Carbonite

I feel like it's time that I give Carbonite online data backup a quick review.

A few months ago, I decided that I want to have a secondary data backup measure. Right now, I have my computer setup with a Mirror RAID. This allows me to keep my data on two drives simultaneously. This is great for if one of the drives fails, but does nothing to protect me against fire, flood, theft, etc..

I had heard about Carbonite and thought I would give them a shot. The price was right and the service boasted unlimited storage, so I figured, why not?

I feel like I made the right choice. So far, my favorite thing is that Carbonite remembers your files locations... and this is important for restoring lost data, but even more important for resuming partial backups...

Allow me to explain:

Because I frequently upgrade/reinstall my operating system, I keep all my user profile data on a secondary hard drive. This allows me to restore the main hard drive without disrupting my important data. I have hundreds of Gigabytes of data and I wanted to backup a good chunk of it. This backup is taking about 2 months to complete. About half way through the backup, I decided to upgrade to Windows 7 64bit, which required me to wipe out all the data on my main drive. I was worried that when I reinstalled Carbonite, it would lose its place on my secondary drive backup. It did not.

Carbonite integrates easily into your GUI and works along side windows in a seamless manor. The backup is slow at first, but once it's complete, it only updates changes, so it is rather quick depending on the size of your modified files.

The only complaint I have about Carbonite is that it does not backup all files types by default and for large files (over a few gigabytes) you have to select them manually. For a video editor like myself, this is a bit annoying, but I can see where for the average user, this would never be an issue.

7

I'm actually a little sad that windows 7 is coming out so soon... I don't feel like Vista has had its full run and I really have loved the Vista OS.

The worst thing is that I heard someone refer to Vista as the modern Windows ME... Ugh... I swear this person NEVER used ME... and probably never used Vista for that matter...

I do look forward to Windows 7 because I think Microsoft is making a lot of great improvements to the OS, but I feel like this is more of the windows 95 to 98 jump than 98 to XP or XP to Vista...

If you recall, the main difference between 95 and 98 (aside from a bunch of technical crap that the average Joe never noticed) was Internet Explorer 4.0 basically replacing Windows Explorer... Sure, that was a bad idea, but it did open a lot of new possibilities (mostly for hackers).

Well, that's my rant for the day...

Ubuntu in Vista

Today, I installed Ubuntu on my computer again. this time, I'm running it through a virtual machine. I'm using Sun's xVM Virtual Box.

The setup was very quick and easy. This was the fastest lnux install I've ever done. I'm quite pleased with the idea of being able to use linux simultaniously with windows. The best part is it's completely free!

Oh, and the fun doesn't stop there. VirtualBox will also allow you to install XP in Vista. That's right. You can install and run XP inside Vista! Not that I have any crazy software that won't run in Vista, but I still find this to be a great idea for anyone who does.

Open in new window...

I think you'll thank me for posting this little tweak I found.

I hate that Vista doesn't let you Shift or Ctrl click on folders in Explorer to open them in a new window. (I should clearify that if you take off the navigation pane from the window, that this feature DOES work... but wtf?)

It would be fine, so long as I could right click and say "open in new window"... but that is another feature they simply left out. Well, I finally got sick of it and asked the gods at Google how to do it... and they gave me a quick and easy tweak that works great!

Check out the link and try it out! I've not tried it in XP, but I think it would work there too.

Vista: Sync Center

I finally took the time to play around with Vista's built in sync capabilities. I've been working on a couple projects and moving files back and forth from my laptop to my desktop as I work both at and away from home. Moving thousands of tiny files back and forth over the network can take ages and frankly, I'm sick of it. I keep the files in the same place all the time (I'm very organized when it comes to long term projects), so it is only natural to set up a network share between the two computers, and I knew I wanted to sync my files, but I had no idea how easy it actually is.

In Vista, all you have to do is navigate to your shared folder, right click on it, and select "Always available offline". 

That's it. Simple. 

You have a few other options in the Sync Center... you can setup the folder(s) to sync on a schedule and what not. It's rather fancy. I recommend mapping a drive to the folder you want to sync so that you can easily pull it up from 'Computer' when you're away from home or the office.

There are lots of great resources both within Windows Vista and on the inter-tubes that go into more depth on the subject, but I think it's worth checking out!

(By the way, there is a similar option available within OneNote that allows you to sync your notebooks over the network... it's really easy to use and makes OneNote even more powerful. I now have all the same notebooks available on both my laptop and my desktop... Neat!)

How to add custom AutoPlay options in Windows Vista

Let me start by saying that if you're not comfortable messing around with your Windows Registry, then DON'T DO IT! If you mess something up in the Registry, you can cause serious problems which could easily lead to data loss! That having been said, read on...

I use Nero to burn DVDs and CDs. Today I went to burn a DVD and I noticed that Vista's AutoPlay did not give me the option to burn a DVD using Nero. I opened the AutoPlay options and clicked around... to my surprise, the option existed for CDs, but not for DVDs. "No problem," I thought aloud to myself, wondering why I was thinking aloud, "I'll just add Nero as an option for DVDs!"

By default, windows vista does not allow you to just use what ever program you want when, say, you insert a blank DVD. There are many options pre-configured options, but no way to modify them. If you're lucky, your burning software automatically added the necessary registry values when you installed it, but if it's not there by magic, you're shit out of luck.

Or are you?

I did a lot of searching for how to add custom programs to the Vista AutoPlay options... While I found the same limited information about how to customize the existing selection of AutoPlay options, no forums offered a solution for adding a program that was not already available.

So, I did what any self respecting geek in my position would do... I figured it out for myself.

In the registry, there are two keys you want to look for.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AutoplayHandlers\EventHandlers\
(This key holds all of the events - for example, I was looking for the HandleDVDBurningOnArrival key.)

and

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AutoplayHandlers\Handlers\
(These are the options that will be available when you go to customize your EventHandlers - in this case, I needed to find NeroAutoPlay7LaunchNeroStartSmart so I could add a new string with that name to the HandleDVDBurningOnArrival key.)

Once you've made the appropriate modifications in the Registry, you're ready to fire up the AutoPlay options. You can get to these options from the Control Panel. If you're not already aware of this, vista has a great search feature at the top right. Open the Control Panel and type "autorun" in the search field and you'll see the option you need.

When the AutoPlay options come up, you'll notice that the string you've added to the EventHandlers key is now available under the respective event... in my example, "Create Your Own Disc Using Nero Start Smart Essentials" is now an option for Blank DVD.

Confused yet? Well, that sucks for you. If you're confused at this point, I don't recommend playing around with your registry You'll probably break something and get pissed off at me.

If anyone stumbles upon this post and wants further assistance, please leave a comment below and I'll try to help out.

Windows Mojave

Ok, so I finally checked out the Windows Mojave website and it loaded this time.

If you haven't seen it, you should check it out. Seriously, I don't know who has been spreading all these rumors that Vista is terrible... The problem is that human nature is to talk about things as fact when all you have to go on is what some dumbass friend of yours says. Guess what, the only reason you trust that friend is because you're too lazy to check the facts yourself.

Wake up America! I know it's a novel idea, but maybe you should make decisions for yourself. Oh, but don't take my word for it... Ask your friend if it's a good idea.