Tech by PC

It is past time for the US to come modern with the metric or SI system. I just happened to run across a site discussing the difference between A4 and Letter. It was a really good read and explains why it is a fight every time you try to fight with reformatting in a word processor. Well this is just a soapbox snippet of a note, but I thought the link was informative and I can’t think of one reasonable reason why the US should still be on a system that everyone else has abandoned.

It has been hashed about more than enough, so I won’t rehash. Sony’s recent claim that Anonymous is responsible is pretty funny. I wouldn’t even say I know much about them, but I did read a lot about them during the HBGary event and it seemed pretty clear at face value that Sony was hoping they would be an easy “common enemy” that no one would question when it comes to pointing fingers. Our response: “Oh, Anonymous, well they’re awesome hackers so you had no chance. Beef up security and let’s hope this doesn’t happen again. You are as much a victim as everyone whose accounts were stolen.”

Yeah, right. Sony could at least have tried to keep their systems patched and web server up to date.

Worst case this is an inconvenience if you practice safety online (different passwords for different sites). Credit card companies aren’t going to make you pay anything so long as you report a fraudulent charge as soon as you notice it. The real damage is to the kids who play these things every day and are angry. Good opportunity for a competitor to step in.

Seems like a great idea: Buy the device and free calling forever. I even subscribed to the premium service for some advanced features that we need like blocking. Unfortunately I have had nothing but trouble since I installed the system. A few days after getting my number ported, incoming calls on that number went straight to /dev/null. The second number on the account worked fine. Worked with tech support for three weeks or more to finally solve the issue which was finally handled by a 3rd level support rep in less than 10 minutes.

Now they have a wide spread problem where incoming calls go straight to voicemail, or ring once and then go to voicemail. I am experiencing the ring once and go to voicemail issue and have been for what seems like a month. Needless to say, this is unacceptable for the rest of the family who expect to receive regular calls on the home number. Ooma forums identified the issue mid-November and say they are working on a fix for mid-December. Seems fine if this were MagicJack or something, but as a primary phone this is just unacceptable.

See the issue here: http://www.ooma.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9832

A couple months ago we cancelled our DirecTV subscription. I had a nearly complete HD package and two HD DVRs, so we were paying something significant for it every month. It was a tough decision because DirecTV is great coupled with a DVR allowing us to have something to watch almost all the time, but there were still those times when there was nothing on that we wanted to watch.

The options we had to choose or mix and match from included:

• Cheapest Cable TV package ~$40/month.
• Netflix ~$10/month.
• HuluPlus ~$10/month.
• Boxee Box
• Custom PC with various websites with streaming (Fox, CBS, etc.)
• Apple TV
• Cheaper Dish package

Cable TV

The point of this exercise is to save some money temporarily. Cable TV has an immediate negative from this perspective in that even the cheapest package available, with just a dozen or so real channels in standard definition, commercials, and general poor quality.

We used a high end Cable TV package prior to switching to DirecTV this last time. Even with the $100/month package that included HD and a DVR it still suffered from quality issues. I complained numerous times. One time they replaced the cable from the pole to the house and that seemed to improve it slightly, but then they replaced the cable from the entry point to the TV so they could blame that and charge me something for the “repair.” The interior wiring was fine and changing it out made no improvement.

The one thing the cable company is good for is their Internet service. It is currently the only high speed option available to me, so I get the fastest Internet only option 8mbps down 512kbps up. It is generally rock solid, and for where I live I’m very glad they offer it.

Netflix

I am a long time subscriber to Netflix having first joined when the service was brand new, although I have let my subscription lapse from time to time. The most useful part of the service, for me, is the streaming service. A DVD subscription is nice, but we always have trouble remembering to put the discs back in the mail. Streaming, especially for kids programming, is wonderful.
Netflix streaming works best when coupled to a 3rd party application. There are TVs that include this option, DVD players, or any Windows based PC.

Hulu/HuluPlus

Hulu still feels really beta to me. For one their refusal to allow Boxee or others to integrate seems ignorant and stupid. It’s not like these services are stealing advertising revenue. On the contrary, they would be increasing viewership. Also, their application for TV usage is designed more approprietly for a desktop computer. The typeface is difficult to view from across a room. The basic service is free, but for $10 more you get a broader selection of shows with more episodes, the ability to work with a few appliances, and HD access. Currently Plus is in beta preview right now, invite only, but still costs money which also seems disingenuous to me. Hulu seems to have an extreme amount of potential coupled with a lazy culture. It is almost as if they are just waiting to be bought out by someone who will take it to the next level.

Boxee Box

Boxee can be downloaded and used for free on any decent PC. Literally. They have versions for Linux32/64, OSX, AppleTV, and various flavors of Windows (XP and better). The Boxee Box is available only on preorder right now, but it looks to be decent except with a (possibly fatal) flaw in that it has not been confirmed that it will play Netflix. The general concensus is that it will not since it is based on Linux and Netflix does not work in Linux without some sort of virtualization.

Boxee’s aim is to provide a positive experience from a remote control on the couch away from the TV, and it does an excellent job at this. The downloaded version integrates just fine with Netflix. Boxee is best experienced rather than talked about, and the sign-up process is so simple that if you are at curious you should try it. There are some bugs with certain web site integration. Sometimes the video cuts off about 3/4 of the way down the screen. Sometimes it gets stuck in a paused mode while the video is still playing. Can’t argue with free though.

Custom PC

A PC to play these solutions has the advantage of being versatile. It can run Boxee, Hulu, Netflix, any video feeds from network sources, or old fashioned browsing. When Boxee has trouble playing an expisode of House (frequently) we can just use the web browser to browse directly to Fox’s website to watch. The negatives here include having an extra computer to take care of and startup costs. This became my solution because I had some extra computer hardware sitting around, and what I did have to purchase was saved in the first two months of being without a bill from DirecTV.

Apple TV

Apple TV looks to be about $100 and plays a variety of things from iTunes. At $0.99 per episode for TV, it is a great alternative financially, however it is not free. If the only shows I watch in an average week is House and CSI, I can get those for free on the respective network website, albeit a week behind schedule. The delay doesn’t bother me at all, so what is the point of paying $0.99.

Cheaper Dish Package

Dish is all about being the cheapest of the traditional solutions. Their initial term prices are always the most competitive, however it is still a contract and still includes startup costs. The quality is slightly inferior to DirecTV, but superior to any streaming solution. I opted out of this idea because of these downsides.

The problem: User data accumulates over time. There are many different types of wasted data on a typical company’s network shares. Here are the top four in no particular order:

1. Users who make a copy of everything as a backup “just in case”. These users will create a copy every time they revise a document. It may not be bad when dealing with a 50K word processing text, but make that a 20MB PowerPoint or a much larger engineering drawing and we are looking at serious wasted disk.
2. Users who do not trust IT. These are users who, possibly having experienced problems in the past, decide to copy their data to every network drive available to them. Say they have a home directory. They use this to back up everything out of a common directory and everything they touch off of an engineering share. Maybe they use this to fulfill #1 above.
3. Unauthorized file types. Some users will not listen no matter how many times they are told. No MP3 files on the network, no home videos and personal picture albums, no joke videos downloaded from the net. Etc.
4. Data no longer relevant. Creating data is easy, but knowing when or if it is safe to delete is a process that requires thought and is not required to get ones job done. What is the incentive for an employee to ever go behind and clean up?

The solution:

1. User education. Users need to understand the architecture to some degree. It makes no sense to have three copies of the same file on the same SAN, backed up to the same disk, tape, etc. It is no more secure than a single file.
2. The network drives also must remain consistent. It is easy and, sometimes we as administrators feel, the right thing, to only take down the minimum amount of resources necessary to get a job done. If the users see the home drive down less frequently than a common drive, they will tend to copy data they might just need on their home drive to guard against losing access during these maintenance events. When possible, take everything (or nothing) down for the users when maintenance has to be done.
3. There are two semi-solutions to unauthorized file times. A manual search and delete, or an automated server-based preventative software. Try to find one that is reasonably priced though. It is important to engage Human Resources and Legal if you are serious about this though. This type of data puts your company at risk.
4. Irrelevant data is always going to be a manual process. Maintaining tight quotas is the only semi-solution for this. If users perceive they are about to run out of space, and the barrier to getting more space is more than a simple phone call, then they are more likely to look at what they can do prior to demanding more space.

General solutions or best practices:

1. Installing deduplication software or using a back end deduplication solution will transparently solve #1 and #2.
2. Storage management software is a good solution for new data stores to allow users to define an expiration date for data retention.

I would love to have someone suggest or describe successful software packages that they used to solve or help with any of these items.

I try to refrain from getting too political here, but there is enough technology in this disaster and I feel strongly enough about it that I need to say something.

• Just about every plan that BP has thought up involves recovering the oil. Are they more concerned about tapping the black gold or fixing the environmental disaster?
• The expert’s long term solution requires a relief well to be drilled. Can we let another company start drilling this NOW? Why do we have to wait months and months for this to begin?
• The US Government’s failure was due to them not enforcing or properly inspecting using current laws and standards. Why create new legislation or standards if we are not willing to enforce the ones we already have?
• BP’s executives promised to pay for all the disaster recovery costs yet their liability is legally only $75 million. They have not addressed this obvious question. Do they have insurance? Are they prepared to pay above the $75 million cap, because it’s likely to cost more than 100 times that, and some things will be just impossible to fund enough to clean up.
• What about economic losses years into the future as this mess spreads around Florida hurting their tourism industry and up the east cost disrupting fishing and tourism potentially for years?
• What about economic losses for other countries such as Mexico whose government may not be as tolerant as the US government is by capping their liability?
• What is the long-term danger of these chemicals that they are pumping into the ocean to break up the oil? Where is the openness and who is the oversight on this technology? If the oil is still in the water but we can’t see it, how does that help?
• I work with computer servers and technology all the time for a large business. We have a contingency plan for just about every scenario including failures during a recovery operation. We won’t be causing ecological damage while we recover, but we will be losing money. BP is doing both right now yet no one thought about this possibility and developed a disaster recovery plan for the initial blowout or a contingency plan in case that failed? There are plenty of ways an oil rig like that could have been destroyed, many of which do not involve negligence of any time by the oil company or the government. Where’s the plan for this?
• Why is BP concealing the extent of the spill?
• Why are people still buying BP gasoline in the US today?!?!?

I believe BP is operating this cleanup effort with an eye on profits from the oil rather than the cost of the environmental disaster. This would lead me to believe that BP has no intention of paying the full costs of the cleanup and economic losses as a result because the cleanup will cost more than the value of the oil that has already spilled into the ocean. It would also then follow that if people would vote at the pump by picking other gas stations over BP until they fixed the problem that would speed up the time it would take them to fix the problem. I drove by a local BP station twice today and both times there were cars lined up buying gas even though there are stations nearby who are selling gas at the same, lower, or slightly higher prices. What sane American would purchase gasoline from BP right now? Why would you support a company who views profits above responsibility? I would understand if BP had lower prices and people needed to save a buck, but why do people get off the highway, drive past a cheaper Mobil station, and purchase more expensive BP gasoline? It makes absolutely no sense.

I know my audience is extremely limited, but please if you read this, don’t by gas at BP until they fix this problem. Please spread this message. I heard someone at church today who sounded like they were hearing about this problem for the first time. We need to get this message out or our complacency will allow BP to act in their own interests without consequences. Our votes as their revenue stream at the gas pump will matter more to BP than anything our government is likely to do to them.

My Dell XPS M1210 has finally died. It is a sad day. I’m in the market for a new laptop, and of course would be glad to do any reviews if you’d like to send me one or give me a discount.

I’d really love another XPS M1210 but more modern. The closest thing I can find is the Alienware m11x however I’m not sure I am willing to buy into a Core 2 chip at this point. I’d be much happier if it were a Core i7 or i5. The graphics on the Alienware are very nice, but I’m concerned about performance in the normal things I do such as running virtual machines while browsing and using office type products.

Any suggestions? The biggest I think I’d want is 15″ but I would prefer smaller. The other problem I have with smaller laptops is how hard it is to find decent screen resolution.

Google Voice really didn’t add anything new other than some interface modifications and instructions for mobile users, however it does bring the service one step closer to perfection. Here’s why: Most people are not going to spend the time figuring out how to forward their cell phone voice mails to Google Voice, but a few clicks gives you the exact sequence to type into your phone for your carrier.

Forwarding your cell phone calls to Google Voice for Voicemail enables voicemail transcription as well as the visual voicemail style audio file in an email message. If you have a smart phone such as a blackberry with the Google Voice application already installed, this just adds to the benefit. Now I am down to two voice mail boxes: Email and work. As soon as work converts to VoIP I suspect I can consolidate that to email as well.

The perfect Google Voice feature would be the ability to port an existing number to them. My home phone, for example, I have had for over 6 years. Everyone knows it and I don’t want to change it. I have ported that number from Verizon to Lingo to Packet 8 and then to ViaTalk. The problem is that each move is a time commitment. Each one had a year contract, but more importantly they had my phone number. If I could port my number to Google Voice, then I would have much more flexibility to try new services or multiple services, or even replacing the home phone with a cell phone. In the case of a cell phone though I would not want to commit my home phone number to it. With Google Voice I could simply forward my permanent number to which ever service I wanted to use at the time. Suddenly I could become completely carrier neutral. If I wanted to use MagicJack for a few days I could do that then switch back to ViaTalk, or even get a land line.

I believe that centralization of voice communication is the goal here, and as soon as I’m able to port my number to Google Voice they will have reached that goal.

Of course I’ve been using Windows 7 for longer than three days, but this is the third day having it on my old Dell XPS M1210. I just noticed recently that the poor laptop is coming up on its 3-year anniversary. It had a 3-year warranty with accidental damage coverage. The only stupid thing I ever did to it was to dump a can of soda into the keyboard. I replaced the keyboard by shopping on eBay and the touchpad buttons still have a slight issue, but I’ll live with it. Anyway, back to my story and the reason why this is relevant. The machine I had Windows 7 installed on at work was fairly new, and over its short pre-Windows 7 history it ran Windows XP 64bit and Debian when XP 64 wasn’t stable. Neither of these were installed for more than a month before Windows 7 was RTM.

My laptop, on the other hand, was used constantly for nearly three years under XP and Vista, so I have a pretty good idea of how it looks and performs. Everything seems to look better under Windows 7, and I’m not sure exactly why. I went through the cleartype configuration wizard, which may have been the reason this is better. As far as performance, I haven’t noticed much of a difference, but I didn’t really expect the speed to increase more than I just hoped it wouldn’t decrease. The laptop does run cooler now. Even when I’m doing more intensive things the fan seems to run less frequently and the bottom feels cooler.

Now I admit, these observations are not scientific. I didn’t measure the temperature of the bottom of my laptop after watching precisely 1 hour of HD content in both configurations. People’s impressions always trump scientific data anyway, as evidenced by Vista. The general impression of Vista was negative, so very few people actually tried it themselves. Windows 7 has the potential to be just as negative, especially since there are some big changes to the interface. Microsoft has done a good job of keeping the initial impressions positive, with only a few exceptions. There was an ignorant article on Federal Computer Week that described Windows 7 as Vista with only a very minor facelift, but not enough to be an improvement. It was obvious from reading it that the author either hadn’t used Vista or hadn’t used Windows 7.

Just as with Vista, people who don’t try it for themselves on decent hardware have no grounds to talk on it. Win 7 is a vast improvement over Windows XP and a valuable improvement over Vista. In my opinion there is no value in “upgrading” from Vista, however a clean install from XP or Vista is valuable if your hardware is reasonably fast. If you have a computer over 3 years old, a new computer is the best upgrade path.

Mozy has disappointed me. I have been unable to do a restore, and without a restore all the routine backups are worthless. The client has sat at “Connecting to backup service…” since I kicked it off yesterday. I’m going to need to reboot soon, so we’ll see if that fixes things. Windows Home Server appears to be able to perform a complete backup of this laptop now, so I’m feeling better about that. I’m going to blow away my desktop and try a full system restore from Windows Home Server and if that works I’m going to start feeling a little better about trusting it.

The big question I had was whether or not entering a retail code into the RTM code would work. It did not work for me.

Now that I’m running 64-bit Windows 7 Professional on my Dell XPS M1210, I thought I’d go through a little of the process so far. First of all, I used the upgrade version, but did a clean install. I verified also that the old trick about installing without a key, not activating, and then using the upgrade key still works. I am upgrading from Vista, but I wiped it out first (dban) in order to try since I had heard conflicting reports on the net about that.

So now the reload process is in full-swing. First on were some windows patches that included a driver for my Nvidia GO 7400 card. A previous install I had attempted to find drivers directly through Nvidia. I went through a few attempts to install a version that wasn’t specifically for my card by changing the INF file. It worked, but I see no advantage of that over the built-in driver, and the built-in driver is certainly easier to install. I installed the Windows 7 compatible Synaptics driver as well because I like the scroll zones and a couple other features of the touchpad.

Next on was ESET Internet Security, my favorite AV software at the moment. Note that these things change as soon as a company starts getting the idea of packing their software full of useless additional components that slow a computer down more than help it (Symantec I’m looking at you, which I dropped shortly after 2000, and also Trend Micro which I dropped around 2007, but should have dropped sooner – you can thank a corporate agreement for keeping me that long).

Next on was Office 2007 Enterprise (thanks to work for the home licensing arrangement). Now I’m starting to see a trend of patch, reboot, patch, reboot for Microsoft things. I’ve done this 4 times now, and although Microsoft Update says I’m done, my AV software says it detects missing patches. Interesting.

Next on was TrueCrypt which recently updated to 6.3 for what they call full Win 7 support. I’m not sure what exactly changed, but it works fine. I run full-disk encryption on my laptop. I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t want to do the same.

Next on was Free File Sync, an open source Windows based synchronization GUI which I used to restore my previously synchronized folders from the Windows Home Server that I’ve been evaluating. While that was synchronizing I kicked off the encryption process for TrueCrypt and downloaded Mozy. I remembered that I used my own encryption key and that it was stored in Roboform, so I downloaded, installed, and re-activated my copy of Roboform in order to pull out my custom key. I need to remember to locate and test my offline copy of that key or there’s little point in my using Mozy in a disaster recovery situation.

I made an image of my system with Acronis prior to wiping it out. For reasons I’ll describe later, I still do not trust Windows Home Server completely. I am not going to put Acronis back on for several reasons. First, Windows Home Server is supposed to be able to do image restores of my OS, so I’m going to do some testing to verify that works properly. Second, Acronis does a major release way too often, and I can’t afford to keep purchasing the software. The version 2009 of their software is not Windows 7 compatible, and they want another $30 in order to upgrade to 2010. If I need that image, and I probably will, I will install my license on another PC and use it to restore. Between Mozy, my offline backups, and Windows Home Server, I just don’t need an additional solution.

Somewhere in there I managed to get Firefox installed. The integration between Firefox and Windows 7 “feels” tighter than it did with Vista. It is hard to describe really, but links appear to open more quickly now, and I haven’t had anything strange happen yet.