I’ve been playing with a Digicel GPRS modem for the last few days, and thought I’d share some initial impressions.

To me, a computer without Internet access feels like a car without wheels. Trotting around town with my GPRS-enabled laptop has made me realise just how many ways the Internet supplements my daily existence. Technical disputes with my kava-drinking buddies are resolved in a flash. (“Dude, railway ties are so treated with creosote. So there.”) My extended family can keep track on what their friends overseas are up to. The opportunities to learn are immense, too. (True story: someone asked me how tall a giraffe is. For the first time ever, I was able to say, “Hang on. I’ll show you.”)

That said, GPRS is far better suited to intermittent connectivity than staying online full-time. A quick facebook update here, an email there – that sort of thing. But compared to the amount of Internet available throughout most of the country (i.e. none) I’ve got to say it’s pretty darn cool to have it when you need it.

Read on for the geeky details.

NOTE: Take everything I say with a grain of salt – I’ve only just started this evaluation, so I reserve the right to be very, very wrong on some or all what follows….

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This online document was authored by IT professionals in Vanuatu at the IT Best Practices Works, held June 24 2005 at the Freswota Computer Resource Center (CRC)

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Ultimate Boot CD for Windows

This is one of the most useful tools I have come across in ages. It has several main benefits:

• As it is a write protected CD, nothing can infect it or comprimise it.
• As you boot from the CD, any spyware or viruses on the hard disk do not run.
• There are lots of useful tools on the CD apart from some good antivirus and antispyware tools.
• It uses the Windows PXE Environment (same as during the windows install stage before the first reboot) so it is easy and familiar to Windows users.
• It supports network access (I’ve not had any luck with wireless but wired LAN connections work fine).
• The network access allows you to connect to the Internet and upgrade the virus scanner and spyware tools. It does this by creating a RAM disk (as drive B:) and can download new virus definitions to there. Of course they get lost when you reboot. I don’t use that method as I disconnect and clean the machine before it is allowed to connect to the Internet.

Some of the disadvantages are:

• You cannot download a CD image (.iso file) of the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows. You have to build it yourself because it contains files from your XP CD and MS wouldn’t like them being distributed.
• Building the CD is a bit a hassle as it is a 230MB download and then a couple of hours to get to know how to build and configure it. After that you have to upgrade each package (using the config option) and wait for each package to download it’s virus/spyware signatures.
• Finally you get to build the package and at the end you have a .iso file that you can write to CD. You can even chhose whether you save the .iso file to burn later or just burn direct to the CD. I always save the .iso in case I want to make another copy later.
• If you use it regularly (as I do) then you will probably want to run the updates every month and write a new CD. This is the safest way to use it.

Some of the other tools include:

• Disk partitioning tools
• Disk imaging tools
• Disk defrag tools
• Disk testing/diagnostic tools
• Secure disk wiping tools
• Web browsers
• Registry editing tools
• Network tools – sniffers/scanners etc
• Password tools
• Benchmarking tools
• etc

Where can I download it?

• http://www.ubcd4win.com/

If enough people are interested then I may be able to run a short workshop one afternoon and demonstrate how to use it. email me at: daryl@datec.com.vu if you are interested.