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           \/             Dick

You guys probably wouldn't have guessed it, but ol' Dickie has a soft spot in his heart for Valentine's Day in 1984.  I was a sophomore at East Lancing Prep when on that horrible V-Day I didn't get a single card from anyone in my class.

While a lesser man-child would have cried like a little baby, I got productive and started working on our class computer, a TI-99/4.  There's nothing like a little Parsec or Pirate Adventure to smother one's love woes.

What does all this have to do with this month's scintillating tip? Well, I absolutely love many things about Windows XP Pro.  For example, the network Quality of Service feature is great at the office.  It prohibits any one person - (cough) Suzy from Accounts Payable - from wasting all the company's bandwidth by downloading 'NSync videos.  How? By reserving 20 percent of total available bandwidth of real work.

But what do you do if you're a home user who prefers the Pro version?  Personally, I want to take full advantage of my 1.5Mbit SDSL line.  Well, luckily, there's a fix.  To unreserve your 0 percent of bandwidth, first log in as the actual Administrator (hold down Ctrl-Alt-Delete at the login screen if yo're a wanker who uses the Fast User Switching screen).  Now go to the Start Menu and select Run.  Type gpedit.msc and press Enter.  Expand "computer Configuration, ' then go to "Administrative templates," then "Network," and selct the "QoS Packet Scheduler."  Double click the "Limit Reservable Bandwidth" key, and check the "Enabled" item on the Settings tab. Change the "Bandwidth limit %" to 0, then click Apply and exit gpedit.msc.  If you still ahve QoS enabled on your network, this should free up that 20 percent.

Sign.  I think I'm gonna go watch something from my library of Whitney Houston concerts now.