Lenovo’s IdeaPad S10e is exactly what I’d hoped for

Posted on By Mark Wilson

If this blog post is full of typos it’s because I’m conducting an experiment.  I’m trying to see if I can type an entire post on an 85% keyboard without making an unacceptable number of mistakes… and then I’ll tell you if the keyboard on my Lenovo S10e is any good.

Readers may recall that, just over a week ago, I was very excited at the prospect of the imminent arrival opf my new toy – my Christmas present to myself.  Some of you even indicated that you’d like to know how I get on with my new netbook and, I have to say, I’m pretty impressed.

Let’s get one thing straight – a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU is not going yto blowe you away with blinding performance – but then consider something else (wehich my friend and colleague Dave Saxon pointed out) – this machine is not designed for content creation and is really intended for content consumption.  Eben so, I reckon it will be the machine that I use for knocking out most of my blog posts for a while.

OK.  Keyboard experiment over… I will correct any typos from now on but, bearing in mind I’m a 16-and-a-half-stone (230lb/105kg) guy who stopped growing before he got to 6 foot tall (i.e. a fat bloke) with podgy fingers, I’m quite happy that I managed to type three paragraphs with only five mistakes (I’d probably have made a couple on a full-sized keyboard).  Like I said, this machine is not designed for content creation but as a half-way-house between a fully mobile (PDA/smartphone) device and a standard notebook PC.  Comparing the keyboard on my Lenovo S10e with some of the other 10” netbooks the 1 is a little too far to the left (so I keep hitting 2) and some others manage a full row of 12 function keys (the Lenovo only has 11 – requiring a Fn+F11 combination to get F12).  Based on looks alone, the Samsung NC10 seems to have a better keyboard – it’s a pity it’s such an ugly machine.

Which nicely leads me into the topics of aesthetics and build quality.  Apple PCs are often held up as examples of design excellence and, when asked about the increasing number of netbooks sold, Apple CEO Steve Jobs is quoted as having said:

“We don’t know how to produce a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk”

[Steve Jobs, October 2008]

He’s probably right – after all, my Apple MacBook is not as well built as I would like and it cost me around £800 (it’s not quite a $1000 piece of crap – but it’s certainly not as good as it should be).  So, if Apple can’t even get a premium-priced notebook PC right, they have no chance with anything at this end of the market.  On the other hand, Lenovo have managed to build a good looking little PC for around the $500 mark (mine cost £292.25, including 15% sales tax) and before I got my hands on it I said that I hoped Lenovo had continued the build quality that previous IBM ThinkPads displayed – I’m pleased to say that the S10e does not disappoint. The one criticism that I have is that the back of the screen appears to be constructed from a single, thin sheet and it does flex if pushed.

The one thing that lets the S10e down is battery life.  In fairness I haven’t run a full charge cycle on my battery yet (so it’s not fully conditioned) but Windows’ prediction of 4 hours and 13 minutes from a fully-charged battery is wildly optimistic – I reckon I’ll be lucky to get three although I am using the WiFi connection.  If this becomes a problem then a 6-cell battery is available – I haven’t found a UK price yet but at least one site is selling them for less than $80.

Some people have criticised the Lenovo for running hot – mine’s been charging on the desk for the last few hours and admittedly it is a bit warm but nothing compared to my Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook S7210, which is quite an effective electric fan heater, or my Apple MacBook, which regularly reports internal temperatures of 70-80 degrees.

My S10e was supplied with 1GB of RAM (512MB fixed and another 512MB of DDR2 PC2-5300 RAM).  For the type of work that this machine is designed for, that should be plenty and I’ve not seen any evidence of excessive paging with a few Internet Explorer tabs, a couple of command prompts, a few Explorer windows and Windows Live Writer running.  Running some Office applications might start to push the envelope slightly though. I can’t comment on how well it works with Windows 7 (I’ll write more as soon as I’m freed from NDA restrictions but Paul Thurrott has reported that there will be a public beta next month so hopefully it won’t be too long), in the meantime I’ll just quote CNet’s Brooke Crothers, who wrote that:

“[Microsoft said that] Windows 7 will run on 1GB of memory and 16GB of (solid-state drive) storage. Higher-end Netbooks will have a 160GB hard disk drive, according to Microsoft ‘guidance.’”

And who am I to argue with CNet?

Even if 1GB is not enough to run 7 on this hardware, there are reports that a 2GB SODIMM can be installed to take the total to 2.5GB (of which 2GB will be addressable).  In addition, for those who are running Windows Vista or later, a USB flash drive or SD card can be used with ReadyBoost to improve system responsiveness.

On the expandability front, it’s a bit of a shame that the SD slot leaves the card sticking out (especially as I have a card in there all the time for ReadyBoost) and it’s the same with the PC Express Card slot but these are still valuable capabilities (most netbooks have media cards readers but few offer a PC Express Card slot).

So, onto the million dollar question – is a netbook actually of any practical use or is it too big a compromise?  To answer that, I’ll refer to my previous point – this device is for content consumption not content creation – and for web browsing, streaming a bit of TV from the BBC website, catching up on e-mail, RSS feeds, etc., a netbook is fine.  TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington wrote that there are three reasons why netbooks are not good enough and I cannot agree at all.  Arrington contests that:

“They’re underpowered as PCs, the screen is too small for web surfing, and the keyboard is so small that effective typing is impossible.”

Underpowered?  Well, you’re not going to be doing media compression on one of these but it’s more than adequate for the purposes I described above.

Screen too small for web surfing? 1024×576 is a little shallow but it works on most sites – there’s the odd dialog box that causes an issue (poor UI design) but it’s easy enough to adjust the font size to read a bit more on a web page (Ctrl+-)and, as Liliputing wrote in their response:

“[Arrington] points out that you can only read the first 8 lines of an article on his web site when using a netbook, while you can see the first 22 lines using the iPhone web browser. But you know what? The iPhone doesn’t have a higher resolution display than a netbook, it just has a different web browser. This is a software issue, not a hardware issue”

(I’d also add that TechCrunch takes up a huge amount of space above the fold with ads and navigation…)

As for the keyboard?  I’ve already proved that, whilst it’s not ideal, it is usable – it may not be great for writing huge documents or knocking out code but it’s fine for leaving the odd comment on a website or responding to e-mail.

Whilst slightly larger alternatives such as the Dell Mini 12 offer a much better specification (closer to a notebook than to a netbook), the whole point of this purchase (for me) was a small, lightweight package – so a 10” model was about my limit.  Sure, there are some compromises (like the keyboard and the 576px display depth) but this netbook is everything I wanted it to be.  For less than £300, the Lenovo S10e is fantastic value – better built than the Acer/Asus netbooks, more fully-featured than the Dell Mini 9, and better looking than the Samsung NC10.  I’m pleased to say that I have absolutely no regrets about this particular purchase.

For more information, check out the Lenovo IdeaPad S Series Forums.

Using cows to measure the environmental benefits associated with server virtualisation…

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Much is made of the environmental benefits of server consolidation using virtualisation technologies so Microsoft and Alinean have put together a website to create a report of the likely environmental benefits of implementing Microsoft Virtualization technologies. I don’t know how accurate it is (the point of using Alinean is that there should be sizable amount of independent market research behind this) but, ultimately, the goal here is to sell products (in this case Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V).

Regardless of the serious environmental and economical qualities of the Hyper-Green site that Microsoft and Alinean have put together, it’s not a patch (humour wise) on the Virtualisation Cow site that the Australian-based virtualisation consultancy Oriel have created, based on using HP server hardware and VMware Virtual Infrastructure software. The Oriel site may not produce a nice report based on market research from IDC and others but I’d rather express my greenhouse gas savings in terms of cows any day!

(This post is dedicated to Patrick Lownds – joint leader of the Microsoft Virtualization UK User Group – who commented at today’s Microsoft Virtualization Readiness training for partners that he was sure this would appear on my blog… it would be a shame to disappoint him…).

Spotting strange connections on the network

Posted on By Mark Wilson

A few nights back, I was sorting the pile of books, newspapers and magazines in the bedside reading pile into two more piles: “no time to read so send for recycling”; and “I really must read that”. As I did so, I came across a copy of .net magazine that included an article on using netstat.exe to detect spyware. This is a well-known, but often forgotten tool in the IT administrator’s arsenal:

netstat -a

will give a list of all network and Internet connections, detailing the protocol (e.g. TCP or UDP), local IP address (and port), foreign (remote) IP address (and port) and the state of the connection.

netstat -an

will display addresses in numeric form, so it’s pretty easy to spot those that are listening from another network and a whois lookup will help work out who’s listening in who shouldn’t be (often it will turn out to be something intentional).

netstat -abnv

will take it a step further and show you the applications and components used to initiate the connection – look out on this list and you should be able to spot any strange applications and google them to find out what they are.

Incidentally, netstat is not just for Windows, but the command switches I gave above are. If you are using Windows and you don’t like the command line, then TCPView is a former Sysinternals tool (now owned by Microsoft) that provides a GUI front end for netstat, including whois lookups and process properties. Another useful tool is Nir Sofer’s CurrPorts, which displays the list of all open TCP and UDP ports along with information about the process that opened the port (including highlighting suspicious processes) and the ability to close unwanted TCP connections, kill the process that opened the ports, and save the information to a file.

Improving the performance of Adobe Bridge CS3

Posted on By Mark Wilson

The computer I use for my digital photography workflow is not exactly underpowered – it’s a 2008 Apple MacBook with a 2.2GHz Intel Core2Duo CPU, 4GB RAM and a 320GB hard disk – so I couldn’t understand why Adobe Bridge (CS3) was taking so long to do anything. Sure, I do have around 15,000 digital photos and over 9000 of them are in a single folder but I was seeing more than my fair share of spinning beachballs (the Mac equivalent of the Windows egg timer – which itself has been replaced with a halo from Windows Vista onwards).

I googled around a bit and didn’t find much at first but then I stumbled across an Adobe User to User Forums post from Ramón G Castañeda where he says that:

“The Bridge that come with CS3 now makes extensive use of the GPU on your graphics display card, That’s new.

If your graphics card is underpowered, enabling Use Software Rendering will actually help performance.”

Of course – my MacBook has an integrated graphics chipset and, whilst that’s fine for the photo editing that I do, drawing all those thumbnails in Bridge was going to bog it down a bit. So I turned on software rendering, restarted Bridge and the difference was very noticeable. Sure, CPU utilisation took a hit – but previously the two CPU cores were idle as they waited for the underpowered GPU to catch up.

Enabling software rendering in the preferences for Adobe Bridge CS3

From reading around, other configuration items that can make a difference include:

  • Make sure there is plenty of free disk space available – and that it’s not fragmented.
  • Organise images into subfolders.
  • Increase the size of the camera raw cache (1GB of disk space will hold about 200 raw images – I bumped mine up to 10GB but I’m not sure if that’s made any difference yet).
    Adjusting the cache size for Adobe Camera Raw 4.5
  • Make sure your PC/Mac has plenty of memory (2GB minimum) and a fast disk (RAID 0 is good if you have a decent workstation but is not an option for laptop users like me).

Securely wiping hard disks using Windows

Posted on By Mark Wilson

My blog posts might be a bit sporadic over the next couple of weeks – I’m trying to squeeze the proverbial quart into a pint pot (in terms of my available time) and am cramming like crazy to get ready for my MCSE to MCITP upgrade exams.

I’m combining this Windows Server 2008 exam cramming with a review of John Savill’s Complete Guide to Windows Server 2008 and I hope to publish my review of that book soon afterwards.

One of the tips I picked up from the book this morning as I tried to learn as much as I could about Bitlocker drive encryption in an hour, was John’s tip for securely wiping hard drives using a couple of Windows commands:

format driveletter: /fs:ntfs /x

will force a dismount if required and reformat the drive, using NTFS.

cipher /w:driveletter:

will remove all data from the unused disk space on the chosen drive.

I don’t know how this compares with third party products that might be used for this function but I certainly thought it was a useful thing to know. This is not new to Windows Server 2008 either – it’s certainly available as far back as Windows XP and possibly further.

For more tips like this, check out the NTFAQ or John’s site at Savilltech.com.

How Microsoft and RSA plan to protect our sensitive data

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Mention Microsoft and security in the same sentence and most people will scoff but these day’s it really a bit unfair… Windows security has come a long way (it still has a way to go too) but nevertheless, many of the customers that I deal with run third party solutions (often at great cost) rather than trust their data security to Microsoft.

Then there’s digital rights management (DRM) – we hear a lot about how DRM is applied to music and video downloads but little about the real practical use of this technology – making sure that only those who are entitled to see a particular item of data (for example medical records or financial details) are able to access it.  Microsoft has rights management services built into Windows as one of the many identity and access solutions but it seems to me that very few organisations use this capability.  Perhaps a few of the frequent and high profile Government data security mishaps would be mitigated if DRM was applied to their data…

Today, Microsoft and RSA – a well-respected security company, now absorbed into EMC – announced an expansion of their technology partnership.  Under the terms of this partnership, Microsoft will license the RSA Data Loss Prevention (DLP) classification engine in order to trigger policy-based controls over information.

Tom Corn, Vice President of Product Management and Marketing for RSA’s Data Security Group, explained that organisations have a requirement to share information without limiting accessibility – striking a balance between security and accessibility.  Slating existing point products as costly, complex and not addressing the problem he explained how:

  1. Protection is an end-to-end problem and the data moves around – existing products only acts at certain points in the data exchange.
  2. Infrastructure components lack visibility of the data sensitivity – context is required to classify data and take appropriate actions.
  3. Existing tools and controls lack identity awareness, making it difficult to tie protection to identity.
  4. Management – security policies often exist as binders on shelves and may be written by different groups within an organisation (e.g. security, or operations) leading to a disconnected approach.  All too often the management policies are infrastructure-centric (e.g. laptop security policy, Internet security policy) rather than information-centric (e.g. credit card data storage policy).

Meanwhile, John (JG) Chirapurath, Director of Identity and Security at Microsoft spoke about how Microsoft is licensing DLP to build it into products such as Exchange Server and Office SharePoint Server to provide content awareness, then providing identity awareness through components such as Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS) to allow collaboration (which relies on knowledge of identity) whilst protecting intellectual property.  By “building in” and not “bolting on”, Microsoft believes that it can provide an end-to-end solution, supported with centralised management for information-centric policies for usage, protection and access.

Under the terms of the agreement, RSA will launch DLP v6.5 later this month with full integration to AD RMS and, as new versions of products come to market eventually the entire infrastructure will make use of the DLP technology.  Customers are able to protect their investment as the core engine and policy formats exist today and, as the core DLP technologies are adopted into the Microsoft platform, RSA will continue to develop complimentary products (e.g. advanced management consoles).

Microsoft were unwilling to disclose any further details of their roadmap for integrating the DLP product into their products but did comment that the claims-based identity platform codenamed Geneva (formerly Zermatt) is a key part of Microsoft’s identity strategy and that there would be clear advantages in using Windows CardSpace to unlock business to consumer (B2C) scenarios for data exchange.  There was also a hint that management would be possible from RSA’s products and from the Forefront integrated security system product (codenamed Stirling).

All in all, this is a positive step on the part of Microsoft and EMC/RSA.  What remains to be seen is how willing business and Government customers are to invest in protecting their data.  Right now we have a business problem and a technology solution but it seems to me there is an apparent lack of desire to implement the technology and supporting processes.  Let’s hope that by integrating technologies like DLP into the core IT infrastructure, our personal details can remain confidential as we increasingly collaborate online.

Windows Vista and Server 2008 SP2 is opened up to the public, target release date announced

Posted on By Mark Wilson

After the storm of announcements from Microsoft at PDC, WinHEC and TechEd EMEA it’s been a quiet few weeks but, for those who haven’t seen, Microsoft announced that the Windows Vista and Server 2008 Service Pack 2 beta will be opened up to a wider audience, starting with TechNet and MSDN subscribers at 14:00 tomorrow (I guess that’s Redmond time, so 22:00 here in the UK) and then via a broader customer preview programme (CPP) on Thursday (4 December).

This release is intended for technology enthusiasts, developers, and administrators who would like to test SP2 in their environments and with their applications prior to final release and, for most customers, Microsoft’s advice is to wait until the final release prior to installing this update.

Full details of the changes in the SP2 beta may be found in Microsoft’s Windows Server TechCenter.

Microsoft also announced the date that they are aiming for (not a firm commitment) – SP2 should be expected in the first half of 2009.

NetBooks, solid state drives and file systems

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Yesterday, I wrote about the new NetBook PC that I’ve ordered (a Lenovo IdeaPad S10). In that post I mentioned that I had some concerns about running Windows 7 on a PC with a solid state drive (SSD) and I wanted to clarify something: it’s not that Windows 7 (or any other version of Windows) is inherently bad on SSD, it’s just that there are considerations to take into account when making sure that you get the most out of a solid state drive.

Reading around various forums it’s apparent that SSDs vary tremendously in quality and performance. As a consequence, buying a cheap NetBook with a Linux distro on it and upgrading the SSD to a larger device (the Linux models generally ship with lower capacity SSDs than their more expensive Windows XP brethren) is not necessarily straightforward. Then there’s the issue of form factor – not all SSDs use the same size board.

Another commonly reported issue is that NTFS performance on an SSD is terrible and that FAT32 should be used instead. That rings alarm bells with me because FAT32: does not include any file-level access control lists; has a maximum file size of 4GB (so no good for storing DVD ISOs – not that you’ll get many of those on the current generation of SSDs – anyway, most NetBooks do not ship with an optical drive).

The reason for poor NTFS performance on SSDs may be found in a slide deck from the 2008 Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), where Frank Shu, a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft, highlights:

  • The alignment of NTFS partition to SSD geometry is important for SSD performance in [Windows]
    • The first Windows XP partition starts at sector #63; the middle of [an] SSD page.
    • [A] misaligned partition can degrade [the] device’s performance […] to 50% caused by read-modify-write.

It sounds to me as if those who are experiencing poor performance on otherwise good SSDs (whilst SSDs come in a smaller package, are resistant to shocks and vibration, use less power and generate less heat than mechanical hard drives SSD life and performance varies wildly) may have an issue with the partition alignment on their drives. Windows 7 implements some technologies to make best use of SSD technology (read more about how Windows 7 will, and won’t, work better with SSDs in Eric Lai’s article on the subject).

In addition, at the 2007 WinHEC, Frank Shu presented three common issues with SSDs:

  • Longer setup time for command execution.
  • SSD write performance.
  • Limited write cycles for NAND flash memory (100,000 write cycles for single layer cell devices and 10,000 write cycles for multi layer cell devices).

(He also mentioned cost – although this is dropping as SSDs become more prevalent in NetBooks and other PC devices aimed at highly-mobile users).

In short, SSD technology is still very new and there are a lot of factors to consider (I’ve just scraped the surface here). I’m sure that in the coming years I’ll be putting SSDs in my PCs but, as things stand at the end of 2008, it’s a little too soon to make that jump – even for a geek like me.

Incidentally, Frank Shu’s slide decks on Solid State Drives – Next Generation Storage (WinHEC 2007: WNS-T432) and Windows 7 Enhancements for Solid-State Drives (WinHEC 2008: COR-T558) are both available on the ‘net and worth a look for anyone considering running Windows on a system with an SSD installed.

Why Lenovo’s S10 seemed like a good idea(pad) to me

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I try to keep my work and home life on different computers. It doesn’t always work, but that’s the idea anyway. The problem I find is that, every time I’m away from home (which is when I get most of my blogging done), I find myself carrying around two laptops and, even without any peripherals (power adapters, etc.), that’s 4.5kg of luggage. Any sensible person would use an external hard disk for one of the workloads but… there you go…

Lenovo IdeaPad S10I’ve been watching developments with small form-factor PCs (so called “NetBooks”) for a while now and over the weekend I took the plunge. Tomorrow morning I’m expecting a delivery of a Lenovo IdeaPad S10 to slip in my bag alongside the Fujitsu-Siemens S7210 that I use for work.

So why did I choose the Lenovo?

  • In terms of build quality, my IBM ThinkPad is by far and away the best notebook PC I’ve ever had (better than the various Toshiba, Compaq, Dell and Fujitsu-Siemens units I’ve used – and certainly better than my Apple MacBook) – I’m hoping that Lenovo have continued that quality as they’ve taken on the former IBM PC business (the reviews I’ve read certainly indicate that they have).
  • I want to use this NetBook with Windows 7 – and I know it can work (this is the model that Steven Sinofsky showed in a keynote at Microsoft’s 2008 Professional Developers Conference).
  • I was impressed with Windows 7 running on Paul Foster’s Acer Aspire One, but the keyboard is just too small for my fat fingers.
  • The Lenovo S10 has a PC Express Card slot (so it should work with my Vodafone 3G card – and yes, I know I can get a USB version but I’d need to convince my employers of the need for an upgrade, which would not be an easy sell when they give me a perfectly good laptop with a PC Express Card slot to use…).
  • I also seriously considered the Dell Mini 9 (especially when they mis-priced it on their website for £99 last week – incidentally, the resulting orders were not fulfilled) but I’m not convinced that using a pre-release operating system on a solid state hard drive is really a good idea – I could easily kill the drive within a few months. Meanwhile, the Lenovo has a traditional 160GB hard disk and the 10.2″ screen (rather than 9″) translates into more space for a larger keyboard without noticeably increasing the size of the computer (for those who still want a 9″ model, Lenovo have announced an S9 but I’ve seen no sign of it in the UK yet). Another option that I discounted was the Samsung NC10 – which has a better battery and one more USB port but no PC Express Card slot.
  • The equivalent Asus and Acer models may be less expensive but the big names (IBM, Dell, HP as well as Samsung and Toshiba) are all reducing their prices – and by waiting for the reduction in the UK’s VAT rate to take effect the price was £292.25 for the S10 at eBuyer with free shipping (although I paid another tenner for next-day delivery).

I’m sure my sons will be amused when yet another computer appears on my desk (my wife may be slightly less so…) but I’m thinking of this as an early Christmas present to myself…

Further reading

Here are some of the posts that I found useful before deciding to buy this PC:

Useful Links: November 2008

Posted on By Mark Wilson

A list of items I’ve come across recently that I found potentially useful, interesting, or just plain funny: