Some little changes coming to this blog

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If you visit this blog and things look a little different don’t panic. While I really like the appearance of the blog now, there are a few templates that I have found that I also like and will look at implementing and testing them. I also want to add Google adwords to the site and maybe create a 3 column look instead of the two column. If you end up seeing a theme that you like let me know. If you see one that you don’t like let me know as well. Make sure you leave a comment for me either way.

Stephen

Mac Mini upgrade done!

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Well it wasn’t as painful as I thought it would be, but then again it wasn’t as easiest PC upgrade I have done wither. The Mac Mini was obviously not designed to be user upgradeable. Thankfully I found a good set of instructions on the net. And the upgrade tools were necessary (my putty knives). The process pretty straight forward. First you disconnect everything from the Mini and work on a flat surface. You place the mini on it’s back with the ports facing towards you. Using the putty knife you gently pry it into the small crack between the edge of the outer chassis and the cover, then you pull back on the putty knife. You may here some cracking and popping but these are the clips disengaging from the one side. I left the putty knife where it was and I used a second one to again pry open the opposite side. Again after more cracking and popping it gave. I was now able to lift the chassis away from the cover.

These instructions are for the Intel Version Mac Mini as on the Power Mac version the Ram is easy to get at.

Looking at the innards of the mini there is a lot of stuff packed into the tiny chassis. To upgrade the memory there are 4 little screws that have to be removed. These screws are located in the 4 corners. Three are very easy to get out , bit the fourth requires removing the Airport Express antenna. Something to note is that one of the screws is longer than the other. This goes in the upper right corner. I put 3 of the screws in a little clear bowl as to not lose them. Then I worked onthe airport antenna. There are 2 little clips underneath that you gently squeeze together. Be ready as when you do this the antenna pops off as it is spring loaded. If your spring pops off you can put that in your little bowl to. Move the antenna over to the side and unscrew the the 4th screw.

Ok after all 4 screws are removed, you still have one thing to do before lifting the chassis away. There is a little battery at the front and next t it there is a small wire connected to the motherboard. Gently pull this wire out and disconnect it. I used a pair of needle nose pliers to do it and it was very easy. Now your ready to left away the DVD (or CD drive and hard drive). Note you will not be disconnecting any of the wires so you will lift the drives out gently ad fold them over the front of the case. You should have a book or something to support the drives.

Before reaching in make sure you ground yourself, by either touching the metal on the inside of the chassis or making sure you are using a ant static strap. The Ram is installed similar to how RAM is installed in laptop. There are two clips on either sides of the ram that you gently pull apart and the ram chip should pop up at at angle. Remove the first chip and then do the same for the lower second chip the same way.

Once the Ram is removed you can insert the RAM. Ram goes in at an angle and then snaps back down in place. Carefully insert your replacement Ram into the lower slot ensuring you don’t touch the gold contacts at an angle and snap it down. Do the same for the second module. Next flip the drives back in place and line up the holes.

Before putting the screws back in connect the system up again to check the Ram. I agree putting the whole thing together and then having to take it apart again would not be fun if you didn’t seat the Ram properly.

Now there is a part where you have to be an octopus or at least be very quick. My instructions indicated to hold down the P, R, Option and Apple keys at the same and start the Mini. Hold the keys in until you here the Apple sound three times It basically does a reset of the system three times. Apparently you should do this every time you add new hardware. I booted up checked the Mac, and it now reported 1 GB of Ram! Success!

Power down and disconnect everything again and you can go back to putting the mini back together. Carefully line up the drives assembly with the motherboard and the screw holes and insert the 4 screws back in. Ensure that the long screw is back in the upper left corner. Once all the screws are back in put the Air port antenna back on (put the spring back if you removed it. You will probably have to gently push the clips together again to engage the clips.

You’re almost there. The last step is fairly easy line up the chassis carefully with the cover and push the chassis back down on the cover. I used one of my putty knives again to gently release the clips that catch on the bar (for lack of a better word) to allow the cover to slide down. Work your way around and ensure that everything is snapped into place.

Total time this took, about 25 minutes ( I was being careful). Total cost was 2.00 for putty knives (2), 1 GB Kingston kit (2 x 512MB) for Mac Mini 225.00. Apple charges about 400.00 USD to do this for you! One of the supposed side effects of using metal putty knives are scratches on the bottom. I was very careful and have a single tiny knick on the bottom.

Upon start up the system runs much faster and better than it did. Just goes to prove that even Macs are better with upgrades.

There are very good instructions available on the Internet including several videos on how to open your Mac Mini. If you are unsure of doing it please don’t try and contact Sysguy or another professional.

Here is a link to the instructions I used:
http://www.methodshop.com/gadgets/tutorials/macmini-ram

Stephen

Mac Mini upgrade tool kit purchased

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Picked up my Mac-mini upgrade tools on the way home from the office today. Yes thank to Apple if you want to do any upgrades to the Mac Mini you need specials tools. Everything that I have seen on upgrading the ram in a Mac Mini indicates that to open up the Mac Mini you need 2 putty knives! Yes putty knives. It also better to use thin plastic putty knives instead of steel ones, as the steel ones will scratch the bottom of the case and chassis.

I plan on upgrading from 512Mb of Ram to 1 GB of ram. The Kingston ram for the mini has been sitting here for a few months so I am going to get to it over the weekend.

After the upgrade, I also wanted to run a little social experiment and set up the Mac and have the kids and SWMBO use it to see how that adapt. Keep checking to hear on the results of the upgrade and the social experiment!

Stephen

Reminder.. Calgary RASC Public Star Night Saturday Mar 24th

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Just a reminder that the Calgary Centre of RASC is holding a public star night tomorrow, March 24th at the west end of Fish Creek Park. The event starts at 7:00 PM and runs till 10:00, and goes clear or cloudy. Several members will have telescopes set up to see our special guest, the planet Saturn, (Weather permitting) and there will be games for kids, informative booths and presentations. For more information and maps to the location please visit the RASC Calgary website at
http://calgary.rasc.ca

You can also read more about the event in my earlier post about it, just click on the Astronomy category.

Stephen

Lots to blog about

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Today was quite a day! Came up with lots of articles to post to the blog. Watch over the coming weekend to see articles on several things. I want to start adding a special series on some of the features of Vista that are available in the different versions and maybe help you make a decision on whether this would be reason enough to upgrade. I have some announcements about some new products that we now have access to (think convergence), a personal rant about a situation that happened today and a phone call to a Customer Service agent and more.

Keep checking back or use your RSS reader to see more posts soon.

 

Stephen

HP All In One Vista Software Released

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HP has finally released their updated all in one software packages for Windows Vista. So if you have an HP all in one device and have lost the scanner and fax functionality after upgrading to Vista, (more so for networked products) you can download it now from the HP site. It is a fairly large download (160 or so MB) so ensure you have a high speed connection.

Without this software if you had a directly connected HP all in one device you could still print and scan from Vista but you had to use the built in scanner and faxing software. This would render these devices unusable if they work networked other than basic printing.

Stephen

Expanding the use of my Blackberry Pearl

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Some of you may know that I picked up a Blackberry 8100 (also known as the Pearl) in early December. As a cell phone the device has been great. Voice quality is clear and signal strength has been really good wherever I used it. For email I was just using the Rogers Blackberry Internet Service which gave me the ability to create a default blackberry address and then add up to 10 POP email accounts to the device. The problem with this was that I could not control when the mail was picked up. Another issue I had was that while I could connect and get mail from my own exchange server (SBS 2003 server at home) via Outlook Web Access, I could not use the calendaring feature of exchange.

If you are not aware there are actually two ways that a Blackberry can work. The personal option is the BIS service offered above, while most corporations use Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) to send and receive emails, synchronize calendars and address books with their corporate email systems. I always thought that BES was a very expensive service (starting at 1500.00) and never thought I would take advantage of it, but there are some Hosted Exchange services that offer BES for a monthly fee (typically 9.99 USD per month). If you run a Microsoft Small Business Server and use email that way and have just a couple of users then the BES solution may have been an expensive option for you.

Then about a month ago, I got a post in one of my SBS tech lists about a free version of Blackberry Enterprise Server, called Blackberry Enterprise Server Express. This version comes with a single user CAL meaning one user can be connected and additional users (up to 15 can be added for about 100.00 USD). I did a Google search, found the page input my data (you have to supply a Blackberry Pin) and downloaded the software.

Today I finally got around to setting it up. Installation on my SBS 2003 Standard Server was fairly straight forward. The documentation guides you through the set up of a User account (requires SBS Cal) and applying the permissions that are required. Then you install the software. My first go really didn’t work right as I skipped the installation of SQL thinking it was on my server. While this server is an SBS 2003 R2 Premium server, I currently have it running as a Standard Server (No SQL and No ISA servers running). My first set up failed because I didn’t have SQL set up , so I installed SQL2005 Express (Another free download) and re installed the BB software (paying a little more attention to what I was doing). The install went fine and the databases set up fine. I went into BES Manager set up my user and then activated my Pearl using the Enterprise Activation on it. It synced everything up and I was in business. Now I can use my SBS server and Blackberry together for contacts, wireless sync and calendaring!

I did run into a few problems thought receiving emails afterwards, in fact my Exchange server had a problem receiving emails period. Turns out that an email archiving program that I was testing and uninstalled was still trying to archive my messages. I got that fixed and the mail started flowing properly again, when I ran into another problem. An MS patch removed the send as permissions on the BESADMIN account. Using an MS and Blackberry support article got that problem fixed and it looks like I am in business again.

One of the best things is that I can use both BIS and BES on my Pearl. So I still get email from the POP3 accounts that I set up but now I get email from my SBS 2003 server as well!

If you are interested in looking at this option please feel free to contact us and we will help set up your SBS server so that you can teach your BB new tricks.

Stephen

DLink DIR-655 Extreme N Wireless Router – Three Strikes and yer out!

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I usually keep my eye out for bargains in this business. Often my competitors will have sales on items were their pricing is at or just above my wholesale cost, so it makes it worth my while to just purchase from them as opposed to buying through distribution. Last week there was just such an opportunity. Future Shop had the DLink Extreme N DIR-655 Router on for 60.00 off. This was not much more than what my wholesale price was, and because I was looking at getting a router that supported QoS for my home network this one looks like it had everything I wanted.

I was extremely happy with my previous router but it was starting to date itself. This was a Nexland 400 PRO ISB. Nexland routers were never very popular and they were purchased by Symantec several years ago as they were the manufacturer for Symantec’s own Raptor firewall appliances. This router had been very stable and fast, and I can’t even remember the last time I had to reset it! It didn’t offer the QoS features and with the increase in devices that I have added to my network this was becoming important. For wireless access I have been using a Netgear WG602 V2 Access Point that has also been very reliable. It is located in roughly the centre of our house and provides a pretty good signal everywhere.

Friday AM, I went to my local Future Shop and picked up one of these routers. My plan was to plug it in, configure it for my home network then move it over later in the day. The three main features I wanted to take advantage of on this router were the QoS, the gigabit Wan and LAN ports and the extended range offered by the Wireless N draft standard. Wireless N draft (the standard is not yet ratified) allows for higher data connection speeds than 802.11G and up to 6 times the range of Wireless G. QoS, stands for Quality of Service and gives network priority traffic to certain applications on your network, such as Multimedia and VOIP phone. In essence it sees network traffic for these types of devices and gives their data packets higher priority to the network. Ideally VoIP traffic and Video would get higher priority than email or web browsing. This is important in our house because I use Microsoft Media Center Extenders and my business phone line is with Vonage. I have several machines with Gigabit cards and use Gigabit Switches in the house so the 2000 Mbs per second would come in handy for large file transfers as well. The DLink DIR-655 has all of these features so I thought it would be a good fit.

The router itself looks very slick, almost like an Ipod. It is shiny white with three detachable antennas, and green LED lights on the front (Hardware Version A2 features blue LEDs). I also noticed that the router came with the latest firmware that was on the DLink Support site. Firmware is code that controls the router and allows the manufacture to fix things via firmware updates. The router has the standard WAN port for your Cable or DSL modem to plug into, a USB port for configuration and 4 LAN ports on the back to connect to computers and switches.

I immediately ignored the sticker on the back of the router covering the LAN ports telling me to install the software first. I have configured between 50 and 75 routers over the years and I prefer using the built in Web interface in the router than installing unnecessary software on my PCs. I plugged a network cable into a LAN port, connected the other end to my backup Dell D600 laptop running XP Home and checked the network address of the Ethernet card. I then used IE 6 to access the routers home page. By default this router was configured for 192.168.0.1 but my own network uses a different network segment. Because I have machines assigned with static IP addresses it is easier to change the router than it is to change all of the devices. I accessed the router and boom the LAN connection dropped and restarted. OK try it again. Same thing. I tried everything I could think of to stabilize the connection (setting duplex and card connection rates) all to no avail. I called DLink support and spent about an hour on the phone with them trying to get it working. Still couldn’t get it to stay connected long enough to do configurations. I was being transferred to DLink second level support when I got cut off and the phone went dead.

I packed the router up and went back to Future Shop to exchange this one thinking it might be a bad one. They replaced the router and I went back home with the new one. This time I tried to configure it and it was more stable. I removed my Nexland router, plugged in the DLink and then the fun started happening. It appeared that the connection to the Internet would reset itself every couple of minutes. It would only be for a couple of seconds but never the less it would reset. I called DLink support again, spoke to first level support and they couldn’t do a lot then (I also got cut off twice) they patched me through to second level. I was advised to turn off UPnP on the router which I did, which stabilized the connection somewhat. I actually got a connection to the Internet for about 14 hours (OK it was overnight). The next day I tried to connect via my Netgear Wireless G PCMCIA card and poof the router rebooted again. Not good.

By this point I had enough and tried to put my old reliable Nexland Pro router back. Connected everything plugged it in and uh-oh, the LAN light was flashing red. This means that the hardware diagnostics failed. I tried everything I could to get it running, attempting to reset to factory defaults didn’t work nor did anything else I tried so I guess it has finally given up.

Instead I installed a Linksys Business Class Wireless router that I had in stock. This router is the WRV 200 G router with Rangebooster. It is designed for small business and features QoS, VLAN, and multiple SSIDs for wireless. I have had some pretty good results in client sites with these as they seem to be fairly stable once upgraded to the latest firmware and I always try to keep one or two in stock. I had this router set up and configured in less than 5 minutes and it has been good so far.

AS for the DLink, I took it back to another Future Shop store and exchanged it for another one. I was really willing to get this one to work. Brought it home, tried connecting via my laptop and again, it would drop the LAN connection every minute. I thought I could backwards flash the Firmware to an older version, but unfortunately I can’t even keep it connected long enough to upload the firmware files. Also the unsecured wireless network appears and disappears on all the wireless cards I have tried connecting to it.

After three tries I am finally giving up on this router. This one is going back to Future Shop shortly. In fairness I have again reported issues to DLink Tech Support via email but I am not holding my breath waiting for a response. I am still waiting for a response to an inquiry I made last week regarding one of their DNS-323 NAS devices. I have read fairly good reviews of this router on line. It seems people who have them working, like them. I just can’t get one working.

In the end I would not advise Sysguy Client’s to get this router based on the experiences I have had, especially at the regular 199.99 price tag. This may be related to a bad batch of these routers that was manufactured and sent to the same distributer. If you are willing to try, ensure that you can take the router back to wherever you purchase it from for a refund if you run into the same problems.

I think I will stick with the few routers that I know work well, I have had good results with the following routers:

Linksys WRV-200 Business class not easily available in stores
Netgear WGT-624 (One I get the fewest calls about)
Belkin Super G (Stable and a nice feature set)

If I hear anything back from DLink I will post it here.

Stephen

Another Small Vista Problem, Adobe Acrobat and IE7

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I have run into another piece of software that has a problem with Vista, except it is only one small piece. If you use Adobe Acrobat 7.0 or 8.0 Standard or Pro version and want to print a pdf from a web page you are out of luck. You will get an error indicating that the software has to be activated before you can use the printer. This occurs even if the software has already been activated. There is a workaround and I would suggest using it if you know you have to print a pdf from a webpage. I usually do when purchasing items on line.

Before opening Internet Explorer, right click on the icon and select run as Administrator. While running IE as an administrator you will be able to print to PDF. I do not recommend running this way all the time as it circumvents IE running in protected mode and makes it vulnerable to Internet threats. If you think you are going to be ordering something or require printing from PDF, opening it in another IE session as Admin, print and exiting. Hopefully Adobe will patch this soon.

Another option is to use a free pdf converter until Adobe fixes the problem. I was using primo pdf except that when I printed from IE under Vista the PDF files would be corrupted. I have gone back to cutepdf, available at http://cutepdf.com. It seems to work just fine.

Stephen

Bashing Vista

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There are some people out there that really do not like Microsoft or the Windows Operating system. These are the Mac and Linux users out there and sometimes I wonder if these people have lives! While I am not impressed or happy with everything that Microsoft does, I think that their last couple Operating Systems have been good. Who could live without Windows XP today or would want to continue running Windows 98?

I was looking through some forums last night trying to find out if there was a Vista version of one of the applications I use. It was amazing reading some of the threads where someone said they had purchased a new computer with Windows Vista or was upgrading, and the treatment that these people got. They were being called stupid and how they should never upgrade until Microsoft releases the first service pack for it. I really want to know what makes these people qualified to judge Vista.

If they point to Beta experiences well that is not a legitimate argument. Beta software version are test versions of software. Yes they are buggy, yes they are unstable at times and yes they break. That is the purpose of beta testing. Vista being delayed as long as it was is arguably one of the most tested software platforms that have ever come out. And even with all the beta testing there are still combinations of hardware, software and configurations that can never ever be duplicated. Are there going to be problems with released software? Yes and they will be fixed. Is Vista stable? Yes! I have been using it for a month and a half on my laptop and it has been fine. Are there going to be problems? Yes, I have some applications that don’t like Vista and I have hardware that doesn’t yet, or won’t have drivers for it. For most of these problems I actually blame the software developers and Hardware manufacturers that have not yet released drivers fully functioning drivers. They also point the finger at Microsoft, but here we are almost a month and a half after release and there are several pieces of hardware that are still not ready.

As for security and interesting thing happened last week. Microsoft sent out their monthly security bulletin for patch Tuesday and there was no critical security patches, both for XP and for Vista… Some folks on IT based newsgroups joked that DST must be the end of the world. But my thought is that this shows how secure Vista is. I am sure there are hackers out there that are trying really hard to break and find security holes in Vista. The fact that in about a month and a half since its public release I have seen no Critical Security patches for it. Vista has been out since Mid November to Volume clients) and in that time there have been no critical security patches needed (I just confirmed this myself as my laptop does not have 1).

I am more likely to believe that some of these people that are Vista bashing have also been using illegal copies of Vista. These are versions that bypass the activation process by using old beta code or some other hack that is out there. Again I would not trust this software as you can’t know what else has been bundled on it.

I am still advising clients that if they wish to upgrade to Vista they should do 2 things. Run the Vista upgrade advisor to check hardware and software compatibility first. Then yes wait a month or two to ensure that there are proper drivers for most of their software. If they are willing to risk it there are usually a few work a rounds as well. For example one of my scanners indicated it wasn’t compatible, I still downloaded the XP driver and installed it. Clicked OK on the warning, but it still worked after the install. For software, I am running the really problematic programs in a Virtualized XP Pro machine using MS Virtual PC 2007.

If you are planning on purchasing a new system with Windows Vista, go ahead and run the upgrade advisor on your existing PC to see if there are recognized hardware and software issues. This way you know ahead of time if you have to buy new hardware or software and you can do it at the same time as you purchase your machine!

Added 03/15/2007
I wrote the above post earlier this week while sitting in Vancouver Airport waiting to get on a flight. Since then I have read a few more forums about Vista and upgrading. There are loads of people out there that are blaming Microsoft because their 5 year old version of software doesn’t work and the company that originally published the software has no plans of upgrading that version to Vista compatibility (let alone support the program any more period)… To these people I say tough luck, I guess you will have to continue to use Windows XP and can’t upgrade to a new computer (soon they will only sell with Vista)!

People seem to forget that we went through virtually the same problems and complaints with the introduction of Windows 95 from Windows 3.1, with the transition to Windows XP from the Win 9x OS’ and we will have to go through it again. So far I am happy and have found some solutions or workarounds to most of the problems I had. Yes I even went out and bought an refurbished Dell Laptop (no bells and whistles) that had Windows XP Home on it just so that I could use a couple of pieces of specialized hardware that is not (and apparently won’t be supported on Windows Vista! I will use this machine for a while and when I am done either give it to the kids or sell it.

Yesterday there was another application compatibility patch released for Windows Vista. These patches are as a result of people sending the problems to Microsoft after having a crash. There are quite a few programs that have been fixed in this release. Remember that before you click no to sending information to Microsoft regarding an application patch. If you do you are helping with these application compatibility patches that could help some of your software run better.

Stephen