DLNA

I've mentioned before that we converted our DVD library so that we could stream it over our home network. One drawback of that setup was that my main development machine had to be online to host the videos. In addition, when anyone in the house wanted to stream that content, it put a small load on my machine. I really wanted to offload those demands. I looked at the various options on the market, and settled on the Western Digital My Book Live (2TB). The WD My Book Live is a single drive NAS that is DLNA certified. We had recently purchased a Samsung SmartTV (UN55D6000) which is also DLNA certified, so I was looking forward to streaming directly from the drive to the TV with no other components in the mix.

I installed the WD My Book Live on our network and set about copying over our music, movies, and pictures to the drive. We have quite a collection, so this was a multi-hour job. When the copy completed, I switched on the Samsung TV and it immediately found the My Book on our network. It streamed our home movies, music, and pictures perfectly, but each time I tried to stream one of our movies the set would stall on the Loading screen for about a minute before giving the message "Not Supported File Format". Even more frustrating, rather than returning to the table of contents, the set immediately attempted to stream the next file in the directory, which hung the machine for another minute until it responded to the request to exit.

I searched to see if this were a known issue, and which product was the culprit. I found that each product has their own slight issues that, combined, resulted in many users complaining about the same problem. It seems that Samsung's DLNA client makes use of the DLNA server in an unusual way, although still keeping within the letter of the DLNA spec. The WD My Book Live uses the Twonky Media Server to stream content. The version of the server on the device (5.1.9) did not respond appropriately to these requests, which resulted in a failure to stream the video. Other DLNA clients, such as my PS3, stream those same videos just fine from the WD MBL.

My first thought was to figure out what file format our home movies used and transcode our movie library to that format. That is a pretty daunting task considering the size of our library though, and if it sacrificed picture quality I wasn't interested. Fortunately, I found that other users with this same issue had found a solution. It seems that Twonky recognized the issue with Samsung sets and corrected it in the latest version of their software (6.0.34). Western Digital doesn't have any plans to release an official firmware with this version of Twonky, but that didn't stop folks from finding a way to do it on their own. This forum posts describes the steps for upgrading from the stock version of Twonky to the latest revision:

http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/forum/t-305396/upgrading-twonky

The Western Digital My Book Live is apparently powered by a PowerPC CPU and runs an embedded version of Linux. After modifying the config file for the machine, it is possible to get a terminal prompt and update the Twonky software. In addition to correcting the streaming issue with Samsung sets, it also includes the ability to display album cover art. Using this new version of Twonky is unsupported, and you have to pay a $20 license fee for the upgrade. I'll gladly pay that fee for working software, although I am disappointed that Western Digital doesn't plan to release this as an official upgrade.

How to Make Your DVD Collection Streamable

If your family is like ours, you probably have a fairly sizable collection of DVDs. You have kids movies, feature films, television show collections, and potentially even home videos. Before Netflix made movie streaming mainstream, you probably thought nothing of keeping a media shelf full of DVD cases and occasionally popping one in your DVD player. It is so much easier now, though, to search for content through that Netflix interface. Wouldn't it be great if all of those DVDs you have around the house were as easy to access as your Netflix content?

Well, with a little time, a PC, and a home network, you can. There are a number of steps involved, though, so I've put together this guide on how to make your DVD collection available on your home network.

DISCLAIMER: This is a guide is intended for use with content that you *own* and have the *right* to use. Distributing copies of copyrighted feature films is against the law. Everybody behave and do good, mmkay?

Ok, with that out of the way, let's talk about the major steps in making your DVD collection available over your home network. First, there are a couple of things you are going to need:

• A Computer with a DVD drive. This guide assumes a Windows machine.
  
• A home network, wireless or wired
  
• A gaming console (PS3, Xbox360, Wii) or Home Theater PC (HTPC)
  

There are three major steps in going from the content on your disc to streaming to your TV, and one optional step.

• Rip the DVD content to your PC
  
• Transcode the content to a streaming friendly format
  
• (Optional)"Tag" the file with additional information
  
• Publish the content on your home network
  

Step 1 - DVD Rip

The first step is to get the content of the disc and onto your PC (otherwise known as ripping) where you can work with it. For this I recommend DVDFab. DVDFab is actually a swiss army knife when it comes to DVDs and Blu-Ray discs, but we're only interested in one feature: HD Decrypter. If you find the software suite useful, I encourage you to buy a copy, as the suite of tools is really quite nice.

When you open DVDFab you will be presented with a list of options along the left. We are interested in the DVD Copy option at the top. We then get additional options. When ripping a DVD, you can select to copy all of the contents of the disc, which includes the special features, menus, alternative languages, and other content on the disc. Alternatively, you can choose to copy just the main movie feature. Your selection will depend on the content you are ripping, but for most feature films your best option will be Main Movie. On the right hand pane of the window use the source field to select the DVD that you would like to copy from. In the Target field select the folder to copy the content to. DVD content is large, and you will want to have plenty of room on your hard drive. If your PC has two hard drives, I recommend creating a folder on the second drive for storing the DVD rips. In the "Volume Label" field name the content you are ripping. DVDFab will use the name from the source DVD label, but you are free to use whatever you like. The software will create a new folder in the target folder with this name. Finally, for best quality, dropdown the DVD size selector to choose DVD 9. This will retain a perfect bit-for-bit copy of the disc rather than performing compression. We're done here, so click the next button.

This next screen displays the tracks found on the disc and which one will be copied. DVDFab is very good about detecting which track is the feature film on the disc. However, if you are ripping a disc that contains episodes of a television show, you may find that you need to fiddle with some of the options. For now, I'll assume that DVDFab correctly selected the main track. Go ahead and click Start to get the rip going. This is a long process, and the time it takes to rip the disc will depend on the length of the content, the speed of your DVD drive, processor, and hard drive. Usually you can expect an hour of content to take about 10 minutes to rip, but this will vary.

Step 2 - Transcode to H.264

Transcoding is the process of converting from one video file format (or codec) to another. I like the Handbrake software for this step. Handbrake comes with a number of profiles that allow you to tailor the transcoding process to the device you intend to display your content on. For the purpose of this guide I'm going to assume you want to display the content on a high definition television from a gaming console, such as a PlayStation3. Select the High Profile option, as this will give you a good copy of the content for streaming without too much compression. From the menu bar, click the Video Source button and choose Video Folder. Now browse to the folder created by DVDFab when it ripped the disc. You may notice that the folder you selected now has several sub-folders: Main Movie->->VIDEO_TS. The video content from the rip is located in the VIDEO_TS folder, so let's select this as our source. Handbrake will then suggest a target destination file. Again, I recommend creating a new folder for storing your transcoded content. Once you have the source, destination, and profile selected, it is time to start transcoding. At the top of the window you will see toolbar button to Start. Click this to begin transcoding. The transcoding process takes a very long time, especially on the High Profile setting. I've found that on my PC, the time required is usually minute-for-minute the same length as the content, but this will be very dependent on the processing power of your PC. If you have a lot of DVDs, you may want to rip several DVDs at once (Step 1), and then setup Handbrake to transcode them at night while you sleep. You may notice that after clicking the start button, the button changed to say Enqueue. You can create a job list for Handbrake in this way. Your PC will work throughout the night, completing the job list.

Step 3 - Tagging (Optional)

While this step is not required to get your content streaming on your home network, you may find it helpful. Tagging allows you to supply additional information about the video file, such as the actors who perform, the director, date it was published, and cover art. I use a free app called MetaX to do this tagging. It isn't the easiest app to use, but the price is right and it has the features I need. First, open the video file you would like to apply tags to. You'll see it added to the list on the right. Next, select that item from the list. Now, on the left side, enter the name of the video in the search box and click Search. The app will pull up data from several tag databases that match the search term. Clicking search results will populate the fields in the main section of the app. If you don't find what you are looking for you can manually enter the details for your file. Once complete, click the check box next to each box that you would like associated with the file, or click the check mark button in the toolbar to toggle all checks. Finally, click the Apply button (shaped like an arrowhead) to apply these tags to the file. You can add several files to your queue and tag them all at once.

Step 4 - Publish

The final step to making your content available is to publish it on your local network. If you are running Windows 7, the built-in Windows Media Server software can do this for you. I've found the security settings required to get Windows Media Server to work properly to be very frustrating, so I use PlayOn. The PlayOn service runs on your PC and makes content available to your other network devices, such as other PCs, game consoles, and mobile devices. While you need to pay for a license for much of the content, the My Media (beta) feature is free to use without a full license. Again, the PlayOn software is great, and I encourage you to purchase a copy, but if you are looking to stream on the cheap, the free version will get you there. The My Media feature of PlayOn requires that you also install the VLC Media Player, which is a fantastic piece of free software for playing movies.

From the PlayOn control panel you need to configure the software to find your local files. Pull up the PlayOn settings window and go to the MyMedia tab. You need to check the box to enable the My Media feature (beta). You can then add folders to PlayOn that will be made available to your networked devices.

Start Streaming!

Now your content is published, go watch it! If you have a PlayStation3, your PlayOn server will appear as an option in the Video section of the cross bar interface. If you use a Wii you will need to open the Internet Browser and browse to the address of the server on your network. The same works for the Xbox360 or a laptop. You will be presented with a menu that allows you to select content. If you use an iPod Touch, iPhone, or Android device there are PlayOn apps.

The PlayOn interface for streaming is a little quirky, and it can be frustrating to try scrubbing to a specific point in a video. The DLNA support on the PlayStation3 is fantastic, and is a great way for viewing your streamed content.

Controlling your Home Theater PC

Last year I converted one of our PCs into a Home Theater PC (HTPC). We had moved to a rural location that didn't offer cable, and I didn't want to pay a monthly subscription to Tivo just to be able to record Over The Air (OTA) television broadcasts. I purchased a Silicon Dust HDHomerun Dual Tuner unit and connected the PC to our television using an HDMI cable. This worked really well for setting up recordings of broadcast television for later viewing. One of the hurdles that limited use of the HTPC in our household was how to control the HTPC. Using a television or DVR is fairly straight forward. Most people are familiar with a remote control and will intuitively understand how to use them. What do you do when someone hands you a keyboard and mouse instead? I made several attempts at finding a good control solution that everyone could understand.

Attempt #1 - Wireless mouse + wired keyboard



Mouse - Logitech MX Revolution



Keyboard - Logitech Wave Corded Keyboard

These were already in the house, so it was the first thing to try. It worked ok, but there were some major annoyances. The range on the wireless mouse was terrible. The mouse was very touchy about detecting movement on fabric. It either wouldn't move, or it would jump all over the screen. We didn't need the keyboard often, but it was an irritation to have to get up to use it.

Attempt #2 - Wireless Multimedia Keyboard



Keyboard - BTC 9019URF

I also had this keyboard, which I'd picked up at Fry's on sale for $40 a few years back. It is a wireless keyboard that includes a joystick for moving the mouse as well as mouse buttons (right, left, click wheel). When I originally bought it, my intention was to strap it to my treadmill so I could get some exercise while doing my regular browsing, e-mail, bills, etc. It uses some custom RF protocol for communicating back to the USB dongle. It worked fairly well when sitting close to the receiver, but the range is really poor (less than 15 feet in my experience). It also chewed through batteries like mad. The mouse would tend to drift, as the joystick sometimes wouldn't right itself. Typing was painful, as it often missed or doubled keystrokes. I wouldn't recommend this keyboard.

Attempt #3 - Windows Media Center Remote + wired keyboard




Remote - Siig Vista Media Center Edition Remote



Keyboard - Logitech Wave Corded Keyboard

After the batteries died on the wireless keyboard, we ditched it and went back to the corded keyboard. Fry'shad the Siig Vista MCE remote available for $30, so I picked it up. Like the wireless keyboard, it uses a usb dongle, but is IR rather than RF. This worked really well on our Win7 HTPC. All of the buttons on the remote work as expected within Media Center, and the family felt comfortable using the HTPC this way. It was familiar, and it was a lot less like using a PC and a lot more like using a DVR. The remote also worked within the Hulu and Boxee interfaces to some extent. The only negatives were the need to get up to use the corded keyboard, and the slight ugliness of an IR dongle at the front of our media cabinet.

Attempt #4 - Logitech DiNovo Mini



HTPC Keyboard - Logitech DiNovo Mini

I received this as a Christmas gift and it is *awesome*! The DiNovo Mini is a very small form-factor wireless keyboard with a touchpad that can be toggled to either act as a trackpad for moving the mouse, or as a D-pad. The keys on the keyboard are about twice as big as on most cell phone keypads, which makes it easy to type with. The keys are also backlit, which is great when watching something in the dark. It uses a rechargeable battery, so no stocking AAs or AAAs. It has a hinged cover so that when it is not in use you can cover the keys to keep dust and other couch detritus out. The form factor is great. Traditional wireless keyboards are pretty big, and it is awkward to keep them on the couch or endtable. This little guy fits right along side my other remotes. I only have one minor quibble with it. The record button doesn't work. There is a driver hack to get it working in WMC, but by default the record button is mapped to Windows Media Player, and will launch it rather than setting the currently selected show to record. You can either use the driver hack or manually select record to work around this, but it was a point of confusion when we tried using the remote to schedule recordings. Aside from this minor issue, I can't recommend this device highly enough. The $150 MSRP is a little salty for a keyboard (you can find it for closer to $110 from Amazon) but in my opinion it is totally worth it for making the HTPC more useful.

HP Mini 1000 - Upgrading the Transcend JetFlash T3

A while back I posted about the HP Mini 1000 and some of the ways it can be upgraded. Probably the easiest upgrade is to the Transcend JetFlash T3 drive that comes with the machine, and fills the recessed USB slot. The Mini comes with a 2GB drive, and the easiest upgrade is to simply purchase a higher capacity Transcend drive in the same line. The 4GB unit is priced at $16.70 on the Transcend store website, or $16.29 from Amazon.

I found a neat alternative. Kingston offers a MicroSDHC card that comes with a MicroSDHC card reader whose form factor is very similar to that of the JetFlash T3. The 4GB card with reader is priced at $14.95 through Amazon currently. I wanted to upgrade the MicroSD card in my GPSr anyway, so this seemed like a good opportunity to try it out.

The first thing I noticed when I got the package was that the MicroSDHC reader is about 20% shorter than the Transcend card. Aside from that, the form factor was perfect. I slotted the 4GB MicroSDHC card into the reader, and then slide it into the small holder that covers the recessed USB port on the Mini. I slid everything into place, but nothing happened. Unfortunately, the shorter length means that the pads don't quite reach to make a connection to the USB port. All is not lost though. With a bit of fiddling, I found I could get the reader to slot into the recessed port without any issue. At that point, I can leave the cover on or off, it doesn't really matter, as the reader is completely within the recessed slot. If you do want to keep the cover on, be sure to slot the reader into the cover first, as trying to push the cover on over the reader after it has been slotted is a chore. Getting the reader back out again is a bit of a trick, but nothing you couldn't do with a handy set of tweezers, or a small set of needle nose pliers.

Given the lower price of MicroSDHC card and reader at the same capacity, I think this is a pretty good way to upgrade your machine. Another advantage is that, as MicroSDHC card capacities increase and prices drop you can continue to upgrade this part.

Rural Internet

My family and I are preparing to move out of the city and into a more rural setting. As part of that move, I've been researching what sorts of internet service will be available to us. At our current residence we have a number of different options for high speed internet service. We currently use the U-Verse service offered by AT&T. We are using the 1.5Mbps service, which adds $15 / month in cost to our U-Verse television bill. Comcast also offers high speed internet service, and I'm sure we could get DSL from any number of folks. Go a few miles outside of a dense residential area and your options quickly become limited.

There are four types of service that I have found that will be available at our new location:

• Dial-Up
• Satellite
• Cellular Wireless
• Microwave Wireless

Dial-Up

Dial-up internet service is the old standby that hasn't changed in over 10 years. The top speed is still pegged at 56kbps (ignoring the "speed boosting" tech that some vendors claim). Depending on the service provider, rates run anywhere from $10-$20 / month. However, we don't plan on having a home phone, so add to this cost the price to install a home phone (around $25 / month with AT&T) for the sole purpose of using dial-up, and it comes to $35 or more per month for that sluggish dial-up internet connection. It would be useful for the most basic internet uses: browsing basic web pages and sending e-mail. Forget about online gaming or rich web media though. Compare this to our U-Verse service, which is the equivalent of 1,500kbps for $20 less each month, and it would be a serious step backward.

Satellite

There are a few satellite internet providers, Hughes and WildBlue being the most prominent. Hughes offers 1.0Mbps down, 128kbps up service for $60 / month, while WildBlue tiers their service at 512K down / 128K up for $50, or 1.5M down / 256K up for $80. Those are fine speeds, if a little pricey. The real gotcha here is latency. It used to be that with satellite internet you only received data over the dish, and all of your uploads were on your telephone line. Now you get both your up and down data from the dish, but the latency can be anywhere up to 5 seconds. Compare that to the typical sub 0.1 second latency of other internet connections, and it is a big downer. This makes the satellite internet service unusable for things like voice chat, VPN connection for working at home, or online gaming. Using a VPN connection and online gaming are high priorities for me from my internet connection, so that eliminated satellite from contention.

Cellular Wireless

Cell phone companies offer data plans for their users who have smart phones (Blackberry, iPhone, Android, etc.). This offers a fairly speedy (348kbps or faster) way to access the internet. Most carriers offer mobile broadband service with the intention that you use it occasionally with your laptop, not as your dedicated home connection. Across providers, the standard seems to be to offer up to 5GB of downloads per month for $60 / month. That may seem like a lot, but it really isn't when it is your dedicated connection for home. You can quickly exhaust that 5GB quota and start paying exorbitant rates per additional kilobyte downloaded. For example, let's say a new product revision is released, and the download is 1GB or more. If there are alternate versions, I could exhaust all 5GB in a single afternoon. The idea of these caps is to prevent folks from hogging the network with P2P applications, swapping movies all day, and to keep usage as intended: occasional use on a mobile device. The net effect for me is that cellular is not an option as a home ISP.

Microwave Wireless

I found microwave wireless service to be the best mix of speeds, price, and availability. There are several service providers that can provide service to our location. With microwave wireless you need line-of-sight to the tower providing the signal. A small antenna is mounted on your home and communicates wirelessly with the main tower. Depending on geography and tree line, these systems can offer service in a 15-30 mile radius around a tower. Prices vary by speed, with it ranging from $35 / month for 512K down, 256 up service to $90 / month for speeds over 1Mbps. There isn't a single dominant player in this market like there is in the national cellular market. The best deals I found were offered by a local company: Hoosier Broadband.

512K/256 $34.95 Residential Service

768K/384 $44.95 Residential Service

1.5M/512 $69.95 Residential Service

512K/256 $54.95 Business Service

768K/384 $64.95 Business Service

The difference between residential service and business service is that Hoosier Broadband reserves the right to lower the priority of residential traffic in deference to their business customers, and business customers are guaranteed support within 24 hours. Residential customers are not. I'm not yet decided on whether I would choose the business or residential service. As the majority of my usage is late at night, I think the residential service should suffice, but given that I also intend to use this service when I need to work from home, the business service might be more prudent. Either way, I would be selecting the 768K service, which is half of what we get now from AT&T. A cut back, yes, but not a terrible one.

DSL, FiOS, and ISDN

Just a quick note on these services: they aren't available. In fact, you probably can't remember the last time (or ever) hearing about ISDN. When I contacted the phone company, they said they are not selling new connections, but only maintaining existing accounts. That's fine, as ISDN has all of the drawbacks of dial-up with a higher cost and only barely better speeds. FiOS would be awesome, but there's no chance of getting that in a rural area as it is too expensive for Verizon to pull new fiber down country roads for a handful of customers. Maybe someday DSL will be an option, but not now.

Summary

I think that microwave wireless is one service that we will hear a lot about in the coming years. One of the president's major policy initiatives is to increase access to broadband internet service for rural Americans. Installing a tower for wireless transmission is one of the most cost effective ways to do that, and the FCC is in active talks concerning opening up more of our wireless spectrum for data traffic (this is a major reason why we had the recent switch from analog to digital television over the air). I'm hopeful that these changes will result in more options for me as rural internet consumer, and lower prices.

HP Mini 1000 Internal Microphone on WIndows 7

One of the only complaints I had about my HP Mini 1000 netbook when I purchased it was the lack of a dedicated microphone jack. The Mini has a combined headphone/microphone jack. You can plug in a set of headphones and get sound, or plug in a mic and record, but not both at once. I like to use Skype, ooVoo, Ventrillo, and other voice applications, and this seemed like an unnecessary limitation.

After loading up Windows 7 on my netbook, I was further disappointed to find that the default driver did not detect if you plugged in a mic or headphone, it just always worked as a headphone jack. This left me with no option for recording other than to use a plantronics USB headset that I had laying around. Taking up one of two USB ports for a headset was less than ideal.

Then I read on a forum that the Mini has an internal microphone. What's this? Hidden, undocumented equipment? Sure enough, half-way between the left edge of the screen and the webcam there is a pinhole microphone. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to enable. I did see it was listed in my recording devices, but I couldn't get it to pick up sound.

After a bit of searching, I found a link to a driver for the sound chip in the Mini 1000:

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp40501-41000/sp40662.exe

I believe this is the official vista driver for the sound chip. After downloading and installing I went to the recording devices menu and sure enough, it is picking up sound! Yeah! The only quirk is that it appears the labels for the recording devices are switched. The recording device marked as External Mic is picking up sound, while the recording device marked Integrated Microphone Array is not. I just switched the default device and now I can carry on Skype video calls without any problems.

HP Mini 1000 Upgrades

Own an HP Mini 1000, or looking to buy one, and want to know what parts can be upgraded?  I've been poking around to see what is available for this great little netbook, and here are some of the things I've found.

Memory

The Mini comes with either 512MB or 1GB of memory.  This is definitely the easiest part to upgrade.  The documentation seems to suggest that 1GB is the max for this device, but mine took a 2GB Kingston DDR2 chip without any complaints.

Hard Drive

The hard drive is a bit trickier.  You'll need to take the keyboard off to get access to it.  If you have a unit with a SSD, you'll also need to disconnect the recessed third USB port.  There is a good demonstration of how to do all of this here: http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2009/01/runcore-18-inch-ssd-on-hp-mini-1000.html

HP Mini Drive

If you purchased with the SSD option, you probably received a 2GB "HP Mini Drive".  This is actually just a Transcend JetFlash T3 with a small plastic piece to help it blend nicely with the body of the netbook.  You could either order a larger unit from HP, or you could get an original Transcend unit.  As of this writing HP is selling the 4GB for $24.99, while transcend has the same unit priced at $17.60.  Transcend also offers an 8GB drive for $32.30, which HP does not currently offer.

WWAN

There has been a lot of chatter lately about cellular carriers offering discounted netbooks on a 2-year data contract.  The HP Mini 1000 is poised to be a part of that offering.  If you ordered yours with the WWAN card built in, you are already set.  If not, you can still add one later.  This video from jkkmobile demonstrates how to add a WWAN module to your netbook.  Again, this involves taking off the keyboard and doing some pretty serious tinkering, so it isn't recommended for the faint of heart.

Battery

The stock 3-cell battery will net you anywhere from 1 to 3 of continuous use, depending on your power settings and what you are doing.  HP now offers a 6-cell replacement battery, available for order here.

External VGA

This one is a stickler.  That funky connector on the left of the unit is where you plug in a propietary VGA adapter cable.  Unfortunately, these are both in short supply and full of issues.   Users who have the cable are reporting that it refuses to output anything but 1024x768 regardless of what display is attached.  This is bad news for anyone hoping to connect to a projector.

I love my netbook and I am getting a lot of great use from it.  It is running Windows 7 RC1 like a champ, and I'm even able to do a little development in Visual Studio on it.  So far I have only upgraded the memory, but I'm tempted to upgrade the Transcend flash drive.  I'm holding off on a SSD upgrade until prices come down, but it is tempting as I currently only have about 1.5GB of free space on the main drive.  Even with a relatively "stock" configuration, I find this unit to be a very nice, performant, and portable computing platform.

Netbook, Windows 7, and Ubuntu Netbook Remix

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a HP Mini 1000 netbook.  I had a couple of intentions for this netbook.  Firstly, I wanted to use it for any personal network use wherever I went.  Rather than using my work PC for checking account balances, personal e-mail, and other non-work related network uses, I would use the netbook instead.  Second, I wanted a portable machine that I could do some light development on.  Nothing complicated mind you, but just the ability to open up a small project, hack some code, and check that it compiles.

After playing around with the netbook for a while, I can safely say that I am very happy with the decision to purchase it.  Netbooks are the latest consumer trend in computing, and there are a lot of models out there.  You'll find that they are all very, very similar.  The typical unit has two or three USB ports, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 512MB or 1GB or RAM, and a small solid state hard drive, or possibly a traditional magnetic drive.  Most come bundled with a simplified Linux operating system, or Windows XP for a slight price premium.  With so many vendors and so little to differentiate them it can be difficult to settle on one.  I chose the HP model mostly because the keyboard felt the most comfortable to type on.  Otherwise, there isn't much to differentiate it from the other $350 10" netbooks on the market.

I made some modifications to my netbook before even powering it on.  First, I upgraded the RAM to 2GB, which only cost $20.  Next, rather than use the provided Windows XP operating system I decided to load the beta of Windows 7 (with some help from my colleague Mike Hall who had done the exact same thing to his own netbook).  I loaded Visual Studio 2008, Google Chrome, and a handful of utilities that I like.  After install my 16GB SSD has about 1.5GB of remaining free space.  I put all of my code on the provided 2GB "HP Mini Drive", and I still have two USB ports and an SD Card slot to expand memory further, if necessary.

I'm very happy with Windows 7.  Even on the relatively weak processing power of the netbook it runs like a champ.  I definitely like it as a replacement for Windows XP.  Visual Studio runs well, if a bit sluggishly, and I am able to compile projects as I had hoped.

Still, this beta is eventually going to run out, and at that time I need to make a decision between paying for a license for Windows 7 (if it is available) or selecting some other operating system.  I could always revert to Windows XP, which came with the unit, at no cost.  Or I could try one of the linux variants on the market, also at no or little cost.  A friend of mine tipped me off to the Netbook Remix of Ubuntu.  Version 9.04 of the Linux OS just released, so I decided to download it and give it a try.  One of the nice features of this release is that you can try it by loading it on a USB stick as a "live" OS, which means you can run it without wiping out the OS already on the machine.

After playing with the netbook remix for a bit, I was impressed.  I'm not ready to swap out my Win7 install, but when the beta expires it will definitely be something I consider.  With MonoDevelop 2.0 and the Mono framework running I could probably still do some light C# work.  One feature of the OS that I really liked was how UI works to maximize screen real estate for the foreground application.  One of my frustrations with running Chrome (or any other browser) on Windows 7 is how much of my precious screen is taken up by title bars, menu bars, toolbars, bookmark bars, status bars, and task bars.  With limited vertical space, it leaves only just enough room for my active application.  This is exacerbated by sites like Google Reader that have a static header that cannot be minimized.

In summary, I'm very happy with the utility I am getting out of my netbook, and I think Windows 7 is a solid OS choice for the platform.  I'm impressed by what I see in Ubuntu Netbook Remix as well, and I may give it a try when my beta license expires.

RAID

  I've been considering some sort of network storage solution for some time now.  We have three PC's in the house and our family pictures, videos, documents, and music are spread among them.  Worse, we have only taken one backup of the pictures, and the rest are squirreled away in unknown folder levels of each of the machines.  I wanted to change that.  I had a couple of options in mind: a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device, a Windows Home Server (WHS), or setting up a share on my main PC.  I came into a little luck and found myself with four 320GB hard drives, which significantly helped matters.

One option I was considering is the Drobo, which is a USB / Firewire storage device from Data Robotics.  The Drobo is a box that can attach to your PC via USB or Firewire, and has slots for up to four hard drives.  You can add hard drives in any pattern that you like, and as the system gets full you are prompted to add more storage.  It uses a proprietary RAID format, offering some data security (if a drive fails, you won't lose everything).  As far as simple solutions, this is tops.  Just plug it in and insert your drives.  The first generation unit is $350 and the current generation is $450.  There is also an add-on piece for $200 that allows you to connect the Drobo directly to the network without any need for a PC to host it.  In that form, it can truly be called a NAS.

I also investigated other NAS products, including those from ASUS, IOGear, and Western Digital.  Those targeted to the home and small office offered two drive slots and a reasonable price, while those targeted at businesses offered four or more slots but at a premium price.

Windows Home Server is an interesting product that also had my eye.  I've known a few people to have them and all have had positive experiences.  One of the biggest benefits of a WHS over a simple NAS is that ability to take complete backups of all of the PC's on your network in an automated fashion.  Once scheduled, you can competely forget about this operation that will take periodic snapshots of your PC's.  If one of those machines should fail, just replace the busted drive and restore it from WHS.  The hardware for a WHS machine is fairly cheap (can be built for around $300).  Unfortunately, at that price point you are still looking at just a two drive setup.

In the end, I decided to setup a RAID on my existing PC and share the drive to the network.  I chose to use a RAID-5 configuration.  There are several flavors of RAID, and each has it's own nuances.  There is RAID-0, which alternates the usage of two drives in "stripes".  The advantage here is that rather than pulling your files from just one drive, it uses both drives equally, improving performance.  It provides no data protection though, so if one of those drives fails, you are toast.  Next is RAID-1, also called mirroring.  In RAID-1, two drives are used and are perfect copies of each other.  As with RAID-0, both drives can be used when reading files, leading to better read performance (writing is slower though), with the advantage that if one drive fails, you don't lose anything.  The disadvantage is that you only get one drive's worth of storage.  Raid 0+1 is a combination of these two techniques that uses four drives.  The data is striped across two drives, and each of these drives is mirrored, resulting in good performance and security in the case of drive failure.  Still, you end up wasting two drives of data here.  That's why I chose RAID 5.  RAID 5 uses some special parity math and rotates the use of the drives to attain a nice balance between security, performance, and disk utilization.  My RAID 5 setup uses four disks, and if any one of those disks fails I can replace it and not lose any data. (If two drives fail, I lose some data, so it is important to watch for a drive failure and deal with it immediately).  With my four 320GB drives installed my RAID 5 setup provides just under 1TB of storage.

Now that I've got it setup, I'm kicking myself for not doing this sooner.  The drive performance is great, and it is nice to know that I have some security in the unfortunate event of a drive failure.  My motherboard has six SATA ports, and it can have two RAID arrays.  I'm considering modifying my setup to use a two disk RAID-1 for the operating system and applications and the four disk RAID-5 for all data storage.  As cheap as hard drives are ($60 for 750GB!) it's seems silly not to take advantage of the security and performance afforded by a RAID configuration.  The next thing I need to do is adhere to a regular backup schedule.

A note: building the RAID (initializing it for the first time) took a long time.  I kicked off the build process last night and it took just over 10 hours to complete.  So if you are considering setting one up yourself, be sure to allow for that build time.

Windows Mobile 6.5 - Follow-Up

A couple of weeks ago I posted an article criticizing Microsoft for the lack of innovation in Windows Mobile 6.5.  Engadget has had a flurry of articles on the topic over the past month, and there is an interesting trend in the comments.  Most commenters are getting into heated fanboi arguments over which is better: iPhone, WM6.5, WebOS, etc.  To me this argument misses the point of the chief criticism towards Microsoft and the Windows Mobile 6.5 offering.  The point is not to compare WM6.5 with iPhone and others, but instead to compare WM6.5 with WM6.1 and previous versions.  Microsoft has stated that WM6.5 will probably not be available until the end of the year, and at that time will only be available on new phones.  So the question is, is WM6.5 enough of an improvement over WM6.1 to purchase a new phone?

It is clear to me the answer is no.  There simply isn't enough new here to warrant upgrading a phone to get the new OS, especially when considering the high cost of smart phones with or without contract.  Microsoft really needs to do something to breath new life into Windows Mobile if they want consumers to upgrade to a new phone to get the OS.

Is the OS Relevant Anymore?

I just read a post from @absenth referencing an article in Linux Journal about the relevancy of the OS.  The crux of the article is that, due to the transition to Cloud Computing and Software as a Service, the host OS is becoming less important.  Users are less concerned over the version of Windows or MacOS that the system is running, and more concerned with finding a good web browser and an office suite.  This trend is most visible in the netbook arena where most offerings include a stripped down version of Linux at a reduced price.  

So is the OS relevant?  If you were presented with a new laptop, and you had your choice of running Windows, MacOS, or Linux, would you have a preference?  How much would you pay for your preference?  I don't have any hard evidence, but I suspect that the average person would pick Windows if price were not a factor.  That would be my choice.  It would also be my choice when choosing an OS for a family member or non-technical friend.  I know my family members are familiar with Windows, and familiarity means fewer calls to me for tech support. That's worth at least $30-$60 from me.  On the other hand, I would choose the Linux variant for myself if it meant saving $100.  

I like the trend towards cloud computing, and I think it can only mean good things for consumers as the OS and hardware become less important.

Experiment: Pico-ITX as Hulu Client

I tried a little experiment tonight.  I wanted to see if my Artigo Pico-ITX machine could act as a Hulu client.  I cleared off the machine and installed Ubuntu 8.10.  After installing the flash plug-in for Firefox I pulled up Hulu and loaded a 30 second clip from Family Guy.  The audio was perfect, but the video was very choppy.  I checked the resource monitor and the CPU was just getting hammered.  I guess I'm a little disappointed that even with a 1GHz processor and 1GB of memory, this little machine can't display streaming video.  YouTube suffers from the same stutter.  This is unfortunate, as I had hoped to connect this box to my HDTV as a quick and dirty web video streamer.  

Of MIDs, UMPCs, Netbooks, and Laptops

CES is always a time to get a preview of a few of the products we'll be seeing throughout the year, and a lot of products we will never see. Over the past couple of years one gadget type that continues to gain ground is the small form-factor computing device. They go by a variety of names and come in a variety of sizes: Mobile Internet Device (MID), Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC), and Netbook. In each case these devices are larger than a cell phone but smaller than traditional laptop. They are also less powerful than their deskbound cousins, but what you give up in power you often get back in battery life and portability.

Netbooks look like the best bet to me. Essentially just a smaller, less powerful, more energy efficient, cheaper laptop, these devices are perfect for the average college student. Some come with a simple version of Linux, some run Windows XP, and some even run Vista. They are able to get all of the basics done: word processing, internet browsing, e-mail, etc. Most can be had for under $500, with some dropping below the $300 mark. This is perfect for the person who needs an inexpensive and simple way to get online.

MIDs and UMPCs are a different story though. These devices sometimes run Windows XP or Vista, and sometimes not. They are smaller, and possibly more power efficient, but in almost every case they are more expensive than a basic laptop. I really can't see the market jumping on these as they just aren't practical. The idea is that you need something more than what your cell phone provides, but you don't want to carry around a laptop. With prices anywhere from $1,000 to $2,000 it is really hard to see where these devices make sense. One example of these devices is the WiBrain. It eschews a keyboard for the keypad you might find on your cell phone. It runs Windows. But would you really spend $700 or more on this rather than getting either a) a small laptop or b) an iPhone? I don't see it.

For some reason, gadget industry is enamored with this device type. Sony just released the Vaio P, which they don't want to call a netbook, but it is. Unfortunately, it isn't going to be priced like a netbook (suggested price starts at $900). There is also the upcoming Viliv S7. In my mind these devices aren't going to catch on unless the prices come down to $500 or less. If you are spending over $500 it makes much better sense to buy a full blown laptop. Even when springing for all of the bells and whistles you would be hard pressed to spend more than $1,200 on a well equipped laptop these days. Compare that to the $2,000+ price that some of these MID and UMPC devices are asking, and the justification just falls apart.

I would be interested in one of these devices if it could replace my Axim PDA, and only if it did so at relatively the same price as my PDA. Three years ago I paid $500 for the Dell Axim x50v. At the time, it was the most powerful PDA on the market, and I still use it today. It runs Windows Mobile 5 (and some industrious hackers have made it run WM 6). It has hooks to supports bluetooth and WiFi out of the box, and you can add a GPS unit if you like. It compares quite favorably with the iPod Touch. To me, what I have seen of the Viliv S7 looks interesting as a replacement for my aging PDA, but only if the price is under $500. For more than $500, I would rather just get a small netbook (like an Asus Eee or MSI Wind).

Working in a technology company, I get exposed to a variety of gadges: both those necessary for our work as well as the toys in the office the guys like to get. I'm surrounded by incredible cell phones with what I would say is equivalent computing power to most of these UMPCs, MIDs, and netbooks. The iPhone is the most common, with several folks also carrying around WM6 smart phones. There are even a couple of iPod Touch units in the office. Several also carry around a laptop or netbook from meeting to meeting. What I have never seen is a MID or UMPC. Who really buys these things, and why?

Vista Frustration

Vista is a well beaten dead horse.  Microsoft is embarassed of it, and is rushing to get Windows 7 out the door in the hopes that the world will forget Vista ever happened.  In the meantime, the world is largely ignoring Vista and staunchly sticking to their XP installations.  Personally, I've installed Vista on my work laptop and on my home PC, while leaving the PCs that my wife and kids use on XP.  

For the typical home user there is no compelling reason to upgrade to Vista.  There is nothing that Vista offers you that you aren't already getting from your Windows XP machine.  If you are one of those hold-outs hanging on to your Windows 95/98/Me edition machine....you could get a lot of of XP, but don't go all the way to Vista yet.

One feature that I have grown to like in Vista is the universal search on the Start button.  Hit your Windows key and you can start typing.  Type the name of the application you want to run, and it hunts down the shortcut.  Type the name of the document you want and it lists all matching files.  Type in a URL and it gives you a link to that website.  It is really handy, and I find myself missing it when I move back to an XP box.  Aside from that, the Aero interface is pretty but adds no tangible value.  You would be hard pressed to name any other Vista improvements that would compel you to switch.

What you will find are a bunch of frustrations though.  First, most of your older hardware just flat won't work.  Have a printer that is more than a couple of years old?  Won't work.  How about that scanner you've had for three years?  Nope, that won't work either.  Webcam?  No.  Grrr..  Vista will also gladly gobble up any extra memory you have around.  Remember two years ago when the whole Vista Capable effort started?  At the time, Vista was just on the horizon and PC manufacturers were selling units with the Vista Capable sticker to let you know that it would run Vista perfectly well.  Not so much.  These machines, outfitted with modest graphics cards and 1GB of memory or less, were horrible Vista platforms.  Vista gladly gobbled up that 1GB of memory for itself and then asked hungrily for me, denying the applications that you wanted to run any memory for themselves.  It consumed the majority of your hard disk, and it busied your graphics cards with moronic things to do like rendering the desktop in 3D, or animating your wallpaper.

On top of those intentional frustrations, there are also a number of unintended frustrations.  For one, you may notice that after time the Network, Sound, and Battery indicator icons in your system tray fall of the end never to be seen again.  For reasons unknown, Vista will occassionally reset the preference to display these, forcing you to find the arcane place where you can ask to have them displayed again.

One frustration I recently dealt with had to do with my CD drive and iTunes.  When iTunes installs, it installs a custom CD driver to assist in burning discs.  Unfortunately, this driver is exactly comfortable running on Vista x64.  Recent revisions of iTunes are much better, but the hangup is that if you ever decide to uninstall iTunes, your CDROM is going away with it.  You see, the custom driver doesn't uninstall properly along with iTunes, and it leaves Vista thinking that the drive is broken.  You have to perform a registry hack to get it back (documented here).

So here's some friendly advice from a geek.  If you have never owned a PC before, and you have no existing equipment that you want to run on a new PC, go ahead and purchase a PC with Vista installed.  Most PC's today with Vista installed have the necessary memory and graphics to get the job done, and you won't experience the pain of trying to get all of your old stuff to work.  If, however, you've been using a PC for more than 2 years, don't bother with Vista.  If you absolutely must buy a new PC, ask for it to be downgraded to XP, or see if you can get a refund for Vista and use the money to buy a copy of XP.  You'll save yourself a ton of frustration, and won't be missing anything.

Drive Space Recovery

If you are like me, when you bought your computer it had an enormous amount of hard drive space that you thought you would never fill.  As time passed and you continued to use the machine, you saw that seemingly impossibly large drive accumulate more and more cruft until one day you get the dreaded "Insufficient Disk Space" message.  Then you make a mad scramble to see just what you can delete safely and not regret later.

The article at 

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/GuideToFreeingUpDiskSpaceUnderWindowsVista.aspx

is a really useful guide for folks using the Vista operating system on how to get some of that missing drive space back.  This works for Windows XP users too, although to a somewhat lesser degree.  Right click on the drive you want to cleanup, then choose properties.  The General Tab will have a button for Disk Cleanup right next to the pie showing you how little space you have left.  If you make use of all of the options in this tool, you can get a suprising amount of drive space back.  Even better, check-out the advanced cleaning options and eliminate all but your last restore point.  Restore points consume a ridiculous amount of space on your drive.

After taking advantage of the advice from that article, I managed to recover 22.3GB of hard drive space.  That's a little more than 10% of the drive!  Even better, I didn't have to make any difficult decisions about backing up or deleting music, pictures, videos, documents, or projects that I had worked on over time.