I was never a big fan of Vista.  I gave it a shot when it was beta and again when the final code was released.  I never liked the interface or the performance of it.  I guess I am one of those users that just love XP and it will be hard to get me off of it.

However the next MS operating system named Windows 7 seems to be looking much better.  It still will have a vista like interface but it looks like a lot of the annoying things with Vista will be fixed up. 

I really hope they fix up explorer.  In Vista, explorer is unbearable to me.  Its just way too slow.

Here is an article where they did speed tests between the new Windows 7, Vista and XP SP3.  The results are really impressive and I am starting to look forward to the new OS.

I hope it isn’t as much as a hardware hog as vista was.  I still think my current cpu I have should be perfect enough to run any Os.  However it isn’t good enough for Vista.

Windows 7 build 7000 outperforms Vista and XP

Labels: Technology

For years I have been using Microsoft Outlook as my primary mail program.  I have become pretty efficient with it.  I used it to manage two email accounts.  Then in 2007 I used the built in RSS feeds to manage all my RSS feeds.  This worked pretty good but was quickly replaced by a Newsgator that also synced with the online version and my Blackberry. 

Well recently I made the jump to get off of Outlook all together.  I use Gmail for my two accounts now and the online version works really well.  I don’t even need to keep a browser open.  I use the Gmail Notifier to let me know when I have a new email.

For RSS feeds I use the online version of Newsgator when I am at my desk.  On the road I use my Blackberry.

So far this new setup is working pretty well.  I have extra free memory on my system as I have one less big program running.

The hardest part of the migration was getting all the email that I have filed in Outlook folders migrated to my Gmail account.  To do this I:

1. Added my Gmail account to Outlook as an IMAP account.
2. Dragged each folder over to the Gmail IMAP account.

I did run into some problems doing this as I had too many nested folders which are translated into labels in Gmail.  I guess the labels were getting too long, but with a few renames I got by it.  It also did take a long time to complete (450meg) but I let it go over night. I do recommend you cleanup anything you don’t need before you start this. 

As online programs are starting to get better and better I find myself willing to move my data to online services.  Its one less headache when I have to rebuild my PC.  I’m going to start to look to move my journal online.  That program is always a pain to backup and restore.  Any suggestions?

Labels: Miscellaneous, software, Technology

I consider myself a heavy RSS user.  Whenever I come across a site with useful content I instantly look for an RSS feed and add it to my list.  If it does not have one chances are I may not visit it it in the future.

This also includes forums.  More and more forums these days have RSS feeds that report the new or updated posts.  Some forums work better than others but I’m just happy if a forum has one.

In the past I used a plug-in for Outlook (pre 2007) called NewsGator.  I loved it so much that after purchasing my copy it probably became the most used application on my computer.  Then along came Outlook 2007 with built in RSS feeds so I really saw no need for NewsGator and unfortunately the program I used so much was put aside.

Recently I got a BlackBerry and was looking for a RSS reader that I could load on it.  The only catch I had is that I wanted something that would sync with my desktop so I didn’t have to do the same work twice.  After a few Google searches along came NewsGator again.  I quickly surfed over the site and was excited at what I saw.

They have an online RSS management system where you can centralize all your RSS needs and all of your clients will sync to it so you don’t have to read the same feeds over and over again.  You can download clients for your PC/Mac or for your mobile devices to read news on the go.  I use this heavily and the clipping feature allows me to mark articles to read in more detail when I get to my PC.  The articles are added to a special folder that I can access later.  I LOVE THIS.

I have listed some of the pro’s and con’s I have noticed so far. 

Pros

• FREE
• Centralized management of feeds online.
• Sync all changes including read/unread, deleted, folder changes (rename/move) done on any of the clients.
• Online feed reader.
• NewsGator Inbox for Outlook.
• NetNewsWire for Mac.
• FeedDemon for PC.
• IE/Firefox plug-in.
• NewsGator Go for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Java Mobile
• Clipping feature to mark items to be read later.
• Much more …

Cons

• Require a data plan for NewsGator Go.
• The NewsGator Inbox for Outlook seems to cause my outlook to take longer to startup.  I remember this way back when I used it in the past but its a small price I pay for such a good program.
• Can’t think of much more as I am still getting use to this.

The best way to learn more about this program is to just give it a try.  Let me know what you think.  Did I say I LOVE IT already?

Labels: mobile, software, Technology, web sites

I remember the first time I heard about Windows Home Server (WHS).  After glancing over the features I was instantly in love with the idea and concept behind it all.  Three of the features that stood out to me were

• Backup
• Remote Access to Any Computer
• Pooled Storage

I instantly joined the beta… downloaded, burned, dusted off my old machine that met the minimum specs and installed it.  Within a few hours I was up and running with a new home server.

Then I got into playing. 

Backups

First played around with the backups.  I setup the connector on a few machines and instantly initiated backups.  They didn’t take long.  Even over WiFi (which isn’t supported) it still worked fine.  This was my favorite feature.  A few weeks later I had to upgrade a hard drive in one of my systems so I did a full backup (which was only partial as the system was already backed up the night before) swapped in the new drive, booted up with the CD and restored the last backup.  Within 15 minutes my machine was back up and running like nothing happened.  I was impressed.

Like all programs in beta there are  bugs.  And I did find one that I could not explain.  For some reason one of my machines would randomly start to blue screen while doing the backup.  It was an XP machine and was stable.  This is the only time I have every seen this machine do this.  I could never figure out why it did this but I did eventually find out that if I removed all of the backups on the server and make it do a full backup again everything would be fine.  For a while… it could be a week, it could be two but it eventually came back.  I never got this solved but it wasn’t the main reason behind me not moving forward with WHS.

Remote Access

This was cool.  From the Internet I could connect to any machine on my network through the WHS.  I currently do this with a combination of port forwarding and remote control software but this was cool as it all could be done through my browser.

I did have problems connecting from my work network but when it worked, it worked nicely.  The one thing about me though is when I want to do something I want to do it quickly.  With my current solution it takes me two clicks to connect to any machine at home.  With the WHS it takes me just a bit longer and I just don’t like waiting.  Its just the way I am.  I eventually continued using my current remote control solution.  But this wasn’t the main reason behind me not moving forward with WHS.

Pooled Storage

This was my 2nd favorite feature in WHS.  You basically just plug in all the hard drives you want and it add’s it to the storage pool.  Files are replicated across more than one hard drive so they are backed up if one of the drives fail at any time.  If you had to remove a drive you do it through the console and the WHS will move the files around to allow you to remove the drive without losing any data.  “COOL!”  That was all I could thing UNTIL….. I ran into problems and heard other stories.

When trying to copy all my data over to the WHS I constantly ran out of space.  Out of space?  Huh?  I thought I had 500 gigs in there and I’m backing up 200 gig.  This is where it gets confusing.  You access the storage through network shares and as you copy stuff to it, the files get put on the main drive and later on moved off onto the other drives in the pool.  I think the problem was when you copied too much data it didn’t have time to move them off in time so you ran out of space.  I think that is what the problem was, but whatever it was I got tired of it fast.  Eventually I got all the data moved over.  Sweet.

Then their was the file corruption bug.  I didn’t look into it fully as this was the deal breaker for me.  If I have a home server I want my files to be safe.  I don’t want to have to think about it much.  Once the file is copied up there I should not have to worry about.  The file corruption bug made me jump ship.  The more upsetting part about the whole thing is that they released the final version of WHS with this bug and haven’t fixed it until recently.  They now have a release candidate of SP1 for WHS.  So technically its still not fixed but in testing.  Maybe I will look into it later again.

The Other Deal Breakers

Price.  When it first came out I saw it as cheap as $175.  In Canada we add tax to that price so it gets higher.  Plus the cost of the hardware, this solution gets more expensive.  Recently I went searching and the price actually went up.  I think it would have dropped if anything.

The OS.  WHS is designed to be a headless system.  That is, you plug this box into your network with WHS installed and no keyboard/mouse/monitor on it and that’s it.  You only need to access the shares and everything else is through the connector.  I don’t know if that is what most of the users want.  I know that is not what I want.  A lot of users instantly tried to remote desktop into the box and install software to run and do various things.  To me, having a computer sitting there that does nothing but share files is a waste to me.  I want to do more with it.  Since the OS is Windows Server 2003 not everything I wanted to install on it would work.  People were constantly coming up with work around’s to get things working but nothing was ever supported and most things caused the system to eventually crash.  I know I was able to crash the system a few times with my torrent/newsgroup downloading programs alone.  I wish they would have developed it as an application you can install on top of XP or Vista instead of an entire OS.  I would have probably been happier with that.

Speed.  Since I now had to download everything on another computer and then move it over, that was extra time I had to wait before I could watch/listen to the files on my entertainment system.  I didn’t like this.  I have a 100mb network and the wait was still too long.  I know I could have put in a GB network but I shouldn’t have to fork out the extra money for that.

So What Do I Currently Use?

I have a Vista box setup as my home server.  It has shares setup on it so I can access what I want from my XBox360 and original XBox or any other computer.

For backup I use NT Backup.  Its scheduled to run once a week and I am happy with that.  It backs up my main systems to my server.  I know if my machine crashes its not a quick restore but I am fine with that.  I’m always up for a fresh rebuild of my main machine.

For server backups I have two drives in the system that are using a hardware RAID setup to mirror the data.  I’ve used RAID in the past and survived 2 hard drive failures very easily.  “Replace Drive, rebuild RAID.  Done.”  I am happy with this.  I know I can’t add and remove storage easily but again, I am fine with this.  500 gig of space is enough.  I may upgrade to 1 TB later on.  I also backup my critical data on a monthly basis to a HD that is disconnected form the computer.  This is in case the data gets corrupted by a Trojan or a hardware failure that takes down the whole system occurs.

Remote control… VNC.  Simple and easy.

I also run iTunes, Alt.Binz, FTP server and uTorrent on the system to download data while I am asleep.  This means I don’t have to keep my other computers on all the time just to download.  I also do other things with my music that is time consuming and by doing it on my server I don’t tie up another machine running it.

With this setup I am very happy.  It just works.  I actually feel more comfortable with my data in this setup.  That I guess is the key thing.  Maybe in the future I will visit WHS again but for now.. the relationship is over.

Do you have a dedicated “server” in your house?  What is your setup?

Labels: backup, rambling, review, Technology