bruceb news

HP has been creating devices for years to bring Windows Media Center to the living room. There are two new Vista Media Center Extenders being marketed under the “MediaSmart” name that have some very interesting features. The HP MediaSmart Connect is sitting in my living room doing exactly what I was hoping.

The previous living room occupant was HP’s Z558 Digital Entertainment Center, a computer running Windows XP Media Center in a box with a full complement of inputs and outputs for audio and video. It was fairly quirky to set up – getting the display to fill the screen took long experimentation, for example, and it wasn’t very good at finding media stored on a different computer. […] continued

Since the market for living room computers never developed, Microsoft decided to focus on “extenders,” a different way to deliver media to your television.

Huge numbers of people already have a computer in the house running Windows Vista Home Premium, holding photos and music. An “extender” is a small box for the living room that connects to the computer over a wireless or wired connection to display the photos on the television and play music on the living room speakers. If the computer is set up for it, the extender can also handle all the TV programming and record TV shows like a Tivo. […] continued

Windows Home Server deserves more recognition. It had a nasty bug that took too long to cure but that’s over now and it’s back to being the helpful tool that I described a year ago. It offers safe storage of your files and photos,  easy ways to share your photos and other files, and remote access to your computers from anywhere. The best devices – like the HP MediaSmart EX475 – are attractive and easy to set up.

One of the best tricks for Windows Home Server is the way it backs up computers on your home or small business network. […] continued

Tough week! Here are the kind of things that fill my days. And bear in mind, these are all stories about software and services that I love dearly – this is the good stuff, these are what I recommend because they’re better than the rest!

Client with hosted Exchange mailbox at 1and1.com. Mailbox doesn’t connect this morning, so no incoming or outgoing mail. Try it from a different computer, try Outlook Web Access – nothing works. Call tech support in India and get through without delay. “Very sorry! That server is down. The experts are working on it.” Any idea when it will come back? […] continued

I have a Verizon mobile wireless adapter built into my Dell Latitude D630. I pay sixty bucks a month so I can connect to a reasonably fast EVDO broadband connection from just about anywhere. It’s becoming a standard accessory for business travellers who don’t want to hassle with conventional wireless.

A few days ago, there was a lengthy delay when I clicked the Connect button – “wait while your equipment is updated,” something like that.

It stopped working after that, although I didn’t recognize the coincidence for a while. I just knew that this error message came up when I tried to connect. […] continued

Dell introduced seven new models of Latitude business notebooks today. There are details, videos, and some screen shots on this page.

Here’s a partial list of new and improved features:

• Vastly improved battery life, in some cases up to 19 hours.
• Lots of connectivity options – Wi-Fi (802.11n), mobile broadband, WWAN, Ultra-wideband, Bluetooth, WiMAX, GPS. 
• Lots of security options: smart card and fingerprint readers, hardware-based disk encryption, smart card.
• Color options on some models – shiny black, matte black, blue, red.
• Full-frame magnesium alloy construction.

Let me tell you a scary story.

When we plan our backups, the idea is to have a duplicate copy of our data on something separate from where it is normally stored and used. In theory, it is unlikely that both sources will fail simultaneously.

Even very small businesses would be devastated by a loss of data or an extended network outage. On Monday I had a simultaneous failure of a server and the primary backup device. We were dealing with the potential loss of a lot of data and a long outage indeed.

The firm will live on because there was a secondary backup device. […] continued

On the assumption that my choices are endlessly fascinating to an ever-growing number of people – really, really bored people – I’ve added a page with details about the hardware and software that I use here at the high-tech headquarters of bruceb consulting. I’ll try to keep it up to date. Heck, my computers are happy – you could do worse than follow my example in precise detail.

Click here for all the prurient details!

This is getting to be an old, old story.

The story is: a manufacturer forces unwanted software on consumers, and the software slows down or breaks perfectly nice devices.

This time, the villain is HP. The device is HP’s version of a Windows Home Server, called the HP MediaSmart Home Server.

Microsoft finally delivered an important update for the Windows Home Server software, potentially a turning point for devices that should be better known and more widespread.

HP released an update at the same time for the proprietary software that runs on top of WHS, enhancing some of its features and controls. […] continued

From a column today by Ed Bott:

“Sony is finally taking on its crapware problem. For the past two months, I’ve been using an astonishingly light and agile Sony VAIO notebook and loving every minute of it. The best part of all was that this machine was absolutely, completely, unequivocally crapware-free, which meant I was able to be productive within a few minutes of unboxing.

“That’s a huge switch for Sony, which has taken a beating as ‘the poster child for negative experiences‘ with new PCs running Windows Vista. And it was a happy surprise for me. When I wrote about my hands-on experiences with two older VAIO notebooks earlier this year, I called it a ‘truly miserable experience.’ It took a crapware-cleansing clean install to fix a 2007-vintage Sony notebook, and I spent hours replacing outdated drivers and removing unwanted software from a 2008 model (if you haven’t read that installment, see Fixing Windows Vista, one machine at a time).

[…] continued