First off a bit of research was needed. Make sure I can run everything I want... Quick recap

• Squeezecenter for my Squeezebox
• MediaTomb or other for UPNP DNLA Server
• Bittorent Daemon with XMLRPC or Web front end
• iTunes server
• Samba/CIFS Server
• Provides remote access into my LAN via SSH (possibly VPN over time)
• ZFS reliable storage.
• Boot from USB Pen Drive

First up I looked at the 8.0 based RC releases that are currently being worked. Unfortunately they are just RCs and with a major change underway the RC (4) doesn't hit all the boxes.. And unfortunately there are no addons right now to add the support.

On the plus side - it installs fast and easily, and your up and running real quick. Once installed and booting from the USB drive it allows you to log in via the web interface. Everything is easily configurable, and setup is a doddle. Which makes the failures even harder to bear - so nice, so close - but missing what I need.

So I looked at 7.x series. And while now every box is ticked there is one annoying issue - the Squeezebox server is enabled through installing the slimNAS package - but it only supports 32bit and thus I can't make use of my lovely 8GB of memory. Besides - surely with ZFS I want to use that as much as possible.

Now, there is one solution. Install FreeBSD on a PC and then create the packages I need for running Squeezebox server or whatever I want. It's defintely an option.. however I would be missing some of the slick menus that are there in freeNAS.

And unfortuantely that's where we must part ways with FreeNAS. It's so close to being exactly what I need, but is just difficient in a few parts. If I had more time I'd definitely put in the effort to get it fully up to speed - but I want to get the server running asap. I will come back once it hits 8.1 or something, but for now it's not for me....

Nexty Entry - FreeBSD.

However there were faults with it.

1. Noisy - the Fan on the CPU was too loud, time to replace it.
2. Too many hot hardisks - some low capacity
3. Not all the same size hard disks - so no RAID
4. No redundancy so every time there's an electrical storm I run the risk of another disk blowout
5. Low memory - 2GB

An opportunity arose to upgrade the CPU to a quad core i7, (from an old core 2 duo E6300) - so got a new motherboard, CPU was free, 8GB of DDR3, and 4x 2TB Green SATA2 harddisks. Total cost - just €440 delivered!

So I've stripped out the old mobo/cpu/memory and harddisks and installed all the new gear. Case is now much more streamlined (going from ATX to mATX) as I've less drives, etc. Big Q now is what to run on it....

To solve pain point #4 above I need RAID. I could use the Intel chipset to do a RAID 1 reducing my 8TB to 4TB but with full backups. Seemed a bit pointless to me to waste 2 disks on redundancy. So ideally RAID5 is needed. And this is where I started to do a little more searching/thinking... There are 2 ways to do RAID - hardware or software. Each has some gotchas, as well as pluses obviously.

For hardware I had a choice - use the Intel stuff, which didn't have RAID5, or buy an external controller. Unfortunately even cheap controllers aren't cheap - about €160 (1/3 of my system price), and good ones are even more expensive (almost the same price again!). While Hardware gives you performance, your at the mercy of the vendor in ensuring compatability of your RAID set on future products if something were to go wrong - e.g. try taking a RAID set from one Intel chipset to another - it doesn't work. Independent RAID cards are a bit better this way - btu your still at their mercy.

So what about software.. Well things are a bit better here. You can always go back and get the software - even possibly an archive of a full distro with the right drivers and software - so in theory it's a lot less risky. But the downside is performance. You now have to use your CPU much more to do the overheads of the RAID algorithm, and write to the individual disks. Lucky me that I've managed to score a nice i7 for my troubles

Which left me looking at solutions. Time and time again it came back to ZFS being the best performing of the lot. However now I had a dilema. ZFS is supported on OpenSolaris, Linux and FreeBSD (as well as Mac OS-X but not gonna run that). Which to pick...

Linux I'm most familiar with. Linux ZFS support has issues, but is developing quite rapidly - 3 solutions exist, 2 native ZFS (zfsonlinux and kqstor)and a FUSE (zfs-on-fuse) implementation. It's been gathering pace and catching up on features but for the most part the impression I get by googling is that the FUSE version isn't efficient, and the native one isn't reliable. Which kind of defeats the purpose of choosing it. I could always go with MD driver on Linux, but I've ruled that out for now as I'd like to get the performance of ZFS if I can

I had a quick look at OpenSolaris - and there is still some activity - particularly on EON the NAS version. However, with Oracle effectively killing it last year it's hard to recommend using it.

And finally - freeBSD. 3 Install options are open to me - freeBSD release itself which actually has quite an old, but stable ZFS support (ZPool version 15), freeNAS which is based on freeBSD, or PC-BSD which is a desktop based distro. From a freeBSD install there are mechanisms, like nanoBSD, to reduce the install down to a USB pendrive. And this is what the freeNAS guys have also moved to - then add their magic on top. Unfortunately again, the ZFS version is still only version 14/15. FreeNAS is undergoing a lot of development now as it moves to use nanoBSD and get it's GUIs updated, etc. It's really nice and worth a look. And finally PC-BSD, it's a desktop version of freeBSD - requires a large install, but looks nice - may even just look for myself.

In conclusion - for latest ZFS versions Linux or OpenSolaris are ahead of the game right now. FreeBSD will get an update to v28 at some point - it's just a matter of time. I may be coming down too hard on the Linux versions, but impressions are slow or unreliable.. I may just have to test them to see which is better. And finally OpenSolaris - is it truly dead?

I'll be sampling these over the coming days/weeks and hope to blog about experiences.

First up FreeNAS 8.0 RC4

I implemented my spam stopping fixes only to break the blogging software - agghh.. Eventually I stripped back everything and got it working and restarted. Fingers crossed we're up and running more.

So, to my first new entry:

I've been trying out a lot of RSS readers on my latest phone - HTC Desire HD.

First off was Pulse from alphonsolabs. Great reader, and a very slick UI. The overall UI fits perfectly for a smartphone or tablet, allowing you to flick up and down through the various feeds quickly and easily. The downside at the time was lack of feeds on the smartphone versions - just 25. Version 2.0 changed that and upped the streams to  60! However - to do that they've had to split the streams into bundles of 12 streams across 5 pages. IMHO this goes against what the original UI was all about.. Yes I can customize whats on what page, but why limit to 12 streams. In previous version having all 25 streams there in 1 page wasn't an issue - in fact I wanted more! Now I have pages and pages...

In between these 2 versions of pulse I tried a few others, but what really stood out and am still using is Taptu. At first glance it's very similar to Pulse. But digging a little further things get better. First off the number of streams was higher (is now less since Pulse went to 2.0) which is always good. But more importantly it has 1 really cool and useful feature. You can merge the streams into a single stream enabling you to quickly scan through similarly related streams in one easy swipe across the screen - very useful when scrolling through news from various sources, but similar materials - e.g. Android news sites. The downsides are there too though - main one being that restriction of 30 streams While some might say the UI isn't as slick as Pulse's I actually prefer the card mechanism deployed in Taptu - is far easier to read for me. However, I think some ability to customize backgrounds and card colours could vastly improve the UI for all.

As nice as both of these readers are (and there are a bunch of others out there) they miss one important aspect. I don't just browse these news streams on a single device. I use my smart phone a lot, but not as much as my laptop, or my desktop, or even my work laptop. Which poses a problem - how do I prevent myself reading the same topic again and again as I move from one device to another. All of these readers fail completely at this hurdle... Not only do they not provide a desktop client, then do not sync across devices. Which is why once again I find myself falling back towards Google Reader and it's android app. It may not be as slick, it may not even be well targetted to touch screen devices - but it's the only tool out there that ensures I don't waste a lot of time reading news I've already read!

Why?

Blog spam...

I would log in every week or so meaning to post but end up spending about 30mins cleaning out spamming comments off the previous entries. And by the time I finished, any motivation I had to create a new post was gone. Comment spam on blogs is such a demotivator.

And before you ask.. I do have anti-spam enabled, installed and running on the software. However a lot gets through. IMHO the main culprit was the inclusion of a URL entry on the comment form. So how to remove it.. I've checked every setting possible in b2evo to no avail. Everytime I deleted the spam comments I did a google search on how to remove, found nothing and then stopped.

That was until a few weeks ago. Someone else asked on the b2evo forums and it was finally answered. Yes, I could have asked myself sometime ago, but again - the demotivating factor.. I really wasn't motivated to continue blogging, and thus why investigate too hard. But now, armed with the tips here http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?t=21622 I've hopefully put in place something which will stop spammers just popping on stupid comments with links to their sites - fingers crossed this reduced the amount of crap in my inbox, and thus allow me to post more.

So, I'm back. I promise to get at least 1 post in this side of xmas, and try and get back to doing more regular updates. I've so much I'd like to post about...

Until then

Rik.

Been doing quite a bit of travelling lately so have given my latest gear a good trial. First up is my Acer laptop. It's small 11" screen combined with a decent sized keyboard was excellent for use on the airplane. Did a range of things from watching HD videos on the laptop, to doing some php programming and debugging. All was pretty easy and pleasurable to do. Combine that with the 8hrs battery life I managed to get all of my 1st flight of 6hrs, and a good portion of my second one (5hrs) before I needed to charge or switch off. Finally, the ability to play a few games while at the hotel was the icing on the cake. The only downside was the graphics card - it's just not up to most modern games, and while it was quite good at playing the original Halo, newer games weren't so lucky. Might consider an upgrade next year...

Next up was my Nook. There is one serious downside of e-readers! That is they are considered portbale electronic devices and so you must turn them off for takeoff and landing... This is a pain. The main times I want to read are just these 2 points in the flight. Seriously need someway for them to bypass this rule and allow readers to continue reading at these times just like reading a real book. Aside from that everything was pretty good. Got a few free books through various offers, and bought a few. Was much handier to bring 1 e-reader instead of 3 or 4 big books. The GSM radio doesn't work in Ireland which is a pity, but at least I have wifi for when I'm at home.

Up next, my phone. Data roaming is way too expensive. I tried to see if I could get some prepaid data SIM card or similar to no avail. I did get a prepaid SIM for voice - but I didn't find any data plans. The good thing with the SIM card is I am now able to log into the US google market and from there buy and download paid apps! Very handy. Have some handy apps like tripit, and more to keep an eye on travel, and various news apps to keep me up to date, as well as facebook and twitter

And finally, my headset - Astro A30 Gaming headset. I haven't put a post up on these before. Might do it in the future. The really nice things about these are they are not noise cancelling, but at the same time they worked incredibly well on the plane, with very little background noise making it through so I was able to watch movies and listen to music very well. They are light which made it easy for transport, and I like the ability to disconnect the main audio connections close to the headset and store the cable. Particularly handy when going between flights when I didn't want to remove the headset, just take care of the cables.

A final note is how both the nook and my phone charge off micro-usb. This meant I had just a single charger for both with me! Very handy

Back in the days with my Palm I used to use a few different ereader software packages and found it quite good. Main disadvantage I've always had is the backlit screen.

Ever try reading a 500 page PDF file on a laptop or PC monitor in a single sitting? Sounds mad - right? Why is that do you think... For my part it's that hours of looking at a backlit monitor or screen is really tiring on the eyes. 1 or 2 hours is ok, but 5 or 6 is a definite no-no. You need to constantly refocus on something else, or go boggle-eyed.

So e-ink really intrigued me. Sony ereaders were the first, but the lack of content and early prices just didn't appeal. Then came the Kindle from Amazon.com. Now we had something with great content and some cool features. I managed to play with one of the early ones and it was buggy. Time was needed for the tech to mature a little. I'm considered by many friends as an early adoptor - but in all honesty I do have a threshold of how much pain I'm willing to put up with, and the first Kindle and Sony's were just that.

When Barnes and Noble announced the Nook I was intrigued... Now finally we had competition in the market, that and the fact that it was to be based on Android, have more of an open interface, and also be supported by one of the major bookstores in the US. Which led me to the next problem - I'm not living in the US.

For me, there are 2 main competitors - The Kindle and the Nook. An ipad or app for android/iphone just puts me back to my old days - I want e-ink.

The Kindle had 1 major issue for me at the start - availability of it here in Europe, and my inability to order content off the amazon.com store (.co.uk didn't have any content). Then Amazon expanded it to europe but content is very limited and it's expensive.

The Nook has similar limitations. You can only buy content through the device in the US, or with a US credit card through their online store. But this where it differed for me.. I already have a virtual prepaid credit card for use in the US. I already have a B&N account as I'm over in the US quite often and usually buy my books when I'm over. Largely because they're cheaper than here in Ireland, but also the experience in a US book store is really nice - you can read books, get coffee, are basically considered a valuable customer - try that in a book store here and you'ld probably get thrown out. And this leads me to one other feature which was the kicker for me - with the Nook you get automatic free wifi when in a B&N store as well as the ability to read books for free when in the store.

So I got one this last trip to NYC. And within minutes ordered about 3 books I was considering buying anyway. I bought 1 through the whispernet (free 3G connection) which downloaded straight away, and then 1 through the online store with my laptop and that was downloaded when I sycned up my Nook over the whispernet again.And just to complete the pay/download story I did try to connect to whispernet here in Ireland - so far no joy But I did order 1 more book online with my PC, and connecting via wifi the Nook downloaded it - sorted!

So what's it like...

Well, it's pretty much like reading a book. I've read quite a few reviews ahead of purchasing and to be honest it was a close call between it and the Kindle. Getting my hands on a US version easily swung it. That said, those reviews weren't all glowing. Quite a few of the issues appear to have been fixed in the 1.3 firmware update so pretty much everything works well for me. If I exit one book, go to another and then come back it knows where I left off. I can have quite a few bookmarks in a book - haven't hit a limit yet, but have yet to really push it.

I read "Haze" by L.E.Modesitt (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Haze/L-E-Modesitt/e/9781429969062/?) on the plane back to Ireland - all 272 pages (I slept some of the way) and it was a delight to read. Going back to the US (west coast this time, so 2x 5-6hr flights) in a few weeks time, and it'll be the great to carry just one Nook instead of 4 books!!! And that's where this thing really comes to the fore - travelling. Every trip to the west coast of US was 2 books - or if I go away on vacation usually 2 books a week (including the flight). So now I don't need to carry so much and I also get the benefit of cheaper US books so win-win for me

There's probably a lot more to it - but am only still getting used to it. Nearly finished my 2nd book - Imperium (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Imperium/Robert-Harris/e/9780743293877/?) by Robert Harris. After that I think I'll do a bit more exploring on the device and get back with another post.

Anyway, back to the main feature.

A while back I posted about my new phone - HTC Hero.
Well it was short lived... I have moved on.
I'm now a proud (definitely ) owner of a HTC Desire.

Main reasons for changing:

• Android 2.1
• AMOLED display
• Increased Resolution of the display
• 1GHz Processor
• Better Camera

I loved the Hero. The main point is connectivity and the integration of everything. I tend not to use IM too much on my work desktop anymore - it's on my phone, why open/close it depending on if I'm going to meetings, etc.. Instead it's on all the time.

So what has improved?

• The browser in the Desire has improved massively. Partly due to the increase in screen resolution, but lots of little things seem to draw better now.
• The contacts integration for facebook is much better. I did have a problem early on with the desire where the contacts manager had linked some google and facebook contacts together, but the wrong way round which meant I kept losing phone info, etc. I unliked and did it the right way round - google as primary and facebook as a link, and it's all sorted.
• The screen - oh the lovely screen. Resolution is massively up. From 320x480 to 480x800 and boy does it make a difference!
• With the 1GHz processor it's hugely more responsive coming out of idle. Still have the odd pause when installing new apps, but now the phne has the compute power to make pretty much most if not all activities integral to my daily life. In my few weeks of ownership, I don't think I've yet to be frustrated waiting on it.
• More on board memory means apps tend to stay resident for much longer, and can quickly swap
• Android 2.1 v Android 1.6. Amazingly the swap isn't as big as I'd hoped. Some tweaks here and there, but generally HTC had done a good job with their Sense UI on the Hero, that the move to Sense UI on 2.1 isn't a huge leap. That said, it is nice to be current It's still a big pity that they don't get 2.1 onto the Hero soon (now pushed to June) which would really show the differences between the two.

And the bad - none yet to mention. I do miss the chin of the Hero which is now on the HTC Legend but I really wanted the 1GHz CPU. Why do I miss it? It's hard to pinpoint but I think that it gave a good reference when putting the phone to your head on a call... I find I have to move the phone around quite a bit to get the speaker properly aligned to my ear.. Never had the issue with the hero. Am sure in a week or 2 that'll disappear.

Overall - the Desire is the Android device I hoped it would be, and that I wanted when I first bought the hero.

P.S. 5 month old HTC Hero for sale (perfect condition )

However, I've sold the eeePC onwards. Why?
Well, to be honest it was just too many compromises. Yes it was great to have a small PC that I could just pop into the luggage and take with me. It could just about do Youtube videos, but in general the graphics (GMA945) is terrible. No acceleration of anything, so you have to rely on the Atom processor (an N270). Which then shows up the Atom for what it is - not quite there yet. That coupled with this ridiculous notion of only small screen resolutions on netbooks (Intel's definition apparently) meant I was constantly frustrated with scrolling in a 1024x600 screen. Anytime I did anything other than browse or IM the app wouldn't fit on the screen res!! So I decided it's time to look around and see what I could get in laptop form that would be resonable priced, portable and have enough grunt to do my normal activities..

I did some searching, and initially I went down the nettop route again looking at new eeePCs (the T91MT 9" and T101MT 10" tablets looked nice), the Viliv S10 and others. but there was so many gotcha's. Most had the same silly restriction on the 10" screen - i.e. 1024x600, or if you wanted more than 11" screens were the requirement. Dell do a 10" screen with 1388x768 but it's expensive and it's a Dell - nothing against them, but I've never found them reliable and have shunned them for many years now - that's just my prefernce.

I digress... back to the 11" screens. If I'm to have a 11" screen, why would I want an atom based netbook. At this size we're starting to reach into laptop territory - so I decided to look around and came up with the Samsung X120. This looked perfect. Only downside was battery life - trustedreviews only got 2.5hrs out of it!!! So back to the drawing board...

Finally I zoned in on this, the Acer Aspire 1810tz. For me, it was a perfect match for what I wanted. Small device, good screen res, and decent CPU and the price --- I got it delivered for €540. Cheaper than all the other options (including the netbooks) I was looking at.

So what's it like...

First off, battery life. It truly is brilliant. I charged up about 2 days ago, and still using it with on average about 3-4hrs a day.. Looks like I will need to charge in the next hour - but I reckon it'll be just over 8hrs. Pretty good on a new battery.

The screen is lovely - crystal clear and easy to work with. Couple that with the GMA X4500MHD graphics means I can watch 720p movies with very little CPU utilisation freeing up my nice CULV pentium cores (2 of them) for other tasks. Have streamed a few movies off my media server, and it works very well.

The keyboard takes a little getting used to. They keys feel a little bigger than I'm used to - not just coming from a 9" netbook, but also smaller than my normal desktop keyboards. Other than that, it perfectly reasonable to type with - hence a nice long blog post

It came with Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit pre installed. Using Windows 7 already on other machines and it works very well. Lots of trial apps installed, so will need to remove them all. Looks like MS Works is installed along with Office 2007 trial. I like neither so both will be coming off pretty soon.

Build quality is good. Feels as sturdy as my eeepc 900A, and as good as my work laptop Lenovo T61. My only concern is the screen hinges do look a little flaky. But I've seen them on Aspires for a while so am hoping it's just a visual thing.

Now - the downsides...

The UK/Ireland model doesn't have bluetooth built in. I knew this when buying it and isn't a cause for concern. Some countries do have it, but is definitely not on this. I looked inside (under the memory flap) and it's got 2 spots for mini-pcie cards, with just one connector populated on the board for a half size card in which is the Intel Wifi 1000BGN card. So am guessing to easy way to retrofit the bluetooth back in just yet.

The second downside is that wifi card. It's just a 2.4MHz wifi card, so you do get 11n, but not 5Ghz. A pity, but I can live with it for now. Must investigate if that other PCIe socket could be populated and fit a proper card.

No real issues to report... Out of the box it worked well. The battery takes a long time to fill up from empty (surprising long actually) and the eRecovery tool to create the recovery CDs gives an error on the 3rd DVD - contacting Acer support to see if there's a work around for it.

Overall though - Highly recommended if you want something light and portable. Much better than any of the netbooks I've seen, and believe me you won't miss moving from 9" netbook to 11" laptop

Finally, just a note on Atom. You may feel I'm really coming down on it. Well, yes I am. Main issue is the reluctance of Intel to mary a nice low power CPU with a decent graphics chip. At least in the Z520 they started, but again crippled the whole thing by limiting the resolution of screens. Not sure how Dell is getting away with their high res screens - but from what I can see they are among the few (possibly HP have one too ).

I'm not convinced by the newer pineview device either. The Grfx core on those have (IMHO) gone backwards with only MPEG2 accelerated decode - no MPEG4 that was in the Z5xx devices. ION is the better job, but netbooks are only starting to surface now, and with pineview devices out there the future of ION is uncertain. That coupled with the prices of these devices continuing to keep pushing up.

A quick survey of many online stores shows netbook prices are now in the €250-€450 mark and climbing. That is nuts. €250 - yes good price. €450, I prefer spending the extra and getting something that is useful for more than just browsing..