Weekend Project: Building a Windows Home Server (Part 2)

In my previous post I described my hardware choices when building my new Windows Home Server, something that I am handling as a weekend project. I am still using the HP ML110 G5 server, with 4Gigs of ECC RAM. I also upgraded the 250Gig HD to a new 500Gig Seagate drive – a nice quick one with 16 meg cache and 7200rpm speed. The 250Gig is now a secondary drive a use for folder duplication – but more on that later.

When doing these upgrades I was once again reminded about why some people insist on buying dedicated hardware for server use instead of using generic desktop components. Upgrading this HP Proliant server is a bit easier than most desktop cases I have come accross. A thumb screw removes the side panel, and thereafter the front bezel of the machine swings open like a door. About 16 screws are neatly lined up on the front of the server for when you want to insert another harddrive – no need to look for extra screws. The hard drives just slide into the front of the machine, and it makes a nice “click” once its installed. Its the small details I like.

When choosing hardware, it is beneficial to use two or more hard drives with Windows Home Server, but also a good idea to use the fastest drive you can for the system partition. WHS uses a proprietary method to distribute storage instead of complicated RAID setups. However, the OS still uses the primary drive for its system installs and also as a first point to write files to when copied to the server, therefore a speedy drive is your friend.

Setting up Windows Home Server cannot be more easy – merely boot the install disc on your machine, and confirm most of the on screen tidbits. It will inform you that all the drives in the machine will be deleted – and you have to confirm this. Once again, it might be a good idea to use as new hardware as possible, which will lead to less chance of failure. The install is not exactly brisk – it takes about an hour, even with nice quick hardware. It reboots many times in the process as well, so be patient. If you are used to the quick installs that Windows 7 or Snow Leopard has these days, you might want to calm down a bit and just be patient.

WHS did not automatically install some of the drivers on my server, including the network card – no biggie, just install the Windows Server 2003 versions of the drivers that came with your hardware. To see which drivers did not install, just check the Device Manager.

Once all you drivers are installed, activate your copy of WHS, so that you can start installing software updates. Unfortunately my copy of WHS is pretty early, so I had a lot of updates – about 200MB’s worth. That again takes some time – patience is virtue. Its easy – just run Windows Update and use the express option.

Once WHS is updated and running, it is time to start setting up shares and backups. To do this you start up WHS Connnector software – you ought to get a disc in the box to install this, otherwise get it from the “Software” folder in your WHS install. Installing the connector software will enable you to administrate the server from your workstation, and also run the server “headless”, meaning it does not require anything but a powerplug and a network cable attached to your network. Once installed, just enter your server password and then you can start setting up your backups and shares.

Backups are pretty easy – using the connector software, WHS gives you the following tabs:

• Computers and Backup – use this to add computers on your network that needs to be backup up.
• User Accounts – setup user profiles who are allowed to access your shared folders, including a Guest user account.
• Shared Folders – So what folders do you want to share on the network? Add them here.
• Server Storage – Give an overview of the current storage on the server.
• Network Health – Will be green unless your computers have not been backed up in a while, or any of your machines have outdated windows patches, antivirus definitions, etc. Very handy.

Backups are pretty easy to do from the connector software, but WHS is also smart in the way that it stores it. If a identical file is found on more than one of your workstations, it will only back that file up once, not a separate version for each machine. In other words, backing up 5 machines with 100GB storage each does not translate into 500GB storage needed. Far from it – in fact, if your machines run mostly the same operating systems, you will see that WHS does not use a lot of space at all. Backups are one of the major reasons to get WHS, so get started with your backups – their first run can take a lot of time, especially over wireless networks, so you might want to connect to ethernet with the notebooks for their first backup.

Shared folders are easy to set up – you can easily choose which folders can and cannot be accessed by certain users in your house, but you can also setup a Guest account so that new machines who connect to your network can easily use some of the resources without any complicated login rituals.

So far in this review WHS does not show too many benefits – shared folders can be done with a lot of free solutions like FreeNAS, but the backup part is very well implemented. Where WHS starts to shine however is with addins and how well it integrates with other devices in your home like Xbox 360. But that I will leave for my next post in this series.

Did you know 4.0: The new age of media is here

If anybody still discredits social media, they might want to watch this:

Via Justin Spratt

Online service to try: Aardvark

While the idea of asking subjective questions on the internet is nothing new, the implementation of these services up to now was not always very good. I recently came across Aardvark which is a remarkably good social search service. The basic premise is that Aardvark answers questions you ask by contacting people who believe they know answers within specific fields. While we are all very used to just asking questions using Google, Aardvark gives a more subjective, timely approach which Google cant match all to easily.

When signing up, Aardvark asks you to choose three areas which you believe you have some knowledge. When other users tag a question category in which you specialize, you will be asked to answer. The service integrates with a variety of online social communication services such as Facebook, Google Talk, Skype, MSN. At first I thought this might lead to unnecessary spam, but in the few days I have used it, I have only been asked to answer a question once.

Aardvark also has a very nicely designed iPhone app that uses push notification to ask questions and also inform you that your questions have been answered. I have asked about a few question already, all in different categories. In most cases the questions were answered within 20 minutes, which is great.

Give it a go: http://www.vark.com

Google drops a bombshell on Apple

Today Google released enhancements of two of their products which seems pretty normal by the looks of it. However, these two updates were targeted primarily as a move to trounce Apple. These two applications are Picasa (a free photo managing and simple editing suite, for Windows and Mac) and Gmail Sync (Google’s free email service).

Picasa:

First up Picasa gains “Name Tags” which automatically searches faces in your photo library, and then you can tag them. Based on these tags, Picasa will then try to look for more similiar faces and tag them as well for you. If Picasa is unsure of a face it will try to guess who it is based on previous name tags. You simply need to confirm it. (Picasa has had this functionality in its Web Albums service, but Name Tags is now built right into the application.)

Picasa also gains much better geo-tagging abilities. Previous Windows versions of Picasa had “experimental” support for Geotagging, but it was not particularly well integrated, and it worked hand in hand with Google Earth. Now however, geotagging is integrated right into the Picasa interface, with an additional frame opening showing where photos were taken. This is a big improvement, and frankly a much better.

So why is these features so important? Because Picasa offers these features absolutely free, whereas Apple’s iPhoto is a paid for application. True, it is free with every Mac, but upgrades to the latest ’09 costs $79.

Google Sync:

Then we get to Google’s other major announcement. Today Google is enabling push services for its GMail services. This enables users to connect to Gmail and having their email “pushed” to their devices as they arrive, as opposed to having to check it at predefined intervals. Not everyone needs push email – in fact, I think you should be very dependent (read: addicted) to email to require push functionality. This service is available to iPhone, Windows Mobile and Symbian S60. Google has offerred these mobile “sync” services for contacts and calendar, but today it completes the sync package with email.
Apple has offered this push email functionality to it’s MobileMe members for quite some time already, so this is nothing new. However, once again Google undercuts Apple’s $99 MobileMe fee with a much lower cost: $0.

With this new Google announcement the only other reasons to go for MobileMe is the iDisk application on your iPhone and also the Find my iPhone feature, which is great. $99 great? Doubt it. The simple fact of the matter is that MobileMe should be a free service, as it would be a great value addition to the iPhone.

One cannot help but wonder if there is some major competition growing between Google and Apple. In the last few months Google’s CEO was kicked off Apple’s board of directors, Google Voice was rejected from the Appstore and there has been a lot of finger pointing between the two companies regarding this. Now one can be on whichever side you wish – but if Google keeps on giving away functionality for free which Apple insists on asking money for, it becomes tough to side with Apple.

Keep it up Google. (Your move, Apple…)

Afrihost starts the broadband pricewar (hopefully)

Ever since the launch of Seacom we have all been waiting for that “disruptive” ISP that will lead the pricewar, and it has been a few months already. Luckily, Afrihost is shaking things up all of a sudden.

Afrihost is currently running a limited time offer of very low cost ADSL bandwidth in SA. Hopefully this leads to more service providers lowering price. At the moment these bundles are available for “power users” – starting at 10 GB and going up to 100 GB per month.

The sad case is of course that in SA you are classified as a “power user” if you use 10 Gig per month. Hopefully this will change soon enough. Now we just need to wait for the other ISPs to make competitive offers, sooner rather than later.

Oh, to Vodacom and MTN – your time is now up. Where is the lower cost 3G? South Africa desperately needs lower cost 3G. Get going.

(thanks Paul Jacobson)

Why a dollar to rand comparison of electronics does not work

I stand corrected.

In my previous post I spoke about the prices of new iPods in South Africa, and I requested feedback on why these prices can possibly be so high. In fact, I really wanted to be proved wrong in my assumption of price gouging, and wanted to get off my high horse.

Well, thanks to twitter, I got some feedback on what type of import taxes are being charged in SA for electronic goods. Here are some important factors to take into account in these comparisons:

Dollar vs Euro vs Pounds: Most electronics distributors in SA get their stock from european headquarters, therefore dollar comparisons will not be fair. For example, Apple Europe is headquartered in Paris, whereas Dell is headquartered in England and Wales. A Euro currency comparison will lead to a much more comparitive price.

VAT: Anything sold in SA typically is taxed with 14% VAT.


Sales Tax: When purchasing anything in the US, a sales tax is typically added to anything, and not quoted on websites. Some states have higher ones than others. For example, when purchasing something in California, a sales tax of 10.75% is added. Good to know.

Import duty on electronics: When reaching the South African customs a typical charge of around 10% – 20%, depending on the type of device. (There are some people who told me that there is no import taxes on electronics to SA though.)

Video device charge: South African customs have started charging additional taxes for portable video devices of around 20 – 24%. Whether this replaces the traditional import tax or is bundled on top of it, I could not get a clear answer.

Like I said, I am not perfectly sure if some of these taxes cancel each other out, but it does give me some understanding. Adding all these costs together does seem to make the current iPod prices a little more fair. In fact, when taking into account VAT, import duty and a possible video device tax on european prices, the cost of a 16GB Nano is already R2700.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I am getting off my high horse for now.

Unlike Julius Malema, I can, and will admit I was wrong.

Price Gouging for Dummies (Updated…)

or: Same old, same old.

I have gone on way to much about the prices Core charges for Apple products in SA in this blog. True. But really, they just keep on flaming the fire – I have tried to start looking for positives in their current operations. I have looked for good service (and I did find it once) and I have noticed the slight dropping of prices of macbooks, even if it was old stock they were trying to get rid of. I actually thought this was a recession busting exercise, which I applauded. But then today they announced their pricing of the new iPods that were announced last week by Apple. I just want to inform my readers of these new prices.

Here is some price comparisons:

iPod Touch 64GB:
UK price: £299 (R3638)

US price: $399
SA price: R5499 ($740 or £452)

iPod Nano 16GB:
UK price: £135 (R1643)

US price: $179
SA price: R2499 ($336 or £205)

iPod Shuffle 4GB:
UK price: £59 (R718)

US price: $79
SA price: R1000 ($135 or £82)

I am well aware that you cannot make direct comparisons between countries because of import taxes and such, but these prices straight up ridiculous. Seeing as SA falls under Apple’s european region, the prices comparisons might be better by using UK pricing.

If there is maybe a new tax on iPods that I am not aware of, I would very much like to be informed – in fact, please correct me if I am wrong in comparing SA and UK prices. Criticism? Please. If it is not Core’s fault and in fact the SA government asking this much tax, let me know.

How much is an acceptable price increase for it to reach SA in your opinion? My opinion is that Core should not have charged more than R2000 for the 16GB Nano. This is not the way to do business in the current economy.

UPDATE: After some feedback I have gotten some import tax figures for electronic devices in South Africa. Find it here.

Weekend Project: Building a Windows Home Server (Part 1)

Many homes these days have more than PC and also have amassed quite a lot of media in the form of photos and videos. One of the small duties most people forget about with their home machines is to do regular backups – and yeah it is quite tedious, especially with more than one computer. While many methods exist to automate these backups, many of them are not particularly easy to use and stable. Microsoft has had a product called Windows Home Server available for a couple of years, and yes it is relatively unknown. But for multiple PC households, it is truly a great solution. So over the next few weeks I will document my experiences with this software and also the hardware I will use.

I recently got hold of a new low end tower server machine, a HP ML110 G5 (you can find it here)  and decided how best to use it. Seeing as it is a server machine, it has a terrible integrated graphics card and some strange proprietary PCI Express slots, so using it as a desktop machine was out of the question. In fact I tried installing Windows 7, but the machine refused to even play a h264 SD video. You can order the machine with Windows Server 2003, but I decided to rather go for Windows Home Server (which is also built on Windows Server 2003). WHS runs as a “headless” server, so you only need a screen and desktop set for the initial setup. Thereafter, you log into the server with other machines in your home.

Windows Home Server can run on quite old hardware, in fact using it on some retired old desktop machine would work fine. Microsoft says a minimum of a 1GHz Pentium 3 and 512MB RAM would work – but I would recommend a bit more. The machine I am using is a Pentium Dual Core 1.8GHz, with 4 Gig of error correcting RAM with a smallish 250gig SATA drive. Having some quad core Xeon processor Xeon processor will be an absolute waste – unless you plan on doing things like real time transcoding and streaming, and even then such a high end processor might be excessive.

I would recommend more than one drive, bigger the better. Also, since it is a server that is on 24/7, you might want to take note of the number of components in the machine which will save electricity in the long run. So if you using an old overclocked gaming machine you might want to first remove some of the excessive fans and components. The more bare bones, the better.

Microsoft however recommends using new components, seeing as they will probably last longer than some tired old component. Seeing as it is a server which will probably house some valuable data such as your old photos, it might be smart to take note of their advice.

When looking at storage, enterprise grade hard drives will probably last longer, but “green” hard drives that consume less electricity might be an even better idea seeing as redundancy can be catered for by the operating system. So far I only have the one drive in the machine, but I will soon start adding some additional drives I have laying around. Every time you add a new drive, the OS will simply remind you that its contents will be erased and then adds it to the storage pool. A system partition holds the OS, while all the storage is pooled into a D: partition, which caters for redundancy as well.

In terms of memory, MS says 512MB would be fine, but memory is so cheap these days it might be a good idea to get more memory. In fact pre-built HP Home servers these days ship with 2GB RAM, so I decided to get 4GB memory. The server machine I am using can use error correcting RAM, so I decided to stick with that, which cant hurt. I was quite surprised to see that ECC RAM does not go for much more than normal RAM.

So far I think I have hardware covered, but I need to create some more storage – my WHS will primarily serve as a backup device for all my machin,e but also as storage for all the media I play on my Xbox 360. WHS can stream movies, videos and photos to the Xbox, so having enough storage will be very important. So I will probably increase the storage with two additional 1TB drives, keeping in mind that the more hard drives you add, the more electricity the box will use, but using additional drives will also increase data redundancy.

What I will look into in the next few days is the actual setup, the backup functionality, media streaming and also mac compatibility. Seeing as I use Mac OSX on my main machine these days, I really want to see how I can do Time Machine backups to my server. Also, support for Windows 7′s connector software is currently still in Beta, so I look forward to see how well Windows 7 plays with it.

Wish me luck…

You can find part 2 here: details on setup of WHS and getting started.

Windows Home Server is $99, so you can find it in SA for around a R1000. Most places dont seem to carry stock of it, so you have to order it in most cases.

Look at these – some cool sites

In the past week I havent quite gotten around to my blog – I was off on a quick getaway to Pretoria… Good to have a change of pace, even if it is only for a few days. In the mean time instead of my normal reviews and such, I did find a few very interesting services online, which I reckon is worth a visit:

Personas: This tool analyzes your online presence and tries to graph your personality traits based on traces you leave behind on the web – all in a very graphically rich and animated manner. Results do vary however, and I find that if you have a rather unique name (like me) the tool works brilliantly. However, if your name is John Smith, it might not be all that useful. Worth checking out.

TweetMeUp.net: Anybody who is on twitter would know about the new phenomena of “tweetups” – which basically means meet-ups organized on twitter. A typical scenario is at a conference, all the social media enthusiasts would organize a meet-up through the use of twitter. TweetMeUp uses a clean interface to quickly and easily set up a tweetup. They are currently working on the next release, so support South African developers and take a look at it!

Testfreaks: Almost like metacritic for gadgets, this is pretty good aggregator of reviews for all things tech. They use a weighted score system depending on how influential the site is that reviews it, and its catalogue is quite big already. Also, if a particular product is getting older, it drops the score as well. A South African version is also available, but the catalogue is still limited.

To be honest, these days I post interesting sites to Twitter, and I also share them in Google Reader. So go take a look!

Long Overdue Full Review: iPhone 3GS

Vodacom launched the iPhone 3GS about a month ago on 28 July, but unfortunately stock was very limited – in fact, there is still a major shortage of the 3GS in South Africa. (you can read my about my mission to get one here, and a bit of well deserved praise for iStore here).

To the untrained eye, the iPhone 3GS looks eerily similar to its older brother – in fact its pretty undistinguishable. (Tip: only difference is the chrome lettering on the bottom half of the back). Clearly Apple is using a similar strategy it has in its computer business for years – they continually refine a form factor, with only radical changes every few years. Apple has also fortunately made the iPhone 3.0 OS updates available to the older iPhones – this review wont focus on the changes in iPhone 3.0.

The unboxing experience is also very similar to the 3G, only difference being a slightly smaller box and the lack of a polishing cloth. Not a big deal on my opinion. Still would love a dock like the first gen iPhone though. The headphones also got a slight revision – they now have volume control as well. These controls in the wire is however a bit more useful with the 3GS’s voice control, but we will get to that later.

The device still has its minimalistic design with only a few buttons – a timeless design that I reckon Apple will stick with for years to come. It still has the glossy plastic back which attracts fingerprints just like the front, but the white models tend to not attract as many fingerprints. Overall I like the form factor a lot, and it does feel very good in your hand. Even though it might feel on the large size, it clearly is a sweet spot once you start using the screen interface. It is also quite thin and sleek – especially compared to other smartphones on the market.

The iPhone 3GS on top of the Nokia N86 8MP, Nokia E75 and HTC G1.

So what has changed? It is all under the hood – first up, the processor is bumped from 412 to 600 MHz, with a larger cache to boot. This has a very clear improvement in the general speed of the device – applications load much quicker, some cases even double the speed. The interface reacts quicker as well – but this might have something to do with improved video chipset as well. The new chipset improves 3D games tremendously – playing a graphically rich game like Hero of Sparta or Assassins Creed shows much smoother frame rates which also add to playability of the games. Clearly Apple is making a major push into handheld gaming.

The framerate also carries over to general use on the devices – flipping pages in apps (for example clicking the “i” button in Weather) have a much smoother visual transition.
Hopefully game publishers will not focus too quickly on the new video chipset seeing as games will become very bad on older hardware, but there is of course still a much larger user base with the older hardware, so that wont happen too soon. Here is a video to show the speed increases (excuse the lack of proper focus, but you get the idea):

Memory has also been doubled to 256 MB – this leads to less page refreshes in multiple tabs in Safari, big applications never give a low memory error, and it yes, it also contributes to the speed. The 3G chipset is also now 7.2 Mbps cabable (up from 3.6) which does increase browsing and download speed. Unfortunately in South Africa this will go to waste – we have the ability on Vodacom Broadband Advanced now, but the fact that you have to pay extra irritates me.

Apple has also added a compass – which does not really sound like a big deal. And yes, in its current guise it does not add a lot to the user experience. You get a compass app, which, you guessed it, shows a compass pointing North. Google Maps also now uses the compass to show you which way you are looking at. But the real change is with apps that are coming – Yelp recently showcased its new “monocle feature” that enables you to look through the camera with restaurant reviews pointing at the restaurants you are looking out. Rumour has it that Google’s streetview will also get this soon. (You might have also heard that Google’s streetview cars are finally surveying South Africa).

The iPhone also gets Nike+ functionality like the 2nd gen iPod Touch has had. I used Nike+ on my Nano a while back, and the interface has been nicely ported to the iPhone OS. However, the lack of hard buttons to control while jogging is not great, guess you have to run with your iPhone supplied earphones to use the in cable controls.

Multimedia:

The iPhone also gains a few other enhancements – first up the camera. The sensor has been boosted from 2 to 3.2 Megapixels, but perhaps more significantly, has gained a autofocus lens. While this is old news on just about all other smartphones, Apple has made a few very useful additions to the way you use the camera. Instead of merely framing a shot and taking the picture, the iPhone allows you to select where you want to focus in the image. This works very well – in fact, I really hope to see this functionality in stand alone cameras soon. Photos do look much better than the 3G, with richer colour and and slightly better performance in low light. Could still use a flash though.

Big news however is the addition of video recording – again, a feature that just about every camera phone had for the last few years. But the iPhone’s video recording looks stunning – the framerate is decent, and the resolution is fine as well for casual use. The 3GS also enables a user to trim the video right on the device to take out unnecessary parts, and then the user can email the video or upload it directly to YouTube. Again, this is something that other phones have had for a while, but the iPhone’s implementation is just so simple, it begs to be used. (The new Facebook for iPhone app also supports video uploading, and this is something I have used a few times already).

The iPod’s functionality is pretty much unchanged, but storage has doubled. The 3GS is now available in 16 and 32 GB sizes. This is great news for people like me who still carried around their iPod classics on long trips – although it is not 120 Gig, 32 Gig is still a big jump from the previous capacity.

Other changes:

The other major change is again something other phones have had for a long time – Voice Control. But once again, the Apple implementation is worlds ahead of other manufacturers. As expected you can call people by saying: “Call John”. You can also tell the 3GS what number to call: “Dial 082 555 5555” and it will phone the number. However, for the number dialing I found it had a touch time with my South African accent (and no, I don’t speak like Wikus vd Merwe). Hopefully Apple will improve this in a software update.

But the 3GS allows you to control you iPod as well in this function, for example: “Play songs by Radiohead”, or “Play album OK Computer”. Then the creepy lady just confirms: “Playing songs by Radiohead”. This worked flawlessly with all the music I threw at it – and remember, the 3GS now supports up to 32Gig storage, which is a lot of music and movies.Here is a video (once again sorry for the lack of proper focus):

Apple also claims slightly better battery life for the iPhone 3GS – which is an outright lie. After using the device for a month, I have not found any improvements in the battery whatsoever. In fact, I will go as far as saying that the battery might be worse than the iPhone 3G, but not much. This is still the achiles heal of the iPhone, and seriously needs attention in the next revision (or even software update if its possible). Hopefully the next gen iPhone will get an OLED screen. The battery life is still better than almost all of its touch screen rivals however.

The other problem I have with the 3GS is with its Bluetooth – for some reason it does not upload names and numbers to my Supertooth handsfree kit. The previous iPhone 3G did this with no problems. While the 3GS connects, the device cannot read out names aloud anymore, merely telling the number which is just irritating. But I am confident Apple will fix this in a software update.

The screen also now has a oleophobic coating that supposedly repels oil from you fingers – I did not test this, seeing as I covered my iPhone in a Invisible Shield – which I highly recommend, if you can get it at a good price.

Conclusion

The iPhone 3GS and iPhone OS 3.0 addresses almost all the issues people have had with iPhones since day one – it finally has a decent camera, and many small additions like MMS and tethering is now available.

If there is one theme I have noticed with iPhone development is that Apple truly does not care if the iPhone does not do certain things. Instead of trying to pack every conceivable function into a device (like the Nokia N97), the iPhone only implements new features if these features can truly add to the experience of the phone. The camera, video recording and voice control all exemplifies this. This is features that are old news, but the implementation on the iPhone is just brilliant. I find myself using these features much more than on any of my other phones – why? Because its easy, and not merely a bolted on little feature – it integrates brilliantly with rest of the device.

My overall opinion of the 3GS is a mixed bag – there are real credible improvements, but I would not yet recommend it to current 3G owners. In South Africa there is currently a major price premium for the 3GS. The price in its current form is tailored for Apple fanboys (might be guilty) and gadget freaks (guilty as charged). If you already have a 3G, I would hold out for the prices to drop. But if you have upgrade coming up, go for the 3GS, it is worth the extra money.

Pros:

• Speed. Glorious Speed.
• Much improved camera and addition of video recording
• Voice Control is actually useful
• Graphically intensive apps look even better.

Cons:

• Current cost in South Africa is way to high. Give it a month or two.
• Battery life is NOT improved.

Rating:
9 out of 10. (Would have been 10 if the price was equivalent to 3G before 3GS launch, or the battery was better)