Windows Sysinternals

Hey all, I haven’t posted about Sysinternals in a while. As you all know, newsid has been discontinued and i have yet to find a worthy application that did the same. I mean sure you can use sysprep, but this was easier Anyone have any suggestions?

Anyways onto the updates. These were released March 3rd.

• AdExplorer v1.30
  This update to AdExplorer, an Active Directory editor, has major node expansion performance improvements and a number of minor bug fixes.
• VMMap v2.6
  VMMap, a powerful process virtual and physical memory analysis tool, now shows both graphical and numeric breakdowns of private virtual memory, as well as heap configuration flags.

The following were added January 11th.

• ProcDump v1.7
  This update to ProcDump, a command-line utility that will generate memory dumps of processes based on various selectable criteria, now supports periodic timed dumps as well as dumps based on virtual memory thresholds.
• AccessChk v4.24
  AccessChk, a utility that shows effective security permissions for files, registry keys, services, and more, now supports process tokens.

You can check out all the applications in the Sysinternals Utilities Index here, or you can just go ahead and download the whole suite here.

-NS

Cisco’s next-generation Internet router

Its called the CRS-3, it is mainly for the world’s largest Internet service providers, your not likely to install one in your home!

The new router, which starts at $90,000, will be sold to the world’s largest Internet service providers. These aren’t your run-of-the-mill ISPs selling 10 Mbps broadband service to consumers. These companies, such as AT&T, Verizon Communications, Level3, and Sprint, are the Internet service providers that aggregate and shuttle the bulk of the nation’s Internet traffic across what is known as “the Internet backbone.”

It offers 12 times the traffic bandwidth than its older brother, the CRS-1, from 2004. The CRS-3 can handle 322 terabits per second.

Check out the full story here.

Palm Pre, just not enough.

I had high hopes for the Palm Pre, even though I knew I wasn’t going to get one, I still liked the design, the interface, and the web os… but stock have fallen and the demand for the Palm Pre is just not there.

The Pre, boasting a new operating system called Web OS, was released to fanfare in 2009 and considered by many analysts a make-or-break product for a company that pioneered handheld computing. A plummeting market value and rising concerns that Palm can’t drum up demand for its most heavily marketed products may put the company in the crosshairs of an acquirer. “The possibility for merger at these levels is certainly more reasonable, given the valuation, than it was nine months ago,” says Scott Searle, an analyst at Merriman Curhan Ford & Co. in New York who rates the stock neutral. “The question is, can Palm achieve enough scale to be relevant? They need more products, more distribution and more applications.” Palm spokeswoman Lynn Fox declined to comment.

Some analysts speak of aquisition, and some say that they have one shot left. Read the full story here.

Good Luck Palm.

-NS

iPad Competition? Gigabyte might have the answer.

Hey everyone! I was just browsing around the net earlier and came upon this news story… could this be Microsoft’s answer to the iPad, a Netvertible? Gigabyte will soon release the Gigabyte T1000, while it might not net as smooth an interface as the iPad, i think upgradingto 2GB+ of ram, would make the experience pleasurable. The specs below are from a cached version of Gigabyte’s website, not sure why they pulled it down, maybe it was posted too early. There is no pricing mentioned either…

Intel® Atom™ Processor N450(1.66GHz)/ N470(1.83GHz) 
Windows® 7 Compliant 
Intel® NM10 Express chipset
Memory 1GB DDRII 
Intel® GMA3150
LCD 10.1″ LCD, 1366×768 Resolution
HDD 250GB 2.5″ SATA HDD 
I/O Port USB(2.0)*2, eSATA/USB Combo, Mic-in, Earphone-out, D-Sub, RJ45, 4-in-1 card reader(SD/MMC/MS/MS Pro), Express card, DC-in 
Audio 1.5 Watt Speakers*2, Internal Mic-in
Bluetooth Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR 
Webcam 1.3 Mega Pixel Webcam 
LAN Ethernet 10/100 Base-T 
Wireless LAN 802.11b/g/n
Battery Li-ion 4 cell, 4500mAh (T1000X)
Li-ion 6 cell, 7650mAh (T1000P)
 
Dimension  265(W) x 195(D) x 38.5(H) mm 265(W) x 214(D) x 41.4(H) mm 
Weight ~1.3kg (with 4-cell battery) (T1000X)
~1.48kg (with 6-cell battery) (T1000P)

I myself have an aging netbook, but you know what? It still does the job, next on my list will definitely be a “Netvertible” or “Tablet Netbook”.

-NS

Microsoft Security Essentials

Well Microsoft finally released a free Antivirus and Malware application, and I must say, its clean, not overly processor intensive, and gets the job done. I personally endorse it, as I have been using it for some time and am very pleased.

Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free* download from Microsoft that is simple to install, easy to use, and always kept up to date so you can be assured your PC is protected by the latest technology. It’s easy to tell if your PC is secure — when you’re green, you’re good. It’s that simple.

Microsoft Security Essentials runs quietly and efficiently in the background so that you are free to use your Windows-based PC the way you want—without interruptions or long computer wait times.

If you want to get started right away, go to the Security Essentials Site, then click on the big blue “Download Now” button.

For the not so tech-savy people go here to learn how install, scan for viruses and malware, or fix an problem.

-NS

BlackBerry Bold 9700 (Bold 2)

Okay all you business people out there… I have been using my BlackBerry Curve 8900 for quite some time, I am very happy with it, everything about it is great minus a few aesthetics here and there. But what more could a young tech savvy guy like me want? You got it MORE POWER! With that I would like to introduce the BlackBerry Bold 9700… yes I know the original Bold was a massive beast, but the Bold 2 is much smaller, lighter, yet BlackBerry was kind enough to increase the processing power(624Mhz) and replace that annoying trackball with a track-pad. I don’t have one yet, but apparently we might be getting some new phones at work, and I can pass mine down to a junior employee! Anyways enough of my ramblings, here are the full specs.

Available Features
Trackpad navigation
Bright, hi-resolution screen
Full QWERTY keyboard
3G technology
Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth® enabled
256MB flash Memory
3.2 MP digital Camera with
Video Camera
Multimedia Player
Wireless Email
Organiser
Browser
Phone
SMS/MMS
MicroSD card Reader

Display
High resolution 480×360 pixel
colour display
Transmissitive TFT LCD
Supports over 65,000 colours
2.44″ (diagonally measured)

Media Player
256 MB Built-in memory
Video format support: XviD partially supported, H.263, H.264, WMV3, MPEG4, Sorenson Spark & On2 VP6 (Flash support)
Audio format support: .3gp, MP3, WMA9 (.wma/.asf), WMA9 Pro / WMA 10, MIDI, AMR-NB, Professional AAC/AAC+/eAAC+

Size and Weight
Height: 4.29 inches (109 mm)
Width: 2.36 inches (60 mm)
Depth: .56 inches (14.1 mm)
Weight: 4.30 ounces / 122 grams (including battery)
3.17 ounces / 90 grams (without battery)

WI-FI
802.11b/g enabled
Wi-Fi Alliance Certifications: WPA/WPA2 Personal and Enterprise, WMM, WMM Power Save, Wi-Fi Protected Setup
Cisco CCX certification
Wi-Fi access to BlackBerry® Enterprise Server
Wi-Fi access to BlackBerry® Internet Server
Direct IP web browsing over Wi-Fi
Support for UMA

Battery & Battery Life
Battery: 1500 mAHr removable/rechargeable lithium-ion battery
Talk Time: Up to 6 hours (GSM and UMTS)
Standby Time: Up to 21 days/504 hours (GSM), Up to 17 days/408 hours (UMTS)
Music Playback Time: Up to 38 hours

Check out this review of the phone, very good read.

-NS

Kindle now on BlackBerry devices.

Wanna catch up on that book your reading at home? Sitting at the mechanics waiting for you car, and the magazines there remind your of National Geographics of old? Well now there is a solution… with Amazon’s Kindle app, still in beta, you can browse 420,000+ books from the online database!

Wireless subscribers who download Amazon’s free beta app to their BlackBerry handsets will have access to more than 420,000 Kindle books, including New York Times bestsellers as well as the latest releases. Users also will have direct access to free content and previews as well as their previously purchased titles, which are stored on Amazon’s servers.

I myself would find this very useful from time to time, as I always find myself in a situation where I could read a good book, and this would make it easy to do so! To get it on your phone just type this into your browser amazon.com/kindlebb, you can also check out a couple simulated screens. (1 and 2)

Read the full story here, Enjoy!

-NS

Why RAID 6 stops working in 2019

To think that technology has come so far in the last 10 years, and now RAID arrays are becoming a risk! This is information everyone should read…

The problem with RAID 5 is that disk drives have read errors. SATA drives are commonly specified with an unrecoverable read error rate (URE) of 10^14. Which means that once every 200,000,000 sectors, the disk will not be able to read a sector.

2 hundred million sectors is about 12 terabytes. When a drive fails in a 7 drive, 2 TB SATA disk RAID 5, you’ll have 6 remaining 2 TB drives. As the RAID controller is reconstructing the data it is very likely it will see an URE. At that point the RAID reconstruction stops.

Here’s the math:
1 – 1 /(2.4 x 10^10)) ^ (2.3 x 10^10) = 0.3835

You have a 62% chance of data loss due to an uncorrectable read error on a 7 drive RAID with one failed disk, assuming a 10^14 read error rate and ~23 billion sectors in 12 TB. Feeling lucky?

Read the rest of the article over at ZDNet.

-NS

Windows 7 RC1 Expiring

Well I don’t have to remind everyone that your evaluation copy of Windows 7 will be expiring soon. As of March 1st 2010, you PC will begin to shutdown every 2 hours. On June 1st 2010, Windows 7 will stop working altogether. So to alleviate yourself from the stresses of a PC that just doesn’t want to keep running, go out and buy yourself a copy already. It was nice enough that Microsoft allowed us to use this amazing OS for free for all this time…

If you order from Microsoft you can download and burn it right away. Go here to select your version of Windows 7, obviously i would recommend Windows 7 Ultimate, its only 20$ more than Windows 7 Home Premium.

Lucky me, since I have a buddy that is an MCT, I was able to use one of his activation keys.

-NS

QNAP NAS Devices

My co-worker Raj and I were going over a solution that we could present to SMB clients, and we were looking for a product that could be utilized pretty much anywhere, well i think we found such a device! QNAP a little known vendor produces some of the coolest NAS devices out there… they range from 2 drive hot-swap enclosures to a whopping 8 drives. With SATA-2 drives being 2TB, just think of how much space you can have… 14TB Raid 5 with a hot-spare, that’s crazy. The price is very affordable as well,  you have to check out the web interface. Watch the video below and let me know what you think!

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/IWtw-2ZkTSQ" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

The specific device that we are looking into is the QNAP TS-439 Pro Turbo NAS. See Insert below from their website.

QNAP TS-439 Pro is the new generation 4-bay model of the worldwide award-winning Turbo NAS Series, providing superior performance for massive data sharing, powerful all-in-one business server features, advanced RAID data protection, built-in iSCSI target service, AES 256-bit volume-based encryption, and rock-solid hot-swappable hard drive design for business.

Powered by Intel 1.6 GHz CPU, 1GB DDRII memory, the TS-439 Pro delivers superior performance for multiple business applications. Advanced RAID configurations, including RAID 0/ 1/ 5/ 6/ 5+Spare, JBOD, Online RAID Capacity Expansion, and Online RAID Level Migration are all supported.

All in all, I would love to get my hands on one of these devices! Hey QNAP, why don’t you send me one and I can review it!

Have a great Friday!

-NS