Author Archives: J.D. H.

Force MacBook Air/Pro keyboard backlight ON [solved]

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I was dismayed when my new MacBook’s backlit keyboard turned off without any warning. Apparently Apple feels it knows best when the kb backlight should be on and off. This auto-off behavior was a bit of a bummer to me after many Dell and HP laptops which feature fully user controllable backlit keyboards. Thankfully “Lab Tick” is a small program which lets you take control of the backlight! Highly recommended for anyone with a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air and backlit keyboard…

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How to view status of app store download? Mac OSX El Capitan

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I was downloading the latest iOS SDK from the Mac App Store and initially I could not find the download status. Eventually I found one way to do so, go to the “Purchased” section of the app store and you should be able to view the download progress! 🙂 I realize it is pretty obvious once you see it, but I really wish Apple would put the progress someplace else too… if anybody has other tips for viewing DL status,

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Install VMWare ESXi on Dell PowerEdge 1950 III server

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Later this week I will be installing VMWare ESXi for the first time. It will be on a nice Dell 1U server and here are a few links and resources that I have gathered so far: Compatibility list for VMWare ESXi versions: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php PowerEdge 1950 = good to go with the latest ESXi versions! Install ESXi to a USB thumbdrive (so you can free a valuable SATA/SAS port for VM usage) Install ESXi 4.0 to a USB devicehttp://www.vm-help.com/esx40i/Boot_ESXi_from_USB_flash_drive.phpBelow are 2

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Minimize all windows/apps in Mac OSX Lion [solved]

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Q. How do I quickly minimize all runnings apps/windows and show the Mac OSX desktop?! A. The best way I know of is to press the F11 key (or Fn+F11 on some MacBook keyboards…) this should  push all your apps out of the way and show the desktop. To get your apps back in place, just press F11 again! PS another method is to command+option+click on the desktop, (or instead of Desktop, a Finder window, or the Finder icon in the dock).

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Best RDP client for Mac OSX Lion

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UPDATE: 2013.03.10 adding a new desktop client to the list as well as info for iOS and Android RDP clients. UPDATE: 2012.04.05 added more info regarding certificate errors (and ignoring them!) This week I have been using OSX alongside Windows. I quickly realized that I needed a good remote desktop connection (terminal server) client for Mac OSX Lion. Here are the primary candidates I considered: MS Remote Desktop Connection Client for Machttp://www.microsoft.com/mac/remote-desktop-clientConnect to multiple PCs New Multiple Session Support gives Mac users

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uTorrent vs Transmission on Mac OSX Lion

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Well, I bought a Mac. Specifically a MacBook Air 11.6″ notebook. It is the best ultralight travel computer I could find. I had known the MacBook Airs were good little computers for quite some time, but after they did away with the backlit keyboard a while back I scratched them off of my “short list” of top notebook. Well, they re-added the backlit keyboard and they also put in some spicy new CPUs and nice big SSD options. So I

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