Hardware

Does yours pop-up in the bottom right of your screen (just at that annoying moment where you need to get to the thing that’s hidden by it!?!?). If so take a look at J4mie’s GMail Notifier Lamp.

photo credit: greg westfall

I’d been debating one of these Asus EEE PC’s for a while, particularly after talking to Dan and him saying his was one of the best things since sliced bread. So once we’d booked our holiday and I knew I’d want to take the D-SLR and a laptop in the same bag, I was ready to order one.

I put it off a little bit I guess because I knew the new EEE PC 900 was coming out with a bigger hard drive capacity. So on release day I went hunting for one - I should have realised! I’d forgotten how annoying it can be to be an early adopter and not being able to get your hands on the technology!

I carefully watched sites for stock, at one point I rang a company to check they’d got stock - they had - by the time I walked back to my desk to order it online they’d sold out again!!!

Then finally on the evening of the 21st of May I managed to get my order in!

Now I’m used to dealing with huge e-commerce sites (Amazon etc), or even eBay sellers who don’t want negative feedback - invariably payment is taken and my goods are dispatched the following day, at a push the day after that is normally acceptable.

I know, I know the bank holiday weekend got in the way, and yes I know I’m an impatient so and so….

But here we are a week later - 28th May and I still don’t have my new toy!! I do however have their questionnaire about whether I’m enjoying my new product - I haven’t replied - YET! Payment was taken but I have been assured that my order is still undergoing “Processing…” and when it is dispatched I’ll get an email with tracking notification. I’ve had my suspicions about whether they really have the stock or are drop-shipping, but the company in question assure me they have the stock.

Today’s reply from them said:

I can confirm that your order was sent for packing and it is expected to be dispatch soon. Once the order has been dispatched, an email confirmation will be sent to you.

In the meantime, please feel free to contact us if you have any additional questions.

Just one, my friends, why is this taking so long!? Apparently my order has undergone various stages of processing including “Quality Control”, I can just see two guys sat at a desk examining my address:

“Do you think that sounds like a reputable area Jim?”

“I’m not sure Bill, let’s get it up on Google Maps”

“Hmmmm fields nearby, looks good - give it the rubber stamp and pass it on to see if his email address looks ok, they’ll check him out on Facebook”

More on this when EEE PC actually arrives!

UPDATE! UPDATE!
The status on the website no longer says “Processing…” It’s “Awaiting Courier Pick-Up”…. I just hope the courier doesn’t drop it!!!

I had a look at the EEE PC at the weekend, it looks kind of cool and weighs virtually nothing…

I know, I know, I know - it was designed for the younger market, but this laptop has infinite appeal for almost any IT professional, at sub 1kg with a solid state disk?

I quite liked the OS that was installed, but a friend suggested installing XP on it (and upping the disk to 4GB or buying a 4GB version) as then it will support everything XP supports, which means I can plug my phone in as a USB 3G modem - that’s the key thing. I could feasibly get away with this being what I take on holiday (sorry Em - no DVD’s anymore?!).

What are peoples thoughts, does anyone have one?

Some notes on websites I’ve found with info that may be considered useful going forward:

• Tnkgrl mods the Asus to have internal Bluetooth
• Ivancover’s guide to a variety of Asus upgrades (Bluetooth, USB, GPS, Flash etc).
• I found the PC Advisor review interesting, and agree with the weakness that it doesn’t have an internal modem just a phone socket, so I’d need to get a USB link to my phone working - under XP or the Linux built in OS. Tracey and Matt appear to have had the same concern, and found JKKMobile’s review of inserting a 3G modem, I think I’d be happier just knowing if it would support my HTC Trinity out of the box with the Linux OS, or whether I’d really need to install XP.

I was interested to read on The Register in the comments section:

Asus tells me the 3G upgrade’s coming by the end of the year and that it’ll be offered on its own, as an upgrade technical users can perform themselves.

There’s no word on price yet.

Anyone waiting the 8GB model isn’t likely to see one before the new year - Asus’ Eee PC production is current focused entirely on the 2GB and 4GB models, I’m told.

The other colours - pink, green and blue - will be coming in 2008 too.

Although an expansys thread suggest a utility I hadn’t heard of before , WMWifiRouter, which appears to work in WM6 and WM5 AKU 3.3 - looks like my WM5 has AKU 3.0. I installed the trial software and it ran, but wouldn’t work - I’ll try again later with some support advice they’ve given me!

I couldn’t be without my USB key these days if I’m honest, I bought a 2GB one about 12 months before our wedding and it has been my absolute life saver on a number of occasions (and I’ve only left in the office just the once!!!).

Up until today I thought the best thing on it was my WOS server (Webserver on a Stick), but looking at Tiny USB Office it might just have some competition on its hands - does anyone use this software? If not, what do you have on your stick?

photo credit: bbaunach

Glenn threw a real spanner in the works just before I went off to buy this damned USB Hard Drive as a backup device!

We both bought external hard disks around the same time, and would probably both do it differently if we were to do it again!

Original photo by Topato

So where do we start?

Glenn’s advice was to get a cheap desktop (circa £200) and stick 4 HDD’s in it and RAID-5 them, this got me thinking - I have my old desktop and I’ve promised Emma I’ll buy a new desktop (that doesn’t have wires hanging out and is in a terrible half working condition) when we move.

Here’s the problem - I’ve not built a PC in years, and I know NOTHING about RAID.

Glenn sent me this article, which discusses RAID in some detail and how to achieve it under Windows. To be fair, I really didn’t want to looking at yet another Windows license.

Expensive “Out of the Box”

So I started looking around at the various “out of the box” solutions that would just require me to populate them with hard drives. Ultimate Storage seem to be the people for this, but the prices are high when you consider I’m likely to be buying four hard disks to put in them! It would be very easy to price yourself out of the market and into a high end solution with this project.

Another Requirement - Futureproofing

That’s another point, looking at hard disk prices, 1TB disk drives are supremely expensive, but that won’t always be the case - I’d be better off with 4 x 500 GB and then upgrading later, so whatever solution I go for should support that potential need for more space, and upgrading the existing space I have.

A Little Project is Born!

The’s when I stumbled across Tom’s Hardware and his Cheap, Fast, DIY RAID 5 NAS box…. This looks like a cunning plan, and we’ve found a card not dissimilar for just over £100 (the 8 port version is probably more aimed at the corporate/server world and hence it’s price hike!). 4 x 500GB Hard disks come in at around £70 including VAT. So providing my old desktop and case can take the pain - I might be able to do this for circa £400.

Just Backup Space?

I know the question most people are asking if you RAID 5 these 4 500GB disks, and you’ve got 1.5TB of data, are you really going to use it as backup space?

The answer is no, it’s likely to become a file server, a huge one at that! but with the four disks in, if one of them goes wrong I can quite easily replace the drive (using Tom’s “sane” method) and be up and running again with no data loss. Why would I then need a backup device?

Offsite backups have to be the next question I guess (but at the bare minimum I would expect to leave a DVD drive in the file server so I can backup data and take the CD’s elsewhere?). I’ll discuss that in another post.

You would think just a second hard drive would be enough to suffice for something like this wouldn’t you? This isn’t so, neither for the server or home use!

Home Backups

I bought a Netgear SC101 a year or so ago, put a 400GB HDD inside it and it runs like a dream, I’m only using one slot of the two available, so it’s not RAIDed or anything. On recent duplicate file scan I discovered that I’m not actually using it as backup device, it’s simply become add-on storage (and lots of it!). I clearly need to backup the data on that as well! You ought to do a scan yourself, you might find you have exactly the same problem!

Fact: I need backup space for all of my hard disk on both laptops (and probably the wife’s as well), and also for the whole of the SC101 storage device.

• Option 1 - 2nd Drive (A)
  Get a second drive, copy all the data back to my laptop (not sure it would fit, but we can cross that bridge later), RAID the existing HDD drives in the SC101 for redundancy, copy the data back to the newly RAID’d disk and I have a secure device.
  Pro’s: All I need is a second HDD of at least equal size.
  Con’s: I’ve read some absolutely abysmal reviews of the SC101 under RAID conditions recently. I’d also still be using the SC101’s proprietary file storage system, so couldn’t just stick the drive in another machine to get the data off, if the box ever blew up I’d need another one to make it work and get the data off.
• Option 2 - 2nd Drive (B)
  Get a second drive, add it to the SC101 copy all the data to it from all the machines and the SC101. Remove the disk and store it somewhere VERY, VERY safe.
  Pro’s: All I need is second HDD of at least equal size, but at least I won’t be using the badly reviewed RAID capabilities of the SC101. I’ll also be able to have it copied over in a day without any major headaches of moving data.
  Con’s: I’ll need to store the drive safely, and it still will be in this proprietary format that means I can’t get the data off without another SC101.
• Option 3 - USB Hard Disk
  Largely similar to option 2 in that the data is on a USB hard disk that I can unplug whenever I feel like it and store it away, alright it’s in the house, but I can probably live with that!
  Pro’s: No RAID headaches, plug it in the laptop overnight, stream the data, can even use syncing software to get the data across, it’s not plugged in all the while, nor is it in a proprietary format.
  Con’s: I can’t actually think of any, except that the data on the USB isn’t RAID’d, but as it’s a backup that shouldn’t be a huge problem (how many failsafe’s can you put in!!?)
• Option 4 - Another Network Disk
  Again largely similar to option 2, but it sounds/feels more permanent than a USB disk, yes I know thousands of people use them everyday, there’s just something I dislike about USB!
  Pro’s: Use syncing software to get the data across, it can be plugged or unplugged when necessary, and it isn’t in a proprietary format. I could even RAID it with the right type of disk.
  Con’s: Probably an increased cost vs option 4?
• Option 5 - Online Services
  Something like JungleDisk, or the online backup service from my own ISP? This is putting my data in the hands of someone else, and paying for how much I use - not something I’m particularly keen on!
  Pro’s: Offsite, way, way offsite!
  Con’s: Data security, integrity, internet latency etc. etc.
• Option 6 - My own Online Service
  This doesn’t actually exist yet, but may well do pending the outcome of a future post on server backup data services.

Which would you choose?

I had the power problem on my laptop fixed (sorted of), I offered the work to several companies.

Philips X53 CORE DUO T2050 80GB PC

• Two companies never replied to my email.
• One company declared they needed the laptop for at least 7-10 days.
• The final company reckoned I could have it back next day if I dropped it after 4pm (it would therefore be first in the queue the following morning!).

Reluctantly I popped out the Hard Drive (I’ve not had time to back it up and it contains a lot of customer data), and took it down to them.

The guy who would actually be working on it had a look at it and said he thought I’d need an entirely new DC socket and it would be 4-5 days minimum before I could get my machine back. Nevertheless I let them have it, and trundled off, safe in the knowledge that most of the data that I use daily is on my USB memory stick!

Surprisingly the next day I receive an answerphone message that my machine is ready for collection!

I get it home and trial it for an hour or two, seems fine but I do have it on a desk.

About 10pm I discover that a push upward on the cable still results in a power outage - Not Good!! I emailed them - slightly annoyed.

It took another 3 days to get a reply, they now need it in for an extended period of time to order an entirely new DC socket (why didn’t they take note of it when they were repairing it, that way they could just bring it in when they actually have the part!!).

I guess it’s time to backup the data and get it onto the old 17″ lappy, the little one is going to be out of action!