JC - Technology and Stuff

You’ve probably noticed as you’ve browsed around my blog that I have an electronic business card embedded in a couple of places. That business card is supplied courtesy of Retaggr, a fairly new company that aggregates all the places you have a net presence and embeds that information onto a card that you can display on your website. The end result is available to display in a number of different ways, one of which follows:

As you can see, it’s a pretty interesting way to display information about everything that you do or are involved in. You can also mouse over the ‘retaggr’ badge under my photo on the right hand side of this page for another version of the information.

So, just what exactly is retaggr and why should I use it? When I first saw an article on retaggr I was intrigued by it but a little sceptical that it would actually be of value to me. I signed up for an account however and went about setting it up to display links to all my important ‘web presences’. The configuration process is really straightforward and it seems that no matter what networking sites you are connected to (eg Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), retaggr has an icon and association for it. In very little time I had a retaggr card completed and all I needed to do was find somewhere to display it! Of course I chose my blog and personal websites! Nothing like a little of home grown advertising!

One of the little things about retaggr that I like is the ability to display your own icons from sites you own. Just drop in the favicon and you’re good to go. Then there’s the ability to add an abbreviated version of the card to your email signature. It’s not supposed to work in Yahoo! Mail - but I managed to get it working without any problems. Now if only Gmail would allow html in signatures!

There are a few things I still don’t get about retaggr. For instance the site talks about ‘tagging’ images on other sites. I’ve looked at the scant documentation and I have to admit I have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. Maybe one day I’ll have the spare time to re-read it all very slowly and try and figure it out.

Apart from that however, it’s a great little service and one that I’ve found particularly useful as I don’t have to worry about pointing friends to all sorts of sites depending on what’s new. Retaggr takes care of helping people find all the relevant news about me. I wish all my friends and colleagues used it!

I’ve blogged about the FoxMarks add-on for Firefox before and about how great it is for synchronizing bookmarks across PCs. Well today I want to write a little about a small tweek you can make so that you can tag an Internet page for reading later - on ANY of you PCs! This means that say you come across something interesting at work but you don’t have time to read it, you can tag it for later and then when you get home it’ll show up on your home PC.

How does this work? Well you need two Firefox add-ons loaded. First FoxMarks as I mentioned. This just acts as a bookmark synchronizer. Then you need to load up ReadItLater. Now ReadItLater is pretty clever. It adds some context sensitive right clicking to web pages and also put a little button in your address bar so that you can manage the pages you’ve marked to read later. When you’re done with the page you simply mark it as read. Behind the scenes ReadItLater works alongside FoxMarks and creates a bookmark folder to store those temporary references in. But don’t worry about all the excess you may think will accumulate. The other thing the partnership does is to delete the bookmark as soon as you mark it read. Clever.

So now you can confidently mark pages to read later, manage them, and keep the list clean. Excellent!

Don’t ever call me a quitter! Not 3 days after I lambasted Windows Home Server, I felt a little sorry for it. That’s not to say I necessarily think it is any better, it’s just that I decided to give it one last chance - in a diminished capacity.

The diminished capacity? I decided it was only going to be allowed to perform backups under very strict supervision! Also I tried a whole new approach with the Remote Access part of the software. So, what did I do different?

Backups - I severely locked down the directories on my hard drive that I allowed Windows Home Server to backup. I coupled that with loading a real backup program (Personal Backup) that backs up my superset of files automatically behind the scenes to my network drive which has lots of space (unlike my server drive which is the only option to back up to using Windows Home Server). Those two things gave me back 35gb of hard drive space. Enough to move some of my other files to the shared user space so that they should be accessible via Remote Desktop.

Remote Desktop - The other thing I did was to convert my secondary router (which controls my T-Mobile @Home and my wireless access) to a bridge. This meant a whole series of scary reconfigurations during which time I didn’t actually know whether I would be able to use my PCs connected to the Internet (in fact I did discover that my main Verizon DSL router although allowing uPNP configuration, doesn’t work too well if you enable it). Anyway, after a while of going through all sorts of screens and rebooting everything (and I mean everything), my network kicked back into life. I then went into the Home Server settings and configured Remote Desktop for the new setup and it tells me everything is good. Until I actually go into the office on Monday and try it, I won’t know for certain though.

Yesterday evening I did burn a live Ubuntu CD and load that on my server and although it worked very well it didn’t ’see’ my windows network drives at all and so it wasn’t going to be a viable solution. Then I reconsidered reloading my Windows Server 2003 software again but at the end of the day, with a new backup program installed, Windows Home Server gets a temporary reprieve. Now the only plus point it has is acting as a Remote Desktop server. We’ll monitor its progress.

Ok, I guess this is more or less 80% of everything I use on a weekly basis in order to get things done. I’m going to revisit this list from time to time and also update it according to my current trends. Browse the list. You may find something that fits you too!

Desktop Application
Firefox Browser

• In Use - Can’t remember - seems like forever!
• Thoughts - You’ll have to give me something really special to replace this on my desktop!

Foxmarks (synchronize bookmarks across multiple PCs - Firefox Extension)

• In Use - 3 months
• Thoughts - I love this Firefox extension. It means that every one of the PCs that I use have the same bookmarks and when I add a bookmark to one PC it automatically appears on my other PCs. Clever!

IrfanView (picture editor and viewer)

• In Use - 6 months
• Thoughts - Has become my default graphics program. The only thing it doesn’t easily do is format photos ready for printing (ie. it doesn’t have a 4×6 picture cropper). Apart from that it’s brilliant. And it’s free!

Microsoft Money (financial software suite)

• In Use - Forever
• Thoughts - There’s one reason why I keep this product and that’s the ‘cash flow forecast’ feature. So far no other software package, be it desktop or online offers an equivalent feature. So for that reason alone I use this piece of software all the time!

Microsoft Office (desktop apps - Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Visio)

• In Use - Forever
• Thoughts - It’s a good solid product at the end of the day and provided you have both the money for it and a PC that you want to install it on, it’s not going to let you down. Office 2007 is far and away better than the Office 2003 version, but it sure eats up a load of Hard Disk space! I use online apps (ie. Zoho) for some documents and spreadsheets but there are just some things that I keep using Office for. Maybe it’ll disappear from my collection at some time, but for the present it’s here to stay. Please note however that I do not use Outlook at all for managing my email, calendar or tasks.

ObjectDock (alternate task bar program)

• In Use - 2 months
• Thoughts - It’s a convenient program that does what it says it would. I like it.

OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon - strategy game)

• In Use - forever!
• Thoughts - My favorite all time game from the DOS/Windows days. It’s been recoded and morphed to an Open Source version now and is bigger and better.

SumatraPDF (PDF viewer)

• In Use - 6 months
• Thoughts - A simple low overhead, low memory version of Adobe Acrobat. It’s free and works faultlessly

WindowBlinds (start bar and theme changer)

• In Use - Discontinued
• Thoughts - Was OK. Just not worth forking out $30 for.

Online Application
Facebook (social networking program)

• In Use - 2 months
• Thoughts - So far I like it. I haven’t explored it to its full potential yet but it has plenty of features that will allow you to waste wile away many hours of personal time

Google Calendar

• In Use - 1 year
• Thoughts - My de facto calendar. Allows you to manage several calendars concurrently and can be displayed in a multitude of places. If only I could get it to sync to my Blackberry!

Google Mail

• In Use - 2 years
• Thoughts - Similar to Yahoo in overall score. I like Google’s tagging system and Calendar but I must admit I do miss folders! Doesn’t sync 100% to my Blackberry

LinkedIn (social networking program)

• In Use - 1 year+
• Thoughts - I use this as the master source of my social network. Works and I like it.

Microsoft OfficeLive (mail, contacts, applications and file storage)

• In Use - over 6 months
• Thoughts - I rarely use this suite of software. It works but it just doesn’t work intuitatively for me nor inspire me. I have even used the WorkSpace feature too but it’s clunky like the old SharePoint technology. This is one product I’ll be phasing out in the next few months

Plaxo (social networking program)

• In Use - 1 year
• Thoughts - The jury is still out on this one. It seems to fall somewhere between LinkedIn and Facebook. Don’t know if I’ll be using this in a year’s time.

Toodledo (online task management)

• In Use - 2 months
• Thoughts - I’ve come to rely on this simple piece of software. The fact that I can add To Do items from any browser, or even via Twitter is wonderful. I create tasks as I think of them during the day either by right-clicking a page that is loaded in my browser, or by loading up Toodledo in my sidebar. Task management is simple and the features are more than sufficient for me. It’s a keeper.

Twitter (social networking program)

• In Use - 2 months
• Thoughts - I like it. It’s simple and helps me spread status to my friends via a centralized feed. It also keeps me in touch with a few select feeds. It’s here to stay.

Yahoo! Mail

• In Use - 10 years+
• Thoughts - It works as well as any competitor’s email system. I actually prefer its interface to Google but its spam handling is not quite as good and I prefer Google’s calendar. I do however prefer Yahoo’s Address Book and Messenger integration. Such a difficult pick! AND it syncs perfectly to my Blackberry.

Zoho Suite (online apps - Writer, Sheet, Show, Notebook, etc.)

• In Use - Over one year
• Thoughts - I keep coming back to this suite of products, try as I may to not want to or to use desktop products exclusively. The problem is that I go through phases where I want to use just desktop apps (ie. Microsoft Office), or just cloud apps (ie. Zoho). I guess at the moment I need and use both types. Of all the various cloud app providers available I prefer Zoho over and above everyone else (yes, even Google). Day by day they add more functionality and tie more and more together. With the latest introduction of Docs there’s now a simple way to keep everything organized in folders too.

Combination Software
Microsoft Mesh (online file storage, backup and file synchronization)

• In Use - 3 months
• Thoughts - As I’ve blogged about before, this one is a no-brainer. It works, it’s no hassle, I never have to even think about it.

I’m done with it. I have to say I was hoping to use it for a little longer than 3 days, but there you have it. I can’t even log into it remotely this morning and I know it’s all up and running. Furthermore, backups are eating up Hard Disk space like a virus on steroids. Cap that with the incessant upgrade instructions, router woes and totally uninspiring functionality and it seems to me that it and I are just not made for each other. Maybe if I had had to buy a brand new server and it came installed with Windows Home Server then it might have been a better experience but right now I can’t wait ’til I have some time at the weekend and I can go back to Windows 2003 Server. Actually I’ll probably install some kind of Linux and turn it into an Apache server. Now that sounds like a worthwhile project

John pulls what's left of his hair out...

I don’t want to sound all doom and gloom so I guess I should be fair and say that Windows Home Server does what it says it will do. Just not in a manner that is acceptable to me. I just don’t think it’s meant to be installed on existing server boxes that are a few years old, in semi-complex home environments that have a variety of PCs and other equipment around. I think it’s best suited to a fairly modern household that has a couple of desktop PCs, an XBox, a media streaming device, perhaps a connected TV and no peculiar requirements. The sort of setup that someone from Circuit City or Best Buy will install for you in an hour. Me, I’m not that kind of family. I’m an old time hacker user that grew up using what I could, and trying to keep my PC budget spend under some kind of control. I can’t justify spending tons of money every time I want to upgrade a small component part of my setup. Some of the equipment I have still functions very well (in fact the PC hardware that Windows Home Server resides on is a perfect example of that) and I don’t think I should have to replace it ‘just because’. There’s no doubt that Windows Home Server will suit some families. It’s supposed to just be there and take away all the thinking of running a home setup. But I still think Microsoft has missed the mark (Not that they will particularly care about my opinion. After all I am nothing to them), in trying to dumb it all down so much.

So tonight I’m going in secure down my routers again, turn off the port forwarding, turn off backups and run the little beastie in kindergarten mode. Heck, I may even just turn it off!

I already have sufficient storage space on my complete network for backups. I already have Microsoft Mesh that I use for remore file access (and it can even serve as a backup for important files). I already have Zoho for online storage. I even have Microsoft Live Workspace if I need it (although I find that it’s not as flexible as Mesh, nor as convenient as Zoho). The only thing I don’t have is a ‘real’ backup progam (which I have just delayed in installing - I’ll post on that later) and a central media streamer (but that’s where I think I can just convert my server to a linux box that will do the job). I so wanted Windows Home Server to just work. But it didn’t.

Previous Posts: Install Part One & Install Part Two

I am reading a book at work at present entitled ‘Now, Discover Your Strengths‘ and one of its claims to fame is that it contains a link to an online strengths test you can take. The idea is that via a series of questions it will tell you what you are good at in order to help you become a better person. Anyway, here are the results it gave me. You can read into them whatever you want!

JOHN COX
Your Signature Themes

Many years of research conducted by The Gallup Organization suggest that
the most effective people are those who understand their strengths and
behaviors. These people are best able to develop strategies to meet and
exceed the demands of their daily lives, their careers, and their families.

A review of the knowledge and skills you have acquired can provide a
basic sense of your abilities, but an awareness and understanding of
your natural talents will provide true insight into the core reasons
behind your consistent successes.

Your Signature Themes report presents your five most dominant themes of
talent, in the rank order revealed by your responses to StrengthsFinder.
Of the 34 themes measured, these are your “top five.”

Your Signature Themes are very important in maximizing the talents that
lead to your successes. By focusing on your Signature Themes, separately
and in combination, you can identify your talents, build them into
strengths, and enjoy personal and career success through consistent,
near-perfect performance.

Maximizer

Excellence, not average, is your measure. Taking something from below
average to slightly above average takes a great deal of effort and in
your opinion is not very rewarding. Transforming something strong into
something superb takes just as much effort but is much more thrilling.
Strengths, whether yours or someone else’s, fascinate you. Like a diver
after pearls, you search them out, watching for the telltale signs of a
strength. A glimpse of untutored excellence, rapid learning, a skill
mastered without recourse to steps—all these are clues that a strength
may be in play. And having found a strength, you feel compelled to
nurture it, refine it, and stretch it toward excellence. You polish the
pearl until it shines. This natural sorting of strengths means that
others see you as discriminating. You choose to spend time with people
who appreciate your particular strengths. Likewise, you are attracted to
others who seem to have found and cultivated their own strengths. You
tend to avoid those who want to fix you and make you well rounded. You
don’t want to spend your life bemoaning what you lack. Rather, you want
to capitalize on the gifts with which you are blessed. It’s more fun.
It’s more productive. And, counterintuitively, it is more demanding.

Activator

“When can we start?” This is a recurring question in your life. You are
impatient for action. You may concede that analysis has its uses or that
debate and discussion can occasionally yield some valuable insights, but
deep down you know that only action is real. Only action can make things
happen. Only action leads to performance. Once a decision is made, you
cannot not act. Others may worry that “there are still some things we
don’t know,” but this doesn’t seem to slow you. If the decision has been
made to go across town, you know that the fastest way to get there is to
go stoplight to stoplight. You are not going to sit around waiting until
all the lights have turned green. Besides, in your view, action and
thinking are not opposites. In fact, guided by your Activator theme, you
believe that action is the best device for learning. You make a
decision, you take action, you look at the result, and you learn. This
learning informs your next action and your next. How can you grow if you
have nothing to react to? Well, you believe you can’t. You must put
yourself out there. You must take the next step. It is the only way to
keep your thinking fresh and informed. The bottom line is this: You know
you will be judged not by what you say, not by what you think, but by
what you get done. This does not frighten you. It pleases you.

Input

You are inquisitive. You collect things. You might collect
information—words, facts, books, and quotations—or you might collect
tangible objects such as butterflies, baseball cards, porcelain dolls,
or sepia photographs. Whatever you collect, you collect it because it
interests you. And yours is the kind of mind that finds so many things
interesting. The world is exciting precisely because of its infinite
variety and complexity. If you read a great deal, it is not necessarily
to refine your theories but, rather, to add more information to your
archives. If you like to travel, it is because each new location offers
novel artifacts and facts. These can be acquired and then stored away.
Why are they worth storing? At the time of storing it is often hard to
say exactly when or why you might need them, but who knows when they
might become useful? With all those possible uses in mind, you really
don’t feel comfortable throwing anything away. So you keep acquiring and
compiling and filing stuff away. It’s interesting. It keeps your mind
fresh. And perhaps one day some of it will prove valuable.

Futuristic

“Wouldn’t it be great if . . .” You are the kind of person who loves to
peer over the horizon. The future fascinates you. As if it were
projected on the wall, you see in detail what the future might hold, and
this detailed picture keeps pulling you forward, into tomorrow. While
the exact content of the picture will depend on your other strengths and
interests—a better product, a better team, a better life, or a better
world—it will always be inspirational to you. You are a dreamer who sees
visions of what could be and who cherishes those visions. When the
present proves too frustrating and the people around you too pragmatic,
you conjure up your visions of the future and they energize you. They
can energize others, too. In fact, very often people look to you to
describe your visions of the future. They want a picture that can raise
their sights and thereby their spirits. You can paint it for them.
Practice. Choose your words carefully. Make the picture as vivid as
possible. People will want to latch on to the hope you bring.

Focus

“Where am I headed?” you ask yourself. You ask this question every day.
Guided by this theme of Focus, you need a clear destination. Lacking
one, your life and your work can quickly become frustrating. And so each
year, each month, and even each week you set goals. These goals then
serve as your compass, helping you determine priorities and make the
necessary corrections to get back on course. Your Focus is powerful
because it forces you to filter; you instinctively evaluate whether or
not a particular action will help you move toward your goal. Those that
don’t are ignored. In the end, then, your Focus forces you to be
efficient. Naturally, the flip side of this is that it causes you to
become impatient with delays, obstacles, and even tangents, no matter
how intriguing they appear to be. This makes you an extremely valuable
team member. When others start to wander down other avenues, you bring
them back to the main road. Your Focus reminds everyone that if
something is not helping you move toward your destination, then it is
not important. And if it is not important, then it is not worth your
time. You keep everyone on point.

Well it seems to work - mostly.

I have to say I am a little underwhelmed by Windows Home Server having used it for a couple of days now. I guess you could argue that being underwhelmed is a good thing in that it is supposed to sit in the background and just work. Well, quite honestly if it did that then I would be better pleased. So far Windows Home Server has been a little bit of a home maintenance nightmare. Or is it just teething problems?

Let’s rewind. After successfully implementing Windows Home Server on my aging Pentium 4 Windows 2003 Server, I logged out of the server like I was told advised and went to one of my home PCs - actually my little Dell laptop which runs Windows XP. I inserted the ‘Home Server Connector CD’ and let the software load. After a couple of uneventful minutes I was connected to my Home Server and browsing its nothingness. I say that because of course the install hadn’t loaded anything onto my Server, just reformatted the Hard Drive and created some empty folders. What to do I asked myself?

Aha, Remote Access. I remembered that one of the reasons I wanted Home Server was because of Remote Access. That’s not being able to connect to the server while I’m at home, but being able to connect to it when I’m not at home! I managed to navigate to the Settings page and from there find Remote Access and this was when things started to go a little downhill. There is no step-by-step guide and no ‘introduction to remote access’, all there is is the not so wonderful Microsoft Help system. Still I figured out that I had to first turn the features ON. Then it seemed obvious that I had to click the ‘Router’ button as it was next on the list. This was my first mistake. Actually the ‘Domain Name’ should have been the next choice - but I didn’t know that. Anyway, I went ahead and let the system auto-configure my router and it then reported back that all was OK, all apart from the Remote Access part! Yeah right, how can Remote Access be OK if that part actually doesn’t work? I pressed Help and it led me to a page that talked about configuring my domain. Duh, of course. Like I said, that should have been the second button on the screen (or maybe even a wizard for first time users Microsoft??). So I configured my domain. It had me supply a Windows Live ID (which was a little weird but as I have one I guess that wasn’t too much of a pain) and then it prompted me to specify what my home domain should be called. I did that too. The system then performed a number of checks and told me that my domain was not accessible via Remote Access. Hmmmm. Not working as expected.

I thought about this for a few seconds and wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that my router is behind another router that has my Internet connection? I had previously thought this may be an issue. Both my routers have firewalls and both are configurable so in a sense the first router was redundant. I just had to keep it because my Verizon DSL connection came to it. My sencondary router is my T-Mobile @Home router and I have that for a whole list of other reasons (see previous post). Anyway, I logged into my first router and disabled the firewall and then rechecked my domain. Still no access for Remote Access. I did some more digging in the wonderful not so good Help system and found a page that talked about forwarding my HTTP, HTTPS and Remote Access ports (80, 443 & 4125). I forwarded these ports in my source router to my @Home router, re-ran the domain tests and lo and behold it reported success. Then I went back to the Router Configuration button and re-ran the tests there too to make sure it was also all good. Hmmmm. No joy. These tests reported they could not validate that my server was accessible via a remote connection. So I brought up a browser, typed in my homeserver domain in the address bar and pressed return. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Aha. But then I thought about this. There is no way it should work from within my own network, behind my own router. It’s a little like using your own server to host a web site and then trying to contact it via the public name. It just doesn’t work. Unfortunately I had no way of testing if it was actually working correctly or not though. Or did I? I had my trusted Blackberry Curve at home. I turned wi-fi off and waited for the signal to revert to EDGE and then I loaded up the browser and typed in my domain name. I got an error message. But that was a good thing. It was a javascript error message. That meant it was actually reaching my server and was trying to do something. I made a mental note to myself that I would try the connection from work on Monday to see if it actually worked.

I spent some time later that day copying all my photos and music over the Home Server and was pleased it all seemed to be working. I slept well on Saturday night. So far so good I hear you say. I wish that after this point nothing happened. Unfortunately life turns its circle and things change.

Sunday brought chaos to my ordered household. During the night two things had happened. Number one the Server had downloaded a million updates it wanted to install. And number two it had backed up my desk PC. Firstly I let it install the updates it wanted. Everything appeared to go well. Then it wanted to update the Connector program that allows me to log on to the Server from any of my home PCs. I’m fairly sure that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. As soon as I had updated my connector, the Server informed me there was a problem with Remote Access. So I went to the screens and re-ran all the tests as in the day before. Every time I got a message that there was an ‘unexpected communication problem’ and my domain remained unconfigured. Not a good sign. No matter what I did, the problem did not go away and at first I thought it may be a Microsoft problem at their end with their servers but I googled the error message and found some disturbing news.

The only mention I could find of the error message I received was on a German language forum. Thankfully Google did an interesting job of translating the page for me and I got the impression that this was a problem that comes about after upgrading the Server software and connector. There appeared to be no known solution for it. Furthermore, the wonderful ‘Health’ part of Windows Home Server tells you its health is ‘Critical’ if you don’t update its software when it wants you to. So if you don’t upgrade, your health is marked as Critical and if you do then things stop working. Bottom line - no Remote Access now.

Oh and that brings me to the backup part of my story. As I mentioned before Home Server had diligently backed up my PC in the middle of the night. 35gb of it!!!! How on earth? Didn’t it use any compression? Didn’t it check to see if it had any copies of anything already on the server? So, it’s an unattended backup program - but it’s a stupid backup program too. Now my server Hard Disk was half full after just one backup. On my old system I only used to backup like 4gb or 5gb at most. Aaaaarrrgggghhhh!!

My day was fast going downhill. After several very bad and frustrating hours (during which the Seattle Seahawks also lost) I decided the only thing for it was to re-install Home Server and turn off updates. So I went through the whole install thing again and one and a half hours later I was back at my original state with a working domain (I hoped). The good thing about the re-install was that it preserved all my data. The bad thing about the install was that it preserved all my data!! (My 35gb backup was still there). At that point I thought to myslef that maybe the backup was just a partition and maybe it wasn’t actually using 35gb. After all, that really did seem a lot of backup space. So I went to my laptop PC and performed a manual backup. That failed! Of course the Server really was using all that space and before long my server Hard Disk got full. I do have a network drive with over 100gb of space on it but there’s no way to add it to the server. Windows Home Server will only recognize local drives. I feel another spending spree coming on just to be able to perform unattended backups. I really don’t know if it’s worth it. I’ll address that in another post.

So, I’d spent the best part of the weekend messing around with Home Server and had experienced very mixed reactions. When I woke up anew on Monday morning I was informed yet again that my Server’s health was Critical as it needed to install more updates. i assume these are the same updates that broke the thing in the first place! I don’t know what I’m going to do about that.

Anyway, I got to work and tried to access my Home Server from my browser. Guess what? It actually worked! The Remote Access lets me browse my server files and upload or download files. Not bad as a remote file store. Apart from that it seemed very limited. Maybe there’s some more Help on other features that are available (yeah, right!).

So, all in all I’ve had a very mixed experience using Windows Home Server. Like I said at the beginning, I am underwhelmed. Will it be worth the spend of $150 to purchase it at the end of the 120 day trial? I’m not so sure. Maybe a cheap backup program will do the job better. Couple that with Mesh and Zoho (which I already use and are FREE) and I’ll have all the functionality that Home Server seems to offer me. I need to make a decision pretty quickly though as I’m going to need to buy another Hard Disk if I continue using Home Server as my backup tool. I’ll report back soon on how things go. One thing is for certain though. If I install these Critical upgrades and it takes my setup down again then I’m reloading my old Windows Server 2003. That just worked…

Well today’s the day when I finally shut down my Windows 2003 Server and completely revamp it. It has served me well for the past 4 years plus but I figured it’s about time to see how the latest in server software fares on it. It’s going to be an interesting few hours ahead of me and I’ll document all the fun I have the experience.

So, first things first, I need to install a bootable DVD drive into the thing. This is where I find out if it’s going to be a simple day or a frustrating one. I’ll be back soon with an update…

As a little history I first purchased my server just as Windows 2003 Server was being released. It’s a Pentium 4 and has an 80gb Hard Drive, 512kb memory and came with a CD ROM drive. That was the part I needed to upgrade. Windows Home Server needs a bootable DVD ROM drive to install. Rather than trying to install from a network drive (which I don’t think is possible) I shelled out just $26 (including delivery) for an AOpen DVD ROM drive at TigerDirect (Now on sale at amazon.com). The drive is really cool, is 16x speed for DVD read, 48x speed for CDs and supports double layer (8gb) DVDs. It also came with the latest copy of Nero software. Anyway, the DVD has been sitting in its box in my office area for the past 6 weeks or so as I waited for the arrival of the Windows Home Server software (see previous posts 1 & 2).

Anyway the whole DVD ROM drive install took me less than 10 minutes. I opened up my very dusty Windows Server case, unplugged the existing CD drive, pulled it out from its mounting and put it to one side. I hoped I didn’t ever need to use it again! I then unboxed my DVD drive, made sure the on-board jumpers were set for the drive to be a master, attached the drive mount from the old CD drive, slid the DVD drive into the case, reattached the connectors and power, closed the case  and rebooted the server. Everything went fine. Less than 10 minutes in and I had now upgraded my Server to have a bootable DVD ROM drive. That was a good value $26 purchase!

It was then time to install the actual Windows Home Server software and the rest of the timeline went as follows:

*** Please note that before performing any of the following steps I recommend completely backing up your old server ***

• 7:40am - Loaded my Windows Home Server install DVD in the DVD ROM drive and rebooted my server
• 7:43am - Server begins formatting Hard Disk (you need to enter your license key during this step)
• 7:50am - Install copies files to Hard Disk
• 7:51am - Install informs me that it will be complete in 51 minutes
• 8:01am - System reboots - NOTE: Do NOT allow the server to reboot from the DVD at this point - like I did - as if you do you have to go through the previous steps all over again - which I had to do!!!
• 8:04am - Restart installation from scratch!
• 8:05am - Server begins reformatting Hard Disk
• 8:10am - Install copies files to Hard Disk
• 8:11am - Install informs me that it will be complete in 51 minutes (again)
• 8:25am - System reboots and I let it do so completely unattended
• 8:27am - Install informs me it is starting setup and copying files (splash screen says Windows Server 2003 for Small Business Server setup)
• 8:29am - Server reboots (splash screen shows Windows Server 2003)
• 8:30am - Install informs me it will be complete in 39 minutes and starts installing Windows
• 8:31am - Server starts installing Devices
• 8:34am - Server starts installing Network (31 minutes to go)
• 8:35am - Server performs Configuration (27 minutes to go)
• 8:37am - Server installs Start Menu items (19 minutes to go)
• 8:37am - Server starts Registering Components
• 8:41am - Server is Saving Settings (7 minutes to go)
• 8:45am - Server reboots (still shows Windows Server 2003) and starts up. Load screen shows Windows Home Server, Build 3790 Service Pack 2
• 8:47am - Servers starts Finalizing Installation and then reboots
• 8:48am - Server runs a CHKDSK and reboots again
• 8:48am - Server starts Updating Windows Update redirector
• 8:49am - Server reboots again
• 8:50am - Server Installs Updates
• 9:04am - Server reboots again
• 9:05am - Server Installs Updates and Installs .NET
• 9:10am - Server starts Creating volume Primary Volume
• 9:11am - Server creates and updates system and performs cleanups
• 9:16am - Server reboots again
• 9:17am - Server starts Configuring Volume Snapshots
• 9:18am - Server displays Welcome Screen (at this point I think that we’re definitely nearly done!)
• 9:18am - I setup my Administrator Password, turn Automatic Updates to ON, turn Customer Experience Program to NO, turn Windows Error Reporting to YES
• 9:21am - Server informs me I should now logoff and access it remotely using the remote access CD. I decide to Activate the Operating System first though.
• 9:22am - Log Off Server

So all in all without the extra reboot at the beginning of the process the whole Windows Home Server install took me 78 minutes. I guess that’s pretty quick and it was certainly a lot quicker than I expected. Now comes the interesting part of the installation as I actually try to use the server and finish all the setup, etc.

This next part will be the subject of my post tomorrow. Have fun!

There are just too many ways and places to store your files online nowadays. I must say I find it a little confusing and overwhelming at times. Which service should I use? Should I even use a service at all? Aaarrrgggghhhh! It just makes me want to scream. Ok, let’s rewind a little.

It wasn’t more than a few years ago when the only option was to keep all your letters, spreadsheets and other documents firmly planted on your home PC. Still that didn’t really matter as you only had one after all. Times have changed and like the multi-car family there are many of us that are now multi-PC families too. Furthermore, we need access (well ‘need’ is a little subjective - but we all swear we ‘need’ that access) to our PCs wherever we go as well. Hmmm. Now there’s the beginning of the problem. How do we have access to all our ’stuff’ whevever we are? It’s a bit like when the car industry started putting CD playes into our cars. Suddenly we had to choose where we were going to use our only copy of the ‘Best of Queen’. Do we leave it at home to play on the stereo unit downstairs? Do we take it upstairs and leave it next to the bed for early morning relaxation? Or do we put it in the car to play at full volume as we drive down the street with the windows wound down? Whatever we chose, the CD was never in the right place when we actually wanted it. So what did we do? Well we either bought a second copy or ‘burned’ our own second copy and used the copy in the car. Later we discovered we could burn compilation CDs and play them too, but that’s another story!

Like the CD copies, all of us started keeping multiple versions of important files on different PCs and even on memory sticks so that we always had the file when we needed it. The problem was that unlike CDs which you can’t alter, files are easily modifiable and very soon we didn’t know which of our devices had the most up to date version of the file. Sure, we meant to always keep the latest one on the memory stick, but didn’t we make a last minute alteration to the version at work last week? Hmmm. Can’t quite seem to remember!

So that brings us to online storage, a wonderful notion of keeping a single copy of a file somewhere in the cloud of the Internet that we can access anytime and is always the latest version (except of course those times when we actually need the file and we’re not online). Like CD players, I’ve tried many different online document storage sites over the past few years as I have struggled to play the ‘where’s the latest version’ game. For the most part they sort of work. And it’s not that they don’t technically work it’s just that like I previously alluded to I always seem to want a file when I’m not online somewhere (and for that I still carry around my memory stick!). Anyway, of all the sites that are available I have two favorites that I continue to use for different reasons, Zoho and Mesh.

Zoho has been around for a couple of years now and has incrementally increased its offerings and maturity along the way. The latest addition this week has been Zoho Docs, a file structure type wrapper that allows all sorts of files to be organized into folders. Zoho is fundamentally different than a lot of other online storage sites as its main purpose is to be an online version of sorts of Microsoft Office. That means it has a spreadsheet offering, a word processing offering, a presentation offering, a notebook offering and many more things besides. All in all it’s a very comprehensive and capable site. If you are the sort of person that wants to write letters, create spreadsheets, use presentations, etc and need access wherever you’re online then this is definitely the product for you. It’s all out more powerful than Google Docs and how they do it for the money (ie FREE) I just don’t know.

Mesh on the other hand (which I’ve blogged about before) is a slightly different tool. Mesh is intended to synchronize files that you keep on one PC with a place in the Internet cloud. It also synchronize with other PCs if you like and can directly synchronize files from one PC to another via its services. Mesh is not intended as a spreadsheet or document editing tool, it supposes that you use software like Microsoft Office for that. Like Zoho, Mesh is also free and provides pretty much unlimited storage to the user.

Online file storage and synchronization has matured quicker than CDs in cars. I still have to keep extra copies of CDs. My car is also not connected to the Internet and so I can’t stream music to it from any central storage. Why? Come on car people - make it happen (oh but that’s another topic).

So if you haven’t taken the plunge yet but have thought about online storage, file access, or synchronization and backups, I definitely recommend Zoho and Mesh. It beats working out where you left your ‘Best of Queen’ CD!

Google Chrome seems a competent enough browser. I loaded it up this morning and put it through its paces and my overall first impression is that it could be here to stay. Of course there are a few little problems with it - not least some website compatibility issues, but overall it works pretty well.

So, here’s the skinny on some of my most used websites (in no particular order):

• Amazon.com - no problems I could find
• Mail.live.com - it works, but not very well
• Office.live.com - a big NO - Microsoft doesn’t recognize the Google Chrome browser at all
• Mesh.com - no problems I could find (which was surprising considering the problems with officelive.com)
• Zoho.com - no problems I could find (although it seemed a little slow on initial loading)
• Gmail.com - no problems I could find (no surprises there)
• iGoogle.com - no problems I could find
• Google.com/reader - no problems I could find
• My.Yahoo.com - no problems I could find
• My Banking Site - no problems I could find (pleasing)
• Twitter.com - no problems I could find
• Facebook.com - a few slight problems with some of the 3rd pary apps. (Enough so that I can’t use Chrome for Facebook at present)
• Microsoft Exchange Webmail - has Firefox compatibility mode only - so no nice split screen previews like in Internet Explorer
• Mail.yahoo.com - no problems I could find
• Blog.johncox.com - no problems I could find
• Pauldorset.com - no problems I could find
• Youtube.com - no problems I could find
• Hulu.com - no problems I could find