Fc-Computer

Posts Tagged ‘Home’

Should You Repair or Replace an Old Heating and Cooling System?

In locations where summer and winter can be up to the highest level as far as temperature is concerned, well here there is one tool that bias adjust heating and air conditioning units are located in these areas should be in good condition and must be maintained on a regular basis, equipment these are: Marietta Furnace Repair. To successfully overcome the cold days of winter and scorching hot weather during the summer, all homeowners should have adequate preparation and the right to retain heat or stroke frostbites. Repair and maintain heating and air conditioning unit at least once a year, in a way that seriously recommended by all professional HVAC contractors.Indoor Air Quality

The air quality in your home should be the upmost importance to you and your family. This is true, especially when it comes to you and your family’s health. Most people already know that the air quality in your home can be up to ten times worst than outdoor air quality. If you value the health of yourself and your family, then investing in air quality products for your home should only be nothing shorter than common sense. The air quality products that should come to mind would be whole house air filters, Marietta HVAC,  dehumidifiers and humidifiers. Asking about these products to your local HVAC contractor would be greatly beneficial to you and your family.

Emergency Air Conditioning Service versus Annual Preseason Check Ups

If you had to choose between annual preseason check-ups, and emergency air conditioning services, which one would you choose? Well, I guess your answer would depend upon your geographical location. If you reside in an extreme hot and cold climate, Marietta Trane Air Conditioning  then you should consider emergency air conditioning services over just annual pre-season check-ups. Having a contractor evaluate your air conditioning unit “annually” is the least you should do, regardless of your geographic location. Read the rest of this entry »

The Perfect Kiosk Platform

Windows 7 is a great operating system environment to run kiosk or single-purpose applications such as POS or multimedia systems. Its ability to host just about any program from a variety of development environments makes it an ideal platform. Adobe Flash, Silverlight, Java, Microsoft.Net, and HTML are just a few of the development languages available to build rich interactive kiosk and single-purpose applications that will run on Windows 7. In addition, there are several variations of Windows 7 available to run your application from the inexpensive (Windows Home Premium), to the fully functional (Windows Enterprise). The Windows version chosen will depend on the functionality needed for your application and your budget. For example, if you don’t need corporate networking abilities, Windows 7 Home Premium is a lower cost solution.

There is another version of Windows 7 called Windows 7 Embedded. Windows 7 Embedded provides complete OS customizations, is light-weight, and is primarily for single-purpose application use. Basically, it is Windows stripped down with no added services or applications. You add to it what you need for your application. This sounds perfect for kiosk and single-purpose implementations, however, a higher degree of IT expertise is required to implement it and it is expensive unless a high volume of licenses are purchased. In addition, Microsoft only makes it available to OEM hardware vendors.

Lock Down Windows 7 with Inteset Secure Lockdown

A benefit of using Windows 7 Embedded is its stripped down out-of-the-box operation. Conversely, retail versions of Windows 7 are loaded with OS enhancing applications, utilities, and services. In this case, if a retail version of Windows 7 is used for kiosk implementation, it is very important to optimize it and lock it down so users do not have access to undesired features and operations. This can be accomplished a few ways. One is through the Windows 7 Group Policy Editor. However, this utility is designed for larger companies that need to control employee access to the operating system functions and not so much for kiosk implementations. In addition, the Group Policy Editor is not available on Windows 7 Home Premium.

An inexpensive, flexible, yet simple alternative to Windows 7 Embedded or the Group Policy Editor is available through the use of a utility called Secure Lockdown v2 by Inteset, LLC(1). Secure Lockdown runs on any retail version of Windows 7. This utility creates a virtual embedded environment whereby your master application is the only one accessible by the end user. It essentially removes access to the Windows 7 Desktop environment and unwanted keystrokes and runs your master application exclusively. It can be enabled simply by applying a few configuration settings and checking the Enable option.

Optimizing Windows 7 for Your Application

Before enabling Secure Lockdown, it first makes sense to optimize the operating system environment for use with your kiosk application. Preparing a retail version of Windows 7 with Secure Lockdown is the reverse of preparing a Windows 7 Embedded environment. Instead of adding features, you strip out superfluous Windows programs and services. Windows 7 makes this easy to do with its Windows Features and Services tools. Note that removing Windows features does not optimize disk space. It simply removes the applications from being accessible. However, many applications do have complimentary services that will be removed thereby increasing system startup speeds and increasing memory availability. Removing services will increase boot times and memory significantly depending on which services and how many are removed. Analyze the ones where the Startup Type is Automatic and disable those you do not need.