July 2007

NET LOCALGROUP

Vista Home lacks the GUI to manage local groups which means the group membership of any user you create will be fixed at creation time. Not such a bad deal for most home environments but if you’re running Samurize, like me, it’s a problem if you want to gather and display performance statistics. It’s a problem that’s been discussed over in their forums for a while. While the GUI is absent, you can do it from the command-line.

NET LOCALGROUP "Performance Monitor Users" username /ADD

will do it. You need to run the command in administrative mode and the easiest way I’ve found to do that is to type “cmd” in the search box but, intead of hitting ENTER, hit SHIFT-ENTER. Respond Continue to the UAC prompt and the Dos-like box is running as a full Administrative user. And while you’re at it, check out all of the NET commands — NET /?.

(I’m going to post this over in the Samurize forums but I want to give you all a first-shot at it.)

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More/New GPS receivers

Things have changed in the 6 months since I’ve posted about GPS receivers — prices have come WAY down and location information is being reported more frequently. Semson’s has lots of Bluetooth receivers available including the i-Blue 737 Bluetooth GPS (5 Hz – Updated Version) (32 channel, Auto On/Off, WAAS) for about $100. What’s a 5Hz version? It reads and transmits location information 5 times per second instead of the usual once per second. Lots of software doesn’t read it that fast and if you’ve set the unit to send at 5Hz, it’ll drain the battery faster but if you want/need greater accuracy, there ya go.

Since Microsoft Windows Live Search for Mobile and Google Mobile Maps have come out and can talk with GPS units, GPS receivers make more and more sense as a cheap add-on for a Smartphone. So, which one to get? Well, like I said above, you can get a 5Hz version for about $100. You can also get the Qstarz BT-Q818, a 32-hour, 32 channel MTK chipset model with auto-on/off, for about $70 (check this GpsPasSion forum posting for a review and recommendation). And then there’s the i-Blue 737 with the MTK chipset for $70, too (see this GpsPasSion forum posting for a review and discussion).

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