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.

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.

HTC shifting focus to more Android based handsets

In a move I cannot help but applaud, HTC has decided move 50% of its models in 2010 to the Android platform. After stagnant development of Windows Mobile, it was only a matter of time. Considering that HTC is one of the world’s largest cellphone manufacturers (and possibly the biggest Windows Mobile manufacturer) I cannot help think that Microsoft must really paranoid about android.

Thats what you get when you refuse to improve your software, regardless of tremendous strides taken by your competitors. Taking the new HTC Hero into account, it is also clear that HTC has much more freedom on interface than the previous TouchFLO implimentations on their Windows Mobile devices.

Well done HTC.

Estimation

Lets hope this gets improved in Windows 7…

(Picture: XKCD)

Review: HTC Touch HD

A few weeks ago I got hold of a review unit of the HTC Touch HD – one of HTC’s new top of the range Windows Mobile phones. Now before I start the review I should mention that I have used Windows Mobile a few years ago in its iPaq heydays. After using Palm OS I used quite a few Windows Mobile devices – and after many frustrations, I vowed to never use Windows Mobile again. From there I switched to Symbian devices for the long run. That is until the iPhone came along. I thought it might be time to revisit Windows Mobile, and see if the WM haters out there still had any valid points.

While I was busy with the review it became apparent that Windows Mobile is actually the Smartphone OS for the crowd who likes to tinker with their phones. While some phones like the iPhone is meant to work out of the box, with not a lot of room for customization (unless you jailbreak it), the Windows Mobile OS is a different animal. The slow development cycle of WM has lead to a large community of developers who have improved the OS in ways Microsoft should have actually had the decency to step up. Seeing as I used a review unit of the HTC Touch HD (and could not risk tweaking it too much), I called in the help of Henre Rossouw, who could bring us up to speed on the customization and tweaking front. As a long time user of Windows Mobile, Henre has some insights on certain interface “oddities” which might not be as apparent to someone like me who tests a lot of different phone operating systems.

One of my pet peeves are fanboys and haters of certain phones on forums and review sites who do not use a variety of devices. In most cases it is the people with least experience who are the most vocal. It is for this very reason I decided to try to do this review from two sides – one, a reviewer who regularly reviews different devices, and two, someone who has considerable experience with regard to Windows Mobile. Henre’s comments on my review is in italics. So here we go:

Windows Mobile is currently the third most popular Smartphone OS behind Symbian and RIM, and with good reason. Windows Mobile is still the compulsory smartphone OS in many companies, due to the (poorly informed) belief that is offers the best Exchange and Outlook integration in an enterprise. One thing that struck me as very odd is that the WM user interface has not changed much in all these years – now that can obviously be a good thing to people unwilling to learn new interfaces, but also highlights the fact that development on the UI side of WM is stagnant. In fact, many WM smartphone makers have taken it upon themselves to create their own “skins” to make the devices more touch friendly, seeing as WM itself is currently not ideal (read: terrible) for use without a stylus.

Yes and no. Microsoft has been slow…terribly slow to get rid of the ridiculously antiquated Windows Mobile 6.1. But we need to keep in mind that Windows Mobile devices range mostly from non-touch enabled phones to the latest touch optimized ones. It simply cannot compare to the Apple iPhone, because Apple only has one device in the market.

To predict how Apple would handle such a situation is unfathomable, simply because they entered the market at such an advanced stage. However, if we look at the Samsung Omnia device, which I have, you will see that Samsung has attempted a touch UI to “cover up” the Windows Mobile 6.1 OS. Again, mostly only a skin, and an absolutely terrible one at that. So much so that many Omnia users have turned to some pretty awesome developers on the net, and on a video I’ve shot a couple of months back, you will witness a “hacked” version of the HTC TouchFlo 3D on my phone. What HTC has done (very well in my opinion) is to develop its “skin” that they stick right on top of the touch unfavourable Windows Mobile OS. Previous HTC devices, while looking very slick with the TouchFlo 3D “skin”, was still highly critiqued simply because the same self “untouchable” Windows Mobile OS graced users after entering the second layer of the OS. On the new HTC devices however, this model included, HTC has gone and built upon the first layer, or the “skin” so to speak, and have built touch oriented functionality deeper into the OS. And I must say, of what I’ve seen from the new TouchFlo 3D, it is pretty remarkable.

Hardware: But enough about the OS, lets get to the phone. The phone comes packaged in a box which is more a display case than a way to box it up. The box is quite large and has a magnetized lid which does give you quite a good unboxing experience – something which is a prerequisite for a phone on this price level. It comes packaged with a charger, a 1350 mAh battery, a USB cable and a set of earphones. Pretty standard stuff. But it also gives a nice sleeve pouch (not that it will protect the phone in a fall), a 8GB micro SD card, a spare stylus and a screen protector. The large battery leads to excellent battery life. On average it lasted more than two days with a few calls, all radios turned on and mild multimedia usage.

Holding the device in your hand you do not feel short-changed – it is built very solid, from high quality steel and plastic components. In fact, I would go as far as saying this might be the most solid feeling handset I have used in quite some time. The rear has a nice rubberized texture, the screen is surrounded by darkened steel, the camera is surrounded by brushed steel and the stylus get clicked into place by a nice magnetic feel. The screen is big at 3.8 inches and bright. Below the screen is four touch sensitive buttons for answering the phone, home and back. There is no directional pad which is a bit of a bummer. Scrolling on Windows Mobile is nowhere near as elegant as on the iPhone or Android handsets, but I suppose you might get used to it over time.

You don’t…really. The scrolling effect of Windows Mobile is atrocious. They’ve attempted to remedy that and you’ll find those attempts on cooked Windows Mobile 6.5 ROMS (more about this later), but it’s still very unfavourable.

At the top of the device is a 3,5mm earphone adaptor (thank you HTC, please do this on ALL your handsets). Very smart move. I simply don’t understand why device manufacturers still opt for proprietary headphone jacks. A sleep wake button is also on the top right of the device, so iPhone users wont feel too out of place. It has a fast 500MHz + processor, GPS, Bluetooth, Wifi and accelerometer. The accelerometer has a nice little feature on this phone – when a call is incoming, you simply turn the device face down to silence it. Clever… Stolen from the Omnia.

The device is quite heavy for its size, but I always appreciate a bit of heft in a premium handset. Not that it is big – in fact it not much different from an iPhone. But because it has square corners, it does feel a bit more bulky in your hand, unlike the tapered edges of other phones. Overall in build quality I could not find too much fault with it, except with screen covering, which does not inspire a lot confidence in everyday use. Unlike the HTC Magic or Apple iPhone, the screen covering feels to plastic and flexible, and my chief concern is whether it will become scratched over time. Good thing HTC supplies a screen film, but I wonder how many busy business users actually bother putting it on.

Interface:

HTC has decided to put the TouchFlo interface on this device as well and with good reason. Out of the box, Windows Mobile is not suited to finger touch operation, but rather stylus only. This is a huge disadvantage, especially now that many devices are starting to use capacitative screens. Resistive screens require force onto the screen in order for the device to react, which in operation can be difficult to use once you have used a capacitative device. It is for this reason that the HTC developed the TouchFlo interface – it makes it much easier to operate the device with only your finger. Even though the Touch HD has a resistive screen, the reactivity within the TouchFlo interface was good, but not great. If you wanted to get work done, you will have to slide out the stylus. I mention this because the TouchFlo interface only reachers up to a certain point. You can scroll around, but the moment you go into a application (like say Calendar) its hello Mr Windows Mobile.

Yes, that is the point I tried to make at the top. Although, they have added some touch functionality, it’s not nearly perfect. But, if you head over to xda-developers, you will find vast improvements to TouchFlo 3D (called Rhodium I think) which will simply blow your mind. If you’er a Windows Mobile device owner, you NEVER have to be satisfied with what comes straight from the box…so please…experiment.

While TouchFlo home screen is handy and very classy in its appearance (the weather tab is particularly cool), it is still only skin deep. There are some custom adaptations to traditional Windows Mobile settings, such as the HTC Communication Manager, which gives you on/off switches for all the radio on the device. One of the tabs on the home screen is a programs tab which you can use to customize your list of favourite applications. This prevents you from having to use the ridiculous Start Menu to start an app.

In terms of standard Windows Mobile apps, HTC has done its best to improve them somewhat – for example, the Contacts application gains a new scrolling method – while in no way better than the “rolling” scroll method of the Android and iPhone, it does work. While it does “roll” it is not very reactive to your touch – requiring quite bit more pressure to “flick” the screen.

These can be remedied to a certain degree if you’re willing to tamper inside the Registry Settings of the device…something many warn against, but which I find strange to this day. I’ve never managed to break my phone and I’m no “registry guru”. Just follow instructions and you’ll be able to increase the “touch sensitivity” so you won’t have to press as hard…and also what they call the “down up” setting, for a more sensitive keystroke. Again, not close to the quality of the iPhone, but much better nonetheless.

The phone application itself is without fault, and it also includes smart dialling – something which I appreciate. Instead of typing out a person’s name, you simply click the numbers which include the letter you are looking for. For example, if you want to phone dave, you simply press 3 – 2 – 8 – 3, and it will narrow down your search to dave. Small things that count…

Yes, it does make a world of difference. Even if the phone doesn’t have that built in, people should realize that there are pretty spectacular applications available that has this functionality. This is the beauty of Windows Mobile. The options are endless. I use Iconsoft’s Phonex for outgoing call handling, while I discuss a 2nd app, VITO’s Fun-Contact contact management, a bit further down. (Crazy enough, I use a 3rd application for incoming call handling. Show me a phone other than Windows driven that can do this) Customized exactly to my liking.

Which brings me to my first big aggrevation – when calling someone, and bringing the phone up to your ear, the display switches off, just like many touch screen phones. But to switch the display on again, you have to use the sleep/wake button to wake the screen again. With other phones, the screen switches on again once it senses it is not close to your face. I just cant seem to understand why HTC would choose this method. After all, their HTC magic does it automatically, why not the Touch HD? It does however switch on the screen if you remove the stylus during a call and automatically opens the Notes app, which is well designed. I reckon HTC might fix this in a ROM update. Otherwise the call sound quality is excellent, and yes, better than the iPhone. The speakerphone is also really good. In fact, it is loud enough to use in your car.

That is petty things quite frankly which HTC could well have left out. Trying to be smart has never earned anyone wholesale fame. Keep it simple and open it up for the user to customize to their liking.

In terms of productivity, being a WM device, the device comes out of the box with the ability to view and edit MS Office files such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint, provided they are not too complicated. The high resolution screen is also great for presentations and PDF’s which is handled by Adobe Reader.

Web Browsing:

The Touch HD has Wifi as you would expect, so you can immediately give its browser a workout. The device is preinstalled thankfully with Opera Mobile, which is actually quite good. No, not quite good. If you can find an honest iPhone user somewhere, they’ll acknowledge that Opera Mobile is quite frankly, brilliant. The HD probably doesn’t come bundled with Opera Mobile 9.7 (which is still in beta I think), but I’d urge an upgrade. Simply brilliant. Again, the excellent screen resolution is great for web browsing. In fact, zooming out on many screen still renders text readable, provided you have good eyes. The browser also has Java support (which is nice for some older generation web applications) and Flash, which in my opinion is only there for ads. Still, its good to know its there. I do also appreciate the full screen viewing, and wish all other devices (ahem: iPhone….) would also give this ability.

Messaging:

The device has a perfectly acceptable messaging and email abilities. Right out of the box I used Exchange (to sync my contacts and calendar at first) and worked without a hitch. The WM interface for Messages and emails looks seriously dated, in fact it looks like it might be a copy of Windows 95. Even though the conversations can be threaded like on the iPhone, it looks terrible. Seriously, it looks like a IRC app from the 90’s. At least HTC has sharpened its usability up with scrolling. The on screen keyboards are a great improvement over the standard Windows Mobile input methods, and they work fine provided you are willing to work with a stylus. While it is possible to work with your fingers, it is terribly frustrating. The user can use a T9 type keyboard, a qwerty or a Blackberry “suretype” keyboard. There is no landscape option, so you have to be very patient with these. If this is a problem, I recommend you look at the Touch Pro 2.

Their keyboards do look nice, don’t they? Messaging on Windows Mobile 6.1…even the cooked 6.5 ROMS, are terrible. And this is probably my cue to come in with what makes Windows Mobile different, and more pleasing: Apps. Yes, yes…the iPhone is the epitome of apps, but then you’d be surprised at the array of apps available for Windows Mobile devices. Touch optimized at that. For messaging, I use VITO Technology’s SMS-Chat. The interface is great and VITO has aced the flick scrolling effect. Simply brilliant. I’m pretty sure VITO based this app on the iPhone though, because MMS is notably absent. I’ve grown pretty fond of VITO’s applications, sporting their Fun Contact application for contact management and their Winterface application which lends my phone a similar iPhone programme launcher feel, which I must say is very handy. It can get quite an expensive addition to the phone, because Windows Mobile apps are famously expensive. But again, I did not choose a Windows Mobile device because it was more cost effective (quite contrary to iPhone users’ beliefs). The first generation Omnia still outshines most phones in hardware spec.

Multimedia:

Seeing as this phone is equipped with a large, excellent screen, it is only natural to expect some multimedia prowess. Playing music is easy enough. The interface is easy to use, and the library functionality is lightyears ahead of Windows Media Player adaptations that has plagued some other WM phones. Unlike the HTC Magic, the Touch HD thankfully includes a 3,5mm adaptor, so you can listen to your music with whichever earphones you choose. A FM radio application is also included, which I think is very handy, despite Apple’s blind ignorance of it. The Camera is a 5 MP unit with autofocus. Overall I am quite impressed with its quality, although the interface is very laggy and requires same patience to get going, and there is noticeable shutter lag. Still it is much better than the iPhone or iPhone 3G. The camera also includes a touch to focus feature similiar to the iPhone 3GS, but I have not really noticed that it really improves photos. Video recording is not very good – in fact I expected much more. The resolution is only 352×288. In this HD era, that is not going to cut it.

It took Apple three versions of the iPhone to get their camera up to a pretty ordinary 3.2MP while the 1st Gen Omnia boasted with probably the best mobile phone camera ever, not only in quality, but settings and functionality to boot…only to be put to shame by…yet another Omnia with an 8MP version.

There is unfortunately no flash, but I found low light performance to be quite good. The image viewer is also good. Images look brilliant on the screen, and you really do see the difference of the high resolution screen compared to other phones. The image viewer is orientation aware, and you can zoom and pan by holding down your thumb. While in no way as innovative as the “pinch” patent on the Apple, it works. In terms of video playing, I had high hopes for the Touch HD – it does afterall have a lovely screen. Unfortunately, HTC dropped the ball by not including decent video playing software. After looking around the web I realized I would have to use Core player in order to do the device justice. All in all video looks incredible, and yes it does look better than on the iPhone or iPod Touch. Colours pop more and the high resolution does help. Especially on darker (in colour) movies like say Fight Club, there is noticeable improvements.

All in all, I think this to be a great device…Windows Mobile and all. I’d still be more inclined to go with the Omnia HD (I may be biased though) with better specs still…although it runs the Symbian S60 OS. I think it’s important to note that personally, I’m not consciously pro Windows Mobile, although it might seem that way. I’m simply pro specifications…and I’m willing to hack my way to a better Windows Mobile experience if that’s what it takes. My “old” Samsung Omnia is a workhorse…and made better continuously with updated cooked Windows Mobile 6.5 ROMS and 3rd party applications. I hope to see a future where device owners will have the freedom of choice though over which OS they’d like to run on their device…or dual boot systems even.

Conclusion:

As a straight comparison to similiar devices, I have to look at the device as a stock standard out of box phone. Its hardware is excellent, in many ways almost perfect. The battery lasts long, the build quality and call quality is excellent, and the device definitely looks good. So as a phone it is great. But alas again, the Achilles heal of the device is once again Windows Mobile. While I realize there is a sizable group of users who prefer Windows Mobile for many reasons, it is hard to recommend this device above other similiar phones in its price range. If you consider its chief rivals – the HTC Magic, the Apple iPhone and the Samsung Omnia HD, you do realize that the HTC Touch HD is a bit of a tough sell.

As I mentioned earlier with the HTC Magic, we are currently in the era where phone cannot simply get by by having the best featureset. It is all good and well that a phone is a mulitimedia powerhouse, but it is all about how it is to use that device. Is it easy to use? Is it easy to expand its cababilities? Does it have a lot of applications available? It is here where Windows Mobile drops the ball – while it is very customizable and highly capable, it is a bit difficult to use in everyday scenarios, and there is still no appstore available. Symbian, Android, iPhone and Blackberry (and soon, Palm) all have their Appstore available. WM appstore is only expected to go live in the Q4 and it is still not clear which versions of WM will be supported. We are past the point of going through a multi-step process just to get a app installed.

What I must say is that I did expect WM to be much worse – in fact, HTC has done an excellent job to improve the quirks of Windows Mobile. Seriously, I would really recommend to Microsoft to maybe get some of the HTC interface designers over to their mobile division. Where Windows Mobile was an absolute disaster on older devices, HTC has managed to make the interface a whole lot more bearable. In fact, some adaptations of HTC’s apps are brilliant. If it was my money I would rather recommend the HTC Magic or the iPhone 3GS. Once again, I can really see HTC shifting its efforts instead to Android phones. While it cant happen entirely, there is just clear evidence that HTC might have reached its limit in how much they can “fix” Windows Mobile. Lets see how WM 7 goes…

Pros:

• Screen and build quality is without peer
• HTC TouchFlo is better than ever
• Decent Camera
• Call quality is great

Cons:

• Windows Mobile cannot be rescued
• Inconsistent interface
• On screen keyboard not landscape capable except in Opera.

Rating:

If you are new to Windows Mobile: 6 / 10

If you are an Windows Mobile old timer: 8 / 10

Thanks to Henre Rossouw for his input- contact him @henre on Twitter or at his website.

Windows 7 will have XP mode

With the ever increasing abilities of computer hardware these days it is perhaps a waste to only focus that power on multimedia or games. How about virtualization? Well, Microsoft is the company to build it into their next operating system.

Whenever a new version of windows is released, the first concern is typically whether it has incompatibility with your current software. While Vista had very few incompatibility issues (except initially driver issues), consumers and businesses still rejected Windows Vista quickly due to “incompatibility issues”.

XP mode in Windows 7 will run as a virtualized machine on higher level (iow not those on netbooks) versions of Windows 7 as long as the hardware is up to scratch. There will be no licencing issues seeing as the virtualized machine will not require an additional XP licence as was needed previously with products like VirtualPC (also free) or VMWare. As long as your machine supports virtualized processors like the Intel VT or AMD-V, and you have more than 2 Gig RAM, you can download the free image of Windows XP.

What this basically enables Microsoft to do is to make the uptake of Windows 7 much, much faster than any previous version of Windows. You might think Windows XP is fine (and dare note touch Vista for some reason), but Windows XP was also slow to be adapted by businesses. I can guarantee you that with this functionality businesses will jump at Windows 7, and not do the agreed upon “wait for SP1 route”.

PS: I have mentioned before that I think Apple should bundle virtual machine abilities into the next version of Mac OS X. If Windows 7 can do it, Snow Leopard can as well. Think about how many people will go for a Mac if they can run Windows 7 and Mac OS X out of the box, without any additional software?

PS PS: One caveat is the XP Mode will require its own antivirus software as well. So I guess we will never quite get rid of the haunted ghost of XP security issues. For that very reason I might run my apps natively as long as possible…

Windows 7 RC, Snow Leopard

While I have always been a fan of Windows Vista, I have been feeling its lack of speed in the last few weeks. I am currently running Mac OSX and Windows 7 Beta. Both of these OS’s are what modern OS’s should be – bleeding fast, never mind what the feature set. Windows 7 addresses this situation with aplomb – things react quicker, the user is constantly reminded that the system is ready for your next move… I am pretty much getting the feeling that these two operating systems are constantly playing catch up. After many years of “look at the monkey!” features (like Time Machine – while brilliant, common, is that big zooming supernova really necessary?), the developers are finally starting to look at speed and general usability that doesnt necessitate very expensive fast hardware.

Snow Leopard is supposedly going to take this approach to the Mac – it is not going to be a big feature set upgrade (not that Leopard really was) but is going to be a big upgrade for what is going on in the background. Features that are definately coming is built support for Exchange (no more having to deal with Entourage), smaller footprint in terms of memory and storage and more efficient handling of multi core CPU’s. OpenCL will also give developers the ability to harness the tremendous processing power in GPU’s nowadays for more mundane tasks.
It is set for release in the second half of 2009.

Windows 7 will take a similiar route – not a lot of new features in terms of front end. Users get a new taskbar, new nifty control schemes that are actually quite intuitive and vastly improved speed. So Windows 7 will actually run decently on a Atom powered netbook.

Windows 7 is set to be in release candidate pose by April 10 2009, which means it will probably be released by July 2009. But the honest truth after using Windows 7 Beta is that the product feels finished. It might be in Beta, but it is remarkably stable and a absolute joy to use.

For excellent resources on Windows 7 (amongst other things) give winsupersite a read.

Tip of the week: Windows Edition

One of the pains of hard drives is the fragmentation of files. If left unattended, your hard drive can become very fragmented which results in much lower performance. Here is a simple graphic that explains how fragmentation occurs, and how a defragmenter fixes it:

Fragmentation occurs when the operating system cannot or will not
allocate enough contiguous space to store a complete file as a unit,
but instead puts parts of it in gaps between other files (usually those
gaps exist because they formerly held a file that the operating system
has subsequently deleted or because the operating system allocated
excess space for the file in the first place). Larger files and greater
numbers of files also contribute to fragmentation and consequent
performance loss. (Wikipedia, 2009) The supplied defragmenter with Windows is simply abysmal. It is slow, not very effective and the user has not feedback on what exactly is happening on the drive.

The best defragmenter is still Diskeeper. It does small things like changing the drive layout so that files that need high performance is moved to a high speed area of the drive, and small files that need faster random access to the inner sectors of the drive. But you have to pay for it. So for people who need the highest performance from their drives like server admins and video editors, Diskeeper is a great buy.

But not everyone wants to spend money on this type of software. The best free version I came across is Defraggler. This software enables a user to very quickly defragment specific files and folders, something that the windows supplied defragmenter cant do. Or of course defrag the drive completely, just like all other defragmenters.

My Tip: A very quick way to defragment your drive is to first analyse the disk, click on file list, arrange the files so that the most fragmented files are on top. Then click the tickbox next to filename (which then automatically ticks all the boxes for you). This is surprisingly quick and even faster than Diskeeper.

Now if someone can just write a free defragmenter for Mac OS X!

Windows 7 Experience Index

While using the Windows Experience Index score as a benchmarking tool has never been quite as powerful as using something such as PCMark, it is handy nonetheless. I appreciate the “bottleneck” aspect of it in that it tends to give a official rating in the form of lowest subsystem score. For example, if all your hardware components score 5.0 but your 3D card is only 3.5, your final score will be 3.5. This give people who like to upgrade their hardware a good idea where to focus on when they get their next upgrade.

Yesterday I installed the Windows 7 Beta on my unibody Mac and so far I am very impressed. Its fast, stable, and a definate step in the right direction. (Not to crazy about the new taskbar though, it has the same problems as Mac OSX’s dock). I fired up the system rating tool to see if there are any changes from Vista.

First thing I noticed is that the ratings have been upgraded to a maximum of 7.9 (up from 5.9 in Vista). Now I do not know why they have such obscure numbers – why not make it a 10? But anyway, here is the ratings my base model late 2008 Macbook got when in Vista:

Processor: 5.0
Memory: 5.7
Graphics: 5.6
Gaming Graphics: 5.4
Primary Hard Drive: 5.9
(Base Score: 5.0)

And here is the scores in Windows 7:
Processor: 5.4
Memory: 5.5
Graphics: 5.2
Gaming Graphics: 4.4
Primary Hard Drive: 5.9
(Base Score: 4.4)

For some reason my processor rating went up (Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 2.0GHz (which is a low voltage part btw)), and my gaming graphics score went down(Nvidia 9400m)? In a way this carries more truth than the Vista score, seeing as the macbook doesnt really focus all too much on having gaming ability graphics.

I would like to see how high end desktop machines do on these tests, seeing as the 5.9 “barrier” was hit pretty quickly when Vista came out. Having a “5.9″ level computer (even a laptop) is not really all that impressive anymore, hopefully the new 7.9 rating will be a real ultra performance PC…

Any feedback on what your Windows 7 score is?

What I use these days (updated Oct 2009)

Here is what I use on a almost daily basis. It will give you good idea of where my opinion lies and why I use certain things. I paid for all my software and I always have valid reasons for using certain applications or hardware, and I am also a bit of a early adopter.

Windows PCs
Computing hardware

I use a few machines every day, but these are my main machines. I am currently using the macbook the most, but sometimes I use the two Lenovos for Windows work. When I have a choice I will always buy Lenovo hardware, or Apple. I have had unpleasant experiences with HP consumer hardware. I always use external monitors on my desk, my current being a Samsung 2263uw 22 inch which runs at 1680 resolution and has niceties like a USB hub and webcam.

Lenovo IBM Thinkpad Z61m

I got this machine in February 2007 and it has served me well. It originally came with Windows XP, but it was immediately upgraded to Vista Enterprise edition, and now its running Windows 7 RC fulltime. I upgraded its RAM to 3 gig, and it is a solid and pretty speedy piece of hardware. The screen runs a roomy 1680 pixel resolution and the keyboard is a joy to use. Not the greatest looking machine, but man is it quick.
Was my primary machine but I am now switching to the macbook.

Lenovo Ideapad S10e

I bought this machine as a secondary PC and is quite a cute little number. It runs a Atom processor and 2 Gig RAM and a 160 gig hard drive. I was always a little hesitant of netbooks (especially after seeing the first eeePCs), but there is very little trade offs in using this machine. But I desperately want to put Windows 7 on this machine.

MacBook (late 2008)

My pride and joy. A base model with a 2.0GHz processor, 2 Gig DDR3 RAM and a little too small 160 gig hard drive. It runs Mac OSX leopard and I run a bootcamp partition with Vista Enterprise and a VM machine running XP SP3. I want to upgrade the RAM to 4 gig, but DDR3 chips are still very expensive. Build incredibly solid from aluminium and the display is really nice and bright. Still cost a bit more than a PC but well worth it.

I upgrade the internal drive with a Seagate 320Gig 7200 rpm drive. Much more roomy and also a bit quicker. Highly recommended. The 2.0GHz processor is getting a little slow, but I am hanging on for the release of Macbooks with the new Core i7 mobile processor.

Servers
Windows Server

I currently use a HP Proliant ML110 server to run Windows Home Server which backs up all my machines and also stores a lot of my media. I upgraded it to 4Gigs of ECC RAM, and 750 GB storage, but this will keep growing. I find a Windows Home Server very powerful and I really hope the next version will be even better.

Gaming

I use Xbox 360 Pro for gaming and media. I use only about 10 percent of the time for games, and use it as a media player connected a nice large 1TB hard drive which has all my media.. I am actually quite disappointed by the hardware quality and I am currently on my 4th Xbox. The last one gave up the ghost after 2 weeks. Luckily they swap them out for free, but it is always a 3 week long ordeal to get it done, thanks to MI Digital’s poor service.
I use a lovely Acer 24 inch 1920 x 1200 pixel screen which makes games look great using a VGA cable. I also connect the Xbox to a nice big 1TB Seagate FreeAgent drive. To be honest I use Xbox much more as a media player than games. Blame high prices of games. I am looking forward to using Windows Home Server with the Xbox.

Portable devices

I have had too many iPods to count. I used to buy a new one each year, and then sell the old model. But I always hang on to my iPod 5G 30Gig which is still my favourite iPod, regardless of model. I keep it in my car or AV dock connected to Logitech Z2300 speakers (which are 4 years old and still work great).
My phone is a iPhone 3GS which is a great device to have with you at all times. Despite its small flaws I still cant switch back to my old Symbian devices. The speed of the new 3GS is great and the current collection of applications are without peer. The apps I cant do without I listed here.

Software I use:
Operating system

I use both Mac OS X and Windows, but I will always have a softspot for Windows Vista. Despite all the marketing hype I am still not completely sold on Mac OS X. Snow Leopard has improved this somewhat. Yes, it is stable and fast, but I miss the tinkering with Vista. I am pretty excited about Windows 7, and now run it fulltime on my Thinkpad. I avoid using Windows XP. Its old and needs to be taken out back and put down.

Digital media
Jukebox: I primarily use iTunes, because I use a iPhone and iPods. I think it is a great music management tool and I stopped using WinAmp the day iTunes came out for Windows. I use smart playlists and rating a lot I am obsessive about things like album art and lyrics.

Online services: Because of a lack of digital music stores in South Africa, I cannot use any legal download services. So I am pretty much forced to buy CD’s.

Digital photos: I use Picasa 3 as a photo manager. Yes, iPhoto is nice, but is not close to Picasa. Why would I want to store my photos in a proprietary giant multi gigabyte file? Let me use standard folders please. I don’t backup my photos online, but I do use Facebook for sharing.

DVD: I rarely use anything other than VLC for playing DVD’s. For backing up DVD’s I use Handbrake (which is way better on Mac than Windows for some reason) which does the job admirably. This makes it easy to take movies with me on my iPhone or iPod.

Digital movies: I don’t really create movies but I must say Apple’s iLife suite has some pretty cool tools. iDVD and iMovie works great, even though it is kind of time consuming to do.

Internet: I always use Mozilla Firefox, and never Internet Explorer. However, some sites don’t display correctly on Firefox, in which case I use Google Chrome. I will give IE8 a chance once its beta releases become more stable, and the web isn’t broken while using it. Safari is a joke, regardless of OS.

Office productivity: I use Microsoft Office 2007 on my PC (and Mac using VMWare). It is actually a great release of Office and I recommend it. Office for Mac 2008 is an absolute joke. It interface is poor and some complex documents and spreadsheets lose functionality. Even though I still have it installed, I would not recommend it.

My primary email is a Gmail account which I use in its standard free guise. I use its IMAP and forwarding abilities to forward to my work email addresses which save me lots of time. Why anyone would pay for a ISP email address these days is beyond me. I use Outlook 2007 and Thunderbird for email management.

My main social networking service is Facebook which I prefer for its uncluttered design. Also, the Facebook app on the iPhone is simply stunning, and should be a yardstick for all mobile apps. I have also recently started using twitter more and more. (@mpieters)

I use Outlook 2007 and iCal to manage my schedule. To keep the two in sync I use a great tool called Plaxo. Plaxo also syncs your address books, so that all your computers and PIM apps are up to date. Great service, I really hope they don’t start charging me to use it.

Security: I find Vista and Windows 7 pretty secure, so I always keep my UAC on, even though it can be irritating. I use AVG Free Antivirus 8, and Windows Defender. On my Mac I don’t use any security software, which I really appreciate. I am curently testing Microsoft’s new free antivirus suite, and I will switch to it eventually I guess. So far I still believe AVG Free is the best option.

Utilities: On my Mac I use VMware fusion daily (this is a Windows world, despite what Apple might tell you). I use Adium and Skype as my IM gateways. uTorrent is by far the best torrent manager, but I also do like Transmission on the Mac.

On Windows I wholeheartedly recommend a good defragmenter like Diskeeper or Defraggler. Defragler is free, quick and does the job. I don’t use a defragmenter for Mac because of the HFS filesystem which does not need it.

I always install Adobe Reader because I need to work with complex PDF files often. I use BurnerXP to burn discs and create disc images. Its free and does the job.