Archive for the ‘computers’ Category

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Windows Home Server (beta)


2007
05.01

Posted in beta, computers, microsoft, technology, windows home server | No Comments »

So, Windows Home Server Build 06.00.1371 has officially been signed off and is publicly available… which means we are allowed to talk about it, show it and everything else…

This is good news :-) The WHS Beta is something that I signed up for on the spur of the moment, kind of excited but also unsure how much I’d like the product itself. I expected some kind of scaled-up & more polished version of Windows XP Media Center Edition.

Boy was I wrong! So what is it if not a scaled version of XP MCE? To start with, it’s built on Windows Server 2003 – yes, the same server OS that runs the worlds servers in all their various flavours, whether standard, enterprise, web, etc etc. So that was the first surprise.

In fact, for the most part that surprise was a pleasant one.. except for one little thing. I was planning to use a spare PC to trial WHS. In fact, while signing up for the beta program I remember the questionnaire mentioning something about having a spare old PC lying around. Check. Except that since the core OS is WinSvr2k3, it expects server hardware. Which my spare PC was NOT. It’s a reasonable P4 1.7 with 1Gb of memory, but it’s not server class hardware. Most of this stuff doesn’t create a problem, since the board & chipset are pretty standard and installed fine. However, the audio & video are a different story. Now as it turns out I don’t need audio OR video capability, but it bugs me to have yellow exclamations in my device manager. It just does.

That apart, the fact that Microsoft have chosen to build this “home” product on the same tested & stable core that powers their most mission-critical servers and applications around the world is a really nice thing.

OK so apart from the warnings about the hardware, this was probably among the easiest OS installs I’ve ever done (installing Vista on my new PC set the speed standard). Hardly any choices, and when it’s done you’re told to shut down, disconnect and never log into the console again. My kind of server :-) . No, really that’s what it says! Apparently many of the native Server 2003 tools will break WHS, so one is advised to steer clear. I did. At first. And then I messed around, and I have not yet managed to break it - this is a first, since most things normally break even when I’m trying to NOT break them :-)

Ok so basically you install the OS, turn it off, disconnect keyboard mouse + monitor, just plug it into power & ethernet under the stairs or something and let it live there quietly. You only need to touch it to perform hardware changes (like adding lots of big fat drives :-) ).

From there on, you’ll drive WHS via the WHS console, which you can install onto a PC from the Connector disc. The Connector disc is installed on each of your home PCs, so that they can access the WHS unit “the way it’s meant to be seen”. I have some comments on this methodology which I will reserve for a later post.

Basically at that stage, fire up the console, set a few options on how much space to allocate to what, set up a user or two and decide backup options.

Huh? What was that? Yes, backup. Another nice touch. By default, WHS will want to take nightly backups of each of your home PCs. I like! I didn’t turn this feature on of course, since my main PC has 400Gb of storage, whereas my beta WHS box has 120. So maybe next time, eh?
It also comes with a home computer restore CD (which I am yet to try), which hopefully does what it says on the tin.

So the 2 other things that got me fired up about WHS?? First, getting rid of nasty partitioning, volumes, file system choices etc. WHS is a bit dictatorial but I agree with the rationale and choices, so I don’t mind at all. I think this is a very significant step. So when the Joneses need more space, they pop out to PC World, buy a 1600 terabyte ;-) drive, just plug in a drive and don’t worry about partitioning it, formatting it, choosing a filesystem etc etc.
Allocate storage to your media and that should about cover it…

The final one may well be the killer app for WHS. Naturally you expect to be able to access your movies, music and pictures from all your home PCs and media extenders etc. But what’s really cool here is the ability to access all your media over the internet from anywhere in the world free of charge, permanently.

Various painful jargon-ish marketing-speak cliches start here about the “endless possibilities” “imagine what you could do” “where do you want to ..” etc etc, but the fact is that it’s very very cool. Giving the average user this level of access to their media (in both directions – to view or save content from the office / hotel / holiday / whatever) is pretty nice. Except of course the fact that this will then mean that apart from credit cards used in TK Maxx, everyone’s personal documents, family photos, dodgy home movies & the world’s private music collections will be available from your friendly neighbourhood call centre ;-) Actually forget the bit about the music, since that’s already available :-)

Granted that early WHS adopters aren’t exactly likely to be “average” users, but given the right price point, the right hardware / software and sufficient UAT to make it truly idiot-proof, a WHS box under the stairs could well become as ubiquitous as a PC and broadband connection…

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The quickest install yet…


2007
04.01

Posted in computers, technology, vista | No Comments »

Just had to get this quickie in… writing this post from my new Vista PC, which had to be THE QUICKEST operating system install I’ve ever done…

Maybe it’s got something to do with Vista. But I doubt it, since the last MS OS fit on a CD and this one needs a DVD.. and this is Vista Ultimate, so it’s got all the bells n whistles.

So it’s probably got more to do with the new tin. It’s a Dell Precision 390, Core 2 Duo E6600, 2Gb memory, SATA II drives and basically seems to really rip it up! :-) I’m dreading turning on the laptop now… :-)

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Skype Beta 3.0.0.106


2006
11.17

Posted in beta, computers, internet, voip | No Comments »

A quick one about another beta – the new skype beta is out, available for anyone to download, from here. Again, haven’t played much with it, but 3 things I noticed & liked:

  1. Browser extensions that recognise phone numbers in your browser (works in Firefox, can’t see it working in IE6 & Opera at the moment – not sure why) and turn them into clickable links with a little flag showing what country code Skype thinks it should use – Nice! Except that I wish voipcheap (more later) had this instead of skypeout!
  2. Skypecasts & the Live tab… seems like cast-fever & Live-fever is catching on here. Welcome to the next big thing :-) But they’re pretty interesting features, and I can see them being of some use, even if in just limited ways as free radio stations or free conference calls! But I actually caught a bit of one yesterday and immediately saw something interesting .. see the Wireless Electricity Becomes a Reality article. Most I’ve looked briefly at since have all been crap, noise and weird noises & heavy breathing. No thanks.
  3. Auto updates: maor releases & hotfixes both. Finally. I always wondered why they didn’t do this a long time ago. As with Apple for their software. Maybe they (apple) argue that unlike Microsoft software their’s didn’t break & need a patch every 30 seconds, but they do have a steady stream of updates, why not automate it (or provide the option) years ago? I would have been using newer versions of iTunes much quicker if the bloody thing didn’t ask me to spend half an hour on it. A new version is available – would you like to download? Click yes. Get taken to the Apple site where it looks like you have to give them your email address, but you don’t. Click iPod+iTunes and download about 3 times, choose where to save the file, wait for it to come down (massive bloody bloated files, too – I want a media player that’s no more than a 5mb download). Double-click setup.exe or whatever and then follow the damn installshield wizard. Man oh man. Couldn’t we have just left it at the first time I said YES??? Anyway, this isn’t about Apple… this is Skype. So anyway, apparently Skype will do it’s thing on it’s own now and not ask me to follow a similar apple-esque waste-of-time mind-numbing hair-tearing cringe-making crappily thought out process that makes me wonder how these guys ever came up with a whole piece of software, if they couldn’t even think this through. Funnily enough, the major-version update option was set to automatic on my installation, but the hotfix (for patches, bugfixes etc) was set to “Ask”. That’s a bit weird isn’t it?

Oh yeah and about voipcheap… for those who don’t know it, it was one of the best VoIP apps around for a while, with great quality service, free calls to landlines AND mobiles all over the world, and a client app that updated IN ONE CLICK. Since the time I started using it, they’ve started charging for calls to a lot of the places that were free, but I’ve got free calls to all of Europe and the U.S. on my mobile now, so I don’t mind that much! As you may have guessed, it’s at www.voipcheap.co.uk and also at www.voipcheap.com … and they’ve just announced that credit you buy for calls to traditional networks will no longer expire – so that’s another reason, apart from the main one – which is that it’s a fair bit cheaper than SkypeOut, and you get a complimentary local number. Huh.

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Word 2007 – things that make you smile


2006
11.17

Posted in computers, office 2007, word 2007 | No Comments »

It’s sad, I know. I’ve already been told as much. It’s not healthy to get so happy by something so foolish. Yet every once in a while a computer does something CLEVER. And it makes me happy :-)

Using Word 2007 about five minutes ago, and I was writing a bulleted list like I have done a thousand times before. What I was doing slightly differently was using a differently formatted heading for each point, something like this:

  • Heading: This is the bulleted item.
  • Heading 2: This is another one.

I’ve probably done this a few times before, but I don’t do it that often. And I’ve also recently (since Word 2007) gotten a bit organised and created templates with custom styles so that I can save myself some formatting overhead. All the stuff was there before, and I even used it once in a while, but I hadn’t integrated it into my workflow. I have now, so that’s one good thing that Office 2007 has prompted.

Anyway, back to my smile :-) . I had just typed the second item in this list & hit enter for the next one. I suddenly realised that the foromatting had switched and I was typing in orange text. I figured this must be a mistake and Word screwing up as usual, but I continued to type. As soon as I had written the 2-word heading and typed the colon, the formatting changed back to black! And I thought I had seen the lightning-bolt-Office-has-changed-something-to-a-way-that-makes-more-sense-to-it-but-you-can-change-it-back-if-you-want icon, so I did it again in a new document, and there it was!! Word can automatically format the beginning of lists differently! How cool… I knew the big brains at Microsoft had to be up to something all these years :-p. Anyway, I’m not sure if you need to use styles or if normal formatting will do the trick. Wait, I’ll check… OK it’ll work even with manual formatting, not just styles. And I’m not sure if this is something new to Word 2007… wait, I’ll check on 2003: OK, 2003 can do it too. Kinda sad because it’s nice to come across proper “new” features, rather than one of the 1,645 that were always there but you never noticed. But even so. I like it, and I’ll even throw in a shot of what the dialog in 2007 looks like:
It’s the first setting in the “Automatically as you type” section.

And I enjoyed it.

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HOW much???


2006
11.15

Posted in computers, random, rant | No Comments »

I thought this was quite interesting… looking at a couple of options for desktop computers, and ended up getting a bit sidetracked.

Right. So here’s the common belief (mine): Dell PCs are cheap, and Macs are expensive. OK, so I went onto both manufacturer’s sites and decided to look up the most expensive desktop I could configure…

Will it be or will it be our funky friends at ?

So here’s what I found… on the Apple store I clicked on MacPro and pushed all the options up to the max. I ended up with two 3.0GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors, 16GB of 667MHz DDR2 fully buffered ECC RAM, and NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 512MB AGP with Stereo 3D (2 x dual-link DVI), 3TB of 7,200rpm SATA II storage, two 16x DVD-writers, Bluetooth, AirPort Extreme, a USB dialup modem, a 2GB fibre channel PCI-X card, wireless keyboard & mighty mouse, 2x 30″ Apple Cinema HD displays (WOOHOO), all running Mac OS X of course. I could have gone for the server variant, but I’m trying to configure a workstation here (couldn’t you tell :-p), wrapped up in a mysterious soundingAppleCare Protection Plan for Mac Pro – Auto-enroll. I also got five USB ports, two FireWire 400 ports and two FireWire 800 ports! Oh and Aperture 1.1 (funny how you can only choose ONE software package to stick onto your Mac). All for a grand total of £10,851.09 ex VAT. Not bad for about 5 minutes shopping, eh?

Right, so over to Dell UK we go (I have the small business site bookmarked, so that’s the one I used). First to find a suitable base system. Not quite as straight forward as choosing the Mac Pro, I settled on the Dell Precision 690 minitower. The rest wasn’t going to be easy either, with Dell offering a total of 28 configuration options, compared to 18 for the Apple. So what did I get? I got Two Intel® Xeon® 5160 (3.0GHz,1333,4MB) processors (I chose not to go for the quad-cores since this was the more expensive option, and even though the quad-cores have 8mb L2 cache, their clock speed is much lower & FSB also much slower – I know the obsession with speed is often false, but in this case the guiding factor was the price & nothing else), 32GB of DDR2 533 Quad Channel FBD Memory, a 512MB nVidia Quadro FX4500 SLI ready DUAL Graphics Card, 1.5TB of 7,200rpm SATA II storage, with an extra 160GB of 10,000rpm space (for my swap & page file silly), 16X DVD+/-RW and a 48X CD-ROM Drive> I also got (deep breath) a Sound Blaster® X-Fi XtremeMusic (D) Sound Card, a 3D Connexion SpacePilot (3D motion controller), a StopTrack anti-theft Label, an APC Back-UPS RS 800VA,a USB Smartcard Reader Black Keyboard, a Logitech® MX1000 Laser Cordless Mouse, an internal media card reader, a 56.6k Data/Fax V92 Internal PCI Modem, Microsoft® Office 2003 Basic and McAfee SecurityCenter – Englishv7 with a 36 month subscription. Did I mention a widescreen Dell UltraSharp™ 3007 30″ Widescreeen Flat Panel AND a Dell UltraSharp™ 2407WFP 24″ Wide Black LCD Monitor. All that and I still only get lil ol’ Windows XP Pro, albeit the 64-bit version. I also get all my old data migrated using Replace My PC – Data Transfer and Backup Software. All the gadgets set up for me by someone else (what fun is that?) with a a 1 Unit, Business Networked Set-up and Test Installation, and all wrapped up & covered by a 5Y NBD (Next Business Day) On-site (incl. e-Learning Pack) Warranty and also 5 Years Business Support, so that when I’m old and feeble I can call Dell and chat. Oh, and I also get the Google Search Assistant free of charge. What they won’t do, the miserable ******s, is give me free delivery, so I need to pay £49 on top of my £22,298.01 price tag. That’s ex-VAT :-) .

Just for the heck of it I also configured a server – the details are boring, but it was just a shade over £50K. I then increased the quantities of servers & workstations until my basket totaled a shade over £1m! And yes, you can click on checkout, and yes, they do give you the option to pay with a credit card. Now I recently had the credit limit on my Visa increased, but I’m not too sure if it’ll stretch to this. Does anyone’s?? Does such a card exist?? I even entered card details, but no, I didn’t go any further than that. I don’t know what the consequences of entering into a binding contract by trying to buy £1m worth of Dell hardware on a visa credit card is, but I didn’t really want to find out the wrong way…

Well there you have it – Macs are half the price of Dells. Or something not like that. :-)