Today I got the chance to play with a Samsung tablet with Windows 8 on it, and though the tablet itself was nice, Windows 8 failed to impress me at all.
My first impression with Windows 8 aligns it more with Vista or Windows ME, than XP or 7, as it is a flaky, wonky beast at best.
It reminds me of Vista, since it appears to be a half-baked,
cobbled-together O/S that shouldn’t have made it past beta. Or, to be more accurate, it appears that Windows 8 IS
the beta. They just decided to release it before it was finished, the
same way they released Windows ME and Vista earlier than they should
have.
It seems that Windows 8 doesn’t know if it wants to be a Windows box or an iPad, and as a result it doesn’t do that good a job as either one.
It’s almost like Microsoft decided to create a touch enabled tablet
O/S by cobbling up a tablet/touch-screen type interface, then they went and slapped it on whatever they had laying around. The result is an operating system that doesn't
really know which way it wants to go, and does a poor job of guiding you to whatever tool you may need to accomplish a particular task.
One thing you notice right away is that you cannot force the system to boot to the desktop. You always get a home screen which is filled with more useless applet icons than you can possibly believe. This is particularly unfortunate since if you want to do anything useful or important, (like setting up a wireless connection, changing your display preferences, or finding something in your home folder), you are forced to go to the desktop as there is no “tablet” way to do it.
When you finally get to the desktop you're in deep sneakers, unless you have a keyboard and mouse installed, because the underlying desktop applications have not been updated to meet the requirements of a touch-screen environment. So, trying to use the desktop on an un-docked tablet is a challenge to say the least.
Microsoft also had the bright idea of actually and physically removing from Windows 8 a lot of what made Windows 7 useful.
For example the start menu, and it's associated button, has been completely ripped out of the O/S to prevent any “back-rev” wannabes from using it like 7. (Though there are some 3rd party payware apps that restore it.)
Removing the "Start" button functionality is an absolute disaster because there are a number of applications that have separate configuration or installation update features that are only found in that application's start menu folder. You need to update or configure something? Hey! It just stinks being you.
Following that lead, Microsoft decided to modify the Windows 8 "First Boot" experience in ways that all but force you to do things "The Microsoft Way", or not at all. A classic example is the initial setup for Windows Update.
In previous Windows installations you were given the choice of automagic installation of updates, or electing to set these options later.
The Windows 8 startup experience gives you two choices: Do it the Microsoft way, or don't do it at all. Period. Oh, you can set Windows Update to notify you prior to downloading and installing, but you have to dig into the control panel to use the Windows Update tool located there to set it that way. And even getting to the Control Panel is not made all that obvious.
To make a bad situation even worse, Windows 8 does not ship with sensible choices enabled by default. An example I ran into really early on is that the out-of-the-box default media player is not Windows Media Player; instead it is some wonky "media center/player" type app.
To make the poor choice of defaults even MORE obvious, when you start a media file a little tool-tip like box pops up to tell you that "There is other software installed that might do a better job of. . . ." If you click on the box, it gives you a list of things that really should have been default choices from the start, and lets you choose one.
Likewise, the application icons offered on the default home screen look like the kind of apps you'd expect to see on some smartphone, not on a tablet that wants to do something useful.
Many of the apps are scrolling boxes that display various things. The weather app keeps scrolling various weather reports from all over Hell and Half of Texas; and quite frankly, I really am not all that interested in what the current weather is in Istanbul, Zaire, Uzbekistan, or Sydney. There is a stock-ticker app, a news feed app, along with enough cruft to make actually finding something useful a challenge in itself.
The way I would describe most of these apps is that Microsoft appeared to take everything that I absolutely HATE about the MSN web-site, chopped the noisy little Java applet pieces up, and placed them on the primary startup screen. Since they decided that the background color of the home screen should be a dark blue instead of some pleasant neutral color, it just makes the applet icons appear even more garish.
Like they tried to do with Vista, they are trying to impress everyone with lots of eye-candy. As a result the default startup screen is ugly, it's way, way too visually noisy, and it's about as useful as Teats on a Boar Hog. The few applets that are actually useful are buried in such a mountain of Gagh!, that it's almost impossible to find them.
What they should have done is to follow the example of Windows 7 by placing a few essential applets on a more cheerfully colored background, allowing the user to choose - like Windows 7's gadgets - what other applets they might want to have on their home screen.
Summary of Windows 8:
As a tablet based operating system, Windows 8 leaves a lot to be desired.
On a desktop system Windows 8 is absolute insanity as you end up with the worst of both worlds: A touch-enabled operating system that functions more like a smartphone than a desktop, with a lot of the useful desktop functionality ripped out of it, installed on inexpensive desktop systems without touch-screens and tossed to an unsuspecting public.
If Microsoft is “betting the farm” on Windows 8 as some have said, then they’re doomed.
I did learn one important lesson about tablets and touch-screens though:
If you have any kind of tremor or palsy, (as I do), using a stylus on a touch-enabled device gets “interesting” to say the least. I’m surprised that they didn’t include some kind of “jitter” compensation in their
“accessibility options”. On the other hand, maybe I am not so surprised.
What say ye?
Jim (JR)
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Really HUGE "Thumb Drives"?
We've all had the problem: You haul out your trusty USB thumb-drive to put something on it. . . And there's no more space. So, you look to see what you can delete, and - damn it all! - there's nothing you can toss.
Or, you want to transfer a LARGE file or data object from point "A" to point "B" and it's just too big to put in your pocket. Uploading to an on-line file repository is an option, but that will take forever.
How would you like to have thumb-drives in the multi-terabyte size range?
The answer is "Hard Drive Docking Stations"
For those of you who are going "Wazzit?", a hard drive docking station is a (relatively) small plug-in device that you can put on your desk that has a slot in the top for a hard drive to fit. Though usually for SATA drives, there are IDE (PATA) options as well.
Here are a couple of examples:
This one is a NexStar caddy that fits two laptop size or two desktop size SATA drives. On the back, (not shown), are ports for both eSATA and USB. If you have an eSATA port on your computer that supports "Port Multiplier" functionality, you can put two drives in it, and access both of them at the same time.
And this little beastie is my Thermaltake BlacX caddy that fits one 2.5 / 3.5 SATA drive. It also has back panel connections for both eSATA and USB. In fact, I'm using this with a 1T drive in it - right now - to back up a customer's laptop before I rebuild it.
Now, granted, these little monsters are not cheap. But they're not all that expensive either, especially if you can get them on sale.
And!
They're damned handy. I've had situations where I had to work with a hard drive in a computer that would not boot, (the MoBo was fried, etc.), and with these things I can mount the hard drive under Windows or Linux, verify drive integrity, and suck the customers data off of it.
Likewise, if you remember the article I wrote about getting hard drives exchanged for (nearly) free, something like this is a great way to take a drive, test it, and get it ready for that all so important warranty return. Or to test the NEW drive they sent you, to verify they didn't send you someone else's crappy drive. (And yes, that does happen.)
If you want to take a lot of data somewhere, all you have to do is load the beastie up, slip it in an anti-static bag, tape it shut, and be on your way. (Don't forget to bring your caddy if the guy at the other end doesn't have one.)
A couple of important points:
First of all, eSATA is way, WAY faster than USB. However, if you are going to use an eSATA card and cable to hook the monster up to your computer, you may not be given the option to "disconnect" the drive in the same way you get that option to disconnect a USB device. The solution? Go to the Device Manager, find the external drive, "uninstall" it, and then you're set to go.
Second, if you are REALLY interested in using in the same way you'd use a USB thumb-drive, you should use a real eSATA port that supports AHCI. This allows you to remove the drive you uninstalled thirty seconds ago, slap another drive in the caddy, and have it come on-line automagically, without a reboot.
If you are desperate, you can use either the USB connection - which does allow disconnect - or one of the SATA ports on your system's motherboard. Unfortunately, most of the motherboards *I* have messed with get real annoyed if you unplug hard drives on 'em. As in frozen solid, or doing bizarre things. So, if you don't have an eSATA port, either bite the bullet and get one, or use USB.
Now you may say that an external USB/eSATA hard drive, or hard drive enclosure, will do the same thing.
I disagree. There is a qualitative difference between using a hot-swap dock and an external hard drive.
With the drive dock, you are not limited to the size of the one drive - or if you want to swap drives - you don't have to disassemble the little bastid.
Of course, there are a few caveats:
One: You don't have the shock-resistance of an enclosed drive, so don't go playing deck hockey with 'em.
Two: You probably want to invest in at least one or two anti-static wrist straps. That's assuming you really don't want to be zapping hundred-dollar-plus hard drives with the static electricity you built up walking across the carpet.
Three: Save the anti-static bags the drives come in. You'll use them to store and/or transport the drive.
The conclusion?
If you are a little bit careful, and a little bit inventive, you can use normal, plain-vanilla hard drives as REALLY HUGE thumb drives.
What say ye?
Jim (JR)
Or, you want to transfer a LARGE file or data object from point "A" to point "B" and it's just too big to put in your pocket. Uploading to an on-line file repository is an option, but that will take forever.
How would you like to have thumb-drives in the multi-terabyte size range?
The answer is "Hard Drive Docking Stations"
For those of you who are going "Wazzit?", a hard drive docking station is a (relatively) small plug-in device that you can put on your desk that has a slot in the top for a hard drive to fit. Though usually for SATA drives, there are IDE (PATA) options as well.
Here are a couple of examples:
This one is a NexStar caddy that fits two laptop size or two desktop size SATA drives. On the back, (not shown), are ports for both eSATA and USB. If you have an eSATA port on your computer that supports "Port Multiplier" functionality, you can put two drives in it, and access both of them at the same time.
And this little beastie is my Thermaltake BlacX caddy that fits one 2.5 / 3.5 SATA drive. It also has back panel connections for both eSATA and USB. In fact, I'm using this with a 1T drive in it - right now - to back up a customer's laptop before I rebuild it.
Now, granted, these little monsters are not cheap. But they're not all that expensive either, especially if you can get them on sale.
And!
They're damned handy. I've had situations where I had to work with a hard drive in a computer that would not boot, (the MoBo was fried, etc.), and with these things I can mount the hard drive under Windows or Linux, verify drive integrity, and suck the customers data off of it.
Likewise, if you remember the article I wrote about getting hard drives exchanged for (nearly) free, something like this is a great way to take a drive, test it, and get it ready for that all so important warranty return. Or to test the NEW drive they sent you, to verify they didn't send you someone else's crappy drive. (And yes, that does happen.)
If you want to take a lot of data somewhere, all you have to do is load the beastie up, slip it in an anti-static bag, tape it shut, and be on your way. (Don't forget to bring your caddy if the guy at the other end doesn't have one.)
A couple of important points:
First of all, eSATA is way, WAY faster than USB. However, if you are going to use an eSATA card and cable to hook the monster up to your computer, you may not be given the option to "disconnect" the drive in the same way you get that option to disconnect a USB device. The solution? Go to the Device Manager, find the external drive, "uninstall" it, and then you're set to go.
Second, if you are REALLY interested in using in the same way you'd use a USB thumb-drive, you should use a real eSATA port that supports AHCI. This allows you to remove the drive you uninstalled thirty seconds ago, slap another drive in the caddy, and have it come on-line automagically, without a reboot.
If you are desperate, you can use either the USB connection - which does allow disconnect - or one of the SATA ports on your system's motherboard. Unfortunately, most of the motherboards *I* have messed with get real annoyed if you unplug hard drives on 'em. As in frozen solid, or doing bizarre things. So, if you don't have an eSATA port, either bite the bullet and get one, or use USB.
Now you may say that an external USB/eSATA hard drive, or hard drive enclosure, will do the same thing.
I disagree. There is a qualitative difference between using a hot-swap dock and an external hard drive.
With the drive dock, you are not limited to the size of the one drive - or if you want to swap drives - you don't have to disassemble the little bastid.
Of course, there are a few caveats:
One: You don't have the shock-resistance of an enclosed drive, so don't go playing deck hockey with 'em.
Two: You probably want to invest in at least one or two anti-static wrist straps. That's assuming you really don't want to be zapping hundred-dollar-plus hard drives with the static electricity you built up walking across the carpet.
Three: Save the anti-static bags the drives come in. You'll use them to store and/or transport the drive.
The conclusion?
If you are a little bit careful, and a little bit inventive, you can use normal, plain-vanilla hard drives as REALLY HUGE thumb drives.
What say ye?
Jim (JR)
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Internet Explorer 10
Prevent Automatic Install
Sheesh!
Hey! Microsoft! Yes, YOU over there!!! What's with this IE-10 as an Important Update stuff!!
Sigh. . . .
Yep, it's that time again. IE-10, (the Windows 8 version of IE), has now been released for Windows 7 et.al., and, as usual, we need to patch the registry to prevent it from being automagically installed.
Here's the patch. Copy this to notepad, and save it as Do Not Allow IE-10.reg
Double click the newly created file, dismiss the UAC by selecting "yes", let it do it's nefarious task, and reboot.
Update:
This file should update the registry properly - however it didn't work at first on my Win7 Home Premium and Professional boxes. I installed the key manually, and then exported it. Even though there was no visible difference, the newly exported file would properly install the key. Your Mileage May Vary.
If you want to read more about it, here is the TechNet article that explains it.
Note that they're offering a "toolkit" executable that (supposedly) does this for you, though I'd rather do the registry hack myself if you don't mind!
What I'd really like to see, is for Microsoft to stop releasing IE updates as "Important" updates. . .
What say ye?
Jim (JR)
Hey! Microsoft! Yes, YOU over there!!! What's with this IE-10 as an Important Update stuff!!
Sigh. . . .
Yep, it's that time again. IE-10, (the Windows 8 version of IE), has now been released for Windows 7 et.al., and, as usual, we need to patch the registry to prevent it from being automagically installed.
Here's the patch. Copy this to notepad, and save it as Do Not Allow IE-10.reg
Double click the newly created file, dismiss the UAC by selecting "yes", let it do it's nefarious task, and reboot.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Setup\10.0]
"DoNotAllowIE10"=dword:00000001And that's it.Update:
This file should update the registry properly - however it didn't work at first on my Win7 Home Premium and Professional boxes. I installed the key manually, and then exported it. Even though there was no visible difference, the newly exported file would properly install the key. Your Mileage May Vary.
If you want to read more about it, here is the TechNet article that explains it.
Note that they're offering a "toolkit" executable that (supposedly) does this for you, though I'd rather do the registry hack myself if you don't mind!
What I'd really like to see, is for Microsoft to stop releasing IE updates as "Important" updates. . .
What say ye?
Jim (JR)
Saturday, March 9, 2013
The New "NAS" Rated Hard Drives
What's The Difference?
Western Digital has announced a "new" series of hard drives specifically rated for NAS, (Network Attached Storage), devices called "Red" drives. (See the WD product page here.) Micro Center has begun selling them, and you can see the web-site ad for them here. At $114 for a 2 Tb, 7200 rpm, 64 meg cache, 6 Gb/second drive, the price is also reasonable compared to other "advanced" drives - and should come down.
As these gain traction, you can expect other manufacturers to follow suit with their own "NAS" rated drives.
The addition of a new "color" to the current hard drive rainbow is not surprising. However, the current cacophony of hard drive types, names, colors, and designations can be confusing - so this article hopes to sort some of this confusion into a reasonable order.
Seagate has their Barracuda, Momentus, (etc.), and just plain-vanilla branded hard drives.
Western Digital also has their "vanilla" branded drive, as well as the Green, Black, Blue, "Caviar," "Scorpio," and now their new "Red" drives.
Up until now, the differentiating factor among all these consumer level drives has been power consumption, speed, (including cache size and rpm rating), and retail price-point.
All of these drives, (except for the Red drive), have one thing in common: They are designed for use in personal computer applications; either desktop, laptop, tablet, netbook, or some other consumer computer product.
In contrast, the new Western Digital "Red" drives are designed to compete with higher-priced Enterprise class drives - at least the Enterprise class SATA drives - in array or RAID configurations, at a much lower price-per-unit.
Hard drives come in two basic flavors: Consumer drives, intended for the personal computer application, and Enterprise drives that are intended for heavy-duty array based usage.
So, what's the difference? (Besides the fact that "Enterprise" class drive can be hugely expensive!)
Basically, it's the firmware loaded into the drive. (At least in the SATA based drives. Fiber-channel, and other advanced interface technologies are a Horse of a Different Hue altogether.)
Consumer level drives have firmware that assumes that the drive is in an application with little to zero redundancy.
As a consequence, if the drive has trouble reading a sector/cluster on the platter it vigorously attempts to read - and recover - the data, which can take extended amounts of time. And this is reasonable. With one, (or at most a few), drives in the system, each one being independent of the others, reading the data - come hell or high water - is of paramount importance.
Enterprise level drive firmware takes an entirely different approach.
Enterprise drive firmware assumes that the drive is in an array or other type of RAID arrangement where data integrity is handled externally to each individual drive - via hardware error recovery, parity, or whatever. And as a consequence, the firmware on an Enterprise level drive is designed to be less anal about digging for the data.
In other words, it gives up and returns a "data fail" message sooner, (in some cases much sooner), the emphasis being on data throughput speed. Since there are other drives, or hardware, to handle the, (hopefully!), occasional data error issue, the drive isn't so eager to dig for data.
Additionally - at least in some cases - the drive's reliability and warranty is more highly rated. (Though there is a white-paper released by Google that claims that the MTBF and speed of the Enterprise level SATA drive is often no better than that of their consumer level counterparts. Despite their greatly advanced prices.)
So, what does this mean to you?
If you are using the drive in a NAS device, where there is some kind of data-recovery mechanism involved, the new NAS rated drives might be the best choice.
Though be careful. If you have a multiple-drive NAS device where the drives are arranged in a RAID-1, RAID-0 or Linear arrangement, (where there is simple mirroring, or all the drives are combined together as one huge drive),"red" drives are not for you, as you still need the built-in aggressive error recovery of the normal consumer rated drive.
Likewise, in a single, (or group of independent drives), arrangement - the NAS rated devices are not the best choice. If it's performance you want in an independent drive scenario, it's better to spend your money on the performance rated drives.
The big telling point is this:
How important is the ability to recover data on an individual drive? If there is no external redundancy, then it's absolutely critical. Otherwise the NAS rated drives might be a better choice.
Note: No matter how aggressive the error recovery may be, or how advanced the RAID technology, there is no substitute for regular backups.
What say ye?
Jim (JR)
(Stupid Disclaimer: The names and other descriptive attributes of the drives and manufacturers mentioned above may well be trademarks belonging to their respective manufacturers.)
As these gain traction, you can expect other manufacturers to follow suit with their own "NAS" rated drives.
The addition of a new "color" to the current hard drive rainbow is not surprising. However, the current cacophony of hard drive types, names, colors, and designations can be confusing - so this article hopes to sort some of this confusion into a reasonable order.
Seagate has their Barracuda, Momentus, (etc.), and just plain-vanilla branded hard drives.
Western Digital also has their "vanilla" branded drive, as well as the Green, Black, Blue, "Caviar," "Scorpio," and now their new "Red" drives.
Up until now, the differentiating factor among all these consumer level drives has been power consumption, speed, (including cache size and rpm rating), and retail price-point.
All of these drives, (except for the Red drive), have one thing in common: They are designed for use in personal computer applications; either desktop, laptop, tablet, netbook, or some other consumer computer product.
In contrast, the new Western Digital "Red" drives are designed to compete with higher-priced Enterprise class drives - at least the Enterprise class SATA drives - in array or RAID configurations, at a much lower price-per-unit.
Hard drives come in two basic flavors: Consumer drives, intended for the personal computer application, and Enterprise drives that are intended for heavy-duty array based usage.
So, what's the difference? (Besides the fact that "Enterprise" class drive can be hugely expensive!)
Basically, it's the firmware loaded into the drive. (At least in the SATA based drives. Fiber-channel, and other advanced interface technologies are a Horse of a Different Hue altogether.)
Consumer level drives have firmware that assumes that the drive is in an application with little to zero redundancy.
As a consequence, if the drive has trouble reading a sector/cluster on the platter it vigorously attempts to read - and recover - the data, which can take extended amounts of time. And this is reasonable. With one, (or at most a few), drives in the system, each one being independent of the others, reading the data - come hell or high water - is of paramount importance.
Enterprise level drive firmware takes an entirely different approach.
Enterprise drive firmware assumes that the drive is in an array or other type of RAID arrangement where data integrity is handled externally to each individual drive - via hardware error recovery, parity, or whatever. And as a consequence, the firmware on an Enterprise level drive is designed to be less anal about digging for the data.
In other words, it gives up and returns a "data fail" message sooner, (in some cases much sooner), the emphasis being on data throughput speed. Since there are other drives, or hardware, to handle the, (hopefully!), occasional data error issue, the drive isn't so eager to dig for data.
Additionally - at least in some cases - the drive's reliability and warranty is more highly rated. (Though there is a white-paper released by Google that claims that the MTBF and speed of the Enterprise level SATA drive is often no better than that of their consumer level counterparts. Despite their greatly advanced prices.)
So, what does this mean to you?
If you are using the drive in a NAS device, where there is some kind of data-recovery mechanism involved, the new NAS rated drives might be the best choice.
Though be careful. If you have a multiple-drive NAS device where the drives are arranged in a RAID-1, RAID-0 or Linear arrangement, (where there is simple mirroring, or all the drives are combined together as one huge drive),"red" drives are not for you, as you still need the built-in aggressive error recovery of the normal consumer rated drive.
Likewise, in a single, (or group of independent drives), arrangement - the NAS rated devices are not the best choice. If it's performance you want in an independent drive scenario, it's better to spend your money on the performance rated drives.
The big telling point is this:
How important is the ability to recover data on an individual drive? If there is no external redundancy, then it's absolutely critical. Otherwise the NAS rated drives might be a better choice.
Note: No matter how aggressive the error recovery may be, or how advanced the RAID technology, there is no substitute for regular backups.
What say ye?
Jim (JR)
(Stupid Disclaimer: The names and other descriptive attributes of the drives and manufacturers mentioned above may well be trademarks belonging to their respective manufacturers.)
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