T3 Magazines "Smart Homes Show" is on at the N.E.C. in Birmingham from 22nd to 25th March.

As someone who's home is a shrine to technology with industrial strength Wi-Fi coverage, 10megabit Broadband, 300GB networked PVR, both Satellite and Freeview Digital TV, multiple Telephone and CAT5e ports in every room of the house, Web enabled Motion-Detection CCTV, Gigabit Ethernet, DAB Radio receivers, a media server, waterproof speakers in the bathroom and a Robotic Guinea Pig (no, honestly...) - as you can imagine, I'm rubbing my geeky little hands at the thought of attending.

If you are attending and fancy meeting up for a cup of tea and a chat, drop me a note - it'd be nice to say hello!

P.S. Avoid the £8 entry fee by requesting free tickets to the Homebuilding & Renovating Show, which is attached to the Smart Home Show. Free tickets from http://www.homebuildingshow.co.uk/cgi-bin/htmlos.c... :-)

I'm a serial bookmarker. That is to say anytime I see any web-site vaguely of interest, I bookmark it within Mozilla Firefox (or add it to favourites for you Internet Explorer folk) in a very organised folder structure, and file it away for future reference.

I also regularly work in many different locations using many different devices. I've a PDA/Mobile Phone, Laptop, Desktop PC, Server and yet another Desktop PC solely for playing games on and doing other non-work stuff. Whilst sat at any of these machines, it's useful to be able to open up one of those thousands of bookmarks I've made before.

This always caused a problem, because if I was at the server and I wanted to look up a bookmark I'd made on the Desktop PC the day before - it wasn't available. Likewise, if I found a site I wanted to bookmark, it'd be scribbled down on a peice of paper, or jotted into the mobile phone notes section, and hopefully make it's way back to the bookmarks on my Desktop PC when I was next there and remembered to do so.

I'd also tried synchronising Firefox's bookmark file itself between various PC's. But I regularly ended up losing entries when I'd made new bookmarks at two different machines without syncing them first.

The closest I'd come to a solution was with the excellent del.icio.us web-site. Del.icio.us allows you to store and tag bookmarks and share them with others. It can integrate with your existing bookmarks within Firefox - but I wasn't sold on this aspect of the site.

So when I came across Foxmarks - an extension for Firefox that said it made bookmark synchronising easy, I was intrigued.

In a nutshell - once installed Foxmarks sync's your bookmarks to a central server, uploading any new entries you've made, and downloading any new entries it finds (that you could have made on another PC). It does this at startup and shutdown without any noticeable overheads, and at scheduled times in between. No new windows to navigate, no special methods - just continue to bookmark web-sites at whichever PC you are at, and they get sync'd to all the other machines on their next use without any intervention at all.

Foxmarks is freely available for Firefox 1.5 and above, for Windows, Linux and Mac. I highly recommend it!

PC Pro Magazine is celebrating it's 150th issue this month. If you work in, or have any responsibility for I.T, and don't read "PC Pro" - why not? It's an invaluable source of information for newbie and experienced user alike.

As part of the 150th Celebrations, PC Pro has asked it's contributors to reminise about their first PC. Anecdotes about Sinclair ZX80's, earlier Apple Mac's and even earlier beasts that barely pass for the modern equivalent of "computer" were presented. Which got me thinking to my first computer experiences.

My first computer was the Atari 600XL (pictured right).

Boasting a whopping 16KB (that's KB, not MB) of memory, a Cartridge Slot for ROM based games, and a heavy integrated keyboard - when my 2nd hand 600XL appeared on Christmas day that year, the 9 year old mini-me was very excited!

Although no manuals were supplied, an Atari Cassette Deck was, and so through trial and error (and using cheap C60 "Data" Cassette's purchased from Tandy's to save information onto, it was mostly error...) I slowly picked up how to write in BASIC. I like to think that this first experience of "it's only a computer, try stuff and see what works" set me up for later life as a reckless IT Consultant...

Plus of course there were the games. Although I was given access to the back catalogue of Atari classics (Joust - pictured left, Centipede and Star Raiders, amongst others) - it wasn't long before I was introduced to the equivalents of PC Pro magazine for the day... "Atari User" and it's less glossy but longer lasting rival "Page 6" Magazine. Within their pages I found out about games of the day like Gauntlet, games that required more than my puny 600XL's 16k memory...

And so I learnt my first lesson about what would become a lifetimes computing necessity, namely "upgrading".

I moved from a 600XL to a 2nd hand Atari 800XL, boasting a huge 64KB of memory - enough to run Gauntlet. Then came a 5.25" Disk Drive, consigning the Cassette Deck to history. Then I lusted after 128KB memory, so a move to the Atari 130XE was required. Before long, the 16-bit Atari STFM was luring me away, and once I was onto the 16-bit platform, my first non-Atari Compuer, the Amiga A500, was purchased.

Being introduced to the Amiga's grown-up UNIX like OS was the final chapter in my"Home Computer" learnings - I soon explored further and discovered something called the "IBM Compatible PC" (an 8086 Processor in this case) and the world of Networking using long lengths of BNC Cable became the new passion.

But I'll never forget my humble beginnings on the Atari. In fact, how can I forget - as I sit typing this blog entry, I can see an Atari 65XE and an original Atari 400 staring at me from the shelves! That's right, I now collect "retro" computers - so the GG has to put up with sharing our home with overflowing shelves full of ZX Spectrums, Commodore 64's, VIC 20's and all the other home computers I could never afford to play with when I was a youngster. :-)

John from John Seeley & Co. has passed me a number of copies of his booklet "83 Ideas To Help You Achieve More".

It's a good short read, and worth referring back to from time to time when you need help getting motivated to "get on".

If you're interested in copy, get in touch and I'll drop one out to you by snail mail on a first-come, first-served basis.

Here in the UK, The Gadget Show returned to television for it's Sixth season last night on Five.

If you've never watched it before and you're even the slightest bit geeky (that means the majority of blokes at least) then it's worth setting the PVR for.

Apart from the lovely Suzi Perry being very easy on the eye for us chaps, Jason Bradbury is definitely a nerds nerd - the man just loves his technology. The weekly challenges are usually great fun too.

In summary, think BBC's "Top Gear" show, only for gadgets, and you're there.

Despite the very late night (thanks HP!) I managed to make it to Manchester on Wednesday afternoon for the second half of the Microsoft Small Business Symposum.

The event (the first set of it's kind, I believe) was put together for Microsoft for it's Small Business Specialist Community with a view to providing an update on Microsoft's plans for its next 12 months. Speakers from Microsoft such as David Overton and Nigel Leggatt were in attendance to give presentations and chat to afterwards.

The parts of the Symposium I found most valuable, however, were the sessions hosted by, and dedicated to interaction between the SBS Partners themselves. The ability to speak to other business owners about their experiences in areas such as growing your business, Marketing, sales and the like was invaluable. Presenters such as Susanne Dansey and Gareth Brown came across as very good speakers and gave interesting views.

I only qualified as a Small Business Specialist late last year, so this event really opened my eyes to the community of fellow SBS members there are within the UK.

Of particular interest was a discussion on how a one-man-band such as myself grows into a bigger business. I was able to give advice to other one-man-bands who had just started up and were facing the same challenges I was 3 years or so ago, whilst I also looked to receive advice from other SBS' who had grown and were in the position I would like to be in the next 18 months.

So, a huge thumbs up for the event. Here's hoping it becomes an annual fixture on the Microsoft calendar.

My blog entry last week giving my views on Vista in a nutshell received a lot of feedback - some of it agreeing with my points that SME's should hold fire before upgrading due to application, driver and hardware issues - some of it disagreeing (and some of it disagreeing quite vocally!).

Mike from Microsoft posted comments, and a few others made the same argument via e-mail, that my view of Vista had been formed whilst using the various Beta copies of the software - not the full release.

Therefore last week, whilst visiting a customer who was interested in running Vista themselves to help them form an opinion, we took the opportunity to slap the full release of Vista Business onto one of their standard PCs - in this case a HP Compaq dx2000 comprising of a P4 2.8ghz Processor, 512mb memory and a ATI Radeon Xpress 200 Graphics Card. A fairly standard setup for businesses - a PC purchased "off the shelf" from one of the big PC manufacturers in the last 18 months.

The PC had a copy of Windows XP Professional and all this customers LOB applications on it.

Running the Vista Upgrade Advisor within XP first showed us where we were likely to hit problems - it came as no surprise to find that an older version of AVG Anti-Virus and Diskeeper Defragmentation software weren't compatible with Vista. It also suggested that some features (Aero) may not work with our existing Graphics Card.

Pressing onwards, the Upgrade process really was a breeze - very quick and simple. The machine was part of a domain and these settings were transferred across seamlessly.

The logon process raised some eyebrows - when you are used to a bog-standard username/password prompt and drop-down domain select box - the response from the gathering masses was that it reminded them of "Duplo bricks". Ahem.

The ease of changing Accessibility features from the logon screen was a useful touch.

Once logged on, the Desktop does look lovely - even with Aero turned off. Windows showed us that we had a "Windows Experience Rating" of... 1.00... certainly not hot, but we expected that. The ATI Radeon Xpress driver didn't work out of the box, but a quick click of "Update Driver" button within Device Manager resolved that by visiting Microsoft Update in the background. Simple and painless.

Response times were very snappy - despite only 512mb memory. Much snappier than I was used to on earlier releases of Vista. Nod to Microsoft Mike - I stand corrected. ;-)

What else caught the eye?

• The Start Menu

Universally loved and adored. The ability to click the erm... blob... where the Start button used to be, and then type any program, document name, web-site, etc. and have it found and loaded was an instant hit. Going into Vista, this was my favourite feature too.

• Windows Meeting Space

Was greeted with a mild nod of approval, as the usefulness in being able to start a peer-to-peer sharing session between executives with laptops is obvious.

• Windows Backup

This elicited cries of "at last!". Whilst 3rd party tools can improve on Windows Backup, it's nice to finally see support for CD and DVD-RW's, external HDD's, USB Devices and Network Backups. Now the only hurdle to making sure roaming laptop users data is really backed up is the most difficult hurdle, getting the users to actually do it!

Help & Support seems much improved also. I like the way it can automatically updated from the Internet, that hovering over certain links shows their destination, and from my own perspective, I was pleased to see the "Small Business Resources" link - sending us to Microsoft's own web pages on how to make the most of EVO from a SME perspective. After all, just buying and slapping on Vista and/or Office 2007 is only the first step - you want help on actually using all this shiny technology to help you run your business better!

So that was the first impressions of a final release Vista Business installation, from both my POV and the customers. Of course, that is just the result of a couple of hours mooching around the O/S - Vista obviously needs more time and attention to find the other real value. My customer is now pressing on with an MS Office 2007 trial too, to see how they cope with the new interface there too.

I do still hold my view that unless you're a customer approaching the end of your, for example, standard 3 year hardware replacement cycle, that you're better of sticking with XP for a while longer. Even the most die-hard Vista fan would have to admit that a lot of the new features can be replicated through third party tools on XP, perhaps not as seamlessly, but still. Whilst my view might seem to rebel against my usual techno-frenzy for all things new, I think it's a realistic point of view.

As a footnote, whilst visiting my brother over the weekend, I got to play with Windows Vista Home Premium (rather predictably, my brothers OEM copy arrived whilst I still wait for my Retail Upgrade to appear...) installed on an actual Media PC - one of these new silent VCR size jobbies that are appearing. With Aero turned on, there is no denying Vista looks superb. The Media Centre applications are neat, and the Windows Sidebar Gadgets come into their own too. However, be warned, on a CRT television (even a 28" model) - using anything other than the chunky icon style Media Centre applications will pretty soon cause eyestrain. The text just isn't clear enough. This is a short-coming of CRT technology, not Vista, of course. A swift upgrade to a LCD Television is therefore now on my brothers shopping list!

A customer today asked me whether it was possible to give a (who was not an Administrator) permission to send messages and log other users off a Terminal Services Server, without giving them full administrative rights.

To achieve this within an Active Directory environment (and in this case with a Windows 2003 Terminal Server, although it should work on earlier versions too) first create a new Security Group (imaginatively called "TerminalServicesAdmins" in this case) within the Active Directory Users and Computers Snap-In. Then add the user or users who you want to have the enhanced privileges to this group.

Next, open Terminal Services Configuration MMC. Select your RDP connection and right click it - then select Properties. Move to the Permissions tab and select your new Security Group.

Click Advanced to show more detailed Permissions. Select your new Security Group again and click Edit.

Finally give your group the additional "Logoff", "Message" and "Disconnect" rights as shown in the screenshot here.

Be aware that these new permissions only take hold once the currently logged on users log off and back on - that includes users not being given any new rights, but who are trying to be logged off by the new demi-Administrators!

There's a good overview of RDP Permissions at Microsoft's Help and Support Site here.