I agree with Stephen J Chin and dmpthekiller. We bought some readers and rfid cards for a project we did a while back and it's really not expensive. You don't need a writer, the cards come with a unique id which you associate with the user in your database. We got our cards here: http://www.futurlec.com/LF\_Cards.shtml Our application was a timeclock application so we got the timeclock elsewhere, they were also fairly cheap, around $100 (had buttons for clocking in and out and to enter passwords and a fingerprint reader as well as rfid).

I agree whole-heartedly with the wish for the ability to pay by the station instead of having to pay for all of them and only listening to 3 or 4. As to whether those 3 or 4 are worth it, sort of... I've had XM for almost 5 years now, the last time my subscription ran out I paid for 3 years so I could get the better rate. That should be running out soon, and my finances are tight so I probably won't renew. But I have enjoyed it these past several years. I've discovered many bands that I now listen to through some of the stations. So it was kind of worth it to me, but probably not for too much longer.

Yeah, I had similar problems with 2005 myself... I finally figured out the cause but it drove me crazy for a couple of days. In my case I was trying to install SP1 for 2005 but I didn't have enough room on the C drive so it bombed just barely before finishing. It took me a while to figure out it was because I had ran out of space because the error wasn't very helpful. But the real problem was that it screwed up the install so I had to get one of those tools like you mention to rip the install off the box because the uninstall (although it ran) didn't work right (it would fail to reinstall afterward).

I've had a ton of experience with Vista and I have plenty of negative things to say about it. If it does what you want it to do that's great, but it doesn't do what I want it to and I've also had a lot of performance issues. It has admittedly gotten better, I've been using it since the final retail version came out and I stick by my opinion that what was originally released was pretty awful. What they have now is passable for most people, and I still use it for one of my boxes because I need experience with it in order to be able to support other users. Don't get me wrong there are some good features in Vista, they just aren't features I'm particularly interested in myself... I have high hopes that Windows 7 will be enough of an improvement for me to recommend it for more than just specialized cases (Gamers who want DX10, or Media Center users who want to take advantage of some of the advances there). I'm an MSDN subscriber so I have Windows 7 beta now, I just haven't had a chance to install it yet. I'll let you know my opinion when I do.

I'd have to think about it but off the top of my head: Always look on the bright side of life...

Be My Head - Flaming Lips http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szy2mUkGfJk&feature=related[^]

I agree 100% with the OP. This is irresponsible. Some of you seem to be so anti-IT that you aren't seeing the danger of this article. Really the sending of big files is the least harmful in the list of things they're instructing users to do. But some of these are down right dangerous, many of them could get you fired, and some are just unproductive. As someone who's been both an IT admin and a programmer for the past 6 years I understand that users need to be able to do the things neccessary for thier job and also that the IT department is resposible for keeping the network safe. We have ways for users to achieve every item on this list that could possibly be deemed work related. But when a new user starts and he's read this article, what's the chances he's going to ask us the right way to do it instead of just using these dangerous methods? Sure an uninformed user could find out about all of these on his own, but if he's going to be doing that much research chances are instead he'd ask us and we'd instruct him in the proper way to achieve his goal.