Affordable servers are here for everyone. This home Server idea is great for home and small businesses. Here I have the HP home server I bought for myself and family. From the beginning, the HP impressed me with its elegant design and won me over with its simple software.

To start, the HP Windows Home Server is amazingly small, it fits just about anywhere. Open the front door to reveal 4 slots to install SATA hard drives, turn it  around and there is the necessary Gigabit Ethernet port, a ESATA port, and a 3 USB ports for external hard drives. Supposedly drives can be swapped while the machine is on.

The HP comes with 3 discs, one for the HP as a recovery, one for installing the connector software necessary to backup your computers, and one for reinstalling windows on a failed but backed up computer. Yes, if I am to understand everything, you only need the one CD to backup any computer that needs to be restored and has been previously backed up. I suspect, during the process, you will need the original installation  disc. You will also get a setup poster, a couple of manuals, and necessary cables to get up and running.

Upon installing the connector software, I noticed there were some pretty cool features HP added. Namely, the ability to keep all your music in a central place and make it available in iTunes in every computer on your network. Each computer has its own backup and can have shared folders. You automatically have folders setup so you can share files with every computer. This is possible  with current Windows but because you will always leave your server on, the files will always be available. You can setup a way to log into your PC when you are not in your network, share photos online making your server a web site and much more. What is really worth mentioning is the fact that Windows created some sort of challenge for developers to develop software for the server so you will see software that will make the server better soon.

The main thing that makes this Home Server so good for everyday people is because it backs up your computer and you can forget about everything. You don’t have to worry about anything, changes on your computer is backed up every night. You can backup your whole system in the even of a failure or just backup certain files or drives. File backup is necessary because it is not a matter of if your hard drive will fail but a matter of when.

The only downside to Windows Home Server is going to be fixed soon with the recently announced Power Pack 1. The Power Pack will fix some bugs and more important, allow 64 bit connector support. Most people only use the most common 32 bit but anyone using x64 is out of luck for a little while. The release is set to be sometime in the first quarter of 08 so pay attention, it will coming soon.

Some people ask me what type of MP3 player to get for themselves or for their kids. Usually, the question is, "should I get an iPod Nano or the iPod?" Most people are tempted to go with the full iPod because you just get more storage for the price.

My answer is: Depends on what you are going to do and how you are going to treat it. If you are getting the MP3 player for you kid or are going to use it while you are active, ie. the gym or jogging, you want to go with the Nano; but, if you are going to hoop it up to your car or use it while on a plane or home, go with the full blown iPod.

I have mentioned this sometime before but it is because the Nano uses flash memory and the full size iPods use a hard drive. MP3 players with flash memory have no moving parts and tend to take a beating much better than a music player with a hard drive. The full size iPod has a mechanical magnetic arm inside that can easily break when dropped hard enough or numerous times. Yes, when you think of price per GB or Gigabyte, the Nano is going to be much more money than the full size iPod but chances are it will last much longer when used by an active person or a child.

I just bought a Canon HG10 which is a pretty nice consumer High Definition digital camcorder that records the video onto an internal hard drive.

What I did not think of, which I cant believe but it happens to all of us, is that HD camcorders record in AVCHD format which is ahead of its time right now. AVCHD stands for Advanced Video Codec High Definintion and it is basically a format that most High Def Camcorders have adopted to compress the files. The only problem there is just about no software that will make that video be viewable on your personal computer. As icing on the cake, if your main computer is Vista x64 (64 bit), you are really in trouble.

The Canon came with some junk from Corel that did not give me the options I wanted to edit my video. In fact, it would not even install on my 64 bit machine. I hear the only other option for Canon’s is the Pinnacle Suite but they have not ever been a recommendation by me. Just not what I am looking for. Ideally, I would want Adobe’s Premier Elements to work but it wont. I have heard there may be an update so I will keep looking.

My solution:
Good thing I have a brand new MacBook Pro with iLife 08. iMovie took the video off of my camera with no extra software, it just worked the first time. It looks like Apple’s Final Cut and Final Cut Express will also work. Ok, ok, I now see why the movie industry is still on Macs. So now I will import the movie files from the camcorder onto my mac and then transcode them into a format my 64 bit machine reads and then I can just pick and choose quite a bit of software that will work with the mpeg4 codec for example. I think I will go with Premier Elements 4.

Conclusion:
If you run any Windows X64 machine, forget about AVCHD for now unless you want to do what I do. If you own a 32 bit version of Windows, you might want to use the software your camcorder came with and then transcode the files into something else, and then move it to your favorite movie editing program. If you own a Mac, upgrade to iLife 08 and you should be good. For more advanced techniques, try our Final Cut Express. So what is my point in all this? The computer and software industry is still not ready for AVCHD, if you buy a High Definition Camcorder that uses AVCHD, prepare for your favorite video editor not to work and prepare to do some work to get your movie edited.

So after hearing the new iPhone update was going to be released today I was happy. But I was filled with so much anticipation. Steve Jobs never mentioned anything about Windows 64 bit compatibility.

So I updated my iPhone firmware on a 32 bit machine. Then proceded to update iTunes on my 64 bit machine. (I hacked the current 7.5 version to work on my 64 bit-it was easy not really a hack) So as I went to the Apple site to upgrade to 7.6 I noticed that something said it was compatible with 64 bit machines. This was great I thought, my itunes wiill now officially work with my Windows Vista 64 bit machine but what I really hope for is the iPhone to work too.

Well, guess what? It did. The iPhone has some really cool new features and it now works with 64 bit versions of Windows operating systems. Well, I have only tried it with Vista Ultimate 64 and none others. Not sure about XP. If someone has XP x64, and the iPhone, please leave a reply.

With Steve Jobs’ Key note only a few hours away, here are my predictions for the 2008 for it. I have no knowledge of anything. These predictions are all guesses (or what I would like to see).

Macbook Pro gets:

• Solid State Drive option,
• Upgraded Core 2 Duo Processors
• BlueRay Burner or reader (I really hope for this)
• Bigger standard Hard Drives

Mac Book gets:

• Bigger standard Hard Drives

iPhone gets:

• Updated iPhone to get High speed AT&T High speed that is. (wont be ready for a while)
• Update current iPhone memory to 16 GB standard
• Some sort Starbucks iPhone relationship will be announced.
• The new version 1.1.3 will be realeased.
• There will be great focus on the iPhone.
• The iPhone will be compatible with 64 bit Windows systems. (I demand this!!! I need this!!!)

Mac Mini:

• The mini gets a redesign.
• The hardware is upgraded.

Others Predictions:

• Something regarding integrated wireless technology will be announced.
• Possibly a new ultra mobile touch screen Macbook!
• At least one new hardware product will be announced.
• A new service for movies is announced.
• iTunes adds a service, probably the one above.

I just got word that LG is going to be selling an LCD Wireless TV.

What does this do and why is this so cool? Well lets say you buy a huge TV and want to hang it on the wall and dont want to see all the cables from all the stuff you need to connect to your TV. Well dont connect any to the TV. What is supposed to happen is you are given a box that has all the TV connections and you connect all of your devices to it. The box you keep with all of your peripherals and it will talk to the TV and send the proper signals to the TV.

This is very cool but as we know from WiFi and cell phones, wireless connections dont always work 100% of the time. I am very interested to seeing what happens to this.

Looking for some good noise canceling earphones? Well keep looking! I just got a pair of Etymotic noise canceling earphones and I am not sure if I like them.

I must say the noise canceling is pretty good.

The downside: I thought I would not mind but my ears don’t like the air pressure change after I put them inside my ears. This is ok though I could get used to.

Here is my biggest gripe! If you bump the cord you hear it in the earphones. I know you will with all but it is a pretty loud poof! I will use these a while check back.

I hear this is pretty good when it comes to in-ear noise canceling earphones so I might just have to go with over the ear. Thankfully I paid less than half for what they go for by making my purchase on ebay. Check them out for yourself at etymotic.com