Mr Alewine

I am realizing there are good and bad aspects to both Firefox and Open Office, but both are comparable to their non-open source counter parts.

Firefox is great for organization (which is helpful for someone like me) by saving a session and allowing me to return where I left off when I close Firefox. It also keeps track of sites I visited and brings them up automatically when I type a URL that has similar text in it. The features are accessible and easy to read, and it runs as fast as any web sever available.
However...
Firefox routinely crashed, leaving me to continually restart the program. This doesn't seem like to be a significant issue, but it's not a problem I had with Safari. This happened more often when I used ESPN360, (a tool for watching live sporting events through espn.com) which would make me move to Safari in order to watch the game (because I'm not giving up watching sports for something silly like principles).

Open Office had the same ups and downs. There were times I could not tell there was a difference between it and Word, and I actually preferred Open Office to Macintosh Pages. It surpassed both programs by offering features like finishing longer words when I started to type them.
However...
Open Office required three more steps to open a document then Pages or Word. If I saved a document in Open Office, I had to start Open Office first and then open the document through the program. If I opened the document by just going to the folder it was saved under, it would have opened through TextEdit. This may be more of a problem with the settings on my computer, but as for now it is a hassle.
Also, Pages allows me to save a document in Pages or as a Word Document. This offers options when sending a document to someone using Microsoft Word. (I know Dr. Pfaffman has asked us to swear off sending Word attachments, but I have not learned this yet.) Open Office does not always work as an attachment, which is frustrating when turning in an assignment.

Open Office and Firefox have as many strengths and weaknesses as their non-open source rivals, and consumers need to determine which meets their needs. But Open Office and Firefox offer one feature non-open source programs cannot; Freedom from Microsoft and Macintosh.

Thank the Lord! Ophcrack worked and the Dell is back and better than ever! (Well... maybe not better than ever.) As it turns out, I was not burning the program onto a disc correctly. I will walk through the entire process, and try to show some screen shots.

- First, visit Ophcrack's site, which I have posted here.

- Install "Ophcrack Live CD". There will be two choices. Choose the Live CD. This program is quick and easy to install, so it should only take a few minutes.

- Once the program is installed, it needs to be burned to a CD. This is not standard CD burning procedure though.
First, you must incert a blank CD and go to Applications->Utilities->Disk Utilities. The image you will see is at the top of this post.
Next, drag the program from your desktop to the window and select "Burn". Dr. Pfaffman explained what this does and why simply burning a CD does not work, but I honestly had a hard time understanding what he meant and do not want to risk confusing anyone else.

- Back to Ophcrack, all that is needed is for the computer to load from Ophcrack instead of Windows. This happens when the computer first turns on. You must hold F12 and choose to "load from CD".

- Ophcrack does the rest. All that is needed is to press Enter a couple of times, and Ophcrack works its way through the computer. It clearly presents your password and all other passwords from other accounts in a simple chart.

All I did after that restart it and sign in as before. All my information was all still there, safe and sound.
I just hope there is not some German spy watching me now through Ophcrack..... uh oh.

So I tried Dr. Pfaffman's idea to register new password for the Dell. This site is Offline NT Password Registry Editor and it operated just like the other two programs. I downloaded the software, burned it to a disc, put it in the computer, and tried to boot it from the disc... Again, nothing. Windows loaded again, just like Ophcrack and Microsoft's free software.
I am beginning to wonder if something awful has happened to my computer.

Dr. Pfaffman is not going to like this post, but I am beginning to consider the legitimacy of Open Source software. As one of my projects, I chose to capitalize on my skills as a journalist and write an article describing the possibilities for education available through Open Source. My thinking was going along with Dr. Pfaffman's, believing this was a legitimate way for schools to save money or use money to fund different needs. It seems so obvious if this is available, why not use it?

I finally attempted Ophcrack, the Software used to crack into computers with lost passwords. I found this site through the video tutorial I posted earlier, and the process seemed fairly simple. All that was needed (according to another video tutorial on youtube) was to download the software, burn ophcrack to a CD, and put the CD in the computer you are trying to crack. The claim was this would work with over 90% of computers using Windows XP and some with Vista. My Dell uses (or I should say "used" since it has been on the shelf for so long) XP, so I assumed this would be no problem. The instructions were to turn on the computer, put in the CD, restart the computer, and enter F12 before Windows starts to load. This allows ophcrack to load instead of Windows.
I followed all these instructions, only to find Windows loading and returning to the same screen where my password was rejected. I tried this several more times, but to no avail. I will burn another CD and try once more, but I believe ophcrack (like the other programs I have tried) does not work. Open Source software is not proving to be beneficial at the moment.

I am in the process of writing an article for the Oak Ridge Observer on the benefits and downfalls of Open Source Software for the Oak Ridge Schools. I spoke with IT Director Doug Cofer this afternoon and will sit with him for an in depth interview tomorrow morning.

Oak Ridge Observer's website.

So after following the advice of the video from PC World, I visited the site http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/download.php and downloaded the free software to recover passwords. The site said the software can recover 99.9% or Windows passwords, I felt fairly optimistic.
The download lasted only a minute, I saved it to a junk drive, and plugged it into my Dell Inspiron... Nothing. Just like last time with the CD that was supposed to recover my password and nothing happened, this new software left me with the same results. I wonder if there is a special button I am supposed to be hitting, or maybe it needs to turned on and off, or maybe something horribly wrong has happened... or maybe it's just a pathetic computer...

Here is a pretty helpful video from PC World my Father in law found for me. I am going to see if any of their tips work to find my Dell's password.

http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-Retrieve-a-Lost-Windows-Password-4512

Firefox has finally shown a flaw. For the past week, it has crashed several times without warning and (according to Firefox) without reason. I am not sure if this is caused by a program I am running that does not work well with Firefox, or if there is something wrong with the browser, but this has happened several times recently. It usually occurs while I am running more than one window or a video player (ESPN 360 for example), so this may have something do to with it. If this is the case, then Safari surpasses Firefox in this area because I never had this problem with Safari. However, this is my first and only problem with Firefox... so far.

Also, I have encountered some problems with OpenOffice. (These aren't necessarily problems, but inconveniences.) I cannot open an OpenOffice document unless I open it through OpenOffice. For example, when I created a document using Pages or Word, I can open the file by simply finding the file and selecting it. I didn't need to first open Pages, and find "Open Document" in Pages. All that was necessary was to find the file. With OpenOffice, I have to open the program and open the document through the "Open Document" link. When I tried to open the file itself, it would open in Textedit. This means I need to pay more attention to where I save files and how I open them. This happened with a mid-term I was supposed to turn in to my English Education professor. Before class, I could not understand how to open the file in order to print it, and I was left with my mid-term in Textedit with achingly small font which I was unable to adjust. Very embarrassing to say the least.
I also tried to email documents to one of my professors and they were unable to open them. I exported them to another folder as PDFs, but the images were jumbled with random text everywhere. I am not sure if there is something I am not doing, but if this is true then OpenOffice needs to make their program easire to navigate.

Another benefit of Firefox, along with the THOUSANDs of others...
When typing an address into the address bar (the box to type a web address, I don't know what it's called), Firefox will begin searching for possible sites that have the letters you have typed. This is nothing new, but Firefox has taken this a step further. Not only will it search for a possible web address, it will also explore sites where those letters show somewhere within the page.
For example, I earlier searched for www.hulu.com.
As I was typing, "hu" I had a list of possible websites, including all the different pages I had opened in the hulu site. I also got a link to an article I had read earlier from www.espn.com, saying, "Isiah Thomas says he's HURT by Magic Johnson's comments." I tested this and typed "es", and saw links to all the ESPN sites I had visited, along with a link to my Facebook status "If I ever had the chance to meet Colin Cowhere from ESPN radio, I believe I would pass."
This is simply incredible. I will never use another web browser again... Hopefully

Last night was my first experience with Open Office, and as someone who has spent my life using Microsoft Word, I am impressed. From what I can see thus far, Open Office has a similar layout and appearance as Word and uses similar icons and commands. For a novice computer user, Open Office offers helpful tools found in Word, including a text feature that will complete long, commonly used words when I start to type them. I can also use Spell and Grammar check, shortcut icons for printing and saving, and an easy to read tool bar.
As it stands now, the comparison is fairly even, with Open Office enjoying a slight edge because... well, it's free.

I'll be honest, at the first thought of Open Source/free software, I was skeptical. My brain still operates on placing value through dollars for most goods, and amateurs making software just for fun sounds more like an undergrad technology project than something I would want to run my computer with. I, however, was very wrong...
In IT521, we have beat this idea to death, yet it still fascinates me. Geniuses of technology are working together to bring their work and software freedom to the masses, like William Wallace with a keyboard... but with no killing. In this experiment, I hope to use as much Open Source software as I possibly can, and document my experience here. The primary programs I will be using are Firefox and Open Office since an internet browser and word processor are the programs I use the most often. I will use Ubuntu through the Dell Dr. Pfaffman issued to me at times during this experiment as a means of comparison with my Mac and campus computers. I will not use it all the time, though, because it is not practical to carry with me on a regular basis for the simple reason... it's too damn heavy. (I may sound pathetic, but I'm okay with that.) This will also allow me to see how prevalent Open Source is with other machines.
This first post will be describing my experience the last couple of weeks with Firefox.
Up until recently, I used computers as little as possible and would feel exhausted and irritable if I sat in front of a computer for more than a half hour doing anything other than write a paper. I used the programs I was instructed to use, which included (of course) Internet Explorer. When my wife gave me a Macbook for Christmas last year, I made the switch to Safari, which ran circles around Explorer. Throughout these years, Firefox was always around but I knew nothing about it. As an undergrad, I thought it was used as a tool for other operations, that I as a peasant computer user would no nothing of. When I would visit the computer lab at ETSU (where I earned my undergrad), I would move to a different computer if it was the only browswer available on the computer I was on.
However, I have seen the light and my eyes have been opened to the wonders of Firefox and its ability to make my life a little easier. It features all the same tools as Safari, and has considerably more than Explorer. My internet use is primarily restricted to ESPN, Yahoo!, iGoogle, Facebook, UTK, and various news sites (BBC, NPR, MSNBC, etc.) With ESPN being the site I visit the most, I use it to watch games on ESPN360 and listen to ESPN Radio. I also use MSNBC to watch their streams of Sunday night NFL games, and Hulu to catch up on the Office and 30 Rock (I don't have cable). All these operations use a different system and tools to provide these videos, and Firefox handles them all with appearant ease. In fact, it streams NBC's NFL games (which works through Microsoft Silverlight) better than Safari. Firefox also allows users to save their ID and passwords on most sites that require them. The top of the window features a Google search box, an easily recognizable icon for a home site, and will make suggestions for previous sites based on what I enter into the address box.
Simply put, Firefox is comparable to Safari and greatly supasses Explorer... all while charging ZERO to the user. When competing against the giant numbers posted by Microsoft and Macintosh, zero can be the largest number of all.

For a project for my class, IT521, I am trying to bring my Dell Inspiron back to life. It's a quality computer and done me well, but has recently kicked me out like a moody girlfriend. My password to log onto Windows no longer works, and before it was running incredibly slow.

So, this is my emergence response. I began with Dr. Pfaffman's suggestion to do a search Google serach for "Forgot Windows Password". I came across the Windows site resetwindowspassword.com, which is Microsoft's site for resetting a password. I found what I thought was a program to download, and began loading it to my Mac. I burned the program to a DVD and inserted it into my Dell. I then waited. Absolutely nothing happened.

I checked back over the site and found what I had downloaded was actually just a Demo. (Apparently my abilities to pay attention and follow directions are not where they should be.) The actual program is $19.95 for the least expensive version, so in the name of open source software, I moved on.

I then found the blog, geeksaresexy.blogspot.com, and there was a post for this very issue. The author suggested a certain program they found to be most effective, so I checked it out. The site was home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpassword. I was ready to begin downloading when I saw a warning that scared me away. "NO WARRANTY WHATSOEVER!" flashed at the bottom of the screen with a message saying the site was not responsible for any damage done to my computer by downloading the program. I know I am being a bit of a wimp, but I didn't know if this was a sure sign to think twice about using this product or if it was normal to post it with websites like these. So I am waiting to ask someone who knows...