Cheap Xbox Live Membership

A few of you have commented about all the good deals I keep finding and that I should share them via my blog. So here is the first good deal I will share.

This one is for those of you with an xbox 360. You have a few options from Microsoft to purchase your xbox live membership.

• 12 Months - £39.99
• 3 Months - £14.99
• Month-to-Month - £4.99

On any of the options above Microsoft even allow you to automatically renew your membership when it expires. Dependant on the option you selected this could become very expensive. To save a few pounds you can purchase a 12 Month xbox live prepaid card from Play.com or Amazon for £34.99.

However if you want to save even more I have discovered Instant Live Codes. This company allows you to purchase 12 months xbox live membership for £26.99, you can pay via debit or credit card and even Paypal. Once you have placed your order it's simply a couple of hours to wait for your code to appear in your email. I have used this company over the last two years and it is legitimate and most importantly it works.

To get your cheap xbox live membership follow this link http://www.instantlivecodes.com/subscriptions.html

Easy way to migrate printers

Recently, as part of a migration I had to migrate a printer server from a server running Windows 2003 to a Server running 2008. There were a lot of printers and I really did not want to find all the drivers again and install them on the new server one by one.

So I had one of those moments when I thought there has to be an easier way to do this, so I turned to google. Fortunately, I found that Microsoft provides a print migration tool called Print Migrator. With the Print Migrator, you can backup and restore printers from a Windows server to another. It supports Windows 2000, Windows NT; Windows Server 2003; Windows XP. However I found it also works with Windows Server 2008 as well. However you do have to use the 'Run As Administrator' option.

When backing up the printers, Print Migrator creates a CAB file including the following data:

• Printers
• Printer PortTID_MONITORS
• Print DriversTID_DRIVERS
• Print Shares
• Active Directory Print Objects

To download Microsoft Print Migrator follow this link http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9B9F2925-CBC9-44DA-B2C9-FFDBC46B0B17&displaylang=en

How to backup the print server configuration
To back up a Windows printer server, follow these steps:

1. Run Printer Migrator.

2. On the Actions menu, click Backup.

3. In the Target server box, type the name of the printer server to back up by using the following UNC format: \\Servername. If you are backing up the printer configuration on a local computer, leave this box blank.

4. In the File name box, either accept the default name and location for the .cab file in which the configuration data is saved (%SystemRoot%\System32\Spool\Pm\Pm.cab), or specify the file name and location that you want to use.

5. Click OK. The backup process starts. The contents of the progress report that is displayed in the lower pane of the Printer Migrator window is written to the Pm.log file. When the backup process is finished, the following text is displayed at the end of the log file: Backup complete.

How to restore the print server configuration
To restore the printer configuration to another printer server, follow these steps:

1. Start Printer Migrator.

2. On the Actions menu, click Restore.

3. In the Look in box, locate the folder that contains the .cab file in which the printer configuration data was saved. For example, if you use the default name and location for the printer configuration information, the name of the file is Pm.cab. The file is located in the following folder: %SystemRoot%\System32\Spool\Pm

4. In the File name box, type the name of the .cab file. For example, type Pm.cab.

5. In the Target server box, type the name of the destination printer server by using the following UNC format: \\Servername.

6. Select the check boxes for the options that you want to set.

7. Click Open to start the restoration operation. When the restoration process starts, Printer Migrator 2000 temporarily stops the Print Spooler service and the Print Server for Macintosh service (if it is started) on the destination computer to restore print queue information.
A progress report is displayed the lower pane of the Printer Migrator 2000 window. The contents of this report is written to the Pm.log file. When the restoration process is finished, text that is similar to the following text is displayed at the end of the log file: Restore complete.Registry restored.Starting Spooler...Spooler RunningStarting MacPrint...MacPrint Running.

Quick and easy way to resize photos

With digital cameras and mobile phones now in the 10 plus mega pixels, the image size is largely increased making the photos taken using digital cameras to above 5MB. Sharing photos with your friends or placing them into a document might not be as practical as you would like. If you don't know what I mean insert a 10 Mega Pixel photo into Excel. Now obviously you can load the photos into a program like Photoshop but not everyone has Photoshop and it does take a while to do it.

Image Resizer Power Toy by Microsoft which was previously available for Windows XP has now been cloned and written for Vista and Windows 7 32 and 64 bit editions. The new version is developed by the guys at Codeplex. This free tool will help you resize images using the right click menu. Once installed, the tool will add an entry to Windows Explorer context menu.

Once the software is installed you simply select your photo or photos as the tool will work in a batch. Right click on the photos and you will see a resize pictures option. Once selected you will be presented with different sizes available for resize. You can select predefined size or a custom size and the tool also provides you with option to either resize the original image or create a new image which is resized.

For more information and to download Image Resizer follow this link http://imageresizer.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=30247

Test if your ISP is manipulating BitTorrent traffic

More and more ISP's are now implementing Traffic Shaping to ensure that they provide all their customers a fast Internet experience (their words not mine). Some IPS's are open about their policies where others keep it quiet. So how can you find out if you ISP it playing with your traffic?

I asked myself this very question and found this useful web application. It works by connecting you to a server and downloading a file by HTTP. Once complete the same file is downloaded as a torrent. The same process is then undertaken for uploads. HTTP traffic is compared to torrent and identifies if your ISP is manipulating or shaping that traffic.

Here is the link: http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparency/bttest.php

Note that some ISPs do not throttle all BitTorrent traffic but only if this traffic exceeds a certain threshold and some only Traffic Shape during certain time periods like 03:00pm to 12:00pm.

Microsoft provides free Anti Virus software for your home

Starting today, you can now download the final release of Microsoft Security Essentials, the replacement for Microsoft’s OneCare. Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free download from Microsoft that has been designed for the home market so it is simple to install and easy to use. The software uses Windows Update to ensure it is always kept up to date and lets you know the protection status of your PC by a coloured shield scheme. Security Essentials is available for Windows XP, Vista and 7 but to my (and I imagine many others) dissapointment there is no product available for Windows Home Server.

At home I have used both AVG and Avast so I am going to give this a try to see how it compares. It will be interested to see how this compares and whether it will be adopted unlike the previous OneCare product.

For more information and to download Microsoft Security Essentials visit http://www.microsoft.com/Security_essentials/default.aspx.

Internet TV for Windows Media Center Now in the UK

For awhile now US Windows Media Centre users have been enjoying the beta of Internet TV provided by MSN Video however this has been impossible until this week in the UK, some people attempted to get this to work by setting their regional settings to English US, though this allowed the beta to be installed due to regional IP address locking most content was unavailable.

That all changed yesterday when I noticed a new option appear in the Extras menu. Internet TV Beta 2. To ensure you receive access to the beta, just ensure you have Automatic Downloads switched on.

Once installed I was surprised to see a decent set of programmes, with full TV shows from the BBC and Channel 4 including Peep Show, Mock the Week, Shameless and Bottom, Music Videos, News Clips, Movie Trailers and more. Whilst I thought the content was of a high quality, offering full series of some good shows the video itself wasn't that great. I found I had to put up with quite a bit of blockiness especially compared to the iPlayer. No high definition content is available at the current time, but let’s hope that comes online in the future.

Blu-Ray to DVR-MS continued...

Well the saga continues. After my initial post of using MakeMKV and DVR-MS ToolBox readers of the post and I have found some issues. It appears that the DVR-MS Toolbox encoding the MKV files is failing with an error trying to decode the video contained within it. After a bit of investigation it appears to be that some Blu-Ray disks work fine and some don't. A few people have resolved this by installing different codecs but still occasionally have issues. As my goal was to be able to RIP my Blu-Ray disks to the hard disk with the least amount of effort and without installing lots of software on my media centre this solution doesn't really cut it. As you may of guessed I killed my Windows 7 by trying additional third party codecs.

So I was back to my quest to find a solution. On my travels I discovered an application called TSMuxer. This application has the ability to very quickly convert HD video files between formats with no quality loss whatsoever. This works by changing the container formats but keeping the video and audio streams the same.

TSMuxer is a small app that has the ability to grab the .mkv files I had created via the instructions of the last post on this topic and convert them to either .ts and .m2ts. The file format m2ts is the original blu-ray format and .ts is the original dvd format found within the vob filests.
Compared to my attempt with DV-RMS, you are not going to see the files size reduction as you did with Microsoft own format. However I find this procedure much more reliable and as .m2ts is a container there is no loss of quality.

TSMuxer does not require the input file to be a .mkv, I started with this as I had started going through my Blu-Ray collection. You can simply use TSMuxer to look at the disk and burn it straight to .m2ts.

This process took about 20 minutes and resulted in a file that plays natively in Windows Media Player 12, Windows Media Center and even better – streams and plays in HD to an Xbox 360 Media Center Extender. No stupid codec packs and no dodgy DirectShow filters.

For more information and to download TSMuxer follow this link http://www.smlabs.net/tsmuxer_en.html.

USB Vs E-SATA Whats best for adding disks to your Windows Home Server

After finding a method of converting my Blu-Ray films to a single loss-less file format that Windows 7 Media Centre is happy with I came accross a new problem, Storage. I use a Microsoft Windows Home as a central storage point for all my media. As my free space started getting lower I decided to add some storage. As my Home Server is a Tranquil T7-330 there is no more space for additional hard disks. Not a problem because Microsoft says just plug an external USB Hard Disk in and add it to your storage pool. So I did that!

However when watching some HD films I noticed a fair bit of lag and stuttering, but only on some. After some investigation it turned out that the HD films on the external USB disk were the only ones stuttering. So there was obviously some performance issue.

I noticed my machine had an E-SATA port on it. The external enclosure I purchased as well as USB had an E-SATA port on it. So I decided to switch the enclosure over to E-SATA. But before I did I wanted to benchmark the enclosure and disk at USB so I had some hard figures to compare the two technologies.

After a bit of digging around I came across HD Tune. This free application provides a great utility to benchmark the raw performance of the physical disk. It also uses S.M.A.R.T. Information (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) to provide health information on the disk and error checking software. For more information or to download HD Tune visit http://www.hdtune.com/.

The technical blurb on the two technologies shows that USB 2.0 provides 480Mbps where E-SATA offers between 1.5Gbps and 3.0Gbps dependent on your motherboard chipset. So I already new that E-SATA would be faster and probably solve my issue but in real world performance is there a noticeable difference? Well Here are my results.

Though I ended adding 1TB Western Digital Green Edition SATA Disks I ran the test with an old Western Digital 160GB SATA Disk as the benchmark. The enclosure used is an ASAKA 3.5" USB / E-SATA unit. The Intel motherboard used support 3.0Gbps through put.

1). Sample 160GB Western Digital SATA Hard Disk - USB

2). Sample 160GB Western Digital SATA Hard Disk - E-SATA

3). The actual 1TB Western Digital SATA Disk connected via E-SATA

If you compare the results of the 1TB disk to the 160GB disk connected via E-SATA you can the see that the actual physical disk itself makes a big difference.

So to answer the question of whats the best way to add additional space to your Windows Home Server here is my two pennies worth. First off, as you probably guessed from the results E-SATA is the way to go however I would not personally purchase a retail USB/E-SATA external Hard Disk. I would purchase an E-SATA enclosure (there are plenty to choose from) and a high quality Hard Disk such as the Western Digital Green Edition disks. The reason for this is that the retail external hard disk units you buy often have a cheaper quality hard disk than you would probably purchase yourself. These are often 5400rpm instead of 7200rpm and have 8Mb of Cache rather than 16Mb. Purchasing a high end disk such as Western Digital Green Edition not only provides a high spec disk but provides a cooler and quieter disk which is essential for 24x7 operation.

Now I can go back to watching HD films with no stuttering.

Outlook Web Access for Everyone

Previous versions of Outlook Web Access have worked in the majority of browsers but only in a 'light' version which removes most of the functionality. The following functionality of the Premium version are not present in Light:

•The Tasks module
•Task-specific properties: Only the text of the task items can be read through OWA Light.
•Search for mail items: OWA Light users can search only Contacts and Address Book. •Reminders
•HTML composing of messages: OWA Light users get only plain text textboxes with no editing or formatting options.
•Flags and Categories
•Weekly view in Calendar: OWA Light shows the daily view only.
•Free/Busy grid in Appointment/Meeting Scheduling Assistant: OWA Light users get only "Suggested Times".
•Print
•Spell Check
•Conversation View
•Account Quota information
•Recover Deleted Items
•Calendar month view
•Add/edit distribution lists
•Public Folder access
•S/MIME features
•Add/edit rules

The only way to get the full functionality in Outlook Web Access was to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer. However Microsoft has now realised that there are a large number of people and businesses are now using alternative browsers to Internet Explorer. Rather than try and fight this and limit non Internet Explorer users to a lesser experience with Exchange 2010 users can experience the same, great Outlook Web Access Premium experience within Internet Explorer 7+, Firefox 3+, and Safari 3+.

This also includes some new features not seen before in the OWA expereince. These include:

Instant Messaging (IM): Outlook Web Access now contains instant messaging functionality within the client. Administrators can choose to connect this to Office Communications Server (onsite) or the Windows Live Messenger Service (hosted). Using the status indication of another user, employees can quickly decide if they should send an e-mail or just fire off a quick IM to get a fast response.

Conversation View: By grouping messages from a single conversation together, the new conversation view enable user to quickly identify the most recent messages, and the chain of responses. Conversation view is always preserved, even if individual e-mail message are located in different folders in the mailbox. By treating an entire group of messages as a single conversation it can be managed, ignored, moved, and deleted as a whole. New messages to old conversations will automatically be placed in the folder to which you have directed the conversation, even if you have deleted or ignored a conversation.

Single Page of Messages: Outlook Web Access 2010 no longer has pages. All messages are on one page and no matter how big the folder, your mailbox will let you scroll through every message without having you advance through pages. Users can more efficiently access the messages and scan conversations to find the communications they are looking for.

Single Page of Messages: Outlook Web Access 2010 no longer has pages. All messages are on one page and no matter how big the folder, your mailbox will let you scroll through every message without having you advance through pages. Users can more efficiently access the messages and scan conversations to find the communications they are looking for.

View/Set Status: A user's contact list is shown in Outlook Web Access with colorful indicators to let the user know if their contact is available to chat or not. This presence indication lets users know which means of communications will help them get the information they need instantly. Users can not only see the status of others but they can also set their own so other users on the network know if they are available to chat.

SMS Sync: Exchange ActiveSync now provides the ability to send and receive SMS text messages from Outlook and Outlook Web Access. Incoming messages, sent via EAS to the user's mobile device, will be seen both in the usual SMS message location and the e-mail Inbox.

Get your media centre to automatically login

A lot of people don’t recommend this, it is a security vulnerability after all. However there are some of us with Media Centres that don't want to get out of their chair every time they turn the TV on. An easy way to solve this is to enable auto-logins for your Windows PC. This is possible in Windows 7, as it was in prior versions.

Here’s how:
1. Press the Windows key + R on your keyboard to launch the “Run” dialog box.
2. Type in "control userpasswords2" and click "OK". The User Accounts window will display.
3. Uncheck the option “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer”
4. Click “OK”. You will then be prompted to enter the current password and confirm it. After doing so, you will no longer be prompted to enter your password upon login.

Creating Bootable Windows 7 USB Flash Drive

Well now the final release of Windows 7 is out it's time to rebuild all my machines. As my netbook has no optical drive in it I decided to look into making a bootable USB pen drive to install the os. I found loads of good guides on how to do this so I thought I would put together the easiest options.

You need a USB Flash Drive with at least 4GB of space and a copy of Microsoft Windows 7 on DVD.

Even if you have an optical drive you may want to use an old USB pen drive as your chosen media to install your operating system as the performance from a pen drive is considerabbly quicker than an optical drive. In fact I did a side by side race on identical machines and the usb pen drive installed Windows 7 in 28 minutes while the DVD took 52 minutes.


Step 1: Format the Drive
The steps here are to use the command line to format the disk properly using the diskpart utility. Be warned this will erase everything on your drive.

1.Plug in your USB Flash Drive

2.Open a command prompt as administrator (Right click on Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt and select “Run as administrator”

3.Find the drive number of your USB Drive by typing the following into the Command Prompt window:

diskpart

list disk

The number of your USB drive will listed. You’ll need this for the next step. I’ll assume that the USB flash drive is disk 1.

4.Format the drive by typing the next instructions into the same window. Replace the number “1” with the number of your disk below.

select disk 1

clean

create partition primary

select partition 1

active

format fs=NTFS

assign

exit

When that is done you’ll have a formatted USB flash drive ready to be made bootable.


Step 2: Make the Drive Bootable
Next use the bootsect utility that comes on the Windows 7 disk to make the flash drive bootable. In the same command window that you were using in Step 1:

1.Insert your Windows 7 DVD into your drive.

2.Change directory to the DVD’s boot directory where bootsect lives:

d:
cd d:\boot

3.Use bootsect to set the USB as a bootable NTFS drive prepared for a Windows 7 image. I’m assuming that your USB flash drive has been labeled disk F:\ by the computer:bootsect /nt60 f:

4.You can now close the command prompt window, we’re done here.


Step 3: Copy the installation DVD to the USB drive
The easiest way is to use Windows explorer to copy all of the files on your DVD on to the formatted flash drive. After you have copied all of the files the disk you are ready to go.


Step 4: Set your BIOS to boot from USB
This is where you’re on your own since every computer is different. Most BIOS’s allow you to hit a key at boot and select a boot option.

Blu-Ray to DVR-MS

I don't like clutter and being a bit of a neat freak I don't want a shelf of DVD's getting dusty in my lounge. Not a problem because with a Media Centre I can Rip my DVD's onto either my Media Centre or Windows Home Server so I can simply browse them through the great Movies section in Media Centre on Windows 7 and play them natively. However in the age of HD Blu-ray films are the way to go. However this causes a couple of issues. Firstly even in Windows 7 Media Centre does not play Blu-Ray natively you have to install another application, some of which do plug into Media Centre but its still a bit clumsy. The second issue is you can't just copy them to your hard disk because of there large size (around 50GB per film), so can't fit many films onto your storage. So I just read the discs, however I find that Blu-Ray discs seem to take forever to spin up and start playing the film. So the Holy grail of Media Centre for me is to burn my Blu-Ray films to a file format that doesn't lose too much quality but takes up less space and plays natively in Media Centre. Well I think I have sussed it. Here is a guide on how to convert your Blu-Ray disc from their 50GB size to a 6GB DVRMS file.

Stage 1. - Convert your Blu-ay disc to MKV
MakeMKV is a great application that provides a one-click solution to convert video that you own into free and patents-unencumbered format that can be played everywhere. MakeMKV is a format converter, it converts the video clips from proprietary (and usually encrypted) disc into a set of MKV files, preserving most information but not changing it in any way. However we don't want a multiple file format and there aren't many media players that support .mkv out of the box. Media Centre certainly doesn't. However this application does provide us with a great file based platform to move on with. MakeMKV is really easy to use, simply open MakeMKV insert your disc and click the open disc button. This then presents you with a list of all the chapters. Select the Titles you want - I personally only want the film, I'm not worried about the extras so I select only Title 1. Though this helps reduce the file size we can bring it down more by expanding the title and only selecting the audio format you require and remove all the subtitles. Choose your output folder and click Make MKV. Once complete you will end up with a folder of the name of the film and a single .mkv file of the same name.
For more information on MakeMKV visit http://www.makemkv.com/.

Stage 2. - Convert MKV to DVRMS
Media Centre cannot play MKV files so we now need to convert the file to a format media centre likes. DVRMS is the standard format for video in Media Centre and is the file type that all recorded TV is created in. This format allows the media centre to easily jump x number of seconds back and forward throughout the show and also the ability to remember where you stopped your show so you can resume from that point days latter. For Media Centre this is my file format of choice.

To convert your .mkv files to a single DVRMS file I would recommend DVRMSToolBox which is available here http://babgvant.com/files/folders/dvrmstoolbox/category1340.aspx and it is ready to go out of the box.

Start by launching DVRMSToolboxSettings and find the Convert MKV to DVR-MS and put in Movie Folder profile, select it and hit and edit profile button at the bottom. If you aren't using Windows 7 and the Movie Library, then use the profile called Convert avi or mkv to DVR-MS.

Select the first step and hit Configure. Change the 'Replace Regex' box with your movie path, be sure to have it end with '\$1\' so something like 'C:\Users\username\Videos\$1\' or '\\whs1\Movies\$1\' so that the film is created within a folder with the name of the film. Before you exit and save, you can add your own steps if you want, say if you wanted to delete the source file or move it to another directory.

To start the conversion process launch DVRMSToolBox DVRMStoMPEGGUI. Double click on the input file box and navigate to your file (UNC paths are not supported here, so if the file is on the network, you need to map a drive). Double click on the output file box and navigate to your Movies folder where the film will be stored. From the drop down profile box select Convert MKV to DVR-MS and put in Movie Folder .

There is no status bar or anything and buffer errors can be ignored, but in about the same amount of time as it'll take you to watch the movie, the conversion will be complete.

Stage 3. - Display the film with cover art and synopsis in Windows 7 Media Centre
Windows 7 Media Centre has a great new feature called Movies where all your films are displayed with cover art and a synopsis of the film. This works well if you simply copy your dvd or blu-ray into the folder in their native formats, however with converting the file as we have done above Media Centre does not know what the film is. So we need to update the film with some meta information.

Yammm - Yet Another Media Meta Manager is a great utility that runs as a Windows Service and will download meta data, artwork, rename folders, rename files and\or create playlists. Metadata can be any combination of dvdid.xml, mymovies.xml and\or XBMC nfo file. All meta information and artwork is provided via either themoviedb.org or thetvdb.com. The reason why I recommend Yammm is because it runs headless without any user interaction and used folder.jpg instead of custom artwork locations. This is important to me as I use Windows 7 media centre and want all my films to appear in the Movies section. In fact Yammm has an option for Windows 7 media centre to ensure the correct meta information is presented in a format that the Movies section likes.

A key requirement for me is if my wife downloads a film it has to appear in the Movies section with the cover art and synopsis all without her having to do anything. Yammm provides this by simply allowing her to create a folder with the name of the film in the Movies directory and save the file in that folder. Yammm then renames both the folder and the file with the correct title and format e.g. if you name the folder star wars and file copied across was star.wars.xvid.hdtv then when Yamm has worked its magic both folder and file become Star Wars Episode One A New Hope (1977).

During the installation process of Yamm a configuration page will open. Here you need to specify the folder you want the service to watch, select the option to rename folders and movie files. I also select the IMDB rating and select the artwork download features I require. Most of the options you can tailor to your requirements but the ones you need to ensure are setup are in the Metadata section. For the movies to appear in the Movies section with artwork and synopsis in Media Centre you have to enable Windows 7 Media Centre for the meta data and select the user account that you run Media Centre under.

So there you have it, a fairly easy process to convert your Blu-Ray discs to a single playable file without loss of quality to the audio and video, and best of all its free. This process though is not without its issues. A special thanks goes to my good friend Steve Newman who has followed this process for me several times. However he has found that it does not work with HD-DVD or original DVD's. HD-DVD is not an issue for me as I don't have any but it appears that MakeMKV doesn't like the encryption used on the discs. Steve has a fair few of these as he was an early adopter (I held out until someone won the HD battle) and he has come up with a work around. Hopefully he will comment on his method for converting HD-DVD. As for good old standard DVD's well there are a multitude of applications that either backup the DVD to its original format like DVD Shrink http://dvdshrinksite.org/ or converters which rip the DVD to an AVI file. However the latter often do drop the quality a bit often in the audio going from DTS to MP3.

I would like to point out that all the tools used are freeware so they won't cost you a penny but please do not hesitate to leave a donation on their sites as these guys have put a lot of work into their apps and without them I know I would either have a shelf of Blu-Rays making the place untidy or spent a fortune on Terabytes of storage.

I would be keen on hearing your methods for converting DVD and Blu-Ray to a single file for media centre as I am sure there are probably better methods out there.

Interesting interview on Mike Burrows

Interesting interview on my brother-in-law Mike Burrows who used to work for Microsoft but has moved over to the Intel camp. http://current.com/100sm4c

TomTom navigation for iPhone arrives

After years of rumor and speculation TomTom navigation arrives for both the iPhone 3G and 3GS. Admittedly this is not the first app offering turn-by-turn driving instructions for the iPhone, Navigon was out a couple of months ago and worked well but this is TomTom, the industry standard. I have been a big fan of their products and owned everything from HP iPAQs to the TomTom one and I am now using a TomTom XL Europe.

The App is available in several versions based on the maps installed, just like the other TomTom product ranges. The UK and Ireland version costs £59.99 with the Western Europe version costing £79.99. International maps for US and Canada (£59.99), Australia (£44.99) and New Zealand (£54.99) are also available.

These prices are slightly dearer than Navigon which is currently priced at £59.99 for the Europe version and nearly double that of CoPilot Live which for the UK version is £25.99.

TomTom also offer a car kit that offers secure docking, enhanced GPS performance, clear voice instructions and hands-free calling, while charging your iPhone at the same time. This could be a real winner as there have been many complaints of Navigon and CoPilot that it isn't quite loud enough. Though pricing for this is not confirmed.

However the big problem with the iPhone and navigation software is that the iPhone cannot run multiple applications at the same time. So if you get a call the software closes so you can answer it. One good feature of the TomTom is that as soon as you finish the call the software loads again to the point you were at.

For more information see http://iphone.tomtom.com/

Your Blog posts in Twitter

Everyone seems to keep suggesting to me that I should do a Twitter page and link it to my blog. I had no idea how to do this, so I did some research and I came across Twitterfeed. Twitterfeed is a service that will automatically twitter any post that you publish on your blog. Here are a few quick steps to get your blog posts to appear in your twitter posts.

1. The easiest way to automatically tweet your blog posts is through Twitterfeed. Go to http://twitterfeed.com/

2. Login to Twitterfeed using your OpenID. If you have a Blogger account, you will just need to choose Blogger from the list of possible logins and enter your username. For example, if the URL of your Blogger blog is http://johnworsfold.blogspot.com/, then your username is johnworsfold.

3. After logging in, you will be able to go to your Twitter feeds. This gives you the option to enter a new feed. Click on "Create New Feed". Enter your Twitter name and password, as well as the URL for your RSS feed. Adjust the settings for how often you want Twitterfeed to check your blog for new posts, and click "Create".

4. Now, when you create a Blogger blog post, a tweet will automatically be created and posted to your Twitter account. Just like this one has! (I hope)

Mount a VHD within Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2

Ever needed to mount a .vhd file into Windows? No, not many people have. However the other day I found that I couldn't find an .iso file that I had for some software. Then I remember it was in an old virtual machine I no longer used. So I restored the .vhd and .vmc files from a backup and was about to download and install Virtual PC or Virtual Server. However I didn't really want to go through the hassle of setting up and configuring those products just to get a file out. I then remembered that Windows 7 Ultimate includes the ability to run a virtual instance of XP and the ability to boot from a .vhd file. So I decided to take a look in Device Manager and Disk Management to see if there was an option to mount a .vhd file. And there was ! Below are some simple instructions on how to mount and dismount a .vhd file.

Instructions to Mount a vhd:

1. Open up Disk Management, you can Right-Click on Computer and choose Manage and then select Disk Management to do this.
2. Right-Click on Disk Management and choose Attach VHD.
3. Enter the path to the VHD. You can choose to mark it Read-Only as well. Click OK.
4. The drive will mount and display in Disk Management. You’ll notice the disk icon is also blue to help you distinguish it as a mounted VHD.

Dismount Instructions:

1. To dismount, Right-Click the disk and select Detach VHD.
2. You will be given the option to delete the VHD as well, but it is not the default. Click OK to detatch.

This allowed me to just browse to my missing .iso file and simply copy and paste from one drive to another. After finding this I wondered if this feature would be added to Windows Server 2008 R2 as R2 and Windows 7 are meant to share a lot of features. So I checked by 2008 R2 release candidate and I was pleased to find that it has been included.

Official Windows 7 upgrade chart

For those of you who don't like to do a fresh clean install of your shinny new operating system here is Microsoft's official Windows 7 Upgrade Chart.

Personally I prefer to do a clean install of an Operating system as it removes the chances of any nasty surprises or pulling through any bugs or issues.

Home Server and Windows 7 - Remote Desktop may not work

Myself along with millions of people have been pre-ordering Windows 7 Home Premium, especially with the special price of £49.99. Professional was also available but for double the cost and as I was in a rush to order it I thought the main difference was the ability to join a Domain and some extras like Backup and Restore.

However if like me you're a Windows Home Server owner, we should have purchased Windows 7 Professional, for one big reason – Remote Desktop.
Those of you currently running Windows XP Home or Windows Vista Home Premium may have tried to access and control those computers remotely using your home server, and found that you can’t. That’s because so called 'consumer' versions of Windows cannot act as a remote desktop host. Hosting remote desktop connections is considered a 'business-level' feature, and is only available in XP Pro and Vista Business, Enterprise and Ultimate. To be honest and embarresed I was not aware of this as I had always used Windows Vista Ultimate. When it came to purchase Windows 7 I thought I didn't use a lot of features that came with Vista Ultimate so dropping to Windows 7 Home Premium seemed like a good idea. Apparantly I was wrong.

So with regard to Windows 7, you’ll see that editions up to and including Windows 7 Home Premium cannot be accessed using a remote desktop connection, whilst Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate do have this feature enabled.

So if you use Home Server I strongly recommend you go for Windows 7 Professional.

Channel Logos in Media Centre

I have come across this great little app that Makryger of The Green Button has developed to put channel Logos in our TV listings within the Windows 7 Media Centre Guide. My Channel Logos for 7MC as it is called comes bundled with a number of TV channel logos and a simple program to assign them to any channel in your listing. It's an automated process which walks you through the couple of clicks required. You can even add your own logos through the program’s easy to use interface.

For more information and to download this great app visit http://mychannellogos.com/default.aspx.

Windows 7 Media Centre

Well I finally got round to replacing my Windows Vista Media Centre to Windows 7 RTM Media Centre. I use the media centre for everything media related in my house and have done since the first version of XP Media Centre. With that in mind if my TV (Media Centre) is working, then I really do not want to mess around with it as my wife won’t be impressed if she can’t watch her shows. Anyway I moved to Windows 7 on all my other machines as soon as the RC was out and have been really impressed, so as my wife was out last night and we had nothing set to record I felt it was about time to move to the latest incarnation of Media Centre.

Whilst installing the OS I read Microsoft’s sales blurb on the changes they have made to Media Centre. I found a lot of their offerings were features I sort of already had via the TV Pack. However a lot of people didn’t have the benefits of the TV Pack as it was only provided to OEM so you only got it when you purchased a new Windows Vista Media Centre in the later half of last year. Some of us that build our own Media Centre did obtain versions of it via other means but to be honest though it brought some nice new features like interactive Digital TV it also had some bugs, in fact it was pretty buggy.

So how does the new Media Centre compare to the previous version. Well the first thing I will point out is that yet again our friends across the pond gain the vast majority of the improvements and us Brits are just left waiting for more.

New Features you can’t use in the UK,
· TV show images throughout the guide and Recorded TV (not a frame of the show).
· Series recording options have some welcomed additions like HD Preferred, Live, and airtime.
· Internet content has been improved with more channels added and this has been expanded on further with the new Internet TV Beta. Unfortunately the online services are still lacking and on the Internet TV Beta, well that’s US only. However a recent announcement by Microsoft has said it’s on its way to the UK.

Features you can use in the UK,
· Media Center Desktop gadget.
· The new mini guide is 100x better than the old one.
· Guide can be color coded by show type.
· Guide button added when in windowed mode.
· You can easily manually add missing DTV channels without editing xml.
· Windows 7 now supports four tuners of each type (analogue and digital) instead of only two.
· Skipping through a programme or video is noticeably more responsive. However I have an Antec case with a VFD and remote and moving from Vista to 7 meant I lost the ability to skip back and forward within a programme. I could skip a track whilst playing music or photos but not TV or videos. I assume this is an issue with the imon software than Windows 7 however I managed to find a work around changing the skip buttons from the skip function to the Ctrl + F (Skip Forward) and Ctrl + B (Skip Back) which are the controls for media player to skip through.
· Scrub bar when used on a PC is awesome, I really like the thumbnail previews as you drag along the bar.
· The scheduling of recordings seems streamlined.
· Fade in and out when you stop and start video adds to the experience.
· If one show in a folder is going to be deleted there is now an ! and towards the bottom it explains why.
· Current time to the seconds is displayed on the scrub bar when watching Live TV.
· New text input method with remote when searching is improved.
· Pictures and music have a few new features like ratings and favourites.
· The animation of playing music has been dressed up a bit as well as the photos slide show.
· There are now HD logos in the grid and in the show info at the bottom. This was something that was in the TV Pack for Vista. Interestingly I have two DVB-T tuners for Freeview and a lot of programmes now have the HD logo. Obviously they are not HD but it looks impressive.
· Accessing Recorded TV from another Media Centre is easy with HomeGroup, this is great if you have several Media Centres in your home and you want to share some recorded TV from one to another.
· Alphabetical order of Recorded TV is now correct (The Office is listed with Os, not Ts).
· One button press for show info when watching video.
· Can edit channel 3.1 to make it 3 instead of forced to use 1031.
· Extender UI for your Xbox360 is greatly enhanced, it also runs faster.
· Favourite views in the guide, which can be made static so you don't have to select them every time.
· Movie Library now no longer requires e a registry hack to enable the feature. This is one of the features that has really improved. Instead of the old DVD library store it now supports more file types, rather than those vob files. An addition to this is that it will also show all the films that are coming on TV over the next 14 days with the same cinema poster cover art as DVD’s stored in the movies folder.
· Ability to resume video types other than dvr-ms and wtv. This is something I have been after for some time.
· Ability to combine tuners of different types to resolve recording conflicts automatically based on priority.

Snow Leopard brings out of the box support for Exchange

With Snow Leopard, the Mac is the only computer with built-in support for the latest version of Microsoft Exchange Server.

Well that's what Apple would have you believe. Truth be told Leopard and to a lesser extent Tiger had out of the box support for Exchange using the built in Mac Mail. I think the point they are trying to tactfully get across is that Windows doesn't have out of the box support but Mac does.

I have read apple's sales blurb on Snow Leopard and this miracle Microsoft Exchange support which can be found here http://www.apple.com/macosx/exchange.html. After reading this I feel the marketing department at Apple changed the wording for dramatic effect. What Apple mean to get across is that they have improved the feature set of Mail, iCal and Address Book so they now provide nearly all the functions you would expect to get out of Exchange Server, like Auto Discover of the server for clients. So does this mean you won't need Entourage? Well that's a good question, Apple's sales blurb doesn't mention opening other users mailboxes, something which Entourage does do. However it may be an option we will just have to wait and see.

I think they key point that isn't covered is the imminent Exchange 2010 and whether Snow Leopard will support that out of the box. It would seem a shame if Snow Leopard is out for only a few months and then Apple's Out of the Box experience only works with the previous version of Exchange.

Planning on upgrading to Server 2008 R2? You may have to wait till Exchange 2010

For those of you like me who are keen to see Windows Server 2008 R2 released may be in for a nasty surprise.

Disclosed on the MS Exchange Team Blog it appears that Windows Server 2008 R2 does not support the installation of Exchange 2007. I magine this has something to do with the fact that 2008 R2 has more in common with Windows 7 where 2008 was more like Vista in some respects. But of course the main reason from Microsoft themselves is that Exchange 2010 is due to be released shortly after the 2008 R2 and Windows 7 release. Microsoft are obviously more concered with ensuring compatibility with the latest offerings as opposed to checking backwards compatibility. It will be interesting to see if Exchange 2010 will hapily run on Windows Server 2008 operating system.

However for those companies out there that have Software Assurance on their Microsoft Licensing won't have to pay for the new version of either software, so migrating to Exchange Server 2010 along with Windows Server 2008 R2 is not too much of an issue.

The Exchange blog clarifies it a bit better on point 4, Exchange 2007 will only use Windows Server 2008 R2 DC’s not run on them....
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/07/17/451835.aspx

Mobile Allowance - iPhone App FREE this weekend only!

For those of us that like to keep an eye on our mobile phone spending this App is definitely worth the download. It logs into the o2 site and displays your total usage with how much of your inclusive minutes and texts are left. These can be displayed in a number of ways including hours and minutes, just minutes or out of your allowance (just in case you can't remember what you get). It displays your currents spend broken down by minutes, texts, roaming and roaming internet. However its worth noting that these prices exclude VAT, so bear that in mind. A feature I like is that the App displays the next update by days left or the actual date when your bill is due and your allowances / bill resets.

It's a great little app and in my opinion was well worth the 59p yet alone the chance to get it for free this weekend!

Provide remote support from your iPhone

The other weekend I was enjoying the weather when I got a call asking for my help to resolve an issue. Of course I was more than willing to help, problem was that I was over an hour away from home and I didn’t have my laptop on me. However I did have my iPhone on me and for once had a strong 3G signal.

Literally days before I was browsing the Apple App Store when I came across iRdesktop. iRdesktop made by ThinStuff is a Remote Desktop Client for Windows Terminal Services or Remote Desktop Services as it is now called in Server 2008 R2. This App is capable of natively using the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) in order to view and control any PC or Server allowing RDP connections using your iPhone and iPod Touch. To be honest if you search the Apple App Store there are a few Apps offering RDP access but what made this one catch my eye was that it was free.

So the first time I used iRdesktop was in the line of action. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised of how good this App is. First off you can create an unlimited number of predefined connection entries that allow storing the servers details including login credentials, resolution and color depth. Nothing new there but some great additions that can also be stored are the port number, ideal if you secure your RDP sessions by using a different port. You can also enable console mode which is one of my favorite features as I often connect to Media Centre at home and need to use the console to access an app I have installed.

Once connected to an RDP session the first thing you notice is that the session is not scaled to the iPhone screen. You can simply use your fingers to scroll around the edge of the iPhone screen to move to pan to the relevant point of the RDP session. You can rotate your iPhone to change from portrait to landscape and you can even zoom in and out to make the screen easier to read using the familiar iPhone controls. To work within the sessions is relatively simple and somewhat impressive with full mouse emulation using your finger. To left click you just tap the screen, to right click you simply hold your finger down a bit longer. Double click as you can imagine is a couple of quick taps and you can even drag and drop files. To enter text there is a keyboard button at the top of the screen which opens the familiar iPhone keyboard.

A couple of features also worthy of a mention is that it works through WIFI, 3G, HSDPA, GPRS and Edge. I was very impressed with how responsive it was over 3G, with little lag. You can also have multiple connections open at the same time which was useful to solve the problem I dealt with. To change between sessions you are provided with a Safari-like page view for switching. Probably one of the key features for System Administrators will be the fact that irDesktop is compatible with the iPhone's built-in VPN (L2TP, PPTP, IPSec) for secure access to corporate networks as most businesses don’t publish RDP externally.

The only drawback I think the App has is that there is no password security built in, so if someone picks up your iPhone they can connect to any of the servers you have stored. Admittedly you could choose to not store the user credentials and then enter them when the connection is established.

So could you work remotely on your iPhone? Technically yes, though I would not want to use Office products and try to do many hours work on it. However if you need to access a server quickly to resolve an issue it certainly worked for me, and did I resolve the issue? Of course I did.

Remote connection to SQL over the web using the Management Studio

I have been asked by a few developers recently how can they connect to a remote SQL server over the web using their locally installed Management Studio.

By default the SQL instance listens on port 1433 so all that needs to be done is the opening of a port within the remote firewall. Obviously there are some security implications of doing this but you can lock traffic down to your own IP address if the remote firewall permits this. However what if the server has multiple instances running on the same server say SQL 2005 and SQL 2008 and you want to connect to a specific one how can this be achieved. You may think well how often does that happen. This can occur as part of a migration or if you have applications that require specific SQl versions.

When another instance in installed on the server by default it uses Dynamic TCP ports. To connect to the instance you will need to configure it with a static port. This is done in the SQL Server Configuration Manager on your SQL Server. Here you will see all the instances installed.

If you look at the first instance that was installed under TCP/IP settings you will see that the TCP Port is set to 1433. On the other instances you will see that the TCp Dynamic Ports will have a value in. Simply remove this value and set the TCP Port to a value. As you can see from the image above I selected the next port along 1434. You will need to restart the SQL service for the changes to take effect. Then you need to allow the port you slected through the firewall.

To connect your local Management Studio type the IP Address and port in the server name box seperating the IP address and port using a comma not a semicolon as most applications use. To connect to the other instances all you need to do is change the port number. I have found it easier to create a SQL account in each instance and use SQL authentication to connect to the SQL server rather than Windows Authentication due to the remote connection.

Goodbye Terminal Services, Hello Remote Desktop Services

With Windows Server 2008 R2 coming just around the corner (October 22nd) it's time to see what we get in the new release. In this post I will take a look at the improvements in Terminal Services, or should I say Remote Desktop Services.

The obvious change is the name, Microsoft have decided to change the name Terminal Services which has been used from NT4 up to Windows Server 2008 to Remote Desktop Services (RDS). As you would imagine the name change has also been reflected in the Role names. Here are the name changes between 2008 and R2.

Terminal Server - Remote Desktop Session Host
TS Licensing - Remote Desktop Licensing
TS Session Broker - Remote Desktop Connection Broker
TS Gateway - Remote Desktop Gateway
TS Web Access - Remote Desktop Web Access

There is also a new Role Service listed called Remote Desktop Virtualization Host. This service provides virtual machines that can be used as personal virtual desktops or virtual desktop pools by using RemoteApp and Desktop Connection. The service has to be installed on a server with the Hyper-V role installed. User accounts can then be assigned a unique personal virtual desktop or be redirected to a virtual desktop pool where a virtual desktop is dynamically assigned. This is a big new feature and is part of Microsoft's Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution and really deserves it's own post. I will report back once I have had a play.

Though the product has been renamed the management consoles have not changed much at all and provide the familiar feel administrators of Windows Server 2008 will be used to. Apart from the name change there are some significant improvements in Remote Desktop Services.

Windows Installer compatibility has been improved. Prior to R2 there was a limitation that only one Windows Installer installation was supported at any one point time. This meant that if you had multiple users logging and invoking an application for the first time like Microsoft Word the first user session would run the installer but the other user sessions would see an issue. With Remote Desktop Services in R2 the per user installations or first runs are queue up and then handled by the Windows Installer Service. This results in a lot smoother end user presentation.

Client Experience has some impressive new features. A key reason for 2008 R2 is to bring the server platform alongside the Windows 7 platform. This has not been ignored in Remote Desktop Services enabling Desktop Composition on the server installs the Desktop Experience Feature to make your server look like Windows 7, including some of the interface elements of Windows Aero like transparent windows. And yes, if you hold the Windows key and press tab you get the nice 3D roller task switching.

Both audio and video playback is available for users with RDP 7.0. I have to be honest out of all the customer deployments of Terminal Services I have done none of them have ever really required video but I had to give it a test. All I can say is that I am very impressed, I successfully watched a full screen 1080p wmv video with no issues, obvioulsy my session was over a LAN and set to 32Bit colour depth but even still very impressive. I can imagine all the shouts that if we let all our staff watch videos it will kill the Server, that's not actually the case. In RDP 7.0 some file types such as wmv are rendered by the local machine and not the server meaning there is little impact on the server. However not all file types can be, for example Flash animation is still rendered on the server and does have an effect. Potentially more useful for businesses is the ability to now enable audio recording redirection, so you can use the microphone on your local PC to record or pass audio through to the server. Does this mean we can use Skype over Remote Desktop Services? Certainly Sound Recorder worked a treat but thats very different to a two way conversation. I don't know if it will be that useable but it is next on my To Do List to give it a try on my test server. I will let you know the results.
For users that like to use multiple monitors RDP 7.0 now supports up to 16 monitors connected and the ability to span of an RDP session. In fact RDP 7.0 now supports a maxium resolution of 4096 X 2048 per monitor.

Remote Desktop IP Virtualization is a new feature that allows you to assign an IP address per session or per application. This can come in handy with applications that are licensed via IP address where you cannot connect or access multiple times with the same IP address. Either each session or actual application can be provided its own IP address from your DHCP server allowing these applications to work with RDS.

User Assignment has been introduced when publishing Remote Applications. By default when you publish an application all authenticated domain users have access to it, however in R2 you can now specify which domain users or groups have access to the application. In fact if the user does not have permission to access the application they cannot even see it listed.

Remote Desktop Connection Broker formerly the Session Broker Service has been expanded to provide administrators with a unified method of setting up user access to both virtualized desktops (running as a full Windows client OS on top of Microsoft's virtualization infrastructure) and traditional session-based remote desktops. Microsoft have introduced a new management console called Remote Desktop Connection Manager to manage the Broker server.

With Windows 7 client PC's you not just limited to publishing .RDP and .msi packages but you can create a config file on the Connection Broker Server which is the installed on the client PC. This creates a feed from the RDS Web Service of all the applications and / or desktops in the Start Menu. This connection periodically checks the Connection Broker Service for updates such as newly published applications or User Assignment changes and applies them instantly on the client machine. In the control panel on the local machine you will find RemoteApp and Desktop Connections where you can view the resources available to you, check the status of the last update or remove the connection. This uses a single sign on so connections use the currently logged on account.

One of the key issues administrators had with the previous incarnations of Terminal Services was load balancing sessions across servers and managing how the sessions took resources from the server they were running on. This was sort of addressed with Server 2003 Enterprise Edition with session reconnection it was not until Server 2008 that we got built in load balancing in the form of the Session Broker Service. However this still didn't fully address the issue of sessions fighting for resources on the server that they were running on. 2008 R2 introduces the Fair Share CPU Scheduling policy. This service dynamically distributes the processor time across all sessions based on the number of sessions running on the server and each sessions demand for processor time. This effectively balances the CPU across all sessions but can be used to prioritise CPU for certain groups of users. This is managed in the Windows System Resource Manager.