habanero_joe

Product Review: Cowon O2PMP

Note: to achieve the appropriate reverent tone, read this post in the same manner as a Catholic priest holding Mass in Latin

There are many, many PMP (personal media player) devices on the market today and many are pretty decent and get the job done. Good or bad, the iPod seems to be the gold standard against which all others are compared. And to be honest, the interface is pretty easy to use one-handed while driving.

That notwithstanding, there is another device that deserves serious consideration; the Cowon O2PMP.

Cowon Systems (South Korea) was started in 1995 with a primary focus on software development. The company released their first audio player in 2000, the CW100. A key component of the Cowon PMP is the JetAudio software application. The Cowon O2PMP was first produced in. Device specifications include a 4.3″ screen, flash-based storage (8GB, 16GB, 32GB), USB 2.0, TV output, SD card slot (up to 16GB), voice recorder and several other features. The device comes preloaded with a very diverse support of audio and video codecs; FLAC, MKV, MP3 among the most common in use. Advertising claims battery life of 8 hours for video playback and 18 for audio playback.

Unfortunately Cowon O2PMP production has been discontinued. This is a tragedy… However, there are still decides to be found on the used market for under $150. When you get a device, go to the Cowon website and make sure you load the latest firmware.
I have owned two of the 32GB models. Still not sure what happened to the first unit, after flawless performance for over a year I had completely drained the battery on a long red-eye flight. I ran through all the troubleshooting steps and it has not worked since. Unit #2 has been working as I expected for about six months. I travel a bit for work and this makes the flights bearable. I watch movies, TV shows and listen to music and audiobooks. For anyone used to watching video on an iPod, the Cowon screen seems huge by comparison. Much closer to an iPhone display. Battery performance is as advertised and it easily charges completely overnight while you are sleeping. Media management is as easy as you please. Unlike Apple devices which require iTunes, the Cowon devices work with any OS (I have tested various Linux and Windows). Plug the included USB cable in to any available port and the OS recognizes the device as a removable storage device. You will quickly find folders for Music and Video, and a few others. Simply copy your media to the appropriate folder, wait for the file operation to complete and eject the device. You are ready to go. The built-in speaker is good for low noise environments, but a good set of headphones will make the experience that much better.
As stated, there is amazing codec support. If you have never used the FLAC format, it is better quality that a typical MP3, by far. As for video, AVI and MKV work flawlessly. Note: resolutions above 720p will not render well and the video and audio will almost certainly be choppy and unviewable. Another big benefit over an Apple device is that you can load media from any source. No pesky messages about your library, computer not authorized, etc.
The only issue I run into form time to time is navigating on the touch screen. While the layout is very intuitive, I occasionally have a hard time scrolling through the media lists. Certainly the pros outweigh this.

Final thoughts, the device size, battery life, storage capacity, and available playback formats make this an excellent device for the frequent traveler as well as the casual home user.

– habanero_joe

Product Review: Lenovo Mini Wireless Keyboard N5091

I have a home project to replace the DirecTV satellite boxes with PCs. So far so good. To make it easy to use I needed a wireless keyboard and mouse. The first box ended up with a Gyration Media Center Remote. For the next box I found a Lenovo Mini Wireless Keyboard with trackball. I purchased it new from the local CompUSA for less than $40.

Upon opening the box I was impressed with the product. It fits in the hand well and is easy to use. The keyboard includes basic media player controls, essential for pausing the movie to grab another drink. Installation was a joke, plug in the micro dongle to an available USB port, install the two (included) AAA batteries and switch on the keyboard. In less than 15 seconds Windows 7 recognized the device and it began working. I removed the wired keyboard and mouse and put em back in the parts locker.

Holding the device in the palm of my right hand I can reach most of the keyboard with my thumb. The shape makes it very comforable to hold. The small power switch is located on the underside of the device and it out of the way so it will not be accidentally shut off. Turning the keyboard will save battery life considerably when not in use. Turn the switch back on and I reconnects immediately. My typical use is from about ten feet away and it works great. Being wireless instead of infrared makes operation painless. I did some testing and was able to use over 25 feet away from the PC in a different room. Good enough for me.

Anyone used this before? Leave a comment.

20110618-165010.jpg

– habanero_joe

Update: 06212011
A couple things about this device that are lacking; 1) no backlighting of the keypad 2) no trigger finger mouse buttons 3) current trackball/mouse button configuration makes it a little difficult to ‘click and scroll’

12/3012

Still using this little guy. Battery life is pretty respectable. Would love to hear of any similar (read that as better) devices.

Alternatives to MS Windows (desktop)

I have worked with and supported just about every version of MS desktop operating systems. That is life in the corporate environment. No matter your opinion of Microsoft OS, it gets the job done for the business user. However, there are many less than desirable “features”, such as licensing costs, hardware requirements, resources used by the OS, and the list goes on…

Some of my early experience was as a sys admin for a SCO UNIX network. I was impressed with the stability and reliability of the system. If I remember correctly the server had 128MB RAM to support 100-plus users. The serial network certainly had no bells and whistles, but it was easy to maintain. Server uptimes were measured in months instead of days for a typical Windows server. Adding a NIC and TCP/IP made the server very versatile and improved performance. As is common in the corporate environment, after a few years, new software required Windows servers and the UNIX box was retired. I pretty much lost touch with *nix in general.

Fast forward five years…

At some point I began loading various Linux distros on older laptops to check it out. Red Hat, Fedora, SUSE and all the other usual suspects were checked out. CentOS seemed to be one of the more popular distros supported. Along the way I met some more-serious Linux users and began loading Ubuntu starting with the 8 series releases. By now I had converted a personal laptop and the main home computer to Ubuntu. Stayed involved and moved along with updates until 10.04 LTS. Was very pleased with how it all worked. The variety of supported hardware is excellent (except maybe audio) and the stability was always very good.

Fast forward to Thursday June 16…

My Lenovo laptop with an XP install was finally experiencing some OS corruption and general performance degradation. Time for a reload with Linux. Off to Ubuntu.com to download 11.04 ISO. I loaded it up and the process was the same simple install I had come to expect with Ubuntu. Rebooted and logged in. I immediately noted the new UI. Complete crap was my first thought. I poked around for the rest of the day and my opinion got worse. It was not intuitive at all. Played around a couple more hours and tossed it in the bag for the night.

Fast forward to the next day…

Thoroughly disappointed with Ubuntu 11.04 I looked up Debian and did a little research. Seemed pretty solid and why use a derivative when you can get the original? A couple answers later (thank you himuraken!) I was installing Debian 6. (look for a future post on using ISO files and a USB drive)
Knowing that Ubuntu is based on Debian, I expected it to be familiar and it was. Two days later and I am very happy with the decision to replace Ubuntu 11.04. I look forward to using it daily.

I strongly encourage anyone interested in Linux to check out Debian. You will not be disappointed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_GNU/Linux

– habanero_joe

Public WiFi – what is the cost?

Question for the readership:

What is the true cost of providing public WiFi (unsecured) in say an airport?
Leave answers in the Comment section…

In this age of 3G, MiFi, etc. does anyone really need to pay to use WiFi service to get work accomplished? Sure I’ll connect all day long if it is free. A good WiFi connection is usually faster than my 3G BlackBerry or Droid Pro connection. But I refuse to pay for this.

On a recent trip, the hotel I was staying at, charged €6 for 30 minutes of WiFi which is close to $17 per hour. The Burger King less than a block away had it for free and served beer, cheap. Another hotel on the same trip had it free in the lobby. Good enough… Based on my fairly extensive domestic travel, it seems that the ‘higher-class’ the hotel, the more it charges for what is a simple service.

I realize that there are real non-recurring and recurring costs but these days, every business needs some sort of Internet connection for daily operations.

I will now step down from the soapbox.

– habanero_Joe

Working For Corporate IT

Background: I work as a manager for a public regional financial institution, managing a team of business analysts. I have held this position for just over seven months. Previously I had worked as IT Director for a medium-sized private company in charge of all aspects of data and voice for approximately ten years. During this time I always thought: “I wonder what it would be like to work for a big company…?”

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

I have approximately fifteen years of technical/IT experience and I have always enjoyed being hands-on, first as a technician and then later as an IT manager. My preference is virtualization, storage, security and networking, specifically planning and implementation of new or growth/replacement scenarios.  While I am the first to admit I don’t care for the daily user helpdesk issues, I certainly enjoy the technical aspects of pure IT. While I have some minor programming training, I have never been a developer or application guy.

So on to the new position: I am now 95% pure management and all that entails. The majority of my day is spent on project conference calls and attending various project and administrative-type meetings. While the change in role has been interesting it has quickly become routine. I travel fairly often and spend a lot of time in hotels and airports. After seven months I am also quickly loosing touch with technical knowledge and it is a struggle to stay interested in what I do everyday. It will come to no surprise to anyone who has experienced this, but corporate IT is typically much more siloed than any small business. The most obvious separation is between infrastructure and applications.

In the corporate application world one benefit is the available resources for development and testing. The drawback is that the requirements to push a new product to production are rather inflexible. Production loads usually have to follow a scheduled calendar cycle. In the small business environment I was used to, “testing” often meant making a production server backup, loading the new update and crossing fingers that it worked. We had had a backup right? On tape… The corporate methodology pretty much ensures that the new app or upgrade will work successfully when moved to production. Of course all of the server virtualization options now make this much easier for everyone.

Overall environment comparisons:

Small Business (non-public company)- flexibility in position, more control over resources,  less restrictions and regulations to deal with, faster move to production, less resources.

Corporate (public company) – rigid org chart, many regulatory controls, more teams with less responsibility, much higher level of security, slower pace, more resources available

So the bottom line is that if you are faced with making a voluntary or involuntary decision to move from a private company smaller environment to a public corporate environment (no matter the position) make sure you ask plenty of questions to ensure that you fully understand what you are getting in to. And count on your life changing!

Running a “datacenter”

It has been way too long since my last post.

In my spare time, along with two other partners, I run a virtualization datacenter in a collocation facility. In addition to generating income, it also serves as an excellent test lab for open source products. It is my conviction that the small business market can seriously benefit from open source applications.

Pfsense, for example, will match up to any mid-level commercial router/firewall for a fraction of the cost (hardware needed to run pf). Virtualization further reduces this expense. Much of the current server hardware in use today will run VMware ESXi (not open source, but no charge). VMware estimates that most desktop and server hardware is only in use 5-15% of the time. Server virtulization reduces physical storage space, cooling requirements, energy consumption, all part of total cost of ownership. VMware certainly is not the only server virtualization host available. Check out offerings from MS, Citrix or Ubuntu. There are others as well.

Note: yes, ESXi is 100% $FREE. There is no requirement to purchase support.

For data storage, we have successfully proven (many times over) that linux (Ubuntu server) NFS is a solid, valid option for shared storage. Production MS Windows and *nix-based virtual machines run flawlessly. MS Windows Server 2008 (all versions) runs particularly well in a virtual environment.

Note: MS Enterprise license allows four instances of server to be installed on a virtual host. Further reduction of expense.

Virtualization is also excellent as a test platform. Windows or *nix servers and desktops can be spun up very rapidly on a single host. I will frequently load a server to install an application evaluation. There is no fear of corrupting existing production servers. If I choose not to use the app, I simply delete the vm and resources are recovered.

I am also successfully using an open source VoIP PBX. Various distributions based on asterisk are very strong and offer all of the common phone system features found in key systems and even pbx.

Today’s take-away: check out virtualization. Check out open source. The benefits will  be clear. The savings will be immediate.

VDI. Who Will Win?

The VDI marketplace has been heating up. VMware’s recent launch of View 4 seems to have sparked more interest overall.
Microsoft has further cemented its partnership with Citrix to provide virtual desktops. Microsoft has also simplified (and reduced pricing) on using desktop OS in a virtual environment.
Recent promotions by Citrix (and Microsoft) are geared towards taking customers away from VMware. Citrix, which has a large installed base in the remote access arena, should do well with the XenApp to XenDesktop trade-in.
Red Hat has just announced that it will offer desktop virtualization based on KVM.
I expect many companies may wait until their next desktop refresh cycle to implement VDI. Moving to low-cost thin and zero clients certainly makes sense from an administration perspective.
This is an exciting time for anyone involved in virtualization!

– habanero_joe

Hyper9 GuessMyOS

This falls under the category of Fun Apps. I recently installed GuessMyOS by Hyper9 (who make several virtualization management apps). This is a plugin for VI3 and vSphere4 client. GuessMyOS replaces the generic VM icons with OS-specific for Linux and Windows. Personally I like seeing the penguin.
This is tied to the client so must be enabled for each client instance.

Hyper9

– habanero_joe