As I mentioned in my previous post, I have installed the latest offering from Microsoft, Windows 7, onto my primary machine.  This machine is my most important machine, and had not been reformatted since the initial Vista installation over two years ago.  However, with the amount of software that has been installed, modified, and uninstalled, the machine was becoming slower than it should be.  I say should be due to the fact that the hardware, despite being two years old, is still cutting edge.  Thusly, I decided to take the plunge.  It bothers me to purchase an operating system for some reason (probably because I think that if you spend the money on a machine, the o/s should be free), but I would rather do that then steal it because I do not like the uncertainty of having it fail when I need it most.  I will have to purchase another copy for my laptop in the near future as well.

Prior to installation, I disconnected all the other hard drives I have in my system lest Windows trys anything funny.  Chance favors the prepared mind.  In so saying that, the Windows 7 installation was easy.  Almost too easy.  Everything was done automatically and I had to go back and make sure that everything was in there.  So far, it is quick…but there is no software on the machine yet.  Its getting there though, slowly but surely.  I have turned off all the “enhancements” because I like the classic look, and I also like to get all the speed that I can out of my computer.  The feel is very similar to Vista and there is not a hard learning curve attached to Windows 7.  In particular, one thing that stood out was the fact that all those horrid, silly, annoying pop up windows that plagued Vista have all but disappeared in Windows 7.

The networking has been streamlined and seems to run much better as well.  I’m not sure what improvements that they made from a technical standpoint – but yes, it works well and it seems like the throughput is much smoother.

One thing that has always bothered me about Windows is the file transfers.  When copying large amounts of data, Microsoft has elected to base the copy time on the number of files, rather than the total size.  For people copying a few files this is not a big deal, but I tend to move hundreds of gigabytes at a time.  It looks like they have fixed this!  Time to break out the party hats.  As an aside, the copying speed has not changed much, if at all (though you cannot expect the operating system to compensate for the speed (or lack thereof) of the hardware).

So far, Microsoft has got it right and Windows 7 could be their best effort to date with respect to an operating system.  I have no problems giving credit where credit is due, because I will also criticize when it is warranted as well.  So – good job Microsoft!

Next up is the codec installation.  I have found that the K-Lite Codec Pack is the best option.  I use the full version (there are standard, lite, and mega versions available) and I have had zero problems with it.  In fact, it has even made codecs work on machines where they previously crashed.  Included with this version is a copy of Media Player Classic.  It is a small piece of software that you can run instead of Windows Media Center.  Because the codecs are all installed properly, everything plays in this tiny little piece of software flawlessly.

After I settled on the codec installation, I installed the AVS4YOU suite of products (some of them).  I’ll give another shout out to this company as well for making an affordable suite of products – that for a small fee ($59.00) – offers lifetime upgrades.  I purchased these products two years ago and I have easily gotten full value for my hard earned dollar.  I will present a formal review of their product suite sometime in the future, but in the interim, if you do any kind of audio/video editing, ripping, or conversion, then this is where you must start.

I installed Nero 7 Burning ROM next.  While Ahead.de’s current offering is Nero 9, I have played with it and have found no discernable difference between the versions from a technical standpoint.  Version 7 simply runs quicker than the newer one.  I do not understand why the installation size changes so much from version to version.   They both do the same thing, and if version 9 does the same things as version 7, they will both run great.  Call the size difference an enigma I suppose.

Continuing on, the Adobe CS3 suite of products was next on my list.  For image and video production, nothing on the market today beats Photoshop and Premiere.  While they can have a steep learning curve attached to them, the investment of time is well worth it.  Some of Adobe’s offerings, such as Encore and Soundbooth, lag behind the competition still.  Others, like Acrobat, are horribly bloated.  Yet all in all, CS3 is a top notch suite that does everything you ask of it (notwithstanding that endorsement, I did not install Acrobat, Encore, or Soundbooth).

Office 2007 was installed next.  I am very familiar with the intricacies of Office, but 2007 is a little different.  Microsoft took the interface in a vastly different direction than its predecessors, so I have a bit of a learning curve ahead of me here.  The jury is still out as to whether or not I like it…time will tell.  If not, I can always install the old version.  The interface is easy, and novice users will like it.  Us old birds who grew up when WordPerfect 5.1 (for DOS) was the universal standard sometimes need a bit of prodding to change out of our old ways into newer ones.

This time, I am doing away with MSN and AOL completely and installing Pidgen.  I have always liked this software and run it everywhere except on my main machine.  That changes now.  I have never been a fan of bloatware and both of those chat clients installed ate up far too much system resources for my liking.  When I first started using them they were decent enough – but as I have squawked about many times, today’s software has become bloatware.  Inefficient coders thinking that the speed and power of the computers these days can cover their errors.  Imagine – just imagine – how fast the computers would run if the coding of today was as super tight as it had to be in years past.  Anyways, Pidgen is small, allows for multiple IM platforms, is simple and easy to use.  It also includes a spell checker!

It is now time to plug in the hard drives that I had previously disconnected.  These include 3 x 500 GB HDDs, 1 x 1.5 TB HDD, and a 4.5 TB E-SATA RAID-5 array.  I am curious to see if the machine takes a performance hit having all those drives connected, though by rights it should be a small one if any.  As they are all SATA 2.0 7500 RPM, things should still run quite adequetely.  One thing I can say though, and all us geeks know it, is that the USB drives perform like a dogs breakfast.  They run slow, and the more that you connect the slower they run.  I have a significant amount of USB drives that I am going to convert over to E-SATA because I do not like the performance hit that they take.

Now that the hard drives are all hooked back up, and the machine is back where it should be, things are starting to feel somewhat more normal.  I.T. guys generally tend to fret when their main computer is in disarray, and I am no exception.  I do not like it and it makes me uncomfortable.  We like a certain order to things.  Now that the computer is well on its way I can turn my attention to some domestic duties.

Today, Geocities was shut down.  Geocities was an institution.  Those of us who have been surfing the Internet for a long time remember it fondly.  If you wanted to publish a website, Geocities was where you went.  It was quick, it was easy, and did not require you to know much HTML or Javascripting.  Mind you, this was back in the day that HTML coding was done in Notepad or some other text editor.

While I never had a Geocities website (I have always published on my own domain, quite sporadically until about a year ago), I have surfed to probably hundreds, if not thousands of them.  I would jump from community to community, webring to webring.  These were the days before Wikipedia, or Flash.  The days of dialup…the early nineties…waiting for websites to appear…staying up until all hours of the night…the Internet was a collection of hobbyists…there was no commercialization, except for the porn sites…

We complain about the lack of speed now, but we were happy with 56k.  It was ok for a page to take 20 seconds to load.  Now our attention span has decreased that if that page takes more than 5 seconds to appear, we are gone.

Those were the days.

Most people have never heard of Marin Soljačić.  He is a physicist of Croatian descent at M.I.T. who, along with his team, invented wireless non-radiative energy transfer.  Essentially, to a layman such as you and I, wireless power.  For his work, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

Approximately one hundred years ago, Nicola Tesla begins theorizing that wireless power is achieveable.  It was his idea to transmit electricity wirelessly over long distances, as the concept of the power grid had not yet been conceived.  He even went so far as to build a 100 ft. tower in New York, the Wardenclyffe Tower.  Unfortunately, he was unable to complete his experiments due to monetary issues.

Enter Professor Soljačić.  He would not have pursued his idea if it was not for his wife having a cell phone with a low battery.  It was constantly beeping at night keeping him awake, and during one of those fruitful nights he thought that there has to be away to charge the cell phone without plugging it in.  And so the experiments began.

As for the technology itself, I think it is best explained by Eric Giler.  He is the chief executive at Witricity, the company formed to bring the new technology to the marketplace.

Microsoft is venturing in the world of the free, and has announced that they will be making a version of their popular office software available for free sometime early in 2010.  This represents a very marked shift in their corporate strategy.  Microsoft Office is one of the largest moneymakers for the company, accounting for approximately $20 billion dollars in sales annually.

This is great news for personal users, who would be more than likely not to purchase a new copy of office every couple of years.  They would rather stick with their copy of Office ‘95 (or 97 or whatever) because there is no fundamental need to upgrade.  I don’t think Microsoft will lose much here.  As we all know, piracy is rampant and I’m sure that this announcement will curb that somewhat as well.  There is no need to steal something that is being given away for free.

The complimentary version of Office 2010 will run within a browser (and somewhat surprisingly, Mozilla and Firefox will be supported natively).  Microsoft will never be the corporate darling of the mass majority of users, yet their software is used by these same people worldwide.  Sometimes, I think that is a tad hypocritical, for if you do not like the company (and bitch about their products constantly) then perhaps you should not use them.

In a different track, the darling corporation of Internet users, Google, is pursuing a different track.  Their version of Google Apps now has a yearly charge of $50.00 (though the free version still remains).  It seems that they are slowly evolving into a more Microsoft-like corporation.  I do not condemn them, however.  The simple fact is that a company cannot survive by giving everything away for free.  If you live by the free, you die by the free.

Microsoft and Google are now both aggressively pursuing the corporate (or B2B) market.  Microsoft has known for years, and as Google is now finding out, that while providing their products for little or no cost to consumers, they have to profit significantly through the corporate sector to survive.  They can make money through “free” by selling advertising and so forth, but they cannot do this forever.  Eventually another company will take over.  Good examples of this are Google taking over from Yahoo, or Facebook taking over from MySpace who took over from Friendster.

On a day to day basis, I do not see too many things that strike me as unique.  Today, I saw not one, not two, but three things that I probably will not see again.

First off, the Michael Jackson Memorial at the Staples Center.  I, along with presumeably over a billion people, watched at least part of the tribute.  It was produced by the same gentleman who does the Grammy Awards and the Oscars, and the promoters were AEG.  The tribute was touching (forgive the irony), with many performers singing and remembering Michael as arguably the greatest entertainer who ever lived.  Short of having the President there, it was a heartwarming, solemn, and worthwhile show that every network carried live.

Secondly…I saw the Google car today!  A curious little thing, I recognized the little tan Toyota Echo almost immediately due to the large four foot pole mounted atop its roof.  The pole has numerous high speed cameras attached to it, filming for Google maps (the street view).  There has been controversy over this initiative, as some people can be clearly identified (and likely, in places where they should not be).  To me, if you are in public, the right to privacy is null and void.  You can be photographed by anyone at any given time.  Google is not singling you out, they are not out to exploit you or your perceived privacy.

Onto the third thing.  I was emailed a link today to a Japanese game that even by their standards is bizarre.  I never thought I would put the words Horny Nazi Tank Girls together.  Yet, in Japan this is actually a video game, and they are porting it over to the X-Box 360 soon.  Now, of all the concepts and ideas one could divine for a video game, I never would have thought of having semi-naked Nazi women pretending to be tanks and planes be one of them.  The native title of the game is Moe Moe Niji Taisen Deluxe, for those who are curious to find some videos and photos online.

Recently, I was afforded the opportunity to pilot a new piece of software called NetSupport.  NetSupport is a remote management and monitoring software that can be installed transparently on any number of PC’s.  It offers up a number of different features from firewalling to remote monitoring (also known as “shadowing”) as well as the opportunity to broadcast messages, lessons, or videos to multiple PC’s from a single station.

The software was very easy to install, and network deployment was seamless.  I had the software installed and configured on both the host and remote pc’s within an hour.  It is a small program, approximately ten megabytes.  Once installed, I explored the program and read through the documentation.  The documentation available is excellent.  Weighing in a 280+ pages, it is easy to follow and thorough.  There are multiple screen shots throughout the manual.

The software also gathers real time hardware and system data.  We can pull the information out into a table as necessary, which is great for inventory purposes.  The training module is something that I still have to explore in depth, despite it not having any applicable value from an Information Technology perspective.  From a teaching standpoint it is the crown jewel of this program.  Not only can you lock the client computers down so that they can only browse the websites that you want them to see (or alternatively, you can block any website), but it does full screen capturing and monitoring.  You can see what every PC is doing at any given time.  You can also lock the computer, shut it down, or reboot it as you see fit.  For paranoid micro-managers who feel the constant need to monitor their staff, they will love this software because it can be easily configured in such a fashion that the end user will never know that it is running on their PC.

The training module also allows the person in charge to develop and remotely deploy lesson plans on the client PC’s.  The end users can follow along as the instructor uses NetSupport to enhance his (or her) lessons.  This is the one piece of the software that I need to work with more to get a better grasp on how to use it.  Some of the features include streaming out audio and video to the PC’s, documents or photos.  Additionally you can instruct on one PC if someone needs assistance, or engage in two way chat (or more, depending).

The remote administration module is where I spent the majority of my time.  Once installed and configured, the I.T. manager can view or assume control of any PC on the LAN or WAN.  We can acquire system and software specs remotely, take full control of the client PC, deploy software, and of course monitor everything going on.

The company is based in England, and their website is http://www.netsupportmanager.com/.  As for cost, I could not tell you but I am sure it ranges depending on the number of PC’s that would have the client installed.  I have been working with a volume license for the entire company, as we have 81 separate locations to manage.

Due to my background as an I.T. Professional, I come across a lot of software.  I have found a couple of pieces that are excellent, and today I will share them below:

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is one of the best software tools in my vast library.  To date, it has found and removed every bit of malware that I have put against it.  It is small, only 2 mb in size.  The program has numerous configurable features, including auto-updating.  The free version is spectacular, and the registered version can actively protect the computer against malicious software.  The program is small, auto-updateable, and extremely thorough.  Download, install, run, and clean.  Reboot if prompted.  It’s that simple.

The second program is not free, but well worth the investment.  YamicSoft Vista Manager (or for those running Windows XP, XP Manager) is a program that allows you to fine tune Windows to the max.  Essentially, it is Crap Cleaner on steroids.  As with Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, it is extremely small, weighing in at a little over 3 megabytes.  Vista Manager has more options than Scrooge McDuck has money.  Truly, I’m not sure where to begin.  Being the gopher, I ran the program on my system.  It took approximately 38 minutes to scan through the registry, and found over 1700 problems (by comparison, cCleaner found 120).  I backed up the registry (which at 400+ mb, is larger than an entire Windows XP installation), and let Vista Manager do its thing.  My machine is noticeably faster after it was finished.  All the options that are available are explained, so that you do not click on something ambiguous by mistake.

One problem I found with Vista Manager is the Duplicate File Finder.  It is clearly designed for systems that do not have a lot of files.  I have over 1.2 million separate files, and this part of the program seemed to run extremely slow.  Oh well, regardless of that minor issue the program is very robust and I am thrilled with it.

In the United States, the digital switchover takes place early in 2009 (February 17th, to be precise).  The OTA analog frequencies will cease to function, and everything will be digital.  For some people, such as those with ATSC tuners in their televisions, will not be affected.  Neither will those people who are currently subscribing to cable and satellite services.

For those who are affected, they will need to purchase an analog to digital converter box.  These boxes are priced in the neighborhood of $60.00, but the federal government is offering a $40.00 coupon to alleviate some of the cost.  You will need to have one of these devices on each analog TV that you own.

In Canada, this transition is not scheduled to take place until August of 2011, but to the best of my knowledge that is an open date and has not been completely finalized yet.  Canadians who live near the border who pick up analog signals from the United States will no longer receive these channels after February 19th of next year.

The sale of the NTSC spectrum is going to reap billions of dollars for the United States Government.  Major players such as Google, AT&T, Motorola and others will purchase this bandwidth.  Some companies do not even know what they will do with it, but they recognize it as too valuable of a commodity to pass up.

Those who subscribe to satellite service are already enjoying the benefits of a mostly digital signal.  Cable companies in the United States are mandated to carry analog signals through 2012.  However, there is an interesting battle shaping up between the FCC and and the cable/satellite companies.  The reason is over the costs of a digital transmission and bandwidth, if it is good for the consumer, and if they can pass these costs down.  The reason to implement an early transition to digital is due to one reason:  bandwidth.

Bandwidth is all that these companies have to sell, when you look at the big picture.  If they do not have enough bandwidth, they are unable to provide such services as internet and cable (or with respect to cable, they cannot carry as many channels).  This is what is motivating the transition to digital.

An analog cable channel takes up 38.4 megabits of bandwidth.  An SD digital channel occupies only 3 megabits, and an HD digital channel is less than 9 megabits.  When a channel is converted to digital, a fair amount of bandwidth is freed up.  Imagine – the crappy weather channel takes up more than four times as much as HDNet!

The more channels that are pushed to digital is the more bandwidth that these companies can allocate to other uses, such as broadband Internet (or adding more channels).  In this age, the need for speed across the Internet is omipresent.  Applications are being developed that require as much bandwidth as we can give them.  A good example of this is YouTube.  If the bandwidth was available they could increase the bitrate of their service, allowing for a much better viewing experience.

The caveat to all of this is that people who are subscribing to basic cable with analog television sets would be required to obtain a digital cable box.  Where the FCC gets involved is determine who pays for this box.  Is is the consumer, or the cable providers?

Being a tech junkie, I’m all for digital cable (better quality, less bandwidth) and faster Internet service over analog tv service.  However, I see the other side of the coin.  I don’t know if this is the right solution or not, but what I would do is start by grandfathering digital cable into the homes.  Split the cost of the cable box between the consumer, the cable company, and the FCC.  All new subscribers would be purely digital.  At the same time, start rolling out pure digital areas in select towns and cities, and upgrade existing users using the aforementioned formula.  The cost would be about $20.00 per party.  Initally, the cable companies will take a hit but by being able to offer better services across the board, they would quickly make up that lost revenue.

I am working on a new home theater PC (HTPC).  I am using Mythbuntu as the installation, and I am going to play around and see how well it works as a multi-capture device and a media server.  I can have front-end and back-end servers, and from all that I have read, it looks very promising.  It will not, however, capture HD via component video, as the Blackmagic Series of cards are not supported.  I can put an HDTV tuner in it, however, and that will capture HD.  The faster the CPU, the more simultaneous streams that can be captured.

I will update more as I tweak the installation, and get things working smoothly.

Meanwhile, I have a few old computers here.  Pentium III’s.  If someone reading needs a free computer, please send me an e-mail to steve(dot)deryck(at)abattoir(dot)net.  We are doing nothing with them, and will eventually dispose of them.  I would like to see them go to a good home.