How to Run a Portable Version of Windows from a USB Drive

http://lifehacker.com/how-to-run-a-portable-version-of-windows-from-a-usb-dri-1565509124

Mac users have had this ability for ages when you can boot from an external drive connected via the Firewire port with latter support for USB- or Thunderbolt-connected drives. The reason being the Mac computers are homogeneous being made by one and only one company -- Apple itself. Therefore, the operating system has all the drivers it needs to run on all Mac computers within a reasonable linage. I assume that it works with Window 8 now because of tighter control of the driver ecosystem that Microsoft forces hardware manufacturers to comply. Therefore, all newer PCs will be Windows 8 compatible and the drivers for the motherboard are already included in Windows 8 itself. No need to hunt for drivers. In effect, Windows has adopted the homogeneous nature of Apple.

Clearly the advantage of running Windows (or Mac OSX) from an external drive is mobility and security. Once the external drive is disconnected from the computer, there is no trace of it on the computer. This way, you can carry your Windows 8 without without having to carry the bulky computer. If your friend has a machine that supports Windows 8 and can boot from the USB port, then you just simply plug in the external drive with Windows 8 in it , and boot from it.

Given that there will be a lot of write operations happening while Windows 8 is being used, it's best to use USB3 and an SSD drive.

Download Windows 8 from Microsoft

In the "old" days when the average person's Internet connection speed was slow or virtually non-existent, people could only download small programs from the Internet. With bulky packages like Office and Photoshop, they had to get them through CDs and DVDs that were purchased in stores or over snail mail. Now, with this average speed much higher, there is no need to do this anymore. Almost all programs these days are purchased online as a download.

The biggest software of all is the operating systems. It started with Linux when you can download the ISOs of various distributions. This was possible because some distros are actually pretty small. Some are as small as a few megabytes. Apple started selling its MacOSX 10.7 (Lion) as a download only. Now, Microsoft has gotten into the act and sells its ubiquitous OS via downloads starting with Windows 8.

Below is a link to the Microsoft website that offers such a download. Windows 8 ISO is a hefty 8GB download. With a speedy Internet connection of 25mbps, it would take about 2 hours to download. No biggie.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/upgrade-product-key-only

The initial download is not the OS itself but a small initiator file from which you can download the full OS after you have verified that you have a legit serial number.

http://www.nirmaltv.com/2013/05/09/download-windows-8-iso-from-microsoft/

For those who want to download the ISO for Windows 8.1 but only have a serial for Windows 8, do this.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/upgrade-product-key-only

Go to the above link and download the initiator file installer for Windows 8. Save this file on the desktop. Keep in mind where it is and its name.

Now download the initiator file installer for Windows 8.1. Save this file on the desktop. Keep in mind where it is and its name.

Run the installer for the Windows 8. As expected, after you have a valid Windows 8 key, it will start to download. Let it download for about 1%. Then quit by hitting the red X. This will put the in progress downloaded file in a limbo state.

Then run the initiator file installer for Windows 8.1. Strangely to get itself out of the limbo, the download will overwrite the partial download and resumes to download the ISO of Windows 8.1. Once the download is finished, it will offer a few choices of what you can do with this download including installing Windows 8.1. But instead of installing, you select to create the installation media which is the ISO file.

Here is the video that provides essentially the same info.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TEu2VzqK7U

Now you have the ISO of Windows 8.1 and have created a bootable media to install it on a empty drive. But you only have the serial for Windows 8. It's ok, you can use the generic Windows 8.1 key initially to allow you to pass the challenge screen asking you for the key. Once the installation is finished, you can change this generic key with your legal Windows 8 key.

The generic Windows 8.1 key is this:
Windows 8.1 Pro Place-Holder Key: XHQ8N-C3MCJ-RQXB6-WCHYG-C9WKB

In all honesty, why would Microsoft put in all these seemingly arbitrary roadblocks to obtain a legal copy of Windows 8.1 ISO? It already offers Windows 8.1 as a legal free upgrade to Windows 8 via its Windows Store. Why not simply offer people a free and easy download of the Windows 8.1 ISO up front? Instead, it forces its customers to go through these loops to do a clean install of Windows 8.1 instead of having basically to do the installation of Windows 8.1 twice. It took me an extra 2 hours for the installation of Windows 8 first, download its updates, then upgrade to Windows 8.1 via another massive download.

Keep in mind here folks, the steps described here take advantage of a bug in the download, mid download halt, and resumption of the "same" download created by Microsoft. Since the ISO comes from Microsoft and the keys used are legit, there is nothing illegal about this. There is no hacked Windows here, just some clever workaround to an arbitrary roadblock.

By the way, the ISO is of a 64bit Windows 8 Pro retail version. This is the version that you purchase from Microsoft or retail stores. It comes as a DVD in a paper box. Some stores actually sell the OEM version of Windows 8.1. If you can get a hand on these OEM DVD, then that negates having to do all this download trick. 

Sheesh!

Java Versions

When you access some websites that require Java to run, you may discover either your computer does not have Java installed or the installed version is too old or too new. Although websites should keep up with the latest technology by upgrading their contents to match up with the mainstream technology, there are circumstances when they cannot do so. Therefore, in order to use their content, you have to use an older version of Java for example. below is a link to download older versions of Java.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/archive-139210.html

I personally find Java to be confusing to use because Oracle, the maker of Java, has so many variations of this technology.

Security for Synology NAS

In my previous post, I laid out the features of the latest firmware for the Synology NASes. A popular use of any NAS is to access the data on it from the Internet. This is a scary proposition because if you or any authorized persons can access this data from outside the local network in which the NAS resides, what prevents unauthorized people, especially those with malicious intent, from accessing the server?

The Synology website has a primer on how to enhance security of its NASes. This has the recommended configuration of the its system for this purpose.

http://www.synology.com/en-global/support/tutorials/478

The article however does not mention about VPN. If you use a Synology NAS at home, then it should already be part of a trusted local network. Therefore, most of these recommended configurations are not necessary. In fact, it is not necessary at all if the home network in question is behind an Internet gateway such as the router that is connected directly to the Internet modem, and this gateway/router has the latest firmware, its firewall activated, and blocks all incoming ports. If there is a need to access the NAS from the outside of the network, then I recommend a VPN solution that uses L2TP/IPSec or OpenVPN. I have written a few posts about this matter so please read them for more info. Remember, VPN is like a catch all method so that you do not have to worry about the more granular configurations for the NAS itself. It's like having a strong door and lock for your home's front door. With such a barrier, you do not really need to have additional doors behind this big door. With that said, if your NAS has confidential information in it, additional and more granular security setup is recommended for the NAS itself.

A few of the tips in the article actually should be the standard setup for the NAS regardless of the situation. An example is the password to the admin account for the NAS. No matter how much trusted is the local network, never leave the admin account on the NAS with either the default password or one that can be guessed easily. Logging into the NAS with the admin account is basically getting in with the key to the kingdom. Even if there is no confidential data stored on the NAS, the admin account should be locked down.

Security is all about layers. The more layers there are, the more difficult it is for any unauthorized people from accessing the information. However, there is a point of diminishing return where the additional complexity does not give you any additional benefits.

Synology NAS Cheat Sheet

I am a big fan of network attach storage boxes (NAS) made by Synology. I must have installed a dozen of them. It has so many features that it's hard to keep track of how many and how to use them. So I have decided to create a cheat sheet of the features touted by the company and check off this list the features that I have actually tested out.

Below is the list of features (in italics) listed on the Synology website. Their latest firmware is the newly released Disk Station Manager (DSM) 5.0 Build 4458. I use their flagship model DS214se as the base model. It can be had for $160 on Amazon. Of course, this is just the NAS without the harddrives. So given that the DS214se is a 2-bay model, you would naturally buy 2 harddrives for it. With a few exceptions, I always setup the drives in mirror mode using Synology's own SHR RAID.

Below are some of the pictures of the DS214se.

Brand New User Interface

Visual design has been totally revamped to provide a cleaner look and touch-friendly user experiences.

High-resolution images are displayed when launched with Ultra HD or retina-display supported devices.

Badges-style notification counters appear on application icons.

Login page displays local weather information.

This is basically eye candy so I don't pay too much attention to it. It has the new flat look that is the rage these days found in UIs for Windows 8 and iOS 7. The icons are bigger and brighter in colors.

QuickConnect
QuickConnect now supports DSM, Photo Station, Audio Station, Surveillance Station, Download Station, Video Station, File Station, providing simplified remote access, without the hassle of setting up port-forwarding on your router.

All mobile apps support QuickConnect.

Enabling QuickConnect requires registering a MyDS Center account.

Web Station and Mail Station does not support QuickConnect.

If you don't mind doing port forwarding and already use a DDNS service, then you do not need using QuickConnect. However, I will explore this option in dept when I have time. 

Backup and Replication
Multiple version backup is now available on local backup, backup to another DiskStation. Only the differential blocks of data are retained among each version, allowing file history to be maintained with better storage efficiency.

Overview page displays scheduled and completed backup tasks.

Credentials for creating backup destinations can be saved as a profile to make backup task creation easier.

Data and configuration backup created in DSM 5.0 can only be restored in DSM 5.0.

Data and configurations that were backed up in DSM 5.0 cannot be restored using DSM 4.3 or earlier.

Control Panel

Layout has been redesigned for better navigation and organization.

Service list displays related firewall and port-forwarding settings.

VPN client settings have been integrated into Network > Network Interface.

Shortcuts on DSM Desktop that were created previously will be cleared after upgrading to DSM 5.0.

Shared Folders with Windows ACL Permissions
The access permissions of shared folders are based on Windows ACL, allowing you to fine-tune permissions beyond just Read Only, Read/Write, No Access. Newly created shared folders implement the permission settings of Windows ACL.

For shared folders created in DSM 4.3 or earlier, you can either convert the existing permissions to Windows ACL, or leave the permission unchanged.

The shared folders - photo, surveillance, and shares on external storage or volume with ext3 file system cannot use Windows ACL permissions.

Storage Manager
New overview displays the overall health of all disks and volumes, as well as hard disk utilization, volume, and iSCSI LUN usage.

Disk health information includes the current and historical health of hard disks

SSD Cache
Read/Write cache is supported. Two identical SSDs can be combined to create a RAID 1 read-write cache and enhance the performance of a volume or block-level iSCSI LUN.

A high-availability cluster cannot be created when SSD read-write cache is enabled.

Package Center
Auto updating allows packages to be updated automatically.

Log Center
Syslog Server and System Logs have been integrated into a single, centralized application.

Support Center
Support tickets can now be sent directly from DSM.

Remote access and log generation allow Synology support engineers to remotely diagnose technical issues on your Synology NAS.

File Station
File sharing links can be created and shared with your Google+ and Facebook friends. Those who receive the link will be asked to enter their Google+ or Facebook login credentials before accessing the folder or file.

You can view Microsoft Office documents using Office Online when QuickConnect is enabled.

Text Editor
Plain text files can be edited directly in DSM.

Rich features are available, such as the ability to change character encoding, recognize file types, and see variable highlighting.

DSM Help
Online help files can be viewed in DSM Help, allowing you to read the latest versions of documentation regarding DSM and packages.

Font size can be changed to larger sizes.

Web Station
The “http” group (http) is the service account for Web Station, introducing better flexibility and security. \

Web applications will run as the same permission as “http” group. We suggest reviewing the permissions of the web folder and assign appropriate permissions to http group.

The PHP version has been updated to 5.5. Please check the compatibility of your PHP-based web apps with php 5.5. The details can be found at Migrating from PHP 5.3.x to PHP 5.4.x and Migrating from PHP 5.4.x to PHP 5.5.x.

Performance has been enhanced with Apache MPM worker.

Media Library
The default indexed folders - photo, video, audio - are removable from indexed folders.

The types of media to be indexed in each default folder can be changed.

Synology High Availability
When binding two or more ethernet connections to create an aggregated heartbeat connection, load balancing and failover are supported.

iSCSI Performance
For iSCSI LUN with Advanced LUN option enabled, iSCSI random read performance has been enhanced by over 6 times, as illustrated in the below comparison:

IOPS (4KB)DSM 4.3DSM 5.0Improvement
Read IOPS from DS1813+ 135 995 637 %

Configured with 4 HDDs composed in SHR-1, the LUN used for testing is a 100G LUN with advanced LUN features enabled. Tested by IOmeter by 100% random read with 4k block size.

File Service
AFP (Apple Filing Protocol) performance has been improved, as illustrated in the below comparison of transferring 5000 x 1MB files to Synology NAS:

Mac to Synology NASDSM 4.3DSM 5.0Improvement
DS213j 25.14 MB/s 31.42 MB/s 25.0%
DS1513+ 31.64 MB/s 41.61 MB/s 31.5%

SPDY
Support for SPDY v3.0 accelerates the overall responsiveness of the user interface when using HTTPS connections.

Memory Compression
Least recently used data in memory is compressed, improving system responsiveness when under heavy load.

Wi-Fi
Connecting up to two USB Wi-Fi adapters is supported, allowing your Synology NAS to share its Internet connection via both 2.4GHz and 5GHz ranges.

You can bridge your wired connection with Wi-Fi hotspot(s) to extend your wireless network range and unify your existing local network and the wireless network hosted on your DiskStation.

Snapshot Manager
Synology Snapshot Manager software plugin available on vSphere and Windows Server environments to create application-consistent snapshots in DSM.

For VMware environments, you can install Synology Snapshot Manager for VMware vCenter Server on Windows Server. After installation, when a snapshot is triggered on DSM, vCenter Server will be notified and flush all the data from memory to the LUN to guarantee data consistency. Once the snapshot is complete, vCenter Server will resume normal I/O operation of VMware datastore.

For Windows environment, you can install Synology Snapshot Manager for Windows Server. After installation, when a snapshot is triggered on DSM, Synology Snapshot Manager will use the Microsoft 

Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) technology to produce consistent point-in-time copies of data. 

Synology Snapshot Manager for Windows Server also supports performing snapshots when triggered by 3rd party software via VSS.

Synology Snapshot Manager for VMware vCenter Server supports vSphere 5.1 or later, and vSphere web client server plugin is required for application interface. Snapshot Manager for Windows supports Windows Server 2008 R2, 2012 and 2012 R2. VMWare applications support up to 3 maximum concurrent snapshot tasks.

Prepaid Credit Card for Roku Setup

I was setting up a Roku 3 and confronted by the setup routine that required a valid credit card number before it could proceed. I googled for a way to proceed without divulging a credit card number, but found no workarounds. This requirement is not listed on the box that the Roku comes with. This of course is not an oversight by the Roku company so I think this is a bit shady if you ask me, a quasi-bait and switch. The box is already opened so certain stores will not take it back for a refund.

So given that this Roku is not for my own use, I could not use my own credit card. I went to the local Walgreen and bought a disposable VISA credit card from a company called OneVanilla.

At the register, I told the sale clerk that I wanted $50 put into this card. He gave me a I-bet-he-use-it-to-pay-for-online-porn look, and rang up $50 plus the $4.95 surcharge. In addition to the regular receipt, I also got a separate receipt that says "Gift Card" that has the serial number of the OneVanilla card.

The credit card has the expiration date of Feb 2022. At home, I opened the package saw that the card inside looks exactly my regular VISA card. It can be used as a "regular" credit card or as a debit card. The sticker on the card directed me to the OneVanilla website to register the card. There, I put in the card's number, expiration date, and the 3-number code. The site also asked for an email address and a password. That was it. So now this particular card's number is associated with my email address and a password. There is an option to create a PIN number to be used as the PIN for the card to be used as a debit card, but I did not create it.

I went back to the Roku website and put in this credit card's number, expiration date, and the 3-number code, and billing address. Just like a regular online purchase with a credit card. It worked. The Roku site said that the credit card is on file with them, but no charges have been made to this credit card number. Fine, you son of a ...

So although the Roku 3 is setup fine, I am still miffed by Roku's non-disclosure that to use its services, you need a credit card. At least with AppleTV, you can setup without the need for a credit card (last time I did it was a few months ago). If your intention is to use the Roku to access free contents via its 1000s of channels, then either you have to give Roku your credit card or get one of these disposable ones.

I have already sent a nasty email to Roku complaining about this. This is not how you should treat your customers.

Simple VPN router

Let's say you want to remote into a network such as your office or home while you are physically outside this place. There are many solutions out there that can be used to do this. Each has its own complexity, cost, reliability, and security strength. If you just want a simple secure way to do such remote access then you can try to setup your own VPN solution.

I am talking about connecting to a remote network here, not necessarily to a specific computer inside a remote network. There are certain advantages of connecting to a remote network in general as opposed to a particular computer. If you are connected to a particular computer, then your usage of that computer is the limitation of the connection. In other words, whatever you can and cannot do on this remote computer is all that you can do. Let's say the remote computer does not have a database program that you want to run to access a database file stored on a server in the same remote network. Then you are still stuck with this problem if you remote into this computer.

By contrast, if you can remote into the network in general and the computer that you are using has this database program, then you can access this server and the database file. In its simplest terms, when you have connected to a remote network via VPN, the immediate machine in front of you thinks it is physically inside this remote network. In fact, through this VPN connection, you can then remote into a particular machine in the remote network and use that machine's installed software, having the best of both worlds.

Using the protocol PPTP is still the current go-to way to create a VPN tunnel if you want something that has the least amount of complexity and cost. PPTP has been around for decades so it has been time tested to work well with a lot of computing devices. The problem for this reliability and friendliness is its security. While it is better than nothing -- yes, you can have a VPN connection without any security at all if your intention is remote access, speed, but security is not a concern -- it can expose your remote session to unauthorized intruders that somehow get tapped into the tunnel.

Microsoft released 2 versions of the security mechanism used for PPTP. The security mechanism is called MPPE. As said, security via encryption of the data going back and forth is not a required criterion of VPN. MPPE is the protocol used for secured PPTP tunnels.

When PPTP was first created, Microsoft used an encryption method called MS-CHAP. This is now deprecated because it has serious security flaws. Microsoft updated it with MS-CHAP version 2. Even this version is considered dated by today's standards, but if your security need is simple, then MS-CHAPv2 is still good. I however recommend L2TP/IPsec is the way to go these days. There is no right or wrong way to security, it's just how paranoid you are. It's about your acceptable level to risk of how someone can intrude upon your remote connection.

For a good primer on MS-CHAP version 1 and 2, you should check out this article by Bruce Schneier. It's an old article (1999), but its information is still relevant.
Cryptanalysis of Microsoft's PPTP Authentication Extensions (MS-CHAPv2)

Also, there has been a discovered vulnerability for using MS-CHAPv2 by itself with additional encapsulation.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/advisory/2743314

With that said, if you want a simple inexpensive PPTP VPN to connect to a remote network with no fuss, then I recommend using this a VPN router model TL-R600VPN from TP-Link.

Setting up a PPTP VPN on this router is simple. I got it to work within 15 minutes. As expected, the remote connection is reliable and fast. Below is the user guide for this router.

http://www.tp-link.com/Resources/document/TL-R600VPN_V1_User_Guide.pdf

I cannot find any documentation of whether this router uses MS-CHAPv2 for its MPPE. I assume it does because there is no reason to still be using MS-CHAPv1. Moreover, when setting up the VPN connection on a Windows 7, machine, I unchecked the box where the the VPN client would be allow to use CHAP, and checked the box where it says MS-CHAPv2. The fact that the connection works, I would infer that the PPTP tunnel is operating under MS-CHAP2 MPPE.

The router also offers the much more secure IPSec protocol, but this would only work if you connect two of these routers with each on both sides of the tunnel. The PPTP can be used for client-to-LAN connection. This means you only need your computer on one end of the tunnel.

More info on how to use VPN on iPhones and iPads because many people access their networks on the road use these devices.
http://www.apple.com/iphone/business/it/deployment.html

SMART Test For Harddrive

When you physically examine your harddrive, you will see a circuit board attached to it. It is usually green in color. This board has some microchips on it. These chips are responsible for communicating with the motherboards to which the drive is attached with a data cable. These chips also do routine self diagnostics to see if there are problems on the drive. One of the most common problems with harddrives is bad sectors. These are physical problems with the drive's storage surface and therefore cannot be fixed. The chips would mark these sectors as unusable to ensure that no data is written onto them. However, once bad sectors are present, it's a cascade of more bad sectors to come.

This self diagnostic is called SMART test which stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology. Not all drives support SMART, and not all SMART-capable drives do the same thorough self diagnostics. Server-grade drives tend to have more extensive SMART information about themselves. This can be used by drive manufacturers to determine if a failing drive can be fixed with a firmware update instead of allowing them to be returned. Firmware is a general term used for a bit of software that runs in these microchips.

So how can you read this SMART information from a drive that you suspect is going bad? It's quite simple really. In fact, if you call the drive's manufacturer asking for a refund or exchange, by telling them that you have run a SMART test on the drive and showing them the results, they are more inclined to accept the drive back. Many drive manufacturers release their own SMART reading programs for their own drives, but this is not really necessary because the SMART technology is standardized. Any well-written SMART program can do the job just fine.

The one I use is called DiskCheckup by PassMark. It's a Windows program so it runs on Windows with buttons to push instead of traditional SMART reading programs that requires typing text commands. Installing it is very simple. Once installed, you would launch it and tell it to read the SMART information on any drives that are connected to the computer -- internally and externally.

Below is the link where you can go to read all the gory details.

http://www.passmark.com/products/diskcheckup.htm

So what happens when the drive in question is the one that has your operating system which now does not boot up? If Windows does not boot up, you cannot run any Windows programs including a SMART reading one like DiskCheckup to see if the cause of the non-boot is a bad harddrive or is it just some software corruption? In general, before you install Windows on any drive, a time-consuming and tedious process, you should make sure that the physical drive is in good health. If the SMART readout shows errors, skip that drive and install Windows on a different drive that has passed the SMART test.

This is done by using any of the major Linux Live CDs. They have SMART tools built-in. Simply download the ISO image of these programs, burn it only a CD or USB flash drive, boot from this external media, and have the SMART utility in it do a scan of the target disk.

How To Create Macrium Reflect Bootable Rescue CD/USB

As a computer technician, I install Windows and Mac OS a lot, more than I ever want to do so because the tasks are time consuming and tedious. Fortunately, there are programs like Macrium that can create a snapshot of my Windows installation so that I do not need to re-install Windows from scratch for the next time. I would simply put back the image. This would without exaggeration save me hours of tedium. Drive cloning and its related cousin drive imaging are two of the staples of a computer technician's tool set. In fact, if someone who claims to be a computer technician and has no idea how to clone or image drives, then you might want to have someone else fixing your computer.

You can run the Macrium program directly in Windows and create an image from within. That is, the Macrium program is installed into the Windows that it images producing an image that includes itself. However, being the purist and minimalist that I am, I prefer the imaging program doing it from outside Windows. This means I would boot the media storage that contains Macrium from a CD or USB stick and from that, create an image of Windows from the harddrive. This way, the resulting image does not contain any traces of Macrium.

The link below shows you how to create a bootable CD or USB from which you can run the Macrium software. This way, you can only create an image manually every time you boot from the CD or USB stick. There is no automatic incremental imaging here. To do that you have to install Macrium into Windows. It is also not a free program compared to its smaller portable version.

http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-create-macrium-reflect-bootable-rescue-cdusb/

How to Rip a DVD to Your Computer

http://lifehacker.com/5809765/how-to-rip-a-dvd-to-your-computer

This is a very time consuming process so be prepare to spend oodles of time ripping your collection of DVDs. However, once done, you will reap the benefits of having these movies accessible on multiple devices. My advice is rip all your DVDs and Blu-rays and store all the resulting files on a NAS storage server. Get a NAS that has RAID1 to protect your investment from drive failure. Then buy another NAS (not necessarily with RAID1), store this NAS offsite, and sync the videos files over the Internet as new ones are created. A total investment of $500 and a lot of your time, but if you are a videophile, it's worth it. Of course, you can also store your home movies on the NAS, too, as well any computer files. It's simply a harddrive that is attached to your home network as opposed to an external harddrive that is attached to a particular computer. A NAS greatly enhances the storing and accessibility of your digital data.

USB-N53 Quirk

I use this WiFi adapter for computers that need to receive either the 2.4GHz or 5GHz signal from WiFi access points.

http://www.asus.com/us/Networking/USBN53/

It comes with a CD, but I would go to the ASUS website to ensure that I get the latest driver. Being the minimalist that I am, I would pick to download just the driver and not the utility because Windows already has the wireless connection utility built-in.

Drivers are available for Windows XP, Vista, W7, and W8 both 32bit and 64bit, making this adapter almost universal for Windows machines. After the appropriate driver was installed, to my dismay, the adapter only detected the 2.4GHz signals. There is a button on the adapter that once pushed, nothing happens. Only after I have downloaded the utility and installed it does the adapter detects the 5GHz signals. Stranger still, during the installation process, I am given the choice of installing only the driver. I chose the driver only option and it works. The point being you have to install the barebone driver using the "utility" installer even though the utility itself is not installed.

Weird.

You should go to the ASUS website to get the latest driver for this device or any devices. However if the site is down, you can download from here. This was downloaded from the ASUS site on Feb 2014.

http://tinyurl.com/asus-usb-n53drivers

Relative Known Sizes of Objects in the Universe

http://htwins.net/scale2/

The Universe is big and yet also very small. Remember, the Universe is not all about what is out there in outer space. The Universe is everything in existence.

Use Your Computer From Anywhere: A Guide to Remote Controlling Your PC

Instead of re-inventing the wheel, I have decided to post a link to this very helpful article.

http://lifehacker.com/5902654/use-your-home-computer-from-anywhere-a-comprehensive-guide-to-remote-controlling-your-pc

http://lifehacker.com/five-best-remote-desktop-tools-1508597379

You should keep a few things in mind when accessing your computer from the Internet. Firstly, every click you click and every text you type will have a slight and noticeable delay. Basically, with remote access, you send the keyboard typing and mouse movement to the remote computer and that computer sends back the up-to-date video of its screen measured in resolution and frame per second. The more resolution, the larger and sharper is the screen. The higher the frame rate, the smoother is the motion of any changes made on the screen. All remote access solutions use some sort of data compression to make the videos being stream back towards you smaller in file size per frame. Therefore, the smoothness in motion and the sharpness of the graphics of the remote computer's screen depend on the processing speed of both the remote computer and the local machine that compress and decompress this video stream. On top of that, there is also the encryption and decryption of the video stream as well. After all, this data that goes back and forth traverses the Internet so in theory anyone whose computers the data goes through can intercept the data. So you may not want these unauthorized people to see the screen of the remote computer and any keystrokes from you that may contain confidential information.

While all remote access technology uses some sort of compression to make the experience smoother, not all of them use encryption. Therefore, if you have confidential data being sent back and forth between your local machine and the remote machine, please make sure that there is encryption involved.

Moreover, just because there is encryption, it does not mean that the encryption is strong enough. Any unauthorized person who is skilled enough will eventually crack the encryption. If your remote access method uses encryption methods like DES, then it is not strong enough for ultra-confidential data. At a minimum, it should be AES 256bit.

If you do not know what sort of encryption your remote access technology uses, then you can use your own encryption method and have the remote access technology run inside your encryption. Therefore, you may actually have a case of double encryption. To do this, you can set up a VPN tunnel between your local computer and the remote computer. You can use the VPN solutions that are built into the operating system or use a third part solution.

A simple VPN using PPTP should be sufficient. Although not as secure as the others, PPTP is fast and is found in all major operating systems from Windows XP to Windows 8. Mac OSX also supports PPTP out-of-the-box. Setting up VPN using PPTP is also easy.

However, if you have confidential data going between the two machines, you should get at least L2TP or IPSec. These are also built into most major operating systems but you may want to have a dedicated box that does the encryption outside the computers. These boxes can also be your network routers. They are not expensive. Having a $200 router that is placed in the network of the remote computer should work fine. You don't need to have another of this router in the network of the local network.      

Enable the F8 key for booting into Safe Mode in Windows 8

First open Command Prompt as Administrator. Then key in.

bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy

This will bring back the Windows 7 screen when you tap F8 during boot including the option to go into Safe Mode. Safe Mode in invaluable when doing any malware removal.

To put it back to the default Windows 8 boot screen (not sure why you want to do that given the usefulness of the older menu option), key in this command in the command line .

bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy standard

Useful Tech Resources

Virtualization

http://www.vladan.fr

Google Apps for Business

In my opinion, Google is the best email host at the moment. If your email address is at GMAIL.COM, then you have Google hosting the email for this account. Moreover, if you want to get an email account with a custom domain like yourcompany.com and want Google to host the email for this domain, then you need to pay Google some money for its Google Apps for Business. Remember, Google only hosts the email service for the domain, not the domain name itself and its DNS service. These two services can be hosted by Google as well if you want, but not necessary a requirement for Google to host the email aspect of the domain.

Google Apps for Business has 2 plans: One with Vault and one without Vault.

The one without Vault is $5 per email address per month with prorate or $50/year. With Vault, add an extra $5 to each account per month. If you choose Apps without Vault, there is no retention of emails that are deleted and the Trash is emptied. By contrast, with Vault, the deleted emails are retained forever as long as you continue to pay Google the extra $5 per account per month to use it. The emails in Vault does not count against the quota in the inbox. Google will also help you with any ediscovery process if required by the courts, certifying that these deleted emails' timestamps and chronology have not been modified. In short, Vault is industry PCI compliant. 

Customers of legacy Postini email retention service will be transitioned starting 2014 to Vault without paying the extra $5. As to how long this generous offer will be, it is unknown. This includes the limited time Postini services such as those only retain the email for 3 months for example. With Vault, the limited retention period is expanded indefinitely. Again, Google may not offer this generous entitlement for grandfathered accounts for long.

Each account gets 30GB of storage that is shared between the various services such as mail, Picassa, Docs, and so forth. If you need more storage, you can buy it. Vault storage is indefinite and is not part of the initial 30GB quota.

If you have multiple accounts (multiple email addresses) for the domain with Vault, each account can have its own Vault license. This means for certain accounts that are more critical, you can assign a Vault license to it to enjoy the retention benefit. For the non-critical account within the same domain, you can use it without Vault. Vault licenses are transferable. Once transferred, the retained email associated with that Vault license is deleted forever. 

If you miss a payment for the month, there is a 30-day grace period where all functions still work. For the next 30 days, the whole domain or any specific unpaid accounts are put on suspension without deletion. After 30 days of suspension, this account or domain will be deleted forever. The point is make sure you pay Google on a timely basis. It goes without saying. It's a business, not a charity.   

Sometimes Having Mercy Pays Off

On my desk, I left a morsel of uneaten food the other day over night. In the morning, there was a line of ants going at it. I could not trace the path back to their nest.

I removed the food bit and smote the ants. Three days later, the ants, although not in so many a number, still were going at the non-existing food. It dawned on me that ants are blind. They cannot see the food or lack there of, but can only follow their chemical trail to the food. So after killing a bunch of them, I spared a few. After a day, there were no more ants. Evidently, the un-killed ants came back to their nest and told the rest that there is no food at the end this particular trail as opposed to no news to colony so the colony keeps on sending their troops to retrieve the food .

USB Thumb Drives

If you are a computer user, even moderately, chances are either you own at least one or have heard about “flash drives”. They are also knows an thumb drives or USB sticks. The latter attests to the method in which these marvelous devices are connected to the computers. In fact, thumb drives are also used to provide external and portable storage to devices that are not traditionally considered computers: things like modern digital TVs, game consoles, and network-connected storage devices called NAS.

Just what are these thumb drives and why are they called thumb drives? Well, the answer is pretty obvious when you see one or hold it in your hand. They are the current superstars of simple and convenient portable storage that you can carry with you in your pockets or purses. They even can be worn like pendants or small enough to hang on your keychains. These are great tech gifts because of their low cost, usefulness, universal compatibility, and can be molded into all kinds of interesting novelty shapes like a human thumb. Some are so small that they virtually disappear into the USB slot. As such, these tiny drives are great for the tablets that have a full-size USB port. 

To use it, you would simply plug one of these drives into the USB port of your computer. After the computer has recognized the drive and as in a Windows PC machine, assigns it a drive letter, it is ready for use.The process only takes a few seconds. No need to install any special hardware because all computers these days have at least one USB port. All widely used computer types like the Macs and PCs recognize these drives automatically. Also, the USB connector on the computer provides the power to the these drives as well. Sometimes you would see a light that comes on when these drives are properly connected to the computer. On a Mac, the thumbdrive would appear as a white-colored icon on the desktop. More recent versions of the Mac system does not display the icons of these drives on the desktop by default. However, you can easily configure your Mac to do so quite easily.

So what are these thumb drives used for? They are used for two primary purposes. First as external portable storage that you can use to keep second copies of important data files as backups in case the primary files are lost. As said, once the computer has recognized the drive and presented it with an icon or drive letter, it's a simple matter of copy and paste the files you want to backup.

The second use of these thumb drives is to transport files from one computer to another, even between Macs and PCs. People often use the local network or the Internet to send files to themselves or others, but sometimes either the network is not available or the files are simply too large to be transmitted this way. Therefore, people would just dump these files onto their thumb drives and re-connect them to the other machine and drag the files out of the drives. It was the old “sneaker net” with those floppy disks except this time, the amount of data that can be transferred is much bigger and the read and write speed from the drives is much faster.

Just how much data can one of these drives contain? The cost of these drives is proportional to their capacity and to a lesser extend their data transfer speed. When these drives first came out 15 years ago, their capacities were 256MB (megabytes) and 512MB. This was a marvel in technology in those days considered floppies were still popular at that time because a typical floppy can store a meager 1.44MB of data! Also, a floppy disk needs a floppy drive to work. These days, you can buy a 8GB (gigabyte) thumb drive for around $10. Capacity wise, they come in other flavors of 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB and 128GB. There are even higher capacities, but their cost is prohibitive. Incidentally, 1GB is 1000MB. So a 16GB thumb drive has the storage capacity of around 11,000 floppies!

The data transfer speed in and out of these thumb drives depends on the maximum theoretical speed of the USB port and the quality of the storage chip inside the thumb drive. Some of these chips can move data faster than other lower quality chips, but none of them can transfer faster than the theoretical maximum speed of the USB connector on the computer. There are 3 versions of USB. Version 1 runs at 10mbps (megabit per second). Version 2 (the current standard in most computers) runs at 480 mbps. The latest USB3 runs at a whopping 4.8 gbps, ten times faster than USB2. USB3 ports on the computer are backward compatible so you don’t have to throw away all those USB2 thumb drives. If you get a USB3 thumb drive anyway, you should get one that has the faster chip to take advantage of the USB3 port speed. You can get a so-called SSD-on-a-stick USB3 thumb drive and experience the amazing speed boost when used on a USB3 ports . Incidentally, USB3 thumb drives will work with USB2 ports on the computer. The U in USB stands for "universal" for a reason.

So when presented with a myriad array of thumb drives at the store, how to pick the right thumb drive? Fortunately, the technology of thumb drives have matured enough that even the cheaper models mostly work just as well as the more expensive ones. I have always picked the cheapest thumb drives and so far no problem with any of them. However, there are other little things you should keep in mind. There are thumb drives that for some reason have their casing wide enough that when plugged into a USB port on the computer, its girth prevents the insertion of another USB plug next to it. You should avoid buying these thumb drives. On the left are drives with a slender casing and one that does not. Other than the slender frame of the thumb drive, I also recommend that you buy a drive that has an indicator light on it. The flickering of this light tells you that there is data going through the drive. Therefore, do not yank it off the computer when it is doing the data transfer.

One thing that drives me crazy with some drives. Some of them contain pre-existing “helper” programs. Once plugged into to the computer, these programs launch themselves and offer a variety of features like pre-made folders for music and pictures. Some even offer encryption for the data stored on the drives. The problem with these programs is if you do not have user administrative rights to the computer that you plug the drives into, you cannot use these programs, and therefore, you have no access to the data that were successfully copied over from the previous computer where you did have admin rights. Unless you need these specific features, do not buy drives that include them. Basically you just want to use a dumb drive that all it does is offer external portable storage. For some of these drives with pre-loaded programs, you can completely remove them. However, I have encountered drives where these programs cannot be removed. So it’s best simply to avoid all of them just in case.

If you want restricted access for the data stored on these thumb drives, there are better and more standardized ways to do so. One would be creating password-protected folders with free programs like 7zip. To unzip such a folder does not require administrator privileges. Some thumb drives literally have a thumb scanner on its encasing. A little search on the Web may yield such a drive that has all of its finger scanning and authentication executed from within the drive, making running of a program on the target computer to offer access to the drive unnecessary.

Lastly, not all thumb drives come with the USB connector. A few drives come with firewire or eSATA connectors. Firewire and eSATA thumb drives obviously require a firewire and eSATA ports on the computer to work, respectively. While these non-USB thumb drives offer faster speeds, the extra speeds do not warrant your buying them because not all computers have firewire or eSATA ports. Given the whole point of having a thumb drive is portability, it defeats the purpose. Buying USB3 thumb drives make more sense because they can be used with any of the ubiquitous USB ports on the computers.  

I leave you with one of my favorite novelty USB drives. Actually, this is technically not a drive because they do not have any storage capacity but given that the USB port also provides power to the "drive", use your imagination as to what the dog will do when plugged into a powered USB port.

 

Fastest USB Flashdrive

Well, I don't know if this is the fastest flash drive on the market right now, but from all the reviews I have read, it was consensus that the fastest thumbdrive you can buy right now is this Sandisk Extreme 64GB. I bought one and personally can tell you that this thing can read and write data much faster than all of my existing flash drives that have the USB2 interface. The Sandisk Extreme 64GB is at least 3 times faster with write speed of 80MB/sec and read of a whopping 135MB/sec. Of course, I plugged this drive into a USB3 port on a PCIe adapter card on my 5 year-old PC running Windows 8 64bit. USB-based data transfers can consume a lot of CPU cycles so you may not get these transfer speeds if your computer has a slower CPU. Incidentally, I use the copying of a 5GB file as a test. If you copy multiple smaller files, the average speed is undoubtedly slower, but I assume it is still faster then the USB2 drives.

You can grab one from Amazon here. I assume the 190 MB/s advertised rate on Amazon site is based on a test on a machine with beefier specs than mine.

http://tinyurl.com/m2nvjor

Free Way to Scan to PDF from Scanner

If you need to scan some paper documents and save the resulting files as PDFs without doing any more fancy post scan processing, then the best way I have found that is free is a combination of an image editing program and a "save-to-PDF" plug-in for it.

All versions of the Microsoft Windows come with a very barebone graphics manipulation program called Paint. If you find it too simplistic such as its inability to do layers or certain filters like Photoshop, then Paint.NET is for you. It's a small program by itself, but it needs Microsoft .NET Framework to run, so for those who do not like to have to install the framework, then they have to look elsewhere. Below is the official hardware and software requirements for Paint.NET.

http://www.getpaint.net

Minimum Requirements

Windows 7 (recommended), Windows Vista,  or Windows XP (SP2 or later)
.NET Framework 3.5 SP1
800MHz processor
512MB of RAM
1024 x 768 screen resolution
200+ MB hard drive space

I ran it on Windows 8 64bit, and it runs fine.

Moreover, if your goal is to tell Paint.NET to acquire an image from a scanner and then save the scanned image as a PDF, you need to get an plug-in for this program. It is called Im(age)PDF filetype.

You can download it here:
http://www.comsquare.ch/files/downloads/ImPDF.FileType%20v1.3.zip

Installing the plug-in is very simple. You would extract the zip folder and copy the two files "ImPDF.FileType.dll" and "ImPDF.Command.exe" into the "FileTypes" folder of your Paint.NET installation.  A typical location is "C:\Program Files\Paint.NET\FileTypes". When you launch Paint.NET after this, you will find an extra option under the Save As command. The rest of the process is pretty much self explanatory.

You can find more information about this plug-in at the Paint.NET forum where the author of the program is willing to take suggestions for improving the plug-in.
http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/22863-imagepdf-filetype-plugin/

Actiontec MOCA : A Products Guide

I am a great fan of MOCA, the networking technology standard that uses the home's coax grid to carry network and Internet signal. Coax is the cable type that carries your cable TV. After being disappointed with the HomePlug technology that does the same using the home's electrical wiring grid, I am glad there is MOCA. I have yet encountered a major issue with MOCA with the exception of one time when it interferes with DVR. Given that most homes in the urban areas have cable TV, or at least coax cables running in the walls, the homes are ready for MOCA. All you need is the appropriate MOCA devices.

The MOCA specification is now version 2, ratified over 2 years ago. Yet, I have not seen any MOCA products certified for it. I am not sure what is the hold up. Amazingly given how well MOCA works, there are only few manufacturers of MOCA devices. Actiontec and D-Link are the only ones I know of. I do not use D-Link stuff because devices from Actiontec have worked so well.

You can setup an Actiontec MOCA relay using these various devices. Because you would need at least 2 MOCA devices to start, the best and cheapest way to get things going is getting this Actiontec Ethernet to Coax Adapter Kit ECB2500CK01 which consists of a pair of identical ECB2500C devices. If you need a third device, then you would just get one more device. Again, as a lone device, it's called ECB2500C.


This is what I use when I already have a router on hand. This ECB2500CK01 kit only acts as a relay of the signal within the coax wiring. They do not have routing, DHCP, nor wifi capability. They basically act like a glorified network cable. You can setup encryption on these devices so the data transmitted between them are encrypted in case someone with other MOCA devices within the same coax grid eavesdrops on the signal even by accident. Inter-devices encryption is done with a Windows utility that can be downloaded from the Actiontec website.

The ECB2500C only has 1 network jack, so if you want additional jacks, you would use one of these (click on the image for bigger view):

Actiontec ECB3500T Ethernet over Coax Network Adapter. Basically, the ECB3500T acts like an ECB2500C, but it has 3 additional network ports. I am not clear on whether the ports are gigabit or not. The ECB2500C's lone network port maxes out at 100mbps.
http://www.actiontec.com/products/datasheets/Trika_ECB3500T_DATASHEET.pdf

At this writing, Amazon also sells model ECB3500T01. I think this is the same as ECB3500T.

So what if you want the functionality of the ECB3500T, but with wifi included. Then you would get this:

WCB3000NK01 or WCB3000N (click on the image for bigger view)
The WCB3000NK01 is a kit that consists of an ECB2500C and a WCB3000N. The WCB3000N is basically a MOCA wireless access point.

http://www.actiontec.com/products/datasheets/wcb3000ndatasheet_finalwb.pdf

Below is a link to a review of another MOCA device made by Netgear. It's an old review on a product that seems to have been discontinued. As said, I am puzzled as to why this technology has not become popular.

http://tinyurl.com/netgear-moca-review

Further reading by someone who wrote a detailed piece on his experience with MOCA can be found here:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2239404

Installing Windows 7 Without a DVD Drive.

I recently had to install Windows XP on an old Dell desktop. For some weird reason, even with different Windows XP CDs, while XP was installed fine, it could not get Windows updates. It was running IE 8 with Service Pack 3. As such, it should be up-to-date enough for Microsoft Windows Update to work, but it stubbornly would not. The Internet connection is fine. I even install .Net Framework 2 as recommended by some of the troubleshooting sites.

I finally gave up and decided to risk it with Windows 7 32bit. The problem was the computer does not have a DVD drive to run the Windows 7 installation DVD. I had a USB external DVD drive but the machine could not boot from an external optical drive. However, XP can read from it. Using this connection, I copied over all of the installation files from the Windows 7 DVD onto a second partition on the harddrive and simply run the installer file. It worked. The Dell now has Windows 7. Windows 7 offered me to do an upgrade from XP, but I told it start from scratch. It installed a fresh copy of Windows 7, saving the old files including XP itself, in a folder called Windows.old. I used Windows 7 built-in Disk Cleanup to remove this Windows.old folder.

The point of this experience is you do not need to install Windows 7 directly from the DVD disc. Yes, Windows 7 can do Windows Update just fine.

Wifi Connection Is A Two-Way Communication

As more and more people have portable wireless devices like smart phones, tablets, and laptops, accessing to online information no longer is restricted to one or a few locations in the homes or offices where their bulky desktops are located. They would be in the breakroom and can check on the latest sport scores on their phones. They can be sitting on the toilet and not miss the latest text or email message. (Admit it, you have done that).

The problem is there might not be a reliable signal in these places. When setting up a wireless data network, people do not usually think about getting the wifi signal in the breakroom or bathroom. Therefore, they would initially install access points, also known as APs, that transmit the wifi signal that is reachable to only the "important" places. When they are in other locations however, they cannot seem to get Internet access via the wifi even when the devices say there is signal detected, even with a strong one. Here is why.

Wifi is a two-way communication. That is, the two devices on both ends of the connection must be able to reliably communicate with each other to maintain the connection. If the AP does not get a constant I-am-still-here feedback from the portable device, the AP assumes that the device no longer needs to associate with it. The AP will then break off the connection.

If your device's signal cannot reach the AP to maintain this association, the AP is useless. Therefore you need to place multiple APs in your location so the closest AP in the chain can relay the signal from your devices back to the gateway router which is the entry point for the incoming Internet. While there is some signal loss of the original signal from your portable devices when it finally reaches the gateway router, this incoming signal is still much better than if the portable device is transmitting the signal to the gateway router directly. A gateway router can also act as an AP. If it does, then it is the most upstream AP in the chain.

You can buy high-gain APs to increase wireless reception. Yes, they work well at pumping out stronger signal to the portable devices. However, using these high gain APs gives the illusion of better signal because as stated, if the AP does not get the acknowledgement signal from the devices, the association is lost. This is like listening to music on your car radio. The massive radio tower would push the music to your car, but your car radio does not need tell the radio tower what music to broadcast. Listening to the radio is a one-way mode of wireless communication. By contrast, with wifi, the portable devices need to transmit their signal to the APs requesting information such as Internet websites.

In short, do not buy into the hype from wifi AP makers about their high gain APs. You need to understand how wireless technology works in this context so you can buy and setup the right devices to get reliable wifi signal in the dead spots in the home or office.