This looks pretty amazing. It’s Microsoft’s new surface computer. You can check out the video here.
http://on10.net/Blogs/larry/first-look-microsoft-surfacing-computing/
Stephen
Monthly Archives: May 2007
The next version of SBS “Cougarâ€
There is finally some public information about the next version of SBS code named “Cougar”. The information can be found at this blog.
http://ts2blogs.com/blogs/larrylentz/archive/2007/05/27/8792.aspx
and another post here
http://sbs.seandaniel.com/2007/05/hey-wheres-my-next-version-of-sbs.html
but in a nutshell
Finally Some Public Info on Cougar
Cougar is the code name for the next version of SBS. The SBS team, lead by Group Product Manager Dean Paron, just gave a presentation here in NOLA. Here are some interesting, public, points:
1. Because Cougar includes Exchange 2007 which is 64 bit only, Cougar will be 64 bit ONLY.
2. Because it is 64 bit only, in place upgrades from earlier versions will not be supported. There was a discussion of how migration will likely take place by Product Manager Chirs Almida. You won’t be able to do an in place upgrade EVEN FROM 64 bit hardware. There will be a migration too that will take you from your current SBS to Cougar on ANOTHER BOX. Surely there will be other third party solutions. Can you spell www.SBSMigration.com?
3. The backup will be very interesting and robust. However, it will NOT support tape. It will be fast and incremental backups can be scheduled as often as every 30 minute. There will be a read only version of NTBACKUP to allow for reading data from backups on your old system. Third party backup solutions may still support tape, but not the built in solution in SBS.
4. The current user cap of 75 users will likely remain.
5. Cougar will need to be installed behind some kind of firewall and the single NIC model will be the standard.
6. Cougar will be based on Longhorn server now officially called Windows Server 2008. I think we all figured that but now Longhorn has a real name.
Published Sunday, May 27, 2007 10:56 AM by LarryLentz
The beta program has started but all Beta Testers have signed NDA’s and cannot talk about it. All I can say is that the last bit of my X64 hardware is due to show up on Friday and I am building a new server this weekend!
Possible Credit Card Scam
I received this email this morning at my regular workplace. I can’t verify that this is actually a scam it is plausible and can be done. I advise anyone to be careful about giving out credit card information and if you get a call out of the blue to check on fraud, they should not be asking you for the verification code on your card. If they truly work for Visa/Mastercard they would not need that to verify the card or to credit the card. In fact the only time they may ask for it is if you call Visa and they might need it to ensure that you are the actual card holder.
> >Royal Bank of Canada received this communication about the newest
> >scam.
> >This is happening in southern Alberta right now and moving.
> >This one is pretty slick since they provide YOU with all the
> >information, except the one piece they
>want.  Note, the callers do
> >not ask for your card number; they already have it.
> >This information is worth reading. By understanding how the VISA &
> >MasterCard telephone Credit Card Scam works, you’ll be better
> >prepared to protect yourself. One of our employees was called on
> >Wednesday from “VISA”, and I was called on Thursday
> >from”MasterCard”.
> >
> >The scam works like this:
> >
> >Person calling says, “This is (name), and I’m calling from the
> >Security and Fraud Department at VISA. My Badge number is 12460 ,
> >Your card has been flagged for an unusual purchase pattern, and I’m
> >calling to verify. This would be on your VISA card which was issued
> >by (name of bank). Did you purchase an Anti-Telemarketing Device for
> >$497.99 from a marketing company based in Arizona ?” When you say
> >”No”, the caller continues with,  “Then we will be issuing a credit to your account.
> >This is a company we have been watching and the charges range from
> >$297 to $497, just under the $500 purchase pattern that flags most
> >cards. Before your next statement, the credit will be sent to (gives
> >you your address), is that correct?”
> >
> >You say “yes”.
> >
> >The caller continues – “I will be starting a Fraud Investigation. If
> >you have any questions, you should call the 1- 800 number listed on
> >the back of  your card (1-800-VISA) and ask for Security. You will
> >need to refer to this Control Number. The caller then gives you a 6
> >digit number.  “Do you need me to read it again?”
> >
> >Here’s the IMPORTANT part on how the scam works:
> >
> >The caller then says, “I need to verify you are in possession of
> >your card”. He’ll ask you to “turn your card over and look for some
> >numbers”. There are 7 numbers; the first 4 are part of your card
> >number, the last 3 are the Security Numbers that verify you are the
> >possessor of the card.
> >
> >These are the numbers you sometimes use to make Internet purchases
> >to prove you have the card. The caller will ask you to read the last
> >3 number to him. After you tell the caller the 3 numbers, he’ll say,
> >”That is correct, I just needed to verify that the card has not been
> >lost or stolen, and that you still have your card. Do you have any
> >other questions?”
> >
> >After you say no, the caller then thanks you and states, “Don’t
> >hesitate to call back if you do”, and hangs up. You actually say
> >very little, and they never ask for or tell you the card number
> >
> >But after we were called on Wednesday, we called back. Within 20
> >minutes to ask a question. Are we glad we did! The REAL VISA
> >Security Department told us it was a scam and in the last 15 minutes
> >a new purchase of $497.99 was charged to our card.
> >
> >We made a real fraud report and closed the VISA account. VISA is
> >reissuing us a new number. What the scammers want is the 3-digit PIN
> >number on the back of the card. Don’t give it to them. Instead, tell
> >them you’ll call VISA or Master Card directly for verification of
> >their conversation.
> >
> >The real VISA told us that they will never ask for anything on the
> >card as they already know the information since they issued the
> >card! If you give the scammers your 3 Digit PIN Number,
>you think
> >you’re receiving a credit.
> >
> >However, by the time you get your statement you’ll see charges for
> >purchases you didn’t make, and by then it’s almost too late and/or
> >more difficult to actually file a fraud report.
> >
> >What makes this more remarkable is that on Thursday, I got a call
> >from a “Jason Richardson of MasterCard” with a Word-for-word repeat
> >of the VISA Scam. This time I didn’t let him finish. I hung up! We
> >filed a police report, as instructed by VISA. The police said they
> >are taking several of these reports daily! They also urged us to
> >tell everybody we know that this scam is happening. I dealt with a
> >similar situation this morning, with the caller telling me that
> >$3,097 had been charged to my account for plane tickets to Spain ,
> >and so on through the above
>routine.
> >
> >It appears that this Is a very active scam, and evidently quite
> >successful.
Getting a new laptop: a quick how to
Over the last year and a half, we have seen a trend shift in consumer PC buying. We are selling more laptops than desktops and being asked about what laptops people should be buying for home use. Here is a brief guide as to what to look for in a laptop and how to buy.
More than desktops, laptops are more of a personal preference type of purchase. Not getting yourself the right laptop could be expensive down the road as laptops are not as easily upgraded as most desktop systems (Processors, RAM and Hard Drives) and when they can be upgraded it is more expensive than desktop components. You have to evaluate what you will be using the machine for now and in the future.
A few factors that you should think about when looking at a new laptop. Is it going to be a desktop replacement or a secondary machine? Do you plan on using for surfing the net, word processing and email or will you be gaming and editing photos and video on it as well? Will it be used away from power sources on a regular basis, what kind of battery life do you need? Will you be travelling with the machine frequently? Are there any special applications that will be used on the machine or special hardware needs? All of these questions need to be answered so that you get the right machine for your personal needs.
There are several classes of laptops available to purchase now a days. There are entry level machines, Ultra Portable machines, portables or mobile, desktop replacements, convertibles, tablets and mid level machines. Typically what you will find is that entry level machines, are usually bigger, lesser powerful and do not have the same battery life as more advanced models.
New, used or refurbished? In the Calgary area there are several dealers that sell refurbished and used machines. They sell machines that have been refreshed out of corporations. Refurbished machines are typically machines that have been sent back to a manufacturer for repairs, and the manufacturers have replaced their clients machines then fixed the broken machines and resold them to these dealers. In most cases refurbished machines can be a very good deal for a buyer, but there can be some lingering problems with these machines. They do not always come with a full manufacturer’s warranty although dealers may offer extended warranties. Used machines on the other hand can be a very risky and costly purchase. The biggest problem is usually the battery life of these machines. Batteries for the most part do well for about a year of charging, discharging and charging again. After a year they tend to start to lose their effectiveness and their life. I have seen used machines with battery life as short as 25 minutes! Replacement laptop batteries (especially the original laptop manufacturers) are not all that inexpensive. In addition the technology is typically older and it may not be able to run applications that you will want it to. Components may also have limited lifespan and there is usually no or little (30 days) warranty on these machines. Hard Drives are moving parts and do have a projected lifetime and are usually the most common point of failure in machines. I usually advise clients against used laptops for these reasons, unless they are on a very tight budget, only need the machine for basic usage and don’t need the battery life. I myself recently purchased a used laptop to run a specific set of applications and cameras for astronomy because some of my hardware and applications are not supported on my Vista laptop yet (and one will never be). I picked up a used Dell laptop with XP Home and the basics that I needed for 400.00. Before I purchased the machine I checked the battery in the store carefully (unplugged and replugged the AC adaptor). I was lucky since it was a Dell machine the battery had been replaced in last fall’s Dell Battery recall. New machines are usually your safest bet, but cost a little (or a lot more) than the other two options. With a new machine, you typically get the latest and greatest technologies as well as a full manufacturer’s warranty.
Low Cost Entry Level Laptops.
While these machines are usually quite inexpensive, you often get what you are paying for. Often these machines have very little RAM, either desktop or low powered processors (Celerons and Semprons) as well as smaller batteries (4 cell) as opposed to 6 or 8 celled batteries. Power Management is usually something that is lacking with the desktop based processors and combining that with a small battery leads to very short battery life. These machines also usually feature integrated graphics cards using shared memory and if the amount of memory is low to begin with, the integrated cards will not be able to do any type of graphics work or gaming. They typically have slower hard drives as well.
Entry Level Laptops.
Some of these machines are actually quite good. You can get a half decent entry level machine for 850.00 to 1000.00. These typically are 15.4″ widescreen displays, 1 GB of Ram and a decent mobile processor. This is what I would consider the minimum specs for an all purpose laptop. These usually weigh in around 7 lbs and offer about 2 hours of battery life (more if you are aggressive with your power management). They can be a little big if you intend to move around with your laptop a bit. These are suitable as desktop replacements. Some of these machines can also be found with discrete graphics cards which are good for gaming and photo editing.
Mid Level Machines.
These start at around 1100.00 and run to 1800.00 and are available in a variety of form factors. You can get these from 14.1″ Widescreens to 17″ Widescreens. A couple of things that I suggest looking for are newer processors, 1 to 2 GB of Ram. A SATA or 5400 RPM PATA hard drive (7200 RPM is best) in sizes from 100GB to 160 GB. If you plan on gaming look for a discrete graphics card with its own dedicated memory.
If you want a small portable machine for carrying around you are typically looking at spending about 1700.00 or more. Making a machine smaller does cost more. These also come in a variety of form factors that include convertible laptops (pivoting screens) and tablets (pen based computing). These machines sometimes come with lower processor speeds but are designed to maximize the battery life.
Desktop Replacements.
These are usually large machines, featuring 17″ widescreen displays. They are not really designed to be moved around a lot but they can be. If you are just looking at a way of conserving space in your home this might be the wait to go. These machines often offer a full feature sets including discrete graphics and are often very suitable as a complete desktop replacement.
What to look for.
A couple of things you can look for in a machine. I always suggest to clients to look at some machines in some computer stores. See if there is a design and a form factor (screen size) that works for your needs. Then look for the following features.
If you have a lot of peripheral’s that you want to connect and will be travelling with the machine try to find a machine with 3 or more USB ports. If battery life is important look for at least a 6 cell battery. If you want to edit video, look for a firewire or 1394 port and maybe an S Video out port. If you plan on gaming, look for a discrete graphics card with its own memory as opposed to an integrated graphics card.
We here at Sysguy Consulting offer several brands of laptops from a good selection of Manufacturer’s including ASUS, ACER, chromebook under 300 which is an amazing laptop on the go,Fujitsu, HP/COMPAQ, LG and Sony. We can also custom build a laptop for you with ASUS shells and Verified by Intel Components. This way we can build a machine to meet your needs and not what only the manufacturer offers. To some degree these machines can be upgraded in the future (processors, hard drives etc) and are available with extended warranties. Please contact us if to see if we can help you with your next laptop purchase.
PC Freezing up lately?
Have you been having problems with a PC just freezing up lately after looging in. The problem is the MS automatic updates. It uses 100% of the processor and doesn’t allow anything else to happen. A fix will be available May 22nd via Automated updates but in the mean time there are two things you can do.
- Disable automatic updates or
- Apply the KB and install the client located in this article. http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9019218&source=NLT_PM&nlid=8
We got a call the other day about a couple of machines with these symptoms and saw them first hand on an XP Home laptop in our labs Tuesday evening. \
Rebooting then applying the updates va Windows Update from help and support immediately fixed the problem on the laptop.
Stephen
Window Home Server Beta 2- 1 month later
It has been about a month since I installed Windows home server beta two on an old PC I had kicking around. So far I’ve been very impressed with the software. While I only have a few machines connected to the server, at the server has done has impressed me so far.
As I stated in an earlier post, windows home server is a product that is in beta for Microsoft designed for Home Networks and is based on windows server 2003 technologies. You install the software on a machine, configure user accounts, and plug it in to your network. Once the server is up and running you can run it as a headless device meaning that it does not need a monitor or a keyboard and mouse connected to it. Access to the server after the monitor and keyboard are disconnected is done using Internet Explorer. Once the server is running, you then use the client CD, and install the client software on each PC that you wanted connect to the home server. The client software sets up a backup routine, adds a shortcut on the desktop to shared folders creates and network status icon in the taskbar. Once user accounts are created on the server it sets up folders for each user, as well as a set of folders that are shared between all users. The server can also be used as a media connect device, that allows you to stream multimedia files to other media connect devices such as in Xbox360 or another windows PC with Media connect installed.
The server utilizes new technology called single instance file backup. What this means is that if the same file is backed up twice from different computers only one actual copy will be saved to the drive and a pointer will be created for one of the PC’s. For example if you are backing up two computers to the server, each with XP home installed, the backup program will back up all files on the first PC, and then while backing up the second PC, it will check to see if the file already exists in another backup and will back up a pointer to that file only if it does exist. This technology saves space on the home server allowing you to get away with smaller storage drives.
The home server product allows you to add more storage space to your home server at any time. This can be internal hard drives or USB or firewire hard drives. A word of caution however, is that when a hard drive is added, the drive is formatted an existing contents are lost. Hard drives can be added a couple of different ways. The new storage space can be added to the server as a whole, and the server will just store files wherever it can. Or the new hard drive can mirror the existing hard drive as a debtor redundancy method. This way if one hard drive fails, files will not be lost.
The server software also comes with a recovery disk. If you have to restore the PC that has been backed up to the server, even if the hard drive has completely failed, you can restore the backup to a new drive. I have tested this using virtual machines and have been very successful with it. I backed up an XP home virtual machine to the server, then under virtual PC 2007 created a new virtual hard drive, captured to restore a ISO file and rebuilt the virtual machine using the backup. This worked flawlessly. It gave me to identical virtual machines each one started fine and worked with no problem. I get to test this on actual hardware, but I do have an older tablet PC that has been backed up and I will soon test this feature. My plan is to format the drive, boot off the recovery disk and attempt to restore the operating system to the formatted drive. If it works like the virtual machine, I should have the system back to where it was before the format.
The backup does work over Wireless Networks, however the restore requires that the PC be physically connected to the network which makes sense as not all wireless card drivers can be included in the boot up. I should add that once a full backup is done, on a client PC, the backup only backs up changed files. This reduces the amount of time and bandwidth that a backup takes.
Windows home server will also be able to share printers that are connected to it to all users. This way one printer can be used by all users of a Home Network without having to purchase print server devices.
Windows home server also features several additional tools. For example it allows you to connect back to your file shares across the Internet using a web browser so that you can share your files with friends and family or access them from another PC. If you are running windows XP Professional, Windows Vista business, Windows Vista enterprise or Windows Vista ultimate, you can remote control your PC on your Home Network across the Internet just using the web browser. I have made the suggestion to Microsoft, that if an end user purchases windows home server and is running Windows Vista home premium, that they may allow remote control to the platform as well. I have not as yet tested a connection to an XP pro machine, but I have a remote controlled to the server. This feature is found in windows small business server 2003 and works extremely well, so I’m assuming that it’ll work just as well under this server package.
Microsoft has just released a software developers kit for windows home server which will allow vendors to create additional applications to extend the functionality of the home server. With this SDK we should see some additional applications available close to the final release of the product.
In my earlier post I indicated that the hardware requirements are not very rigid. All you need to install a server is a 1 GHz processor, 512 MB of ram and they 80 GB hard drive. This will allow for virtually any PC sold in the last four years to be used as the home server without too many hardware upgrades. One word of caution though, older hardware is more likely to break down sooner, especially hard drives, so I would suggest that if are using an older PC you consider at least replacing the hard drive before installing the server. In this way you can also install a larger hard drive at a minimal upgrade cost and use the second one as a second drive and the server.
As we are in beta two, I would suspect that we would see at least two release candidates before the software is made available to the public. I would guess that the time frame for release it be in the summer or early fall of 2007. It is still unclear if it will be available as this offer only purchase, available at retail or an OEM product. I’m also sure that we will see hardware appliances sold by the major tier one manufacturers. Regardless of how it is being sold we are recommending this product to most of our end users even if they only have one computer laptop. Our experiences show that most home users don’t have an adequate backup plan to deal with important documents, downloaded music or digital pictures.
Update
Since the time I started writing this and before I published it, Windows Home Server has gone to Consumer Technology Preview (CTP). This means that if you want to get a head start on the WHS server you can apply to download it. Visit the Microsoft Home Server Website http://www.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver and follow the links. You will have to fill out a brief questionnaire at the site and log in using a Windows Live Account.
I have also been thinking about configuration for these Home servers going forward. I think that the configurations we will be offering at Sysguy Consulting will be based on clients risk strategy. If they are looking at using an old PC to run the WHS, we would advice adding a new hard drive and using file replication as a backup. If they are looking at getting a brand new box, an AMD Sempron or Intel Celeron Processor would be fine. Hard Drives and setup could be chosen based on if the client is looking at a large amount of storage space or if they want data protection.
I still feel that the Windows Home Server product is a real winner! It answers a small problem that is often neglected by home users until it is too late and that is backing up important files and documents. So far the product has been very stable and I would encourage people to look at this very seriously as soon as it is available later in 2007.
Stephen