.::REALITYRECALL::.

Last week we highlighted the benefits of having a Windows Home Server, including seamless backups and system restoration. Now let’s take a closer look at five great add-ins for making the most of your home server.

In our overview last week, we briefly touched on the idea of using add-ins to enhance your Windows Home Server experience and get more out of the console. This week we’re highlighting five add-ins and providing a little more detail on their functionality and how they make your Windows Home Server experience even better.

First, for those who haven’t installed any add-ins to their WHS before, the process is simple. When you find an add-in you want to use, save the .MSI file such as AwesomeAddOnForWHS.msi to the /Software/Add-Ins/ folder on your Windows Home Server. The next time you open up your console, click on Settings (located beneath the Windows Home Server icon in the upper right corner of the Console window), then click Add-Ins once you’re in the Settings menu. You’ll see two tabs, like in the screenshot above, that show your Installed and Available add-ins. All the add-ins you saved will be under the Available tab.

Note: For ease of use—some of the add-ins homepages are forum posts or in foreign languages—we've linked to the reviews at WHSPlus, a Windows Home Server enthusiast blog. It's a great resource for finding more add-ins and each review has a link back to the author's site.

Windows Home Server Disk Management

WHS Disk Management provides a more detailed look at your disk storage than the basic view included in the console. You can use existing server wire frames (most commercial WHS frames are available) or create your own if you have a DIY build. WHS Disk Management makes it easy to see what’s going on with which physical disk in your server. The wire frame model includes disk bays in your tower and external drives for a comprehensive picture of what’s going on with your disks. Eventually when you have to replace a disk or want to upgrade one for additional space, having a detailed model like the one in WHS Disk Management makes it easy to make sure you’re unloading and extracting the right disk.

AutoExit for WindowsHomeServer

AutoExit makes it easy to send commands to Windows machines connected to your Windows Home Server through your home network. You can send messages to machines on the network, and perform a variety of shut down functions like suspending, hibernating, rebooting or completely shutting down the remote machine. When you have access to your WHS console remotely it’s a great way to have control over other machines on the network.

Remote Notification

Remote Notification makes sure you get updates about your WHS even when you’re away. You can always remotely login to your console to view the notifications in the console itself, but Remote Notification will send systems notifications to the email address of your choice. If you have an email address for your cellphone’s SMS account, it’s simple to plug that in and get notifications directly on your phone.

One of the great things about Remote Notification is that it forwards all notifications—not just the default system notifications. If you have 3rd-party plug-ins that handle things like downloads and you have them configured to issue system notifications, those will be forwarded to your email or cellphone via Remote Notification too.

LightsOut

While you may opt to run your WHS 24/7, many users opt to power their home servers down at night to conserve energy and cut down on their energy bills. LightsOut is a fantastic add-in for WHS that allows granular control over when the server is awake and when it is suspended, hibernating, or completely shut down. In addition to giving you control over the up and downtime of the server it also tracks the up and down time of both the server and the machines that connect to the Windows Home Server. Even if you’re intending to run your server night and day, if you’re a sucker for graphs and feedback about your network you might consider installing LightsOut just to see what the uptime patterns across your network look like.

Grid Junction

It's the least glamorous of the add-ins we're featuring today, but it's a handy tool to have around if you've got an Uninterruptible Power Supply hooked up to your home server—and you do have one hooked up to your server, don’t you? Grid Junction issues power alerts through the console, makes it easy to monitor the UPS, and lets you easily set up custom shut down scripts and test them. It’s not loaded with bells and whistles but it makes it simply to manage your UPS on a headless system.

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Have a favorite add-in for Windows Home Server? Let’s hear about it, and your other WHS tips, in the comments.

Dell’s finally run its finger along the edge and unhinged the last bit of details for its enigmatic, 0.4-inch-thin Adamo XPS. As it turns out those leaked specs weren’t entirely off. We’re looking at a LED-backlit 13.4-inch, 720p widescreen display, 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo ultra-low voltage processor, GS45 integrated graphics, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, a 128GB thin-micro SSD, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. In terms of connectivity, there’s 802.11a/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, location awareness, DisplayPort, two USB 2.0 ports (one on each side). The 20WHr Li-Ion battery can last up to 2 hours and 36 minutes, or you can get the optional 40WHr version instead for 5 hours and 17 minutes of claimed, lab-tested use. Other packaged goods include dongles for ethernet and VGA / HDMI, and for an added fee you can nab a DVD+/-RW drive, a Blu-ray drive, or an external hard drive measured at 250GB or 500GB in capacity.

At $1,799, the price isn’t as bad as originally thought, but it’s still far from great if performance takes any precedence for you over style. Earlier this week, we got to spend some time with the ultra-thin chez Dell’s PR firm — not enough to really get a feel for how it performs, but enough to admire the hardware and enjoy unboxing what we’re told is the final retail packaging. We saw an expected launch date listed for this month, but a rep was quick to note the current line is officially “in time for the holidays” — just in case the company misses Black Friday, of course. Read on for some more impressions and video unboxing / hands-on!

Continue reading Dell Adamo XPS coming ‘in time for the holidays’ for $1799 (unboxing and hands-on video!)

Filed under: Laptops

Dell Adamo XPS coming ‘in time for the holidays’ for $1799 (unboxing and hands-on video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ever wanted to take a step back and look at all the Google apps and data you’re hooked into? Google’s offering that top-down view with Google Dashboard, a central clearinghouse for app settings, privacy information, and use statistics.

The main value to the average user at the Dashboard, reachable at google.com/dashboard when signed into a Google account, is a peek at all the services you use, the data Google’s acquired from you, and quick links to each app’s settings. You also get direct links to your Google calendars, your most recent Gmail messages and Google Docs documents, and secondary settings, like changing your personal information in apps that use that data. Those with privacy concerns also get quick links to the policies of every app they’re using.

Here’s how Google explains their Dashboard in animated video form:

What features would you want to see added to a Google Dashboard? Personally, I’d like to see a single, secure place to suspend or recover passwords from certain accounts, assuming you could log in with stronger-than-normal verification.

Over the years, women have proven to be stellar athletes and, over time, some experts expect women to be able to compete and defeat male athletes. But that doesn’t mean they don’t like downright foxy in their different uniforms.

A staff member has been fired after an Alberta Health Services probe into why some members of the Calgary Flames and their families received the H1N1 shot without lining up at public clinics.

The Silicon Alley Insider has heard that Mike Arrington’s vision of an affordable Crunchpad web tablet is dying due to higher-than-expected costs.

The fact is that the timeline for the Crunchpad thus far reads like a vaporware gadget or the financially-challeged launch of the OLPC project. First, the Crunchpad was $200, then it became $300, then there was supposed to be an announcement in July or August. Of course, that never happened, but another summertime rumor placed the launch in November for $400. That was months ago—and nothing has materialized so far.

Rumors are rumors, but if rising costs are a major issue, that does not bode well—especially with the threat of a sub $1000 Apple Tablet looming. [Silicon Alley]

There are fails. And then there are fails.

In the following video (after the break), taken by a surveillance camera, a worker on a forklift tries earnestly to move boxes around a vodka warehouse in Moscow. (Ed. Note: Way to propagate Russian stereotypes, Moscow.) Epic calamity ensues. With one swerve of the wheel, he singlehandedly turns the place into a Jenga game gone horribly wrong. Incredibly, the guy walked away with only minor injuries, although the incident resulted in the loss of an estimated $150,000 worth of vodka and cognac (a tragedy in its own right). The entire thing has taken the world by total surprise. Heavy machinery? Vodka warehouse? Accident? Noooo way. [From: Urlesque and Huffington Post]

Continue reading Forklift FAIL Results in $150K Damage, Chaos in Vodka Warehouse

Filed under: Audio/Video, Car Tech

Forklift FAIL Results in $150K Damage, Chaos in Vodka Warehouse originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You have your new Windows 7 system up and running, but suddenly you realize some things are not running as smoothly as they once did. Today we take look at using the hidden but useful advanced system tools in Windows 7 to troubleshoot a problem.

Advanced System Tools

There is a very handy collection of system utilities that are included in Windows 7 and Vista that can help you troubleshoot problems that may arise. For some reason Microsoft felt the need to bury them in the OS so they’re not immediately apparent to most users. Here we take a look at accessing the diagnostic tools and briefly cover some of what’s included. 

To get to the tools type Performance Info into the search box in the Start menu and hit Enter.

 

In the Performance Information and Tools windows click on Advanced Tools.

 

Alternately you could click through to Control Panel \ All Control Panel Items \ Performance Information and Tools \ Advanced Tools…see what I mean by buried?

What’s Included

It opens up a list of different tools you can use to monitor different aspects of the system performance. From here you can do several things like defrag the hard drive, check Event Viewer, and even re-rate the Experience Index score. 

Notice there is a column for Performance issues you can click on to get additional details on how to correct the problem. In this example it shows a driver interfering with Sleep mode and that changing visual settings will improve performance.

In additional details it tells us turning off the Aero feature will improve performance. I find it odd that MS would alert you to turn off Aero as it’s a hyped feature to the interface since XP. At least they’re honest in telling you Aero can slow performance, especially with under powered video cards.

 

Even Viewer is a great tool used by administrators that records event errors that happen “behind the scenes” so to speak. The information in these logs are meant for admins and advanced users to help determine why certain errors are occurring. Most users won’t need to worry about this section, but you may need to access it while receiving tech support.

Resource Monitor is like the Task Manager on steroids…it’s a great tool to monitor what apps and services are using up your system’s memory, processor, disk usage, and network activity. If you find a service or program that is frozen or taking up too many resources you can close it out.

A very handy tool that is not well known about is the ability to generate a system health report.

Wait while an analysis takes place and the information is collected…

The report takes about a minute to create and then you can go through a very detailed analysis of virtually every aspect of your system.

You can also export the report to HTML format so you can share or save the report for future comparisons and troubleshooting.

If you’re experiencing problems with your Windows 7 machine, using the included advanced system tools can help a lot, without the need for installing 3rd party utilities. 

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Uh, Archos? You do remember telling us that your Archos 9 media tablet would ship on October 22nd for $499 back in late September, right? ‘Cause if our eyes are being truthful to us, that’s not at all what’s happening here. The outfit’s official web store has the 8.9-inch device listed (complete with Windows 7 Starter, WiFi, Bluetooth and a 1.3 megapixel camera) for $549.99, and worse still, it’s only up for “pre-order.” You know what happens after the second strike, right guys?

[Thanks, Trini]

Filed under: Handhelds

Archos 9 up for pre-order in America for $50 more than anticipated originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re looking for a particular web page rather than a particular result, Google has added “Page Previews” to the left-hand search options sidebar to make that feat much easier. It’s a fairly low-resolution, compressed image, but if you happened to remember what a certain page looked like, or just wanted to avoid another page you know will clutter up results, it might be pretty helpful. [via Google Operating System]

Ford Motor Company earned $997 million US – or 29 cents per share – during the third quarter, the company says.

If you’ve ever installed a program and suddenly found certain file types opening with it instead of what you had before, it can be confusing and annoying. Today we take a look at how you can control which applications are opening certain file types on you computer.

The Problem

You’re finally figuring out Windows 7 and listening to your favorite songs on Windows Media Player and everything is great. You then decide to install iTunes because you just got an iPod as a gift. After installation, you realize the icons in your music folder look different and they’re opening with iTunes by default instead of WMP…what happened?

While you were installing iTunes you may not have noticed that it installs itself as the default player for all audio files unless you uncheck the option. This situation can happen a lot with all different programs and file types. Using the Set Default Programs feature in Windows 7 and Vista you can gain control over which applications are associated with each file type.

Set Default Programs 

To access the Set Default Programs feature, click on Start  and click Default Programs.

Click on Set your default programs.

Go through each program  and decide if you want to set it up for the default program to open all of the file types it’s capable of opening.

Or you can choose which file types to associate each program with. Like in this example we’re selecting Foobar2000 as the default programs for just certain types of audio files while VLC and WMP open others.

You can also go in and associate file types with different programs, like in this example VLC is opening WMV files and we want to change it to Windows Media Player. You can highlight the file type and click the Change program button or simply double click on it.

Select a program from the list under Recommended or Other Programs or you can browse to the location of a specific app if it’s not listed. Notice the Always use the selected program to open this kind of file box is checked and grayed out because we’re going through the Set Default Programs to get to the Open with screen. Windows assumes changes are permanent because of the route we took to get here and grays it out.

If you right-click on a file and go to Open with by way of the context menu…

The box is not grayed out and you can decide if it will always open that type of program or not.

In Set Default Programs you can also change AutoPlay settings for when you insert media or devices like a flash drive. For example you can set DVDs to always open in Media Player and music CDs to ask you every time. You can also turn it off by unchecking Use AutoPlay for all media and devices.

If you have it set to ask you when you put in say a DVD…AutoPlay opens and you can choose what to open it with. You can also access the above setting by clicking View more AutoPlay options in Control Panel.

Another cool utility for controlling file associations is Default Programs Editor which we previously covered. This will give you all of the options we just took a look at and a lot more.

This should help you get started in deciding what programs you want to feature with different file types. In this tutorial we focused on music and movie files, but it works the same for any file type.

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It wasn’t all that long ago that Microsoft was talking up the Virtual WiFi feature developed by Microsoft Research and set for inclusion in Windows 7, but something got lost along the road to release day, and the functionality never officially made it into the OS. As you might expect with anything as big and complicated as an operating system though, some of that code did make it into the final release, and there was apparently enough of it for the folks at Nomadio to exploit into a full fledged feature. That’s now become Connectify, a free application from the company that effectively turns any Windows 7 computer into a virtual WiFi hotspot — letting you, for instance, wirelessly tether a number of devices to your laptop at location where only an Ethernet jack is available, or even tether a number of laptops together at a coffee shop that chargers for WiFi. Intrigued? Hit up the link below to grab the beta.

[Via PC World]

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Wireless, Software

Unfinished Windows 7 feature exploited for virtual WiFi hotspots originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Nov 2009 02:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re moving from XP to Windows 7 you might be wondering what app to get for making DVD’s. Windows DVD Maker is already included, and lets you author a DVD quickly with custom menus, scene selections, or add your digital photos with music.

Windows DVD Maker

Go to Start \ Windows DVD Maker to launch the application.

DVD Maker starts up with a splash screen that you can prompt to not show in the future.

Now simply add the videos and / or pictures you want to add to the DVD.

You can set up different options for the DVD such as the playback and burner speed.

Customize the DVD menu to add style to your video.

If you’re making a slide show of your photos you can add music and customize the presentation.

At anytime you can preview how the customizations and changes will look and sound before burning it to disc.

It might not be as feature rich as experienced video authors would like, but if you need a neat way present your vacation or family photos it gets the job done. If you want more functionality in creating your own movies, you might want to download Movie Maker which is included in Windows Live Essentials.

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Tim Hortons Inc. is reporting higher third-quarter revenue.

Nothing gets my blood pumping like a sexy lady wearing a skimpy outfit that glows in the dark. Well, I guess the glowing in the dark thing isn’t necessary, but if it’s part of the package, go nuts, I guess.

LuminoGlow is an Australian company that makes unmentionables that look normal with the lights on, but glow in the dark when they’re turned off. Pretty neat, but don’t glow in the dark items need to be left in the light for a while before they glow? Are you supposed to wear these around the house all day first just to charge them up before gametime at night? And will they glow through your clothes if you wear a thin shirt or dress?

Also, where’s my glow in the dark underwear? Why do only the ladies get this fun? So many questions, so few answers.

[LuminoGlow via Newslite via The Daily What]