Idle Speculation

Since Google’s Chrome OS has been announced and the idle speculation of what this will mean for Microsoft has begun, I want to share my two cents worth, as the owner/user of a netbook, and someone who supports several non-tech netbook users.

Recent articles have said that this is an aim by Google to take over the low end of the market, by targeting the underpowered netbooks.  Maybe.  If so, it is going to be harder going than the pundits are realizing.

The tech oriented users, like me, have more on their netbooks than just the OS.  I have a few simple games that I like, as well as a few productivity tools, such as Windows Live Writer, which I’m using to create this post.  (Some would argue that posting to a blog isn’t productive, but that’s for a later post.)  The games in the Linux world are certainly available, and similar to what I’m currently playing (card games, slot machines, puzzles), but they aren’t as polished and professional looking for the most part.  I like what I like, and playing the game I’ve grown fond of on the netbook as well as on my desktop machine is important to me.  Since Microsoft owns my desktop, I want to play Windows based games, and use Windows based tools.

For my non-tech friends for whom I am their user support, they want something familiar.  They don’t like learning new ways of doing things.  Even I complain about the Microsoft UI and how things work in Internet Explorer, but getting them to switch to Firefox or Chrome isn’t going to happen.  I know, I’ve tried and I’ve suffered for it.  Tech types also know about the problems with Microsoft’s use to web standards in rendering pages, but when users get used to seeing something, they always want to see the same thing.  Complain as much as you like about the way the web portal for Outlook renders on Internet Explorer versus the other browsers, but my friends want to see the IE version, not the Chrome or Firefox version.  They will never install a game on their netbook (unless they make me do it for them) and will probably never consider any productivity tools.  They truly will just use it for surfing and email, but they want the surfing and email to look exactly like, and work exactly like, their desktops at work and home.

Apple has aimed at the top of the market, and this gives them an income and some bragging rights.  Google might be aiming at the bottom of the market where they will promote speed and simplicity.  Microsoft might be in the middle of the market, but just like my body, it is a HUGE middle, and the folks there are comfortable with what they have, and want that same comfort and experience.

For Google to succeed, it has to convince the buyers/users of the devices that they are doing something “different” just like they do something different when they use their smartphones for email, texting, surfing, etc.  On the phones the UI is different, and folks learned because they were told they had to learn, there was no other way.  By the way, when users get to see Windows Mobile, and see that it works very much like their desktop, they do get hooked.

It is going to be fun to watch.

Lords of Content – Update

Jim Louderback from Revision 3 has an interesting tale of paying for content to be delivered anywhere.  It is a cautionary account to compliment my earlier post of wanting to view the content I pay for on the devices of my choosing at the time of my choosing.  I wasn’t thinking of live events, but Jim was.

Kindle for PC

If you’ve gotten the bug, or been bugged by someone to look at or get the new Amazon reading device called the Kindle, you can now do the same thing for free from your PC (sorry Mac lovers, that version is coming soon but not yet ready.)

Of course if you must have the actual Kindle device, please do buy one from the links below, or just buy the books and use the free reader for the PC.  One of the big attractions is that they sell the electronic version of the book generally for about 1/2 the price of the printed book.  It makes sense.  It costs them next to nothing to churn out another electronic copy to you, so they are making even more profit than selling and shipping a real book.

But now you can increase Amazon’s bottom line by using the free software from them and still buying the electronic book.

The software can be found at this link:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_pc_mkt_lnd?docId=1000426311

The devices and books can be found at these links:

Caught a Wave

Well, I got my Google Wave invitation. When I heard about Wave, I went to the Google site and signed up. I guess my patience paid off since I got my invitation just the other day.

I really see potential here as a workplace collaboration tool. Right now, with the very limited participation I'm mostly seeing very familiar instant messaging/email type usage. I'm also watching some different groups form, so it will be fun to watch what kind of collaboration starts up between people who hardly know each other. Until some friends or co-workers of mine get on the system, I'm kind of stuck watching and reading the public waves.

Youtube XL

Youtube has released a couch-size version of their site at www.youtube.com/xl

I can use my media center remote to navigate the site, but not for input.  I’ll have to play around to see what else I can and can’t do.  But this is definitely a move in the right direction for Youtube as more and more PC’s get hooked to televisions in the living room.

Roomba Pac Man

Too much fun

iTunes vs Cable vs OTA

Might this be the end of cable TV and the resurgence of the broadcast networks?

I’ve been reading that Apple wants to start a $30/month subscription TV service through its iTunes store.  I have no inside knowledge what that might mean and how it would work, but it does make me want to juggle some numbers around right now.

I just made a list of all the shows I watch regularly.  I took this list from the DVR list I’ve got on my cable box.  It comes to about 12 shows that I watch regularly.  So I went to the iTunes store to see if these 12 shows were available.  They were.  I can purchase almost of them in individual episodes and most in high definition.  I can also purchase a ‘season pass’ which automatically downloads the next available episode for me.

So I put together a little spreadsheet for costs.  If I purchase the season pass for each show in HD when available and SD when not (which comes out a little cheaper than individual episodes), it will cost me $357.73 for everything for a year which averages to almost $30/month.

My current cable bill (which includes my internet service and all the sundry set top boxes I need plus some movie channels that I almost never watch) is almost $186.00/month.  I can save over $100 a month, or $1,200 a year by dumping the TV portion of cable, buying the shows I want, and using the free over-the-air (OTA) to watch local programs and sports (go Cardinals – Suns – Diamondbacks - Coyotes) and just channel surfing.

I went to go see the Microsoft Store

I had a very rare Saturday morning free, and since we’re one of two places that has a Microsoft Store, I went for a look-see.  But I didn’t go inside.  Even after driving 15 miles to see it, I just didn’t feel the need.

If you’ve seen an Apple Store, you’ve seen a Microsoft Store.  It was a blatant rip-off.  At least from the outside looking in.  I didn’t venture inside for a number of reasons, most of them having to do with it being a blatant rip-off of Apple.

It  was Bauhaus and chic and seemed designed for the ‘pretty people’ of Scottsdale.  I lived in that area for many years, and know the ‘pretty people’ well.  One magazine writer said it best.  Watching the mommies and nannies pick up the school kids is like watching a Playboy tryout.  He was right.

Microsoft, I’ve gotta ask . . . why the Apple envy?  For all intents and purposes, YOU’VE WON.  I know those “Mac/PC” ads sting a little bit, but you can almost buy and sell them in an afternoon with your spare cash.  You dominate the desktop and office productivity software.  They only thing they choose to compete on is image.  They even switched over to YOUR hardware platform with the Intel move.  Image, that’s it – ephemeral opinions, that’s all.  So if you want to live and die by image – here’s the image you painted with me.

It is that image that turns me off about their stores, and now your stores.  I’m not Bauhaus or chic.  I’m middle aged, overweight, and decidedly unbeautiful.  I don’t walk around like I grok the whole Apple image/mystique thing.  When I look at the Apple store (and now the Microsoft store), I feel unwelcome.  First it reminds me of Grandma’s formal living room, covered with plastic slipcovers that put you on notice that this room (and these products) are not ever for ordinary use – keep your grubby self out of there – you don’t measure up – this is for important people – and you ain’t it.  Second it oozes that smug gnosticism that those inside are among the enlightened few.  The fact that the Microsoft workers wore the minimalist uniform of pants and a colored t-shirt (colors taken from the Windows flag) didn’t make it folksy, warm, or inviting – just the opposite for me.

Microsoft, what about ditching the image thing and showing us what you really do – how the software is going to make my life as a small business owner or consumer all the better for using it?  I’m guessing that a retail store is not to attract large businesses with giant I.T. staffs.

Show me your business platforms.  I’d like to learn more about this Sharepoint stuff.  I’d like to see how your Hyper-V technology will help me save money and do more with my meager server capabilities.

What about showcasing all the ways that Windows 7 will help the family with multiple PC’s?  How about showing off in a decent way the wonderful Media Center you’ve buried inside but never really gotten around to showing the world.  Don’t get me started on Windows Home Server and the ways it has saved my bacon countless times already with its backup feature, and how it can be used in the home.

Educators are the biggest sheep on the planet.  Convince one of the braver ones that your products help schools save money and prepare students and they’ll beat a path to your door.

Sure, if I walked inside I would probably have been met by the super-friendly staff who could have shown all this to me – but I just didn’t want to run that gauntlet.  The minimalist decor also made it possible for everyone to see everything that everyone was doing.  That way the customer can also be treated to the experience of the car lot – something we all love – where you are seen approaching a mile away and can be descended upon like a gazelle in a pirahna pond while the manager watches through a minimalist monocle and sniffs disapprovingly.

Am I being fair about this?  Probably not.  Am I showing that I am a disturbed individual with obvious issues of confidence?  Probably.  Am I going back to the Microsoft Store?  No.

One Device to Rule them All

In a previous post, I mused on letting me move video and watch it on any device I might own.

In this post, I want to conjecture on having one device that I carry with me at all times.  Ideally this device would have:

• A phone
• Access to mail and calendar (if I so choose) from AOL, GMail/Google, and Outlook (yes, I use all three, don’t ask, you don’t have time for the story).
• Music/mp3 capabilities.
• Audible.com support (for my DRM audiobook collection from them – grr).
• A game or two.
• Various and sundry other applications that will emerge and tickle my fancy.

Right now to get all this done well, I have to carry both my phone (Blackberry Storm) and an iPod Classic 80.

The Blackberry was getting close to this capability with the Blackberry Audible application, but alas it seems this has gone bonkers with the release of OS 5.  I was trying to use it today and frustration was the key feature.  The audio kept dropping off no matter if I stored the book locally or streamed it from Audible.  It was maddening because there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it.  To restart the audio, I had to stop the playback then start it again.  If I did it right away, it would pick up where it dropped off, but if I was doing something nonessential, like driving, and had to wait for the work-around, then I missed the portion that was read during the worthless driving activity.

You might say that the iPhone does all this.  Yes, it appears to, but I haven’t seen the mail & calendar integration that I would need, and I just hate being trapped in the Apple-only ecosystem.  Today it all works with Audible, but if Apple decides that its best interests are to kill the Audible cooperation, it won’t hesitate to do so (as would any self-respecting capitalist institution).  I applaud this approach, for I believe in our system, but I just don’t want to get trapped by it.  I could continue to do what I do right now by buying only DRM free music, but I like the Verizon network I have and have been hearing bad stories about AT&T.

Windows Mobile might be the answer, but I got burned pretty badly by their upgrades not supporting whatever recent purchase I had made, and the fact that Windows CE-then PocketPC-then Mobile seems to have a hard time deciding what it wants to be, so for now I stay away.

I’m hoping that maybe the Verizon (my current phone carrier) and its new embrace of Google’s Android might be the answer.  The Navigation application looks like a real winner no matter what.  I’ve seen the demos of the mail/calendar integration, but the kicker is whether or not Audible is going to support the OS with player.  It took them a while with Zune, so I’m hoping for Android.  Of course by the time I wait, and am rewarded, some new version or new application will be out there that I want to have, and it won’t be supported by whatever current device I carry.

I don’t mind upgrading the hardware every few years or so, but balk at being locked in to a DRM situation that won’t be supported in a future release or new devices.  (Yes, I know I’m locked into Audible, but I was young, and needed to save the money, etc.)

Hacking your way through life's jungle

Hackers - despite the negative media connotation, they are simply folks who like to see how far they can take products in a new direction or beyond the listed limitations. There are also social hackers, who "bend" social conventions to their own purposes. Not necessarily always evil purposes.

But my favorite hacking site is Lifehacker at www.lifehacker.com. At the site they have everything from making your own detergent and saving money, to evaluating and setting up, or building up, your own home server.

It is just a great site to browse through, and a great site to get daily updates from their RSS feed.

Can I switch to 7 yet?

I've been using the beta and RTM versions of Windows 7 for a while now (thanks to my Technet subscription.) But I haven't switched over my main computers (yes more than one - I'm a geek!) to 7 yet because I'm waiting for the free upgrade software from the manufacturer. The computers are new, but were heavily discounted to make room for the preloaded 7 machines - so I took advantage of a sale.

But now I'm chomping at the bit to get 7 loaded on them. One of the cool new features I found is right clicking on the folder that contains the music I want, and choosing to add all the songs in that folder to the Windows Media Player - rather than opening the folder, selecting all the songs, and adding them by right click.

The new feature saves me clicks - and I like it. So I'm thinking of putting on a temporary version of 7 on the machines until the upgrade software comes - just so I can use that, and some other great new features.

Blackberry OS 5 - Where have you been all my life?

On Monday of this week, I got the notification from Blackberry that my Storm's OS has been updated, and that I might want to do the update.

So I did. At first I regretted the effort. I grew to dislike the Storm more and more over the year that I've had it, and the process of upgrading was horrendous. It didn't work at first - or second - or fourth or fifth. It just kept stopping in the middle telling me a fatal error occurred, and left me between the old OS 4.7 and the new OS 5, and a non-functioning phone. I was not pleased.

Patience and time, and really nothing to lose, had me try the upgrade over and over again until finally late in the afternoon it worked. I restored my personal data from a backup that I had, and then took the upgraded phone out for a spin.

WOW. If this thing had acted like this over the past year, I would not have been so strident in expressing my hatred to family and friends. Quick and responsive - the two things I wanted most have arrived. This phone now actually does what I want, when I want! No more push the thing and wait, wait, wait, until it finally figures out what to do. The hated lock/unlock feature now works immediately!

Not only do things work quickly, but there is a bit of eye candy with screen opens and closes, and fast scrolling that "bounces" when you reach the end of a list.

I actually like this phone much, much more. I might even be able to wait for my "new every two" time before switching to an Android phone.

Update:

This morning when checking a voice message I noticed that the number pad remains on the screen when you make a call so that you don't have to call it back up to tap in your access code. Gosh what a novel concept - at least for the Storm. That was one of my pet peeves all along - the minute you send your call, the number pad disappeared. Thank you again!

But I am looking around for access to the App store that I had under 4.7.

What I just read and liked

A great book for someone who wants to know what it takes to move peacefully through life. You probably won’t become a multi-millionaire by using it (or maybe you will), but you will make life more pleasant for everyone around you. The book is "The Go-Giver" and the link below will take you to the Amazon description.

Lords of Content & Delivery, have Mercy on me, a viewer

Or

St. Amazon, hear my prayer

I want to watch what I want, when I want, on the device(s) I want.  For a resident of the U.S., this seems like something that goes right along with individual freedoms, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I can now listen to what I want, when I want, on the device(s) I want - thanks to DRM free music that can be legally purchased through Amazon and other sites (which is why I call them St. Amazon).  I can even pay a slightly higher fee on iTunes for the same opportunity on some music.  The recording industry is not happy about this, even though studies have shown that it actually increases music sales.

But you can’t do that with television.

I can’t purchase just a few cable channels that I want.  I have to purchase “packages” that contain 80% of what I don’t want in order to get what I do want.  What is free over the air does not contain the content from the cable channels that I want.

I can record to a VCR (remember those?), a DVR, or to my home PC (via Microsoft’s Media Center).  But I’m kind of stuck viewing on those devices only - unless I want to go through some rather arcane and time consuming steps to move that content to other devices, or just to other TV’s.  By the way, this recording and viewing later was fought against by the content producers until they were handed a final and stunning defeat.  Much like the recording industry, they aren’t happy about our choices.

I can only watch the great new high definition shows on approved devices (my cable company DVR, and a limited number on my PC) and sometimes those even have time limits before they self-destruct and lots of anti-copying restrictions.  If I want to watch on other devices, I have to purchase copies of them for those devices only, or go through some arcane and time-consuming steps again to try to move them around to other devices, and probably do some illegal circumventing of the Digital Rights Management (DRM) that comes along with the content.

So what do I want?  What is the content of my prayer?

I want to purchase (legally purchase!) a single show (or season of shows), or movies that are digitally delivered to me that I can watch on any device that supports the format.  I also want these shows to be free of DRM so that if a new whiz-bang-must-have-device comes out, I can move the shows over to it with a minimum of problems.  I want to keep the shows as long as I want, to watch whenever I want, as often as I want.

Right now I can lock myself into the Apple DRM world and purchase most of the content I want from Apple and watch it on an iPod and even dock that iPod with my TVs to move the content around.  This is most of the way there.  The only problem is being locked into the iPod ecosystem.

Yes, lots of questions arise, and maybe in the future I’ll add my own two cents in to the issues.  But for now, I just offer my prayer and hope the Lords of Content and Delivery hear and consider it.

Nerd-vana?

I'm sitting on a flight, 35,000 feet over Oklahoma, using a netbook running Windows 7 Ultimate, connected to free Wi-Fi (to get us interested in the service) while accessing my Windows Home Server and posting to a blog.

Does it get any better than this?

Tim Ferriss & Kevin Rose

Tim and Kevin from Glenn McElhose on Vimeo.

IE8 and Internet History

An amusing look of how we got here.  Yes, a commercial for IE8 too, but tolerable.

Is it over yet?

This coming Friday is the finale of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series that’s been limping along for the last four years.

I was a fan of the original Battlestar series that ran for just one season back in 1979.  I hid my eyes and pretended I saw nothing (Nothing!) at the Galactica: 1980 mistake.  So when the revival was finally real, I looked forward to it all, even with the casting choices and gender changes from the original.

I’ve never gotten used to the whole seizure inducing, stomach rolling, jittery camera technique.  I have no idea what it adds to the storytelling, but hey what do I know, I’m just a consumer of the product, I’m not a visionary producer or something.

Overall, after staying with this slowly dying show for four years, I can’t help feeling like they never really advanced the show from the original 1979 version.  Last vestiges of humanity looking for Earth.  We got lots of fraks (but oddly few felgercarbs) to make us all grin like adolescent schoolboys who got away with a thinly veiled fart joke.  We got to see some smootching and flirting and almost interesting sexual innuendo scenes.  We got to see a few more flying around and shooting things scenes (but again with the stomach rolling camera movements).  But how did the story really advance.  OK, we got the ‘skin job’ Cylons, but that’s just a way around having to spend some money on CG or guys-in-costume Cylons.  Personally I still think the original “By your command” Cylon voice is far more interesting than all the nearly naked Six and Eight views.

I think we had a lot more material in looking at the Cylon society from the first series – which was never really played out but could have been interesting and a good metaphor about authoritarian structures verses democratic ones, etc.  Instead we got “the final five” who somehow used to be super geniuses who built up the entire ‘new’ Cylon race, but are now just drunken, lovesick, addled members of the fugitive fleet.

Oh, and by the way, the original series never really figured out if the Cylons were our machines who rebelled, or an alien race of machines who rebelled.  The new series “our mistakes made this problem” is just so much more 1960’s ‘down with the man’ retread. 

The whole “Earth is poisoned so let’s move on” thing just seemed like a cheap way of not satisfying the viewers and not having to deal with the whole “are they in the future or are they the Chariots of the Gods” angle.  I noticed the new series started out leaning heavily on Glen Larson’s original Egyptian theme, switched over to some Greek and Roman themes, then just dropped it all.  At least Stargate SG-1 did a better job of explaining the old gods of the past.

I’m glad and grateful for the DVR technology that lets me speed through the episodes, especially this last season, hunting for a few moments of interesting or relevant dialogue.

Will I watch the finale.  Actually I’ll record it and yes I’ll sit down and try to pick through it for something interesting.  But I’m just as glad it is ending.  They’ve been stretching out the last few good ideas for almost 3 years now and filling in with mind-numbing angst-ridden dialogue.

Thanks for reviving the series just to show how dead-end it really was.

How the Netbook is changing the industry

I own a netbook and it is really as good as they say.  It does everything I need, weighs nothing compared to a laptop, and unlike what the article says, runs Vista Ultimate like a champion.

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/17-03/mf_netbooks?currentPage=all

If you’re wondering what netbook I use:

Wait for it . . .

Right now most of the coverage of Windows 7’s beta has been quite positive, and I have to say I’ve been impressed too (and I LIKE Vista).  But the real Microsoft haters haven’t had their say yet, and when they yowl, they do so for a very long time, with very little provocation, and with very little proof of problems.

But just wait for it, they will begin soon.  Until then, know that there is a lot to recommend this beta to folks, and a lot of good stuff that is in this OS.

A beta for the masses

Microsoft released a public beta of Windows 7 and was immediately swamped with download requests.  They pulled the beta so they could add more “infrastructure” (servers) to the mix, relaunched, and extended the time you have to download it.

Such a large public beta – basically a free though time-limited version of Windows for folks to use.  Why such niceness?

My theory is they did this for two reasons.  By getting it out there in almost finished form so soon, it will build up a large positive audience to overcome the Vista anxiety.  The second reason is to force the manufacturers of hardware the the publishers of software to get on board and get drivers and patches ready.  One of the big complaints about early Vista was that nothing would run on it (wrong, but that was the impression) because many drivers and patches were not available and took months to get to market.  Already in a lot of online forums that I visit I’ve seen folks screaming for Windows 7 drivers and patches for those few things that don’t work like they did under Vista.

Good job Microsoft.  You’re learning.

The link for Windows 7 on Microsoft’s site is:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx

It’s a Beta!

As I mentioned, I downloaded the Windows 7 beta last night, and I’m blogging from it today.  As I get more used to it, I’ll mention some of my own observations, highlights and lowlights.  One thing to start with, the desktop background photos that come with the beta are beautiful.

Downloading Windows 7 Beta

As I’m watching Steve Ballmer at the CES keynote, I’m downloading the Windows 7 Beta that is available to Technet subscribers, and posting to my blog.  All using my Acer netbook.

Who says these things are underpowered?

Yes, I am in Nerdvana!

GPS Recommendation for my sister

Here’s the unit I recommend for you.

Metro Ride – Phase II

Image via Wikipedia

I had another chance at a Metro ride on Friday as a couple friends and I got together to make a go at having lunch on Mill Avenue in Tempe.  We started at the same Encanto & Central station that two of us had tried on the first day of operations.

We arrived to purchase the tickets from the kiosks.  We were able to start through the process when suddenly an announcement came that the train was delayed.  Huh?  So we asked a couple of the folks waiting if they knew what that meant.  We were told nothing much, those announcements had been heard before.  So we bravely purchased 3 all-day passes for the three of us and used a credit card.

When the train arrived it was standing room only, but no where near the crowds of the first few days.  I had braved the easterly run before, but my friends had not, so this was a new experience.

One of my friends is an avid mass transit, urban revival fan.  He was full of praise for the system, as he should be.  At this point it is still very clean and smooth in operating.  His only negative comments were about the route chosen in that east bound on Jefferson and Washington are not the most attractive views of the city, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of opportunities for folks to get on the train once you leave the central core.  He was also saying that most of the land along the Jefferson and Washington corridors should be bought up and rebuilt with the kind of development that urban planners drool over.  Not having that kind of money ourselves, I guess that’s for another day.  About halfway through the ride, we were actually able to be seated.

We arrived at Mill Avenue, and wanted to walk around a bit before deciding on lunch.  Most of the folks on the train also got out at Mill Avenue.  It seems to be the one ‘destination’ spot on the circuit.  Mill doesn’t change much.  Stores come and go, but the overall college-town feeling is the same.  One thing my urban planning friend did notice was that the Harkins Theatres are gone, the Borders is closing, and the Fascinations upscale sex store that is now there gives an ominous warning.  “If they don’t watch it, this will be nothing but bars and sex shops” was his remark.  He may be onto something.

We had a pleasant lunch, finished walking around a bit, and got on the train back to Encanto & Central.  We did have to stand the rest of the way back.  The amount of people riding did surprise us and it was encouraging.

Later that evening, around 6:30 p.m. I drove back to my home and had to cross Central at Thomas.  As I waited at the light, the Metro went through the intersection heading north and west.  It was standing room only.

My only concerns are what will it be like to wait on those platforms and ride during the months of 100 degree plus temperatures (April to September), and how will it handle large events along the route.  On the previous Wednesday I attended the Insight Bowl in Tempe.  At the beginning and end of the game when crowds were swarming around the stadium, the train had trouble getting through the people walking on the tracks.  The roads were closed to help traffic get in and out, so folks were not going to marked crossings to cross roads that had no traffic.  Only the train was passing through, and it had to slow down and almost stop several times while sounding its horn to get people to move.

Let’s wait and see.

Why I’m going back to Windows Home Server

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve had an on-again/off-again relationship with Windows Home Server.

I started out with the public beta, went running right out and plunked down some hard earned credit to get the pieces of a decent enough rig to run the beta.  As with all beta software it had some rough spots, but I never did run into the dreaded data corruption bug.

After the beta I went out and spent my own money on the OEM software and did a fresh install on the machine.  As prices dropped I added more and more storage to the system.  The WHS machine saved my bacon a couple times by having a full system backup of a couple different hobby systems I have.  On those I like to change and rearrange things often, installing different OS’s and such.  At the end of it all, I like to go back to a clean and stable OS and software set, and the restore feature of WHS is perfect for that.

However I went on vacation this summer, and when I returned, of all the drives on the WHS to die, it was the system drive.  I went to power up and just got “clunk, clunk, clunk” from the system drive.

Except for my system images, I didn’t have anything that I couldn’t afford to lose on the system, and I thought I wanted a dedicated Vista Media Center system more than I wanted the WHS system.  So I popped in a new system drive, and just reformatted the whole thing over to Vista and convinced myself that I was OK to lose my system images.

I’ve been using it as my main Media Center machine/server since the summer, and it works OK when you get Vista to share things with the other systems.

But the main reason I’m going back?  For the backup of my other systems.  I just want that feature.  Also with the public beta of Windows 7 due soon through my Technet subscription, I want to be able to keep an image of the system I choose to move over to 7 so I can go back when and if I need to go back.

For all the other features of WHS, the one I miss the most is the backup feature.  I know you can get other products to do similar things, but since I already have the WHS software, I’m going to go back.

For my Vista Media Center system?  I’ve got a laptop that my sister dropped and broke the screen on, so it will be perfect to just sit and record TV and move it over to the WHS system.