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