This post of part of The Smorgasbord Tech Reviews series!

First, let’s talk about what a Solid State hard Drive is. You get the definitive answer from Wikipedia of course. Let me give you some details from that Wikipedia entry:

A Solid State Drive, or SSD, has no moving parts. Think of it as a huge flash drive. Because it has no moving parts, it eliminates the seek time and latency of a traditional spinning disk hard drive – and it’s faster. So because you’ve eliminated electro-mechanical delay, you’ve also eliminated electro-mechanical failures. It’s not to say an SSD wont go out, but at least you know it can’t go out due to moving part failure.

A Solid State Drive is comprised of either Flash RAM or SDRAM. SDRAM SSD’s are “fast access”, and data access is less than 0.01ms (250 times faster than the fastest hard drive in 2004). SDRAM SSD’s have an internal battery, and if the power goes out, whatever is in memory (RAM) can be copied to disk. There’s a distinct advantage over a spinning disk. Flash memory is slower than SDRAM, but because it’s more durable and rugged – it’s more widely used in SSD’s. Flash based SSD’s do not have a battery and use non-volatile memory.

SSD Pro’s:

• Faster startup and boot time
• Faster I/O (data access, see time)
• Longer lifetime (10 years of normal use)
• No moving parts
• Easy to ‘wipe’ clean
• Lower weight and size

SSD Con’s:

• Price ($8/GB compared to 0.25 cents/GB for spinning disk)
• Data possibly harder to recover with drive failuer vs. spinning disk
• Possibly affected by magnetic fields / static charges
• Slower random write speeds

Now, let’s give you a better perspective by sampling some information about SSD’s from across the net. Popular Mechanics calls the Solid State Drive the 3rd most Brilliant Gadget of 2007. They also mention the use of the term “solid state disk” as an oxymoronic term.

Tom’s Hardware reviewed the Solid State Drive 4 years ago, and one of the things that I noted was the fact that they said their test unit literally didn’t get hot at all and was virtually silent. In addition to being smaller than a traditional hard drive, it’s power consumption was way less than a spinning disk, and nearly nothing at all when not in use. These are definite distinct advantages that didn’t seem to come up in the Wikipedia article. I’ve had many computers in the past that had 3-4 hard drives installed, and they not only sounded like an airplane hangar – some of the drives would get very, very hot. SSD drives would definitely completely change that picture. They also mentioned that the drive could be used in nearly any environment, which I didn’t think about. Spinning disk would not work as well (or at all) in extreme heat or cold, but an SSD should. In this article you can view the performance graphs taken during testing showing how much faster and better performing the SSD was compared to 20-odd spinning disk hard drives.

So let’s recap what we’ve learned here…

• SSD Solid State Hard Drives boot faster than spinning disk drives
• SSD’s weigh less, don’t get hot, and use less energy than traditional HDD
• The SSD cost much more, but prices are coming down
• You see how well an SSD can function in a mobile situation – like a laptop or portable
• Solid State Drive’s are worse than traditional HDD is sustained data transfer – which means it’s not well suited for saving, moving, copying lots of large files or functioning in a constantly data intensive situation, like a database server
• SSD’s should last longer and be way less succeptible to failure than traditional HDD

If you’re considering getting a Solid State Drive:

• Can you justify the price vs. the benefit
• Are you better off waiting for prices to come down?
• Do you do data intensive work that is better suited to a traditional HDD?

Last – I’m going to provide you with some links so you can get current pricing on SDD Solid State Drive’s.

There are several Solid State Drive’s listed on Amazon:

Here are the most recent eBay auctions for solid state drives:

SAMSUNG MCBOE32GQAPQ-MWA 32GB Solid state DRIVE
	USD 1.25 (2 Bids) End time: 2010-09-10 05:20:59

17-inch MacBook Pro Solid State Drive (SSD) EXCELLENT!
	USD / 3450.00 (0 Bid) End time: 2010-09-10 14:12:54

OCZ Enyo USB3.0 External Solid State Drive 128GB Great!
	USD 200.00 (0 Bid) End time: 2010-09-10 18:55:46

OCZ Vertex 2 240GB SATA II Solid State Drive SSD NR!!!!
	USD 499.99 (1 Bid) End time: 2010-09-10 21:38:38

Do you own an SSD? Have an opinion about Solid State Drives?

We doing business with “the beast” there have been lots of issues of course – going back to when Comcast would “hijack” packets when people were filesharing or using peer to peer networks, to bandwidth caps, and all kinds of other things. There have been many times when web sites would hang (or be really slow) – but when I ping them from another data center they were just fine. Lately, the thing I really don’t like is the fact that Comcast now participates in “DNS hijacking”. When you mistype a URL that doesn’t exist, instead of giving you a “not found” page – they give you targeted ads! I guess other ISP’s do it too, and it’s called “DNS Redirection Advertising“. I call it BS.

So, when google announced “google public DNS” today – I about peed myself! Everyone knows google’s data centers are fast as hell and very redundant (all over the world). They are faster, more powerful, and probably more secure than Comcast will ever be – and they don’t filter a damn thing! No ads, no BS – woohoo! You can use google’s public DNS whether you are on Windows, Ubuntu, or Mac! It’s easy and quick to make the change, google has directions on using pubic DNS here.

If you’re using Ubuntu (like me), just to go to “System -> Network Connections” and “edit” whatever connection you’re using (Wireless, Wired, etc), and then go to the “IPv4″ tab:

Just enter their public server addresses like I did:
8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4

(make sure there is a space between the 2 sets of numbers).

I have to say – I noticed an IMMEDIATE improvement and MUCH FASTER speed! I LOVE it!!!

Sidenote – if you want to continue to use Comcast DNS – they apparently a DNS Health Portal, where you can use “opt out” servers for the DNS redirection. I’m sure nearly no one knows about this (or uses it) – AND it’s STILL slower than google! Some people use Open DNS because they have filtering options – might be good for families with younger kids, or protection against malware. Me – I now prefer the lightning quick speed on Google’s Open DNS!!

The only improvement in all this time has been touchscreens, which are no better since basically it’s just a single finger at a time. I’ve been waiting for a lot of things a very long time – things that I’ll probably never see in this lifetime. Like flying cars, jet packs, and vacations on the damn moon (or a trip to mars).

We’ve all seen that idiot Tom Cruise in “Mission Impossible” where he puts his fingers in the air and grabs shit and moves it all around in some kind of crazy air/windows/keyboard mess. If that crap was real it’s would just be a carpal tunnel lawsuit waiting to happen. I’m going to show you the future, right friggin’ now. A future where windows is actually IMPROVED – where you use all 10 fingers and not a shitty one-finger mouse. I mean for god’s sake – who’s idea was it to just have one damn pointer on your desktop anyway?! Nobody ever thought to experiment with two mice so you could have one for each hand. A damn Xbox or Playstation controller has more features than a modern mouse.

Anyway – watch this video. If you aren’t amazed I’ll be shocked. Be prepared – it IS 6 minutes, but it’s worth your time, because it shows the future. The future with no mice and a flat surface that you use ALL 10 FINGERS on to interact with the computer. Now only would the paradigm of computing change for the first time in 30 years if this were to become reality, but imagine – just imagine how the future of gaming and entertainment could change on the PC as well!

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

What is a “pre-boot shell” you ask? It’s an environment that loads instantly when your PC starts – before you ever get to windows. This is usually based on Linux, and the cool things is now manufacturer are starting to add features that allow you to perform basic tasks without ever booting into Windows. Just need a web browser, or quick access to Amazon or flickR? These pre-boot shells have wi-fi built in so you can do basic web tasks on the fly in seconds without booting. Phoenix claims as much as 25% increase in savings to your battery charge.

I think it’s funny in a way that “once again” Linux is being used as an innovator where Microsoft falls flat. On the one hand you could say that Windows Vista had too many versions to choose from, but on the other hand Linux is so very flexible that it can be used on a phone, for a pre-boot shell, on a thumb drive, or in a cable box.

In a way – the simplistic features of the pre-boot shell remind me of when I tried gOS, the version of Linux that is famously installed on the WalMart budget PC’s that were $199 last year. It has huge icons at the bottom toolbar with most-oft-used web functions, like MySpace, Facebook, eBay, Amazon, Firefox, etc.

If any of you are interested in what the pre-boot shell could be like, I invite you to download a copy of the latest Ubuntu Linux for free, burn it to a CD and run it “live”. You can try out Linux on your Windows laptop or desktop without installing a thing.

Isn’t Linux great?

It’s a dual-core machine with 2GB of RAM, and sometimes it just gets too damn slow for the resources it should have available. I had a virus once, and it was a PITA to remove. A few weeks back the computer got some kind of a glitch, where it would keep trying to load DLL’s that didn’t exist. This was hanging the machine, and it would literally take 5-8 minutes just to open a file folder. I knew the machine HAD to be reformatted and wiped again, because the restore disk only has the option to install from scratch – there is no “repair over the top of existing Windows” like there is from a real original Windows (non-OEM) disk.

I’ve used Ubuntu on my 1.2Ghz 512MB of RAM 7 year old Gateway machine in the basement for the last 5+ years. It stays on 24/7, it has 3 100GB hard drives in it, and I reboot it maybe 5 times a year. I use it almost every night when I play guitar to listen to mp3′s and play along, and I also do web work on it, lookup lyrics, and write content from time to time. It does have WINE of it for Windows emulation, and I did install (and use) TaxCut on it once a few years back with no problems.

I thought about installing Ubuntu on the laptop when I first got it, but didn’t because I have to have a Windows box to login to work remotely using VPN. It requires Internet Explorer, ActiveX, and all that jazz. Since I knew that the laptop had to be reformatted anyway – I decided to try Ubuntu on it and see how it would work before reinstalling Windows. If I had problems, then in with the Vista restore disk and back to MS-land again. I sent to the Ubuntu Web Site and downloaded the 32-bit ISO to burn and install.

If you haven’t used Ubuntu Linux before – you should try it. The install is painless and as easy as Windows, and to most people that don’t know any different – it’s just a “PC”, and they have no problems using it at all. Case and point, we have relatives that were calling me every 3 months because their computer kept locking up and getting viruses. I was sick of it, so I formatted the disk and installed Ubuntu. I installed Java, Flash, Firefox Windows Media plugin and never looked back. I never told them it wasn’t Windows (they aren’t computer people or techie at all) – and they don’t know any different. They think it’s actually some new version of Windows other people don’t have. They’ve had it one year now, and have never called me to ask “how do I do…” anything, and they have not accidentally screwed it up or gotten a virus at all. In fact, both adults in the house were taking online courses at the college using that PC (and printing out papers) with no problems – AND they never called me to setup the printer! I think that’s really saying something about how far Linux has come the last few years.

When you boot from the Ubuntu CD the first option you have is to “boot live and try”, so I decided to try that first and make sure all the hardware worked. Once the desktop came up, I tried a web browser, and everything (including sound) worked great! All drives and hardware components showed up, even my card reader. I plugged in an external drive, no problems there, and the wireless was fine. There was an icon on the desktop “install” – so I took the plunge. In less than 15 minutes I had wiped the disk, installed Ubuntu 8.10 and was on my new desktop.

I set about installing the things I would need to work, Firefox and my required addons, windows and other (quicktime) media codecs, the latest version of Flash, an Acrobat reader, FTP, telnet, some graphics and movie editors, etc. Then I remembered that there were two things I STILL needed Windows for. The first was to login to work via VPN, and the second was to install and edit my Line 6 PodXT tones for my guitar rig. These were both two very specific things I wouldn’t be able to do in Linux at all.

I remembered at work that they were starting to convert the data center over to “virtual machines”. Instead of buying hundreds of rack mounted servers, they were starting to install virtual machines on the mainframe and really big super-computer servers. This had become really big in the IT business world, but had it translated over to mainstream linux yet?

It turns out it has, and Sun is leading the way (or so it appears). Sun has software called Virtual Box, and the personal license is FREE! I was skeptical at first, but downloaded and installed it on my now Ubuntu laptop. I installed the downloaded .deb package, but you can do it from the command line or with Synaptic no problem. USB support is disabled by default, but that’s easily fixed with a tutorial like “how to enable USB in Virtualbox.

Once I installed the software I created a new “Virtual Machine” and called it “WindowsXP”. I gave it 10GB of disk space and 256MB of Ram, 8MB shared video. It said to put in a CD to install, so I popped in an old WindowsXP disk and let it rip! I took about 10 minutes to install and reboot, and about 20 more minutes on Windows famous “first time configuration” runs, and then the “virtual” PC rebooted and presented me with a login screen. I promptly changed the settings to 1024×768 display (my laptop is widescreen 1680px). When I logged in everything was perfect! I fired up an IE browser and downloaded Firefox. I installed quicktime, flash, and acrobat reader. I logged into my desktop PC remotely – no problem! All from within “virtual Windows XP” window on my Ubuntu Linux desktop. When I went to close the Window I was prompted, do you want to “save the state of the virtual machine”, “power off”, or “reboot”.

Wow, I had to think about the power of what all this meant. Let’s say you had an ubuntu box with a 500GB hard drive. You could install Virtual box with WindowsXP, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, or even other versions of Linux if you wanted. Personally I would stick with Windows XP, but you could install all your software on it you normally use (like Office), and then “save the state” of the machine. Let’s say you have 3 kids in the house that are notorious for screwing up your PC (or relatives or friends). Give ‘em each their own virtual machine. If they screw it up – make another!

Kids like to play Windows based games, need a Windows PC for work – all “virtual machine”. Guess what? VirtualBox has versions you can download and install for both Windows AND Mac (free!) too! So, you can download on Windows and install Linux virtual machines, or even other Windows virtual machines. Install on a Mac to install Windows or Linux virtual machines! The possibilities are endless, and it’s all FREE!!

I’m glad I downgraded my Windows Vista laptop to Ubuntu and Windows XP – it’s the best thing I ever did!

Back in the day (like 10 years ago) I remember when we used to download all kinds of Windows utilities to do handy things, and there was this thing called a “password revealer” that I used to have. When you ran a small executable file it would open a “loupe” (fancy word for jewelers maginifying glass). When you moved the “loupe” over a password field it would turn the dots or asteriks into their real letters, numbers, and characters revealing the real password. w00t!

Now today I wanted to find this utility or a very good reason – I wanted to figure my own password out. Unfortuantely there are people out there who would want to use this tool for ill gotten gains, like hacking your myspace password, breaking into your hotmail account, or for an easy way to steal your yahoo password. What I’m saying is, I’m going to give you a tool you can use to reveal most saved password, but it would be in your best interest to uninstall when you were done to keep prying eyes from getting into your business! Like I said – there’s a reason that less than 100 people per month search for “password revealer”, but more than 2,000 each search for “hacking myspace password”, and “hotmail password stealer”?!?

When your dealing something like looking for a “password revealer” tool – a lot of the search results are spammy or trying to get you to buy some piece of software to solve your problem. I was lucky enough that Lifehacker saved the day (again) with their post Recover Lost Passwords. They linked to a site and post I forgot about – Snadboy’s Revelation 2.0, which is course is a freeware password revealer. It worked for me! If it doesn’t work for you, try some of the other tools on the Lifehacker page, and report back here what works and what doesn’t!

This post of part of The Smorgasbord Tech Reviews series!

Let me explain…in my basement I have a 6 or 7 year old Gateway box. When I got it (used) it had 128MB of RAM and a 20GB HDD. The processor I think is Pentium III, maybe 500-600Mhz?? I upgraded the Ram to 256MB and installed Redhat Linux. Over the years it has had many different versions of Linux, but for the last 3 years or so it’s been Ubuntu. Now that box has 512MB of Ram, a 100GB and 120GB hard drive, and a 128MB graphics card and an LCD dispay. It’s funny, the only thing I never upgraded was the USB 1.1 to 2.0. This box works great as an Internet / email workhorse. I can get any web work done on it, edit graphics, manage digital pics, or mp3′s. I converted video on this box for many years (and still can). My whole point here is that you don’t need a lot of horsepower or the latest hardware to have a solid affordable working home computer for many years (anymore). I know tons of geeks that recycle hardware and do the exact same thing.

Now that technology has evolved a bit, the same “sect” of geeks that recycle hardware wouldn’t mind using that same tech on a portable device they could take with them. There are lots of linux laptops now available, but many geeks have been installing linux on their windows laptops for years. It was inevitable that the Asus Eee Linux PC would be a hit in the geek community. Asus got a taste of success and predicted 2 million Asus Eee PC’s sold this year, and you can just hear somebody in marketing say “if we sold that many Linux Eee’s, just imagine how many we could sell if it had Windows on it!”.

Well, that time has come, and now Asus has come forward to release versions (4G and 12G) Windows XP Home installed. A lot of geeks are pissed off and screaming “sellout”, but Asus isn’t exactly a non-profit company. If the oil companies can make windfall profits the year of the largest hurricane in U.S. history – is it any surprise Asus released a windows version of the Eee PC? I think not.

So now that anyone can enjoy the sub-compact genius of the Eee PC – how well does Windows run on it? It comes with Windows XP, 12GB of storage, 900Mhz Celeron CPU, and 1GB of DDR memory. It has a new 8.9 inch display which can run at 1,024 x 600 pixels, which makes it much closer to a standard (non-wide) desktop. It even supports multi-gesture inputs, like the iPod touch and iPhone, something (that currently) no other PC made today can claim. You don’t get Skype and Open Office installed, but you certainly can install them yourself easily.

Some reviews say the Windows version of the Asus Eee PC aren’t as good as Linux, mainly because the storage is only 12GB instead of 20. The storage had to be sacrificed to pay for the Windows license. The speakers may suck, but they do on the Linux version too. At least the screen is increased to a decent (and still compact) size, and the camera is now a respectable 1.3 megapixels. It’s all give and take I guess.

I had read a lot of reviews on Amazon and eBay where some had purchased the Linux version of the Eee PC and just couldn’t do it. They had all kinds of problems, and probably no “geek” to turn to for help. So they either tried to return them or sell them on eBay. The Windows version is for the masses, and will make it much easier to just “plug and play” devices. Although “most things” work in Linux, there are still of lot of printers, cameras, and other devices that either don’t work, or take a bit of “tweaking” to get running. Let’s face it, none of us may ever drop anything off to the “Geek Squad” to be fixed, but there’s a reason they have customers.

My original Asus Eee (Linux) PC Review.

[nms:asus Eee 12G XP,4,0,0,smorgas.asus.eee]
[nms:asus Eee 4G XP,4,0,0,smorgas.asus.eee]
[nms:asus Eee 12G XP,4,0,0,smorgas.asus.eee]

This post of part of The Smorgasbord Tech Reviews series!

With all the people downgrading from Windows Vista to XP, I felt this was a pretty timely post. You can’t boot Windows XP from a floppy disc, but you can from a CD Rom if you need to reinstall or make a repair. Burning CD’s is so passe anymore – can’t you just boot Windows XP from a USB flash memory stick drive? Of course you can – if you know how!

What’s more – you can use applications you’ve installed on the flash drive as well to fix any PC problems you may have.

First – you’re going to need a program called PEBuilder – download it here. The PEBuilder Home page is here. PE Builder is “Pre-Installed Environment Builder” – basically think of it as a freeware way to build a “Windows” LiveCD (like Linux).

As the home page states it will give you:

• A complete Win32 environment with network support
• A GUI or graphical user interface (800×600)
• FAT/NTFS filesystem support
• You get the ability to:
• Do burn in testing with no installed OS
• Rescue files or boot a dead PC
• Perform Virus scan, remove trojans, fix problems, etc.

Microsoft already has a PE or Pre-Installed Environment utility – BUT, it’s only availble to big enterprise and OEM companies, AND it’s only command line (no GUI). Ok, now that you have to tool to build a PE, you need to get another tool to install that PE to a usb flash drive. So you need download PE to USB, a program that was specifically designed to use PEBuilder and install that PE to a flash drive.

Now I’m going to show you how to get this done in 5 easy steps:

1. Install PEBuilder
2. Copy your “i386″ directory from your Windows XP Pro SP2 CD to a folder in the PE Builder directory called “BartPE”
3. Extract the PEtoUSB files to the PEBuilder folder
4. Run the PE to USB program and select “Enable Disk Format”, “Quick Format”, and “Enable File Copy”. For “Source Path” select the “BartPE” folder
5. REBOOT with USB flash drive and you will have a running Windows environment on a stick! (enable usb boot in bios if needed)

If you have something to add or a suggestion about building a Windows booting Flash drive – please, comment now!

Oh – and if by some chance you need a geeky new USB flash drive – then I can tell you some of the best deals are on eBay! Here are some usb flash memory drive auctions on eBay right now!

Seems like someone dropped a computer because of a forgotten or lost password a few years back, and at that time the only solution I managed to find after hours and hours of searching was a linux boot floppy with some tools to reset the password by editing the registry and some other file. My son found OPHCrack for this time around, and he managed to crack and reveal the lost password in just minutes. All you have to do download and burn the LiveCD, and then bootup using it on the computer with the lost password – then use OPHCrack to crack it and you’re good to go! There are some Linux tools out there that allow you to reset a Windows password (like the one I used to have), but this one just flat out cracks the password for you. It worked well for us, we were very pleased. The program is free and legal – just don’t be using it for illegal or illicit purposes! Bookmark the page, you might forget your own password someday!

Samba is a Windows compatible file and printer sharing service that you can install and run. I believe by default in Ubuntu it’s already running. Follow the official Samba How To and Reference Guide for install, configuration, and testing instructions.

You will find all this information in the Official How To Guide, but basically once Samba is installed (using Synaptic Package Manager if you don’t already have it), you are going to edit a text file for cofiguration called “smb.conf”. You’ll find this fill in Ubuntu 5.10 in /etc/samba/smb.conf. You will add (or remove) the options from that configuration file that you need to customize it to your liking. You will choose to set it up for access by user accounts, and last you will add a default account (or accounts) under System -> Administration -> Users and Groups to access your system from Windows machines.

All the correct information is in the How To Reference Guide above, but here are some pointers from someone who just set Samba up for windows file and print sharing:
make sure your username map line is right, like this:

username map = /etc/samba/smbusers

In the guide you will follow instructions to create a samba userfile, and your smb.conf file will point to this like the line above. If your username file isn’t mapped properly, you will never be able to connect from a windows computer on your network.

On your Linux computer, make sure that under System -> Administration -> general (tab) that the “Host” is the name of your computer (as it will be shared on the network). Also, make sure that the line:

workgroup = MSHOME

is the name of the actualy workgroup your home or small office lan is called.

If your Windows PC’s are Windows XP, just use the file and print sharing wizard, answer the questions, and make sure to set your workgroup correctly. Be sure the workgroup is the same as what you entered on the Linux PC during setup.

Last – make sure that you setup share(s) on your Linux box by going to “System -> Administration -> Shared Folders”. You can share mounted drives as well (I do), by using the “/media/hda1″ path in your smb.conf file as well.

That’s pretty much it….once you setup the Linux PC run the “testparm” command from the terminal to make sure you edited your config file properly. Then, on the Windows PC, add a new network place by browsing your enter network to find your linux PC, and then enter the account and password you setup for sharing on the Linux PC. If it connects you are good to do, if not read the troubleshooting section of the Samba Reference and How To Guide.

originally posted: 2006-01-24 00:32:07 -0400