In a word. Absolutely.

This is a first of a series of posts I’m planning on doing that describes how my WHS, Media Library and home is setup.

I’ve been meaning to revise my media streaming capabilities of my WHS for a while now, and with a significant amount of DVD’s ripped for use with Windows 7 Media Centre, I wanted to find a way in which these could also be used remotely via an XBox 360 (in addition to the other numerous formats I’ve now got, including HD Content as MKV’s).

So I never really got TVersity running smoothly, lots of video types simply didn’t work, transcoding never worked effectively and I was getting a little disillusioned. Basically apart from the core types of files, all of my other content was only usable in the office (or other Win 7 machines dotted around the house).

So last night, I started to hunt around with the view of changing my streaming solution to the house. Hidden deep within a WHS Forum on Media Streaming, I saw PS3MS mentioned.

So off I went with for a little digging…and came to the conclusion pretty darn quickly that it needed to be given a go.

Download was small (17Mb or so) and and install was quick. As it’s Java based it automatically pulled down the JRE as part of the install as well. Once complete, I then clicked run, added my WHS Media Shares, click Save and powered up the 360.

And this is where I then sat agape at my screen watching everything I threw at the 360 (via the Video Library option) render and play perfectly with no intervention from me. No codecs, no configuration, nothing. It just worked.

Even 720P MKV files were rendered in their full glory with no issue. Even more impressive was it was running and streaming all of this happily via a wireless adapter and the server was happily running along at around 50-60% CPU utilisation.

The icing on the cake was DVD ISO Transcoding. This remarkable piece of software, again with no tweaking, will automatically read a VIDEO_TS folder and create virtual video files of all of the titles on a ripped DVD which you can then play.

Every piece of video content I now have on my WHS (and there’s in excess of 300Gb’s worth) is now fully watchable remotely via my 360.

And it’s free. Really is a no brainer…

PS3 Media Centre’s main site is here and the official forum is here. If you stream, or want to stream content, to your 360 (or PS3), I highly recommend you give it a go.

Now I have one proviso, I haven’t managed Audio quite as impressively as Video as it seems to want all music files in the same folder. I’ve got almost 30Gb’s of music so this isn’t going to happen. Will be working through this little issue shortly as I’m sure there’s away around it.

With my corporate laptop dying on me again last week, I needed a reimage. This was then duly performed by IT Support at work. The first thing on my to do list when I booted it at home was to add it to my WHS for backup purposes.

However this didn’t quite work as expected. At the end of the Connector install, I got an error stating I already had 10 computers connected to my WHS and that to add this one, I’d need to remove one. Unfortunately removing a computer from WHS also removes ALL previous backup images of said computer as well.

Now I don’t have 10 computers in the house (more like 5) however the other computers are old images of reimaged computers (my vista x64 image of my desktop now running Windows 7 for example). The problem is I *do* was to keep these at least short to mid term just in case there’s files/resources that I’ve not yet needed or restored from them.

And anyways, I was adding the SAME machine twice, with the same computer name, the same licence key etc. Why was it looking to add it as a totally new machine?

Well the answer and solution is relatively simple thankfully. Scouring the forums, there was a general annoyance at this ‘feature’ as it was causing a lot of inconvenience to everyone, especially to people who like me, prefers to reimage their machine periodically to ensure optimal performance.

Luckily the fix is simply a registry tweak: -

From the looks of it, the first time the WHS Connector software is attempted to be installed onto a desktop it creates a registry key in

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Home Server

Within this newly created key it assigns a GUID to this machine (in the “value” called GUID ironically enough).

On the WHS, each computer is tracked by its GUID. These are again listed and managed by a registry key: -

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Home Server\Transport\clients

Within this section there is a number of registry key entries, one for each of the computers managed by the WHS. If you then look at each of the keys, you’ll see the values against it show full details of each of your computers (the computer name, the Model etc).

So the fix is simple. Locate the entry under ‘Clients’ that represents the computer you’ve recently reimaged. Head back onto the computer you’re trying to add and replace the GUID registry value with this value from the WHS and reinstall the WHS Connector software.

This will then simply merge this new computer back into the existing computer account it has on the WHS as opposed to attempting to create a new one.

I’ve tried many a time to describe and show how Twitter works but a lot of my friends and family just don’t get the attraction.  In fact I’d even go as far as to say I’m regularly mocked over my twitter usage (and I’m not *that* heavy a user either!).

One example on the Saturday just gone through just demonstrates the differences between the likes of Facebook and Twitter and why it will always be viewed as an essential tool/means of communication for me. It also clearly demonstrates one particular use of Twitter that I adore.

Now, I love Facebook and I use it to keep in contact with a lot of old friends and a lot of family throughout the world who I would otherwise never really get to correspond with frequently. Twitter is truly different though in the immediacy of responses and this aspect is what clearly puts it above the other social networks with respect to interacting with your peers.

So, here I was Saturday morning, waking up in a Limerick hotel with a relatively bad hang-over. It had been a good idea at the time; A great night out on the town saying goodbye to a lot of colleagues who have recently left or would be the following week due to redundancies.

What I needed was a decent breakfast but not really living in Limerick, where could I find a great ‘greasy spoon’ in the centre of the city to have a decent fry?

A number of options were open to me:

1. Have the Hotel’s breakfast (inevitably overpriced for a buffet and probably luke-warm by the time I’d come down)
2. Ask someone in the street for a recommendation
3. Pot Luck
4. Ask my 207 followers (a number of whom would know Limerick far better than I) where a decent greasy spoon was?

I opted initially for the last one to see what I’d get back, so at 0934 Saturday morning, as I was about to check out, I tweeted “Anyone recommend a good greasy spoon in the centre of limerick??” .

Two things then happened very quickly (all within 10 minutes): -

Within 4 minutes Damien Mulley, a large presence in the blogging community here in Ireland, “ReTweeted” my question to all of his followers (all 939 of them)

5 minutes later, Alexia Golez suggested The Wild Onion on High Street. 3 minutes later Tommy Collison also recommended The Wild Onion and even supplied me with the phone number so I could ring ahead. Also two other people I don’t follow (from Damien’s follower’s) also recommended the Wild Onion.

So with four recommendations, it was sold to me. So off I went in search of The Wild Onion on the High Street.

This is a very typical use of Twitter and very often this type of interaction and usefulness of such as immediate Social Network isn’t clearly apparent. It’s in one way, a live search engine. You ask a question, and real people will answer your question or pass it onto people who will know the answer.

Suffice to say, I found The Wild Onion (which by the way I would NEVER have found had it been down to pot luck, it’s tucked away and you’d never know about it if you didn’t know about it beforehand). The food was bloody fabulous and I happily walked back to by car feeling far more human for the long drive to West Cork.

So I’ve advocated just how great Windows Home Server is many times. It’s also saved my bacon, from a backup perspective on more than one occasion.

One of the great aspects of a WHS is the ability to develop add-ins for the WHS Console. I have a number installed which extend the functionality of WHS signifcantly (the integration into Amazon’s S3 service via the Jungle Disk WHS Add-in for automatic offline storage is one for example that I rely upon greatly).

A new add-in has just been released that allows your Home Server to ‘tweet’ its Health status via Twitter. By following my WHS’s Twitter account, I can now monitor the home Server and network health irrespective of where I am.

Such a great idea and given that the alerts themselves are totally extendable, this means, add-ins, when coded correctly can alert their users of almost any issue irrespective of where they are.

My home server’s twitter account is RedDogWHS if anyone’s interested in knowing how healthy my current server and network is (although I have protected them).

You can download the WHSTweet add-in from the Home Server hacks page.

I came into my Home Office this morning to find my corporate laptop totally and utterly dead.

It was working on Friday, powered it up this morning and nothing. So this, given I’m planned on a lot this morning, was a real curve ball. However all wasn’t lost *too* much.

With the power of WHS, I had a full image of my data so could easily open my image from Friday and access the files I needed.

Email was again not too much of challenge as I have my Blackberry and WebMail.

What this did mean though was I’d need to use my newly built Windows 7 desktop for work this morning as opposed to my Vista desktop.

Overall, actually having to use it ‘properly’ for day to day work has been a pleasure. I also did discover some other fun bits whilst moving open windows around that I wasn’t fully aware of.

Windows Gestures

As Windows 7 is designed for Touch screens as well, there are a number of built in Gestures to assist users when using a touch screen interface. these also work with the Mouse (Click and then perform the gesture).

“Cut out the Clutter”
Ever had a whole heap of windows open and just wanted to clean everything up and only have the one window left showing that you're working on?

Click and ‘shake’ the title bar of the window you want left open. All others will be minimized. ‘Shake’ it again to restore your desktop to the previous (cluttered) state. Kinda cool and I think actually will become more useful that it first sounds.

I had accidentally done this a number of times and thought “What?! What did I do there, where have my windows gone?”. Now that I know it, I may well use it more often.

Jump Lists
Jump lists can also be initiated by a ‘drag’ of the Application icon on the taskbar(as opposed to a right click). Purely for touch user’s I’d say as right click is quicker (but a right click doesn’t fade in like it does with a ‘drag’).

There are a large amount of others as well, some I find I’ll use, some I won’t. Tim Sneath has a great post for Windows 7 that shows a lot of the secrets of the new UI. Check it out here.

I’m also trying out Tip 22 (The Widescreen Tip), by having my taskbar now vertical. Tim’s right, the whole design does now suit a vertical toolbar.

So I’ve always been a fan of Media Centre and although I’ve never really used it to its full potential (never had Live TV through it) I have used it sporadically on both my old Vista machine and via my 360 acting as an extender. What's stopped me from really moving to it full time, from a media playback perspective, was it’s lack of support of other 3rd party codecs (DivX, XVid etc).

However, whilst playing with Windows 7 over the last few days, I noticed something that didn’t really hit me until now.

Windows 7 out of the box now seems to support DivX and XVid formats (amongst others). All content I have on my WHS was fully playable in Windows 7 without installing ANY codecs. These formats are now able to also be able to played back in Media Centre (as opposed to Media Player).

Tonight, I’ve finally got a little time to connect my 360 to Windows 7 as a Media Extender and amazingly, all codecs can now also be played back via the Extender. I don’t believe this was ever possible prior to connecting to a Win 7 Media Centre and in addition the UI of the extender now reflects the Windows 7 UI (so I suspect the recent NXE update to the 360 also enabled it to also receive updates to the Media Centre Extender client).

All good news and another step towards me having a fully integrated Media solution at home. All I need now is for the next version of Windows Home Server (which will be based on the Windows Server 2008 R2/Windows 7 architecture) to also include Media Centre so I don’t need to keep two machines on constantly to serve media.

As I’m sure no one in the IT industry will have missed, Microsoft released their Release Candidate of Windows 7 to MSDN and TechNet subscribers a few days ago.

Well, I couldn’t resist. Having played with the beta on my old Dell Dimension a few months back and being very surprised at just how stable and complete it was, the appearance of the RC really meant it was time now to give it a proper appraisal.

So over the last few days, I decided to say goodbye to my incredibly stable and astoundingly quick Vista x64 build on my Vostro. Having ensured all aspects of the system was backed up onto my Windows Home Server, I popped the DVD in and rebooted.

Now, I’m an advocate for clean installs of O/S’s as I know a lot of people are. Upgrading O/S’s, although convenient, forces you to bring along with you all the crap you’ve installed and hoarded since the last time you installed an O/S. “No” I said to myself. Even though I’d kept my x64 install of vista relatively clean (and I was sorely tempted just before of the work involved in reinstalling and restoring all your data), it was still time for a clean out, no upgrade for me…so I formatted the 500Gb hard drive and clicked install.

Ten minutes later I was staring at my new Windows 7 desktop. Yes you read that right. TEN minutes. That’s all it took from the second I clicked ‘format’ to seeing Windows 7 boot up. I tweeted just after I’d clicked the ‘Format’ option, and then again once I was staring at a Win 7 Desktop.

NO matter what anyone says, Microsoft have to be commended for having an OS that installs so darn fast.

There are a number of sites that detail the changes of Win 7 far better than I ever could, so I’m not going to attempt to. Paul Thurrott’s WinSuperSite has a huge amount of content on Win 7. Instead I’m going to concentrate on my impressions to the changes as well as my overall experience.

Installation

Absolutely flawless. My experience is getting Vista x64 to initially recognise my Vostro’s hardware was a real struggle back in March of last year. With Windows 7, not one unknown device and everything works as you’d expect. Wireless keyboards, mice, onboard sound, networks all worked right from the go.

On my older Dell Dimension 4500 (P4, 2.4Ghz and 1Gb RAM), again installation was very quick (~15 mins), and everything worked (except sound) from the go. As soon as I logged in, Windows Update immediately started to download drivers for my sound card and sound became available (with no restart I may add).

Application Compatibility

There was one issue though when I booted up. The 32 bit version of IE 8 kept crashing the instant I opened it (64 bit IE8 was fine strangely enough). As I only needed to get to Google to download Chrome (still my preferred browser), this sufficed. However for completeness, I wanted to make sure the 32 bit version of IE8 worked. Turning on and off the InPrivate filter seemed to fix it which was rather strange. However I had also installed Office 2007 inbetween attempts to run it so I’m not sure which of these steps actually fixed it.

Chrome also had issues with the default install. However this is a known issue with a 64 bit O/S and 32 bit Chrome (although I never got it with Vista x64 it has to be said). A lot of people reported that Win 7 RC didn’t have this issue, but mine did. To fix, you simply need to change the Shortcut parameters to have the parameter “-in-process-plugins” like so: -

C:\…\chrome.exe -in-process-plugins

This resolves any startup issues with Chrome. Apart from the two issues, I’ve found no issues whatsoever so far in the applications that I run day to day.

Performance

Now this is a hard one to compare on this machine. My experience with Vista x64 has been nothing but exemplary on this system and I sometimes think if only Vista worked like this for everyone I know it wouldn’t have such a stigma attached to it. Blindingly quick and never a crash, my 64 bit install far exceeds my vista 32 bit experiences (sometimes painfully slow, error prone and to be truthful, sometimes an absolute bloody mystery as to why the hell the hard drive was spinning at a gazillion rpm’s when the machine was doing ‘nothing’). Vista really hasn’t help itself in this regard it has to be said.

My WEI has actually increased by quite an amount as well between Vista x64 and Windows 7 x64 (4.8 to 5.3). The bottleneck in Vista seemed to be my memory (4Gb of 667Mhz). In Windows 7, my memory performance is a far healthier 5.4. This clearly seems to indicate memory management in Windows 7 has had a major overhaul.

My bottleneck is now my ATI HD2600 XT 256Mb video card for gaming. As gaming is mainly done on an Xbox 360, this doesn’t concern me too much.

Unable to really compare on my Vostro, it’s a lot easier with my older Dimension 4500. Performance has increased from Vista significantly. Everything runs a lot lot quicker, even with the system’s modest specs.

The TaskBar

A lot has been said of the taskbar and I was a little cynical at first. It’s a total overhaul to the traditional task bar that has served all Windows O/S’s since Windows 95 and this is a real sea-change. Now that I’ve grown accustomed to it, it’s a serious improvement.

Now saying that, it does takes some getting used to, especially in the default settings it gets installed with (which I do prefer if I’m truthful). Once the way it works is known, it truly is a evolutionary step compared to what was there before it. How this will be changed and tweaked in future versions of Windows will be interesting.

The best way to describe it is a combination of the quick launch bar and standard windows task bar.

Below is my current taskbar (in the default behaviour at installation) and you’ll see both the applications that are ‘pinned’ to it as well as the applications that I have running.

Another mode of the task bar allows it to perform more like the current Windows Task Bar and only combine the icons when the task bar is full (as well as displaying labels): -

However I just don’t like the hybrid mode and much prefer the fully combined icon only view. I could probably write posts and posts about the Taskbar and its new behaviours. But the real great improvements are: -

• Jump Lists
• Much Improved Preview
• Aero Peek

Summary

Windows 7 is a serious improvement on Vista in almost every way. I use Vista day to day within my corporate environment and have grown accustomed to its idiosyncrasies and pitfalls. However I can see Vista getting very old very quickly now I’ve seen the improvements to the usability that has come about with the redesign in Windows 7.

Now, I should know better. Being an Architect of Enterprise Scale applications (millions of transactions, hundreds of thousands of messages a day and database tables the size you’ve never seen), I should know and preach the power of more memory.

However, I, for some crazy reason, have ignored my own instincts for a long time with respect to my own Home Server.

“It’s only storing my Audio and Video and running backups. Microsoft clearly calls out 512Mb as the recommended memory for a ‘typical’ WHS” I kept thinking. So why bother upgrading?

Well two things changed my mind: -

1. I demonstrated remote access to a colleague the other day and viewing WebGuide was really really slow
2. My WHS over the last few weeks has started to become a little more of a work horse, with some new planned blogs and sites running on it while in their design stage (resulting in both mySQL and SQL Server being required…)

So Friday just gone, I ordered 2Gb of memory online to add to the already paltry 512Mb. It arrived this morning so having just put it in, I booted the server up.

One area where performance has increased exponentially is with the Remote Console (a very cleverly disguised Remote Desktop Session). Prior to this, performance was only adequate (even before I added RDBMS’s to it). However the UI now absolutely flies with switching between the difference ‘tabs’ being almost instantaneous.

With more and more add-ins coming out for WHS, I suspect a great many people with experience the same degrading performance as they add more and more functionality to the server without being aware that simply adding more RAM will speed it up.

However, one challenge here is the fixed Sku’s of certain WHS’s (unless you build your own like I did). The HP Media Smart range of servers for instance, has no official way as yet to upgrade memory so doing so invariably invalidates your warranty. I believe they are aware of this concern though and are currently preparing an upgrade path for customers.

As a final thought, I should have done this six months ago. Knowing Windows as well as I do, I also know Windows ‘loves’ as much memory as you throw at it so if you think, or even suspect, your server/desktop is swapping to disk often, upgrade the RAM, the difference will be like night and day.

On that note, I sourced my memory from Orca in the UK. The memory was shipped within 45 minutes of me ordering it online on Friday and arrived here in Ireland on the Monday. Can’t ask for more than that.

So, I've been using WHS now since the beginning of the year and as with my previous posts on WHS, everything just 'works'.

I haven't experienced any issues and overall my network, numerous PC's and overall data storage are in a far better state than they ever were.

With the release of Power Pack 1 (and the fix for the data corruption bug), my entire photo gallery is now held natively on the server with Windows Photo Gallery accessing this directly (management of Tags, ratings etc). Prior to PP1, this was something that was risky if you had multiple drives and because of this,the photo's, until recently were stored locally on my main Vista desktop.

One aspect of my new regime that hadn't as yet been truly investigated was online backup (no real reason, just simply not enough time). However, after looking at the storage the other day, I had to be honest with myself and admit that some of that data is truly critical and irreplaceable (the 19Gb of photo's is high on that list believe me).

Yes, I duplicate everything at the moment over at least 2 disks (as I have the space) but there's still that risk of catastrophic failure. There's over 6 years of photo's there and losing them would be heartbreaking.

So I've finally taken the plunge and opted to add into my backup strategy an online portion.

One aspect that was important is obviously integration with WHS as this will always be my primary backup and storage source for all of the data held in the house.

My approach is pretty straight forward: -

• Use WHS Backup's as my primary backup strategy (and why not? As it just works *so* well)
• Use the WHS shares (with all important data duplicated over two drives) as my main storage for public and common files used by everyone in the household (Music, Photo's, Video's, Shared docs etc)
• Compliment this with off-site storage for all absolutely critical content and files on the WHS that I cannot be without in the event of having to 'start again'

This approach will give a pretty consistent approach in the unlucky event of a failure/catastrophe:-

• In the event of a Media failure (a hard disk in the WHS), remove the failed disk and replace. Absolutely no 'downtime' and all files are always available
• In the event of a desktop/laptop failure (HDD, O/S corruption etc), restore from a WHS restoration image
• In the event of a serious catastrophe, all files I can't easily obtain again will be stored offsite and can easily be restored once the WHS is back up and running again

After looking around at a number of options, I've decided to use Amazon's S3 service and Jungle Disk's WHS add-on to manage this aspect.

One of the advantages (or disadvantages depending on how the S3 service is used) is that it's not fixed price (but then it doesn't have any data limits either), and you only pay for the storage you use.

Given my strategy (restoration from offsite storage is absolutely last resort and only for critical content I can't easily re-obtain/recreate) this approach will actually me cost pretty much next to nothing on a month by month basis and will grow and scale as I need in the future.

Had I chosen to use Jungle Disk on my desktop's as my main primary backup strategy, my usage and thus cost, would I'm sure be more significant (as you do also pay for 'requests' for the data as well as putting data in and out). However, with the strategy above, I estimate storing all of my essential content will only cost me between €2-€3.50/month

So I suppose a lot of you would be asking, well this is never going to happen to me, so why do I need to backup my data so securely? Unsurprisingly as we all know, PC's are being used more and more. But then surprisingly, the absolutely lack of awareness to the importance of backups really still passes most people by.

However it DOES happen; A family member for instance, recently had GCSE grades lower than expected due to losing all of their coursework on the family computer. My good friend (Paul Hammond) came back from holiday to find his hard disks had failed. It happens. Period.

Now saying the above, I've luckily never, in all the time I've been in IT, experienced a Hard Drive failure or serious data loss. However, I've seen it happen to too many people I know and I for one, am now glad that I've finally put in place the final element to ensure I'm protected.

Microsoft is renowned for using code names for its product development and sometimes the code names are far more interesting than the final product names they become.

Well Microsoft's latest new product is a new version of their Cloud Computing technology (the current of which is Live Mesh which is in public beta). The code name for this new version? According to Information Week, it's Red Dog.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/services/saas/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=209400797

This gave me a chuckle but my good friend Paul hinted at something interesting (who ironically also works for Microsoft). I may find some some new visitors to this site whilst they look for information on "Red Dog".

So if you are someone looking for information of codename "Red Dog", I'm afraid you've lucked out but whilst you're here, by all means stay a while, take a read and welcome

For all you WHS users out there, the long awaited update (PowerPack 1) has RTM'd and can now be downloaded from Microsoft's Download centre (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1A6AEF46-DB57-401F-814F-6EFA26E7A1E8&displaylang=en).

This brings a number of advantages as well as fixing the Data Corruption bug when using applications to write data directly to the WHS Shares if multiple drives are connected.

This update also brings with it full x64 support so I can finally remove Vista's backup for my Vista Ultimate x64 install and have the machine backed up like all of my other x32 clients.

I had my hotmail account hacked this week whilst I was staying over in Limerick on Workshops.

I thought it was a little strange when I received at my Dell email, an obvious Spam message but from 'me' (and it was from me as well as the email address was my hotmail account).

However, given I was then at an offsite, I thought nothing else of it and continued to carry on with work. Until a colleague at work mentioned he'd also received an email from me...

I then got a voice mail from Paul (http://www.phammond.com) saying he believed I'd been hacked as everyone we both knew also received emails and even worse, a mutual friend of ours was apparently TALKING to the hacker on MSN Messenger as he was signed in as me...and it clearly wasn't me online as some of the responses were questionable.

Have just logged into Hotmail (after Paul kindly changed my password whilst I was unavailable) and I did indeed send an email titled "hello" to a GREAT many people. So I apologise to literally everyone I know who received an email from me.

Intriguingly, it appears I was also 'selected' to send to all 'S' emails as there's a number of "sent" emails that was for everyone who's address started with 'S', all of which I don't recognise.

Thankfully the damage probably wasn't as bad is it could have been as Paul acted swiftly to change my password for me (Thanks again Paul!). However it's still highly annoying as I'm now receiving hundreds of postmaster emails for the email addresses that are no longer valid. It's also made me incredibly angry as somehow I was hacked and I don't fully know how.

I've now set about reviewing my password 'policy' and am currently revising all of my online accounts to have a far stronger password (as yes I know, my standard password wasn't exactly strong and had been used for probably far too long).

A copy of the offending email is below and I want to clarify I'm not advocating ANYTHING to do with their shop: -

Dear friend
   we are the CYGJW company .Here is our website www.cygjw.com. we mainly sell electrical product .such as digital  cameras,mobile,LCD TV,xbox, Laptops,DV,Mp4, GPS, and so on.All items come with 12months international warranty . If you want  to buy something ,please contact us freely ,we will serve you wholeheartedly.
MSN   :  cygjw@hotmail.com
E-mail:  cygjw@cygjw.com

Although I'm a fan of Vista's SideBar, there's not *that* many gadgets that I regard as unable to live without.

However, Donavon West has just released what must be the most useful gadget for users of Windows Home Server.

His ShareMaster gadget (now compatible with x64 versions of Vista without the WHS Connector S/W installed as well) is a dream.

The gadget simply shows 6 icons that represent the main shares exposed by WHS like so: -

Clicking the icon obviously opens an explorer window at that location, but the real beauty is simply the ability to drag a file/folder onto the icon to copy it to that WHS location.

This saves a huge amount of time (open windows, mouse clicks etc) when managing the content between your workstations and the WHS.

It has become a standard gadget now on all of my vista machines.

Check out the gadget at

http://www.homeserverhacks.com/2008/04/sharemaster-for-home-server-gadget.html

Back in November I visited TechEd 2007 in Barcelona.

Overall (as always with TechEd), the trip was incredibly useful and bought much clarity to a lot of new Microsoft Technologies that we're now actively looking to use in forthcoming projects.

Whilst over there, I was also incredibly lucky enough to be a Session Feedback winner. For this I was given an HTC Touch Smart Phone running Windows Mobile 6 Professional.

Now, being a corporate BlackBerry user, I started using the new phone with a little trepidation as the simple ease of use of the BB makes emailing on the go as easy as it should be.

To be honest, I just didn't get on with the HTC the first time I started using it (messaging especially was irksome). Yes, if was flash (but no iPhone killer like it was portrayed) and it provided some useful features the BB didn't but I really missed the ease of use of the BB for messaging. A little disheartened, I gradually moved back to the BB and simply started using the Touch as a PDA.

About 3 weeks ago, I decided to give it a go once more. So this time, I did a little homework as opposed to simply jumping straight in.

I did a hardware reset on the Touch to restore everything back to factory settings then installed a number of 'killer' apps as recommended by the Windows Mobile community as a whole. Onto the Touch went both BatteryStatus and the PCM Keyboard app.

BatteryStatus provides some very useful features to the main UI as well as the great ability to overclock the processor. The HTC Touch isn't the quickest of Windows Mobile phones and (the lack of) performance definitely contributed to the general bad feeling I had towards the Touch the first time round. However, with the processor overclocked to 256MHz, things are a little more responsive.

Next, PCM Keyboard. Messaging using the standard on screen keyboard (or stylus input) was to be brutally honest, pretty awful and this was really my main issue with the usability (or lack thereof).

PCM Keyboard removes this by providing on screen a full qwerty keyboard fully usable by 'fat fingers'. With a little use, the on screen keyboard is fairly responsive now and this has again removed one of the main criticism's I had.

Overall, this '2nd go' with the Touch (and Window Mobile 6.0 in general) is a lot more productive that my last attempt. With the new version of ActiveSync (Windows Mobile Device Centre) running happily on my new Vostro and partnered with the Touch, it now provides me with a much better experience than previously.

The next plan is to increase the storage to 2Gb, hook up a Bluetooth GPS and install TomTom.

Well, 36 hours after I ordered my new Vostro, whilst away on vacation, I get a ring from the courier to say "I have a delivery of a new computer for you".

Have had to push it back until tomorrow when I'm at home and have lost the remainder of today (Sunday) to get the new beast up and running (next week is fairly busy so will have to squeeze the rebuild and reorganising of the desktops over the whole week's evenings now I think).

What was a busy week, will now be hectic as the list of things to do has just gotten larger: -

• Upgrade the Home Server
• Copy the contents over from my current desktop to the server
• Totally throw away the current build in the new Vostro and rebuild from scratch with Vista Ultimate x64
• Rebuild my current desktop with Vista Home Premium for the kids
• Reinstall everything onto the new desktops (sigh)

Even though I proudly work for Dell, and for the last two years, was the main software architect for Supply Chain throughout EMEA, it still impresses the hell out of me sometimes just how quickly we can fulfil orders (the Manufacturing facility at Limerick when at full speed is a sight to behold believe me).

Roll on tomorrow and the start of the rebuilding.

Well I've just ordered (finally) a new desktop for myself. Have been using my rock solid (but old) Dell Dimension 4500 (now coming up to 6 years old) since it was bought brand new when I moved to Ireland...and I've been slowly coming to the conclusion it simply cannot cope with my expectations anymore. It's time for it to be retired to the children's playroom once I've rebuilt it.

I did promise myself one last year but never seemed to get round to it. We're doing until the 26th (Dell that is) a sterling deal on the Vostro range (Vostro 400, Dual Core, 4Gb RAM + 1Tb storage (2x500Gb SATA)) for a staggering cheap €319+vat. Have also upgraded the video to a 256Mb which means I get free shipping.

So it's cost me pretty much next to nothing for a pretty powerful machine.

The plan is to install Vista Ultimate 64-bit on it so that I can address all 4Gb RAM as well as also steal one of the 500Gb SATA drives and stick it in my Home Server.

So this kills two birds with one stone; I get a desktop that's actually usable running vista, and my home server gets another 0.5Tb storage.

Lovely

So I've been using WHS now for a number of months now and overall am very impressed with the overall package.

One aspect I hadn't really used (or setup) was the Remote Access features and links to xxxx.homerserver.com.

No real reason tbh, just hadn't the inclination or time to fully investigate it. Well with potentially more travel in the coming months, having the ability to have access to my files and all music while on go is getting a little more attractive.

Unfortunately, my ISP (the disadvantage of living rurally is you have very little choice to your ISP especially when ADSL is not available in your village!), won't allow me access to my router's configuration to enable UPnP (which WHS needs to so it can configure port forwarding).

However after a little investigation they will configure it for you. So yesterday I pushed an email off them asking them to open ports 80, 443, 444 (streaming) and 4125 (Remote Desktop) and forward it onto my WHS on my internal network).

30 minutes later, all is changed, I check my xxxx.homeserver.com domain and viola! All is working. I now have access to my entire internal network via a pretty efficient web based UI if required. I can even run the WHS Console remotely so if need be I can kick off backup's, check storage etc.

I've also added the WebGuide WHS Add-in that will stream your content (video or music) to an external client.

All in all, my setup it pretty set now, except for the ever growing need of more storage. My DVD collection I've put onto the server is starting to highlight the real need for more drives...

As a family of fairly heavy users of computers at home (2 desktops, 3 laptops), I was always very aware of the risk present with lots of data on all of the machines.

So, when WHS was announced I started to keep a closer eye on the technology and how it was developing.

As a promise to myself this year, I assured 'me', I'd sort out the backup strategy and media streaming capabilities of the house (to both the 360 in the 2nd living room and the main TV/Stereo in the main one).

So in January I jumped onboard and installed WHS onto a Xeon based Dell PowerEdge server I had 'lying' around doing nothing.

Have been using WHS for about a month now so thought I'd share my views on it.

Well, it just 'works'. There's nothing more to say. The integration onto the desktop is excellent, the backup engine again is just so well put together there's never an issue. I've created a backup window every evening and the systems just backup one at a time during this time with no issues. WHS will even push a Wake Up over LAN message to them if they're hibernated or asleep.

Overall, the product has changed my setup here for the better (and yes, granted I could have performed most of the functionality by simply reusing the current version of Win2K3 that was on the server and tweaking my own processes). But items that need to be called out as serious enhancements are: -

• The Drive Extender technology (never worry about a drive running out of space again)
• Backup Engine is flawless and quick (which is a marked difference to the Vista backup engine!)
• The Remote Connection capabilities via xxxx.homeserver.com)
• The Console (even though based on a Remote Desktop Connection) is a great tool centralising all aspects of the WHS and the add-in functionality is great.

But there's a but. There's currently a known issue with the Drive Extender technology that means any 'write' to a WHS share from specific applications from any computer that's not the Server may result in data corruption.

This is being worked on as a top priority by MS and a fix is slated for release in June(!). So until then WHS does lose a little of its flair but, enough for me to remove WHS (like lot of people are saying they will) and revert back to my old ways??

No way.