RHFtech Help Desk (and more)

One of the holy grails of technology is to make things go faster. This impulse pervades all technology from cars to computers. There are three new and improved technologies for data transfer within a computer, tablet device or smartphone that have recently come to market that will speed up our computing. These are solid state drives (SSD), Serial ATA Revision 3.0 and Universal Serial Bus 3.0.

Solid state devices replace rotational storage devices like hard drives. They are much faster than hard drives and more durable. They are also expensive. SSDs use non-volatile memory to read, write and store information. The most recent Intel/Micron joint venture fabrication facility builds SSDs using 25-nanometer NAND technology. The factory cost billions of dollars to construct and outfit. 25-nanometers is very small. At this size a few atoms misbehaving can ruin a device. SSDs are desirable as computer drives but I am waiting for SSD prices to drop significantly before deploying them as replacement drives in my existing computers.

As an aside, I recently had a conversation with a friend who consults to a large German optical company that makes the lens for these plants. He said he was working on the 11-nanometer next generation NAND lens. Unbelievable! What an incredible human accomplishment to work at this microscopic level.

SATA is the typical way internal drives connect to a computer. The first version of SATA allowed for theoretical speeds of data transfers up to 1.5Gb/s. Revision 2 doubled that theoretical speed to 3.0Gb/s. Most modern computers have drives and controllers that communicate using SATA 2.x. SATA Revision 3.0 is also known as SATA 6Gb/s because it has doubled the maximum transfer rate once again. Real world data speeds never come close to these maximums but each major revision has significantly sped up our computers.

I tested an ASUS U3S6 controller card in my custom-built Windows 7 main computer. The computer has an ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 motherboard, 12GB of DDR3 RAM and an Intel i7-920 (2.66GHz) CPU.  The U3S6 adapter card has two USB 3.0 connectors on the back plane and two SATA 6Gb/s connectors on the inside. These are used to connect to a computer’s internal drives. The adapter card connects to the motherboard via a PCI Express x4 interface

I needed 6Gb/s drives to test so I bought two Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX hard drives. There are not a lot choices today. This is likely to change in the near future. I also acquired a BYTECC T-200U3 external docking station, that incorporates a USB 3.0 connector, to test USB 3.0 data transfer rates.  These four pieces of equipment cost me about $300.

I wanted to get SSDs but they cost much more and the SSDs’ capacities are too small so I went with this setup: A $30 add-on card and two new SATA 6.0Gb/s capable 1TB hard drives. A single Crucial Real SSD 256GB SATA 6Gb/s costs $759 at Newegg today. My configuration is slower than the SSD but I have 8x the storage for less than half the price.

I first benchmarked my existing drives using the motherboard’s built-in SATA 3Gb/s controllers and the external USB 2.0 ports. I used PC Wizard 2010 to run the hard drive benchmarks. I then installed the board and benchmarked the SATA 6Gb/s controller and drives, and the USB 3.0 docking station with both the new and old drives.

In my testing SATA 6Gb/s is about 50% faster than SATA 3Gb/s controllers+drives not the 100% I hoped for. However, my computer is much more responsive. Applications and files open much faster than before I installed the board and new drives.

USB 3.0 may be a big improvement but I didn’t see it in my initial testing. It is supposed to work at speeds up to 10x USB 2.0. This board’s USB 3.0 ports connected to a USB 3.0 external hard drive are only about 40%-50% faster than USB 2.0 equipment. This is good but nowhere near the 10x range I hoped for. The ASUS-supplied software drivers are the probable culprit. I am hopeful that ASUS will release new ones in the near future.

The bottom line is that I recommend this board and new hard drives to anyone who has the money and the motherboard expansion slot. The 50% improvement with USB 3.0 is nice but less than hoped for. However, I do not believe you will be disappointed if you upgrade your rig. I am not looking backwards.

I am a fan of Cablevision. They provide a great choice of bleeding edge technology services, which they seem to be constantly adding to and improving. They have the best customer service for a large company. I do not know of other large companies in their league when it comes to customer service. Sure, I wish their services cost less (free would be great) but I feel they provide real value for the price. I cannot make this statement about my AT&T Wireless service.

I am also a fan of TiVo. They revolutionized TV-viewing for me and millions of other TiVo/DVR users. I have had many TiVos through the years. I upgraded to the TiVoHD several years ago. Unlike the earlier TiVo versions it requires CableCARDs to get most of the cable company channels. These little cards require a cable company technician for installation but then disappear from consciousness. They cost a few dollars a month to rent, less than the cable company boxes.

The switch to high definition (HD) television signals put a strain on the capacity of the cable companies. They have large pipes but their capacity is not infinite. So they are changing their model for distributing content signals to subscribers.

Before HD the cable companies pushed every channel down every coaxial cable to all their customers. If you had a cable box and subscribed to premium channels you could decrypt the channel signal and watch the content. If you didn’t subscribe you could not see the channel but it was streaming into your house.

Cable companies are implementing switched digital video (SDV) to cope with the extra bandwidth requirements of high definition. SDV is more like the Internet. You send a URL request for a webpage and that gets sent to your browser. SDV works similarly. The cable companies are more discriminating now. Rather than stream all their channels to every household all the time, they send the most commonly watched channels to everyone but only send infrequently watched channels when a subscriber actually wants to watch it. They conserve bandwidth this way and can accommodate a much larger selection of high definition channels.

SDV requires that the subscriber’s cable equipment communicate your channel choice back to the cable system so that they can send you the channel you want to watch. CableCARDs are one-way devices that do not work with SDV signals. As an example, if I want to watch the Encore HD channel, 816 on Cablevision in my area, I need a cable box because 816 is an SDV channel that is only streamed when a subscriber wants to watch. The TiVoHD cannot make that request.

The cable companies provide SDV Tuning Adapters to workaround the limitation that CableLabs, a cable industry association, designed into CableCARDs. The tuning adapter boxes are generally provided free to CableCARD customers, like me.

I picked up a Cisco STA1520 tuning adapter at the Cablevision Norwalk, CT store last week. I installed it yesterday.

I am not a fan of the tuning adapter. The box is overly large for its limited functionality, 11.75” x 8” x 1.75” (w-d-h). It adds three more cables to my home theater cabling mess. It adds to the heat generation and electrical requirements, and is yet another lighted LED in my home theater. Since it has a USB connection to the TiVoHD it could get its power via USB if Cisco designed it better, eliminating the need for a power cable and AC/DC block. It also requires a call to Cablevision to activate once it is successfully installed.

The box takes at least 20 minutes to install if all goes well. It took me 50 minutes to install because I mistakenly connected the USB cable when I installed the box. You are supposed to wait until the tuning adapter is ready before doing that. It took a call to Cablevision, a 15 minute wait on hold and then talking to two CSRs before it was fixed.

I can now watch channel 816. Whoopee!

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You might want to read my prior post about CableCARDS and computer OCURs – Too little, too late, too difficult, too expensive

David Pogue, a truly nice guy, an unabashed Mac fan, a Yale graduate with a degree in music,  a blogger for the New York Times Technology section, an author of technology books, a really good presenter on technology and other topics and a resident of Westport CT, recently penned “A Closer Look at Windows Live”. His closing line, “It’s worth the humiliation to spread the word.” sums up his appreciation for the Windows Live services and applications.

Windows Live is Microsoft’s free collection of applications like Windows Live Photo Gallery, a photo tool, Windows Live Mail, an email client, or Windows Live Writer, a blogging tool. I used Window Live Writer to pen this post. It is also a collection of online services live Hotmail and Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Calendar or SkyDrive.

Pogue’s discovery of SkyDrive is quite possibly what inspired his article. SkyDrive is a free, 25Gb online storage space. You can backup files to it. Post and share photos and integrate it directly into Windows Explorer.  

There are limitations on the size of what you can upload and what you can share. (See About Windows Live SkyDrive for more information.) The largest file that you can upload is 50MB. However, SDExplorer  Pro ($13.75) lets you upload larger files. I successfully tested uploading a 60GB video to check this out. This may be a violation of Microsoft’s Terms of Use for SkyDrive.

SDExplorer is a Windows utility that integrates SkyDrive into Windows Explorer on your computer. There is a free version and a pro version (mentioned above). Once SDExplorer is installed on your Windows computer, your online SkyDrive storage shows up in Windows Explorer, as you can see in the image below.

The first time you double click on the SDExplorer icon brings up a SkyDrive Explorer logon dialog.

After you logon you can navigate your SkyDrive as if it were a drive on your computer.

Use drag and drop, copy/paste and other Windows Explorer functions on SkyDrive as if it were a local device.

SkyDrive + SDExplorer has its limitations. Uploading files takes a lot more time than downloading them due to the asymmetric Internet connections we all have. I have a very fast Internet connection but my upload speed is 1/6th of my download speed.  The speed of your Internet connection has a material impact on cloud storage functionality.

SkyDrive is great. It is large. It is free. But it needs to evolve. It will be great once Microsoft integrates Live Mesh synchronization service and SkyDrive. Until then…

You might want to take a look at How to Email Photos to Your Free 25GB Windows Live SkyDrive to learn more about using SkyDrive.

Do you use Dropbox? It is a great synchronization service. Maybe the best one available today. It is simple to install. Once installed it becomes invisible, just doing its job.

It can synchronize your files to all your computers whether they are connected via the Internet or a local area network (LAN). Dropbox has a free 2GB service and larger storage spaces available for a monthly fee.

It is usually lightning fast. Close a file on one computer and moments later it is duplicated on all your other machines and on your account on the Dropbox server.

Dropbox recently added the ability to sync locally via your LAN rather than via their server. This should be enabled on all your Dropbox computers. If you are not running the latest version of the software stop the service on your computer, download and install the latest version from their home page.

Once you have the latest software installed and running, right-click on the Windows system tray icon or the Mac menu bar icon and select Preferences…. Then make certain that the Enable LAN sync checkbox is checked. It probably is, but it is better to be certain rather than assume this. Do this for each of your computers.

Interesting website – worldometers  at  http://www.worldometers.info/
Many more statistics on the site than displayed below.

Where does your computer store your documents, photos, music and videos? The correct answer includes the full path. Do you know? Many of you do not. That is okay because you can read your documents, view your photos, listen to your music and watch your movies, even if you do not know where they are stored. (Bonus question: where are your applications stored?)

Microsoft recently moved the default Windows location from the Windows XP "Documents and Settings" folder to the "Users" folder in Vista and Windows 7. The name "Users" makes more sense to me than "Documents and Settings" and it mirrors what the Linux/Unix world does, including Macs. Did you know that you can move the default location to somewhere else? It is simple in Windows 7, a bit harder in Windows XP, and hardest in Mac OS X.

My friend Walt recently complained about the way Windows 7 handles things, like the new libraries virtual folder concept. Generally, he likes Windows 7. But he is unhappy about the things in it that differ from what he is used to in Windows XP, like libraries. He reverted some Windows 7 new features he dislikes to the more familiar XP method. For example, he exposes every system tray icon rather than leave them hidden the way the Windows 7 User Interface ("UI") designers intended. They want less visual clutter. He wants quick access to the icons.

Walt does not like libraries. Most days I agree with him. Libraries are a neat theoretical concept. Yet most of us will never understand the concept or use libraries. (I can write similar statements about the Windows 7 HomeGroup networking concept.) But there are some instances where libraries make sense, particularly for aggregating disparate media folders on several computers into one place so that you play music without having to search for it on your child’s machine.

Macs are more autocratic in UI/UX design features than Windows. Some make the analogy that Macs are the Catholics of computers, while Windows are the Protestants. Therefore, Steve Jobs is the Pope who dictates how you will use Apple computers. (Some Apple fans think he is more like God.)

This is easily seen in the way iTunes works and the even more insidious default iPhoto settings. iTunes default setting, on a Mac, is to copy music from the source, a CD or another drive, into the buried iTunes Music folder. Open iTunes and you a have hard time finding where a file is actually located on your computer. (Hint: right-click on the item and select Get Info.) If you want to share it with a friend you have to dig down into your Music directory to find it.

iPhoto is far worse than iTunes in hiding your files. The default Mac setting is to copy pictures directly into the iPhoto.library file. This is a wrapper that puts all your images into one very large file. It is hard to get one of those images out of the library file to attach to an email to send to Aunt Em in Kansas. If something happens to that single iPhoto.library file you may lose every photo you stored in iPhoto. Mac users can fix this by changing the setting in Preferences —> Advanced away from Copy items to the iPhoto Library.

Although I find Windows 7 more customizable than Snow Leopard, Microsoft is behaving more like Apple with each new application and operating system iteration. They become less user-configurable. For example, Microsoft Office 2007 jettisoned most user UI customizations that existed in previous versions. The iPhone is the best (worst?) example of this trend. Do it Apple’s way or don’t do it at all.

Steganos LockNote is a free, Windows program that provides a simple solution for securely storing passwords and other confidential information. LockNote is small, only 402 kb, and requires no installation after you download it. It is easy to take the LockNote file with you on a USB flash memory drive or keep it in the cloud so that you can always “remember” your important, confidential information.

The following screen appears the first time you run LockNote.Replace the default text with whatever you want. For example the passwords you use for logging onto websites.

When you finish and exit LockNote. It asks, “Do you want to save your changes?”

Click the Yes button and LockNote asks for a password.

Enter your password, click the OK button. You are done.

Now whenever you need to remember a password or username you only need run LockNote, enter your LockNote password and all your confidential information is available.

You can have multiple copies of LockNote on your computer. You can rename the files or use the File —> Save As… to name them when you create them.

Steve Gibson of Gibson Research has examined the open source programming code for LockNote and says that the encryption LockNote uses is strong.

I helped a client network her Windows 7 and Mac computers a few days ago. She had tried and paid two other firms’ tech support before she called me.

I received the following email a few minutes ago:

I just wanted you to know how much I am enjoying working with my computers now that you have solved the problem of networking them.  Just today I wanted to print a document with some color in it… and it worked perfectly.

I have never been able to use it on my Mac ever since I got my Dell with Windows 7 but you have really done great work on fixing it perfectly.

I am so pleased and and do not want this day to go by without thanking you.  You are the best. [emphasis added]

It is always nice to get message like this.

Today it is not enough to have standard TV sources like over-the-air (OTA), cable or satellite, to watch video. We need Internet connections as well. That way we can watch video on demand (VOD) from sources such as Amazon VOD, the Apple iTunes store or Netflix. There are many ways to do this. Some are better than others. None are perfect. All have their pluses and minuses.

Many of my clients have purchased HDTVs that have an Ethernet connector that lets them connect the TVs to the Internet. Others have purchased Blu-ray players with similar capabilities. These solutions are limited ones. You are confined to Internet sources that the vendor allows. If they have a deal with Netflix then you can watch that. If they do not, you cannot watch Netflix. These services are subject to change at a moment’s notice. I can easily envision a dispute between SONY and Netflix in the future that plays out the same way that the Cablevision – Food Network dispute played out last month. Cablevision’s subscribers were caught in the middle as the Food Network pulled their programming from Cablevision in a contract dispute.

These devices are simple to connect to your home wired Ethernet network. Plug an Ethernet cable into the device and your router. They are much are harder to connect using WiFi. Most Internet capable HDTVs and Blu-ray players do not have built-in WiFi adapters. Therefore, the homeowner is responsible for purchasing and installing the correct device. You will have to check if the wireless adapter will work with your HDTV or Blu-ray player and know how to setup a wireless connection. You also need to make certain that the wireless network’s signal is strong enough and fast enough to deliver VOD this way. It is best to replace older 802.11g wireless capable routers with newer, faster 802.11n capable ones.

An alternative to the above is to purchase a dedicated Internet capable device. They have names like Apple TV, Popcorn Hour, Roku or TiVo. You have to pay for and install the device. Programming content is additional. They all provide some free content. Amazon VOD, Netflix, or the Apple iTunes store, all require either pay-to-play or subscriptions. TiVo is far superior to the other devices. It provides a great easy-to-use interface. It has one of the best remote control devices and can easily integrate with your cable TV subscription.

You can also use gaming consoles to watch video on an HDTV. The choices for gaming consoles are the Microsoft Xbox, the Nintendo Wii and the SONY PlayStation 3. The latter has a built-in Blu-ray player. As above, your choices for Internet video content are limited by the console’s manufacturer.

Connecting a computer to your HDTV provides unlimited Internet access. It also magnifies the issues of device selection, connecting the computer and controlling it. A computer connected to an HDTV should be unobtrusive and quiet. You do not want to hear the computer’s fans or see bright, flashing LEDs in your bedroom or home theater. You also do not want an ugly computer box marring the decor.

Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows 7 PCs have applications, Front Row and Windows Media Center, respectively, designed for the 10 foot user interface. They work reasonably well and allow you to watch Internet downloaded or streaming media, view your photos on your HDTV, or listen to Internet-provided audio, like podcasts or Pandora, through your home theater’s speakers. Remote controls can be relatively standard ones, such as the Logitech Harmony remotes, wireless keyboard and mouse combos, as sold by Gyration, or devices like the Apple iPod Touch and perhaps the soon-to-be-released Apple iPad.

Dropbox is a great service, remarkably useful in today’s connected world. I received this note from Dropbox yesterday: