Deb-Tech

In my blog post over on Amazon’s End User Blog, I related some of my experiences with the new version of Virtual PC that supports Windows 7 XP Mode (XPM), and how it compares to VMware Workstation with Unity view. Something that I forgot to mention is that although you can simultaneously run applications from multiple VPC VMs, you can’t start VMware Workstation while a VPC VM is running.  If you try, you get the following error message:

 
Click to enlarge

And in fact, if you already have a VMware VM running and you click on a VPC application in the Start menu, the VMware VM shuts down and you get that same error message. The VPC virtual application then starts up. So apparently VPC takes precedence over VMware in these scenarios. I guess maybe it has to do with both virtualization technologies not being able to utilize the hardware virtualization components (in this case, Intel VT) at the same time – but I’ll have to check further to verify that.

If you simply hibernate the VPC VM(s) – which is what the XPM VM is set to do by default when you click Close – you won’t be able to use VMware. If you set it to prompt you for an action on close and choose Turn Off, then you will be able to open your VMware virtual machines. I learned all this through trial and error, figured it might be useful information for those who have both VMware Workstation and VPC XPM installed.

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

Intel’s Trusted Execution Technology (TXT, also sometimes abbreviated TET, but not by Intel), was originally known as LeGrande. It’s a hardware implementation designed to protect computers against software-based attacks and enables the creation of separate execution environments called protected partitions. With applications running in separate environments, the memory pools are locked so that they can’t be accessed or written to by other processes. User input is also protected so that users can interact with the applications without risk from other software that may be running. TXT can perform “platform verification,” whereby it confirms at boot-up that a computer has exactly the same configuration it had last time it was booted. It works in conjunction with Intel Virtualization Technology (VT) on Intel vPro platforms.  All of this is part of Intel’s Safer Computing Initiative. If you’re interested, you can read about the technical details of TXT here: http://www.intel.com/technology/security/downloads/arch-overview.pdfhttp://www.intel.com/technology/security/downloads/arch-overview.pdf 

Then what is TPM? A Trusted Platform Module is a hardware chip that can generate and store cryptographic keys and perform authentication of hardware devices. It can be used by TXT and is also used by technologies such as Microsoft’s BitLocker disk encryption. TPM chips are made by a number of different vendors, and many computers now come with a built-in TPM.

You may have heard of TPMs in a less than favorable light. The TPM is the component that caused such controversy several years ago, when privacy advocates voiced concerns about the chip assigning a unique identifier to the computer in which it’s installed. Although this helps to protect against online identity theft and make financial transactions over the ‘Net more secure, many were afraid the chip would be used by the software, music and movie industries to enforce copy protection and to eliminate anonymity on the Internet.

deb@shinder.net   www.debshinder.com

I got on the social networking bandwagon a little later than many. On the other hand, many of my friends who use the Internet extensively and have been involved in email discussion lists and the like for a decade or more are still wary of the social networking phenomenon. Like them, I didn’t see the value of it – until I tried it. I thought sites like Facebook and Twitter would end up being big time-wasters. Instead, I found that after joining those sites, my time spent at the computer actually went down. That’s because instead of carrying on dozens of different email conversations to impart the same information to different friends, family members and lists, I could reach many more people with a single post.

Well, you could do the same thing with email’s cc: function, you might say. Yes, but not exactly. An email message with copies to a bunch of different people feels impersonal, almost rude. And you don’t want to divulge everyone’s email address to a bunch of strangers, so you have to do something like “undisclosed recipient” or put your own address as the primary “to” address, which makes it even worse – now each recipient knows that he/she is just one in a crowd but has no idea how large that crowd is or who else is in it. But if you see my news as a post on Facebook, you don’t feel slighted. You know that the nature of the forum is such that others are seeing the post, yet you can also feel “special” that you are one of my chosen “friends” with whom I share these messages.

The other advantage of SN is that many people just don’t seem to get into the groove of writing email. Yet they will post to the SN sites. I have relatives I’ve come to know much better after “friending” them on FB; these are folks who, before, I might see once a year at a Christmas gathering but I never got an intimate glimpse into their everyday lives as I do in reading their daily posts. It’s also interesting to see who their friends are, and what those friends say in various “wall” threads. It will does give you a different perspective on people. You get more insight into the personalities of co-workers, as well. It’s always a delight to discover that someone you’ve worked with for years on a purely professional basis is a fan of the same obscure musician that you adore, or loves cats as much as you do, or has the same political beliefs as you. Occasionally, you’ll get a big surprise: that “guy” named Jamie with whom you’ve been working for years in the virtual world turns out to be … not a guy at all, or that lady (you assumed) named Pat is actually a Patrick instead of a Patricia. Of course, there’s a  darker side to that coin, too. As in the real world, getting to know people better carries risks as well as rewards. You may find out that your favorite online colleague is a fanatical fan of a politician you can’t stand, or thinks all cats should be shot on sight, or believes people of your religious persuasion are all idiots or heathens who are damned for eternity. Worst of all, he/she might even support a rival sports team. :)

Social networking is an enabling technology, but it sometimes enables more than you might like. That’s especially true if you’re someone who’s “semi famous.” If you’re a genuine celebrity, I can imagine that it’s even worse. Anytime lots of people know you whom you don’t know, you have to decide on a strategy before you set up a SN account. One option would be to either adopt an “open door” policy and accept all friendships offered (which seems to be what many well known politicians have done, judging by the number of “friends” they have). Another is to protect your privacy and reject all those who you don’t know. The strategy you adopt is important because it will determine, in large part, what types of posts you make.

As someone who is by no means famous, but who is well known in certain circles through my writing, I’m never sure what to do when I get a “friend” request from someone I don’t really know. Sometimes the name is vaguely familiar – probably a reader who has emailed me in the past – and other times, I have no idea who the person is. I know from my own experience that when you read a great deal of what a writer has written, you often feel as if you know him/her. I’m flattered that people who read my newsletters, articles, etc. come away from them wanting to be my friend. On the other hand, I feel a little funny having a bunch of folks out there who I don’t know at all, seeing my sometimes semi-personal posts.

I know some people who are “friend collectors.” They seek out as many “friends” as possible, sending requests to everyone they know and many people they don’t know. They have thousands of “friends.” It’s almost as if they see it as a contest: who can get the most “friends?”  That’s not my goal in using SN. And I’m not sure I want to be part of someone else’s collection. I view my FB site a little differently, as a gathering of people I know at least a little and whom, based on what I know, I like. On the other hand, I don’t want to insult people who like me and feel as if they know me, even though I don’t know them.

So I’m asking this: if you want to send me a “friend” request and we don’t have an ongoing relationship, please include a note to let me know a little about yourself and how you know me (VistaNews, TechRepublic columns, Microsoft network, etc.) and why you want to be a FB friend. I’m not looking for a long essay here, or trying to make it an “application process.” I just want to know who I’m letting into my relatively limited circle of folks with whom I share some important and trivial details of my life each day. Thanks!

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

Vista’s Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) was a step in the right direction, but I was always having problems with it. Sometimes it would recognize my device and sometimes it wouldn’t.

With Windows 7, Microsoft has taken the same tactic as with many of the other applications that were built into Vista: WMDC is not included when you install the operating system but you can download it. However, unlike with Windows Mail, Messenger, etc., you don’t have to go out there and hunt it down. Just plug your device (in my case, my Samsung i910, a.k.a. the Omnia) into a USB port on the Windows 7 machine and – depending on your Windows Update settings – it will automatically download and install both the drivers for the phone and the latest version of the Windows Mobile Device Center. Momentarily, you get the happy news shown below:

Then it opens WMDC and connects to your device. No muss, no fuss.

You can set up the device to synchronize it with your computer, or if you just want to transfer a file (such as photo you took with your cell phone camera) to or from the device, you can connect without setting it up.

You can browse the contents of your device’s built in storage and any memory cards that are inserted, as shown below, using the familiar Windows Explorer interface.

Unfortunately, Explorer’s thumbnail view of folder contents doesn’t seem to work with the files on the phone. You just see a generic icon for jpg files, as you can see below.

Now that would be a useful feature, so I could easily identify which pictures I want to transfer from the phone to my computer. The good news is that if I do know which one I want, I can just drag and drop it from the device to my computer desktop (or vice versa).

Of course, if you want to just import them all, that’s a straightforward task.

You can tag them when you import them (for instance, to identify them as photos from the cell phone) and you can even select to automatically rotate vertical photos when they’re imported. How cool is that?

I’ve been using the WMDC in Win 7 for a while now and it has proven to be, so far, more reliable than the same software in Vista (but then so has most everything else). Performance is also faster, but then maybe it’s the new hardware that should get the credit for that. :)

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

External SATA (eSATA) is a great idea that gives you the advantage of USB/IEEE 1394 (convenience) coupled with the advantage of internal SATA (high speed). We were excited to discover that our new Core i7 computers from HP have built in eSATA ports. That makes adding a hard drive a much easier task with no need to open the case. Just plug and play. Or so I hoped.

I already happened to have a Western Digital 1 TB bare drive sitting around, still new in its bubble wrap (we had ordered it for another system and then didn’t need it). So after a bit of research, I ordered a ThermalTake Max 4 Active Cooling drive enclosure from Amazon. It wasn’t the least expensive enclosure, but it got very good reviews. It arrived today, and I was eager to get my new drive installed and have another terabyte of storage space at my fingertips.

The housing was lighter than it looked in the photos, but appears to be well made. What should have been a five minute task, though, took about twenty because of all the annoying tiny screws that have to be dealt with. First, I made the mistake of removing the screws from the wrong side, exposing the bottom instead of the top of the case because there was lettering on the bottom as well as the top. So, after finally getting the four little screws out, I had to put them back. Getting them lined up correctly was a pain. Then I got the top section off, and there were more screws inside to unscrew; these are the ones that hold the brackets into which the hard drive goes. Took those out and the drive fits easily into the brackets. Then you snap the brackets back into the rails and slide the drive down so that the eSATA connector goes into the socket. No problem there. Now it’s time to put the screws back. Be sure you don’t get the two different types of screws mixed up (the ones that go into the brackets vs. the ones that hold the top of the housing on). They are almost the same, but the two that go in the bracket are slightly longer than the four that go into the housing.

Thermaltake Max 4 drive housing – supports USB or eSATA connection

Once I had it all assembled, I plugged in the power cord and plugged in the eSATA cable (which was included with the housing), then plugged the other end of the eSATA cable into my computer and  … nothing. Didn’t show up in My Computer, didn’t show up in Disk Manager, no “installing device drivers” message, just … nothing. Okay, maybe you need to reboot since it’s SATA. Nope, that didn’t help either. So I started doing some web research and found that many people who were buying external SATA drives were having the same problem. They said their drives worked fine with the USB connection, but wasn’t recognized with the eSATA connection. Some of them said you need to set the SATA controller to AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) mode in the BIOS. So I rebooted again, went into Setup and switched it from RAID mode to AHCI.

Went through the BIOS startup, went through the boot menu, got to the Windows 7 startup “fireflies” screen and then … reboot. The computer was in one of those vicious loops where it keeps rebooting itself before going into the operating system. Well, I also have Vista installed, and Tom suggested I try booting into it. Guess what – it booted into Vista with no problem, and I got a message that it was installing AHCI drivers. And lo and behold, when I opened up Disk Manager, there was the new drive, all 1000 unformatted GB of it. I had to first initialize it, and then I partitioned it into two volumes and quick formatted them in NTFS. Okay, that’s nice, but I have no intention of working in Vista.

So I tried booting into Win7 again. No go, same loop. Went back to Setup and changed the SATA controller setting back to RAID. Now I could boot into Win7 with no problem. And now my new partitions were showing up in My Computer. No problem with the drive since, and yes, it’s definitely a good deal faster than USB.

 
There’s my new eSATA drive (partitions F and G) in Windows 7 – after I initialized the disk and formatted the partitions in Vista

So I don’t know if it’s a glitch in Windows 7 or if it’s an anomaly that’s peculiar to my computer, but all’s well that ends well and I’m glad I kept that old Vista installation in a dual boot configuration.

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

The big headline today is that Apple is dropping the price of their lowest-end iPhone from $199 to $99.  Does anybody really care?  Is there anybody out there who didn’t buy an iPhone and will now buy one because it’s $100 cheaper?

A $100 one-time cost difference means almost nothing. The obstacle to buying an iPhone, for many who otherwise would, is the ongoing monthly charges. When the iPhone (finally) became capable of 3G speeds last summer, the price of the phone itself went down but the cost of the service went up. The unlimited data plan is $45/month for “corporate” service (if you need to access your company mail server or intranet sites). Unlimited text messages cost another $20 (if you do “pay as you go” for text messages, it costs .20 per message). And all that is on top of the charges for voice service, the least expensive of which is $40/month for 450 minutes. So we’re talking $85/month before all the taxes and fees, or $105 with unlimited texting. Then add about 20% for taxes and fees – now you’re paying $102 to $126/month. And that’s if you don’t do much talking. For more voice minutes, you’ll pay more.

When you realize that the TCO is over $1200/year, that $100 off the phone price starts to seem pretty insignificant. If they really wanted to jump start sales, they would lower the cost of the voice/data plans so people could see some real savings over the life of the phone, instead of shaving a little off the phone price.

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

I am at the point where I’m ready to give up on reading my local online newpaper, because of proliferation of maddening, intrusive ads that greet me every time I visit the site. Here’s a screenshot of today’s front page – except that you can only see a small bit of it at the bottom right because a huge black ad pops up to cover most of the left side and then a “page curl” ad obscures the top right. Sometimes these ads have “close” buttons and sometimes you just have to sit there and wait for them to do their thing and go away.

I understand very well that there’s no such thing as a free lunch and I don’t mind GOOD web ads – in fact, I even sometimes click on them and actually read about the products or services they’re hawking. A good ad is one that gets my attention by having a compelling picture or intriguing headline – not one that does it by getting in my face and preventing me from seeing the content I came there to read.

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

I am a big fan of Remote Desktop. That’s probably because I have three different desktop computers in different locations. If I need to switch from the downstairs office to the upstairs office, with RDP it’s no problem. I don’t need to close my documents and reopen them on the other computer. I can just make a remote desktop connection from the upstairs computer to the one downstairs and continue working on whatever’s open and running.

The other advantage of RDP is that one of my computers is much faster than the others. It would be great to have a Nehalem 64 bit system with a ton of RAM in each location, but not so financially savvy – especially since I can run everything on the fast guy and just access its desktop from whichever of my older machines I’m sitting at.

With XP, there were some serious limitations to Remote Desktop if you happened to be a fan of multiple monitors (those who have been reading my blogs and articles for any length of time know that I am). Then along came the ability to span multiple monitors by adding the /span parameter to mstsc.exe to open the RDP connection, so that the remote desktop connection wasn’t limited to just one monitor when the host computer had its apps and windows spread out over two or three. The problem was that the multiple monitors had to be the same size and running at the same resolution for this to work right.

Windows 7 adds better support for the whole multiple monitor scenario. Instead of having to deal with the command line, you can configure the Win7 RDP client to use multiple monitors by simply expanding the Options link and clicking the Display tab, then just check the box that says “Use all my monitors for the remote session” as shown below.

Now you’ll see the RDP host’s desktop across all your monitors, even if those monitors are different sizes and running at different resolutions.

What would be even better?  The ability to designate how many of your monitors to use. For instance, when connecting to my computer that has two monitors from an RDP client computer that has three monitors, I would like to be able to put the remote desktop session on two of the monitors where I’m sitting and display the local desktop on the other one. Not a big deal, but something to think about for the next incarnation.

Be sure to check out the Experience tab in the connection options. Here you can specify what type of connection you have, which will determine which elements will be allowed for best performance. You can also manually check or uncheck the visual elements that you want to use. By default, it’s set to the lowest bandwidth connection with none of the fancy visual elements enabled, so if you have a high speed broadband connection or you’re using Remote Desktop over a LAN, you can get a “prettier” experience by enabling the visual elements here.

Meanwhile, there are a number of other improvements to RDP in the Remote Desktop Connection v7 that comes with Windows 7. I’ll be writing about them all in next week’s VistaNews.

deb@shinder.net   www.debshinder.com

Have the Mac folks given up? From Apple’s web site regarding their next operating system, “Snow Leopard”":

Taking a break from adding new features, Snow Leopard — scheduled to ship in about a year — builds on Leopard’s enormous innovations by delivering a new generation of core software technologies that will streamline Mac OS X, enhance its performance, and set new standards for quality. Snow Leopard dramatically reduces the footprint of Mac OS X, making it even more efficient for users, and giving them back valuable hard drive space for their music and photos.

A break from adding new features?  That doesn’t sound very exciting. Reduces the footprint and gives back valuable hard drive space?  Hmm. Sounds a lot like Windows 7.

They go on to list the big “benefits” of their new OS:

• Microsoft Exchange Support – well, whoop de do. I’ve had that with Windows for, umm, forever.
• Support for multicore systems – Duh. Been running Windows on multiple cores for years.
• 64 bit – did Macs not support it before?
• “Optimized support for modern codecs and more efficient media playback” – hey, I’ve got Windows Media Center.

I have to admit I love Apple’s naming scheme. “Snow Leopard” is the coolest sounding big cat yet. But there’s more to a computer operating system – at least for those of us who work with them all day, every day – than neat names and a good advertising agency. 

Now if only Microsoft would hire Jeri Ryan to represent (Windows) Seven. She would blow that goofy Mac guy away with those Borg implants. :)

Running, ducking and putting on my kevlar vest and flame retardant suit in anticipation of the responses to this one.

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

This past week, I’ve been participating in the private technical preview of Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, and I like what I’ve been seeing. Now it’s available to the public at www.bing.com.  I did a full review for this week’s edition of VistaNews at www.vistanews.com and this blog post is a companion piece to that article, since we don’t do screenshots in the newsletter itself. So please read the article first for details of the new features, and then see the screenshots below.

Click on the pictures to enlarge them.

 
The bing “front page” from which you start your search is simple and much more attractive than Google’s

However, a search engine needs much more than a pretty face (after all, Live Search had that). Bing delivers.

The pop-up page preview is my favorite feature in bing.

I love that I can often get the information I need (or discover that the site isn’t what I’m looking for) without even going to the page.

The preferences page lets you identify your location to get search results more relevant to your area

 
You can choose whether broader included terms should be displayed.

A search for “eSATA housing” includes results for “SATA housing” but with a simple click, you can restrict the results to just those that contain “eSATA.”

 
Advanced Search allows you to look for results from a specific country or region

In function, Bing is a search portal as well as an engine. An interesting aspect of this is that you can read full articles without ever leaving the Bing site:

 
This full article on leukemia can be read without leaving the Bing site

A search for “color printer” on Bing turns up useful links at the top to top brands, printers categorized by price, and printer buying guides

All in all, Bing performs well. Is it a Google Killer? Only time will tell.

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

Quite by accident, I discovered this today. I was working on my bedroom computer where I still had Google set as my default search provider. I wanted to create a tiny URL for a post, but I didn’t have this computer set up yet with links to that site. So I naturally typed “Tiny URL” in the search box. Here’s what I got

Click to enlarge

I don’t know what www.tiny.cc is, but it’s not the site I was looking for. In fact, I don’t see it there anywhere. So I switched to Bing and here are the results

Click to enlarge

Ah – www.tinyurl.com is the first result and “best match,” as it should be.

So for those who are saying Bing’s results are not as good as Google’s, this random little test seems to say otherwise. It might not hold true for every search, but I’m just sayin’ … .

deb@shinder.net   www.debshinder.com

Our new Core i7s arrived last Saturday. I set mine up the same day – just couldn’t resist it even though I had plenty of work to get done. I did get the work done, although I stayed up half the night to do it. Worth it? You bet.

Setting up the hardware was a snap. The box is more compact than I expected (maybe because I’m so used to that huge XPS). What really surprised me was how quiet it is. You wouldn’t even know it’s running if not for the lights (which are a very soft blue, not the annoying bright blue of some of my peripherals). On the Dell, the flash card reader has always been loose in its bay so that it shifts when you put a card in. On this computer, the card reader is mounted securely in place. A little thing, but one that matters in the overall experience. There is also a recessed rubberized shallow tray area on the top of the computer. This is great if you want to sit something on top of the box. I have an external Autumn Wave TV tuner box on top of the Dell and it’s always sliding around and trying to fall off if you touch it, so this was a thoughtful touch.

I have the whole thing set up temporarily in the big bay window in the master bedroom, until my new upstairs office to ready to move into. We got the carpet ripped out a couple of weeks ago, painted last weekend and are hoping to get the wood flooring installed next weekend. Then I can move my big L shaped desk from the media room downstairs to the office and put the new computer there. Meanwhile, I’m not complaining. The bedroom is a wonderful place to work in the afternoon and evening (mornings, there’s a little too much sunshine). My view is to die for and the sounds of water (the fountain in the spa and the waterfall from the spa to the pool) has a calming effect. Here are a couple of photos of my workspace:

The machine came with Vista Home Premium x64 installed. I went through the setup process, but wow, was there ever a lot of HP crapware loaded on it. Also had a problem with the 22 inch monitor; Vista wouldn’t give me the option to set it to its maximum resolution (1680 x 1050), and kept switching back to the second monitor as primary when I rebooted.

Oh, well. I had no desire to run Vista anyway. I quickly used Vista’s Disk Management tool to make two 300 GB partitions out of the one huge one. Then I did a clean  install of Windows 7 Ultimate x64 RC to the second partition and it worked like a dream from the beginning. The installation took less than half an hour, and both monitors were automatically set to their maximum/optimum resolutions. Unlike with the Dell, I had no problem with the sound card (although it’s supposed to be the same model). My iBook USB drive, which was sometimes recognized and sometimes not on the XP machine it had been attached to before, hasn’t disappeared once. And of course without all the “extras,” it booted up in no time at all.

It took another few hours to install all my applications and make all the little configuration changes (set Explorer to show file extensions and hidden files, change my wallpaper to a custom one, get my Quick Launch toolbar on the taskbar, put the taskbar up the left side instead of across the bottom, download and install my favorite gadgets, configure security settings, set up IE 8 the way I wanted it, import my Favorites, configure the Explorer interface the way I wanted it, etc. etc. etc. I installed the following apps: Vipre, Office 2007 Ultimate, Expression Web, Visio 2007, Live Messenger, Live Writer, Photo Gallery, CorelDraw and PhotoPaint x4, Paint Shop Pro, Easy Thumbnails, Adobe Reader, DisplayFusion, PowerISO.  There are a few more that I still need to install but I can get all my basic work done with those.

When I boot up Windows 7 with those same programs installed on the Dell, my memory utilization is 51%.  On the new HP, it’s 19%.  This morning I was running a couple of graphics programs, Outlook, Word, IE (six tabs), Windows Media Center, Live Writer, Messenger and several more apps, and my memory utilization was 26%, processor utilization never went over 10% on any core.

My Windows Experience Index (WEI) is brought down by the video card, a Radeon 4350 which only scores a 4.1.  The Core i7 processor and memory come in at 7.4, as you can see in the screenshot.

Click to enlarge

I’m not too concerned by that “bottleneck,” since I’ve not seen any visible effects on performance. Aero responds smoothly, videos and TV programs play flawlessly, and everything is blazing fast. Maybe if I were a gamer, I would notice the difference.

I’m happy with everything from the speedy delivery (we ordered the systems on the 26th and received them on the 30th) to the price ($1249 for Core i7 920 with 12 GB DDR3 memory, 640 GB hard drive, Lightscribe DVD/CD burner, even two eSATA ports) to the performance of the product. I heard recently that HP is kicking Dell’s A$$ and the reason is obvious.

7 on 7 rocks!

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

For the past eight years, ever since I got tired of building them myself, our primary workstations have been Dells. They’ve served us well; only a couple of times have we had hardware problems and when we did, they were promptly fixed. My current system is an XPS and it’s a behemoth of a machine that weighs a ton and sounds like a 747 taking off when you power it up. I’ve had it for about two and a half years now and although I’m running Windows 7 on it and it works well, but it maxes out at 4 GB of RAM. Once upon a time, that was plenty for anything you’d ever want to do, but today, with VMs and video editing and a 64 bit OS, one longs for more.

The Dell XPS is a loud monster, but it gets the job done

Tom’s been chugging along with a Dell P4 for even longer, about 3 or 3 and a half years now. I’ve been trying to talk him into getting a new system for over a year, but he has an aversion to “new” (unlike me – I love nothing more than setting up a brand new computer). Finally, last night, he decided to take the plunge, and we ordered a pair of HP m9600ts with Nehalem (Core i7) processors and loaded down with RAM. Price with a $300 discount coupon for the configuration with 12 GB of DDR3 RAM was only $1149 – who could say no to that?

The HP may not look as impressive as the XPS, but the price and specs were right

The most significant thing about this purchase is that it represents a radical departure from previous brand loyalty. We might have been more hesitant, if not for the Media Center PC that we got from HP a year or so ago. It’s been a great, fast system and the only problem we’ve had with it was a hard drive that died – something that can happen with any computer vendor.

We probably would have bought Dells again, if not for the fact that a similarly configured Dell came in at hundreds of dollars more. We were also encouraged by the reviews of the HP that said it’s not only an excellent value for the money, but is also very quiet. That will be nice.

I look forward to posting a full review here once they arrive and we get a chance to play with them for a while.

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

You would have to be living in a cave to not know that the country – indeed, most of the world – is in the middle of a “down” economy. We’re bombarded every day with horror stories from the media, and even if we’ve been lucky enough to escape the direct impact, most of us know at least one or two people who have lost their jobs or taken pay cuts recently. Companies are slashing their budgets; this includes giant IT companies formerly thought to be invulnerable to financial woes – and it shows in big ways (such as the layoffs of “rock star” employees) and small ones (such as going on the cheap for food and entertainment at big conferences, compared to past years).

What effect is this having on data security? If capex budgets are cut, that could result in foregoing new firewalls, servers capable of running new, more secure software, etc. If opex budgets are cut, security services may suffer. If IT staff is cut, that means fewer personnel to ensure that the network is secure. Another, perhaps overlooked effect of the economic downturn is that more companies are turning to telecommuting to save money for both the company and the employees. With more remote users accessing the network, the security threat rises.

Will all of these factors lead to a perfect storm, making network security breaches even more common than they’ve been in the past? Or will companies recognize that security is one area where short term cost cuts may result in long term liabilities that will cost far more?

deb@shinder.net   www.debshinder.com

Okay, I admit I am not a fan of the new logon screen background in the Windows 7 RC. I thought the one in the beta was much classier.

 
Original Windows 7 logon screen in the beta

This new one is friendly, what with the little bird and the spring of greenery, but not very, well, professional looking.

The new Windows 7 RC logon screen

It’s just not … me. It was crying out to be changed. So that’s what I did. Now I have my own custom picture on the logon screen.

Windows 7 logon screen with custom background

That’s much better. If you don’t care for the flowery look, you can find the instructions for changing it here:
http://www.blogsdna.com/2698/you-can-customize-windows-7-logon-background-officially.htm 

Or if you aren’t comfortable with making the registry edits, you can download a Logon Changer program to let you do it through the UI:
http://tweaks.com/software/tweakslogon/ 

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

Okay, I’m happier with the RC now. I discovered that one of the few things I didn’t like about the beta has been fixed, and it’s an important one. The drivers for my HP Officejet 6310 in the beta would not allow me to set the print quality. The option to choose Fast Draft was just gone, regardless of which drivers I used.  I was beginning to suspect it was an Evil HP Conspiracy designed to make me use up my ink cartridge faster. But in the RC, I have the ability to print fast drafts back again. Hurray! I don’t really print all that often anymore, but when I do, I usually don’t need super duper high quality. This makes up for most of the other stuff.

That’s especially true since I bit the bullet and bought CorelDraw x4, which has the newest version of PhotoPaint, which does work just fine on Windows 7. I know PhotoShop is everybody’s darling, but I just have always liked the PhotoPaint interface much better. Now I have it and the full functionality of my printer back. Things are looking up.

deb@shinder.net   www.debshinder.com

Okay, I’m being overly dramatic in that headline. The RC isn’t a giant step backward or anything – but it always wasn’t (at least on my Dell XPS) quite as trouble-free an install as the Win 7 public beta was. Both installations were clean installs to new partitions. Both were done on the same computer, with no hardware changes having been made. I installed the same applications on both; even made a list based on my beta installation to ensure that.

I had read that the RC would have support for more devices than the beta had, so I was surprised when two cards that had been recognized automatically when I installed the beta required me to go hunt down drivers in the RC. Neither my sound card (a very common Creative Soundblaster X-Fi) nor my external TV tuner (a not so common AutumnWave OnAir Creator) worked off the bat as they had in the beta. Finding and installing the drivers wasn’t a big deal, but I’m just saying … .

Then there’s this quirky little problem I’m having with settings not “sticking.” When I installed, my middle monitor wasn’t set as the primary monitor. No big deal, easy to change. But then this morning, for no apparent reason (without rebooting or doing anything related to the display settings), it suddenly reverted back, making my right monitor the primary monitor again. Changing it back caused the gadgets that were on the middle screen (where I wanted them) to move to my left monitor and I had to manually move them all back to their proper places. Again, this isn’t a huge big deal, but it’s annoying and I hope it doesn’t become a habit. That never happened in the betas.

Much more serious is the bug that Ed Bott calls a “doozy” in his blog post at http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1003 . This one can cause programs you install to be unable to run if you install them before installing the fix that was released a few days ago. If you have updates configured to install automatically,  sure to install the update before you install any programs to save yourself some grief.

Speaking of programs, I was absolutely thrilled when I found that my ancient Corel PhotoPaint v10 installed and ran on the Windows 7 beta (it wouldn’t work at all in Vista). Well, that happiness was short-lived; I was able to install it on the RC but it won’t open. No matter what compatibility mode I use, I get this disheartening message:

Then there’s the fact that IE 8 in the RC keeps giving me the “Welcome to Internet Explorer 8” spiel every time I open it after rebooting, and wanting me to go through the little setup wizard to select my search provider, accelerators, etc. Why?  Also of note: in the beta, Windows 7 made whatever partition it was installed on appear as C: (only when you were booted into Win 7; if you had a dual boot configuration and booted back into your previous OS, drive letters reverted back to whatever they had been before). In the RC, that doesn’t seem to happen. I installed it onto the drive I had named E: in the beta and it was still called E: in the RC OS. However, this might be because I started the RC installation from within Windows, rather than booting from the installation disc.  Or it may be because I already had an instance of 7 installed (the beta). I’ll have to do further experimenting to determine whether there has really been a change in behavior here.

On the positive side, performance seems a bit snappier than the beta. It’s also easier to distinguish the active/open programs on the taskbar from programs that are just pinned there (I had no problem distinguishing between them before, but Tom did so I guess this is a good thing). I haven’t had the problems with Adobe Reader and Flash that I had in the beta; they installed and worked without a bunch of hassle this time.

So … I don’t hate the RC. I still like it much better than Vista. But I also don’t love it to death, which was the way I felt about the beta. From my point of view, on my particular computer, with my particular configuration and applications, it seems as if they broke more than they fixed. Too bad the beta expires soon. Anybody else had a similar experience or am I the only one?

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

Already planning for the final release of Windows 7 and not yet sure which edition of the OS to get for your primary system? With the beta it was easy: everybody gets Ultimate (NOTE: As with the beta, the Windows 7 RC will install Ultimate by default. If you want to install a different edition, you’ll need to follow the procedure here: How to Install Any Windows 7 Release Candidate Edition.

But when the new OS actually goes on the market, it will come in six different editions. If you’re a home user, you aren’t going to be using Enterprise edition because it’s only available to companies with volume licensing plans. You can also pretty much discount Starter edition, which will come installed on low-end low-cost netbooks and will only run three applications at a time (NOTE: this limit isn’t quite as bad as it sounds; see Ed Bott’s article Living with the Limits of Windows 7 Starter Edition to find out which programs don’t count toward that three-app quota).

Home Basic edition will be offered only in “emerging markets,” so that cuts it out of the running for those who live in the U.S., western Europe, Australia, etc.

That leaves you with only three viable choices:

• Home Premium: recommended for consumers; supports Aero, Touch, includes Windows Media Center)
• Professional: roughly equivalent to Business Edition in Vista, recommended for small businesses and telecommuters (adds Remote Desktop host service, Mobility Center, offline folders, Presentation mode, can join a Windows domain)
• Ultimate: recommended for “PC enthusiasts.” (Adds Bitlocker, ability to boot from a virtual drive, Direct Access)

Although pricing hasn’t been announced yet, we can assume the differences between the editions will be similar to the Vista pricing structure (perhaps $40 additional for each subsequent edition).

You might conclude that if you’re a home user, Home Premium is your best bet. I recommend that you spend the extra bucks and go for Pro, instead. The Remote Desktop service alone is worth the price; you’ll be able to set up your Win 7 Pro machine as a RDP host and connect to its desktop from other machines on your home network (including those running Home editions of XP and Vista – those systems support the RDP client, but not the host service).

And if you’re using a 64 bit version of Windows 7 (and you should be, if you’re a power user), there’s another reason to splurge on Pro: according to Adrian Kingsley-Hughes’ post titled Max Memory Limits for 64 bit Windows 7, Home Premium will only support 16 GB of RAM. Pro (along with Enterprise and Ultimate) supports a whopping 192 GB.  That’s a heck of a difference. You might think you would never need more than 16 GB of memory, but don’t forget Bill Gates’ infamous statement that “640K ought to be enough for anybody.”  The need for extra memory often comes about before the need for a new OS, and already there are desktop computer motherboards that can support 24 GB of RAM. It almost always pays to plan for as much expansion as possible when it comes to memory.

Well then, should you spend another forty bucks for Ultimate? If you have plenty of extra cash, why not? Certainly BitLocker, and especially the new BitLocker to go, offers a big security advantage. And if you’re going to use your own computer to connect to your corporate network, DirectAccess can make it easier and more secure. Some home users will also appreciate the ability to boot from a virtual hard drive (VHD file). But if you’re looking to save a few dollars, Pro will probably fulfill all the needs of the majority of non-corporate users.

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

This isn’t the first time Google’s Chrome web browser has been found to suffer from security vulnerabilities, but this one is particularly nasty in that it can put you at risk even if you aren’t using Chrome (if you have it installed). There are no doubt many people out there who downloaded Chrome to try it out and then went back to IE (I was one of them – but since then I’ve installed a new operating system and didn’t bother to install Chrome this time).

Here’s the problem: If you visit the attacker’s web page using Internet Explorer, but you have Chrome installed, this universal cross-site scripting attack can cause Chrome to launch, open up multiple tabs and load malicious scripts.

If you have Chrome, update to version 1.0.154.59 to fix this vulnerability. You can read more here: http://blog.watchfire.com/wfblog/2009/04/google-chrome-universal-xss-vulnerability-.html

deb@shinder.net   www.debshinder.com

Twitter fans now have a site where you can analyze your own or someone else’s “Twitter personality” at http://twanalyst.com.   I was a bit taken aback to see that I was labeled both “likeable” and “vain.”  Almost all of my Twitter posts are about technology so why “vain?”  Then I started “twanalyzing” the accounts of other people I know, and found a common thread: If you have a large number of followers relative to the number of people you follow, you’re considered “vain.”  I have 149 followers and only follow 13. My friend Bill Detwiler has 306 followers and only follows 12, and is also considered “vain.” The same pattern seems to hold. Hmmm. I would have preferred the label “discriminating.”  If you have a very large number of followers, though (seems to be over 500) but don’t follow many of them back, then you become a “guru.”

I also noticed that all those who have a very high number of followers (including one friend with 2151 and one with 860) are labeled “renowned.” This seems to kick in when you have more than 500 followers. If you have between 100 and 300, you’re “likeable” and 300 to 500 makes you “popular.” Those with huge numbers of followers are “celebrities.”

If you post lots of links, you’re labeled a “sharer.” Since most of my tweets contain links to my new articles, I got that appellation.  However, I didn’t have a high enough proportion of links to other info to make me a “robot.” 

 
Twanalyst

Be careful about retweeting a lot; you’ll get labeled a “parrot.” And if you mainly engage in direct conversations (lots of @ posts), you become known as a “socialite.” Don’t tweet much at all? Twanalyzer will conclude that you’re a “lurker.”

I’d take Twanalyzer’s personality and style analyses with a grain of salt, along with their recommendations for “improving” your tweets. The latter section admonished me with such nuggets of wisdom as “the more people you follow, the more followers you’ll get in return” and “why not follow more people back to get a dialogue going?”  I don’t use Twitter with the goal of getting dialogues going; I use it to let people know when I publish a new article or to provide the readers of my newsletters and articles with links to additional information on topics I’ve addressed recently.

What is useful about Twanalyst, though, is the top section of the analysis that gives you the actual numbers: how many tweets you average per day, your “readability index,” and percentage of links to original content.

Note that you can only “twanalyze” the accounts of people who have their settings configured to show on the public timeline. If a person has configured “protected updates,” even if you’re one of his/her followers, you won’t be able to twanalyze the account.

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

Twitter – a venue for malware? How could that be? Well, a recent worm created by Twitter user “Mikeyy” proved that the microblogging service presents attackers with one more method for spreading malicious code. It exploits a cross-site scripting vulnerability, and the author – who, according to some reports, is 17 years old – claims to have created it “out of boredom.” The worm propagates by sending a URL that takes users to a web site where their profiles are infected, causing them to in turn send the same URL to their own contacts.

Now it appears that other attackers are following suit and spreading their own malicious links via Twitter. And was the original malware author punished for his deeds? Actually, it seems he was rewarded with a job offer instead. Now there’s a deterrent.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Twitter-and-Celebrities-Hit-By-More-Mikeyy-Worms-271396/ 

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

In last week’s VistaNews editorial, I ranted a bit about the advantages of using the right tool for the job. Some folks took issue with my statement that Excel is a spreadsheet program and spreadsheets are designed for dealing with numbers, not big chunks of text data, but I stand by it. Spreadsheets were created to emulate bookkeeping ledgers, after all.

This week, I started thinking about how this “right tool for the job” thing applies to social networking tools. Recently I’ve heard many complaints (from Facebook users) about the linking of Twitter accounts to Facebook. They’re saying things like “If I want to read your tweets, I’ll follow you on Twitter.” Some are going so far as to say that they plan to “unfriend” their friends whose Twitter posts show up on Facebook.

My first reaction was: what’s the big deal? It’s easier to read a friend’s posts all in the same place, in my Facebook stream, than to have to go to a separate site (Twitter) to see them.

Then I started thinking about how I use the two services. I do have my Twitter account linked to my Facebook profile. When I “tweet,” it shows up as a new status message on FB. My tweets are almost all about articles I’m working on or have just finished, or occasionally links to excellent tech-related articles I’ve read. In short, I use Twitter pretty much as a promotional tool for my IT writing.

Many of my FB “friends” are in the IT business, too, or they’re readers of my newsletters. So I figure they’re at least somewhat interested in what I’m publishing. For a good bit, I was duplicating effort by posting the same things to my FB status as what I’d just “tweeted.” I save a little time and effort by automating that process.

On the other hand, my Twitter account is “open” to the world – anyone can see my tweets. That’s one reason I try keep it business-like. I pick up new followers that way, presumably people who are interested in the subjects I post about. Many or most of them I don’t know and I follow very few of them back.

My Facebook page is not public; it’s configured so only my friends can see it. My FB friends are people I know – either in “real life” or through mailing lists, discussion groups, email correspondence, etc. It’s a less formal environment, less business-focused. My work is a big part of my life so it shows up there a lot, but I also post things on FB that I would never post on Twitter, such as the details of my recent fall down a flight of stairs, or a mini-review of dinner at a great restaurant.

Then there’s my LinkedIn network, which is a whole different world. It’s all business – I have many contacts there whom I would never think of boring with my dining experiences or medical problems.

Thus my tweets are a subset of my Facebook posts, and my LinkedIn activities are completely separate from either.  It’s a matter of using different services for different, but overlapping purposes. Of course, other people may use the same services differently – some folks make their tweets private and only allow friends to follow them, in which case you might disclose much more intimate information in your tweets.

I’m curious about what readers think. Do you use different social networking sites for different purposes? Does it annoy you when your friends’ twitter posts show up in the FB stream? Or do you consider the whole SN phenomenon a waste of time? Let me know.

 
deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

Our network, like so many “just grew that way.” There was some rhyme and reason to the original setup when we moved here four and a half years ago, but we’ve added servers, switches, WAPs and other network devices as the need arose, and now it’s a bit of a jungle in there. Here’s a look at the current server room:

Even though our new servers and desktops have gigabit NICs, we haven’t been able to take full advantage because most of the switches are still old 10/100 models. They still work fine, so it seems like a shame to just decommission them – but for tasks like doing full backups across the network or streaming recorded TV files and other large media files from one computer to another, we really need the speed.

So today I bit the bullet and ordered three new gigabit switches. This afternoon, I’m going to be clearing out a couple of the older servers (including two that run Windows 2000 and have been going strong since the late 1990s) to make room for the newest Xeon quad core server, who has to move out of the “extra” office because I’m about to remodel it and turn it into my upstairs office.

Someday maybe we’ll actually buy a rack for the rack mount servers. :) In the meantime, the server room is never going to be exactly a showplace, but maybe I can get it cleaned up a little when Tom goes out of town at the end of the month, so that it will at least be fit for humans to enter.

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

The Cyber Security Act of 2009 was introduced in the U.S. Senate on April 1. Was that just a coincidence or is this (we hope) a big joke? According to eWeek’s article Bill Grants President Unprecedented Cyber Security Powers, it gives the president the authority to shut down private networks and allows the Security of Commerce to demand data from them “without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule or policy restricting such access.” Designated private networks would be required to get government permission before they could install new security software. Now that’s scary.

deb@shinder.net   www.debshinder.com

A recent article by Andrew Garcia on the eWeek web site proclaims that Wi-Fi is a Smartphone Must. That hasn’t been my experience at all. My Samsung Omnia, like the i760 and i730 before it, has wi-fi networking. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’ve used that feature.

Andrew wrote, “My device—an Apple iPhone—would be practically useless without Wi-Fi. No matter how many commercials I see touting more bars in more places, AT&T has completely failed to win me over with its network.” Maybe this is just a failing of iPhones and/or of AT&T or maybe it’s a problem with GSM networks. I don’t know, because I don’t use any of them.

With Verizon, I get a good EV-DO signal just about everywhere I go. I can’t remember the last time I was unable to get my email or access a web site with my phone. Now, granted, I don’t go wandering out into outlying areas that much; I spend most of my time in my home on the eastern edge of Dallas County or somewhere else in the DFW metroplex. I occasionally travel to Seattle/Redmond, Las Vegas or San Diego. When I do venture down I-30 into rural Texas, though, I’ve still been able to get use my phone’s data capabilities, albeit it’s not always as fast. But the places where I can’t get EV-DO are not places where there’s likely to be a wi-fi network, either.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m happy to have wi-fi on the Omnia as a backup in case I ever do need it. I’m not saying they should eliminate it in the next model. I’m just saying personally, I almost never use it. So I would hardly rate it as a “must have” feature.

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com