An add-on called Webguide allows remote access and control of media center from a web browser. Download and install the add-on on the machine with Media Center, configure, open up ports 50538 and 50539 on your router, point your browser to your home IP address, and watch/record TV from anywhere.

One fine day I was listening to Swap Shop on my local AM station (stay with me), and the program ended and The Kim Komando Show began. If you’ve never heard of the Kim Komando Show, it’s tailored to the every day user on down to Grandma playing solitaire. It’s not overly technical (I mean who would listen to that?, Shut up… only if I wasn’t really busy.), more for the ipod users and slideshow makers than web developers. Normally, I would only listen to KK subconsiously if I happened to already be in the car and on the radio station. On this day (this fine day) Kim spouted off a really clever tip that really reeled me in. It was simply that you could right-click on a .jpg, sort through the properties and find the camera settings you used to take the picture. I always had problems duplicating shots when I got a really good one. Hey, you cant know everything right?

So anyway, the long and short of it is this: I don’t necessarily listen to the show every Saturday morning, but I did join the Kim’s Club so I could download it. No regrets. I dig Kim’s listing of freebies because I never have to worry about any of it being really bad or chocked full of spyware. I just find what I need and click it because I know it’s going to be reasonably safe. It’s a huge time saver.

I also really like the forum. It’s pretty simple and restricted, which keeps me from being distracted. I would especially recommend the forum to anyone with questions about office suites, backups, and antivirus/antispyware.

More on this later. Here’s a shoutout to AskBud (a KK forum member) as promised, he creates screen videos with narration of commonly asked questions, a great idea. AskBud4computerlessons.com

Why it leaves me Thunderbird.

Thunderbird is part of the Mozilla suite, is open source, and free. The mail client alone is simple, convenient, and attractive. There’s really so many nice things I can say about the base program, it makes more sense for you to just have a look yourself here.

Worth noting are the calendar extension ‘Lightning’, and gnupg extension ‘Enigmail’. Also worth noting, is that I’m able to place my Thunderbird profile on a fat32 partition shared between the 2 operating systems and use it from both linux and windows.

In the gray area:

Mencode will encode video anyway I want it with no complaint. The Windows Movie Maker included in Vista works like a dream, whereas in Windows XP, it was terrible.

Email in Evolution (linux) is way more comfortable for me. Windows Mail, in Vista, gave me nothing but problems. Outlook 2003 does the best job filtering spam of any client I’ve tried so far.

Networking in windows is more flexible than it has been in the past, but still not as smooth as linux.

Truths that live on:

Linux is the best fileserver hands down.

Windows is still the buttered side of the bread as far as software developers are concerned, although performance of some existing software is somewhat spotty.

If you want to turn your home videos into DVDs, and Vista is available to you, you’d be silly not to use it.

Ubuntu Linux still seems to know my new latop better than Windows Vista on a fresh install. Almost all of the hardware works out of the gate on Ubuntu whereas not much of anything gets figured out by Vista alone.

Without adding third party software to Vista, it’s pretty painful to try and code anything.

New revelations:

Internet Explorer 7 is a pretty damn good browser. I think they’ve taken a number of lessons from Firefox and Opera. Browsers under linux could be better.

Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn is due to be released this month.

If I gave Beryl the resources I’m giving Windows, I could make my linux desktop at least as nice.

Edit: Annoyance– I’ve just tried to fax something from Vista. It turns out Vista home premium doesn’t include fax and scanner utilities. You have to pay up for Business or Ultimate edition for those privileges. Come on Microsoft…

1 C3823 PROCESSOR, 80547, PENTIUM 4 PRESCOTT DT, 520, SKT-T
1 F3105 BASE (ASSEMBLY OR GROUP), MICRO-MINI TOWER, PENTIUM 4 PRESCOTT DT, 520, 4700
1 N7965 MODULE, SOFTWARE, WXPHSP2, DIMENSION, ENGLAND/ENGLISH, NO DOCS/DISKETTES, DELL AMERICAS ORGANIZATION
1 R5017 MODULE, DUAL IN-LINE MEMORY MODULE, 512, 2X256, 400, 1R, 512
1 R0473 MODULE, FLOPPY DRIVE, NO-FD, 212, DIMENSION
1 U3976 MODULE, HARD DRIVE, 40G, I, Serial ATA, #1, WD-XL80SD
1 H3793 MODULE, MODEM, SONNY, INTERNAL, DATA FAX, DIMENSION, DELL AMERICAS ORGANIZATION
1 K2810 MODULE, DIGITAL VIDEO DISK DRIVE, 16X, IDE (INTEGRATED DRIVE ELECTRONICS), HALF HEIGHT, LITEON, DIMENSION, MIDNIGHT GRAY

The RAM has been upgraded to 2 Gig and the video to a Geforce PCI express card with 256M ram.

I have to say I really like this OS for my son’s machine. The Aero interface is nice but not that exciting if you’re used to using Beryl on linux. The clincher for me is the Media Center (not included in Vista Home Basic). Combined with the Hauppauge PVR-150 tv card already in the machine, tv watching/recording on this OS is by far the best I’ve seen. The media center essentially gives you TIVO. You really just have to experience it to appreciate it. Media center also gives you a section with alternative online content such as Turbonick and XM Radio (if you have a subscription), that is very comfortable.

Ok, so I really like Vista on my son’s PC… Here’s something I learned yesterday:

I already own Windows XP, and I bought the retail upgrade for Windows Vista Home Premium. I wanted to do a clean install instead of running the upgrade from within XP. So I booted from the Vista DVD, formatted the hard drive, and installed same as always. Soon I realized that it had not asked me to put in my old XP disk or product ID. Uh oh… Sure enough it installs (approx 40 min.) and I can’t activate my new OS. I get an error that says something about “you bought an upgrade license, you can’t do a fresh install.” Oh well, it says I have 30 days, I’ll call Microsoft and sort it out later… Yesterday I decided to call and get it sorted out. In the meanwhile, my son had settled into Vista, personalized it, installed games, blah blah blah… I explained to the support guy (who was very good, by the way) what I did and that I couldn’t activate Vista. His first words were something pleasant that I don’t remember exactly but that summarized into me being screwed and needing to start all over with installing XP first and then upgrading from XP to Vista. I had pretty much accepted that I had to start over but the support guy told me he would find out if there was any possible way to activate the software without starting completely over. After conferring with his people, he came back on the line and said possibly we could put the Vista disk in and try the Ugrade option. To make a long story short, (40 minutes later) it worked! All my son’s settings were saved and I was then able to activate Vista. The tech guy stayed on the line the whole time to see how it came out! My first thought was that this would be handy in the future because I wipe a lot of machines. It saves me having to run down an XP disk everytime. My second thought came shortly thereafter and I asked the tech guy “You realize I never put in my XP disk or XP product ID in right?” He didn’t seem to want to discuss it much so I thanked him and we parted ways.

So do they even sell a retail full edition? What besides the honor system requires you to buy anything but the upgrade?

Simply put, I recommend:

If you can refrain from upgrading to Vista for a few months, wait. Wait to see what happens with DRM, better hardware support, and better hardware prices.

If you upgrade now, be sure your hardware can handle it.

If you’re buying a new machine, test drive it. Expect to pay more for a machine that will run Vista the way you need it to.

Let me explain. Like any new operating system, Windows Vista has teething troubles. Hardware support is limited and some software applications will need patched. We went through it with XP, and we survived it. And in my opinion, Windows XP was/is a decent operating system. However, the biggest issue when making the move to Vista is hardware. When XP launched, most hardware was running Windows 98 and 2000 like a rocket. A high percentage of machines running Windows 2000 (or 98) could be upgraded to XP with at most an upgrade to 256 Meg of RAM. Not so with Vista.

If you’ve recently purchased a new machine upgrading to Vista may be your only practical choice. Minimum RAM requirement for Vista is 1 Gig. If your not living in a dream world, the requirement is more like 2 Gig. And remember, you’ll likely be buying a pair of chips and replacing (rather than adding to) the RAM you currently have. If your processor was sold in the last year or so, it’s going to be ok. If your planning on using the fancy Aero interface (and why wouldn’t you if you just dropped $200-400 for an OS), you’ll need a high end video card with at least 256M of video RAM. If you plan on using BitLocker (with Vista Enterprise or Ultimate) you’ll need a board that has a TPM 1.2 chip.

If your in the market for a new machine, you’re in a bit better position. Where mid-grade machines were in the $400-600 range for XP for the past 6 months, mid-grade machines for running Vista are somewhere in the $800-1000 range right now. My recommendation is simply to go into Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. and test drive Vista machines. When you find the one that runs the way you want it to, select a machine that’s one step up from that one. Remember, when you load the base Windows XP operating system on a machine, it runs fast. When you start adding in SP2 and all the security patches it slows way down. I wouldn’t expect Vista to be any different.
If you prefer to buy your machines online, I still recommend test driving machines at the retailers. Just write down the system specifications from the one you like and use them for reference when buying online.

The long of it:Slingbox comes in 3 flavors – Tuner, AV, and Pro. The “Tuner” version works great if you only want to watch regular cable without the on demand or dvr stuff. The “AV” version is set up to interface with your cable box for on demand or dvr stuff. Basically it has the AV inputs and IR stuff for the remote control of your cable box. The “Pro” version has all features of the other two units combined plus hi def plugs. I don’t know anything about hi def so that’s all I’ll say about that.

The most complicated thing about setting up the Slingbox is opening the port on your router, seriously. The software that comes with the unit is simple and attractive. It tries to help you open the correct port on your router, sets up the inputs on the unit (tunes channels, that sort of thing), and lets you set up an access password as well as an administrator password.

Slingplayer is the software used to watch the stream, and is free for desktops. It’s $30 for mobile platforms, which is understandable, because there are so many. It works flawlessly on my Dell Axim with Windows Mobile 2003/2005. It will run under WINE if you’re using Ubuntu linux.

If you have the administrative password, you can boot anyone else who is watching with the access password. You can tailor the stream (resolution, bitrate, framerate, etc.) to fit your available bandwidth, although it works wonderfully with Insightbb broadband.

I would recommend this hardware solution to anyone who has messed around with software / tuner card solutions. Just install it and be done with it. And be able to change your channels too!

It is pretty impressive when you can download an entire disk image in 10 minutes or so.

After receiving the letter informing me of my bandwidth increase, I still wasn’t seeing any difference in my speeds so I went to Insightbb’s online chat and asked about it. The person asked me what model my modem was and eventually decided it was outdated and needed replaced. An insight technician called me two days later and brought me a new modem. While hooking up my new modem, the technician mentioned my old Speedstream router might not be up to snuff. I scoffed at this (I love my old router) and we headed upstairs to check the speed. Sure enough, it was still slow. I switched my old router out for a newer Linksys and zing… super speed. So if your not getting the speed increase (check it here http://74.128.14.17/), your modem or router may need updated. I would recommend hooking a machine straight to the cable modem to eliminate the modem as the bottleneck. If you get good speed, then you know you need to change out the router.

I was impressed by Insightbb’s proactive approach to eliminating DSL as a competitor by dramatically improving service at no extra cost. That said, I’m not interested in shopping for DSL right now. If in the next year insightbb decides to raise their rates, you can come back to this blog and get the decaturpc.com prognosis.

Owner
decaturpc.com

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer sharing protocol popular for use with large files because it allows for restablishing and continuing downloads. That is, if you lose your connection with 99% of the download done, all is not lost. BitTorrent allows for (even depends on) a large download to be broken into many smaller chunks. These chunks come from any number of different peers (others on the BitTorrent network just like yourself). In this way, once you’ve downloaded a small chunk, it’s “yours”. If your connection is lost, the only loss to you is the small chunk that you were in the middle of downloading.

Think of it this way. You’re baking a cake and need some sugar, milk, flour, and icing. You go to the store and get the sugar, milk, and flour, but they are out of icing. No problem; you can be making the cake while someone else goes to a different store to get the icing. The cake won’t be complete, but you can be working on it in the meantime. Under the BitTorrent model, your neighbor can come over and borrow a cup of sugar while you’re waiting.

I’ll use decaturpc’s favorite Linux flavor, Ubuntu, as an example. You want to download the latest Ubuntu iso and, for whatever reason, don’t want to use their website. You can go out to piratebay.org, isohunt.com, or any number of other torrent-searching sites. (A word of caution: don’t let the kids do it. You will, more than likely, run into some material that is geared toward a more mature audience.)

Ahh, here it is: “Ubuntu iso image”. What’s this other stuff? Leechers? Seeders? And why is the torrent file so small?

The torrent file (usually a .torrent extension), is simply a pointer to a “tracker”, someone who keeps track of where to find all the little chunks of your Ubuntu iso. The file may also contain some information about how the chunks are divided up. (Here is where my technical details may fail, but they are not important to be able to use BitTorrent.) At any rate, the .torrent file is not the ends but the means. The ends are stored on multiple different systems (peers), one of which you will become shortly.

A Seeder (or Seed) is simply a peer who already has the entire (in this case) Ubuntu iso image. They have all of the chunks ready to go. They may be the one who original started the torrent or simply someone who has finished the download and is allowing others to access it.

A Leecher is not as bad as it sounds. The Leechers simply don’t have the entire file yet. They are generally sharing what they have, but their chunks are incomplete. If they have a chunk that you don’t, you can get it from them. They are not just sucking up and giving nothing back as the name sort of implies. You will be a leecher until your download is complete.

Now that you have a little background, know the lingo, and are generally 1337, let’s get a client. Yep, you’ve got a torrent file in your grubby little paws; what are you going to do with it? Google is your friend. Bittorrent. Client. I got 5 million hits in about a tenth of a second. What’s the best one? Dunno. Pick one and try it. If you don’t like it, try another. Personally, I use BitTornado because 1) I saw that it got good reviews once upon a time, 2) I’ve never had trouble with it, and 3) it does what I want so I see no reason to change. I have heard good things about Azureus, but I’ve never used it….

Anyway, install your client-of-choice and open the .torrent file with it. You should see it finding peers, seeds, etc. Then it’ll take off in a blazing fury of downloading goodness! Nope, not quite like that. More likely than not, it will start slow and ramp up and down. The whole model is somewhat based on upload amount vs. download amount. VERY roughly speaking, the more you upload, the more you will download. With that in mind, remember that, in the beginning, you have NONE of the chunks, so no one is interested in you and your upload rate remains low. Over time, however, you will get more and more chunks; more and more peers will be interested in what you have (because they don’t have the same chunks as you), your upload rate goes up, and speed picks up.

***This is not always the case. I have seen torrents with such vast numbers of peers that upload rates were not a concern. This resulted in such fast download rates that I was only limited by bandwidth. Generally speaking, however, the BitTorrent model depends on users uploading as well as downloading. Otherwise, the network kind of falls apart.

So you get all of your chunks, your download is complete, you’re done. Well, to complete the cycle, you should keep the client active for a while and let others benefit from you as you have from those before you. Remember, the whole model depends on you giving back. There are no hard and fast rules, no one will ban you for shutting down your client once you’ve gotten what you want, and sometimes just no one is interested in what you have. I usually leave it up for a day unless the upload rate drops to nothing; at that point, why bother? That’s just me.

Good luck, have fun, and behave.

Adam

Here’s why.
Say you want to try Ubuntu but you’re not sure. Go to Ubuntu’s website and if their website alone doesn’t make you feel like you’re in a favorite chair sipping hot cocoa, maybe you should stop right now. It is truly a beautiful site simple, elegant, etc… I digress… Download an .iso image of the appropriate install disc, probably “PC (Intel x86)” but maybe “64-bit PC (AMD64)”. If you don’t know, I’m guessing the software would tell you if you were trying to install the wrong version. This isn’t after all your average install disk, it’s an Ubuntu install disc. A very smart disc indeed. You can boot and run this disk, and in fact the Ubuntu operating system, without harming your Windows operating system. It’s what’s called a “live cd”, and it’s very cool. It will run much slower than Ubuntu when it’s installed on your hard drive, but it will allow you to try the features of Ubuntu risk-free. If you should decide to install Ubuntu on your hard drive, you’ll find an icon right on the Ubuntu desktop that will allow you to install to your hard drive while working in the live cd version! A live cd becomes a live install. If you decided to keep your Windows XP, Ubuntu will shrink the ntfs partition and install Ubuntu to dual-boot with the existing XP installation. This means that when your pc starts, it will give you the choice to boot Windows or Ubuntu. When I install Windows XP on my pc, I spend the next 2 hours installing drivers for my video card, scanner, printer, card reader, ipod, etc. Ubuntu takes care of that for me on install and when it says it’s done, everything works.

Included in the Ubuntu base installation is everything you need to get started at work or play. Applications such as OpenOffice – a Microsoft Office replacement, and Evolution – a Microsoft Outlook replacement install by default. Firefox is of course the browser for Linux users as well as many Windows users. CD and DVD burning software also comes with the base installation of Ubuntu, whereas Windows XP does not come ready to burn DVDs. Gimp, a graphics editing program comparable to Adobe Photoshop, is also installed by default. For users familiar with Linux power applications, you have python, perl, PHP, Apache, MySQL, and SAMBA, ready to go with again, the base installation.

Although I have found my switch away from Windows XP to Ubuntu to have a quick productivity payoff, there are some things that take time to adjust to. For example Autodesk does not make an AutoCad for Linux, so I do my drafting with QCad. QCad takes .dxf files, so I have to export my .dwf files from AutoCad. Also, Ubuntu Linux does not allow you to set up your user account as an administrator. You will have to make certain changes to the system and to other users files as “sudo” or log in as root. A basic understanding of file permissions is necessary to make things work the way you want.

In the end, I’m writing this blog in Firefox, watching tv from my tuner card, sharing files and printers with my Windows machines, and checking my email on a free operating system that I haven’t rebooted since I installed. Missing Windows XP? No…

Owner
decaturpc.com