1) Host a set of files somewhere in the cloud that’s at least semi-secure (Amazon S3 comes to mind)

2) Have a client which sits on the PC’s receiving files that will periodically check this file store and make sure their local copy of the files is perfectly synchronized to it. Bonus points if it does this at a block level or any other methods to reduce data transfer. Double bonus points if it will do this all-the-time, in the style of a “Dropbox” type solution.

Dropbox was the inspiration for thinking something like this could exist. For those who do not know, Dropbox is a tool for synchronizing files across multiple computers as well as into the cloud, but it’s based about the needs of a single user across more than one computer, not as much one-to-many. Surely though someone has had to have this thought and used it in a different environment like this.

(Yes, that’s a referral link, but if you do sign up you get extra free space too, so everyone wins.)

Know of such a tool? Send it over in the comments.

I’ve found a tool and some directions on how to get the Strategic Commander working in Windows 7 x64. The directions are here, and the tool to use it, Strategic Engine, is attached to this blog post. I’ll post more on how it works soon, but this will get you started now.

StrategicEngine1.3.exe

• VLC 1280×720 Playback - There is a myriad of reasons that this probably didn’t work. Not only did it stutter badly because the CPU was spiked, I was also trying to play this over a WLAN network! Grant you, Wireless-G can push some data, but it just can’t do both. My recommendation is to keep the video you play on this to DVD sizes or smaller, the Atom processor just isn’t powerful enough to decode much more than that.
• TV Tuner – It’s not because it could not process the analog stream (I did not even try HD ClearQAM Digital). It’s because it can’t handle this AND timeshift. Some of this is my fault as I replaced the hard drive built in with a 60GB OCZ Core V1 SSD, which is formidable in the AAO, it’s not made for the random and quick writes and re-writes of the timeshifting features of both the built-in software OR Windows Media Center. What’s worse, there isn’t a way to turn them off! So, through the limitations of software to just serve basic purpose, this really doesn’t fly on here.
• Gametap – This is a video card limitation, and I need to beta test it more, it’s been awhile since I’ve tried this. GameTap requires a full implementation of OpenGL 2.0, which the Intel Integrated Wireless doesn’t do. There’s probably a middle ground here that I haven’t found, as I suspect many of the games, emulated or not, will do fairly well on here.

Every other task I’ve thrown at it up to this point, it’s done to my satisfaction. These are, of course, realistic wants, I don’t expect to be playing the Orange Box on this, and I don’t want to use it as an encoding box for anything. It’s a basic CPU, but with enough memory and a decent OS, can do great things. Anyone expecting more out of this in any netbook is nuts, and yes, that includes the $1,000 ones from Fujitsu or Sony, even if they have better displays, are smaller, and admittedly look cooler and smaller.

I’m still plenty happy with my Aspire One. My original model is down below $250 now, it’s worth getting. Really!

Why, you get a fun project for me to try of course. This time, it was a CPU upgrade.

The A6442P HP Pavilion desktop wasn’t a slouch when I got it. It had 4GB of RAM, a 500GB Hard Drive, DVD Burner, onboard graphics (which got upgraded to a Quadro card real quick), and USB ports all over the place for $400. The weak link as it turned out? The nice, but not overly zippy E2200 processor. It’s 64-bit capable, and has “Core Duo” type architecture, but still gets the lame yet appropriate title of “Pentium Dual Core”. If you ever look as PassMark results, you’ll know why. It scores around 1,100. So,  for what you get in the package, and the fact it’s x64 out of the box, it was a nice find. But, it had room for upgrade.

Documentation on this sucker is hard to come by, but with a little bit of work, you can find system specs, and information about the motherboard. My initial research showed one very positive thing: this board supports far more than it’s outfitted with from the factory, including up to 8GB in RAM, and processors up to Core 2 Quad’s. However, they show support for Q9xxx processors, but not necessarily Q8xxx processors. So when Micro Center had a deal for a Q8200 processor for $100, I was intrigued. It’s not “officially” supported, but the specs match up to the ones that are supported, except for a slightly smaller L2 cache. I gave in, went and got it, and gave it a shot.

The installation as pretty easy, far easier than the last time I tried processor upgrading or modding (this was back in the Pentium 2 days). I ended up needing to use the old stock fan though, the Intel fan’s plastic snaps didn’t work well in the small form factor. But, considering this chip’s reputation for running cool (it’s very overclockable, but I didn’t want that), this didn’t worry me. Sure enough, it was instantly detected by the BIOS (I had v5.22). Just to be safe, I bumped up the BIOS version to v5.35, and it detected great, didn’t even require a re-activation.

How much of a jump is it? The average PassMark benchmark is 3,161. That’s a 2.87x performance boost, and it instantly took my Vista processor ranking from 5.1 (respectable) to 5.9, likely well off the chart. It also took my memory from 5.4 to 5.9 due to it not being a bottleneck. My system is now clocking in at 5.4, only because of the graphics card, and it’s still pretty darn good!

If you are toting around a system with a E2200 processor, I can’t recommend this enough if your motherboard supports it. The ability to improve your PC by multiples for a low price is hard to ignore, and it’s even pretty good at NewEgg’s current price ($165).

The iPhone App Store has become a breeding ground for some wonderful games, and both big and small companies are realizing that a way they can get people to buy their game is through offering  a demo version, or as it’s always referred to in the App Store world, a lite version. This is fine to do. In fact, I enjoy that they do.

The problem arises from how the rankings system works. Because these are free downloads, they get dumped in with all of the other free downloads, and thus are viewed as strictly free, they take up almost all of the spots for the free downloads! Demo and lite versions really are different than truly free!

So, in the next iteration of the stop especially with the 3.0 OS, I would love to see a differentiation somewhere. Ideally, I would love a demo section, but would settle for breaking out “free apps” and “free games” as two separate entities. I think it would allow people who are genuinely making a free app, or a gateway to their web service (like Evernote) more recognized, as they should be, compared to the demo of the game they want you to pay for.

Maybe accelerating my system is the thing to do. Enter eBoostr, what’s been commonly called “ReadyBoost” for XP. Just like that fated feature, there is a lot of discussion to see whether it really does anything, either by performance or by battery life standards. Even reports on other blogs seem to ask the same question, and it all depends on the quality of the system. Just like with Vista ReadyBoost, the better the system, the less performance boost you get.

The Aspire One falls squarely at the middle of this line. 1GB of RAM is excellent for XP, but it’s not excessive. The processor is dual-core, but low-end and low power. The battery life is short with a small battery, so even gaining 15 minutes with no performance gain is worth it, especially with the 2GB card I am using being worth about five bucks, tops!

My first impression? It does seem to help a little, just from the sense that I do not see the hard drive working quite as hard. The Aspire One doesn’t have a light to denote access to the SD slot, so I cannot tell quite how much the cache is being hit (and you can trust the stats maybe, but it’s good to see more results).

You used eBoostr? ReadyBoost? Post your thoughts on it in the comments, my follow up will be soon.

THE GOOD

* The size … the trend lately for books like that of the Asus Eee have been to slowly work themself closer to the point of an actual notebook, which defeats the point of their existence. This machine at 2 pounds, and with a 9″ screen is perfect. Just as nice to carry as a DVD player would be and far more well rounded.

* Windows XP … this one is a personal preference, I understand, but for me, having a small machine with Windows XP on it works for my needs. I can run every program (including Firefox to write this blog entry) without any slowdowns or problems, and can port all of my data over from my existing environment without any effort. I see the market and reasons for having a mini-Linux version for someone who has no previous machine, but staying within platform is a nice perk.

* The Hard Drive and RAM … those Linux models? Their 512MB of RAM and 8GB (slow) Solid State Drive lock you in, no ability to play around and try anything else. Give me the 120GB hard drive and 1GB RAM of this model any day of the week, it’s XP performance is equal of our Sony Vaio laptops at work, and they are 1.6 Pentium M machines, and I know they weren’t no $350 when they came out!

* USB … 3 USB ports is awesome, it makes up for the couple of weaknesses I will mention. Something is wrong when my netbook has more USB ports than my M1330 work laptop does!

THE BAD

* Internal 3G … many of the netbooks coming up are toting this option, and it would have been nice to have onboard. I can see these being the primary way to get online with mobile broadband very soon, I am relegared to using a USB dongle for this.

* Internal Bluetooth … see the above reason, although low profile Bluetooth is a reality.

* No Recovery CD …. it’s all on the hard drive already, so I cannot recommend enough for users to do a hard drive backup before they fire this up the first time. Maybe my IT experience has made be sensitive to that and untrusting of even the eRecovery tools, but do your own backup dilligence first.

SOME OF BOTH

* The battery … the thing looks no bigger than 3 AA batteries, and that is because it isn’t! It runs on a 3-cell 2100 Mah battery, uses only 30 watts of juice with the super small charger box, and its tiny! It gets about 2.5 hours, which for my needs is not too bad. A lot of people have clamored about this though, and while it would be nice to have 5 hours of battery life, it would also weigh the machine down a bit and defeat some of the benefit of having a machine that small. I look forward to the battery and charger market heating up for this as companies will both offer cheaper standard ways to get juice into the machine (the 6-cell coming out? $100, I am passing) as well as ways to charge it up. I’ve already seen car chargers, I want more!

* Small keyboard … with small screens come small keyboards. You can’t change it, but it has its own advantages of disadvantages.

I expect to post more about my experiences with the laptop soon, but so far, I love the machine!

When would one need the use anymore for a floppy drive? Maybe for an old driver disk that only “extracts to a floppy disk”, or maybe for that old decrepit game otherwise known as abandonware that’s still worth playing! Anyways, most computer don’t come with a floppy drive anymore, nor should they. CD Writers and USB Flash Drives are the new de-facto way to move your stuff around, as wel they should be.

BUT, should you have a program that at least wants to act like a floppy drive is there for compatibility reasons, or if you want to make a image file for one of those old emulators. Go HERE. It’s a link to VMBack, a virtual floppy drive program so you can manipulate floppy disk images as if it was a disk in the drive. It’s Daemon Tools for the 3-1/2″ world.

The article HERE goes through how to do this dual-boot. Quite honesty, it doesn’t seem too much difficult than any other dual-boot setup, but it’s good to know this can be done should you have needs to use the horsepower that your Xeon (or Core 2 Duo) processor lends you!

For seemingly no reason, after installing CS3, the Number Lock key would come on at the Windows Login screen for users. This isn’t a problem for a desktop user with a full keyboard, but really annoying to someone with a laptop screen who thinks they are typing in letters, but in reality are sketching numbers, and thus a non working password.

Thankfully, this thread HERE does a good job of showing where both the individual user options for the NumLock keys are set, as well as the Default User options (which dictate how it is at login). If you’ve run into this, post a comment!