I've been off eBay for a while and started using it again recently. It seems like each year that site gets crappier and crappier.
For example, I've had several auctions where the price starts at $0.99. I set my max bid to say $40, which is a fair price for what I'm bidding on. The auction will have 3-4 days left on it. So I'm the highest bidder at $5 or whatever. Then suddenly the auction is cancelled with no reason given!
I know some people used to list an item on Craigslist or something but they'd typically have a Buy It Now price and at least tell you that they were trying to sell it outside of eBay.
The only other option I can think of is the seller decided not to sell the item or worried they weren't going to get their price. But due to bid sniping, you won't know until the final minutes what your final price is going to be near.
Now you bid with the possibility that whatever you bid on can be pulled at any time. If anything, this is making me look for sellers who run "Sell it on eBay" stores or are "professional" eBay auctioneers. Those with low ratings, etc are losing my business because I can't take their auction seriously!
Monday, June 14, 2010
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Windows Home Server
I've been using Windows Home Server for about six months now and feel comfortable giving it a review now.
Overview
Earlier this year I realized my tech at home was getting out of control. I had a personal desktop, work desktop, laptop, digital camera, digital camcorder, my wife's laptop, XBox 360, camera phones, etc.
I frequently found myself looking across multiple devices to find documents, photos, baby videos, etc. I also found that I had a lot of physical media (Music CDs, DVD movies) that I was storing in cabinets when I could save them to a centralized location and store the physical media in the attic or storage closet.
Originally, my plan was to build a full blown server and setup a domain, shared folders, etc. But, why implement an Enterprise solution for a relatively trivial task.
The solution I decided upon was Windows Home Server.
Getting to WHS
I'd looked at some other free products but didn't find anything I was really enamored with. There were plenty of applications that would allow me to share my content with the XBox and handle MP3s/MPGs. But, these tools didn't handle documents very well. I also wanted some directory security to avoid someone accidentally moving or deleting source code for clients I support while trying to copy some photos. I also wanted to be able to make some content public for friends when they visited and hooked up to the WiFi for example, free software I downloaded and use, but not my taxes and bank statements.
I could have gone with a mixed solution, Active Directory for file management, and another program for media syndication. However, I wanted a product that really integrated seamlessly across all boundaries.
Ultimately, I found WHS would be my best option.
Using WHS
Installing WHS is like any other Windows install you've ever done so there were no surprises there. Well, unless your host machine didn't support modern power management functionality. I ended up having to change out the motherboard on my host machine (a rack mount server) to a compliant board.
Once installed, you really never need to go back into the WHS machine. Instead, you install a "connector" application on the machines you want to use WHS with. I don't recall needing to do anything special for the XBox it just sees the server and can access whatever publicly accessible content is available; pictures, movies, music.
Once installed, the connector shows up as an icon in your system tray. When the server is running and your PC is "healthy" the icon is green. Otherwise it will change colors depending on the situation.
Setting up users and file permissions are very easy. You simple create them using the WHS GUI and assign users rights (none, read, full). It basically handles the active directory type functions for you.
You also get a "Shared Folders" desktop icon to access the Shares you have access to.
There is no magic here, just a simple and easy to use interface for sharing data on your network.
Misc Notes
WHS also automates backups of your machines which is handy if you're looking for a centralized backup solution.
Another cool feature is WHS handles the allocation of the disks for you. Once you mount a drive your disk WHS will automatically handle it. Instead of having physical disks, you have a big virtual disk that expands and is managed by WHS automatically.
Next Steps
For me, my next step is to figure out how to store DVR data on my server. My DVR fills us quickly and I end up having to delete programs I wanted to keep!
Overview
Earlier this year I realized my tech at home was getting out of control. I had a personal desktop, work desktop, laptop, digital camera, digital camcorder, my wife's laptop, XBox 360, camera phones, etc.
I frequently found myself looking across multiple devices to find documents, photos, baby videos, etc. I also found that I had a lot of physical media (Music CDs, DVD movies) that I was storing in cabinets when I could save them to a centralized location and store the physical media in the attic or storage closet.
Originally, my plan was to build a full blown server and setup a domain, shared folders, etc. But, why implement an Enterprise solution for a relatively trivial task.
The solution I decided upon was Windows Home Server.
Getting to WHS
I'd looked at some other free products but didn't find anything I was really enamored with. There were plenty of applications that would allow me to share my content with the XBox and handle MP3s/MPGs. But, these tools didn't handle documents very well. I also wanted some directory security to avoid someone accidentally moving or deleting source code for clients I support while trying to copy some photos. I also wanted to be able to make some content public for friends when they visited and hooked up to the WiFi for example, free software I downloaded and use, but not my taxes and bank statements.
I could have gone with a mixed solution, Active Directory for file management, and another program for media syndication. However, I wanted a product that really integrated seamlessly across all boundaries.
Ultimately, I found WHS would be my best option.
Using WHS
Installing WHS is like any other Windows install you've ever done so there were no surprises there. Well, unless your host machine didn't support modern power management functionality. I ended up having to change out the motherboard on my host machine (a rack mount server) to a compliant board.
Once installed, you really never need to go back into the WHS machine. Instead, you install a "connector" application on the machines you want to use WHS with. I don't recall needing to do anything special for the XBox it just sees the server and can access whatever publicly accessible content is available; pictures, movies, music.
Once installed, the connector shows up as an icon in your system tray. When the server is running and your PC is "healthy" the icon is green. Otherwise it will change colors depending on the situation.
Setting up users and file permissions are very easy. You simple create them using the WHS GUI and assign users rights (none, read, full). It basically handles the active directory type functions for you.
You also get a "Shared Folders" desktop icon to access the Shares you have access to.
There is no magic here, just a simple and easy to use interface for sharing data on your network.
Misc Notes
WHS also automates backups of your machines which is handy if you're looking for a centralized backup solution.
Another cool feature is WHS handles the allocation of the disks for you. Once you mount a drive your disk WHS will automatically handle it. Instead of having physical disks, you have a big virtual disk that expands and is managed by WHS automatically.
Next Steps
For me, my next step is to figure out how to store DVR data on my server. My DVR fills us quickly and I end up having to delete programs I wanted to keep!
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