Windows 7 – 64 bit Experience begins

I’ve moved my main home machine to Windows 7, 64 bit edition.  So far, things seem to be progressing reasonably well.

My printer is supported out of the box.  ITunes has a 64 bit edition (which seems to run as a 32-bit application, weird).

My main photo applications, Downloader Pro and BreezeBrowser Pro work well with Windows 7.

I’m not running into nearly as many issues as I’ve run into with Vista at my office in my test environments.

My VPN works from home to my office, which is pretty essential as well. 

All in all, so far the experience has been a good one so far.

Technorati Tags: Windows 7,Vista,ITunes,BreezeBrowser,DownloaderPro

Skipping the Vista Train

I have a desktop, about 1.5 years old, that is currently running Windows XP.

When I purchased it, I had the opportunity to go with Vista or XP.  I chose XP, because I knew about the Vista issues that had been plaguing many folks out in ‘the real world’, and wanted no part of the Vista ‘phenomenon’.

Fast forward two years or so.  Windows 7 is about to be released on the 22nd of October.  I’m seriously considering upgrading my main desktop to Windows 7 64bit Professional. 

My main needs are photography (BreezeBrowser), Itunes, email, and blogging and Twitter.

I can twitter and blog from my phone.  I have to be able to download and catalog photos, so that’s a must.  ITunes is fairly necessary for my phone.

Other than that, I’m pretty well good to go.  I VPN into my office, but can do that via VPN software available already for Windows 7.

Bring on Windows 7 and let the games begin.

Technorati Tags: Windows 7,Vista,XP,BreezeBrowser

IPhone versus Blackberry again (for the final time)

About a month ago, I switched from my Blackberry Pearl to an IPhone 3G. 

“Just to see how the other half lives” I told myself.

Well, after a month, I switched back to the Pearl. For about three hours.  I got so frustrated with the speed of the Blackberry, that I’ve switched back the IPhone 3G full time (even called AT&T and switched my Blackberry plan over to an IPhone plan, Visual Voicemail here I come) and I bought an application from the ITunes store.

I guess I’m a fanboy now. :-)

Some things I love about the IPhone:

• The browser is fantastic for my needs
• Their is a free app called Shazam that will listen to music and tell you what the song is, without any guidance from the user other than turning on the listen mode.  Pretty wicked.  I have discovered new music with this app, and it was free.
• Email – It supports IMap which is great for my office email, and IMap for GMail.  There (hopefully) will very soon be an application called GPush which will enable push notification for GMail.  This will make email work almost as well as on the Blackberry.
• Google Sync – I can modify all my contacts online on my computer and they automatically sync to the phone.  Awesome.

The things I don’t like:

• No voice dialing.  Supposedly will be implemented in 3.1 of the IPhone OS, but only on the 3Gs. 
• Battery life.  Battery life is pretty abysmal.  But I have a charger at home and I have a charger at work.  I also have access to a car charger for trips.

After my contract expires, I’m going to look into a 3Gs, but for now, the 3G will work for me. 

Technorati Tags: IPhone,Blackberry,Shazam

What is so different about Linux+Apache?

I’ve got an application that serves up projects via the web.  It uses a pointer file and that pointer file tells my client application where to look for the images that exist in it’s project.

For example, I have a file called pointer.maxFR which has one line of text in it:

maxpt http://www.myhomeoffice.org/ellsworth/ellsworth.maxfr

 

My application reads that pointer.maxFR file and KNOWS that it will find the images in ellsworth.maxFR at http://www.myhomeoffice.org/ellsworth/

Here’s the rub:

- This works great if the server is IIS.
- This works great if the server is using Apache and the client is using IE.
- If the server is Apache and the client is Firefox, all the user gets is

maxpt http://www.myhomeoffice.org/ellsworth/ellsworth.maxfr

displayed as a line in their browser.

WHY?  How do I fix it?  I don’t know Linux well enough, as I don’t use it enough to know where to look.

Email me if you would, or DM me on twitter as mike_strock

 

Thanks!

 

Technorati Tags: Linux,Apache,File Types

Home office Desk Layouts – Where to start?

I’m putting together a new setup for my home office soon, I hope, and have been looking throughout the web for ideas to implement.

Here’s what I have:

• Desktop machine with a 22” flat screen display (Tower)
• IP Phone connected to my day job office
• Printer
• Scanner
• About 80 USB connected devices, be they cameras, IPods, etc
• Want for a second monitor.

I’m looking for some solution that will allow me to put it all within reasonable reach, but not cramp the space that I have.

Currently, I don’t work from home,except during the evenings and on rare days where I am able to work from home.  I’m hoping that changes, or my situation changes, where I can work like a nomad from home.  In order to facilitate that situation, I need to have an optimal solution.

The printer I use has to be connected to the network so others can print, so I may end up getting a network laser printer inexpensively.

The scanner I use rarely, but I think that’s mainly because I don’t have enough space for it right now.

The USB devices are always a pain, because I have to find the right cord, find an open USB space (or make one) and then remember to put the cord away.

I’m hoping to get a USB hub that would allow me to plug all my devices in and label them so the cables would not be lost.

The printer is so rarely used by me, but my kids use it and will use it more as their schoolwork requires.

My main need is for desktop space for my 22” flat screen.  I had a laptop before, which died, and got this desktop to replace it.  It came with a sweet 22” flat screen monitor which I love, but I really want to get a second monitor.  I find it much more productive to work with two monitors.  So I need the desk space for that.

I’ve been searching Flickr for ideas on how to set the space up.  I haven’t really found anything in particular.

I did find one OVER THE TOP setup though, but it is Mac centric:

Home office Setup

While I love this setup, I don’t need all the machines/monitors.  Just two.

Anyway, if you have a setup you’d like to suggest, shoot me a message, it would be much appreciated.

 

Technorati Tags: Home Office Layout,Nomadic,Desks,Ikea

IPhone verus Blackberry Pearl

Recently, I was given the opportunity to use an IPhone for a week to see if I liked it.  As an avowed Blackberry addict, I was thinking initially that the IPhone was not going to work well for me due to the fact that it had no physical keyboard.  I was wrong.

I received the IPhone on Tuesday morning, charged it and put my SIM card in.  It recognized all my contacts, and I was able to browse the web using 3G speeds.  Excellent start, don’t you think?

My previous Blackberry was a Pearl, which uses EDGE for data.  Not necessarily slow, but compared to 3G, not fast.  I was pleased with the speed of the web browsing, and I was pleased with the rendering of web pages that I would normally go do during a regular day.

I was able to get my email set up for both work and home.  I was able to send and receive email from both, so I was pretty happy.

The on screen keyboard, which I really felt was going to be a huge deterrent to the usage of the phone was a big detraction.  It slowed me down quite a bit.  But I was able to work around it successfully, but I was not as productive with it as I was on my regular hard keyboard based BlackBerry Pearl.

The ITunes store is really useful for both applications and music.  I liked the fact that I was able to get a Facebook client, a Twitter client and a couple other clients easily downloaded and installed on the IPhone.  They worked really really well.

I was hoping that I could replace my IPod, my phone and use the Kindle application to read books.  The Kindle application is top notch and well worth the price of admission.

Now the cons, at least in my experience:

• The on screen keyboard.  While it was OK once you got used to it, a heavy email/text message user is going to have difficulty being as productive as they would be with a physical keyboard.
• Email notification.  With the Blackberry, one of the beautiful things is that I get notified of emails without having to go into the physical MAIL application portion of the phone.  In my line of work, this is essential.  With the IPhone, I was never able to get it to work so that if I was in another application, I would get alerts for new email and new text messages and without actually being in the Mail portion of the phone.
• THE BATTERY LIFE IS ABYSMAL.  AT BEST.  I could only get about five hours of usage out of the battery before I would get a 10% warning and have to charge it.  It is possible that I got a bad battery, but wow, after normal usage, the battery life is really really bad.  I couldn’t even get through a normal day with one charge.
• I couldn’t add music to it from more than one machine.  With my IPod, I can add music from more than one machine.  But with the IPhone, I am told that I have to blow everything away and start from scratch.  Not a good thing.

So I’m back to the Pearl. I’ll revist the situation in August, possibly going with the Bold at that point.

Technorati Tags: Blackberry,IPhone,Mobile Phones,Digital Nomad

VOIP Growing pains

As I mentioned previously, we recently installed a VOIP phone system at work, based on Asterisk.

Actually love it quite a bit.  I think that for our needs, once we straighten out the few glitches that we have with it, it will work so much better than our previous phone system.

Many of the “glitches” that we are finding we didn’t find with our old phone system.  But you know why?  Because the old phone system was created about the time that President Abraham Lincoln was born.  Meaning, it was old.  It did not have any of the features of the new phone system, except for voicemail.

So some of the growing pains we are feeling are caused by getting some of these new “neat features” to work correctly.

Such as:

• Remote phones.  Theoretically, a user will be able to pick their phone up from their office, take it anywhere in the world that has a high speed connection that can be accessed via an Ethernet connection and plug the phone in and they should have the same phone number that they had in their office.  They should also be able to call back into the office at no charge.
• Virtual fax machine that delivers faxes via PDF.  Works fantastically.
• Built in conference calling.  The phone system allows you to create “conferences” that people can call into, like the conferencing feature available from Gotomeeting and various telco providers.  This feature works really well too.

The current problems we have are some echo on certain calls and the fact that remote phones don’t currently work for incoming calls.  They work for OUTGOING calls, but for incoming, they go straight to voicemail.

Little glitches, but annoying nonetheless.

Our vendor is working to resolve the issues, and I have complete faith that the issues will be resolved soon. 

Even with the issues we have now, it is a so much better phone system than we had previously, it doesn’t even really compare.

 

Technorati Tags: VOIP,Asterisk,SOHO

February 9th – Kindle 2.0?

 

Amazon has scheduled a news conference/press event for February 9th, 2009 at the New York City Public Library.  Speculation is that they will do one of two things:

• Announce that Jeff Bezos is funding a theme park somewhere in Mongolia
• Introduction of the Amazon Kindle 2.0

I make no bones about the fact that I am very impressed with the Amazon Kindle.  It looks like a great device for reading books.

It’s an electronic reader that can hold a large number of books on it, and it also has built in wireless for ordering books from Amazon (if they are in Kindle format).

It also (for a monthly fee) will allow you to download blogs, various newspapers, etc, directly to the Kindle.

It’s not a cheap device, coming in at about $359.  But the biggest problem with the device is that it has been sold out since early November.  Oprah featured it on her show as one of her “Favorite Things” and ever since, they have been sold out with an average delivery time if you ordered today of six to eight weeks.

Speculation is that on the ninth of February the new Kindle will be announced.  Nothing has been mentioned about new features, at least by Amazon.

I look forward to the new Kindle.  I look forward to the possibility that I could have a device with 15-20 books on it that I could take anywhere and read.  Packing 15-20 books into a paperbook sized device holds great appeal to me.

So Mr. Bezos, bring on Kindle 2!

Technorati Tags: Kindle,Bezos,Amazon,Electronic Readers