On The Other Hand

My neighbours had a wee fire in their dumpster on Saturday afternoon.  Thank goodness our excellent fire department was able to get it under control in no time.

This enterprising soul was standing in front of the Nova Scotia Legislature, across the street from my office.  We spotted him from above, thanks to his shiny silver shoulder pads.  He was kind enough to let me take his photo.

A while back, the hard drive in my new laptop started to make a scary-sounding clicking sound.  Rather than wait for it to fail, I decided to contact my friendly IS rep and have the machine replaced.

Now, normally, this would entail a few days of reinstalling Windows, copying my data over, reinstalling all my apps, and tweaking all my preferences to get things back to normal.  However, I’ve been running Vista Ultimate almost since the day it came out — and Ultimate comes with Windows Complete Backup.  Time to put it through its paces.

I had already made backups on an external USB drive I keep for the purpose.  However, like a moron, I’d never used it before to restore anything.  No matter.  I refreshed the backup with my latest data.  Then I hooked the drive up to the new laptop and inserted the Windows DVD.  After a few seconds, I was presented with a menu giving me the option to restore from a backup.  I selected the external drive and hit ‘Go’.  Thirty minutes later, the machine rebooted and it was exactly like before!  Woohoo!

From my scientific sample of exactly one instance, I can conclude that Windows Complete Backup works and works extremely well.  That being said, there may be some caveats.  The machines I was working with were nearly identical.  I’m not sure if it would have been so smooth if the machines had contained radically different hardware.  Also, if you use BitLocker, your backup will not be encrypted and should be stored in a secure location.  You will need to reinitialize your TPM and re-encrypt your new drive.

Compute safely!

I am building a PowerShell SnapIn (more on that in another), and decided it should have a proper Windows installer.  Of course, at the time I decided this, I was at the Shoe.  No matter.  I pulled out my trusty laptop and added a WiX project to my snapIn solution.  Next I added my files and registry keys and hit build.  Built OK.  Tested OK.  Laptop back in the bag.

Then I ordered another beer.

It might not seem like much, but if you’ve lived in Halifax in the spring, you understand.

Halifax has plenty of coffee shops.  Most every one of them offers free wireless internet access.  When you think about it, this seems like a reasonable service to offer when your customers are willing to shell out five bucks for what is, essentially, a big glass of milk.

Unfortunately, Starbucks has recently partnered with Bell Canada to offer paid WiFi in all their Canadian stores.  For a mere $7.50 an hour, you too can have the privilege of using your laptop from their hallowed halls.  Take a look at the full pricing schedule.

I won’t be going back.  I really like the Wired Monk anyway.

I finally broke down and bought a Playstation 3.  After one day of ownership, I have to say, I couldn’t be happier.

I bought the 40GB version, which lacks the media card reader and Playstation 2 emulation.  Neither of those features was particularly important to me, so I couldn’t really justify an extra hundred bucks for the 80GB version.  If I run out of space on it, I can buy any 2.5" SATA hard drive and pop it in for much less than that.

The setup process was pretty straightforward.  Plug in the cables.  Turn it on.  Answer some questions.  One click to update the software.  Off to the races.

I did buy this system for playing games.  I picked up Call Of Duty 4 and, as you would expect, the system excels.  I fragged many an enemy soldier in hi-def, Dolby-Digital glory.  However, it turns out, that’s not what really surprised and impressed me.

It turns out, the PS3 is a very capable media player.  With no configuration at all, I was able to view all of the media on all of my computers at home, and easily view downloaded TV, listen to music, and view photos.  That’s pretty much all you want in a living-room based media-player.  Here’s a tip - if you want to listen to music, make sure to check out the "Earth" visualization.  It’s absolutely stunning.

In fact, the PS3 is not that far off from a decent general-purpose living-room PC.  You can install Linux on it.  It’s compatible with almost every Bluetooth and USB peripheral out there.  And it’s got one of the best Blu-Ray players on the market.  For the price you can’t beat it.

Speaking of prices, I now have a Samsung 1080P upconverting DVD player for sale. 

Vista Service Pack 1 has been released to manufacturing and will be available in mid-March for most customers.  I’m looking forward to testing it.  I have not been able to find a comprehensive list of the issues addressed, but they are generally believed to be largely around performance and reliability.  Of course, various updates over the last year have already significantly improved the performance of Vista, so I am curious to see if there will be any more improvements on fully patched systems.

One thing we do know is that SP1 will remove the Group Policy Management Console from the default Vista install.  In order to get it back, you will need to install the upcoming Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT).  In the meantime, you will be unable to run the QGPM service on a Vista SP1 box.  But you wouldn’t want to do that anyway, right?

QGPM uses programmatic interfaces exposed by GPMC for various functions, including backup/restore and reporting on GPO settings.  Primarily, these features are implemented in the QGPM service, but GPMC is also used on the client if you try to export a GPO from the live environment.

With SP1, Microsoft is removing GPMC from Vista.  For the majority of our customers, this will have no impact on the functionality of QGPM (save the aforementioned export functionality).  Most likely you are running your QGPM service on a server OS and therefore the service will be unaffected.

For those customers affected by this, the rumour is that Microsoft will ship a Vista compatible version of GPMC as a separate install.  For more information on this, contact your friendly neighbourhood MS rep.