Cool.  You can now create a bootable image for your USB disk.  I haven’t seen too many computers that will boot off of the USB port, though.  The Toshiba TabletPC I had at one point, did.  Does anyone know how common this feature is? 

[Oliver Aaltonen] Previously, I posted a couple small guides on bootable USB drives, but recently I've been receiving reports that the utility mentioned in the guides is not working correctly. In all fairness, the utility was created only for use with a certain type of drive, and whoever made it hasn't updated it, so problems with newer, unsupported drives are unavoidable. A newer, better utility is now available from HP, the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool. (Don't worry, it can be used with non-HP drives, verified with my Sandisk Cruzer Mini.) The HP utility will allow you to easily create a bootable USB drive, provided you have a disk available with the proper DOS system files, for example a Windows 98 boot floppy.

To clarify the process, I've decided to post an update on how to manually make a bootable USB drive.

This rocks - plain and simple. I was trying to get this to work all weekend with bootable CD's, and had no luck. Basically, I want to be able to boot both my laptop and desktop from the USB Key Drive, specifically to use Ghost 2003. I ended up using the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool on my Lexar JumpDrive, and copied the files from my Ghost disk to it. Works like a charm.

I'm thinking I might go ahead and attempt make the uber USB boot disk, use the XP Boot Manager, and drop all sorts of bootable DOS versions, ghost configurations, etc. for recovery purposes.

Anyways, thanks Oliver - you made my night!

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[The Furrygoat Experience]

This is a very cool tip from the Exchange Blog.  Although my i600 Smartphone (Samsung) doesn’t have the “Automatic” selection.  I wish it did, though… 

If you’re lucky enough to own a Windows Mobile-powered Smartphone (like the Motorola MPx200), there’s one cool little function that isn’t altogether obvious. Like most handsets, Smartphones have various profiles between which you can switch (Normal, Silent, Meeting, that kind of thing). You can see which profile you’ve currently selected on the home screen, and can change it by moving the cursor on the home screen down to the Profile line and hitting the select button. When you do this, you’ll see all the available profiles, and have the option (on the right hand soft button) to Edit the profile (changing the volume of the ring tones etc).

One of the profiles is called ‘Automatic’, and when you select the Edit option for that profile, the following text is displayed:

                        The Automatic profile
                        switches between the
                        Normal profile and the
                        Meeting profile when the
                        calendar indicates that the
                        current time is busy.

So when you switch the phone to Automatic, it won’t ring during your meetings! And all because you’ve synched it with your Exchange server… the Magic of Software J

- Ewan Dalton 

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[You Had Me At EHLO...]