Windows Home Server Power Pack 3

Power Pack 3 for Windows Home Server is available to download today.  Login to your Windows Home Server and click on Windows Update. More information on Power Pack 3 here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/pp.mspx

 If you have installed any of the beta versions, you will need to follow the instructions here: http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowshomeserver/archive/2009/11/24/power-pack-3-instructions-for-users-running-pre-release-versions.aspx

Belkin N+ wireless router and Xbox Live

If, like me, you have been having problems getting Xbox Live to work over your Belkin N+ Wireless route, here's a great article that takes you through the solution (or workaround!).  Judging my the number of comments on this article, I was not the only one suffering with problems.  This fixed mine.  :^)

http://www.zath.co.uk/how-to-get-xbox-live-working-with-belkin-n-wireless-router/

HTC Snap review

I have just replaced my HTC Touch Diamond with a HTC Snap.  I have been using a Touch Diamond for over a year and haven't really been that pleased with it.  Looking back on the review I wrote on it over a year ago, I can see that my initial impressions weren't far off the mark.

My initial impressions with the HTC Snap couldn't be more different.  The unit boots up quickly and is very responsive to use.  I love the QWERTY keyboard - I have had Blackberrys in my work life on a couple of occasions and this is about as close to a Blackberry as you are going to get for a Windows Mobile (6.1) device.  However, the keys are still a little close together for me, but it is still pretty good.  Even some of the Blackberry like UI features (e.g. inserting a capital letter after a fullstop) are present.  About time!

The battery life seems pretty good for a 3G device and in normal use I find it will go 3 days between charges.  Obviously battery life depends on usage, so your mileage may vary.  The GPS works well with Google maps (preinstalled on the device) and if you are a big Facebook user, I recommend downloading the Windows Mobile version (you will find it here).

The overall build quality is great- it feels robust and the matt black finish works really well.  The screen is bright and clear (if a little small compared to some other devices these days).  It locks/unlocks very easily and considerable thought seems to have gone into the UI to make it even more usable.  Somehow all the features that you need are right at your finger tips.  The email was easier to set up and internet connectivity was a breeze. 

I did have a HTC S620 which was the 2G predessor to this device.  I loved it, but unfortunately it had an accident (let's just say it suffered severe water ingress!).  This is a great replacement for the S620 and I feel relieved now that I have retired my Touch Diamond.

WHS Connectivity Problems

I have had some problems with my home server over the past couple of weeks. It all started when I tried to install the latest Power Pack (Power Pack 2) for Windows Home Server. In reality the problem had nothing to do with Power Pack, but the update process highlighted that my Internet connection for the home server was down. This was due to the issues with my Netgear router (see previous blog entry), but in trying to fixing it I thought it was a firewall issue. In trying to identify the problem, I set the firewall settings back to their defaults.

Normally, this wouldn't be an issue, but I am using a Tranquil Harmony Home Server and you can only connect to it remotely (via a remote desktop connection). The firewall defaults are to deny file & print sharing AND remote desktop connections. Duh! I realised about 10 seconds after hitting the restore default button what I had done.

To fix this, you need to connect to the Tranquil server directly. Fortunately this is fairly straightforward. Remove the rear face plate (just three screws) and you will find a VGA, keyboard and mouse sockets (see photo above). This will allow you to logon to the machine directly without having to use a remote desktop. Just set the firewall settings back to normal (firewall set to "ON", but file & printing sharing and remote desktop selected on the "Exceptions" tab). And bingo, you are back in business.

Once you have the back plate off, the motherboard assembly just pulls out of the front of the unit. The motherboard and hard disk all come out as a single unit. There are a couple of screws on the top of the unit that allow you to remove the hard disk and access the memory. There is a single module - PC2-5300 DDR2 - I just happened to have a spare 1GB module, so I swapped it for the 512K already installed.

Bye bye Netgear DG834N

Well after just over 2 years of faithful service it looks like I have reached the end of the road with my Netgear router. It started to have problems a few weeks ago (denying Internet access and sporadically losing WiFi connectivity) - all of which could be resolved by rebooting it. It is amazing how reliant we have become on Internet access (the TV in the house is streamed over a WiFi connection adding an additional inconvenience!). Having to reboot the router daily was a major inconvenience. Originally, I thought it might have been issues with my ISP, but sadly not.

I have just replaced it with one of the new Belkin N+ Wireless Routers. It doesn't have the same aesthethic appeal as the Netgear router, but at least this one works. The documentation is not brilliant (more about this later), but it didn't take very long to install. Plus, much to my relief, all of the issues that I had been encountering seem to have disappeared. So it looks like it was the Netgear router that was faulty after all. I would have expected it to last longer than 2 years, but with the cost of a replacement being so low (around £70), I am not going to lose any sleep over it.

Back to Windows Vista Media Centre

Well, the combined issues of non-supported dual tuners and network congestion means that the only choice I have is to re-install Windows Vista. Having taken the decision and re-installed it, I must admit I had forgotten how rock solid Windows Vista + Linksys DMA2200 are as a combination. Even when streaming live TV over WiFi.

Network connectivity and 7MC

It turns out that the network connectivity issue that I mentioned in previous entry is a known issue. Apparently, Microsoft are working on it. Good summary thread here.

Shame, it looks like this issue and the dual tuner issue means I will be reinstalling Vista!

7MC and Dual Tuners

Having installed Windows 7 onto the box that I am using as a Media Center everything seems to work fine, except Media Center treats the dual tuner card as if it only has one tuner. It recognises the dual tuners during set-up, but when you try and use the two tuners in practice it says there is a conflict and shows the two tuners are already both in use. Argh!

A little bit of investigation shows that this is a common issue. Try here for a great summary thread that lists the affected cards (which includes the Hauppauge dual tuner that I am using) on The Green Button.

Windows 7 Media Center (7MC)

I have just upgraded the Intel Atom based machine that I have being using to run Vista Media Center. I connect it to my TV using the Linksys DMA2200 Media Extender. The combination works a treat although occasional the Media Extender does need to be rebooted. This set up is described elsewhere on this blog, but I think it is fair to say that running Windows Vista on such a small footprint machine is pushing the limits (1.6GHz HT processor with 1GB of memory).

Well, I thought I would push the limits a bit further and install the Beta build for Windows 7 onto the machine. I am using the Beta build (build 7000) that was released last week and you can download off MSDN.

I did an upgrade from Vista SP1 using the ISO download on a DVD. The process is fairly seamless and can be done completely unattended, except the bit at the end where you need to insert the license key. Amazingly, it came up first time without any problems. Not bad for a Beta! I have included the performance data above. You can compare it to the results from Windows Vista here running on the same box.

OK, so onto Media Center. First time you start it up, it asks if you want to import that previous Media Center. This is what I did and it worked well - it sorted out the tuners (the drivers all worked), it re-tuned the tuners and even imported the existing scheduled recordings. The Media Center UI has been revamped in Windows 7 and it looks a little more polished with some additional features. As always, it is going to take a little time to get used to. More of this once I have had more time to play with it.

I powered up the Media Extender (expecting to have to set it back up again) and it worked first time without any fiddling or re-setting up. I hadn't really thought much about it, but I was pleasantly surprised when the new Windows 7 Media Center UI appeared on the extender. Cool.
I do seem to be suffering from some more network connectivity issues than I have had in the past. But I can't see how this is due to the new version of Media Center. But let's see how it performs over the next week or so.

Intel Atom Media Centre (again)

The Intel Atom Media Center seems to be working well with the Hauppauge Dual Tuner PCI card. It seems to have enough CPU to be able to record 2 channels while playing back a previously recorded programme. Indeed, looking at the performance of the machine shows that this is only using around 15% of the CPU. Overall, the unit is pretty quiet and uses only about 35-40W.

I am using a Linksys DMA-2200 Media Extender to stream TV (Freeview not HD) over WiFi to my TV. The Media Extender outputs 1080i format and is connected via HDMI to the TV. This essentially means that the extender is upscaling the image for display - the unit includes a DVD player as well as the Media Extender (this enables the playback of DVDs which cannot otherwise by played by the extender. The unit works reasonably well, but is a little short of horsepower - this shows up most of the animated Media Center user interface. You can customise the user interface not to use animation, if you want. This improves the responsiveness of the unit.

While this works technically, it isn't a great solution. It is far too expensive. The Linksys DMA-2200 retails for around £200 which makes it more expensive than an Xbox-360 which also plays DVDs and works as a Media Extender (it plays games too and is £40 cheaper!). The only advantage that the DMA-2200 over the Xbox-360 is that it is quiet. Then once you add in the cost of the Media Center, it all gets a bit ridiculous.

Since the Media Center is on all the time (to "hoover up" those TV programmes), I have decided to use it as a Print Server too. It would be really neat to see the Media Center capability built into Windows Home Server (you know the one that provides backup, file serving and remote access. This would mean taking all of the "Services" that should be running all of the time and combining them to run on a single (highly efficient) hardware platform.

Hauppauge Nova TV PCI Card

I built an Intel Atom based box a few months ago. I installed Windows Vista Ultimate on it and used the Media Center functionality to record TV programmes off Freeview. You will find the original post here.

Up until now I have been using a Hauppauge Dual Tuner USB stick, but decided to upgrade to a PCI card. The USB stick solution works well, but it isn't a particularly elegant solution. I like using this computer to record programmes since it uses such lower power (around 30W) and can be left on all the time.

The main challenge is that the mini-ITX case that I am using has space for only one PCI card and this card is positioned parallel to the motherboard so requires a right angle PCI extender. I used a Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T 500 Dual digital DVB-T PCI TV card. This provides dual Freeview tuners. The card is half length card (which is just fits in the mini-ITX case). I was a little confused since the image on the outside of the box clearly shows a full-length PCI card (see the image above). Compare this image to the image of the actual card installed into the unit shown below.

Even with a half-length card it is a tight squeeze to get all of this into a single box. As always, when the space is tight, it can be fiddly to get all of the cables installed and ensure that none of the fans are fowled. The main issue that I can see is that the PCI card lies very close (maybe 3-5mm) to the fan on the motherboard - there is only one fan on this motherboard and that is on the graphics chip. However, there aren't any major components on the PCI card that further reduce the clearance. You can see this on the image to the above.

The hard drive is then installed on top of this card, so there really isn't a lot of space inside this case (it is a Noah 3988 case).

Over the next couple of days, I will install the relevant drivers and get this unit back up and running. Hopefully, the lack of clearance over the fan will not cause any major issues.

Power Pack 1 (PP1) for Windows Home Server went live today!

Well, the long awaited Power Pack for Windows Home Server (WHS) finally went live today. You will find the update package here and the release notes here.

It fixes the data corruption issue that some users have encountered (you only run into this if you have more than one hard disk in your home server) as well as providing 64-bit support (which you will need if any of your client PCs are running 64-bit Vista or XP). The install on the server is straightforward (it does require a server reboot) and the connectors on each of the client machines should update themselves automatically once the update has been installed and the server rebooted.

I seemed to run into an issue which required my router to be rebooted as well, but I am going to put this down to coincidence (it does happen, but not all that often).

I am running WHS on a Tranquil 7-HSA and it works really well. I had to get an update to the BIOS from Tranquil to change the boot order. The server seemed to be set up to boot off an external hard drive by default, if one was present. This doesn't matter unless (like me) you use an external hard drive to back up your server. If you leave the external drive attached and the server needs to be rebooted, you have to remember to unattach the drive while it is rebooting. A quick email to the support folks at Tranquil help fix it - they sent me a BIOS update on a flash drive.

Realtek audio card on the Intel Atom motherboard

Well, again here's an example of another great piece of design that completely threw the end user, i.e. me!

When I built my Intel Atom based machine, I had some issues with the audio drivers. I was a bit surprised. I installed Vista Ultimate first and then used the CD that came with the motherboard. This even seemed to contain drivers intended specifically for Vista. The graphics drivers worked a treat and the overall performance of the machine improved as I commented on in a previous blog. However, the audio continued to prove a problem.

Every time I fired up the Media Center software, it would fail to display any live television. It would display an error message stating "No audio device found". Even the audio icon in the system tray seemed to display that it had a problem. I assumed that it was a problelm with the drivers and re-installed them from the CD. No luck. So I reverted to the Realtek site and downloaded a fresh set of drivers. But same problem.

I was stumped and decided to plug in a set of speakers just to check what was going on. Guess what? A dialog box appeared on the screen as soon as I plugged the speakers in! "New audio device" found! Well, I suppose that a set of speakers counts as an "audio device", but it wasn't obvious.

Again, I have to admire the engineer that designed this. It was a great idea. But it just didn't work - all it needed was a better error message and it would have counted as being real cool! As it is, it is just another one of those things that threw me.

HTC Touch Diamond - Great concept, almost a great product

But not quite. It has some great design features, but it has too many flaws for it to consider great.

First things first. If you are going to set high user expectations (and then you allow you Marketing department to overhype them), you had better deliver. Unfortunately, the HTC doesn't. The main problem is that the user interface (called TouchFlo 3D) does everything, but flow. The user interface stutters on occasion leading to a number of false selections and while it has some great ideas, it is just to fiddly in practice to be workable.

There are some really cool features:

• Putting the phone face down when ringing mutes the ringer. Nice design as it mimics exactly the action that I perform when my phone rings in meetings. Would I have guessed that it would work this way? Probably not. I guess that's what makes it a cool design that no one would ever guess.


• It s possible to reject a call and have the phone automatically text the caller that you will ring them back when free. Not sure if this is a new feature of Windows Mobile 6.1, but either way it is a cool feature.


• The phone going into vibrate mode when in a meeting according to your calendar. Nice.


• Rather than using strokes on the navigation tabs, press on the active tab and (while keeping the pressure on) move our finger to the left or right until the relevant icon is selected. Stroking the main screen, just selects the previous or next icon depending on the direction of the stroke. This makes the touchscreen interface much more usable.


• It is very easy to set up multiple email accounts – I have two setup – outlook for my corporate email, and POP3 access for my CompuServe account


• Threaded SMS messages really help keep track of conversations. Again not sure if this is specific to this phone or Windows Mobile 6.1, but either way still a neat feature.
  Envelope views for new emails. I find this surprisingly useful and quick to use. I frequently get a couple of hundred emails a day and this is a quick way to browse them.
  

But there are a number of negatives:

• The keypad disappears when you are in a call. This is NOT useful when you are trying to navigate your voicemail using touchtones – you make the call, then the keypad disappears. It can take a few seconds to get it back – press the button on the top of the phone followed by the keypad icon in the icon tray – by which time, your voicemail has timed out! I can’t find any settings to control this. Argh!


• The user interface is not smooth enough. For example, when trying to scroll down a long list of options, it is not unusual for the list to stop all of a sudden as it is presumably thinking about displaying the next part of the list. But what makes this even more frustrating is that the phone will often then select the option currently in viewing when the list halted. Argh! Pressing the back key sends you to the top of the list, where you start the whole process again! The Back key should send you back to where you were in the list before the option was selected, NOT the top of the list (which would be the equivalent of pressing the Back key twice!).


• Some of the icons and buttons are too smaller. Who is these designed for? Squirrels? For example, the OK button in the top right hand corner of many of the standard Windows Mobile dialogs is too small for most adult (human) fingers. Now, since these are standard WM dialogs, I am a little sympathetic. Where I have a bigger issue (and bone to pick!) is where these are custom UIs that have been developed. For example, if you set up more than one email account, you end up with buttons for the different accounts on the main Mail screen. You can only really access these using the stylus.


• Why didn’t they package the device with some GPS software? Even it is were only a trial version. It is like buying a car with world class speakers installed by default, but no radio! What good is half a solution? Installing demo GPS software would have demonstrated the capability of the device much better. I found myself checking the specs on the outside of the packaging to see if it really did GPS! After all, there was nothing on the device that would indicate it. And surely, a percentage of those folks who use the trial software would have purchased the full product?

In short, cool features are great, but you need to get the basics right. Maybe an update to the software will make all the difference, on the other hand, maybe the problems are down to a more fundamental limitation of the phone's hardware. Hopefully, HTC can work it out.

Adding ringtones to the HTC Touch Diamond

The HTC Touch Diamond is an interesting phone - I will write up some notes once I have had a little more experience with it (it takes some getting used to!), but in the meantime here's how to upload your own ringtone to the device.

While the device prides itself on usability, this was not obvious and I had to revert to reading the manual - something I don't expect to have to do with a phone. In fact, I have probably had 15+ different phones over the last 15 or so years. In the early years, I always had to read the manuals, then I discovered Nokia phones. Guess what, once I had learnt to use one, I seemed to be able to use any model Nokia. Needless to say, I became a loyal customer for many years, plus no more reading of manuals!

So having to revert to the manual for my latest phone was a real blast from the past! To save you the trouble of reading the manual (page 233, I think), here's how to add a ringtone.

1. First you will need to browse the file system on the phone. The easiest way to do this is to connect the phone to your laptop using a USB cable. If you are using Vista, it will install the necessary drivers and then display a dialog box asking you what you want to do. Select "open a folder"


2. Navigate to \My Documents on the phone and create a folder in called \My Ringtones in the \My Documents folder.


3. Drop your ringtone files into this directory.


4. Go to the Settings tab on the phone.


5. Select Sound. And then on this screen, scroll down until you get to Ringtones. This throw me for a while since I hadn’t realised that it was possible to scroll this page. The lack of scrollbars was the missing clue.


6. Once you open the Ringtones option, you can select your ringtone from the list. Easy, eh!

HTC could have done a couple of things to have made this process a little easier:

1. Create a \My Documents\My Ringtones directory on the phone by default. This would have been simple and require no changes to the software, just a minor change to the build. This would have been enough of a clue for me to work out what to do. If you want to provide more of a clue, why not put a sample ringtone in it which would have then appeared in the drop down list of ringtones?


2. Even better, when selecting a ringtone, why not allow the user to browse to a different file location on the device? This is the usual way of adding ringtones on other phones that I have had, but for some reason is missing on this phone. Shame.

Hauppauge WinTV USB Stick with Dual tuners

I have been using one of the Hauppauge Win-TV Nova-T USB sticks for a while with my Vista Media Center without any issues. However, there have been a number of occasions when it would have been useful to have had access to two tuners.

With this in mind, I decided to upgrade to the Dual tuner version of the USB stick. For around £50-60, this looks like a bargain. The USB stick is only slightly bigger than the single tuner version and I thought that it was going to be a dawdle to set up. After all, the single tuner version was a breeze - just plug it in and let Vista find the drivers for it automatically and it worked first time.

Well, this only half worked with the dual tuner version. In fact, it exactly half worked because, while it seemed to install correctly, I could only access one tuner and not two.

Here's how I did it:

1. Remove the old drivers if you have previously installed a Hauppauge USB stick. You can do this using the HCWclear application that you will find on the CD that shipped with the device. If you want the latest version of the software, you will find it here: http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/site/support/support_digital.html


2. You need to install the Diversity tool that is on the product CD. I have an aversion for bloatware and generally do not install software that comes with a product unless I really have to or it is a key part of the product. Again, this tool in contained on the product CD and it is possible just to install this tool (it is the checkbox at the bottom of the list). Once you have installed it, launched the application from the Start button and select dual tuner. For some reason, this seems to be set to single tuner mode by default. Strange. Can't imagine why someone would pay the extra money for the dual tuner version of the product and then use it in single tuner mode. You would be better off buying the single tuner version and saving the extra money.
3. Reboot. Media center finds this "new" dual tuner device and insists on going back through the setup process, but once done it works a treat.
   

Anyway, having been through these three simple steps, Vista Media Center can see both of the tuners. If you had previously installed it in single tuner mode, it will need to go through the re-scanning process again, but it will work afterwards.

Intel Atom DG945GCLF Motherboard

Just built a mini ITX PC using one of these motherboards. The motherboard has one of the Intel Atom processor onboard (230 clocked at 1.6Ghz). Probably the most remarkable thing about this processor is its power consumption of around 5W. The motherboard does have a fan, but it is on the graphics processor and not the CPU.

The motherboard was bought from Tranquil in the UK and set me back £42 (excluding VAT and delivery). I fitted it into a Noah 3988 case with a 500GB 7200rpm SATA drive, 1GB RAM and a slimline format CD/DVD drive. It is powered by an external power block and DC-DC board.

This combination is very quiet and produces so little heat that I could probably disconnect the fan in the case, leaving just the fan on the graphics processor.

I installed Vista Ultimate onto the machine. It installs without any issues and the CD that is supplied with the motherboard contains all the relevant drivers. The CD even recognise that it was installing on a Vista machine. The aero UI on Vista came up first time with the drivers on the CD. The network also installed without any issues. The audio took a little more fiddling with to get it to work.

The screen capture above shows the performance figures that I got out of the machine once I had installed the drivers from the CD enclosed with the motherboard. There is a definite improvement in video performance with these drivers - the graphics increased from 2.0 to 4.2 and the gaming graphics increased from 2.4 to 2.8.

When running Vista, this unit is pulling between 30-40W (most of the time it runs at about 33W). Exactly the same configuration with a D201GLY2A motherboard (Intel Celeron processor running at 1.2GHz) pulls about 40 - 50W (averaging around 45W). Because the Intel Atom is generating less heat, I unplugged the internal case fan. In hindsight, this was pretty pointless - it saves about 1.5-2W and makes very little audible difference to the running of the unit.

With this configuration, this unit is pretty quiet and would make an ideal candidate for a small format Vista Media Center. However, the motherboard's very limited video output capability (a single VGA connector) probably limits it's use in this department. Personally, I have been using the Linksys DMA-2200 Media Extender to connect to my TV via HDMI. So the lack of video connectivity is less of an issue.

I have a Hauppauge Dual Tuner TV USB stick that I will put into this machine and test out in the next few days.

Installing Windows Vista on a MacBook Pro

My current laptop has run out of horsepower. I put some more memory in it last year, but it is now up to it's limit - 512Mb. It is only of the small Sony Viaos (Sony TR1-MP). I guess it is coming up for 3 years old so it is no surprise that it is time to replace it.

I had a look around and really liked the look of the new Apple MacBook Pro. Of course, these are Intel based and it is relatively straightforward according to some colleagues that have done it.


It took me a while to track one down - I was after a 2.4GHz, 15.4" MacBook Pro. Eventually, I found on in the Apple store in Brent Cross shopping centre. It was interesting that everyone else seemed to be sold out except the Apple Store. The price was pretty much the same wherever you bought it.

It is indeed quite straightforward to set the MacBook up to dual boot. You need to download BootCamp from the Apple website (http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/). The software is Beta, but seems to work a treat. I used the latest version of the software - 1.3. The trick is to print out the instructions and follow them (http://images.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/pdf/Boot_Camp_Beta_Setup_Guide_v1.3.pdf). I was installing Vista Ultimate and the installation went without a hitch.

I have got everything working except the I-Sight camera. As part of the Boot Camp process, a set of Apple drivers are copied onto a DVDR and installed after Windows has been installed.

One of the cool things about Vista is being able to review the performance of the computer and its components. I am really impressed with the performance of the Mac Book (I have included the snippit from the performance monitor). It is way out performing my Toshiba M400 laptop that I use for work as well as my home desktop machine.

Pretty impressive for a laptop! And it is dual boot so now I can run Aperture too!