Checking how much power a USB device requires

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I have a number of USB-attached hard disks that I use for portable mass storage, backups, etc. Very occasionally, Windows XP will report that there has been a power surge on the USB port and that it has been shut down. This can happen when the total number of devices attached to a USB hub (internal or external) exceeds the total power available. I’ve always treated that as a minor annoyance (and as these disks have two USB connections and a Y-shaped cable, I can simply use two ports) but then a few days back I noticed something I’ve never see before – the ability to view power details for (or more precisely current drawn through) a USB root hub:

USB device power draw

As can be seen in the example above, my scanner is using the full 500mA on its port, but there is still a port available which could potentially provide another 500mA. To view this information, open Device Manager from the Computer Management MMC snap-in and expand the Universal Serial Bus Controllers node. There will normally be a number of controllers listed, along with some devices and USB root hubs. Each USB root hub should have include power details within its properties.

Checking my IEEE 1394 (FireWire/i.Link) controller doesn’t seem to offer the same facilities, presumably because it doesn’t have the same concept of a root hub.

A business case for an iPod?

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Ever since the Apple iPod Nano was launched last September, I’ve been saying that I would like one (but can’t justify it because I only bought my iPod Mini in May last year).

Then, a few days back, I met up with a friend who is a professional photographer. He showed me his iPod with video and now that’s the one I want. I was always suspicious of how good a 2.5″ screen could be, but it really is clear and bright (even in daylight). My friend explained that by putting his portfolio onto his iPod he has already got two new commissions, meaning that it has effectively paid for itself already!

Now if only I could build a case for an IT Consultant to sell services via an iPod…

Windows XP service pack 3 delayed until after Windows Vista

Posted on By Mark Wilson

We all know that Microsoft will have to pull out all the stops if they are going to meet their target of shipping the much hyped and severely delayed Windows Vista this calendar year. Well, it seems that desire to get a new version of Windows out is at the expense of existing Windows XP customers and Windows XP service pack 3 will not be here until late 2007 – that’s a full 3 years after service pack 2 was released.

As reported by Paul Thurrott in his Windows IT Pro magazine network WinInfo Daily Update, Microsoft’s Windows service pack roadmap states that service pack 3 for Windows XP Home/Professional Editions is currently planned for the second half of 2007 (preliminary date). Service pack 2 for Windows Server 2003 is still shown for the second half of this year (maybe Microsoft views server customers as more critical to it’s continued growth?).

That means that, based on the current published schedules (which I will concede are not always the most reliable source of information), Windows Vista will be here before the next Windows XP service pack! I know that Microsoft is disappointed at Windows XP service pack 2 adoption rates but for those of us who did get with the program, what happened to regular service pack releases? The fully-patched Windows XP machine on which I’m writing this post already has no less than 50 post-SP2 hotfixes, updates and security updates for Windows XP installed so how many more do I have to install before they get rolled up into a service pack?!!

Standalone QuickTime installer

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Apple QuickTimeI have Apple iTunes installed on the PC where I synchronise my iPod. I don’t need it anywhere else, but for some reason if you try to download Apple’s QuickTime, it comes bundled with iTunes. Thanks to a Tech-Recipes Internet tip, I found the standalone QuickTime installer. Now all I need is for Apple to realise that I don’t want to install an English (United States) version – if there’s only one English option available, then please call it English.

Is Microsoft still a monopoly?

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I spent a lot of time in the car yesterday, which means I got to catch up on some of my podcast listening – this time I was mostly listening to Slashdot Review. One of the items I picked up on was an interesting discussion on whether or not Microsoft is still a monopoly.

My view is that Microsoft probably does have a monopoly (in the legal sense) over the PC operating system and office productivity suite market (although that’s weakening rapidly, as major OEMs consider offering non-Microsoft operating systems on new PCs), but in many other markets they are just an also-ran. Not everyone agrees and the real issue is not really whether Microsoft is a monopoly (nothing wrong with that), but whether they abuse a position of power to restrict competition. My observation is that Microsoft is a company who are “damned if they do and damned if the don’t”. By that I mean that consumers and critics are constantly asking for new security features within the operating system, but if Microsoft dares to bundle any such middleware within the operating system, competitors cry foul.

Migrating e-mail from Mozilla Thunderbird to Microsoft Outlook

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Since the end of November, I’ve been using the Mozilla Thunderbird client for my personal e-mail. It’s quite good (and in many ways better than Microsoft’s Outlook Express, which is no longer being developed), but it lacks many features that I used daily in the full Microsoft Outlook client (and quite frankly, Outlook was doing a better job of filtering out spam). The biggest drawbacks for me were a lack of calendar functionality, no longer being able to send SMS messages from within my e-mail client and that the address book only has space for two e-mail addresses per contact.

Anyway, sometime this afternoon, my laptop is due to be collected for repairs, so I needed to get my e-mail data out of Thunderbird and into a format that I could use on my work PC for a week or so (i.e. Microsoft Outlook personal folder – a .PST file).

Finding the Thunderbird data was easy enough – the Thunderbird FAQ pointed me to %appdata%\Thunderbird\Profiles\randomstring.default\; however, Thunderbird uses the standard Unix .MBOX format whilst Outlook Express uses proprietary .DBX files (but understands .EML, which are plain text files) and Outlook stores messages in binary proprietary .PST files.

Outlook can import data from Outlook Express, and Outlook Express claims to be able to read Eudora data (which is also in MBOX format); however I couldn’t get Outlook Express to read my Thunderbird files, instead displaying the following message:

Import Message
No messages can be found in this folder or another application is running that has the required files open. Please select another folder or try closing applications that may have files open.

A Google search turned up some anecdotal evidence of successful conversions using Eudora as an intermediary, but this was based on Eudora v5 (v7 is the current version available for download). After digging further, I found two articles which used third party utilities to convert the .MBOX data to .EML – one from Robert Peloschek (aka. Unic0der), and the other from Broobles. The principles are the same:

  1. Compact folders in Thunderbird (optional, but prevents conversion of deleted messages).
  2. Back up Thunderbird mail data (a simple file copy is fine).
  3. For each Thunderbird file without an extension (e.g. Inbox – but not Inbox.mfs), convert this to a series of .EML formatted files, for example using the Broobles IMAPSize utility (this is what I used) or Ulrich Krebs’ Mbox2eml (which relies on a Java runtime environment being present).
  4. Drag and drop the resulting files from the file system to Outlook Express.
  5. Import Outlook Express data to Outlook.

It worked for me, with one caveat – messages I had sent, but that were filed in locations other than in my Sent folder, all have the date stamp set to yesterday. I’ll live with that (after 2 hours of converting the data in each individual folder to a series of .EML files and the dragging and dropping them to the appropriate locations in a new folder structure, I’m just glad to have my data back where I want it) but I did read that this can be controlled by changing the sort order from received to sent before the file conversion and import.

So, that’s my Thunderbird experiment over. I’ll probably try out the e-mail and calendar client on my Solaris box soon (so will be back to .MBOX format I guess) but for a long while now I’ve been meaning to set up a mail server at home so that I can keep the mail there and use IMAP to access it online from whichever client I choose.

When blog spam goes wrong!

Posted on By Mark Wilson

A few weeks back, I wrote about a device (called Diesel Guard) that I’d been told to fit to my company car to help prevent accidental mis-fuelling. A couple of weeks later, someone posted a comment on the post about an alternative product (called MagneCap). At the time, I thought of it as a bit of friendly advice and I didn’t think anything more of it, but now it looks as if the comment was blog spam (which, incidentally, is specifically mentioned as prohibited in the rules for comments on this site).

The thing is, that at the time of writing, this blog has a higher Google page rank than the official site for MagneCap. That means that if you search Google for MagneCap, what comes back is not what the owners of the MagneCap site would like to see:

Google search results for MagneCap

(especially as, out of context, the quote reads as if it’s MagneCap that’s the embarrassing product, rather than Diesel Guard!)

Yesterday afternoon, I received an e-mail asking me if I had any ideas to correct the “incorrect heading” but there is absolutely nothing I can do about Google’s index (which is quite correct in quoting the title of the page and a couple of lines from the blog spam comment). Either I, or the author, could remove the original blog spam comment (in which case I would also remove the following two anonymous comments, which I also suspect are blog spam as the timing is remarkable at 45 and 50 minutes after the e-mail asking for help…) but Google’s cached version will still be available online. I also suggested that MagneCap take out a paid ad so that their site appears above Google’s standard search results. Because I genuinely believe that this was simple product placement and not malicious in any way, I’m also writing this post, so that hopefully Google will pick this up as the next entry and it might become clear that MagneCap was not the embarrassing device which I originally wrote about.

Just like Aesop’s fables, there is a moral to this tale… if you feel like engaging in a bit of product placement on someone else’s website, ask them first. Or at least make sure the blog spam gives the message you want if only a few words are quoted out of context by a search engine.

New toys from Nikon

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Although this is mostly an IT blog, one of my hobbies is photography and the two fields are getting ever-closer to one another.

Nikon 80-200 f2.8 IF-ED

I’ve just picked up my latest toy – an AF-S Zoom Nikkor 80-200 f2.8 IF-ED lens for my Nikon cameras. It’s second hand, but it’s a really good lens, bought from a professional photographer friend who has switched from Nikon to Canon.

Actually, for the last few weeks I’ve been getting very excited by a new DSLR camera body from Nikon that I’d really like – the D200.

Nikon D200

Like all Nikon DSLRs, the D200 uses an APS-sized (DX) sensor, as Nikon do not produce a body with a full-frame image sensor and seem to be relying on us all upgrading to DX lenses to make the most of the tiny image sensor (it seems to me that more professionals are defecting to Canon, leaving Nikon with just consumers and prosumers like myself); however the D200 offers a number of improvements over the D70 that I bought just over a year ago with a 10.2 million pixel image sensor, ISO range from 100-3200, improved autofocus, remote cable release and a massive 2.5″ LCD display.

Sadly, I’ll have to wait a while for this as, at about £1299 for the body only, I’d need to sell both my F90x and my D70 – and secondhand values are really not very good at all.

Oh well, I’ve finally managed to upgrade my most-used lenses to Nikkor models, the D200 body will just have to go on my wishlist.

Apple observations

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Although my day job involves a lot of work with Windows (often working closely with people at Microsoft), I also use a fair amount of open source software (e.g. Sun Solaris, Mozilla Firefox, FileZilla, etc.) so I’m not completely biased towards the company that everybody loves to hate. I’m also writing this post on a PC running Unix and like to think of myself as pretty operating system agnostic – it’s just that Windows is where I have the greatest knowledge and experience.

I think that Apple produce some great products – I love my iPod Mini and I’d seriously consider buying a Mac Mini should they ever go over to Intel and 64-bit – but I do find that people who use Macs tend to be… somewhat fanatical (maybe it’s something to do with being an oppressed minority). When I dared to suggest that OS X icons are big and a waste of space (not exclusively a Mac problem – I also slated the KDE and Vista desktop environments), it didn’t take long for someone with more Mac experience than me to slap me down and tell me to use CMD-J to alter the size and then “come back… and apologise”.

That was good advice, I’m sure, but my point was that the defaults are ugly (a personal view of course, which I’m entitled to). When I was writing about the OS X/Vista videos a few days back, I came across the following comment about Apple fans (it’s slightly out of date because of the Intel references, but I left them in anyway). I think it’s funny – I wish I’d written it myself, but I didn’t:

“I am an Apple user.I have no opinions, needs or desires that are in conflict with Apple. If it’s good for Apple it’s good for me. If it’s good for me, but bad for Apple, then I oppose it. If it’s good for me, but Apple doesn’t offer it yet, I oppose it. When Apple tells me that it is good for them, I will change my mind and support it. I need no choices because choices mean I can choose something other than Apple, which is bad. Therefore choice is bad. Unless Apple gives me a choice, then choice is good.

Apple’s success means I have been successful at making Apple successful. If Jobs is happy I am happy. If Jobs is angry I am angry. I have no opinions other than Jobs’. When something new comes out, Apple will tell me what it is and tell me how much I want it. I can tell if Apple wants me to have it because they will sell it to me if it is good, and not sell it to me if it is bad.

Apple gives me all the choices I need. I can load music on my iPod that I download from Apple, rip from my CDs or pirate. Piracy is good because Apple permits it. If it were bad they would prevent it. Pirated music helps sell more iPods, which is good for Apple. So pirated music is good.

As of today Intels are bad, feh, I hate them. IBM PowerPCs are good. As of whenever Apple switches, IBM PowerPCs will be bad. I will hate them. When Intel CPUs sit in a Mac they will be good. When they sit in a PC they will be bad, crappy Dells. I will hate them.

The Operating System. Ah-oom. The Operating System. Mac OS X version 4.1.2.3.4.5.6.7 Tigerrrrr. Ah-oom. Oooh, aaah, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, eeeeh, aaaaaaah. Oh Steve. zzzzzzzzzzz.”

[source: MacLive.net]

If you love everything Apple does, please don’t flame me – it’s a joke – and I just plagiarised someone else’s wit and humour, to share it with the world (well, the few people who read this blog anyway). I took a pop at Microsoft a few days back and now I’m redressing the balance! I’m sure someone could write something similar with the names Gates and Microsoft in it and if you still think I’m being unfair to Apple, there was another comment on the same post that made me laugh, pointing out that Vista could be an acronym for Viruses, Infections, Spyware, Trojans, Adware – make what you want of that (although I tend to agree that these are all caused by poor computer discipline).

Where has the Windows User Group – Nordic gone?

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Johan Arwidmark is a Microsoft MVP, who has published a lot of good advice over the years on RIS, Windows PE and other deployment technologies. I’ve found some of this content really useful and have linked to it in the past but last year Johan’s Windows User Group – Nordic website went offline. A whois lookup shows that it is registered to a company called Lutteman Consulting AB, whose website still links to the Windows User Group – Nordic forum but the link is dead (it used to be available under both the .com and .net TLDs).

I needed that information, so I e-mailed Johan to find out where it had gone. I didn’t expect a reply (and didn’t get one either), so I searched for copies of Johan’s articles that had been cached by Google (what a great feature that is!). In doing so, I stumbled some of the articles, republished on MyITForum, where Johan’s bio mentions that he now works for TrueSec AB, whose website proudly proclaims (under news from 16 September 2005) that:

“Sveriges främsta expert inom deployment är rekryterad till TrueSec. Johan är en av fÃ¥ i världen utsedd till Microsoft MVP pÃ¥ deployment.Johans kompetens förstärker TrueSecs förmÃ¥ga att leverera optimerade klient och serverinstallationer för kunder med behov av säkerhet.”

For those who don’t read Swedish, that roughly translates to say that Sweden’s foremost expert in deployment has been recruited to TrueSec, before continuing that Johan was nominated as a Microsoft MVP on deployment in a global poll and his competency enhances TrueSec’s power to deliver optimised client and server installations for clients who need security.

Anyway, for those who don’t want to be cybersleuths, tracking down lost information (I got lucky really), for Windows User Group – Nordic, check out Google’s cached results.