You’ve been brainwashed. Brainwashed by clever marketing and the classic underpromise-and-overdeliver strategy employed by Microsoft to fix the mistakes they made with Vista.

I know, I know, everyone told you Vista was bad. You maybe even used Vista pre-SP1, on a “Vista Capable” machine way back when it launched and concluded that it was horrible. Or, maybe you heard all the bad press and skipped on it altogether? Stuck with XP, then switched straight to 7. Is that what you did?

Well, regardless, I am convinced that Vista is the superior operating system. So vastly superior, that I am going out of my way to ensure that it replaces all the systems that I have been tricked into installing Windows 7 on. At work, at home, and for my clients. I am going to make an argument in this article as to why I believe that Vista remains superior.

I challenge someone to list 7 reasons why Windows 7 is better than Windows Vista. Actual reasons. “Features” like Aero Snap, Jump Lists, and the new taskbar do not necessitate an entirely new operating system, so they don’t really count. Those could easily be implemented into Vista, if it were not abandoned in the wake of Windows 7 by the new CEO, Steve Ballmer. So, we begin with a mini history lesson:

Windows Vista was a major disaster. Microsoft suffered from heavily over promising on features (remember WinFS?) and failing to live up to their own hype; and they really hyped it up. Naturally, normal people don’t care or know when a new Microsoft operating system is launched, but the tech community does. So, to over-promise and under deliver, and miss your self-imposed deadlines again and again, the disappointment becomes palpable.

At the time, 64-bit processors were becoming more ubiquitous, and Windows XP 64-bit Edition had a plethora of issues with drivers and was not widely adopted — so they were under immense pressure to release the OS.

Vista Beta 2 came out in 2006, and it was an absolute disaster. If you looked at it funny, or moved the mouse too quickly, it would crash. It was completely unusable, but Microsoft insisted that it was intentional, and that they were planning to fix all of the bugs at once, at the end, prior to RTM. They did, although there was still the issues of heavy disk I/O in the final RTM as well as a large number of driver issues in the final versions.

Much of the problems with Vista stemmed from an overzealous Search Indexer, incomplete drivers from third party manufacturers, UAC, and underpowered systems. RAM was still moderately expensive at the time, and Vista did not work very well with only 1GB, which was common on low-end systems.

After Beta 2, Microsoft shipped release candidate versions and finally the RTM. They continued to fix all of the issues rapidly, releasing patch after patch. All the while, Vista was hammered in the press, blogs and forums repeatedly for problems stemming from the aforementioned.

This negative press was not without merit. Vista was truly very slow, and despite the improvements, they felt minor in the face of a computer that was so severely hampered. Especially when the computer was branded as: Vista Capable.

Finally, with Vista Service Pack 1 (2/2008), the operating system became relatively stable, and performance was drastically improved. However, plagued by the hasty launch, not enough enticing features over XP, and an insipid ad campaign (“the wow starts now“), there were very few who gave it a second review.

Microsoft later attempted to “prove” that they had fixed Vista with the Mojave Experiment, in which they secretly video taped people who had heard that Vista was bad, and had them interact with a supposed “new” operating system codenamed “Mojave.” Evidently, over 90% of the participants thought it was great and an improvement over XP and/or Vista, and expressed shock/surprise when informed that they were actually using regular ‘ol Windows Vista. Of course, bias is to be expected.

After the release of Service Pack 2 (4/2008) and subsequent updates, performance continued to improve and was on par, or superior to that of Windows 7. None of this ever made it to the press because Windows 7 was under-hyped, under-promised and over-delivered by releasing early, since Microsoft learned their lessons with Vista. Moreover, Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” ad-campaign for 7 was well executed.

So, what’s wrong with Windows 7? Why have I become so negative about it? Here’s 7 reasons why I think Windows 7 is a downgrade from Windows Vista (asterisks denote a subjective comment):

1. Windows 7 removes features

What’s missing? Well, where’d the QuickLaunch go? Oh, right, it got consumed into the massive start menu. Where’d the Show Desktop icon go? Moved, to the right hand side (this drives a lot of people batty, believe it or not). Windows Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, DreamScene, just to name a few, no longer come with the OS, they have to be downloaded manually with “Windows Live Essentials” (except for DreamScene, which is totally gone…why?!) — this is not an improvement by any means, just gives the illusion of “less bloat.” But don’t worry, you can put the QuickLaunch and Show Desktop button back — it’s just not exactly all that easy to do.

2. All system tray icons are hidden by default

Is this a problem? I think it is. Microsoft’s attempt to unclutter the taskbar by hiding all third party systemtray icons is a nuisance. How many times have you had to try to explain to someone to “click the little arrow to the left” over the phone to a client, family member, or friend? Hiding all systemtray icons does little in the way of solving the “problem” of the systemtray. As a result, I often find myself just showing all icons on the systems I administer and repair.

3. Libraries

After much annoyance, I finally get libraries. I understand why they exist. I even think it’s a semi-cool idea … but it doesn’t work. Try and copy the path of a file you’re looking at within a Windows 7 Library into another Explorer dialog box. Go ahead. I’ll wait. What’s that? You can’t?

Well that’s aggravating because everytime you click a shortcut like Music on your start menu, it takes you to the music Library, even if you just have one Music folder! Can you replace the shortcut on the Start menu to go directly to your Music folder? No. You cannot. I won’t add a separate section, but HomeGroups annoy me in a similar fashion. I’m sure they’re great for some people — but in general, I just get a lot of “what’s homegroup?!” from people trying to do very basic filesharing across their networks.

4. Windows Media Player 12

Have you used Windows Media Player 11? It’s pretty simple to use. Yes, the defaults are still annoying, but the interface is vastly superior. Try it yourself. Use WMP 11 and then switch over to v.12 which comes with 7 and see which makes more sense to you. The illogical layout of the software is mind boggling to me. This isn’t exactly a Windows 7 issue per se, but since Microsoft made a specific decision to remove WMP 11, I find it worth mentioning. Also, it looks like you can fix it here.

5. Search

This, for me, is the real trouble with Windows 7. In Windows XP, you can download the optional search indexer from Windows Update. Its heyday was really with the search add-on version 2.0, which was an extremely precise search indexer that you could control with a decent amount of precision. In Vista, Microsoft took it to the next level by deeply integrating the indexer and the UI throughout the operating system. Vista’s search solution, once the Indexer was optimized with SP1+, is very powerful and incredibly easy to fine tune. Observe the control you can exert over your search in Vista:

Now, let’s juxtapose this with Windows 7′s search “improvements”:

So, here is what I can’t do with Windows 7′s search:

- Force a search in a non-indexed, or partially indexed location. So, let’s say you just added a folder and want to do a quick search in Windows 7… you can’t, because the indexer hasn’t caught up, and you cannot force the indexer to start on command. So you’re screwed. This is a constant problem that I run into all the damn time.

- Change the search path without first performing a search, and then scrolling to the very bottom of the search results. Who was the genius who designed this?

- Perform complex filters quickly. In 7, I have to use that awkward drop-down menu to manually select each filter, and then scroll back to the left to change my search parameters. This is incredibly cumbersome and unintuitive. Totally fails the grandma test. In Vista, if I want to find a song, I just type one word of the song and then click the “Music” button and bam — it appears immediately.

- Inconsistent search-related glitches (see also Bugs, #6, below) which for whatever reason cause known search results not to materialize. Video evidence of this that I documented is here, on a fully patched, legally licensed, MSDN version of Windows 7 Ultimate. I’m not the only one complaining, either. This is a real problem that simply didn’t exist before 7.

- Oh, and see how the text becomes blue in the search box once I type the word “in”? Well that’s because Windows 7 thinks that I am using a search “operator,” and thus it is not returning any results. If I type the exact same search query into Vista’s search box, it would return results. In order for me to make 7 search for the word “in” I have to put it in quotes in order to “tell” 7 to search it, and not to use it as an operator. Do you think your clients are going to figure that out? I doubt it.

6. Bugs that never get fixed

Microsoft has the capability to fix problems. They proved that with Vista. In my years with Vista, I observed Microsoft fix the operating system relatively quickly. Each problem slowly disappeared, and by the time SP2 hit, nearly everything that was a concern vanished. Yet somehow, that isn’t happening with Windows 7. My biggest #1 problem with Windows 7 is the Explorer refreshing bug.

Have a look at that link. You’ll find that this is a bug that has persisted throughout every single version of Windows 7, and despite innumerable complaints, it isn’t fixed. Windows 7 launched in 2009, and it is now 2012 — it remains unfixed, and inconsistent. I have lost track of how many times I have had to explain to clients that the reason why the file that they saved to the desktop/folder isn’t appearing is because it sometimes won’t refresh automatically and that they have to right click and hit refresh or press F5. Of course, F5 won’t work on Microsoft keyboards because you have to first press F-Lock to enable standard keyboard behavior. This is aggravating, and Microsoft appears unable or unwilling to fix bugs of this magnitude, despite their brilliant engineers on staff.

Other bugs are equally frustrating. For example, after installing a completely legal MSDN version of Windows 7 Ultimate, with keys from Microsoft, activated and operating for a few months, Microsoft released an optional hotfix to determine if your specific instance of Windows had been illegally activated. Since mine were not, I installed the patch on a couple systems that I had running at the time. After restarting, they were flagged as counterfeit copies. After calling, Microsoft double checked the keys and could not determine why they were being flagged as counterfeit. So, I had to manually remove the hotfix to get my legal copies of Windows 7 working normally again. Moreover, I then had to set all the computers to not automatically download updates because with Windows 7, you are forced to install downloaded updates when shutting down. You cannot bypass it as you could in Vista. This “problem” resulted in my having to unplug the systems that had downloaded the updates so that they wouldn’t install the broken hotfix.

There are of course many more, but those two are what come to mind.

7. Taskbar & Explorer changes

The Windows 7 taskbar is subjective. Some people like it just fine, and some detest it. I fall in the middle. I find the auto-grouping to look nice, but irritating as it slows me down. I find the missing quicklaunch, and the auto-hidden systemtray icons problematic, but we’ve already discussed that.

The “Lock” button on the start menu is missing in 7. It is now located under the “>” arrow to the right of Shut down. There’s no particular reason for this change that I can see. The “change view” button is unintuitively* located on the right side of the Explorer window, rather than on the left as in Vista. No reason I can think of as to why this was changed, and there’s no ability to customize it.

The Windows Calendar is gone from Windows 7. It came with Vista, but they removed it — but you can go out of your way and download it with Windows Live Essentials.

AeroShake. Arguably, AeroPeek and AeroSnap are useful, but AeroShake simply hides all background windows when you “shake” a foreground window. This often happens to me by mistake, and I find it irritating. It can be disabled, but it’s too technical for your average user. Moreover, why are these features OS specific? They could easily be appended to Vista, but Microsoft chooses to make them 7-only, as if they are a reason to “upgrade” your operating system (kinda like Siri on the 4S).

More importantly, sortable column headings only appear in Details view, now. There is no way to change this back.

The bottom line is: where’s the upgrade? All I am seeing here are minor changes, missing features, screwed up search, bugs that never get fixed, and other annoyances. Why on earth is this operating system still being priased so much over Vista?

I’d like to see 7 reasons why Windows 7 is an improvement over Vista (SP2).

admin@variableghz.com

Just for fun, I attempted to bruteforce my own WPA2 (“Wi-Fi Protected Access”) network using Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery. Since I had rather awful results in the past with *.PDFs, I thought, perhaps I would have better luck with WPA cracking. The PDF algorithm doesn’t work with GPUs, but it does work with WPA, so I thought that maybe I’d be in luck!

In order to bruteforce WPA/2, you have to capture a 4-way “handshake” (tutorial below). You can do this using BackTrack, or WireShark to listen and capture the packets to a file, specifically a *.CAP file. If you don’t capture it correctly, you won’t be able to even try cracking it. Not that this makes much of a difference…

So, is it possible to bruteforce a WPA/2 network? As it turns out, the answer to that is a resounding no. Shocked? The algorithm is so strong that the passwords-per-second that you can achieve in bruteforce are incredibly low. For example, I loaded the distributed agent on my Quad-Core (Q9450) system w/ just one NVIDIA GTX280, at full power it average just ~10,000 passwords per second. Even if I could double that to ~20,000 passwords per second, it wouldn’t even amount to a drop in the bucket. This would be more like a drop into the Hoover Dam.

Have a look at a tiny cluster of just7 systems (excluding the above-referenced rig), mostly CPUs (one GPU rig) w/ 11 cores going at it. All those systems combined produced a whopping 2,556 pw/s.

WPA/2 has a minimum password length of 8 characters, and for good reason. This length is just enough to make things impossible without serious power.

So, at 2,556 pw/s, you’re looking at ~1.1 million days to recover an 8-character password. Hey, that’s only ~3,013 years! But wait, there’s more. I only have uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers. What if they use a symbol or a space? Then it’s even worse! Or, what if it’s a 9, 10, or 20 character password? Forget about it. Moreover, if someone has an irregular SSID. you won’t be able to run a rainbow table attack on it.

If, however, you somehow get control of all the current GPU power of Bitcoin… then maybe you could successfully bruteforce my WPA/2 network, anything short of that, you’re out of luck.

Forgive my sarcasm, I just cannot wrap my mind around why this is even offered as an option in this software. Under what circumstances would it ever be possible? OK, I suppose if you knew some of the characters of the password, you could mask off the known characters and bruteforce the rest. In that instance, it could be a useful tool.

But hey, if you really don’t believe me, and want to give it a try yourself, here’s what you need to do:

- Download a BackTrack ISO (“BT”) and burn it to a disc (or use a VM if you know what you’re doing). (Note: different versions behave…differently. I found that, for example, BackTrack 3 worked with a certain wireless card of mine while BT4 did not recognize the same card. So, if you find that you have trouble with one version of BT, try out another before giving up. It is a really tremendously valuable distribution.)

- Boot up BT and open a terminal (command-line prompt).

-Type iwconfig to determine your wireless card interface name. (For example, “eth1″ or “wlan0″). If nothing shows up, then BT did not detect it, and you’ll have to do a lot of Googling to figure it out, or try another version of BT.

- Type airmon-ng start wlan0

- This will enable monitor mode on your wireless interface.

- It should be called mon0. So, go ahead and type: airodump-ng mon0

- From the list of wireless APs (Access Points), take note of the channel, ESSID and BSSID.

- Type airodump-ng -c [channel] -w [ESSID] –output-format ivs mon0

- The [ESSID] will be the filename. Note: don’t type the [brackets] themselves, just enter the data directly in. (As an example: airodump-ng -c 6 -w VGHzNetwork…)

- Open a new console.

- Type aireplay-ng -0 1 -e [BSSID] mon0

- This performs a deauthentication (“deauth”) — in order to acquire a 4-way handshake, someone needs to connect to the network. Since most computers automatically reconnect when the connection is interrupted, we use this command to kick them off. Note: You may need to do this several times, at different intervals. Depending on the router and devices connected, it can be tough to get the handshake. So, be patient. If no one is home, and no devices are connected… you can’t get the handshake no matter what you do. Someone must connect successfully.

- So, keep an eye on the previous console window and look for the words “WPA Handshake” to appear in the upper right corner. Once you see it, you can stop the console window (with Ctrl+C). The aireplay-ng window can then be closed as well since the handshake has been acquired.

- Type aircrack-ng -w list.lst [ESSID]

- Note: Remember the filename you specified earlier on. It will be a *.ivs file. Example: ESSID-01.ivs; type ls to locate it if you don’t know the name.

- You can use this file with ESDPR, or you can use the built-in dictionary attacker w/ aircrack-ng. You’ll want to use a pretty beefy dictionary — and it will likely fail, unless someone has a weak password consisting of something matching your dictionary. If you go this route, you’ll likely need a much larger  dictionary than the one provided with BT.

admin@variableghz.com

I miss the old days of Windows when there was always a way to get something done. Fast. There was always a “do it anyway” button, if you will, with Microsoft products. You could hack it together and no matter what, you could find a way to make even the most unstable, cobbled-together idea, become stable and useful for years and years.

Three months ago, I wanted to search a mapped network drive in Windows 7 only to have it produce incomplete results nearly every time. I realized somehow that Windows wanted me to configure the network drive with the Manage Offline Files feature in Windows 7 and then index it using Windows Search because, for whatever reason, there’s no “index-it-over-the-network-anyway” button. So I did, and the search results were somewhat more complete, however, using a lot of hard drive space since it was now maintaining an unencrypted copy of an 80GB TrueCrypt volume worth of data on my local drive.

You can “encrypt” offline files by clicking the “Encrypt” button, though, which can be pretty useful if you implement it correctly.

Nevertheless, I still had a lot of incomplete search results. Most of the files were PDFs, Word documents, and the like. I set all of the filetypes to search contents as well. There were two layers of slowness: (1) the “Sync Center” which now had to synchronize all changes over the network, and I had to keep a close eye on it to make sure it was actually syncing and keeping things up to date because it often wasn’t doing it fast enough; and (2) the Search Indexer, which doesn’t have any settings for something like “high priority” so that it would work at full capacity to keep the index up to date. Because my system is almost always busy doing something, the results were most often incomplete.

I elected to disable Offline Files and just go back to the plain old mapped network drive. It was taking up too much hard drive space, and taking up far too much of my time babysitting the whole process. Not only that, but I went ahead and disabled the search indexer entirely, which forces Windows 7 to perform a real search of the contents every time I type something resulting in up to date, incredibly slow, accurate search results. I don’t recommend doing this, it is just horribly slow.

During the latest MSE full virus-scan I performed, I noticed some very familiar files in my Windows\CSC (which stands for “Client Side Caching”) directory. They were the entire drive contents of the mapped network drive that I previously disabled from the Manage Offline Files feature! All of the files were still there residing on my local machine. Incredibly, they were never deleted automatically when I disabled the feature.

I opened up the Windows\CSC directory and the default permissions don’t allow access. So I had to right click and take ownership of the folder in order to be able to view the contents. Once I did, sure enough, I verified that everything was still there, an entire copy of the drive since I disabled Manage Offline Files. I was honestly very surprised to see those files still there with no warning or any indication that they weren’t deleted. Some cursory online research revealed that deleting the files manually would “break” the Offline Files feature, so, I proceeded revisit the Manage Offline Files feature and try to remove the files the “right” way.

Unfortunately, because I had disabled the feature, all the buttons were grayed out and I had to restart in order to enable them.

After restarting, I clicked “View your offline files” and went into mapped drives, right clicked and unchecked “Make available offline.” Windows then proceeded to comb through every single file in the \CSC directory, I can only guess that it was changing some flag on each file. Once it was finished, I then right clicked again and clicked delete. Again, Windows combed through all of the files informing me that it was deleting the local copies of the files, but that network data was not affected.

After three hours of it “deleting” the files. I right clicked the namespace folder inside of the CSC folder and wouldn’t you know it — everything was still there. I couldn’t tell you what Windows was doing for those three hours, but it certainly wasn’t deleting all of those files. Just for good measure, I right clicked again and selected delete only to see Windows begin to comb through the files again, needless to say I canceled this operation and went to delete the folder manually directly from Windows Explorer.

It only sorta deleted. There was one file that was too long, and Windows has a strange quirk whereby if a file is too long, Windows will not permit you the option to delete or rename it. So, without hesitation, I opened up an elevated command prompt, navigated to the directory within the \windows\csc\ directory and deleted the file using del *.pdf.

Curiously, there were folders which I was unable to access all over the place. Every time I would shift+delete a range of folders, Windows would delete everything until it would come across something that I didn’t have permissions for and would immediately halt the entire operation and wouldn’t continue to delete the stuff that I did have permissions to delete. I had to take ownership of quite a few extraneous folders just to be able to delete them. I couldn’t even begin to tell you why Windows elected to make certain folders have restricted ownership inside of its caching mechanism. It’s all very mysterious.

While I’m at it, have a look at these two dialog boxes. I can’t help but wonder what inspired individual created the former one.

It seems to be the first folder of every other subfolder that needs to have ownership permissions set. I’d really love for a Microsoft software engineer to explain the logic behind this to me. This whole ordeal easily took up four hours of my time to get rid of all the cached files and get the Sync Center fully disabled.

In the end, I found Windows Search to be completely unusable without the indexer enabled. So, I installed a spare 250GB drive into my system and dedicated it exclusively to the indexer (and a few other applications that have indexing features as well). Windows searches, as you might expect, perform much better with the index folder residing on a separate hard drive and somehow, the results are more complete — although I have no scientific method of “proving” that theory.

Most of all, though, having the index folder on another hard drive seems to update quicker. When I left the Indexing Options folder open, I would usually immediately see an increase in the “items indexed” area when I would add a new file. When I used to have the index folder on the main C: drive, it could take anywhere from a minute to half an hour to see that update.

When Microsoft rolled out the updated Windows Desktop Search add-on for XP back in 2006, you could force it to index whenever you wanted, so, even if your PC was busy doing a virus scan you could still force it to index while you were away. In Windows Vista, you were afforded the ability to force the indexer to search unindexed locations — a feature that is sorely missing from Windows 7. But, more on that later.

admin@variableghz.com

Power settings matter a great deal, especially on notebooks. Many pre-built computers come with their own power settings built into the OS, usually called something like “Dell Recommended.” These settings are usually decent, but to be sure you’re getting the best power management it is advised to instead use Balanced which will likely do a better job of dynamically setting the CPU as necessary. There’s always more to power settings than meets the eye, however; for example in XP, power settings were curiously hidden in various names like “Home/Office Desk” and “Minimal Power Management” — and, what’s the difference between “Presentation” and “Always On”? Turns out, if you wanted XP to use full power you’d have to set it to “Home/Office Desk.”

In Windows Vista & 7, the power settings have been dramatically overhauled for the better. Here’s what’s different and noteworthy:

Vista and 7 both give you more control over your energy consumption, yet a simpler interface by which to control it. The three defaults, Power Saver, Balanced and High Performance are good enough for most people. Thing is, Balanced does an excellent job at ramping up the CPU when necessary, but tends to err on the higher end of the spectrum whereas Power Saver will actually throttle down the CPU dramatically resulting in a much cooler system, rather quickly. You could operate a laptop in a warm environment (like on a bed or carpet) and the CPU will stay mostly cool, certainly a lot cooler than if you had it set to Balanced. On Power Saver, I noted the CPU’s Maximum Frequency remained fixed at 36% while the system was mostly idle. Even during spikes of CPU usage, it remains fixed at 36%, refusing to budge.

Power saver is perfect for reading, browsing, light word processing, and any other tasks that aren’t heavy on the CPU/GPU. However, once you start taxing the CPU, Balanced is ideal for keeping things, well, balanced. Thing is, if your system is “idle,” all sorts of processes are pinging the CPU’s resources incessantly. Often, many of these requests aren’t mission critical such as a request from Java to check for updates. Nevertheless, it may cause the Maximum Frequency to increase momentarily to allow the process full access to the CPU’s resources. Because this happens every few seconds, the overall effect on a laptop is higher energy usage and a warmer CPU and thus a louder fan to increase cooling.

From my tests, I can’t tell a difference between Balanced and High Performance at all. Balanced seems to immediately crank up the Maximum Frequency to 100% if needed, and High Performance simply leaves it at 100% the entire time, even if the CPU is hardly being utilized.

So, on a notebook. It makes plenty of sense to toggle between Power Saver and Balanced, but much less to switch between Balanced and High Performance.

By default, Windows will invariable put your system to Sleep after a certain period of “inactivity.” So, if you’re downloading a large file, or running a long virus scan, it will invariably interrupt that process. For this reason, I always set it to “Never” sleep — on all operating systems, XP, Vista and 7. I trust you’ll be able to put your own PC to sleep.

In the advanced power settings, you can control much more. Many USB devices have issues with the “USB selective suspend setting” feature, so I tend to disable this. For kicks, I created a custom power plan called Extreme Power Saver & set the Processor power management’s minimum processor state to 1%, and maximum to 2%.

After enabling my custom Extreme Power Saver, I checked the CPU Maximum Frequency in the Reliability and Performance Monitor — it stayed flat at 36%, same as the regular Power Saver. To be sure, I fired up SpeedFan and checked the CPU frequency on both Power Saver and my Extreme Power Saver — both registered at 798MHz (maximum is 2,194MHz, or 2.1GHz). So, Vista/7 both don’t let the Maximum Frequency fall below 36%.

There’s no advantage to making an extreme power saver plan. Toggling between Power Saver and Balanced is the way to go. My test system here is an HP tx 1000 running Windows Vista x86. The same applies for my desktop and work systems running Vista and 7, respectively.

admin@variableghz.com

In a previous article, I detailed my awkward experience with Windows Home Server and setting up a stable FTP server. In the end, I converted it into an XP server and assigned my clients with NetDrive so that they could mount the FTP server as a drive letter and browse effortlessly.

Problem is, NetDrive’s performance was subpar with large files, such as PDFs. For example, if I were to open a large PDF, instead of caching the entire PDF and reading it locally, NetDrive would proceed to download the PDF in parts much the same way it works when you view a large PDF from within a web browser. Because many of the PDFs on the server are large (100MB+), this resulted in extremely slow performance. Moreover, a client requested that the files be made available offline so that data from the server could be reviewed and edited while on a plane, for example. Dropbox’s impressive core sync engine evidently left quite an impression, and rightfully so.

I began an epic quest for the perfect realtime, bi-directional sync utility that I could use in conjunction with NetDrive to sync between a local copy of the server data and the server itself — in an effort to essentially replicate the Dropbox-like sync experience.

I must have installed over a hundred sync applications. This was an exhausting and defeating endeavor. Many sync software applications are remarkably similar and there is heavy competition among them. At one point, I had a near-perfect sync using this remarkably capable (albeit not-entirely-user-friendly) program called FTP Auto Sync which I could get working about 80% of the time. However, all of the programs were unable to handle multi-client scenarios. My server is intended to handle changes from multiple users simultaneously. So, one user may delete a file while another user adds a 10GB worth of new files somewhere else. What I was essentially asking all of these programs to do was “check whatever was done last on the server and sync it back with whatever I did last locally and figure it out.” A tall order. Problem is, a locally residing program is blind to the changes the remote FTP server is doing while offline and is unable to monitor all folders at all times anyway.

Let’s say I delete four files from the server. How is the local client to know whether to delete the files from the local client, or the sync the local files back to the server? To get around this, some programs maintain a database of changes, however, they still do not work in a multi-client environment unless I were to switch to an entirely different platform, such as iFolder. Many programs simply were unable to handle syncing in realtime between a pseudo-drive such as NetDrive altogether.

I ended uninstalling everything, including NetDrive and installing WebDrive to replace it after discovering that it had advanced caching and offline synchronization features. The main WebDrive interface may look similar to NetDrive, but the underlying technology is much more robust and feature rich.

By default, WebDrive is configured for “Single User” under Cache Settings. This infers that you will be the only one affecting changes on the server. Since my server data will be changed by many users, I wanted mine to be Multi-user which makes WebDrive check the modified date/time on the server files to verify that the cached files are up to date, if they are not, it will re-download the files as necessary.

You’ll also note that on the bottom, there are two additional options for flushing the cache upon connecting. Since this is the default behavior for Multi-user, I selected Custom and unchecked these two so that the cached files would remain.

Once you have connected to your FTP server, WebDrive has a useful little tool called the WebDrive Monitor. You can access it by right clicking on the WebDrive system tray icon and selecting “Show Monitor.” The Monitor displays the raw FTP commands as they are executed between the client and server as well as file transfers, speed, and a handy progress bar. In addition, the WebDrive system tray icon flashes a world icon whenever data is being transferred. Whenever there is any kind of delay, it’s nice to be able to open up the Monitor and see what is slowing things down, or even to troubleshoot an issue on the server if necessary.

Now, to test the offline sync, I created a test folder entitled “server copy”; I placed four PDFs in the folder and selected the drive made available offline. To prepare a system to be ready for offline files unfortunately requires a few steps to be taken. Those steps can be found in complete detail here, so please refer to that PDF and read it entirely if you intend to use WebDrive for this purpose. First, I open the WebDrive program settings and check both “Synchronize Offline files at Connect time” and “Synchronize Offline files at Disconnect time” for full synchronization. With the server in “online mode” I right click on the “server copy” folder and under WebDrive> select “Make Available Offline.” Since I have the Monitor open, I can see that they are “Set offline.”

Once the files are marked for offline mode, I reconnect to the WebDrive in “offline mode” by checking the “Connect Offline” box next to the Connect button, then reconnect. Of course, you must first disconnect from the server in order to reconnect, even in offline mode. Once connected, I then VNC’d to the server unit directly and deleted 4.pdf and added a new text file called “server.txt”; on the local “offline” copy, I deleted 1.pdf and 2.pdf and added a new text file called “local.txt”

WebDrive has several ways to perform a sync: (1) you can right click on the drive letter itself and select WebDrive > Synchronize Now; (2) right click on the system tray icon, select your WebDrive and then choose Synchronize Now; and (3) simply going back into Online mode where WebDrive will automatically perform a sync on connect. I right clicked on the system tray icon and selected “Go Online” to initiate an auto-sync. The sync was near instantaneous since my files sizes were trivial.

I was hoping for a solution that would free my clients from having to right-click and generally be reminded so much that they are using a workaround for Dropbox, but without Dropbox’s core sync engine, this is as elegant as it gets. I am informed that Novell/kablink’s iFolder (server software not available for Windows) and SparkleShare (not yet available) as well as other utilities such as Unison (no longer under active development) could potentially solve my FTP sync issues as well. My quest is over, at least for now, and while it may not be entirely seamless, my clients will be given the closest thing to the perfect sync.

admin@variableghz.com

I was compelled to set up a file server because my clients maxed out their Dropbox. Originally, they were only sharing about 100MB worth of documents, so, I figured Dropbox was the ideal solution for them. Of course as they got real comfortable, they started sharing folders and moving enormous PDFs, .wav files and videos into the Dropbox. Needless to say, they maxed it out pretty quickly. I could upgrade their Dropbox, but then I’d have to upgrade everybody’s Dropbox and at this point there are at least ten different clients accessing the data at any given time. So, a dedicated file server seemed like the logical choice.

After reading Paul Thurrott’s review on the SuperSite a number of years ago, I had high hopes for Windows Home Server (WHS) but never had a reason to set one up until now. I was excited to try out a new Microsoft OS and have an always-on dedicated FTP file server to support the needs of my clients in a scalable way. So I did, I grabbed an old Compaq desktop PC that was given to me by a client who called it a “boat anchor” (a 2007 “vista capable” computer that came with Vista pre-SP1 installed on it) and told me to just get rid of it — obviously, I can’t do that — so now it is a file server.

I burned the MSDN ISO of WHS to a DVD/RW and began installing it. The installation screen had a strange mix of new and old; it has the same Windows XP installer look, but with some sleeker Windows Vista style informative tidbits. Half way through the installation it displays this oldschool looking DOS installer whereby it installs additional components, on the top of the screen it indicates Windows Server 2003, which WHS is based on. I’m told the stability is amazing.

WHS boots up and makes you do that Control-Alt-Delete thing to get in. I’m told that this is for security reasons, but I can’t exactly recall why. VNC lets you execute controls like C-A-D so I’m at a loss. Maybe it’s a dated security feature. Once you get to the desktop, you’re greeted with a local webpage indicating to you that you shouldn’t be using WHS directly, but rather via the Windows Home Console on another computer. Okay, fine, but I have to set all that up first. So, thanks for the premature warning I guess, Microsoft.

So, I close the awkward local html file warning page. Looking around, it looks like Windows XP, except a little off. The start menu is missing a bunch of stuff like on those heavily restricted public computers. All of the visual niceties have been disabled, so when you drag windows around there is that oldschool outline, Windows Classic theme, no fading/sliding on right-click, shadows, etc. It looks like Windows 98, XP and Vista all at the same time. And since it’s a server, that’s fine, however I thought that this OS was meant for somewhat novice home users to configure on their own? If that’s the case, then this whole thing definitely falls short in the ease of use/configuration category.

So, to begin, I click Windows Home Server Console and a wizard takes you through the steps of setting up the Console. It was simpler than I expected, considering the awkward and unfriendly UI experience it started with. Once it got to the remote access and Internet accessibility of the Console, however, things came to a halt. Cleverly, WHS tries to enable UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) in your router to make things easy. However, just like with ActiveX, UPnP was/is the cause of many security exploits and malware so by default, many routers have UPnP disabled — including the one I am using. So, I enabled UPnP on this Netgear router and then the wizard was able to proceed, however, it still briefly flashed  that orange exclamation mark icon before stating that everything was A-OK and later on down the line it would tell me periodically that remote access functionality wasn’t working. To fix it, I would click repair and it would show me a spinny wheel for a while, then, somehow, it would be fine… for a while. Fortunately, I don’t rely on gimmicky “remote access” hubs/add-ins, I use the real deal: UltraVNC.

So, having read a great deal about WHS, I know what it’s meant to do and I elected to use it because I’ve heard such great things about the stability of Server 2003/2008, and since WHS is based on Server 2003, I figure that’s as stable as it’s gonna get. Also, the Console has a terrific quasi-RAID feature called “Folder Duplication” which will automatically make extra copies of whatever folders you select to a second drive installed on the server. That’s pretty awesome, especially since the “server” I am using is just a plain Compaq desktop with no onboard RAID.

After trying to set up my FTP server using FileZilla, I decided I wanted anti-virus protection because I don’t necessarily trust that my clients are going to always be using updated anti-virus software themselves. So, I went to download Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) only to learn that Microsoft doesn’t support their own operating system, Windows Server 2003/Windows Home Server! So, I started looking around for other choices and was surprised to find a very limited selection. Still wary about WHS, I elected to go with a free a/v, ClamWin and see how that goes.

The Console has an “add-ins” section where you can extend the functionality of the Console with all sorts of third party extensions like audio-streamers, sync tools and anti-virus utilities. Installing ClamWin was, in a word, awkward. That’s fine, since it’s free and clearly stated as a work in progress by the author. Nevertheless, the fact that Microsoft doesn’t support their own MSE on their own operating system is very odd. WHS shares so many similarities to XP and I can’t imagine it would take much to make it work on there.

So I performed a virus scan with ClamWin. I didn’t have a very reassured feeling about the whole thing. In the terminal-like window it told me that my version was out of date, but not to panic (?). I went looking for a newer version and was unable to find it. Awkward.

Setting up FTP was difficult. I kept getting inconsistent results. It would connect fine on some connections and not others. VNC also presented an issue, it suddenly stopped working at one point providing me with a vague error message: “End of stream.” In six years of near-daily VNC use, on dozens of computers, I’ve never gotten that error message. I wasn’t using any of the Console features, anti-virus was awkward, FTP was inconsistent, VNC no longer functional — I reformatted & installed a standard Windows XP installation to see if it would better suit my needs.

Maybe not so surprisingly, after I disabled a bunch of unnecessary services, installed a hundred updates, and stripped everything down — my standard XP installation was more reliable and I was able to get everything (FTP, VNC, A/V) working and stable in about twenty minutes. To keep overhead as minimal as possible, I didn’t install any graphics drivers and disabled everything that wasn’t being used such as serial ports, audio drivers, etc. 800×600 resolution. Very easy to administer. Note the locked LAN IP “.45″ and custom port 8888 to make room for other systems on the same network to use VNC:

You cannot easily split an Ethernet jack the same way you can split a phone jack. So, I was at a loss for where to physically place the server. I decided to place it inside a box designed to house the modem/router and switch for the whole floor:

Problem is, since there’s no ventilation in the box, the server slowly started to bake. Not as hot as I was expecting, but when I saw the little flame icon on SpeedFan I decided it was time to move the server.

So, because each area of the floor only has one Ethernet jack, and they are all being used, I used a spare 16-slot rack-mounted switch & used that to split the Ethernet between the copier & server. The switch seems like overkill, but I didn’t have anything simpler or smaller to use. The temps are now stable at ~44°c.

So, WHS would be fine for other purposes I suppose. It’s designed to be this all-in-one hub for your LAN so that users can have auto-backups and easily accessible media. I can’t help but feel like it’s a stretch to expect the average user to set up something like this. I almost found it easier to set up the FTP server than to configure the WHS Console to be stable. Because it relies on UPnP as the default configuration method, it provides very little information on which ports to forward and doesn’t stress any importance on anti-virus protection. I’m betting that the UPnP will fail on 19/20 routers unless UPnP is explicitly enabled. Moreover, because everything is configured via the Console, why is the underlying OS Windows Server 2003? That Console application I’m sure could easily be ported to run on Windows XP, Vista or 7. It seems all seems very basic, yet overly complex for the average user — which it seems to be designed for. I think Microsoft can do better. I gotta wonder who is taking notes at their focus groups.

If you’re curious to try out Windows Home Server, and I know you are, Microsoft offers a 30-day trial of it.

Many complaints about the iPhone being unable to do what Android devices can do are often unwarranted. Flash doesn’t work on Safari, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t workarounds. There’s always a way. After reading about Flash’s poor performance on Android, I decided to give Flash a try on the iPhone using the free app “CloudBrowse,” (no jailbreaking required) easily the most interesting app I’ve seen on the iPhone since MicroSurface or JellyCar. Although it’s possible to view/play Flash content on an iPhone, is it worth the trouble? Read on to find out and see a video of its performance with CloudBrowse.

Alright, here’s the deal: avoid playing/consuming Flash content on your mobile device. If there is something you absolutely must watch and it cannot wait, then CloudBrowse will come to the rescue. CloudBrowse performs a number of services: (1) acts as an anonymous web surfing platform (uses Firefox on Linux), delivering a proxy’d Internet connection and custom UI enabling the easiest navigation of a browser-in-an-app possible; and (2) full streaming video & audio, so Flash games and video can be viewed through the app. The whole experience is similar to trying to navigate a browser over VNC, except with a number of custom GUI shortcuts making it smoother & more seamless. Below is a video of some Flash content being streamed over 3G to an iPhone 4.

Trying to play Flash games via the virtual keyboard and touch controls is where things really start to fall apart — it becomes evident that Flash truly is a desktop-era technology and not suitable for mobile phones. Many Flash games rely on hovering your mouse over things, a UI syntax that fails on smartphone touchscreens. Video and sound, however, play surprisingly well considering they are being processed by a third party app, going over a proxy, being sent over a 3G connection, then finally played backed on the iPhone. It seems to average 15-25 fps.

You can even use the Flash controls by zooming in close enough. It’s certainly not ideal, but it gets the job done.

I imagine Flash would run smoother if it were being processed directly by the iPhone. Regardless, Flash is clearly a problem across all mobile platforms and Adobe has proven themselves unable or unwilling to step up their platform to handle it despite having several years to do so. Hate to say it, but I think the mobile space is best left without Flash.

CloudBrowse isn’t perfect. There’s only so many spaces available for users to connect, and often their server is full. Other times, the connection will drop out with no explanation and then subsequently fail to restart itself. Even with all its flaws, it still works enough to keep around for a Flash emergency.

Back in the old days, the concept of “focus,” that is, which active window, button, text field or icon being active or selected was very clear. If a message box or dialogue box appeared on the screen or “took focus” from whatever you were doing, it was clear that you’d have the option to either press space bar, tab, alt+key, or any other combination thereof to make your desired selection quickly and move on.

This was the norm for many years going back as far as MS-DOS to Windows98 SE if my memory serves. After that, somehow the rules changed. Mind you, I’m not talking about Linux here, just Windows. From the limited distros I’ve tested, Linux seems to be pretty spot-on with handling focus consistently.

Now, it is relatively common for another window to appear on top of whatever we were working on yet the cursor can still be seen blinking in the background window that currently does not have the focus. Why is that? Or, the foreground window will have a darkened border around a button (indicating a default if Enter is pressed) yet will not respond if Enter is pressed until the mouse is clicked to re-affirm focus.

In Windows98, when the advent of the scroll-wheel mice and the middle click began to take popularity, it was quick and easy to switch focus rapidly between all windows and subwindows using a single middle click. Now, however, the rules seemed to have changed. Sometimes the foreground window will already appear to have the focus, yet when I try to add text — nothing happens until I actually click into the text field, despite the fact that the cursor was already blinking there.

In this example, the Acrobat icon is selected in the taskbar, yet the foreground notepad object has focus so that text can be selected, yet the CaseMap program in the background has the focus — at least visually.

One of the most important features in Windows has been the long standing ability to reliably operate it without a mouse, using exclusively the combination of advanced shortcuts such as Alt+Tab (“Windows Flip“), Alt+Space, alt+key, winkey+key, and various combinations of tab, spacebar, etc. With the focus rules having changed to where they now no longer operate in a homogenous way between all applications, more clicking is required to perform seemingly basic tasks that could previously be executed in an instant.

In this screenshot, the iPhone foreground dialog box and the background Gmail window both appear to have the focus, yet the taskbar only indicates that Gmail truly has the focus. I can type in the chat window in the background window, yet the foreground window has a darkened default OK button which should execute on Enter, but it won’t until I actually click to activate¬† the window.

This isn’t a big deal for day to day tasks and general use operation, of course, but let’s say I had to perform some tasks over VNC and didn’t have a mouse? It can be a big problem. It seems as though people are now more mouse reliant than ever — I suppose that’s not such a bad thing — it certainly is easier — but it sure is slower.

admin@variableghz.com

Recently, I’ve had to work on a number of machines that have had Outlook as their primary e-mail client for a number of years and in doing the requisite work on these systems that I’ve come to see a broad issue with locally stored e-mail and the way Outlook in particular makes it very difficult to get away from. What is surprising to me is just how many people are still falling for the locally stored e-mail trap. Don’t get me wrong, allow me to explain. Some people (such as those who heavily value privacy, manage their own e-mail servers, etc.) can benefit heavily from such a system, but an average user who doesn’t know the difference between Gmail and an Exchange Server should certainly not be using the latter.

At first, Outlook seems like a great tool. It’s got everything in one place, e-mail, tasks, calendars, notes and so on. As you continue using Outlook over the years, I imagine it becomes familiar as you begin to make folders and subfolders, add to your calendar and make reminders for your calendaring. I get that.

Now, here’s the thing. Outlook was created a long time ago when most people barely even had a single PC, let alone two or more that is commonplace now. So, Outlook starts to really show its issues when synchronization is attempted between multiple computers. Outlook was never originally intended for this — so every attempt at having smooth synchronization is a convoluted process. Not to mention incredibly expensive.

There are many other small issues that compound as well. Such as, let’s say you have a new domain and you have your e-mail currently downloading via POP to a desktop system. Alright, not a problem. However, let’s say we start downloading the mail onto a laptop as well. Now we have to check whether the e-mails are stored on the server after they are downloaded. If they are, for how long? Will Outlook double-download them if they stay on the server for too long?

There are many things that cloud-computing may be wrong for, but e-mail is not one of them. By leaving your e-mails in the cloud, you could be free to use Outlook with IMAP as a synchronized e-mail platform. However, what about calendars, contacts, tasks and notes? Ah, right. For that you might need another solution such as SYNCING.NET or an Exchange Server. Both solutions which I do not recommend.

In general, my advice would be to stay far far away from Outlook and use something with the strength and versatility of Gmail. I can understand many instances in which Gmail wouldn’t suffice (privacy concerns, for one); however there are hundreds of competitors to choose from and a great percentage of them will be far superior than any minor advantages you might get from using Outlook. However, if you’re just now trying to get away from Outlook — you can actually import your Outlook data into Gmail, which is a pretty good solution.

admin@variableghz.com