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Scaling Remote Desktop To Specific Resolution (aka still show your taskbar)

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There’s no denying that Remote Desktop is one of the greatest features of Windows. It’s incredibly handy and it’s speed and performance beats VNC and many other remote control solutions in speed and picture quality.

One gripe I have had with Remote Desktop is that I want to be able to connect to my desktop machine (my work laptop) at a resolution which would allow it to be a full size window but NOT full screen. In other words, I want it full screen but still showing MY taskbar. It turns out scaling the window to fit without scrollbars isn’t that difficult; you just can’t do it from the GUI.

Here’s how to pull this off:

  • Configure your remote connection from the GUI as usual.
  • In “Local Resources, make sure that “Apply Windows key combinations” is set to “On the remote computer”.
  • Save the connections settings to a file. Call it for example “MyLaptopRDP.rdp”.
  • Open Notepad and edit the file you just created. Here’s a shortened version of what you’ll see:
screen mode id:i:1
desktopwidth:i:1280
desktopheight:i:800
session bpp:i:16
winposstr:s:0,3,0,0,800,600
compression:i:1
keyboardhook:i:1
  • Add a new line with this text: “smart sizing:i:1?
  • Change the desktop width and height to what you want (for example I set mine to the laptops 1600×900).
  • Save and quit Notepad. Double click on MyLaptopRDP.rdp (this part is important… you have to use the NEW RDP connection file to launch to get this to work) and now you’ll have an RDP session that fits on your screen but still shows you default machines taskbar. Super sweet!
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Microsofts latest ad – Lisa and Jackson get a Sony VAIO

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Seems like Microsoft might *cough* FINALLY be getting some advertising right. Microsoft’s latest Laptop Hunters ad follows a mom and her kid. Lisa and Jackson say they need a computer which is “fast” because they need to “look up stuff” before they “get to baseball.” (uh… ok) They have a a sub-$1500 budget. Somewhere in the middle they take a look at a Mac — which Lisa notes are “popular at this age” (total Apple snub…  “they’re for kids!”). Regardless, they’re both so turned off by the cute-but-small computers that they hurry back to the affordable VAIO section and make off with a 16-inch laptop.

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Laser-etched Eee PC with complete maps of Super Mario Land

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Revolvingdork laser-etched the top of his Eee PC with the complete level maps of Super Mario Land (on the Game Boy). Everything from the familiar layouts of 1-1 to the climactic battle with Tatanga in the clouds at the end of 4-3 is represented in the etching.

Laser Etched Eee pc

I just bought my kid an Eee PC for his birthday… he’s all into Power Rangers (ya ya I know), but it would be super cool to get that etched into his lid!

This was made possible with the laser cutter at NYC Resistor in Brooklyn ( www.nycresistor.com ), where you can go to get your laptop etched too! He set the laser in raster mode at 70% speed and 40% power to achieve this look.

View all the images on his Flickr photostream.

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Lock your computer via Bluetooth when you walk away

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Open source application Blue Lock monitors the proximity of your Bluetooth phone or device and automatically locks your computer whenever it’s out of range (e.g., you’ve walked away from your computer). The usefulness will depend on the strength of your Bluetooth devices, since it’s not really going to do its job if you’ve got a strong signal and receiver that keeps a connection from across the office. But if it works well with your Bluetooth devices, Blue Lock provides a simple way to keep your computer secure when you step away for a few seconds but forget to hit Win-L to lock your workstation. Blue Lock is free, Windows only.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that my phone DOES pair with my laptop, I couldn’t get Bluelock to work. I currently have an HTC Touch (Sprint Touch aka HTC Vogue). Bluelock flat out won’t find my phone. Ce la vi… maybe it’ll work for you cuz it sounds like an awesome concept.

Blue Lock website

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Vista tweak – Reduce System Restore disk usage

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System restore is never anything I found particularly useful… in fact I don’t know that I’ve ever even used it. However, I’ve always left it enabled just in case. In Windows XP you could configure the amount of drive space System Restore uses via a slider control. No such control exists in Windows Vista and by default the sucker is configured to use up to 15 percent of your available drive space! Ok… 15% for something I don’t think I’ve ever used… I don’t think so.

To store restore points, you need at least 300 megabytes (MB) of free space on each hard disk that has System Protection turned on. System Restore might use up to 15 percent of the space on each disk. As the amount of space fills up with restore points, System Restore will delete older restore points to make room for new ones.

My laptop currently has a 60g drive and it’s allocated 5.136g of space. Of course this isn’t visible via the interface but to find out you can open a command prompt. Click on the start menu (or the orb as it seems to be called nowadays) and in the searc box type ‘command’, right click on the Command Prompt icon and select Run as Administrator. You’ll then see a DOS command prompt open up… type the following to see the current settings:

vssadmin list shadowstorage

What you’ll see is something like the following:

System Restore - show current usage

The command to set the amount of space used follows this syntax:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=[drive]: /for=[drive]: /maxsize=[size]

So to configure your drive to only use 2 gigs of space on your C: drive you’d to the following:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=C: /for=C: /maxsize=2GB

That’s it! You’ve recovered some space. If you find system restore useful I’d recommend not touching this setting, or at least not reducing it too much. But if you’re somebody like me who’s never used it you can easily reclaim some space.

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