Neuron Computer Services Blog

I am currently in the process of building myself a new server. This server will primarily serve as a file server as well as a learning platform for Windows Server 2008 and other various utilities such as Microsoft CRM 4.0, System Center, and others that come with the Microsoft Action Pack Subscription. I’m a Microsoft Partner so I was able to pass a test and literally be able to purchase tens of thousands of dollars worth of Microsoft software for just $299, all legally.

My original intention was to build my server with six identical 750GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 SATAII hard drives in a RAID-5, with 100GB of the 3.5TB partitioned as the C: drive. However, the RAID array never seemed to initialize properly. I had left the IMSM BIOS utility overnight for 2 whole days with it saying “Initialize”. Finally, I lost patience and gave up on it - especially after I had read some forum comments about Intel’s Matrix RAID slowness in initialization. I immediately tried setting up a RAID-1 array of two of the 750GB hard drives. The initilization was instant and it was immediately available and ready with a status of “Normal”. I then decided to RAID-5 the remaining four hard drives. Again, the initialization was instant and it was immediately available and ready with a status of “Normal”. At this point, I probably should have deleted the arrays and tried the full six disk RAID-5 array creation once more. But, I went ahead and went with the Server 2008 install. The down side to this RAID-1 and RAID-5 mixed setup is I basically “wasted” 1.5 TB of potential space, as two of the 750 GB hard drives have to be dedicated to the RAID-1 mirroring and the RAID-5 parity (although parity is actually distributed across ALL disks, equaling approximately 750GB total for parity data).

The next step was the installation of Server 2008 Standard Edition, x64. I have 8 GB of RAM installed on a Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R motherboard with the Intel P35 chipset and a Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz CPU. The hardware is definitely not server-grade, but it works well for a budget server and so far everything has been installed and running without a hitch. I’m fully going to rely on the RAID-1 and RAID-5 for my nearline backups and an online backup subscription to MozyPro for the more serious business data. This server will finally be the central hub for all of my data - photos, music, videos, documents, e-mail, and business-related data.

So the moral of the story here with Intel Matrix RAID is this: It’s great for a low-cost, budget PC or server but it definitely lacks when it comes to true RAID benefits and performance. A true RAID solution would have, at a minimum, support for up to 8 drives in a RAID-5, battery backup, and onboard dedicated RAM for RAID caching. These RAID solutions costs upwards of $500 for an add-on card alone. The Intel Matrix RAID costs $0 when it’s already included in certain motherboards.

In this post, I’m going to talk about one of the most hated things about computers and the Internet — spam. Spam, also called Junk Email, hits our inbox daily whether we like it or not.

Most of you already have some kind of anti-spam mechanism, whether it’s by hosting with me, using a big ISP’s e-mail, or using a free webmail service like Yahoo! or Google. These all have server-side spam filtering. However, anti-spam is not a perfect science, so some junk mail still slips through. Below, I have listed seven different tips on reducing or circumventing spam.

• Don’t use any “auto-preview” features in your mail client. Examples of this are the Reading Pane in Outlook 2003/2007 or the Preview Pane in Outlook Express/Windows Mail. These should be turned off as they auto-load the e-mail. Most spam is easily identifiable by its sender and subject, which is okay to view.
• Don’t post your e-mail address in plain text on the Internet. Examples include having it on your website (use a contact form instead), posting in forums, chat dialogs, or blogs. Having your e-mail in plain text can easily be found by spam robots that crawl the Internet to harvest e-mails for spamming. Spammers are very sophisticated with this, much like how Google is sophisticated with web search.
• Don’t unsubscribe. Some spam e-mails have an “opt-out” link that simply verifies that you’re a real, active e-mail user who opened their junk e-mail message. Legitimate newsletters, however, usually have good privacy policies, are e-mails that you know you signed up for, and are from trusted, known sources.
• Don’t open suspicious/unknown attachments. Spam e-mails may come with an attachment that looks like it’s a picture or a text file of some sort. This is usually malicious in nature and will usually infect your system with a Trojan that gathers even more e-mail from your own address book. A good anti-virus solution usually circumvents this very well. In fact, AVG AntiVirus 8.0 does this very well. It has plugins that scan incoming emails for these malicious attachments and will either silently take care of it for you, or prompt you to do something about it.
• Don’t open spam e-mails with pictures. The pictures are downloaded from a spammer’s server on the Internet. This lets them track you and see that you opened their message. It’s a welcome mat for even more spam.
• Use a throw-away e-mail address. If you regularly find yourself having to sign up on various websites just to gather information on something, download something, or get something, it may be a good idea to have a “throw-away” e-mail address. This is an address that you can use for sign-ups only and it would be separate from your business or personal address that you only give to friends or family. Free e-mail services such as Google’s Gmail, Yahoo, or MSN Hotmail are easy to sign up for and use. On the more advanced side, I have my own domain “neuroncomputers.com”. So what I do is I create some random, jargon e-mail address like signups392@neuroncomputers.com and use that for awhile. When I see that it gets hit with tons of spam, I simply delete it and create a new one called signups405 and so on so forth.
• And the #1, perfect anti-spam solution is…Don’t Use Email! Of course that would be impossible since email has really become a staple in business and in our personal lives. The good news is, as technology gets better and better, so does the fight against spam. From my own observations with clients and how their email systems are set up, I’ve seen first hand that approximately 98% of all emails have been effectively blocked and discarded as spam. So if you’re actually getting 5-10 spam e-mails per day, that’s only a small fraction of the 2% of e-mails that are not being blocked. I’d certainly hate to have thousands of spam e-mails in my inbox!

If you have any spam-blocking/prevention ideas, questions, or comments, please feel free to share them with me, and I’ll be sure to add your comments to my blog and in my next newsletter edition.

A lot of people are confused about the transition from Windows XP to Windows Vista, especially since Microsoft has really pushed for Vista despite a rocky, well-published start. In this blog post, I’m going to talk about this very situation and give you my honest take on the whole deal with Windows Vista. Read on!

My Take On Windows Vista

For starters, it has always been my policy to stay away from any new operating system release until at least the first service pack (SP) has been released for that particular OS. I did this back in the days of Windows 98, 2000, and even XP. I held onto Windows 2000 the longest, for at least 4 years, well beyond the time frame of Windows XP’s service pack 1 release. I can even recall how people complained about Windows XP’s flaws and shortcomings when it was first released. I’ve seen reviews of the “new Fisher Price toy operating system that does not offer any new, exciting features over Windows 2000″. However, Windows XP is an exception to Microsoft’s line of operating systems because of the fact that it has been the operating system of choice for over 7 years now (it was released in 2001). As such, it has been patched, re-patched, updated, and is currently at SP3 level. The result of 7 years of Patch Tuesday updates has brought on a rock-solid operating system that millions of users have come to love and appreciate. As an IT tech, computer gamer, and computer hobbyist, it still remains my operating system of choice for myself, friends, family, and clients. I currently run Windows XP on my primary desktop PC as well as my “Tech Station” PC that I use to backup hard drives and serve out files on my network.

My Dell XPS m1330 Laptop Came Preloaded with…

I purchased my new Dell laptop back in November of 2007 preloaded with, you guessed it, Windows Vista. The first service pack was not yet released for Vista at this time, so I actually did break my own golden rule of “wait for SP1″. However, since I am an IT technician, I have to stay on top of the game and keep my knowledge and skills sharp with the latest software and hardware technologies. This was the only reason I chose to get my laptop preloaded with Vista. Despite all of the negative publicity surrounding Vista in terms of performance, stability, and most importantly, compatibility, I personally did not experience any problems whatsoever with my Vista laptop. However, with other clients’ Vista computers, the most common problems I faced were:

• Printer compatibility: Very, very rocky in the beginning. It was nearly impossible to get even a 6 month old printer to work with Vista as drivers were not released. Microsoft had completely changed the printing subsystem, so as a result, it broke a lot of applications’ printing capabilities as well as printers.
• Software compatibility: While Vista does have a “compatibility mode” feature where you can make programs run as if it were installed on Windows XP, for example, they were still flaky and unstable in some cases.
• Learning curve: The user interface of Vista has changed dramatically from XP. It took time for some clients to adjust to the interface. While you can turn off a lot of Vista’s new user interface features, and make it look practically like XP, it’s still a different and unfamiliar way of doing things.
• Performance: Forget about running Vista on less than 2 GB of RAM. You can also forget about running Vista’s Aero interface on a slower, older graphics card. Memory requirements for Windows XP are recommended to be at least 128 MB (512 for even better performance) whereas Vista recommends 1 GB. It’s such a huge leap in memory requirements, but luckily memory upgrades have become dirt cheap.

The Future of Windows XP

Microsoft officially stopped selling Windows XP on June 30, 2008. You can no longer walk into a retail store to pick up a copy of Windows XP. However, the good news is, OEMs like Dell or me can still provide copies of Windows XP on preloaded systems. You can purchase a Dell with a valid Windows Vista license and legally “downgrade” to Windows XP and the computer will come shipped with XP preloaded and ready to go. The same holds true if you want to purchase a PC from me, although there won’t be a Vista software DVD included - only Windows XP.

Windows XP patches and support will continue until the end of 2014, even though sales will officially end, regardless of Dell, OEM, etc, at the end of 2009.

So, in short, we have until Q4 2009 to get our hands on Windows XP but our investment in Windows XP is good ’til 2014.

The Bottom Line: Should We Embrace Windows Vista?

My short answer to that is yes, but only for very specific situations. If you are running brand new hardware and have business applications that do support Vista, then it would be an ideal choice. If you have a relatively new Windows XP computer that has absolutely no problems, then there is certainly no need to upgrade to Vista. You wouldn’t be missing out on anything if you chose not to go to Vista in that case.

In my recent experience with working with Windows XP and loading updated third party software, I have noticed some programs actually get broken with their latest update, since they were “fixed” or “optimized” for Vista. This has happened in some cases with clients’ computers and networks where business applications that were once rock-solid on Windows XP became very buggy and broken due to updates tailored for Vista compatibility. Ouch!

As for me, I love the fact that I’m running Vista on my laptop because it is great with managing battery life, networking/wireless connectivity in multiple locations, and has gotten much, much more stable with SP1. However, I’m not in a hurry to switch my main desktop PC over to Vista anytime soon. In fact, I have decided to hang on to my current setup, as-is, until at least 2010, when Windows 7 is slated to come out. At that time, I will upgrade with totally new hardware that would be more compatible and in line with the requirements of the next generation operating system.

Microsoft Corp Chairman Bill Gates is stepping down from daily operations at the software maker, to focus on his philanthropic efforts. Go here to see a cool time line of all the major events in the life of Microsoft, the company he co-founded in 1975, and in the Gates’ life.

This thing I came across by a good friend of mine has absolutely, positively blown me away. It’s called LogMeIn Rescue and it is the coolest thing since sliced bread. I signed up for the 2 week free trial and it has already “paid” for itself many times over. I was able to provide computer repair services to several satisfied clients. I cannot wait to purchase this thing.

Basically the way it works is I send an e-mail with a link or send customers to a special website (customizable later by me), and a PIN code. They input the PIN code, download and run the special program, and we’re connected. It’s as simple as that. Once it’s running, we can chat one on one in an AOL Instant Messenger-like chat window. I can then request various important functions such as the current PCs resource load (CPU, memory, hard drive space used, etc), programs that are running, and even take complete control of their desktop — all with their permission first of course. The best thing of all is this is safe and extremely secure, as it uses 256-bit encryption to transmit information back and forth between me and the client.

What I envision doing in the the very near future is implement a website that is an extension of www.neuroncomputers.com and have clients be able to provide their information and click “Connect”. Initially, I will just offer instant connect access and ask for billing information post-session. In the future, I will accept credit cards and offer the option to purchase “prepaid minutes” or flat-rate services such as “Set up your music player” or “Install your office suite program”.

It is so amazing how technology has progressed to this. With Windows Vista coming out very, very soon (if it hasn’t already — I’m so behind with that), then there will be even more of a need for remote support.