A couple of weeks ago my younger brother asked me to buy some songs for him from the iTunes store. So I thought this would be no big deal. Normally I buy, download and burn the songs to a CD and also put them onto his iPod shuffle for him. Well, that wasn’t the case this time. I had some issues and thought I would share them.

The music was bought and I transferred it over to my PC because I don’t have a burner in my iBook, which is where the music was purchased from. No big deal. I get the tracks into iTunes on the PC and put them into a playlist and click on burn, no luck. There is an error that it can’t find a burner. The drive was being recognized by Windows as well as Nero. I got to thinking about it and I decided to disconnect the hard drive that was also on the same cable as the CD/DVD burner. Ok, first of all. I know it’s probably not wise to do that but I needed to connect the drive to the computer and it worked, so shush! Anyways. After taking my computer case apart, unplugging the hard drive and getting it all put back together again I turn the PC on and I still get the same error in iTunes. It is still being recognized by Windows and Nero.

I then realize that Nero is not displaying the drive as a CD or DVD Burner. I don’t know what the deal with that was. I’m still having issues copying CDs or DVDs. I’m thinking that I’m either needing to re-flash the optical drive, re-install Windows or buy a new DVD burner. But anyways. That’s not why I am writing.

Once I finally got the music over onto the PC and found out that I was not going to be able to burn the music using iTunes I needed to try and burn it using Nero or something else. Of course you can’t do that without removing the DRM from the music! So i found myFairTunes (a Windows only application, DRM Dumpster does the same thing for Mac users but you’ll need a CDRW and it isn’t freeware). I removed the DRM, converted the tracks to MP3 format in iTunes and tried to burn the music using Nero. Of course I thought the music had burned succesfully because it went through the entire process and said it was successful. However, looking at the CD after it came out of the drive you can tell that there was nothing on the disc, when you put it into a CD player it makes the blank disc noise and when you put it back into a computer it says it is blank.

My point to this entire entry is that DRM is only making it harder for people who actually purchase music. We all know that. However the music industry still does not understand that fact. Thankfully, iTunes is now offering DRM free music. Also, fortunately, there amazing companies like Magnatune who are against DRM. Magnatune allows you share the music you purchase with 3 people and they also let you license the music for videos, podcasts and other productions under a Creative Commons license.

The issue I had isn’t the only reason DRM needs to be sent to the dumpster. People want to buy music players and put their music on it but when a player is tied to one music store and one DRM format, you can’t do it. Maybe one of these days this will be a thing of the past and our descendants will look at us like we were crazy for DRM (along with many, many other things).

Installation

I just downloaded and installed IE7. A MUCH, MUCH needed update to Microsoft's web browser. The installation went very well, there weren't any glitches, it done everything on its own without asking many questions. It is interesting because in older versions of IE, 4 & 5, it would ask you all kinds of questions, whether you wanted this option, or this plugin, etc. I think one of the reasons they done that then was because they were trying to add more functionality to the operating system. I remember getting Web view folders with IE4 and being tickled to death because I was using Windows 95 at the time and it looked like a lot of the features that 98 had. However, they don't need those options now since the only operating systems that can install this version of IE (2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista) have those features built into the OS already.

Upon installing and rebooting the computer I opened up the new version and waited for the run-once website to appear, it never did, it gave a message stating that this website could not be found. This wouldn't be good for a new computer user, they might think that their browser is broken, however, I do realize that Microsoft's servers are probably under a lot of stress from everyone downloading, installing and running the new version, just as I did.

Web Standards

I decided to navigate to my website to see how it rendered. As a web designer I have been anxiously awaiting this version of Internet Explorer because supposedly, I won't have to hack my code anymore to make it work! The rate of adoption will probably be slow and I honestly cannot wait until Microsoft sends it out as a Windows Update. I realize there will be companies that cannot update to this version due to internal applications, but, for everyday users, it will be nice not to have to hear them complaining that my website does not render correctly in their browser because Microsoft refuses to comply with web standards! I am anxiously awaiting to see if this new version is more standards friendly.

I just navigated around to a few pages on my website. The navigation menu still does not appear as it does in Mozilla Firefox and Opera. I also clicked over to my Flickr photo sets page and the sets have a gap in them about 4 rows down.

Anti-Phishing Technology

When I did navigate to my website I got a pop up message about setting up my phishing filter. I'm sure that this is just a standard dialog meant to appear when you access your first website. Hopefully someone hasn't hijacked my website and is installing spyware onto peoples computers! I do think this will be a great addition to the IE browser for those people who have just purchased a new computer and are learning to use the Internet because they don't know about all these security risks, spyware, etc.

Minimalist Layout

I do appreciate the minimalist layout that they have went with in IE7. I suppose this will give room for those spyware toolbars that everyone seems to get.

Tabbed Browsing

I don't think that they made it apparent enough that the browser now supports tabs. However, I do have to give them credit because by default Firefox does not even add the “New Tab” button to the toolbar.

I really do like the quick tabs feature. If you have multiple tabs open you can quickly view all the open tab and select the one you want to view. I think they will really entice a lot of users with that feature because users will see the true benefits of tabbed browsing by using that feature.

RSS Reader

They have added an RSS reader into the browser. This will also be another great feature for those casual computer users who don't know anything about RSS. They will know that when they see that Orange button light up, they can subscribe to that website and then not actually have to go back to that website to see if there are any updates. One problem with this is that after I had subscribed to a few of my own personal feeds, I did not see how I could pull up the RSS Reader with all of my subscribed feeds. I'm still looking for it. The only way I've been able to get back to subscribed feeds is by going to one of my blogs, looking at the feed and then viewing the subscribed feeds.

Built In Search

The search feature is another nice edition to the browser. Users will no longer have to launch their browser, navigate to their favorite search engine to simply do a search. They can use the built in search tool and they can change which search engine it uses, it uses MSN's Live search by default. I prefer Google, however I don't have any issues with them using their own search engine as the default! (Google did!)

Final first look thoughts

I think they have really done a lot to bring IE up to speed. I think it is a serious competitor to the other browsers. The problem is that a lot of the new features that are in the new version have been in other browsers for several years now. One feature that I see being a killer feature is the anti-phishing technology. It is one thing for Firefox to block pop ups and to block software from being installed on your computer, but, its another thing to be fooled by a website that looks real and is actually a fake.

I think that if Microsoft were to create versions of IE7 that would run on the Mac & on Linux then they would have a lot more users. The problem is, Microsoft is no longer creating version to run on the Mac and I would SINCERELY doubt that they would create versions to run on Linux, although, I wish they would!

For the new users out there, I think they should have included a “Whats New” guide when the new version launched that gives a guided tour of tabs, phishing, etc. I don't think they've made these features stand out enough. I also don't think that the users will navigate to Microsoft's website to read about them. I really wish more users could understand the true benefits of RSS, BUT, they won't be getting that unless they know what it means/does and the reader works the way it should!

Lastly, I think this is definitely a much needed update to IE and I believe if there is anyone out there running an old version of Internet Explorer and can upgrade to this new version I would highly recommend it, mainly because of the advanced security but also because of the new features the browser has. I think that many, many people would benefit from using RSS feeds, but most people either don't know they exist or have no clue how to use them.

The only reasons I'll be using IE7 is to check and make sure my websites load properly in it and to access those websites that only work with IE. I don't think I'll be ditching Firefox anytime soon, I'm too happy with it. However, with that said, I strongly urge anyone who uses IE as their default browser to update to this new version.

Update 10/20/06: I found the feeds I subscribed to in the “Favorites Center”

I had a hard time trying to decide whether or not I wanted to post this on my “Free Software Blog” or here. I decided that since this software works alongside Windows Terminal Services that I would write about it on the “Windows Blog.”

A while back Microsoft released a stripped down copy of Windows XP that can be run on old hardware. The main difference is that some of the applications would not be run locally, some of the more processor intense applications could be run off of the server. I think that was a great thing for Microsoft to release, however, they didn't release it to the general public, it is only available to Microsoft Software Assurance customers. The good news is that 2X Software has a server and client application that you can use to achieve this, free of charge (there are limitations however to the free version). You can also serve out applications to Linux clients, that is something Windows XP Fundamentals can't do.

I downloaded and installed it and very quickly was able to push out an application to my old Windows XP laptop that has (as many of you already know) 32 MB RAM & 200 Mhz processor. I chose Aptana (a web development IDE) as my test application. I installed the client software on the laptop after I had set up the server, I saw Aptana and chose to launch it, you can also choose to create a shortcut on your desktop for the application. I had to enter my username and password into a dialog box and I also had to enter it again at a Windows login dialog (I think this is specific to my setup, I have Windows Terminal Services set so that users MUST enter a username and password each time they logon). Once I had entered my login credentials Aptana started up and looked as though it was starting up on the local machine, there is no Remote Desktop window, the application even appears where your running applications normally appear.

The Linux side of things was a little more difficult, for me at least. The 2X Server Client software for Linux is command line only, as far as I know. I could not find a GUI interface and there is no mention of it in the manual. It took me a few minutes to correctly enter the syntax but I was finally able to pull up the Aptana application on my installation of Fedora. It seemed a lot slower on Linux than it did on Windows.

For you Mac fans out there you should be happy to know that they also have client software for the Mac as well, it appears to be a GUI interface.

As far as I can tell, the software is free. For 30 days you can serve an unlimited number of applications, after the 30 days you are only able to serve 5. Even though after 30 days you can only serve 5 applications, that still gives you enough to be able to get old machines up and running a decent web browser, office suite and other mission critical applications.

What I really like: When I am doing testing on websites I always have a virtual server running my web server. I like to keep the web server on a separate display so I don't have to keep switching windows and I can see log files, etc. Normally, I'd have to login to the laptop, make a remote desktop connection, start up my virtual server and then login to that. Now, all I have to do is login to my laptop and double click on VMware and run it just as if it was on my main computer. Very nice!

2X ApplicationServer for Windows Terminal Services

About Wtware & Reasons For Use

If your business has an assortment of old that are planned for removal, you may want to re-consider that plan once you learn more about Wtware. What is it? Wtware allows you to take a really old computer and turn it into a Windows terminal workstation, with very little effort and nothing to install on the client workstation. The only requirement is that you have a Microsoft Windows Server (2000 or 2003) that has Terminal Services Server installed.

Once you get your server set up for accepting clients, you can then insert a CD, floppy, USB thumb drive or use your network card to boot onto the server and use it as a normal workstation. There is nothing to install (unless you want to) and the only thing the computer is doing is displaying to you the desktop on the server.

The beauty of it is that you've saved money by reviving old hardware and the added benefit of only having one machine to install software & updates on. Also, since the machines are now running off the server they will be much faster and to make them faster you will only have to upgrade one machine.

Problems I Had

Unfortunately I ran into problems while I was testing out the software. The first problem arose when I tried testing the software out on my laptop. My laptop (as many of you already know) is quite old. I do have a PCMCIA network card installed in it, however, Wtware cannot detect my network card during the bootup process but that is the case with almost any other operating system I have had on it, even Windows.

The second problem I came across was with the other computer I have that I tried it on. It did detect the network & video cards without any problems. However I could not get it to accept a default configuration, it seemed as though it wasn't happy with any of the configurations that I chose. It kept asking me to go through each test for the video card again and again even though I had already entered the information into the configuration file on the server for the specs of the machine I was trying to boot from.

Successful Test

Fortunately, I did have a successful test of the software. I opened up Vmware server and created an empty virtual machine. I booted the virtual machine using the Wtware ISO image I had made and previously burned to CD to try and boot the other two machines. This time it worked, I was able to configure everything correctly and in a short amount of time I was booted onto my server.

Easy to setup

Wtware is fairly easy to set up. All I had to do was to install the software and then create a boot disk. You'll follow a wizard to enter DNS & DHCP information. Once you do that you'll burn the ISO image to a CD, take it to the computer you plan to use as a terminal and run some tests to see which settings will work best on that terminal. After that, you'll return to the server and make a configuration file (the name of the file will be that terminals MAC address). You'll enter a few settings in there, return to the other computer and you should be able to boot that computer onto your terminal server, very quickly.

Gripes

Although I think this is a great application I do have a few gripes about it. The first gripe that I have is that the license you purchase can only be used on ONE network card, one MAC address. That means it is tied to that network card, forever. The license is $20. If I'm going to spend $20 on something I should be able to use it on any machine I like and move it to any machine I like. Now, if the license was down in the $1 or $2 range, I might not care. This is one case where I think they should charge a fee for their software ($20 maybe) and then charge a much, much lower rate for the licenses ($1-$2).

The free version also has banner ads that are obtrusive. I realize that they need to be able to get people to upgrade to the paid for version, but why does the ad have to be obtrusive? They are marketing their free version to libraries and schools who can't afford their software.

Free Alternative

After my gripes section above a thought comes to mind. Would I actually pay for and use this software? No, I probably wouldn't. Why? Whenever I need to connect to a Windows terminal server and the machine I am using does not have an operating system already I would probably simply insert a Live Linux CD (DSL, SLAX, Puppy, Ubuntu, etc) and simply use the Terminal Server Client software that is already pre-installed and connect to the remote server. Granted, this process is not as fast as Wtware, but it would work and you could use this alternative on as many machines as you like, without banner ads.

Learn More

Now, I realize even though this program isn't for me that there is truly a market out there for it. I can see businesses that are needing more computers but can't afford brand new computers using this. It is honestly a lot better than waiting on a live Linux CD to boot, then connecting to the server, every time you need to use it.

Windows Terminal Ware