PepperonI

  I can confess to being one of those annoyed on occasions when receiving appointments, .ics files created and sent with Outlook, from someone who has simultaniously sent it to multiple recipients with a list of all recipients’ email addresses showing in the Cc field.  I guess that’s OK if everybody included knows everybody else, or they work in the same organisation, but when that’s not the case some people can get a little upset because their address is being shared with persons unknown or, worse still, their email address could end up on a malware infected system resulting in them being targeted by the malware.

  After questioning the sender I have been told that they can’t send Outlook appointments to Bcc (Blind carbon copy) recipients because the option wasn’t available.  This is true; when you create an appointment and the select invite attendees in the ribbon there is no Bcc field in the To area even when you would normally have selected Bcc to be displayed when sending everyday emails.

  So, is it possible to send appointments to Bcc recipients?  Yes it is; but it requires one or two extra clicks to achieve this.  I’m not claiming to have discovered this; I actually found it out myself after googling the problem, but felt it worth another mention in the web.  The first thing that needs to be done is to create an appointment as usual;

  After all the Attendees have been added to the Bcc field, all that is required is to click on the send button to start it on it’s way though the ethernet to it’s multiple destinations. Job done!

- "A long time ago ... the harddrive emporer comes up and will conquer the world ... but now its time to renew the universe with even faster mSata SSD ... Its time for Clonewars II the SSD strikes back..."

Klaus Feige, Microsoft MVP - AKA KalvinKlein

Klaus is not only an MVP, he is a moderator in the Lenovo Community Forums and at ThinkPad-Forum.de where he is also one of the stalwart supporters at the ThinkPad Treffs, member meetings, staged regularly in various towns and cities throughout Germany during the year.

Klaus also collaborated with me on the creation of Hard Drive Clonewars - Klonkrieg der Festplatten and the above reply is what I received when I asked him for thoughts and ideas on how I should introduce our latest collaboration and sequel to it.

So with heartfelt thanks to Klaus and no further ado I offer you our latest bilingual collaboration, which has again been created as a feature blog; "SSD Clonewars - Klonkrieg der SSDs".......

Be it due to spill damage, non-functional / popped off key-caps or just wanting to change the language of the keyboard on a notebook, it’s generally fair to say that it’s not going to be a too difficult or complicated undertaking. This is definitely not the case with some notebooks and requires a little more than removing the usual two or three screws and then sliding or unclicking the keyboard all in the space of a meagre few minutes.

On the left is the underside of the upper body of a Sony VPCZ11 system. In order to change out the keyboard you have to remove basically all you can see with the exception of the touchpad electronics, the green boards at the bottom of the picture. You can actually see the underside of the keyboard most noticeably the silver rectangle centre right.

On the right is a Sony VPCZ21 in all its glory before changing out the keyboard which the palm rest is an integral part of.  Basically besides the display, touchpad and buttons what you can see is the keyboard which if requires changing out is definitely not a quick pit stop action …….. more here

I got the idea for this blog having read David Hill’s blog with the same title, What’s In My Backpack, in the Lenovo Blogs, it’s just taken me a little longer to get around to actually writing something. And as David does I like to carry what I can in a backpack because it definitely leaves my hands free, there’s nothing worse than trying to eat a sandwich or burger whilst underway with one hand and a bag of sorts in your other hand.

The above is probably the only thing we have in common as far as a backpack is concerned; looking at the picture above will show that the contents of mine do somewhat differ to David’s contents, not only do I not have a shorty mechanical pencil - I don’t even have a pen, guess I need to fix that.

Just for fun I called in to the local Deutsche Post Office on the way to work one day and asked them if I could pop the backpack on their scales, which they gracefully allowed. It turned out I’m wandering around the whole time with 10.2 Kg, (22lb), hanging on my shoulders.

The camera which was used to take the picture isn’t in the picture, hopefully I’ve not forgotten anything.

I have to say I was pretty surprised at the weight of the backpack and have been looking for ideas to lighten it. Obviously I could swap the T61p out for another lighter notebook, but can’t think of anything else I could dispense with when visiting a customer to fix their notebook, Ideas?

I've been playing around with the idea of starting a Photoblog for some time and decided that it was about time to do it.  The hardest part was deciding how it should look; should it be different theme to my main blog or, should it be similar and some of the features trimmed down?  I also needed to have an excuse to post something in this Blog.

b2evolution, the open-source software I use, does actually offer a skin and all the tools necessary making the creation of a working Photoblog to be almost child's play. I decided not to use the skin they offer, rather to stick to the theme I was already using and tweak some of the settings.  Sticking with the same theme allows for visitors to be able to comment on, ask questions about, individual entries which the b2evolution skin as far as I could see doesn't cater for.

The content of the Photoblog is a collection of just some of the photos I've taken of different notebooks, in various states of disassembly, over the last year or so.  Initially I've started with just over a dozen pictures to get the "Blog rolling" which aren't featured in my other articles.  Whilst choosing the pictures I realised that I'm going to need to improve my photographic skills somewhat.

Now I've got you curious I can tell you how to find my Photoblog; under the Blog Calendar is where to find the link to it.  As always suggestions and constructive criticism is more than welcome, enjoy!