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Finally time then to move the last Windows user in the household to a Mac!

On the Mac I use VMware Fusion to run various other operating systems and applications. The new release of VMware Fusion features many optimizations and some great features that integrate applications running on a foreign OS directly into the host environment. VMware achieves that with Unity and even provides a quick search  button from which applications can be found in a VM. In the past, I’ve used the VMware Converter to convert physical systems into virtual machines – it’s a great way to create an exact duplicate for reference purposes or hive off an SAP development system for use elsewhere, for example. A standard feature in the Fusion product is the ability to create a mirror image of a Windows system for use on the Mac. I unsuccessfully attempted to run this a number of times whilst G2S was still running the Windows 7 RC. The Migration Assistant is a small executable that is installed on the source machine – Bonjour is installed, and in true Mac fashion, the source is found by simply keying in the four digit value the Migration Assistant displays. On the RC installation, G2S would simply freeze and require a restart. No migration would take place. With the full install of Windows 7 Ultimate, I had absolutely no trouble. One requirement: after the installation of the Migration Assistant component for the PC, a reboot of the Windows machine seems to be necessary – I could not get the Migration Assistant to find the source machine, by Bonjour or IP address. After a reboot, the connection is instantaneous and the copy process begins.

For the 57GB or so of data to be migrated from G2S, about five hours was estimated. That’s over a wired connection. In practice, that estimate was too high. The operation completed after approximately three hour or so.

Startup of the VM on the iMac took a bit of time, especially since Windows needs to find a bunch of drivers and determine its new base of operations. After that, all functionality of the system together with all the data is available for use.

The VM will be a handy system to have access to when I’m out an about and have only the MacBook with me.

One of the reasons I got my newly installed system ready for use in record time was partially due to the speedy installation of Windows 7 and also the fast copy of all my data back to the internal hard drive. But the real time to get a machine back to a usable state is spent installing all those small applications one needs on a day to day basis. Microsoft Office is standard fare, but MSN Messenger, Google Talk, iTunes, IrfanView and many others require a search and download of the latest version and then the installation.

Now, a very convenient solution is at hand: Ninite. Select the products to be installed from the extensive list and download the installer.

Then simply run it and wait for it to complete. Ninite seeks out the very latest versions of the selected applications, downloads and installs them without further ado.

It’s a huge time saver and a great idea. If there are any applications you can’t find in the list, the developers are quite happy to add them. Try Ninite when next you have a number of applications to install: it’ll save you a heap of time.

After being a very happy user of both the Windows 7 Beta and then the Release Candidate for quite a number of months, I have made the switch to the release version of Microsoft‘s latest OS. Truth be told, this is probably the first time I’ve purchased a copy of a Microsoft OS outright, with all previous versions I’ve run being pre-installed on notebooks and desktops I’ve used.

The process was reasonable pain-free and assisted by a remarkably fast installation time: I started off with a dual backup of all my documents, downloads and other temporary rubbish a hard disk accumulates. The folder My Documents contains roughly 15GB of data – mainly PDF‘s, archived mail folders and many, many files I simply migrate from machine to machine to make sure I always have everything I need. The backup of that data quantity took quite some time and I dumped those files to both the Drobo and an external hard drive before proceeding. Each one of those backups ran for a long time – I left G2S on over night and let the job complete.

After having ensured that both copies looked similar to the original (and after opening one or two files just as a confirmation) I slotted the Windows 7 DVD into the drive and rebooted. The Windows 7 installation is blisteringly fast, compares favourably to modern Linux installations and requires virtually no information to proceed. My installation included a format of the existing hard drive and an installation of the 64-bit Ultimate edition. When I next looked at the machine less than 30 minutes later, everything was ready to roll. That included a driver for the wireless network card (which had already found and connected to my home network) and the audio drivers. From a hardware support perspective, the only driver I loaded was the latest NVidia driver that is already certified for Windows 7. Another reboot and the system was ready for use. I connected my external drive and copied My Documents and various bits and pieces back – oddly, the same data quantity copied in a fraction of the time it initially took to back up in the first place. Whether this is due to a complete disk defragmentation, I don’t know. Suffice to say that it was many orders of magnitude faster than the initial copy to exactly the same drive.

With the OS activated, I proceeded to install the remaining applications I needed to get going and started working. The experience promised with the beta and RC has been maintained: Windows 7 is, in my opinion, one of the best operating systems Microsoft has ever released. It’s modern, slick and speedy. Whilst it won’t replace Mac OS X as a current favourite of mine, it has proved crash resistant and pleasant to work with since I started using it. If you’re in the market for an upgrade, you should consider it – though XP was certainly robust and stable, Windows 7 improves tremendously on that platform.

Today is the world-wide release of Microsoft Windows 7 to the general public. For the first time, Microsoft has provided both beta and release candidates of their latest operating system as a general download. I installed first the beta and later the updated release candidate on G2S and have been using that system as my primary workhorse for quite a few months.

From today, the OS is available for purchase with a wide range of variants to choose form and a fair discrepancy in pricing.

Pricing seems to range from just over ZAR 1000 for the Home Basic Edition to about ZAR 2500 for the Ultimate Edition. Many retailers are offering the DSP version for a lot less – in that case, the DSP Home Basic Edition costs about ZAR 850 and DSP Ultimate ZAR 1500. There are also special offers for owners of Vista who have purchased that software only a short time ago.

Choosing a variant depends on what the intended use of the target machine will be. Ultimate is a bit of a waste – the Professional Edition makes far more sense unless AppLocker and BitLocker feature strongly on your list of requirements.

Home Basic offers only partial Aero functionality – considering the fact that recent reports about the performance of WIndows 7 on lower-end systems have indicated that the OS should rather be targeted at newer machines, partial Aero functionality is a waste of time. There are also substantial differences in the delivery of the Media CentreWindows XP functionality, mode and the ability of the OS to connect to a Windows domain. Why Microsoft still chooses to confuse customers with multiple variants of the same software is beyond me: a standard price for the delivery of everything the software contains would lead to a clearer marketing message, less disappointment when the wrong variant is chosen and fewer support headaches. Of course, many features can be enabled on a cheaper variant using a variety of hacks.

With that said, I’m extremely happy with Windows 7 – both the beta and RC versions have performed flawlessly in the past few months and I can confidently state that I’ve experienced no serious issues. Though it’s little more than an update to Vista on the surface, the fixes and updates that have been provided in the Windows 7 core OS certainly lead to a more stable and usable system. Performance is reasonable, though I’m also of the opinion that the use of Windows 7 on a low-powered system should be considered carefully. I’ll be updating my present RC installation with an official copy as soon as I get a hold of a variant that is suitable.

For a detailed comparison chart, refer to the Windows 7 Wikipedia page.

It’s been a while since I’ve worked extensively with Remote Deskop under Windows. Remembering certain key tasks is a difficult thing. For example, remembering that to enter into console mode, it’s best to execute Remote Desktop from the Run menu by entering mstsc /console. That won’t work for systems running Windows 2000, though. And, the /console switch has changed to /admin in later versions of Remote Desktop running on more modern versions of the Windows OS.

But the one thing I simply couldn’t remember was how get the remote system to restart. Obviously, the relevant option doesn’t show up in the Start menu.

In case you have brain-freeze the way I have, it may take you some time to remember that the correct key combination to get to the necessary option is Ctrl-Alt-End instead of Ctrl-Alt-Del.

Choose Shut Down, and then Restart form the subsequent set of options.

I’m busy building and developing a bunch of interfaces from third-party products to talk to SAP via SAP PI. It’s all great fun, until the interaction with the third-party software running on Windows XP had to get going. The interface I’m building reads a text file generated by that software. The text file is written to a directory on the PC and PI polls until it’s ready to pick the file up using ftp.

The interface worked well until PI tried to remove the file: unable to delete the file due to insufficient privileges. I check the ftp server details, checked the ownership of the target directory and ensured all users and their permission were set up correctly. No go.

Trying to change the Read-only attribute of the directory, which was the obvious cause of the issue, caused me a bit of frustration: regardless how often and insistently I tried to turn the attribute off and clicked Apply, the read-only attribute remained.

I found a solution in the Microsoft Knowledgebase under article Q256614. The fix involves the insertion of a new registry key, then modifying the attribute from the command line using the attrib command. All this because folder customization utilizes the Read-only attribute. In my case, the folder was in no way customized and all newly created folders on that system exhibit similar behaviour. It’s an XP system running SP3 and is newly installed.

And the behaviour of that attribute is by design. Fancy that…

Backing up data is one of those tedious tasks that simply have to get done. On Linux, I relied on a script containing rsync that was scheduled using cron. On Windows, I like to use robocopy, a very handy command-line utility that is still around (and even updated) in Windows 7. Robocopy functions very much like rsync, and it’s the kind of backup I feel most comfortable with: no dumping of precious files into bit buckets hampered by specific formats. Instead, the source is replicated to the target drive and, if necessary, deletions on either end are carried over (or not) to ensure the source and target stay the same. Even better, once the initial copy has taken place, subsequent synchronizations are incremental and finish up in a jiffy.

On the Mac, Time Machine is certainly worthwhile using and a great backup utility. Unfortunately, Time Machine isn’t all that easy to use with network attached storage, such as my set of Drobos. The Drobo is quite happy to be seen by Time Machine when connected to the Mac via the fast Firewire or slower USB 2.0 ports. Workarounds exist to make a Drobo connected to a DroboShare unit be seen by Time Machine – use of sparse bundle images or BackMyFruitUp. Neither of those options gives me any high degree of comfort, primarily due to the fact that they’re not officially supported. Data corruption isn’t high on my wish list…

Whilst I could easily have utilized the humble command line rsync command under Mac OS X, I  searched for something a bit more user friendly. I settled on ChronoSync. Simply put, ChronoSync does exactly what rsync and robocopy do; it synchronizes files by copying from a source to a target. But that’s really just a tiny part of its arsenal. For USD 40, ChronoSync performs file synchronization, archiving of file versions, creation of bootable backup disks and much more.

Best of all, there is no need to code command line scripts or employ cron for job scheduling: that’s built in and permits a slew of backups to be run at intervals that are suitable.

For the paranoid, there’s even an option to synchronize a file the moment it has been altered. With the aid of a tiny piece of AppleScript, I am notified of the successful completion of my ChronoSync backups via Growl, on to Prowl to the iPhone. Scripting support may be employed for a number of other reasons, such as to shut down a database prior to copying, for example. I generally synchronize entire directory trees without filtering out specific files, though ChronoSync includes support for complex filters for file selection during archival and synchronization operations. In fact, the options provided by ChronoSync are very extensive and should cater for almost any specialized requirement.

Though it may be considered expensive, ChronoSync works without fail and puts my mind at ease. What more would one want from a backup solution?

There’s a time-limited trial version available for download here and so far, I’ve had no issue with ChronoSync running under Snow Leopard.

Of late I’ve been a bit obsessed with getting various operating systems to read various file systems. The main reason for that is that I needed to migrate various systems: first the stuff I had stored on the ext3 file system on the Mandriva-based katana to the new iMac.

I had the Drobo connected to the Linux system using the USB 2.0 interface and used rsync on a daily basis to back up my data.  I wasn’t in the mood to fiddle with ext3 on the Drobo as I wanted to have access to the storage system from other systems that run Windows. The result was that my Drobo was formatted NTFS, resulting in the four 1TB drives being partitioned into one 2TB and  one 800MB partition. Certainly not ideal, but workable. With the arrival of the iMac, I decided to trash that partitioning scheme and opt for a file system that handled thin provisioning in a slightly more intelligent way than NTFS does. The result was a 12 hour exercise during which all data was copied from the Drobo to various external hard drives, a partitioning of the Drobo for a maximum possible provision of 16TB using HFS+ and then a copy back of all the data. Until my DroboShare arrives (the shipment destined for South Africa was tampered with in Amsterdam and all DroboShare units stolen), the Drobo is connected to the iMac through the FireWire 800 port. It’s fast!

From the iMac, I’ve shared the Drobo making it available to all other systems in the house via the wired and wireless network. But, Windows systems cannot mount Mac volumes natively. For a while, I’ve used MacDrive and found that it works exceptionally well. The latest version runs without issue on the 64-bit Windows 7 installation. The only disadvantage I can name is the price: MacDrive 8 costs USD 49.95 for a single system. That’s pricey, but worth it. I’m more at ease with the current Drobo configuration and have more Mac systems requiring access to the storage unit than Windows systems. To sweeten the deal, MediaFour provides two licenses for USD 59.95. That’s good value and suited my requirement for licensing two systems perfectly.

The download is small. The 5MB file installs without fanfare, requiring very little user input. It’s simply a file system driver, after all. Once the installation is complete, the MacDrive icon appears in the task bar. There’s no need to click on that unless one requires to perform special functions. Those include burning a Mac-compatible optical disk or formatting a hard drive for use by Mac OS X.

More advanced settings are available under the MacDrive options link. Once again, these are of no interest to anyone unless a very specific configuration or operation is required. This is really a run and forget utility. Once installed, I immediately saw the shared Drobo in the Windows Explorer from G2S running Windows 7.

All ordinary file operations are seamless and work without a hitch. Though this is an expensive option, it is very stable and requires no additional action to access the HFS+ drives. I was unable to find many alternatives that could perform the same functions at a lower price.

The Crunchpad is a Linux-based tablet in the style of the hoped-for Apple iPhone tablet. Weighing in at only 800g, but running Windows 7 is the ARCHOS 9PCtablet.

It’s not just an Internet device. Instead, the 9PCtablet is a fully-fledged PC based on an Intel Atom processor with a built-in 80GB hard drive and various wireless connectivity options. TV reception via DVBT is supported, as is Bluetooth and WiFi.

There is no physical keyboard. Instead, the user interacts with the device using the on-screen keyboard on the resistive touchscreen. The ARCHOS is an attractive device, and the company has a good reputation for manufacturing high-quality video playback devices. There is no indication of an expected release date yet.