Geekness continues
December 11th, 2009I finally got win 7 for my new beast and it runs it great. That said, I also subscribed to Microsoft Technet. With all the computers I test/play with, it makes sense. I can now use all of Microsoft’s OS’s to test, evaluate, and keep current on, for one fee. Well worth it. I even put windows 7 Pro on an old Pentium 4 2gig machine just for fun and it works surprisingly well.
I re purposed my old Dell XPS400 as a windows home server and installed a 160gig drive, a 500 gig drive and TWO terrabyte drives. This thing is awesome and mind numbingly easy to set up . It automatically backs up all of my computers every night. Not just file backups, but image based, so if a hard drive dies on one of my machines, I can boot from a restore disk and put the exact image on the new hard drive and loose nothing. Equally as cool and useful is the fact that I have all my photo’s, videos, Movies, documents and others shared to all of my computers on this thing. Better than that is they are duplicated on two drives sort of like raid. This means if a drive in my server dies, I just replace it with a new one, and it rebuilds it and I lose nothing. I also shared my printers from it and aside from manually installing the 64bit drivers for sharing, It was plug and play. Good stuff. Its built off of Server 2003 and runs rock solid. With a few add ins, I can now remote into it from any machine on the home network and do anything I need. Another neat feature is it monitors all the PC’s on my network and lets me know if one of them is missing backups, or has out of date antivirus or other potential problems. If you have more than say 3 PC’s to keep up with, this is handy stuff. I currently have 6 not including the server itself. The system has a max of 10 that it can backup, more than enough for most people……hopefully me.
I have also built an HTPC for the living room. It is a zotac IONITX system and is very small. It uses the Intel Atom 1.6 processor combined with the Nvidia ION and has 2 gigs of ram. It has built in HDMI out and digital optical audio out, Gigabit Network, 8 USB ports, and everything else you would need. I put it in an Apex HTPC case and used a 500 gig drive I had laying around. Plenty big given the server I now stream everything from. I put a MCE remote on it for ease of use. Best of all I have a total of 220 bucks invested in this HTPC since I used some parts I already had.
This new HTPC thing had me wanting to upgrade my network, so I ended up with a Linksys Wireless N router with a built in Gigabit switch. This also required me to string 50 feet of Cat5 through the walls, and up in the attic and back through the walls to the switch. Gigabit network is SUPER fast and well worth an upgrade. I love being able to stream my movies in HD from any room in the house.
And just because I can, I bought a Dell Zino HD for Johns room. Neat machine. I dont have it yet, but hoping its worth the bargain price they are selling for (less than 300 bucks!)
To offset the geekiness, I have a 93 maxima to pull the trans out of, and tomorrow I will be changing wheel bearings in a 2000 Honda Foreman 4×4 due to too much mud inhalation. Well thats it for now.