SSD drives… unbelievable performance.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted but life happens and kids keep me busy and I’m a little lazy about writing… okay, can’t think of any more excuses.

I’ve recently jumped into the solid state hard drive market (heretofore referred to as SSD drives). I have been reading the comprehensive Anandtech.com reviews and tests (which I recommend highly to anyone who isn’t intimidated by some really in-depth technical writing) and I’ve been wanting one for some time now. The biggest thing holding me back was the price. I’ve been waiting for them to fall under the $2 per Gig price point and it finally happened for me last month with mail-in rebates taken into account. I bought an OCZ Vertex 2 120Gig SSD from Newegg.ca and with the rebate the price, shipped and tax included was approx. $190.

The drive arrived and I installed it quickly. First impressions… man, are SATA drives in general ever a lot easier to install than in the old PATA IDE days. Mount the drive in an empty bay with 4 screws, connect a spare drive power connector which is keyed for zero chance of a mistake, and connect the keyed SATA cable for the same ease and lack of problems.

I then booted the computer with my Windows 7 install disk in the optical drive and installed Windows 7 amazingly quickly. I do a lot of re-installs for people who have thrown their hands up in frustration with a corrupted / infected computer so I’m well aware of how long it takes to install Windows on a standard SATA drive, install all the security updates and reinstall programs. Let’s just say that on a 2 year old Dell desktop computer with a Quad-core processor and 6Gig of system RAM the whole routine would have taken 4 or 5 hours if I really went at it and was monitoring the updates (those .net framework updates seem to take forever to install) and rebooting and launching Windows update immediately after every reboot. With an SSD drive installed the whole install, update and reinstall programs process took less than 2 hours! I could literally watch the progress bar move from start to end of the .net framework updates! Needless to say I’m thoroughly impressed with the performance of my new SSD drive.

The computer seems new and snappier to use as well. I can boot the system from a cold boot state and sit there, watch it boot and be using it within 30 seconds. Before the SSD I’d hit the power button walk away to do something else and then come back once the desktop was up and running. It got so I was leaving the computer on all the time just because I was too impatient to let the system boot to use it. Now I power it off all the time because restarting the system is so painless!

Now for the downside… it happened last night. My daughter was using the computer and asked me to look at it because “FIrefox wouldn’t start”. The cursor responded to the mouse and clicks seemed to happen onscreen but nothing would launch and neither ctrl-alt-esc nor ctrl-alt-del would do anything. I powered off the system by holding in the power button for a couple of seconds and then tried to power on the system. It just sat there at the Dell splash screen and then booted into Windows repair mode eventually telling me that Windows was unable to repair itself. I rebooted the system and entered the BIOS only to see that the SSD drive was not registering as installed in the system. I swapped SATA cables and tried different power connectors to no avail. The SSD was DOA! I called Newegg.ca customer service today and they gave me an RMA number and were excellent in general. I’ll definitely continue to look for deals on their site.

The courier just picked up the SSD and Newegg will be shipping me a replacement. If that drive fails then I’m not sure if I’ll be buying another OCZ drive but I’m not giving up on SSDs at all. Why? Because re-installing Windows 7 last night and doing all the updates and re-installing programs took me until after midnight on the standard SATA drive… I’m totally spoiled by the speed of the SSD and I don’t think I can go back to using a non-SSD system now…

I’ll keep you posted on how things go once the replacement drive arrives. Until then…

Windows Live Writer… who knew!

I’m writing this using the new “beta” refresh of the Windows Live Essentials release. Now, it’s beta but only in the sense that Microsoft wants to work out any bugs before stamping this ready for prime time but I’ve yet to find anything wrong with it.

To be honest this is the first time I’ve even given this portion of the Live Essentials software a look. Up ‘til now I’ve always installed the Live Essentials suite sans Tool bar and Parental controls and not bothered to even open Live Writer. I’ve just now discovered what I’ve been missing out on.

If you have a personal blog of just about any type (mine happens to be on WordPress but all the others are covered with this software) this is one of the easiest ways to contribute content to your blog. I’ve always logged into the dashboard of my wordpress account to check readership stats and then added content in the native screens within my account settings. I can easily imagine that adding content will be easier (and thus more often?) with a single click of the program shortcut on my desktop I’m instantly adding blog posts.

As stated above… the real test will be if I actually add more content more often because it’ll be easier. I guess time will tell.

That’s Froyo… not Frodo!

I’ve been on a bit of an Android bender for the last couple of days. It started a while ago when I received my Milestone in the middle of February but the Google IO conference really has my blood up. I can’t wait for the Android update to version 2.2 to hit my phone… code named Froyo (short for Frozen Yogurt… Google seems to have a penchant for naming things after deserts).

When my Milestone arrived it had shipped with Android version 2.0.1 and I liked it a lot. Then in the middle of April Motorola made version 2.1 available. As much as I loved my phone when it shipped there were small things that bugged me about it and 2.1 solved a lot of those problems. I jumped at installing it mostly compelled by the promise of much better battery life and an option to add more screens to load all those app shortcuts onto. I was very happy with the 2.1 upgrade and to be honest wasn’t even yearning for the next update… until I saw the stream of Day 2 at the Google IO conference where Android 2.2 was unveiled!

The least compelling of all the updates is probably to the GUI… the notification bar has been tweaked and is a little more customizable. Nice but not a reason to be updating…
Getting better is the announcement of tethering and wifi hotspotting built into the OS! Now this is big. I’ve loved being able to tether my phone to my laptop on the go when I needed a connection on a bigger screen but it involved a third party app and if I wanted to connect to a secure site I had to have a paid version of that app. With this built into the OS it saves the cost of the third party app and the wifi hotspotting will be unbelievably handy travelling with the family when my daughter wants to connect her iPod Touch to check in with her friends when we are on vacation. I want this NOW!
External storage for applications is added and I can’t believe this wasn’t in the original. I actually got the message the other day that I was low on storage and I thought there was no way with a 16gig memory card that I was out of room already. That’s when I found out that apps can only install to the phone’s internal memory! I need this feature as soon as possible…
Flash! I know Steve Jobs and Apple seem to be trying very hard to convince every one of their customers that flash is unimportant but I don’t care if it is or isn’t… if I come across a web site that has flash I’d like the option to view it please… and thanks to Android 2.2 I’ll be able to.
Finally and probably most importantly… performance. Who doesn’t want a free performance upgrade. Granted, no one has seen a finished version of this upgrade yet but if Google is to be believed then we should get a fast phone once the update ships. Heck, even if it feels the same but delivers on the other features I’ll be happy.

Google TV… FTW!

Day 2 of Google IO and I’m STOKED! I’ve been espousing the advent the convergence of computing/home theatre/home media for a few years now. So much so that friends and family mostly either humour me, ignore me, or… the one’s with some tech savvy… argue that Microsoft tried this over and over again and have failed repeatedly. My response (up ’til now) has been that Microsoft failed not because the vision of tech/livingroom convergence is flawed… but because there hasn’t been the ability to bring this all together seamlessly for the non-tech geek. Apple has tried with AppleTV… and even in Apple circles (read that “fanboys”) it’s acknowledged that AppleTV is a whole lot of cash-suck and not a lot of win for a company that has gotten used to winning with every product they release.

Enter Google! Today’s announcement that Google TV will be out by 4th quarter this year integrated into Sony TVs is a big deal. Google has partnered with Sony, Dish Network, Logitech, Intel, and Best Buy to deliver Google TV capability to the consumer chain. Now, I won’t get into what every facet of this deal means but I will express some hopes…
1) I’d love to see Sony come out with a firmware upgrade for the PS3 that brings Google TV all of us that love the media capabilities of our Playstations.
2) Please don’t leave Canadians out in the cold waiting for this to be available in our country… I don’t expect it to roll out at the same time as in the U.S. but I want to see this integration with Bell ExpressVu (supplied by equipment from Dish Network).
3) Android phones can control the Google TV box (or integrated gear) for searching what you want to watch… if Google knows anything… it’s search!

They also announced easier access to web based content and they aren’t just talking about YouTube (in which they have a very vested interest). This is going to be huge for content providers that aren’t in the main stream media business and I can see what happened with the music industry all over again. Those traditional content providers that insist on clinging to their old business model will not survive… those that adapt to the new convergence of web / new media / tv will prosper. It’s time to choose your sides… but if history has proven anything it’s open source content and technology available to all that always wins over closed content and hardware… think systems that force you to use their software/hardware to watch their content.

I’m looking forward to a new media experience thanks to Google.
If you’d like some info directly from Google check out:

http://www.google.com/tv

I’ve signed up for the notifications and I can’t wait for this to happen fast enough!

Androids are better!

I’ve really become a huge fan of the Android OS on my Motorola Milestone (that’s a Droid to those of you from the U.S.). I’ve yet to pay for an app… but there are a couple I’m leaning toward upgrading to the paid versions. Some have become indispensable and I really have a hard time understanding how I managed my online/electronic life without a smartphone up ’til now. That, most of all, speaks to how compelling this device is to me.

The key to making an Android device work for you is a Google account. I’ve set up Milestones for others who (for whatever reasons they may have) decided that they don’t want a Google account and prefer to keep using either Yahoo mail, or Hotmail/Live mail, or an ISP email account. Regardless of why… it is drop dead easy to setup an Android device if you use that Google account regularly. Turn on the device, enter your gmail username and password at the prompt and all of your mail and contacts instantly flow into the device in less than a minute. It borders on magical… impressive indeed.

I know other device manufacturers offer similar features and ease of use but each of the others (hello Apple / Microsoft) ties you to their software / platform. Using Android means you aren’t tied to iTunes to manage your media on the device. You aren’t forced to install the zune software… you tether the device (in my case the Milestone) either via a USB cable or wirelessly (Apple has yet to be able to offer this feature although it’s rumoured for OS 4 on the iPhone) and the device shows up as drive that can be accessed via drag and drop for both getting media on or off the device. No software to install… this is not only elegant it’s the way it should be for any portable device. No matter what computer I am using… Apple / Windows / Linux … I should be able to access and mange the device. Android is the only major smartphone OS that offers this functionality… and it’s for this reason above all others that I love my Milestone!

I’ll be back soon with recommended apps and some tips and tricks if you’ve got yourself an Android device!

Media servers made even easier…

I’ve mentioned before about using the Playstation3 as a front end for a media server to a home theatre system. I’ve even taken the time in a previous post to list steps on how to get Windows Media Player (WMP) to show up in the XMB menu of the PS3 as a media server. Well, it’s now even easier than that…

A few days ago my wife was asking me if “that computer in the corner of the basement has to be running all the time?”. I explained that the computer was our backup system/media server that she takes for granted each day and yes, it has to be running all the time. The fact was I had set up that server 2 years ago as an experiment of sorts. I had heard about “FreeNAS” and wanted to see if it was worthwhile or not. I had an old computer kicking around that I was going to strip for parts so before cannibalizing it I decided to give FreeNAS a try.

The project worked so well that I had pretty much forgotten about the system. I had put 2 320gig drives and a 500 gig drive into an old antec case with an up to date power supply to try and diminish the electrical foot print of the device. I had gone to the trouble of tracking down a compact flash (CF) ide drive adapter because FreeNAS fits onto a 32mb CF card and I happened to have one of those laying around from the days when Canon cameras used the CF memory format and the card supplied with the camera was of the fairly useless (up until now) 32mb variety. By installing to the CF card you free up all of the hard drive space for storage and backup purposes.

My system had worked perfectly for at least a couple of years and still was but it was bugging me that I had the server running and a windows system as well for serving media to the PS3. FreeNAS is linux based (freebsd) and I’d yet to find a way to get the PS3 to “see”  the FreeNAS server. My wife’s question got me thinking that I should check into the latest version of “FreeNAS” to update the system and see what functionality they’ve added in the last couple of years. This is more a testament to how well the FreeNAS software works… I’ve not had to even think about the system in the last two years and I’m a firm believer in the old adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

Upon checking the FreeNAS site ( http://www.freenas.org/ ) I found the latest stable build was dated May 23, 2008 and when it comes to a backup server “stable” is a good word to look for. I was happy to see that they have indeed added media server functions to FreeNAS that makes it very ( and I can’t stress “very” enough ) easy to stream media content from your FreeNAS server to a PS3. I won’t get into the specifics of setting up the FreeNAS software because there are several very good tutorials already out there and I’d just be repeating them ( probably not as effectively as well ).

Once the FreeNAS software is installed login to the system admin page and in the “System” section enable “UPnP”. Then select the location of the media files you wish to share with the PS3 (seperate entries for video, pictures, and music each). Next under “Profile” select Playstation3 (there’s selections for Xbox 360 as well… leave all port settings at their default value) and then click save and restart the system.

Now in your PS3 XMB menu under video (also under pictures and music) you’ll see the “MT” media server icon. MT stands for MediaTomb which is linux based media server software that FreeNAS is using to stream your shared folders on the server to your PS3. Once you’ve navigated in the XMB menu through the MediaTomb file structure to the shared folder you can choose to either play your media from that location or copy any media there to your PS3 using the “triangle” button on the PS3 controller and then selecting “copy”. This is especially handy for HD content that could bog down a non-gigabit network. You have upgraded the hard drive on your PS3… right?

Another topic for another day.

Chrome for Vista…

One of the best things to happen for Vista in the last couple of days is Chrome. For those not in the know… the good people at Google have released yet another free product. I’m a big fan of Google’s give-aways… Picasa being a great example (I’ll talk in length about Picasa in a later post). Chrome is an open source web browser. It’s an alternative to the bundled Internet Explorer (IE 7 included with Vista and available as a much recommended upgrade to XP) or Firefox.

I’ve been a big proponent of Firefox ever since it was in beta pre-1.0 days and I still use it a lot. I have to admit that I was skepticle that Chrome could dislodge Firefox from the top of my favoured browser list but it’s slowly doing just that. First of all, like many of Google’s products it’s listed as “beta” meaning not quite ready for primetime. This is a bit of an inside joke for a lot of Google stuff because Gmail has been around for years and it’s still listed as beta. (Gmail is yet another great Google offering.).

Here’s what Chrome gets right and why it’s so right for Vista. Memory management. This was the achilles heel of Firefox 2.0 and something that the developers of Firefox worked very hard at fixing when they rolled out 3.0 (that’s the current version of Firefox and if you haven’t upgraded to it yet you should). There’s an excellent review at Anandtech ( http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3398 ) that has an indepth test of the memory used compared to other browsers but the big surprise is that when multiple tabs are closed leaving one page viewed Chrome gave back almost all the system ram used by the other tabs… IE, Firefox, and Safari did not behave as well. Any program that gives memory back to Vista is going to result in a better perfoming and more stable Vista.

It’s not just memory management though… some of the best reasons to use Chrome are the features. The home page is a tiled list of the most frequently visited pages… so you aren’t stuck with just one home page as a starting point. The tabs are at the top of the window and there is no menu bar… this makes a much cleaner workspace and simplifies the look and use of the program. There are a couple of buttons to the right of the URL bar that access all setup and customization features leaving the back, forward and reload buttons where they should be to the left of the URL bar (unlike the overly funky IE 7 which seems to be trying too hard to be cool). Add to all this the ability to search not only the page you are on but also your history which allows you to quickly find something you were looking at a couple of days ago but forgot to bookmark and it’s a timesaver too. This could have saved me some headaches last week… Chrome, where were you when I needed you.

When installing Chrome it asks to import your passwords, cookies, and settings from Firefox (or IE if that’s what you use) and it does so flawlessly. One of the only wants I have with Chrome is that it lacks the customization of Firefox via add-ons. This is what keeps Firefox at the precarious top of my list for now. Add-ons allow a user to customize Firefox to their liking… if you’d like a feature or customization chances are someone has developed one already. Most Firefox users have a list of  must-have add-ons that they automatically install when doing a clean install of windows/firefox. Adblock should be on everyone’s list and it’s at the top of my wishlist for Chrome.

Even though this program was released just days ago I’ve had zero problems with it and I recommend it highly. Try it out and let me know what you think…

More about media…

I touched on using a Playstation 3 as a media centre for a home theatre and I stand by that assertion. Now, here’s a Vista tip to segue us back towards computers without leaving the home theatre topic too quickly. Here’s a few simple steps to use your Vista machine (this’ll work with XP as well as long as you have upgraded windows media player to version 11) as a media server accessed by the PS3.

Make sure that “Media Server Connection” is enabled under the “Settings” menu of the XMB (X = cross media bar) on your PS3. Then launch Windows Media Player (WMP) and hit the “Alt” key to unhide the menu bar. Select “Tools” and then “Options”. This will open the options dialogue window and then click on the “Library” tab. Click on the “Sharing Media” button and then check the box beside “Share My Media to:”. After clicking the share media button the window will refresh and there will be a “Settings” button… click it and name your shares. Select “Okay”.

Now click on the “Monitor Folders” button and select the folders that you would like to share between the PS3 and WMP. WMP will build a library of these files… close this window and by this time media sharing will have found your PS3 as an unknown device (assuming you have your PS3 turned on and and connected to your network via a common router… using the same router your Vista machine is connected to ensures a common subnet mask which is fancy network jargon for “they’ll be able to see each other”). Click on the “Sharing Media” button and there should now be listed an “Unknown device”. Highlight the unknown device by left clicking it once and then click the “Allow” button to share media with this device. If you are using the built in windows firewall media player  will have made the alterations to the exceptions list to allow media streaming between the devices. If you are using a third party firewall like Norton’s internet security or McAfee or some other then you may have to go into the settings of these firewalls and manually add WMP to allow media to stream via your network.

Now click “Okay” out of all the WMP options windows and trot back to your PS3. There should now be a windows logo icon under the video, music, and pictures menus in the PS3′s XMB. Navigate through them using your PS3′s controller and enjoy.

Some home theatre stuff…

Enough about computers… for now. I thought I’d talk a bit about my new favourite piece of home theatre hardware. Playstation 3! I love this device. I originally bought it just for the Blu-Ray player but I was quickly blown away by everything else it can do. Without sounding too much like an infomercial (“it dices, it slices!”) I believe this is the best bang-for-the-buck media center available.

First, it’s a Blu-Ray player… okay, that one is obvious. But, let’s expand on that thought. It’s the best Blu-Ray player out there at this time. It is one of the only ones that has ethernet (it’s had this from the start as it’s required for the gaming part of the system when no other home player could say the same) and a hard drive… again required as part of the gaming system and an integral part of the PS3. These two key features allow this Blu-Ray player to be updated with the latest features and Blu-Ray specs as Sony rolls them out. It’s the ultimate future proof purchase. As long as Blu-Ray is around the PS3 will be relevant. On top of all that it upscales regular DVDs as well.

It easily streams media from a computer either wirelessly (built in… no add-on required) or via the ethernet port (gigabit, btw). Now, HD content will not stream flawlessly from a computer to the PS3 wirelessly but hook up an ethernet cable and it’s HD goodness in all it’s glory… especially if you’ve got a gigabit router. It plays just about any video file format you can throw at it as well… you torrenters will know what I’m talking about.

Finally, I recently purchased a Canon HF10 HD camcorder that records to SD flash cards. All I have to do is connect the HF10 to the PS3 via one of the available USB ports on the front of the PS3 and I can watch all my video shot in all it’s 1080p goodness. I don’t even need the tiny remote that comes with the camcorder because the PS3 controller controls the HF10 as far as fast forward, rewind, pause, play and stop are concerned. It doesn’t get better than that!

It has optical out for audio to your home theatre audio (I’ll discuss audio in more depth later) and it connects to your HD tv of choice via HDMI…  now if all the above wasn’t enough to convince you a Playstation 3 has to be part of your home entertainment nirvana then add to all of that a kick butt gaming system as well.

I love my PS3!

It’s time to leave XP behind…

Okay, I seem to be the lone voice in the wilderness but between the main stream press requrgitating rumors and the Apple/PC (blatantly false) advertising and finally word of mouth has led to an over-whelming perseption that “Windows SUCKS!”.

First let me start off by saying that I own and operate multiple operating systems. I have 2 Windows XP machines, 2 Linux machines, 1 Power PC based OS 9 machine and an Intel based Mac OS X system as well. On top of those I have a computer running Vista (SP1) and a system running Windows 7 (64 bit).  Of all these I prefer the Win7 system.

Linux is great… but most people don’t want the learning curve involved with a new operating system and most Linux distros still require a little knowledge when it comes to adding a scanner or a printer or such. I find Linux to be an excellent operating system but you have to almost go “full immersion” into using it so that you don’t have Windows on which to fall back.

Now, I’ve been using Apple computers for a long time but I’ve never understood this perception that they are “intuitive and easier” to use. If you’ve only used Windows you can expect to have to invest some time to learn your way around. Doing anything other than checking email or using the internet will require adapting to the Apple way of doing things and it isn’t always obvious how those tasks are accomplished. If anyone does decide to “switch”… get a two button mouse and ditch the Apple mouse… they SUCK!

So, that leaves us with Vista or Windows7. Okay, XP is still there but really… it’s old. It’s has significant security problems that require constant attention via windows update and a handful of third party security apps. Vista and Win7 require none of this… especially the 64 bit versions. Yes, Vista and Windows7 still has to be updated regularly but it’s now accomplished automatically via an update applet and not the old Windows update site using IE… yuck!!! Vista doesn’t jump out and grab you… and this may be why Microsoft has had a hard time with the negative perception associated with Vista. The best parts of Vista are evident when using it for a while. The context search of the Start menu is worth going to Vista all by itself. In fact, this great little search box is in every explorer window in Vista which makes not having to have nested folders to sort untold amounts of data, pictures, and music a joy. Windows 7 has improved on the gui even more with a much improved Windows Explorer (libraries are fantastic once you get used to how they work) and the task bar is so good it’s hard to go back to Vista let alone Windows XP!

Both Vista and Windows 7 have  very good user interfaces, are far more secure than XP, and don’t require a significant amount of  time and patience to learn to use. I can tell you this… try going back to XP after using Vista (let alone Win7) for a while and you’ll understand immediately why the latest versions of Windows are a great choice and not to be avoided. Add to this that if you choose to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional you get a free copy of XP to run in a virtual machine to take care of any legacy programs you might have trouble running in the latest Microsoft OS’s and it’s a no-brainer… Windows 7 is an awesome choice….