WINDOWS LIVE SYNC ARRIVES

Microsoft has released Windows Live Sync, a free utility that syncs folders among two or more computers and makes it possible to share synced folders with others. It is the successor to Foldershare - and really not much more than a facelift for Foldershare. It accomplishes an important goal for Microsoft, though, by integrating the service with the Windows Live ID authentication that is driving all the other online services from Microsoft. Here's the blog from the Windows Live Sync team.

If you're not familiar with Foldershare, here's some background and an explanation of the basic principles. Windows Live Sync runs continuously on your computer; you can designate any folder and Windows Live Sync will copy the contents of that folder to any other computer of your choice running the software. The two folders will then always be kept in sync - if something is deleted from the folder at one end, the same file will be deleted at the other end, for example.

The program only copies files when both computers are turned on and running the program online at the same time. That can cause confusion - I know people who shut down their office computer at the end of the day, went home and turned on their home computer, and were disappointed that they didn't have their synced files. I was ready to criticize them for being unclear on the concept but what I found was that this is a hard concept and frequently leaves people confused or frustrated. I don't want to dissuade you from trying it! Just plan to give it some attention until you have that "Aha!" moment.

Windows Live Sync closely overlaps the Live Mesh service, but as far as I know the two services run on completely different underpinnings. I have this vision of the two Microsoft teams fighting it out for dominance and we'll find out at some random time which one is the victor and which program will die. Maybe they'll both live forever. Maybe they'll both be renamed and squished together by spring. Who knows?

There's an interesting detail in one blog today: apparently Windows Live Sync will be quietly included with every copy of a new version of Windows Live Photo Gallery due soon. That might just be to help people make their photos available on every computer in the house, or perhaps to make it easy to share photos with friends and grandparents. But I've also seen speculation that it will be set up to automatically copy your photos to the online photo storage space provided for free by Microsoft (which is now tied in to the Skydrive service). This will take careful work - many people are overwhelmed by all the names floating around and are ready to drop out at the first confusing bit.

FOLDERSHARE USERS: You'll be prompted to install this update automatically. There may be some confusing bits - you'll have to associate it with a Windows Live ID (and create one if you haven't done that yet), and you'll have to start from scratch to set up shared folders with others. Let me know if you have any problems!

Labels: file_sharing, Microsoft, photos, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 12/12/2008 12:42:00 AM | permalink

SKYDRIVE UPDATE

Windows Live Skydrive has been updated with a new look, 25Gb of free storage space, and new options for storing and sharing photos. There is some integration with an updated version of Windows Live Photo Gallery but I haven't yet explored how that works. If you're not using Skydrive yet, here are my notes about it.

That's 25Gb of free online storage space. That's a lot of space! Hotmail users have also been bumped to 25Gb of free storage space for email, in addition to the Skydrive space. You can share files with the world or with individuals and there's no longer a need for people to sign in with a Windows Live ID to see a shared file.

The redesigned front page for Skydrive is quite elegant. I don't see a big advertisement like the one in the screen shot from last month. Ah! I  get it now. The ad is displayed if you look at someone else's Skydrive space, or if you're not signed in. The elegant display is for your own Skydrive account after signing in.

Folders that contain photos are set apart automatically, and they look just great, with built-in controls for slideshows and very nice thumbnails. When photos are shared, it appears people can download the full-sized files instead of being limited to a low-resolution version of a photo - a common problem with online photo services until recently.

The folder shown below, by the way, contains my favorite wallpaper images for widescreen monitors, gathered from all over the web. You probably know this but bear in mind - if you get a full-sized image onscreen that you like, you can right-click it and click on "Set as desktop background" to make it your wallpaper. With these images, for example, if you click on a thumbnail, you're taken to a page showing a small version of the individual image. If you click on that image and click on "Open," you should see the full-size image. That's the one to use for your wallpaper. Go take a look!

Labels: file_sharing, Microsoft, photos, web_services

posted by bruceb at 12/04/2008 09:55:00 AM | permalink

WINDOWS LIVE SKYDRIVE UPDATE

Microsoft is updating and integrating all of its "Windows Live" services. The results are overwhelming and quirky but the changes  include some things that are even attractive for cranky old folks like me that have no idea what to do with a "social network." (I'm not sure but I think it requires friends, so I have no reason to go there.) In particular, Windows Live Skydrive is getting some exciting new features but there is still some confusing overlap in Microsoft's services for storing and sharing files online.

The updates are a bit of a blur, really - it will mostly be people under 25, I think, that have a lot of names in Windows Live People and sort them into Windows Live Groups so it's easier to send them invitations to Windows Live Events that are tracked on Windows Live Calendar, with RSVPs sent using Windows Live Messenger and photos shared afterward on Windows Live Photos. Honest, those are all names of interlocking pieces of this big social network, which is all free and all tied together, and that's just the half of it - there are pieces that will run on mobile phones and pieces that will interact with other online social networking sites and a toolbar for Internet Explorer and a piece that will deliver pictures straight from your cell phone to a digital picture frame (honest!) and on and on. Here's an article about the upcoming new releases, and here's a press release that runs through most of the highlights.

Let's focus on Windows Live Skydrive, a free place where you can store files online that can be accessed from anywhere. You're required to have a free Windows Live ID to get started but that's nothing new - all these services are built around your Windows Live ID. You can have private folders on Skydrive, or you can share folders with specific people, or you can have folders that are open to anyone. Skydrive is one of the services that I strongly recommend you become familiar with! It will quickly become a tool that you use routinely.

When Skydrive is updated, everyone will be able to store up to 25Gb of files online, up from the current limit of 5Gb. That's a lot of space! There are big improvements to the way photos can be stored and shared, with bigger thumbnails and instant slideshows and tighter integration with Windows Live Photo Gallery. Right now it's clumsy to move files around on Skydrive; the update will make it possible to move and copy files between Skydrive folders.

And in one welcome improvement, apparently it will be possible to share files with people even if they do not have a Windows Live ID. That's been a stumbling block, since many people aren't ready to figure out the Windows Live ID concept.

One change to Windows Live Skydrive leaps out at me from this screenshot of the update - Microsoft has decided to put really big advertisements on the web pages for some of these services. Oh joy!

Now for the confusing part. Look at this list of Microsoft services.

• Windows Live Skydrive lets you store files online and share them with others.
• Windows Live Sync will be the new name of Foldershare, which syncs folders among several computers, either your own or shared with others.
• Live Mesh lets you store files online, share them with others, and sync folders among several computers, either your own or shared with others.
• Office Live Workspace lets you store files online, share them with others, and open them directly into Microsoft Office programs.

The overhaul of the Windows Live services announced yesterday does nothing to simplify that lineup. If Live Mesh lives up to its potential, it can absorb and duplicate all of the other services; perhaps that's the ultimate goal and the other services are only temporary, since it will take several years to build out Live Mesh and the framework it rests on.

While we wait, go start using Skydrive and Live Mesh. They're worth knowing about!

Labels: file_sharing, Microsoft, mobile, photos, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 11/14/2008 01:06:00 AM | permalink

WINDOWS AZURE & LIFE IN THE CLOUD

"Windows Azure" is a terrible name but you need to be aware of it anyway. Windows Azure is a breathtakingly ambitious platform outlined by Microsoft at last week's Professional Developer Conference, another attempt by Microsoft to position itself to profit from a paradigm shift that will be just as important as the move to the Internet in the 90s.

Yesterday I used word processing as an easy example to imagine what it would be like if you had universal access to your files with the ability to open and edit them from any computer. Of course, it's just as easy to imagine having easy access from anywhere to your Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations, with the programs running in a browser if you don't have a copy installed on the computer nearby.

Okay, now stretch a little bit. Imagine that you could have something like the same experience on your phone - Windows Mobile can sync folders using Live Mesh and it runs little tiny versions of Word and Excel. Photos can be moved around from computer to computer and/or stored online, too, so you might not be surprised by this anecdote from someone who tried using Live Mesh on his phone to sync the folder where the phone stores pictures. There were the pictures on his computer a few minutes later with no muss, no fuss, no action required at all. The camera on the phone looks a lot more usable all of a sudden!

But now let's take a big step. Windows Azure is a platform that will allow you to run programs that are identical to programs installed on your computer but which are actually running from Microsoft's online servers. Microsoft's goal is to have all of its programs run from Microsoft's data centers in such a way that you cannot tell the difference between a program hosted online and a program on your computer. The developer tools will allow all the other software vendors to do the same thing.

Some of you already have experience with that. Businesses running on Small Business Server use Outlook to connect to mailboxes stored in Exchange Server. At the office, people open Outlook to do their work; away from the office, they might use Outlook on their notebook computer, or they might check their mail or calendar on their Windows Mobile phone, or they might use Outlook Web Access to display their Outlook folders in a web browser. Outlook Web Access is already significantly improved in Exchange 2007 so it more closely resembles Outlook, and it only takes a small leap of faith to imagine the experience being identical to using the full program.

The Azure framework is intended to give developers the ability to present their programs to you over your Internet connection so that virtually all the hard work is done by the online servers. Microsoft or Google or Amazon have responsibility for holding the data and backing it up; when a program is updated, the updates are applied at the source instead of requiring you to take steps to install updates on each of your computers.

I'll be writing more about Live Framework, the unified underpinning of the various Windows Live services as they become increasingly integrated, and Microsoft Online Services, which will introduce hosted online Exchange mailboxes to many of my clients. They're early signs of this movement to online services that will change your life, whether you're ready or not. There are many miles and many competitors and the future is not assured for Microsoft, but make no mistake - the company has staked its future on this ambitious transformation.

Here are some more early comments on Windows Azure: Dan Farber on "Microsoft's Manhattan Project"; Robert Scoble says not to underestimate Microsoft's ability to turn a corner; CBS News on the Azure launch; and Joe Wilcox on the significance of the project:

"I simply cannot overstate how enormous an undertaking is Azure. Microsoft plans to support cloud services in every product. Azure is hugely ambitious and will transform Microsoft, whether or not the vision stated on Monday makes it to market. As such, Azure is enormously risky and its success as envisioned is uncertain."

Labels: business, computers, file_sharing, Google, Internet, mail, Microsoft, mobile, Outlook, photos, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 11/04/2008 12:05:00 AM | permalink

DELL REMOTE ACCESS

Access everywhere! Lots of interesting services are being set up to make it easy for you to have access to files, folders, photos, and computers from anywhere, whether it's working on an office computer from home or bringing up pictures from your home computer on a mobile phone.

The latest entry comes from Dell, strangely enough. Dell just introduced Dell Remote Access, a ten dollar per month service for a number of tasks loosely related to "remote access." It's designed to be extremely easy to use. You'll install some software on the computer to be controlled; the software will run continuously and periodically check in with Dell Server Central Command. Then when you go to my.dellremoteaccess.com and log in, you can control your computer remotely as if you're sitting in front of it. That's not all, though! You can stream music and photos to your remote device or upload files to the computer running the Dell software. Plus one more interesting feature that I haven't seen before - you can send a link to someone by email that gives them an encrypted connection to a folder on your computer, so they can look at pictures, say, with very little fuss.

Here are a couple of places where people say nice things about the new service. The people saying those nice things work for Dell. Haven't seen much feedback from the real world yet.

That's pretty cool stuff, and you might want to try it, but I'd offer two thoughts before you jump in.

This is an increasingly crowded field. You have alternatives to choose from at a range of prices, with simple or difficult interfaces, and with similar or different features. You can jump into whichever one gets your attention first - just be aware that's what you're doing. LogMeIn will let you run its software and connect remotely to a single computer for free; its paid subscription adds very easy file transfers and the ability to email a link to a single file on your computer. GoToMyPC is slightly more expensive and aimed more at business users. Windows Live Mesh is a free service from Microsoft that will let you connect remotely to a number of computers, along with file and folder sharing and syncing and more to come; it's a little complicated to get started but might be worth the learning curve for its extra capabilities. Windows Home Server sets up remote access and photo sharing along with its file storage and backup features. Businesses running Microsoft Small Business Server already have remote access to their office computers using Remote Web Workplace.

Which leads to a point that gets more important all the time. A new program or service requires a commitment! Do not install programs or sign up for services on a whim! Each program will require time to learn its features and its quirks; it will require periodic attention to keep it up to date when security issues inevitably appear; if it's a good choice, it will require time to figure out where it fits in your life or your business. You'll likely have another web page address to memorize and another login name and password to add to the notes you can never find when you need them.

There are exciting new services out there! Choose them wisely and stick with the ones you choose so you can make them work for you. If you flit from one new thing to another, installing programs and abandoning them quickly,  you'll wind up talking to me about why your computer is slow and programs are crashing. You'll be depressed when I click on your Start menu and nod my head sadly and give you an economics lesson in the cost of cleanup versus the cost of a new computer.

With that in mind, get connected remotely! You don't have to leave computers behind any more.

Labels: computers, Internet, Microsoft, mobile, phone, photos, remote, SBS, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 10/21/2008 01:36:00 AM | permalink

GETTING STARTED WITH WINDOWS LIVE

I routinely set up a Windows Live ID for my clients when they get a new computer. There are many programs and online services in the world; Microsoft's programs and services under the Windows Live name are well designed, free to explore, and reasonably simple - a good choice for people who want to do some new tricks without being overwhelmed.

Here are the steps to get started.

Windows Live ID is a single sign-on service from Microsoft that allows people to log into many websites and services with one account. A Windows Live ID is an email address and a password stored in Microsoft's servers. It's free. Follow the instructions here to log in with your Windows Live ID, or set one up if you don't have one already. If you're at your own computer, check all the boxes to sign in automatically and remember your password - the services will then work automatically.

Download and install Windows Live Photo Gallery, a free program for viewing and editing your photos. It's an upgrade for the version of Windows Photo Gallery included with Vista, and also runs on Windows XP. It includes an easy way to share photos online for free. Here's more information about Windows Live Photo Gallery.

• Be careful when you install Windows Live Photo Gallery! You'll have the option to install other Windows Live programs; only install the ones that you are genuinely interested in. Watch the checkboxes on the right - if you're not careful, your Internet Explorer home page will be changed and you'll get an unnecessary extra toolbar.

Explore Windows Live Skydrive, a free place to store and share files online. It is a genuinely useful service, completely free and very easy to use! You'll have access to the files stored in Skydrive from any computer, and you can set up easily that can be shared with someone else, or left open for anyone. Once you're familiar with it, it can be very handy! Here's more information about Windows Live Skydrive.

Windows Live Mesh is (a) a place to store files online, (b) a program that runs on your computer to keep folders in sync on multiple computers, and (c) a way to get remote access to your computer from anywhere - and in the future it will do more! It's a little more complex to get started with but it's already one of the most interesting services available. There's basic information about the service here, and notes about how to get started here. (If you get a message that the Mesh service is not available in your country, it's a glitch - the instructions to solve it are here.)

The world is already flooded with online services, and this is just the beginning of a very big transformation indeed. We're moving from complete dependence on our usual computer, to a much more amophous relationship with a number of computers and other devices that communicate with each other and a mix of locally installed software and services running up in the cloud. Stay sharp! Things are changing.

Labels: file_sharing, Internet, Microsoft, photos, remote, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 10/13/2008 12:49:00 AM | permalink

RESIZING OUTLOOK PHOTO ATTACHMENTS

Here's a tip about Microsoft Outlook that I discovered by accident.

A common problem - you'd like to send an email to a friend with a number of photos attached. If you send the photos straight from the camera, the files are too large. Typical photos from a digital camera are 1.5-2.5Mb each, too big for an email attachment. Attach two or three or more and your message is likely not to be delivered, blocked by filters for oversized mail on your company mail server or your ISP's outgoing mail server or the recipient's incoming mail server or mail program.

There are many workarounds to resize the image for easy sharing. The photos can be shared online, or they can be resized by one of the many programs that can work with Outlook - Windows Live Photo Gallery and Photoshop Elements and many more.

There's another way to resize the attachments in Outlook and it's even easier. (If you don't use Outlook for mail, this isn't for you. Chat amongst yourselves for a few minutes.)

• Attach the photos to the outgoing message without any regard for their original size.
• Open the sidebar for "Attachment Options."
• Outlook 2003: button on the right of the attachment line.
• Outlook 2007: little arrow under the Message / Include buttons.
• Voila! An option to resize pictures automatically before the picture is sent. Pick a small/medium/large setting, push Send, and the message is on its way with reasonably sized attachments.

That's great stuff! Here's how those buttons look.

OUTLOOK 2003

OUTLOOK 2007

Labels: mail, Outlook, photos

posted by bruceb at 9/24/2008 01:08:00 AM | permalink

THE MEDIA CENTER COMPUTER

Running a Vista Media Center Extender in the living room requires a computer in the house running Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate. Your home computer can send your photos and music to the living room without working very hard, so it's quite possible to use the same computer that you're using at your desk.

There is a caveat, though. The most important trick for a Vista Media Center Extender is delivering TV shows to the TV, and your home computer probably isn't ready to do that without an extra bit of hardware to plug in the Comcast cable and act as a TV tuner. Once the hardware is set up, the Vista Media Center software is easy to set up - it automatically identifies your cable provider and channel selection, downloads a program guide, and handles program recording.

There are inexpensive USB devices that add TV tuner functions and are reported to work quite well, but I got an ATI TV Wonder HD-650 for a hundred bucks to put inside the PC, since it seemed to have the fewest trouble reports. In this category, as with so many others, there are always reports of horrible problems on Amazon and the online forums, requiring an intuitive weighing to decide which ones can be discarded because you're luckier or smarter than those people.

When shows are recording and being streamed into the living room, the computer is working a bit harder, enough that it might slow down your work on the computer occasionally. I also wanted to set up the Media Center computer to do some time-consuming, processor-intensive jobs - converting DVDs into files that could be stored on the computer's hard drive and played on the Extender. My desktop computer gets restarted pretty regularly as a side effect of testing too much software, which would play havoc with recording a show and might interrupt somebody's experience in the living room.

That's why a lot of people set up a separate computer that is dedicated to doing the Media Center chores. It can be a home-built PC, if you want to save some money. I opted to buy a Dell Inspiron 530 with a lot of memory, since basic computers are so absurdly cheap. I got a good video card but that's optional - I don't plan to ever have it hooked up to a monitor. It's sitting off in the corner and my interaction with it is all done from my desk using Remote Desktop.

A new dedicated computer and the HP Extender gives me a rock solid foundation for more living room entertainment than I have time for. It looks and sounds fabulous.

One more part of the story before we're done - a few scary notes about audio and video formats tomorrow.

Labels: audio, computers, hardware, photos, video, Vista

posted by bruceb at 9/22/2008 01:39:00 AM | permalink

HP MEDIASMART CONNECT

HP has been creating devices for years to bring Windows Media Center to the living room. There are two new Vista Media Center Extenders being marketed under the "MediaSmart" name that have some very interesting features. The HP MediaSmart Connect is sitting in my living room doing exactly what I was hoping.

The previous living room occupant was HP's Z558 Digital Entertainment Center, a computer running Windows XP Media Center in a box with a full complement of inputs and outputs for audio and video. It was fairly quirky to set up - getting the display to fill the screen took long experimentation, for example, and it wasn't very good at finding media stored on a different computer. It worked for several years but it always ran hot, which eventually doomed it - the proprietary video card died once from overheating and was almost impossible to replace, and the fans have lately been getting louder and louder until they became an unbearable distraction.

There are several new Vista Extenders on the market which overlap in their primary purpose, to bring Vista Media Center to the TV from another computer in the home. HP has developed an HD TV with the MediaSmart technology built into the guts of the TV - an interesting idea that would make setup much more simple if you need a new TV, but it requires a firm belief that the technology running a Vista Media Center Extender will last as long as the TV. I don't know if I would make that bet.

The HP MediaSmart Connect stood out for me, though, when I read some favorable reviews. It's a small box, 8 1/2 inches square and less than two inches tall, and completely silent. It has the right outputs to connect to my TV and audio receiver - HDMI, component video, and analog and digital audio. It has built-in wireless networking but I have a network cable running to the living room so I never had to find out if the wireless connection would be jerky or slow, a frequent complaint. HP is reportedly going to lower the price in the next week, giving it a list price of $299 and a likely street price of $249. (Gadgets like this require exactly the same calculation as software: if you get the wrong thing, it doesn't matter if it was cheap; if you get the right thing, the price is almost irrelevant in the long run.)

The remote control bristles with buttons, since there are just too many functions for it to be simple, but at least the remote is sturdy and solid in the hand, which is not always true of the competitors.

The Vista Media Center experience is satisfying but it would be more or less the same with any Extender. What sets the MediaSmart Connector apart is the proprietary software added by HP.

HP has built an interface that includes seamless access to Vista Media Center in its entirety - but there's also an attractive, simple interface that provides access to photos, music and videos that runs completely apart from Vista Media Center. HP provides optional software to run on the home computers that delivers the photos, music and videos to the MediaSmart Connect. Browsing photos with Vista Media Center is quite nice, for example - thumbnails, the ability to browse by tag or folder name, etc. - but some people will prefer to browse the same photos with HP's software, shown at left. Both views are available at any time.

HP then gave its box one more ability that was important to me: the HP MediaSmart Connect is able to connect to other software running on a home computer in addition to the program supplied by HP. It can display lists of media from any standard UPNP or DLNA server.

That means the HP MediaConnect can display music, photos or video sent around the network by a wide variety of programs, including some of the ones I mentioned yesterday. In my case, that means it connected immediately to the UPNP server built into J River Media Center, the program I depend on to keep my embarrassingly large music library organized. I've spent hours sorting my music by genre and creating playlists and smartlists, and in just a few minutes, there were those playlists on the TV, ready to be played at the click of a button. I started playing one ("Audio -- Recently Imported -- Two Months -- shuffle") and wiped a tear from my eye, because I had never been able to go back and forth elegantly between Windows Media Center and J River Media Center before.

That probably isn't important to you. There are a hundred reasons why this works for me and might not work for you. Maybe you'd be frustrated that the experience is not troublefree - I can't see cover art for music albums, I've wrestled with video formats (that story comes later), and the interface is sometimes a little slow, for example. You might be fiercely interested in streaming high-definition video or 5.1 surround sound, which I can't tell you about because I don't care.

The good parts far outweigh any negatives in our living room. Vista Media Center has a tremendous program guide for live and recorded television that I can reach with a single click of a button. I can browse through thumbnails and start a slide show of last month's family photos. I can play my video and music collection. All of those things are handled by an interface that's easy to navigate from the couch with a single remote control. That's good stuff!

All of this requires a computer in the house doing the work, and some hard experience to discover which formats work and which don't work. I'll tell you more later about how I'm handling those things.

Labels: audio, hardware, network, photos, software, video, Vista

posted by bruceb at 9/19/2008 12:59:00 AM | permalink

MEDIA CENTER EXTENDERS

Since the market for living room computers never developed, Microsoft decided to focus on "extenders," a different way to deliver media to your television.

Huge numbers of people already have a computer in the house running Windows Vista Home Premium, holding photos and music. An "extender" is a small box for the living room that connects to the computer over a wireless or wired connection to display the photos on the television and play music on the living room speakers. If the computer is set up for it, the extender can also handle all the TV programming and record TV shows like a Tivo. It works exclusively with a remote control - no keyboard or mouse! - and looks great from across the room. Here are some cute animations from Microsoft about how it works.

Extenders are not a new concept, and Microsoft is not the only company offering products that work this way. Apple TV is a box that streams music and video from your computer's copy of iTunes to the living room, hemmed in by Apple's fairly restrictive selection of supported formats and features. There is a rich selection of third party software and hardware that will send streams out onto a home network - Twonky, Tversity, music devices from Roku Soundbridge and Sonos, and much more. Tivo supplies software to send photos and music to the Tivo in the living room. Do-it-yourselfers and gadget freaks and technical types are having a wonderful time squabbling about the pros and cons of various setups.

Microsoft gets more attention in the mainstream because the technology it has chosen is elegant and because, well, because it's Microsoft, I guess. Media Center Extenders are based on a simple concept. The small living room box connects to the computer over the home network and displays the Vista Media Center interface, exactly as if it was running directly on the computer. Under the hood is a specialized version of Remote Desktop, which many businesspeople use to connect to their office computers from home.

All the work is done on the computer, but the computer can stay in the room suited for it. Multiple extenders can be connected to the same computer, and the computer can be used normally while it's sending media to the other rooms. The physical connections to the television for audio and video can be difficult but mating the computer with the extender is pretty straightforward.

Some people already have this technology without knowing it, because an XBox 360 can be a Media Center Extender. Chances are the XBox 360 is already on the home network to get updates and play online, so the only setup involves a bit of fumbling to bring a new blade to life in the XBox dashboard, full of photos and music. Microsoft recently announced that the XBox 360 dashboard would be completely overhauled to make it look like Media Center.

In addition to the XBox 360, there was a first generation of extenders from Linksys and others for Windows XP Media Center Edition, but they were slow and cranky and became obsolete when Microsoft rewrote everything for Vista. A new generation of extenders are now being introduced with some attractive features.

I don't have an XBox 360 - noisy things that fail a lot. (If you're interested, a good article appeared a few days ago about the XBox 360's sad history of hardware problems.) Instead, I'll tell you tomorrow about HP's MediaSmart Connect, which is the best of the extenders on the market now.

Labels: Apple, audio, hardware, Microsoft, network, photos, software, video, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 9/18/2008 12:05:00 AM | permalink

MEDIA IN THE LIVING ROOM

Your photos are on your computer.

Your music is on your computer.

It makes sense that computers should be able to record TV shows - it's kind of a computery thing to do, right?

It's probably occurred to you that it makes sense to store movies on a computer instead of buying them or getting them from Netflix.

Your new HD TV is basically a big computer monitor.

So why don't you have a computer in your living room?

You have no idea how many people have tried to figure that out. Microsoft introduced Windows XP Media Center edition, intended for living rooms, and no one cared, so it built an updated version of the Media Center interface into Vista, and still no one cared. (If you have Vista Home Premium, look around for "Windows Media Center" on the menu and start it up. Never seen it before, have you? The interface is designed to be seen from across the room. It's quite a nice design, just a little pointless on a desktop PC.)

There are lots of manufacturers making living room computers running Vista Media Center - Niveus, Avideus, Alienware, VelocityMicro, and many more. Many of them are very expensive and some of them are only sold through audio/video specialists, because it turns out that getting your media into the living room is frighteningly complicated.

Your needs are different than mine. Nobody will have the same setup, which is part of why this is so difficult. The best I can do is tell my story in the next couple of days and hope that it helps you think things through if you decide to go down this road.

For today, let me just give you a few of the considerations that make this so hard.

• Computers are noisy. A fan that's acceptable under your desk can quickly come to sound like a jet plane when you're watching television.
• Your living room doesn't have room for something that's shaped like a computer. The media center PCs have to be designed like a piece of audio equipment. That makes them too small to have adequate ventilation, so they run hot and need big fans, which gets back to the noise problem.
• Normal people find it virtually impossible to hook up a new television to cable and speakers, which is why Best Buy and the other retailers are getting deeply involved in sending installers to your home. A media center PC adds a new tangle of cables, each with its own quirks and requirements and possible incompatibilities - HDMI, component video, optical audio, S-video, and oh so many more. Your television connection might be analog cable or digital cable, it might require a converter box or a CableCard (a hellishly complex bit of equipment in its own right), it might be DirecTV, you might have an antenna for HD signals, and the setup will different for every one. Trust me - the Best Buy geek isn't going to set up your media center PC.
• You don't have a network cable running into your living room. Sure, all the new stuff claims to work over wireless connections but maybe you've noticed - wireless connections are not the most stable, troublefree items in our tech toolbox, are they?
• There are an endless number of proprietary formats and programs that will become barriers to making everything work. I'll touch on this more later. You'd like to think that someone could give you instructions for how to get a movie from the camcorder and see it in the living room but there is no guarantee that anything will work - and if it works today, it might not work tomorrow.

Pretty depressing, huh? There, there. I feel your pain. But I'm a survivor - I've got pictures running in a slide show, I've got music playing from my library, and I've got a lovely collection of movies to browse through, and it's all down in my living room where it belongs. It took some money and some persistence and things aren't perfect but it can be done! More to come.

Labels: audio, computers, Microsoft, photos, video, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 9/17/2008 01:35:00 AM | permalink

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS 7

Adobe is taking orders for its annual upgrade to Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements, the photo and video programs for consumers. Over the years I've found it hard to know what to suggest to people for working with photos. Photoshop Elements 7 might be a perfect fit for you but don't take it casually - if you're not prepared to enter into a significant long-term relationship, then it will go unused.

Photoshop Elements has an organizer for browsing through photos that works fairly naturally. If you are obsessive and tag the photos (assign keywords or categories to each photo - "Mom," "Our house," "vacation," "Obama"), then it's easy to display just the photos that match certain tags. It takes some discipline to get in the habit of tagging photos, so many people use the organizer to do nothing more than look through thumbnails.

When it's time to edit photos or use them in projects, Photoshop Elements is tremendously powerful but frankly, it's almost as unintuitive as its older sibling, the full version of Adobe Photoshop. There are several different ways in the program to begin photo editing that expose or conceal various editing tools - "Quick Fix" and "Guided" in addition to a full-blown set of complex tools, plus different panes to begin different kinds of projects and ways to share photos. I used Photoshop Elements 6 to put together a photo book this summer; the result was glorious but "learning curve" doesn't begin to express how long I spent figuring out dozens of unintuitive quirks of the program.

The new version, Photoshop Elements 7, apparently does not change the interface significantly. Instead it adds an additional layer of complexity built around an upgraded set of online services, Photoshop.com. The new program insistently presents advertising about the service until you pony up fifty bucks for a year's subscription, guaranteeing a flow of income to Acrobat even if you decide not to buy next year's upgrade. There is a free connection to a limited set of online services but you can bet that there will be an unending series of advertisements and popups and blinking headlines about the joy of upgrading to the paid service.

The online service includes online storage for photos, syncing with the collection on your computer, making photos accessible from anywhere, which is nice. Photoshop.com also backs up your photos and gives you many options to share them, including connections to Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, and Picasa. It does not reassure me that most of the online features are built around the "albums" that can be created in Photoshop Elements, since I've never used "albums" in the last five years of running the program consistently. Using an online service is similar to installing a new piece of software - it does nothing for you unless you understand it, learn its quirks, and use it regularly. The link to Photoshop.com might become a critical part of your relationship with your photos, but if you're not dedicated and diligent, it will be just one more bit of clutter in your technology landscape. If you're already feeling overloaded by the annoyances of computing in 2008, this won't help.

Photoshop Elements 6 has bugs (I've had to recover the "catalog" - the database that drives the program - from backups on numerous occasions after the program has crashed and the database has been corrupted), and its performance is glacially slow. So I'm disheartened by the online reports from people testing the beta releases of the new programs that performance is slow and the betas are unstable. Maybe they'll get better.

If you're just getting started with photo organizers and editors, install Microsoft's free program Windows Live Photo Gallery. The organizer for thumbnails is quite nice, there are simple tools for cropping and removing red eye and adjusting lighting, and you can easily upload a photo gallery for sharing online.

On the other hand, if you're a veteran or good with technology (i.e., young), Photoshop Elements 7 is still the leader and this is a lot of power for a hundred bucks. Put it to good use!

Labels: file_sharing, photos, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 9/10/2008 04:19:00 PM | permalink

SETTING UP A WINDOWS LIVE ID

Windows Live ID is a single sign-on service from Microsoft that allows people to log into many websites and services with one account. A Windows Live ID is an email address and a password stored in Microsoft's servers. It's free.

Most people will have a single Windows Live ID. I'm setting them up routinely for each employee in my clients' offices.

More services are being added all the time. Almost all of them are free. They are increasingly tied together so that access to them is easy. This includes instant messaging (Windows Live Messenger), file syncing and sharing (Live Mesh), online file storage and sharing (Windows Live Skydrive), online photo sharing (Windows Live Photo Gallery), and more.

If you don't yet have a Windows Live ID, follow this process. I'm including a couple of extra steps that will save you time later.

Go to this site and click on Sign up on the left.

Use your regular email address.

Choose a safe password. Put it somewhere secure. Remember it.

• (If you're already got a Windows Live ID for the email address, you'll find that out when you leave the signup screen. If so, you'll have to figure out what the password is, or reset it.)

You'll get an email asking you to verify the email address. Follow the instructions - you'll click the link in the message, then go through a couple of very short screens online.

Go to http://account.live.com

Click on "Registered information"

Enter first and last name

Enter birth date (apparently required, but you don't have to tell the truth as long as you make yourself an adult)

Change home and work country to NONE

Change home and work country back to United States. Each one should now have extra lines for addresses. They can be left blank.

The page for "Registered Information" will look like this - on the left when you arrive, on the right when you're done.

   

Click SAVE

You should now see your name and Country/Region: United States on the front page.

You're done!

When you're prompted for your Windows Live ID and you're sitting at your primary computer, watch for the checkboxes to save your login name and password - the Windows Live services can almost always open automatically with no password prompt after the first time.

Read about the Windows Live services on my news page or online. There are links to many of the services here on my Favorites page. You may find something that you can use right away!

Labels: file_sharing, Internet, Microsoft, OneCare, photos, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 8/27/2008 12:56:00 AM | permalink

WHAT I USE

On the assumption that my choices are endlessly fascinating to an ever-growing number of people - really, really bored people - I've added a page with details about the hardware and software that I use here at the high-tech headquarters of bruceb consulting. I'll try to keep it up to date. Heck, my computers are happy - you could do worse than follow my example in precise detail.

Click here for all the prurient details!

Labels: audio, backup, broadband, bruceb, computers, file_sharing, hardware, mobile, phone, photos, printers, SBS, security, software, video, web_services

posted by bruceb at 7/30/2008 01:02:00 AM | permalink

WINDOWS LIVE NAMING CONFUSION

Microsoft has done a terrible job of branding things in the last few years. "Microsoft Network" morphed into "MSN," which has at various times been a software package, a collection of TV-like programming, a brand for web services like Hotmail and Messenger, a dialup Internet provider, and a web portal.

Many MSN services were included in a reorganization under the new brand name "Windows Live" in 2006, and Microsoft began creating more and more services with the Windows Live name, including some that have no obvious relationship to each other. The Wikipedia list of Live-branded services is pretty daunting!

Some of the services will be dying quietly soon - Microsoft just announced that it will be closing down Windows Live Expo, intended to be a competitor to Craigslist, joining recently deceased Live Search Books and Live Search Academic.

I find myself joining clients and friends now in stumbling over one particularly poor bit of naming.

Vista comes with Windows Photo Gallery, a simple but useful photo program that's well suited for many people.

Later, Microsoft released Windows Live Photo Gallery, a free download for Vista and Windows XP. It's almost identical, but changes some things around on the menus and makes it easy to put photos online in free photo galleries for sharing.

When Windows Live Photo Gallery is installed on a Vista computer, it does not replace Windows Photo Gallery. They're visually indistinguishable, so the only way to tell which one you're using is the name on the title bar in the upper left corner.

Frankly, most of the time it won't make any difference. The two programs both display the same pictures and the same tags and almost all of the same features. But why do that to people? When it's time to put pictures on a DVD and someone looks for the "Burn" button, why should they have no idea why it's under "Make," instead? The access to online services will appear and disappear randomly if people aren't careful to click on the right program.

The situation is basically the same with Windows Mail (Vista's mail program) and Windows Live Mail (a separate program for Vista and an upgrade for Outlook Express on Windows XP).

Didn't Microsoft learn anything from the years of confusion caused by "Outlook" and "Outlook Express"?

Labels: mail, Microsoft, photos, Vista, web_services, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 6/08/2008 03:24:00 PM | permalink

MICROSOFT & THE CLOUD

Microsoft is working on a package of software and online services that might be exactly right for students and home computer users.

Although Vista includes important features out of the box, it does not include Microsoft Office - Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. That's surprising to many people. (Dell will preinstall Office if you remember to check the box, but all the other manufacturers leave it off to keep the computer sale price down.) I talk to a lot of people about why they have to make an unexpected trip to Costco or Office Depot to buy a copy of Office.

The computer manufacturer may include security software but all too often it's a bloated suite from whatever vendor paid the most to be included, or it's only a trial version.

Similarly, most people have a poor experience with badly designed software for editing and sharing photos that comes preinstalled with their new computer or installed along with the driver for a new printer or camera.

These are not deep mysteries. Any technically adept person is able to jump in and clean things up! Uninstall the crap. Sign up for online services - lots of people have favorites of the hundreds available. Use Google Docs or OpenOffice for free or buy a copy of Office 2007 Home & Student Edition.

The package from Microsoft isn't aimed at those people.

Instead, Microsoft will be packaging up a collection that's good enough for people who want the choices to be made for them and presented in a neat, easy-to-use package. And Microsoft will be experimenting with selling the package as a cheap monthly subscription instead of an expensive box at Best Buy. (Microsoft sees subscriptions as an inevitable shift in the long run but it's had trouble figuring out how to jump in without cannibalizing its current license fees.)

The "software plus service" bundle is code-named "Albany" during testing. Let's fantasize and assume that Microsoft delivers a well-designed integrated experience. Here's the way it will go sometime this fall.

• If you don't have one, you'll get a free Windows Live ID.
• You'll agree to pay a monthly fee - not yet determined but probably $10-15/month.
• A single installer will download and install these programs on your new computer, and set up access to their online components:
  • Microsoft Office 2007 Home And Student - Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and OneNote
  • Windows Live Office Workplace - online file storage and sharing for Office files, integrated with the Office programs, as easy as clicking a button; files can then be viewed and retrieved from any computer
  • Windows Live OneCare - easy-to-understand program for antivirus, spyware protection, firewall management, backups, printer sharing, and system maintenance
  • Windows Live Photo Gallery - the easiest and best-designed program for working with the photos on your computer and sharing them online
  • Windows Live Mail - full-featured and safe mail program, better than Outlook for home users, easy to integrate with Hotmail so mail can be viewed from anywhere
  • Windows Live Messenger

The programs would then all be updated automatically.

There's nothing new about the package except the integration and the subscription pricing. Most of those components are free; Office 2007 Home & Student is about $140 and Live OneCare is $49.99 or less, so this is under two hundred dollars of software.

But the integrated experience is everything! If I've learned anything over the last ten years, it's that many people don't want to think about their computers. They want to sit down and do stuff! If this package was installed on a nice cleaned-up computer, people would be able to do stuff with a minimum of fuss. I think it's a winner.

Here's an article about Microsoft's official acknowledgement that this package would enter beta testing soon, leading to a final release sometime this fall.

Labels: computers, mail, Microsoft, Office, OneCare, photos, security, software, Vista, web_services

posted by bruceb at 4/23/2008 01:28:00 AM | permalink

PHOTOSHOP TIPS

Adobe Photoshop Elements is one of the best programs available for cataloging and editing photos. It's not the simplest - some people will prefer the simplicity and elegant design of Windows Live Photo Gallery, or one of the online photo services. But Photoshop Elements is the program to use if you care enough to spend some time keeping your photos organized, or you're confident enough at a computer to grow into powerful editing tools. Photoshop Elements has simple editing screens for red eye removal and lighting effects but also has almost all the tools found in the grownup version of Photoshop used by professionals.

The full set of tools is intimidating and famously difficult. I've got two resources for you.

There must be hundreds of web sites devoted to Photoshop - tips, tutorials, formal and informal training, and more. Luxa is a good place to start - a deep collection of tutorials, articles, tips & tricks, and videos for beginners and experts alike. It's a little overwhelming, but heck, so is Photoshop. Unlike many Photoshop tutorial sites, Luxa is free.

Before you dive in, you might want to watch a couple of these short video tutorials, even if you don't own Photoshop. In addition to being informative, they're drop-dead hilarious. Not a secret - Boing Boing has been featuring these for the last few weeks. Well worth a look!

You Sucjk At Photoshop - Vol. 1: Distort, Warp & Layer Effects

You Suck At Photoshop - Vol. 2: Covering Your Mistakes

You Suck At Photardshop - Vol. 3: Clone Stamp & Manual Cloning

You Suck It Photoshop - Vol. 4: Paths & Masks

You Suck At Photoshops - Vol. 5: Select Color Range

Labels: photos, software

posted by bruceb at 2/06/2008 12:38:00 AM | permalink

HP MEDIASMART SERVER

I've been involved in the setup of two HP MediaSmart EX475 Windows Home Servers recently. The Windows Home Server software is simply elegant, and HP has enhanced it to make setup go remarkably smoothly.

At a couple of points I marveled at the technology that made some steps seem easy during setup. In a few clicks, I had a web site name assigned to a server and registered with a dynamic DNS service so it will turn up online regardless of what kind of broadband service is available. It's free, included in the price of the server, and could not have been simpler. People will be dazzled when they explore the options for sharing files and photos from these servers!

There are steps where you might want some handholding. I did a few mildly tricky things in the process of configuring computers for backup and remote access. User login names and passwords have to be assigned consistently on each computer; help is offered but that will be a bit daunting for some people. The server does a valiant job trying to configure the router so it can be reached online but that will frequently require manual work to forward ports on the router.

The HP MediaSmart server immediately goes to work doing full backups of each computer in the network, every day. If a hard drive dies, you can install a new hard drive and boot the computer from a provided CD; the computer will connect to the server and immediately restore the computer to its last-backed-up state. It's called a "bare metal restore" and by all accounts WHS does it brilliantly.

If computers in the network are running Windows XP Professional or Windows Vista Business, the web access to the server sets up Remote Desktop connections to those computers with a single click.

Those features alone are almost worth the price of the server, but of course it also excels at storing shared files and displaying photos on a pretty web page for the grandparents and a lot of other tricks. Here's where I hyped Windows Home Server a few months ago. Maybe you should go read the book. Why haven't you bought one yet?

Labels: backup, Home_Server, photos

posted by bruceb at 1/24/2008 12:38:00 AM | permalink

SPEAKING GEEK

The Wall Street Journal's site All Things Digital has a useful article that translates some geek jargon into English. It's a nicely written collection of common-sense explanations of terms used to describe digital cameras, mobile devices, televisions, and more. Sample:

"DIGITAL CAMERAS - Megapixels: This term describes the highest resolution photo a camera can take. Often mistaken as the most important factor in a digital camera, a high megapixel count - such as 10MP or more - isn't necessary for the average user unless he or she plans on heavily editing or enlarging photos. Most new digicams offer between five and eight megapixels, which is usually more than enough."

Labels: audio, mobile, phone, photos, video, wireless

posted by bruceb at 1/10/2008 01:05:00 AM | permalink

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2008!

In 2007, we started to work with Windows Vista, bought lots of handheld devices, and started to move things online - our mail, our photos, our movies.

What will 2008 bring? It will start with lots more of the same. Many of you will get your first Windows Vista computer and discover that it's quite a nice operating system. There's a flood of new handheld devices on the way inspired by the iPhone, although my guess is that Apple will stay a step ahead by releasing the iPhone version 2 with better data speeds and support for corporate e-mail systems - making it look very tempting for almost anyone who can stomach an account with AT&T. And the online sites for photos and videos will continually improve their ease of use and security; this should be on your mind every time you hear a story about someone who didn't have a backup of the family photos when the computer crashed.

2008 will bring an update to Microsoft Small Business Server - too early to know what the impact of that will be. I sense virtualization in my future - software that allows multiple computers to run on the same piece of hardware, each one convinced that it has exclusive control of the machine. That allows changes to be tested without risk and might even allow a business to run multiple servers in a more secure, less expensive way. We'll talk about that just as soon as I understand it even a little tiny bit.

With luck we'll talk less in 2008 about the recording industry and confusing DRM restrictions on music and video files. Slowly but surely the entertainment industry is being forced to consider new business models based on trusting consumers instead of suing them. Warner Music just began offering part of its music catalog in MP3 format through Amazon.com, joining EMI and Universal, and leaving Sony as the lonely holdout. My second favorite news item at the end of 2007 is the latest over-the-top assertion by the recording industry, this time in a brief filed by the RIAA last month in one of its acts of litigation terrorism against consumers. The RIAA now asserts that it is illegal for you to rip a CD to your computer, even if you purchased the CD and the computer files are only for your personal use. This is what it looks like when an entire industry dies a horrible self-inflicted death.

But my favorite end-of-year news story should warm all of our hearts. Wal-Mart announced that it has closed its online service for downloading movies. The service was opened in February with the endorsement of all major movie studios and TV networks, offering movies with intense DRM restrictions.

But that's not the good part.

The good part is that when Wal-Mart posted the announcement that the site was closed, no one noticed. In this world where everything is observed and commented on, it took a week for the closure to be mentioned in any blog or news article. It was such a cruddy, overpriced, difficult, restrictive service that literally no one ever looked at it. I love that!

Let's take it to be a good sign for 2008. My wish for you all is that in 2008, cruddy services and software will be ignored and valuable services and software will rise to the top, making you richer and more productive and happier. We can hope, right?

All my best wishes for a happy new year!

Labels: audio, business, DRM, Internet, mobile, phone, photos, SBS, video, web_services

posted by bruceb at 1/02/2008 12:05:00 AM | permalink

DIGITAL MOVIES & DURABLE DATA

The New York Times has a fascinating article comparing the methods used to preserve 35-millimeter movies and digital master records of movies. Conventional film can be stored in a limestone mine for almost nothing and last for decades. Pure digital storage is far more expensive and is likely to be more ephemeral.

You've likely thought of this when you're storing your digital photos or home videos. Hardware and storage media have a much shorter shelf life than film or paper. Hard drives can freeze up within a couple of years if they're not operated occasionally. CDs and DVDs degrade; their life span is variable but 15 years is a good rule of thumb.

As computer technology advances, file formats change and an archived file may become unreadable. A JPG or Quicktime file may seem permanent today, but are you confident that those formats will still be accessible in 20 years?

For the film industry, that means that digital archiving becomes a dynamic process where stored films must be re-archived periodically - far more labor intensive and expensive than storing traditional film.

It's tempting to believe that our data has achieved more permanence on the computer than when it was on paper, but perhaps the opposite is true.

Labels: business, photos, video

posted by bruceb at 12/26/2007 01:22:00 AM | permalink

WINDOWS HOME SERVER DEBUTS

Microsoft's Windows Home Server just arrived on the market - and it's what you want for Xmas.

I'll give you a short overview and some links for you to click on, but let's do some superlatives first. Windows Home Server is the coolest technology to arrive in years! It's innovative, it's beautifully designed, it does a lot of exceptionally useful things in elegant ways, and it's open for third parties to extend it in the future. This is seriously good stuff.

Let's get oriented. Microsoft has created software named "Windows Home Server," but you won't buy the software separately. You'll buy a device made by HP or Iomega or Intel or a host of others that runs the Windows Home Server software.

Look at that image above and shrink it in your mind. The device you pull out of the box will look more like an oversized toaster than a computer. The HP MediaSmart in the picture is less than ten inches tall.

And that's all there is. No keyboard. No mouse. No monitor. You'll attach it to your router with a network cable and plug it into electricity. You're done setting up the hardware!

You'll install some software on your computer that will take care of the actual setup. In a series of easy-to-understand screens, you'll make a few choices that get the Windows Home Server started. Sooner than you realize, it will be doing its tricks.

What does it do? A lot, more than I can convey in a few words. The categories are backup, file storage, computer monitoring, and remote access.

BACKUP

Every computer on the network is backed up automatically, every night.

The backups can be used to restore individual files or to restore an entire computer after a hard drive fails. There's technical magic to make the backups take an amazingly small amount of storage space, and there's design magic to make this easy to use.

FILE STORAGE

Your computers will have easy access to folders on the Windows Home Server for documents, photos and video. You'll be able to get to those folders as easily as you get to your My Documents folder now - no complicated trips through Network Neighborhood.

Most Windows Home Server devices will have two or more hard drives. You won't know anything about that - you'll just see a single place to store things without having to look for an F: or a G: drive. Windows Home Server will be using technical magic to store duplicate copies of your stuff - if a hard drive fails on the Windows Home Server, your files will still be there.

If you plug in more drives (internally or by plugging in external USB drives), Windows Home Server will absorb them and you'll have more storage space. If you unplug them, you'll have less storage space. Your files won't change either way.

COMPUTER MONITORING

Windows Home Server will be checking all the computers in the house to see if they have security issues, if their hard drives are running out of space, if there are any backup problems. You can have a single icon by the clock on your computer to give you feedback - if it's green, all the computers are in good shape; if it's yellow or red, something needs attention. If your computers are running Windows Live OneCare, it will be integrated soon so the single icon will alert you to any computer in the house that is dealing with viruses or spyware or needs updates installed.

REMOTE ACCESS

You'll be able to access your Windows Home Server from anywhere, using a web browser and a name that you choose during setup (e.g., "http://bruceb.HomeServer.com/Home"). You'll be able to download files, display photos, and do searches. You'll also be able to send links to other people to photo galleries and folders on the Windows Home Server - no need to upload photos to an online service. You might need help configuring the router, but other parts of remote access are as easy to set up and use as everything else.

If you have a computer running Windows XP Pro or Vista Business, you'll also be able to access it remotely through the Windows Home Server web page, controlling it with Remote Desktop from anywhere.

It's worth reiterating that the design for all these controls is gorgeous and intuitive. Here's the remote access portal, for example:



Go read about Windows Home Server!

Start with Microsoft's web site for Windows Home Server - click the links, read the hype, watch the cheesy demo.

Go through Paul Thurrott's review, or Gizmodo's review and screen shots.

HP worked hard to add cool features to the HP MediaSmart Server, which has a much better demo. HP's Reviewer's Guide is one of the best introductions to Windows Home Server features, as well as highlighting the work done by HP to enhance its photo sharing and other features. Here are screen shots of some HP features. Amazon is taking pre-orders for the HP MediaSmart servers, which will be shipping within a week or two.

There's a flood of hardware and software heading for the market built around Windows Home Server. (