Category: Imported

As has been pointed out, I am the author of a new book about Windows Home Server for Wiley Publishing.  The book is titled Windows Home Server: Protect and Simplify Your Digital Life, and it should be available in January ’08.  The book focuses on teaching computer users how to make the best use of Microsoft’s new Windows Home Server line of products to protect their data and simplify their computing experience.

The Amazon.com write-up covers things pretty well.

I’ve got a bunch of blog posts in my head covering what I’ve learned so far as I’m going through the authoring process for the first time.  The editors I’ve been working with at Wiley are great, and I’m really looking forward to completing the process and actually holding a real printed copy of the book in my hands.  I’ve found writing to be very enjoyable.  The technical research, and the setup for screenshots and such takes a lot of time, but it’s a geeky kind of fun.  It’s great to have an excuse to “play around” with my home server and computers each night.

Obviously, blogging is going to be pretty slow until I finish up the book, but as I’ve said before, that really shouldn’t matter.

I’m late to the party, but if you haven’t heard, Windows Home Server has RTM’d.  Lot’s of bloggers already covering this.

From the outside looking in, this seems to have gone more smoothly than other Microsoft projects as of late.  Maybe Charlie Kindel can give us a post-mortem of how they managed to to keep things on track, or at least maintain the appearance of staying on track.

I’m looking forward to seeing the OEM machines actually hit the street, and see how they fare in the market. 

1. Memory Stick Backups – A service that will run on my desktop or laptop and automatically back up my USB memory stick whenever I plug it in.  Each memory stick should be backed up to the same location on the server no matter which computer I plug it in to.


2. Download Manager – Automatically hand off regular downloads from Internet Explorer to be downloaded and stored on my home server.


3. User Account Sync – Automatically create user accounts on client PCs for each Windows Home Server user account.  Automatically update passwords.


4. Favorites Sync – Sync my favorites to a folder on WHS. (I know I can do this with foldershare.  Add-in would be much better.)  Also include Desktop Sync, My Documents Sync, etc.

 

For many years, I’ve been a paying customer for Hotmail.  Now this isn’t as big a benefit as it used to be, but still, I like the service I get, and usually don’t have any issues.  Tonight, after sending an email, I tried to use the “Add Contact” feature, and was denied.  Instead of the expected result, I got the following:

This prompted me to check how many contacts I’ve got squirreled away.  Evidently, I’ve accumulated 999 contacts.  While I admit that it’s a lot, every one of those contacts was added for a reason, and now Windows Live Hotmail is telling me that I have to purge something if I want to continue adding contacts.

Now I’m in total agreement that my Address Book could use some serious spring cleaning, but I don’t like being forced into it.  Besides that, my current “Mailbox Usage” is resting at 6% of 4GB used.  This is not a space issue.  This is an arbitrary limit that was placed on Hotmail.  My question is: What is the functional or business requirement that caused them to set this limit at 999?  Basically, this tells power users and communicators that if they have more than 999 legitimate contacts, then Hotmail isn’t good enough for them.

For the better part of 5 years, I have carried a Windows Mobile device on a daily basis.  My first Windows Mobile device was a Dell Axim X5 (And for the nitpickers, it actually ran Microsoft Pocket PC 2002).  I had a short run with an SMT5600 Smart Phone, and an even longer run with an Axim X50v.  Since last May I have been a happy Motorola Q owner.  We’ve had some good times, checked email well over 1000 times, read blogs, navigated the eastern US.

But tomorrow, I’m saying goodbye, or at least fare-well to my Windows Mobile days.  I’ve got an order in for a Samsung SCH-u740.  When I first saw this phone, my initial gut reaction was “That’s going to be my next SmartPhone”, but after I realized that it didn’t run Windows Mobile, I brushed it aside.  Yeah it’s a cool phone, and the form factor is pretty innovative, but what about all the cool Windows Mobile apps that it can’t run?  You see, I had become a Windows Mobile snob.

Lately though, I’ve come to realize that Windows Mobile to me is like having a 800 watt home theater speaker setup.  You don’t really need that much volume, but there’s some geek appeal to knowing that you could shake your neighbor’s fillings loose with a simple turn of a knob.  Sports cars that can do 200mph fall into the same mental category for me.  Same with giant SUV’s that never set a wheel off paved ground.  It’s excess capacity, and frankly I don’t really need it.

My new SCH-u740 will let me check email, and I can browse blogs.  And it’s supposed to be a pretty good phone as well.  Plus it can do all of this without having Verizon’s outrageously priced unlimited data plan.  I’ll sign up for Mobile Web 2.0, and that will give me all I need.

Now I’m sure there are many Windows Mobile fans out there that are thinking “He just doesn’t get it”.  I used to be one of you.  But now I feel like I do get it.  My phone is a tool that I use to communicate, and I’ve found a phone that will let me communicate the way I like, at a lower cost, and in a form factor that I love.  Just because I usually prefer Microsoft technology doesn’t mean I’m going to blindly follow the Microsoft brand, when better alternatives exist.

There’s a 30 day window where I can return the new phone if it doesn’t live up to my expectations, so I guess Windows Mobile and I are really on a trial separation.  I’ll write up my post-Windows Mobile experience after I’ve had time to get used to the new phone, including what I think works better outside the Microsoft umbrella, and what I miss.