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iPod/iPhone audio and sync cable

Jeremy — Thu, 06 May 2010 00:17:42 +0000

Let me get it out of the way at the beginning of this post. Monoprice rocks. I've used them for years for various cables, usually ethernet and HDMI and have always been impressed with the high quality of their cables and surprised by their low prices. A couple weeks ago I was listening to the Real Deal podcast from Cnet.com and heard about a cable that really fit a need in my life. A caller was asking about ways to get their iPod into their car stereo and one of the hosts suggested a cable from Monoprice that connected via the iPod dock connector and had USB and stereo audio out on the other end. This cable was the answer to my frustrating car audio problems.

The image to the left is my iPhone with the cables I've been using. I have a window mount I occasionally use, but it's mainly for long trips when I'm using a GPS app. It's frustrating to have to deal with the two cables all the time.

The "Audio and Sync Cable for iPhone / iPod" from Monoprice eliminated my frustration. Because I have one cable now going into my iPhone it's much easier to use (while the car is stopped of course). The dock connection is the older style that has releases on the side you need to push, but I prefer those connectors to the new ones. Another benefit to this cable is that it sends audio through dock connector's line out. There will be no more constantly adjusting the audio on the phone, then on the car, then on the phone again. The car audio system now handles all volume, and it sounds great.

All that said, the best thing about this is the price. I paid $5.63 including shipping (it retails for $3.90 for a single cable). Compare this to $19 for a standard sync cable from Apple. I definitely recommend this cable for anyone trying to get audio into their car's aux jack.

Error installing Office 2010 RTM

Jeremy — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 20:40:32 +0000

The final version of Office 2010 was released to Technet and MSDN subscribers yesterday. When I tried to upgrade my primary Windows 7 virtual machine on my Mac I got the following error complaining that I had the beta version installed:

This was odd because this VM was primarily used for my school coursework and had Office 2007 installed, but I never tried 2010 on it. I had opened some documents that were created in 2010, but that was it. I searched my installed programs and updates and found nothing with the number 2010. Reading through the Technet forums, I saw other people with similar errors. One suggestion solved the problem for me. Running the MSI Cleanup Utility, I discovered that there were some 2010 bits installed.

As you can see from the image, there are two MUI packs from Office 2010 installed. How they got there, I'm not sure, but I suspect it might be due to opening the documents that originated in 2010 on another computer. I removed the two 2010 items with the cleanup utility and Office 2010 installed without any other problems. Hopefully this posts helps other people running into this problem.

Failure when injecting Windows 7 drivers into a SCCM 2007 OSD boot image

Jeremy — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 16:30:00 +0000

This problem was driving me nuts for the last week, and is more for my own memory than anything else. At work we got a demo unit from HP of the desktop computer we’re going to be rolling out this summer and I was updating the network drivers in our OS Deployment boot images. The Windows PE environment wasn’t getting the network drivers installed and finally I saw the error message “The selected driver is not applicable to any supported platforms.”

The fix was easy. Microsoft KB 978754 has a hotfix that needs to be installed on the SCCM Site Server, then the server needs to be rebooted. The drivers then installed without a problem. The KB article says the cause of the issue was the driver importing wizard couldn’t recognize drivers signed for only Windows 7.

Good to know.

Fixing IT problems with a hammer

Jeremy — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:35:40 +0000

In a continuing process of cleaning up horrible decisions by our predecessors, we just moved a website off one of our domain controllers. The website was moving from IIS6 to 7 (or 7.5, whatever comes with Server 2008 R2), and it required some tweaking to start working again. One of the parts that didn’t work was a self-help page where teachers could unlock student accounts. I set up this web server, and created a service account for it that doesn’t have any special rights on the domain. Because the website runs in IIS as this service account, it could query the domain with no problems, but it didn’t have the rights to unlock accounts.

This is obviously where I differ from a coworker…

him: “Just add the service account to Domain Admins”

me: “Why would I want to do that?”

In the end I remembered I can delegate just the permissions needed to unlock our student accounts to that service account and it works fine.

Why use a hammer when you only need a tiny screwdriver?

quick Windows 7 tip

Jeremy — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:16:55 +0000

Found a quick workaround for my complaint that you can’t pin items that are on network shares to the Windows 7 taskbar. All you have to do is create a folder for shortcuts to all the items, create a new toolbar on the taskbar using that folder. It shows up like the old Quicklaunch toolbar, and creates a separate icon on the taskbar when the app is launched, but it kinda solves my problem.

Here’s the steps:

Create a new folder with shortcuts to the applications you can’t pin.
Right click taskbar and unlock it.
Right click the taskbar again, select toolbars, then select “New toolbar.”
Browse to the folder you created, and click “select folder."