Network Lights is a Windows program, which blinks keyboard LEDs Light Emitting Diode indicating outgoing and incoming network packets on network interface. Network Lights lets you monitor network activity upload/download from your keyboard ScrollLock and NumLock indicators. Each LED will flicker when network traffic is detected.

“I’d recommend against running Network Lights on a laptop which doesn’t have a full numeric pad on the keyboard. As the app flicks the LED on and off, your dual-mode keys (usually on the right side around J-K-L) will periodically become unresponsive. While this is an older app and hasn’t been updated in quite some time, Network Lights runs just fine under Windows 7.” via [Lee Mathews | DownloadSquad]

“This utility is a standalone executable.  You can use the system tray icon (click the mouse) to customize program settings. If you have an older motherboard and your keyboard LED doesn’t blink when there are network traffic, try going to Settings and enable “Force Keyboard Capture” option.” via [Raymond.cc]

via Network Lights – IT Samples.

Device Doctor is a freeware/donationware Windows application that scans your computer hardware and checks to see if there are new driver updates available for your devices. It also locates drivers for “unidentified devices” in the Windows Device Manager. Device Doctor queries their own manufacturer driver database and immediately fetches the correct driver files for your computer.

Device Doctor version 1.0 is now available, download the free driver updater (4.6 MB)

Features:

Device Driver Database

• Provides drivers for every major computer hardware and device manufacturer
• More than 3 terabytes (3,000 GB) of drivers currently in the database
• We cache all drivers so downloads are quick and work every time
• Fast hardware scan takes mere seconds

Consistent Updating

• Constantly updated to include new driver versions as soon as released
• Every driver is human reviewed using specialized compatibility tools
• Learns from other users to recommend better drivers every day

Future-proof with Windows 7 and 64-bit Support

• Designed for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7
• Thousands of drivers coming in weekly for Windows 7
• Full support for 64-bit systems, as well as 32-bit systems

Other Big Deal Functionality

• Provides device names for unknown devices before updating drivers
• Can be used offline – scan results are saved so you can move them to a connected computer and download there
• Updates WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) and non-WHQL drivers

via Free Driver Update Software – Device Doctor.

Lee Mathews over at DownloadSquad hit another home run:

“Adobe has done a lot to improve Reader in recent versions. I’m more than happy to run an open source alternative, however. Sumatra PDF is ridiculously small (a 1.2Mb download), lightweight, and handles the PDFs I throw at it without skipping a beat.

Today, Sumatra has finally hit version 1.0. Sumatra’s a pretty bare-bones application, so don’t expect any mind-blowing changes. What the new update boils down to is better compatibility, bug fixes, and performance tweaks.”

Read More: Open source Adobe Reader alternative Sumatra PDF hits version 1.0.

Chris Morris over at Switched.com blogs:

Traditionalists might balk, but the holiday shopping season is already underway. Skeptical? Head to your local department store and you’ll be inundated with Christmas trees and holiday ornaments. Bargain hunters, though, know that the real deals are over a month away.

Traditionally, Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving for the uninitiated) is when retailers truly slash prices. Early birds can shave hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars off their holiday bills. We checked with a few elves, who gave us a sneak peek at what you can expect deal-wise this year.

via 10 ‘Black Friday’ Deals to Watch For.

[Thanks Jeff for the Tip!]

Elvin Lee, Software Engineer over a Google informs the world…

“People today have more personal data online than ever before. More and more people are starting to move the bulk of their data off the desktop and into servers “in the cloud,” where it’s accessible from any computer or mobile device and easily shareable with friends and family. At the same time, digital photo technology is making it easier and cheaper than ever to take a lot of pictures, and client software like Picasa 3.5 makes it easier than ever to move photos from your camera to the cloud. That’s why we’ve always given you lots of free storage in products like Picasa Web Albums and Gmail, and why for the past two years we’ve offered additional storage you can purchase if you need even more space.While the cost of hard drive storage has continued to drop in these two years, we’ve also been working hard to improve our infrastructure to reduce your costs even further.

Today we’re dramatically lowering our prices to make extra storage even more affordable. You can now buy 20 GB for only $5 a year — that’s twice as much storage for a quarter of the old price, and enough space for more than 10,000 full resolution pictures taken with a five megapixel camera. Since most people have less than 10 GB of photos, chances are you can now save all your memories online for a year for the cost of a triple mocha. If you need more than 20 GB, plans range all the way up to 16 TB, which is enough room for 8 million full resolution photos! And Google paid storage offers an extra level of security, protection and accessibility that you can’t get with an external drive — at a similar cost per gigabyte.As always, extra storage acts as an overflow that you only start using when you reach the limit of your free storage, and people who have extra storage will be automatically upgraded. So if you need more space for thousands of photos of your toddler, or if you’re running out of room in your overflowing inbox, visit www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage to see all the plans and to buy more storage.”

via Official Google Blog: Twice the storage for a quarter of the price.

When you’re traveling this holiday season, you can enjoy free WiFi at 47 participating airports and on every Virgin America flight. Just bring a WiFi-enabled laptop or mobile device and stay connected to family and friends for free while you travel now through January 15, 2010.

Starting Monday, November 16, 2009, you’ll be able to win prizes by submitting a photo of yourself using the WiFi in any participating airport or on a Virgin America flight. In addition to being able to win great stuff, we’ll feature winning photos on this website.

The holidays are about giving and we hope that you can continue to spread holiday cheer by making a donation via Google Checkout to any of the participating non-profits. At the end of the program, Google will match donations made via participating WiFi networks, up to a maximum of $250,000. Just look for the link to donate once you connect. Learn more.

via Free WiFi – A 2009-2010 Holiday Gift from Google.

JR Raphael over at ITworld compiled 25 of the funniest vintage tech ads they could find. Some will make you laugh; others will make you cringe. But nearly every one will make you wonder what the hell we all were thinking.

My oh my, how things have changed. These 25 vintage tech ads are guaranteed to take you back — and, in most cases, remind you how truly terrible our tastes once were.

Click ahead, and enjoy the shame-free trip down memory lane. via Priceless! The 25 Funniest Vintage Tech Ads | ITworld.

The great folks over at Packet Life opened up their Library and provided 24 Cheat Sheets that all Sysadmins could appreciate. They kindly break the cheat sheets into categories (and in separate PDFs) that include:

• Protocols
• Applications
• Reference
• Syntax
• Technologies
• Misc.

Each image links to the PDF hosted @ Packet Life. If you are planning/wanting to download them all you can save their bandwidth by: Clicking Here (Zip File hosted @ MediaFire)

Protocols

BGP (Border Gate Protocol)

EIGRP (Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol)

First Hop Redundancy

IEEE 802.11 WLAN

IEEE 802.1X

IPv4 Multicast

IPsec (IP Security)

IPv6

IS-IS (Intermediate system to intermediate system)

OSPF (Open Shortest Path First)

PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol)

Spanning Tree

Applications

TCP Dump

Wireshark Display Filters

Reference

Common Ports

IOS (Internetwork Operating System) IPv4 Access Lists

IPv4 Subnetting

Syntax

"Mark Down"

MediaWiki

Technologies

Frame Mode MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching)

QoS (Quality of Service)

VLANs (Virtual Local Area Networks)

Miscellaneous

Cisco IOS Versions (Internetwork Operating System)

Physical Terminations

via Cheat Sheets – Packet Life.

If you are planning/wanting to download them all you can save their bandwidth by: Clicking Here (Zip File hosted @ MediaFire)

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In this session, Dell will introduce you to the basics of Virtualization including how to evaluate if you’re a good candidate, key components involved in the transition, and some of the latest approaches and solutions to making it happen.

via Spiceworks TV.