I've gotta say, that I haven't been this happy with those Redmond money grubbers since Windows 2000, and I'm including XP here since that's really a prettied up version of W2K. It seems like every other OS release, they lay a rotten egg. Obviously, I'm talking about ME and Vista, where half-baked ideas, unfinished features are pushed on to the public because they needed to release something and make money.
However; as most of you have found, Windows 7 is a completely different animal; not in how it looks, but in how it functions. I've been on some version of W7 for about a year now and have progressively moved our stable of machines over to it during that time, but its really been in the last month that I've learned to really appreciate it. Why now? That would coincide with me bringing both a file server running Windows Home Server, and a HTPC up running Windows 7 Home Premium (which includes the current Windows Media Center). I've spend a good part of this week configuring this product as well as reloading both my main workstation and laptop on W7 Ultimate.....don't ask (thanks Jake)!
This has been a little a little more challenging than you might think (not because of what you might think either), due to the daily threat of "rolling blackouts", along with the 108-111 degree temps. Basically, I have to get everything done before about 1pm and then I shut down the big machines. Not only due to the "rolling blackout" issue, but it just gets too dang hot in the office with 2-3 machines, 2 printers, and 3 or more monitors running! The other issue, is that there was so much lossless music on the server that it took the clients quite a bit of time to index it all through the network (I'm definitely considering moving to gigabit soon). But once that got done.....WOW!!!
This may not be news to some of you, but its just like the magazine articles have been saying; once you've experienced online/connected media, you really wonder why you didn't do it before. At the core of what makes it possible (at least for not software guru, me) is the networking simplicity of W7 with the pretty much seamless integration of WHS combined through the new Windows Media Center! Side-note here is that I'm still going to be working on getting XBMC (X-Box Media Center) up and running, but the fact of the matter is that WMC has been very simple to set up. I've even been able to get it to recognize and use the cheapo NTSC/ATSC-Tuner-capture card in my workstation to work, when all the forums had said that it wouldn't. So at this point, I can have most any of the computers that has WMC set up to record a program, then archive it to the servers public "recorded TV" folder to be watched by any other computer in the house!
What's so cool about it? Other than the DVR function that I wanted, I found that I'm hooked on Internet TV. I knew it was out there; I'd been watch Revision 3 (the old TechTV) on and off through a browser for some time, but this makes that stuff work just like regular TV with a channel guide and everything. Some of the "over-the-air" stations (notably CBS) has some complete shows on it. I've watched a few NCISs so far. Plus there are other channels that I didn't even know existed like Smithsonian Channel which has some very interesting shows on it....at least for me. I found myself in bed last night watch TV wishing I could just surf the stuff other than what the cable provider had available.
So, there has been grunt work involved of course. Hours of uploading files to the server to that our photos, and music is available anywhere. Turning all the pictures so that they show up right when the computers pull them for the screen saver slideshow: YES, W7 does go out over the network and do that! Which lead me to another great W7 thing: you can turn pictures (even big ones) right from Windows Explorer! Then, there's the organizing, tagging, sorting, and selectively editing the music files to get rid of stuff that we don't like and won't listen to, that came from who knows where. Then there'll be the laborious ripping of the rest of my library into WMA Lossless to come. Let me tell ya, watching the software have the tuner search through the seemingly hundreds of channels of both analog as well as digital is mind-numbing as well, since you know that you'll have to go back and get rid of half the digital channels since they are in a foreign language or are for shopping.
There was some hardware involved (that I haven't already talked about). The most important has been the 2 tuners that I bought. I picked up an off-brand tuner on eBay for about $25 mostly for its capture capabilities, but I've watched a surprising amount of TV on it already. Then there's the well thought of Hauppauge one with 2 internal tuners, so it has the capability to record 2 or watch 1 and record another which is in the HTPC. I found that on Craig's List for $50. Then the "unsung" hero; which was the 12' optical cable that I picked up from Monoprice (if you haven't used them, you should at least look), which has allowed me to send the digital stream directly from the HTPC motherboard to the far superior DAC in my home theater system. Those lossless music files streamed from the server SOUND GOOD!!!
So, I've largely reached my home network goal of being able to do what I want from anywhere and watch/listen to the results from anywhere as well. Most of this was accomplished with the use of free (or at least included in the price) Microsoft software. Amazingly, it works as advertised and the costs has been very affordable! This is no small thing! I know that a lot of guys out there have been able to do all this for some time, but I'm kind of software-phobic/lazy, so if its not easy, I won't do it.
As an addendum: I do have a hardware purchase bulletin to report. I found a ThinkPad Z60t listed on Craig's List on Monday night for $40. The add said that the seller needed to sell it immediately and had a August 4th deadline (yesterday). I figured that it was either garbage or he'd already sold it, but I emailed anyway. Low and behold I got a reply back saying that he still had it, but need to meet and get it done quickly which sounded suspicious. Turns out that he's a medical school student down at UT Southwestern, has just graduated and leaving to go back to China this weekend! He had tried to sell it for the last 2 weeks (needed it for school till then), but had a hard time doing so. He had dropped the price twice (I found the other ads), but had trouble selling it, since he didn't clean it up, his kids had pulled off 2 keys (I fixed them in 5 minutes), and the battery was dead.
The lesson here is that, if you intend to be frugal, you pretty much have to do the homework or you miss opportunities like this! This isn't a smoking hot, almost-new computer by any stretch of the imagination, but its worth at least $150-175, cleaned up! Plus I also spied a Salvation Army store across the street from the hospital complex. You think that they might have some interesting stuff that all those future (and present) doctors have donated!?!
Gotta run; the office is heating up!
No comments:
Post a Comment