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Hot Tech Deals – Sony STR-DH520 7.1ch 700W 3D-Ready Home Theater Receiver $179.99 Free Shipping & More!
Posted on 30 October 2011.
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Hot Tech Deals – MartinLogan MLT-1 5.1ch Home Theater Speakers $279.99 Free Shipping & More!
Posted on 16 October 2011.
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Hot Tech Deals – MartinLogan MLT-1 5.1ch Home Theater Speakers $279.99 Free Shipping & More!
Posted on 16 October 2011.
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Hot Tech Deals – MartinLogan MLT-1 5.1ch Home Theater Speakers $279.99 Free Shipping & More!
Posted on 16 October 2011.
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Hot Tech Deals – MartinLogan MLT-1 5.1ch Home Theater Speakers $279.99 Free Shipping & More!
Posted on 15 October 2011.
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The Bat! Home Edition 5.0.24
Posted on 10 October 2011.
The Bat! mail client has a lot of vital benefits and useful features that make your email experience simple and convenient. All these features perfectly fit any Windows OS. Moreover, The Bat! is the first and only email client Certified for Windows Vista by Microsoft Corporation. “Certified for Vista” logo guarantees the highest level of compatibil…
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INFOGRAPHIC: Got The Internet? Then Never Leave Home Again
Posted on 03 October 2011.
Our infographic today comes from
Has doing things on the Internet made you stay home more and more? What parts of the infographic do you most identify with? Have you ever Googled your medical symptoms and convinced yourself you have a rare tropical disease? Let us know in the comments!
Created by:
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Is Windows Home Server The Most Reliable Backup & File Server?
Posted on 14 September 2011.
What Is Windows Home Server?
Based upon Windows Small Business Server 2008,
In hardware terms, if it runs Windows 7 relatively well it will run WHS2011 just fine too, though if you’re building your own machine I’d suggest skimping on the graphics card and getting more memory instead.
Cost – & The Alternatives
Before I start introducing you to features, let me say upfront that Windows Home Server 2011 costs $49.99 if you purchase an OEM license – which means you’ll have to build the computer yourself that you plan to install it on. Legally, you shouldn’t buy OEM versions if you’re installing it onto an existing computer, but I’ve also heard it said that simply changing one of the cables or upgrading the memory classifies you as a “system builder” and therefore qualifies as OEM.
If you’re interested in purchasing a complete, ready built home server computer (usually with a wonderfully small form factor), check out the
- FreeNAS is a solid fileserver / router linux distro, definitely for advanced users only. I plan to write an updated article on it, but for now
- We regularly cover
- You could
That said and done, let’s look at the features provided by Windows Home Server 2011.
Automated Backups
One of the main concerns of home users is how to implement a decent backup system. For me, this means full data backup, as well a bootable system backup so I can be up and running again soon. If you have more than a few PCs in your house, managing all those backups becomes a constant mess of USB drives and various free apps to handle bootable partitions and…..well let’s just say it’s just a big hassle that I don’t need. WHS handles backing up all your PCs and data with such simplicity, it’s hard to believe it’s a Microsoft product.
Once connected to the server, your computer will be set to back up automatically. That’s it. You can view all the connected PCs from the WHS dashboard and adjust settings for backup frequency or when to delete old backups, but the defaults are fine and it all just works.
In the event of a catastrophic drive failure on that machine, you need only change the drive for a working one, and boot from the supplied WHS recovery CD. All your data and system will then be restored in just a few clicks, over the network, from either the most recent backup set or any archived sets.
File Server
With full user access control, WHS is the most reliable file server I’ve used yet. It also gives you the option to backup those file shares, of course.
Yes, you could just share some folders from any Windows 7 PC, but as anyone with home networking experience knows, the results don’t always work as expected. It’s difficult to set up fine-grained access control without a central user server.
Media Sharing
As well as a secure file store for your media, WHS also allows to share your media with any standard DLNA device – the Xbox 360 for instance. Not limited to your home network only either, you can access your media remotely too over the internet – to show relatives a slideshow for example. You can also upload files to your server which is useful if you’re out on a long holiday.
Admittedly, movie streaming isn’t a feature I use often and various codecs can present a problem.
One minor useful feature for me is the ability to automatically archive shows and movies from your
It’s Windows 7!
One of the problems with customised Linux distros is the fact that an entire computer is given over to the task, and all other little Windows apps I like to run suddenly need Linux alternatives. Not so with Windows Home Server, as it’s still a functional Windows environment. However, Home Server doesn’t run some of the more advanced Windows components and isn’t suitable for gaming, for instance. Media Center is noticeably absent.
I do hope you consider using Windows Home Server to handle your homes file and backup needs, but there will always be free alternatives if you’re prepared to put in the time and effort to make it all work. If you have any questions about Home Server I’d be happy to answer them in the comments, or as ever feel free to share your own choice for home backup and file servers – I’d especially like to hear of any complete solutions that are relatively easy to set up. In the coming weeks, I’ll highlight some of the add-ins (plugins?) available for WHS2011 too, that add even more functionality to your server.
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How Do You Listen To Music At Home? [MakeUseOf Poll]
Posted on 22 August 2011.
We collected a total of 109 votes, with this distribution: 81% readers will avoid tethering costs where possible; 10% voters haven’t thought about avoiding tethering costs or just don’t use tethering; 7% voters want to avoid tethering costs but can’t manage to do so; while 2% readers think additional tethering fees are reasonable and are happy to pay for them.
Full results and this week’s poll after the jump.
It looks like most MakeUseOf readers are ensuring they don’t pay for extra tethering fees.
This week’s
Most of us would have some way of listening to music at home. But, what’s a normal set-up these days? What devices do you use?
If you’re really proud of your home music set-up, feel free to explain it in the comments. Some of us might get ideas!
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The Bat! Home Edition 5.0.20.1
Posted on 28 July 2011.
The Bat! mail client has a lot of vital benefits and useful features that make your email experience simple and convenient. All these features perfectly fit any Windows OS. Moreover, The Bat! is the first and only email client Certified for Windows Vista by Microsoft Corporation. “Certified for Vista” logo guarantees the highest level of compatibil…
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The Bat! Home Edition 5.0.16
Posted on 28 June 2011.
The Bat! mail client has a lot of vital benefits and useful features that make your email experience simple and convenient. All these features perfectly fit any Windows OS. Moreover, The Bat! is the first and only email client Certified for Windows Vista by Microsoft Corporation. “Certified for Vista” logo guarantees the highest level of compatibil…
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The Bat! Home Edition 5.0.14
Posted on 21 June 2011.
The Bat! mail client has a lot of vital benefits and useful features that make your email experience simple and convenient. All these features perfectly fit any Windows OS. Moreover, The Bat! is the first and only email client Certified for Windows Vista by Microsoft Corporation. “Certified for Vista” logo guarantees the highest level of compatibil…
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Take A Look At James’ Home Setup [Show & Tell]
Posted on 01 June 2011.
Main Computer
My main work machine is a 27” iMac. Bored of sitting all the time and for health reasons, I switched the desk legs for some extendable ones at IKEA and I now have a fantastic simple standing desk that’s actually really solid. If you already have a suitable desktop, you can pick up just the legs for about $100. I do need to do something about the cables though.
I have a second monitor beside it which runs Windows 7 inside a virtual Parallels machine, mostly used for testing purposes and because it’s much easier to take screenshots with a virtual machine.
Network
With a total of about 10 clients, everything in my house is networked together – including the TV. Where possible, I run a wired ethernet connection. No matter how good your wireless router is, a wired connection is always going to be faster, especially important when shuffling around large files and streaming HD movies. The main router is a stock firmware device given to me by my cable company – it’s good enough, and acts as both a 4 port switch and a wireless router. To extend the network upstairs, I then have a separate network switch connected via a simple crossover ethernet cable.
The number of devices is perhaps a bit excessive, but most are old laptops that wouldn’t sell anyway, and like most geeks I can’t bear to throw hardware away.
If you’d like to learn more about setting up a home network of your own, be sure to read our
Home Server
Sitting in the cupboard is my home media, backup, and file server. Right now it’s running
Of course, with all that space it also runs
Situated in a small room with a window upstairs, it’s also ideal as a motion-sensing security system using a webcam and a suite of tools I showed you before. When activated, the system can send
Media Center
Though the TV is able to read some files straight off the network, I prefer to use my media centre PC and just output to the TV. This avoids any format issues, and allows me to have wonderful metadata and covers from Plex as I said, streaming from the server – this is done through XBMC and the PleXBMC plugin. Last week, I hacked the Xbox360 Kinect camera into this Windows PC to let me
To be honest, there’s quite a few Media Center apps you could use, and it’s really down to personal preference which you choose in the long run. Some of the writers here prefer
Web Services
I must admit I’m quite minimalist when it comes to web services.
That’s it from me, but I hope you’ll get to see what works for other writers in the coming weeks, so stay tuned and we can both look forward to reading those. As ever, feel free to comment or ask questions and I’ll do my best to reply. For general questions, you might want to ask in the
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Hot Tech Deals – Pinnacle Home Theater Systems + more
Posted on 08 May 2011.
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The Bat! Home Edition 5.0.10
Posted on 02 May 2011.
The Bat! mail client has a lot of vital benefits and useful features that make your email experience simple and convenient. All these features perfectly fit any Windows OS. Moreover, The Bat! is the first and only email client Certified for Windows Vista by Microsoft Corporation. “Certified for Vista” logo guarantees the highest level of compatibil…
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The Bat! Home Edition 5.0.8
Posted on 06 April 2011.
The Bat! mail client has a lot of vital benefits and useful features that make your email experience simple and convenient. All these features perfectly fit any Windows OS. Moreover, The Bat! is the first and only email client Certified for Windows Vista by Microsoft Corporation. “Certified for Vista” logo guarantees the highest level of compatibil…
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