http://www.lenovo.com/psref/pdf/tabook.pdf

It seems that some industrious mail order catalog’s have listed the prices (notable, one of my favorites, ProVantage) so that gives me something to compare.  I’m not sure I’ll get one right away, because they are pretty expensive and of course  want the top of the line, but we will see what happens when they are actually released.

So, Here are some interesting things I’ve gleaned so far.

Graphics

This implies upgrading the graphics card from a 1000M to a 2000M is about $200. (both have 1920×1080 screens, 6MB Cache and can handle 1600ghz memory, though Crucial does not sell it yet.  You can find more info on the graphics cards here:  http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadrofx_go.html   Seems that the 1000M has a gizillion processors and the 2000M has 2 gazillion, but both have the same specs.  Go figure.

Mix Bag

Clearly, I don’t get the pattern in the pricing besides there is a huge range.  I need to get back to real work instead of this fantasy stuff.

See you.

The NAS Itself

I’ve been through multiple NAS devices and I have finally found one I love.  It’s the Synology NAS DS710+.

Briefly, the reasons I really am impressed with this device (in order)

1. It is blazing fast.  I’ve seen 90% of the Gigabit Network in use
2. Great Features Including Rsync support
3. Great User Interface (written well in ExtJs)
4. High Quality Workmanship
5. Low Power Consumption (idles at about 18 watts)

After buying multiple other NAS devices, I finally did some real research and found a great site that reviewed several NAS devices. I finally ended having several emails with the author of the review and based on that, bought the DS710.  For you information, the review site of multiple NAS devices I really like is:  http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/networking/ and the reviewer is: Hugh Barros.

Installing DeltaCopy On Windows Computer

Installing DeltaCopy is very straight forward and there are several blogs on the net.  You can get the download from the site http://www.aboutmyip.com/AboutMyXApp/DeltaCopy.jsp but I’m not sure if that is the official location or not.  If you know, please add a comment to this post and I’ll update it.  One site that goes through a step by step install is here:  http://www.aboutmyip.com/AboutMyXApp/DeltaCopy.jsp

Configuring DeltaCopy to Act as Rsync Server to NAS

First thing you need to do is open a port in your file wall so that the NAS can reach out to your computer. The port you need to open is:   873.

Then, I recommend installing DeltaCopy as a service.  You do that by running the “DeltaCopy Server” from your start menu. 

You need to setup a virtual directory where rsync will target the download.  Here is what that looks like:

Notice the Existing Directory box has an entry for each virtual directory you want to setup on your windows hard drive.  The name is very important.  It’s a required field in the NAS setup called “Backup Module”.  To me, that’s very confusing because I would think a module is some kind of compiled at in, not the name of the virtual directory.  I’m not an rsync wizard though so I’m guessing it may have meaning to those that are.  You do need to create a username and password for the NAS client to work with this server.  I’m on a trusted internal network so I would prefer it work without authentication, but I guess this is reasonable.  I do not use encryption because I want to be able to access these files natively on the windows hard disk I’m rsync’ing to.

Creating Backup Job on NAS Plus Scheduling

Now, on the NAS (DS710+) side, you need to go to Backup / Backup and Create a new backup job. Below is the setup screen for that.

Notice that 192.168.1.108 is the IP address of my windows workstation with the drive on it.  I’m sure I could setup dns and use the system name instead.  Something for later. Also, notice the password is masked.  On the DeltaCopy side, the password is not masked.  IMHO, a very bad practice.  I always shutter when I see my password and not stars as is best practice and almost always followed.

Now, when need to create a schedule so that the data is updated every day.  You simply go to the 4th tab “Scheduled Backup” and tell it to backup once a day.  This is creates a mirror (with incremental not checked on setup) so that it will not take long to run.  I set mine to run at 3AM every day.  You can also configure email to go out if any error occurs.  A very nice and important feature.

That’s about it.  I’ve only had the device for a couple days, but so far, it’s a winner!

Hope this helps.

So, here I am, and so far, vary happy.  I did try the Windows 7 beta and had some weirdness with Visual Studio 2008, but so far, everything has been perfect.  I do know the Microsoft folks have advertised that it contains better multi-monitor support.  I don’t know exactly what that means, but I have two monitors running off my Lenovo.  One is 2560×1600 and the other is 1600×1200.  One hassle I always had was moving a windows that was too big for the small monitor.  Now, I find that when I drag from the bigger to smaller, if the app is to big, it automatically get’s resized!  Nice Job MS!

Also, the appearance display is nicer. There is more granularity in letting you line up the monitors.  That is, my smaller one is centered next to the bigger one and I can align them exactly now as the screen show shows.

That’s it for now.  See you.

I recently notice on Amazon a discussion thread of about 15 people saying how absolutely wonderful SSDs are and how the brought new life to their notebook computers.  Every one of them raved about the magic this brought into their lives.

Well, after checking out the prices and performance, it seems that right now there are two classes of these drives.  It seems there is a first generation drive that performs in the area of 15/40Mbs/sec and ones that perform in the 100/170Mbs/sec.  To put this in perspective, when people refer to SATA/150 or SATA/300, the 150 and 300 are the Mbs/sec.  With Vista resource manager, you can actually see for yourself how man Mbs/sec you are actually getting.  Below is a screen shot showing that.

The price point for a 64Gig SSD which performs in the faster category is now about $150.  Off to the computer store I went to get mine.  The one I bought is a Patriot Warp as shown below.

What Happened

So, I get home and immediately put this new drive in my computer and since I now only have 64Gig for my system ( C ) drive, I need to load Vista Business on my Lenovo W500 from scratch (see description at bottom of page).

Immediately, I noticed it booted faster and shutdown faster.  This in fact was power of suggestion because when I looked at the numbers, it really did not boot much faster.  Here is the comparison.

Well, then things really began to fall apart.  It normally takes me a while to load all my different software programs.  Usually I can work at the same time as I’m installing software (most of my software I have ISO’s for so I don’t need to mess with DVDs).  It usually slows me down, but not too bad.  I quickly found that on this SSD, while software was installing, all I could do was wait.  If I tried to do anything else, the computer just slowed to a crawl.

In disbelief, I kept going down this path thinking it was all my imagination and that things were fine and fast.  I even convinced myself this was normal.  Finally, when installing one of my packages from Microsoft I got a failure.  I decided, since I really needed this software I should see if it’s the SSD drive causing the problem.

Next thing I did was to make an image backup with my favorite software (Acronis, see link below), then restore the SSD data to my WD 7200RPM basic rotating drive.  Well, to my total surprise, everything is now fast again and the Microsoft software actually installed no problem.

Conclusion

Wait for the next generation of SSD’s to come out.  This generation just does not work for me.  Thank goodness for 15 day return policies!

Hardware and Software Used