theMediaman.com

I’m a Microsoft lacky. I’ll shout it proudly.

I prefer the world Bill Gates has set out for us where everything works poorly together. Not the one Steve Jobs has set out where several things work well together (for a 50% premium on each), or the one Linus Torvolds has set out where everything works fantastic but not at all with one another (look up “Linux Flavours“).

I don’t intend to argue with people over which dead end option is the least-worst (although I feel I should disclose that I enjoy pissing off Apple Prophets). All three options have pros and cons, like anything in life.  My sin is simply that I prefer Microsoft.

One feature of the new Mac OS X 10.5 that I kinda like is Time Machine.  Using a clever, 3D interface, you can rummage through all files you’ve ever created, and restore ones that might have been deleted.  Problems with this include the need to buy a large external hard drive, it doesn’t work on older Macs (specifically because of the 3D interface), and the fact that deleting your porn sensitive files might not completely delete them from being found.

Just quickly, I’ll address the “older Macs” issue. Yes, Vista won’t work on comparible PC to the Macintosh G4’s, but Windows Home server requires nothing more than Windows XP which can run happlily on a mid-range Pentium III.

Looking for a backup system for my machine hasn’t been a big concern until after I moved in with Simone the total of active computers in my house rose to three (two desktops and a notebook). There are also a lot of digital photographs that sometimes exist on only one hard drive, and the two desktops are starting to show age (4-6 years old).

My first solution of an external hard drive that connects directly to the network was full of holes. The primary issue was that the file system on the hard drive had to be FAT32 instead of something more secure and error-proof like NTFS. The cost of deployment would be around $200 after installing a 500 GB hard drive.

More recently I looked at the new Windows Home Server.  There are several important features, but the one I’m most concerned with is the backups.  Like Time Machine, it does incremental backups, so it doesn’t use up space re-writing the same files over and over again.  It backs up from all Windows PCs on the network, so those same redundant files (photos, system files, etc.) are also not repeated. All of this is done automatically, another timesaver.

The hope is for everyone to buy a pre-built machine from HP or Dell or whatever and pay $500-600 for the privilege. I was able to find minimum system requirements and found that a 1 GHz P3 with 512 MB of RAM can do the job.  Considering that these can be found for about $75, that’s pretty damned good.

Turning one of our desktops into the server will save even more money. So total cost of deployment will be $166 for the OS and around $100 for the hard drive. All administration is done through a web browser, so the machine just needs to have a power plug and a network cable hooked into it.

Some secondary features are also there that I was hoping for, including the ability to set up a rudimentary web server to share photos, videos and music. We can also store and share our music collections, freeing up hard drive space on our main computers.

Sure there’s a cool 3D interface on Time Machine.  Sure there’s probably an open-source, command-line version for the flavour of Linux you’re sporting.  Sure the initial release of Home Server is probably going to be ridden with bugs.

I still love Bill.