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Dumping TM, watching IIS, managing lists

By Mark Gibbs , Network World , 03/08/2007
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We have three topics this week. First, reader James Curcurato wrote in to ask about Process Explorer, one of the topics of last week's column, "Polishing Windows." Curcurato's question was essentially, how do you replace Task Manager with Process Explorer? The answer is easy - when Process Explorer is running go to Options and select "Replace Task Manager." Process Explorer will now appear whenever Task Manager would have.

He also asked for a practical example of how to use Virtual Desktop Manager. A virtual desktop manager is really useful when you want to arrange application windows so you can switch left/right/up/down instead of in/out. This is partially an aesthetic choice, but it does also reduce visual clutter because you can group application displays, giving you a different way to organize your view of Windows.

Our second topic is the result of another letter, this one from Steve Powell. He asked, "Do you know of a way I can see, in real time, a list of users and/or machine names that are currently using my IIS Web site? I've tried a few log analyzers, and some of the freeware stuff is really nice, but I can't find any that will show a dynamic listing of 'who's on now.' Freeware or open source for Windows is my preference (hey, I work for the government), but I could probably wrangle some bucks if I could find the right tool." Anyone got any suggestions?

Finally, many of you will, by now, have received the first questions to the Gibbs Irregulars list. If you missed the previous mention, it is a list of BackSpin and Gearhead readers who get polled occasionally for their thoughts about a variety of topics (to subscribe send a message to lists@gibbs.com with the subject "subscribe gibbsirregulars").

Now, given the number of people signing up, I was facing a real problem about how to manage the flow of people joining and leaving the group. We wound up with four lists: A list of everyone who was originally invited (if you wrote to either of my columns you were invited), a list of all bounced messages, a short list of those who wanted to be unsubscribed, and a list of new subscription requests.

We generated these lists using the excellent e-mail migration tool Aid4Mail from Fookes Software, which we discussed in this column back in '05. Since then Fookes has continued to polish and refine Aid4Mail to the point where we find it hard to imagine how you could live without it!

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