stuart test blog

I’ve just posted some details and pictures of our cute new kittens on the DebandStu site. Link here: http://www.debandstu.co.nz/2005/08/08/new-kittens-cooper-and-minnie/

I had heard of Konfabulator in the past as being an Apple app that displayed widgets on your screen, and, being a Windows man and not usually a fan of having junk cluttering my desktop, didn’t pay much notice to it. So when I heard that Yahoo had bought the company and then released the software for free, I thought: “Good on ya Yahoo…” but didn’t think anything more about it. Until… a couple of the guys at work where talking about the Windows version and all the cool widgets you can download…

So I hastily found their site and downloaded the latest version and installed it on my new notebook. The installer works as expected and then launches a few recommened widgets on the screen, like the wireless link monitor (good for my home wireless network), CPU load & memory monitor, an analog clock, and a search tool.

It’s now been two days and I can’t see my Windows Vista wallpaper for all the widgets that are scattered across the desktop! I don’t know how long I’ll keep using them – I’ve tried similar products before (although not as cool looking) and I usually get bored of them after a while. They don’t use up much CPU time but each one uses between two and four MB’s RAM – good thing I’ve just purchased an additional gig of RAM for my notebook…

I haven’t managed to get my hands on a copy of it but it’s good to hear that the beta has finally been released. From what I’ve read so far about it, this release doesn’t contain too many of the cool features that we’ll see in the final release – it seems to be more directed towards developers for application compatibilty testing.

Being the geek I am, I’ve already downloaded the Windows Vista wallpaper which you can download from bink.nu here: http://bink.nu/Article4571.bink. As mentioned on the site it does look quite cool with the Royale Theme.

I’ve been using Plaxo for a while now to manage my contacts, and apart from some of the quirks (like repeatedly spamming all your contacts with updates requests) I really like the service. My biggest complaint has been that it doesn’t support Thunderbird which I use at home with my IMAP accounts.

Well that has just changed with the release of Plaxo for Thunderbird (Beta) – first noticed on Mark Jen’s blog. I’ve already tested it and it does work well although not perfectly. The Plaxo toolbar which shows up in Thunderbird after installation is not customisable which means that the icons can’t be downsized to small icons which looks a bit odd with the theme I’m using (see below), but that apart it seems OK for a first release.

You can download it here: http://www.plaxo.com/downloads/tbird.

Haven’t seen this on any of the tech blogs that I read so I don’t know if I’m the first to notice it, but there is a big change coming up with the imminent release of Exchange 2003 SP2. The maximum database size will be increased to a whopping 75GB.

This is huge news for any small business currently getting towards their 16GB limit – just hold out a bit longer for SP2 and there will be no need to purchase Exchange Enterprise Edition. There are also several other new features that are worth checking out at the link below. Good on ya Microsoft…

Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 is Coming!

Google have been revolutionising online maps recently with their satellite technology which you can view online at maps.google.com. They have also released an extremely cool application called Google Earth, which is a free download and allows you to dynamically view satellite photos of the earth to extremely close-up zooms – you can download it here: earth.google.com.

If that wasn’t good enough, they have now also released an online service called Google Moon (moon.google.com) and this is well worth checking out – especially as it lets you zoom really close in to the surface of the moon to see what it really looks like.

Mozilla have released Firefox 1.0.6 and Thunderbird 1.0.6 which are both security and bug-fix releases. They have also announced that the 1.1 release of Firefox has been delayed by several months and will become Firefox 1.5 when released.

Download here:

• Firefox 1.0.6 – (Release Notes)
• Thunderbird 1.0.6 – (Release Notes)

Just been reading about this on a couple of tech blogs – notably John Howard’s – Windows Longhorn has now been renamed to what will be it’s official release name, Windows Vista. The name is supposed to give thoughts of clarity and connectivity…

My new notebook arrived on Monday and I couldn’t be happier with it. I spent a lot of time leading up to this purchase researching prices and features of various notebooks and brands and I’m fairly sure that I got it right. This notebook is my first, proper, new computer – all of the others I’ve owned were either second-hand, or built-up using a mixture of new and second-hand parts.

The important specs of the notebook are:

• Processor: Intel? Pentium? M Processor 740 (#) supports Enhanced Intel? SpeedStep Technology (1.73GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 533MHz FSB)
• Cache: 2MB Level-2 Cache
• Memory: 512MB (1 x 512MB) DDR2 SDRAM (400MHz)
• Smart hard drives: 60GB (5400 rpm)
• Display: 15.4″ colour TFT WXGA (1280 x 800 resolution)
• Graphics: ATI Mobility Radeon X600 PCI-Express (64MB video memory)
• Audio: Integrated 16-bit Sound Blaster Pro-compatible stereo audio, AC97 audio, integrated stereo speakers, volume control and mute buttons
• Communications: High speed 56K modem with digital line guard, integrated 10/100/1000 NIC, Intel? Pro/Wireless 2915ABG 802.11a/b/g integrated wireless LAN, integrated Bluetooth
• Battery: 4.8Ahr 8-cell Lithium-Ion battery, up to 4 hours of battery life
• Keyboard: 101/102-key compatible keyboard with isolated inverted-T cursor control keys, editing keys, left and right control & alt keys, and 12 function keys; One-touch access to HP Info Center, Wireless on/off, Presentation mode, and volume control
• Optical drive: DVD?RW/?R
• Dimensions: 2.8cm(H) x 35.5(W) x 25.9cm(D)
• Weight (min.): Up to 2.71kg – may vary, depending on configuration and components

My reasons for choosing this notebook were based around: (a) the features I wanted, and (b) the features I could afford. My first decision to make was the type of screen I wanted, as this usually slims down the number of models to choose between. I decided to go for a wide screen model as opposed to the traditional screen, and although I wanted to get as high-resolution as possible, the cost factor kicked in and I decided to settle for the 1280×800 screen. This is actually a very comfortable size to use – text isn’t too big or too small (it’s just right…) Once I had decided on the screen, it was just a case of getting as much CPU/RAM/HDD as possible on my budget. I also wanted to get a dedicated graphics card in the notebook as I’m tired of having to miss out on playing the latest games due to having to share precious memory with the rest of the system. This notebook has an ATI X600 PCI-Express graphics card with 64MB dedicated RAM. 64MB may not seem much compared with some of the newer graphics cards out now, but it is ample for all but the most strenuous of games.

The CPU is also not the most powerful on the market currently but it is also more than OK for day-to-day tasks and it’s been able to easily handle everything I’ve thrown at it so far. The notebook also came with 512MB RAM in a single slot and is upgradeable to 2GB, I may look at installing an extra 1GB RAM later this year. The 60GB hard drive is a little smaller than the 80GB drive I wanted but this came down to the cost issue again. The size and weight of the notebook is perfect too – the widescreen is crisp and clear, and the rest of the body is slim and light.

As I had recently set up my new Linksys wireless router, I was eager to test out the wireless capability of the laptop. I had configured the router with WPA2 security so I needed to download an update for Windows XP SP2 to allow me to authenticate. As soon as I had the update in place, the wireless card picked up the AP, asked me for the pre-shared key, and then connected effortlessly at ‘G’ speeds of 54Mbps. It’s quite cool to be able to move around the house with my notebook without having to drag a 10 metre ethernet cable behind me!

I’ve just purchased a new wireless/router/4-port switch for home. It’s a Linksys WRT54G and it has: wireless capabilities for both B and G access; a 4-port 100MB switch; and router/firewall functions. The reason for buying it was two-fold: firstly, I wanted to buy a 100Mbps switch as I’m currently using a crappy, old 10Mbps hub; secondly: I had purchased (and waiting for delivery) a new notebook that had built-in wireless capability.

I was at first going to buy a Linksys 8 port switch and then compare prices on a wireless access point. However, I stumbled across the WRT54G and this device was cheaper than some of the regular access points, and it had a built-in 4 port switch. The added functionality of the firewall/router meant that I could use my existing SonicWall SOHO 3 as the internet firewall and then use the Linksys as a second firewall, creating a DMZ where I could keep my web/mail server. This worked out way better than just using the one firewall and port forwarding web and mail traffic to the server on my LAN. This also caused another problem, but I’ll get to that later.

With the two firewalls in place, I now had two local subnets – one designated as a DMZ using the 10Mb hub, and the other as my LAN with my two computers, and network printer plugged into the switch – leaving one port spare. I now had no direct access to my LAN from the internet and only had the minimal ports opened on both firewalls. The increased network performance from going from a 10Mb hub to a 100Mb switch was (as expected) incredible and as I use my Windows PC as a pseudo-file-server storing videos and music, I could easily stream music across the network without any jumping or stuttering.

The only problem I encountered with my new setup, is that I’m no longer able to use the VPN functionality of the SonicWall effectively. Before, I connect remotely to my LAN using the SonicWall Global VPN Client. The SonicWall would terminate the connection and assign me an IP address on my LAN using DHCP, and I would have full access to my network from anywhere with an internet connection. But now, if my SonicWall gives me an IP address it’s going to be in the DMZ – so I’ll have full access to my web/mail server but nothing on the LAN because of the extra firewall. So I’m not sure what I’m going to do about this – for the meantime I’ve just stopped using the VPN because I it’s a ‘nice-to-have’ but not essential. I may try to do some fancy configuring of the firewalls to get it all working but haven’t got around to it yet.

As for the wireless setup on the Linksys, I didn’t really know what the best way to set it up would be so I did a bit of research. I headed straight to Google and starting digging up all sorts of info about what levels of protection would be best. Obviously, I wanted it to be as secure as possible, but I also didn’t want it to be so secure that it would be a hassle to maintain. I soon worked out that the latest, greatest wireless security was WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2) – an update to WPA. Windows XP doesn’t support this out of the box, but if you’re running Service Pack 2 (which you should be!) then you can download an update to get support – I read about it here: www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg0505.mspx. The other update I had to install was to the Linksys router itself. The firmware that it shipped with didn’t have support for WPA2 but a quick look on their website (www.linksys.co.nz for NZ) and I found an updated firmware that was a few clicks away from installing. With this firmware in place, setting up the security was a breeze. I ended up configuring the security using WPA2 with PSK (pre-shared key) as I didn’t have a RADIUS server in place. I also chose not to use MAC address filtering because it would have meant that I would need to edit the router everytime I wanted to allow someone access to my network. The MAC address filtering can also easily be hacked, and I was quite happy that my long, complex pre-shared key would keep hackers guessing for a long time.

Now I just need my laptop to arrive to test that it all works….