FlyerTalk Forums - What Do You Name Your Computer In Windows?

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At work I generally use a combination of the room and building, mainly for convenience. Probably not an ideal situation, because it does make the machine somewhat more identifiable to outsiders.

When I ran a smaller lab, I was using names from greek mythology. That did get me a few strange looks, because I liked to find somewhat more obscure ones :).

Quote:

Originally Posted by ScottC (Post 16172385)

Domain Elbonia, machines named Wally, Dilbert, Alice, PHB etc...

Shouldn't your screen name be "ScottA"?

Bah. (we need a paw-wave emoticon, I think).

Quote:

Originally Posted by WillCAD (Post 16162529)

Okay, how about "Rem"? That's the most obscure one I could think of, and I couldn't even remember the name, just the character, so I had to look up the name on IMDB.

And I'm tapping out :-).

Off to look it up.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Landing Gear (Post 16147407)

This may sound like a dumb question, but I got to Starbucks often and I don't see any other computers online. How do they see me? Is it when I am connected to the AT&T wifi?

Depends on the operating system, IIRC Windows will only show computers within your workgroup or domain. Many people still use the default workgroup of WORKGROUP so you may see a couple. Of course you could install a packet sniffer or N other programs to see all the available samba shares though.

Mac OS doesn't care about the workgroups and will find any computers with a samba share that are on the same network.

Quote:

Originally Posted by gfunkdave (Post 16147751)

1. Sometimes, but not often. If you're using Outlook or a mail program like it that runs on your computer, one of the email headers might have your computer name in it, something to the effect of "Received from PC-NAME by smtp.gmail.com..." but not if you send via the web. I just tried it.

2. No, the Windows networking name (aka the SMB or NetBIOS name) has no bearing on web traffic.

It's required when sending outgoing email that you provide a hostname. If your using Outlook or a desktop email client it will likely just use your computer name, if your sending from web based email you don't actually connect to the outgoing mail server, it's done on your behalf by the website so that's why it doesn't show up on the headers. In any event as mentioned its not a big deal.

I have my server called "virus" and my network "infected with virus"

doesn't really matter. i just usually name it by manufacturer. so i'll name it like "dell" or "acer" just for my own referencing since i do all the networking in my house.

I miss whimsical names. A couple of years ago my employer switched from an 8 character naming convention to 12 characters and to this day I can't remember what each field represents.

And one of the most important ones is gone. :( In the 8 character convention, one of the letters represented the datacenter. Now if I want to know I have to look it up through other databases or memorize the IP subnets assigned to the various locations. ARGH!

At home, my systems are named after Irish cities. The main system is Dublin. I've got Doolin, Kinsale, Cobh, Nenah, Roscommon and Howth so far. :)

It's rarer to see these days, but in some traceroutes or reverse DNS entries, you can see some fun and creative server hostnames out there on the Internet.

As for me:

I got my first laptop, a blue clamshell iBook, right after I had been to Germany and seen the Danube River. I named it Blue Danube.

I got a PowerMac G4 (the original Yikes! model) not too much later. Its plastic matched the style of the iBook's but was a smoky gray. For consistency, I named it Gray Danube.

The aluminum PowerBook G4 I got in 2003 was metal, so I named it Silver Danube.

My iPhone 3G came next. I got the black model, so it became Black Danube. (That name migrated over to my iPhone 4.)

My latest Dell laptop is sort of a graphite, so it's Graphite Danube.

Oh, yes--the conduit of the information flow (get it--the source of the Danube? :p), my ancient Airport wifi base station (on its last legs), is Donauquelle.

It's getting a little odd, but I can't break the chain after so many years! :p

At work, I use a more straightforward [locationcode][physicallocation] format for all shared workstations and printers and [locationcode][primaryuserfirstname] for all personal workstations. The server name I inherited. It bugs me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by will5404 (Post 16186753)

Indeed. In 99.9% of cases, it doesn't matter that your hostname shows externally, since no one outside of your network can resolve your hostname back to you. (That is, if Outlook transmits a hostname of LandingGearLaptop or even LandingGearLaptop.wifi.starbucks.net or something, they won't be able to track back to your actual machine.) Some corporate networks assign individual public IPs to every device, but corporate networks with those kinds of resources also tend to have very good firewalls that would block any incoming traffic. (My university did this; when connected to the network, my laptop showed up as and properly resolved any DNS inquiries to silverdanube.universityname.edu.)