A few months ago I decided to retire my SN41GV2 Shuttle Box PC. The Shuttle Box, which is named Titan, has served me well as a home server, but I had grown tired of the noise level associated with its power supply fans. I worried too that after being upgraded to an Athlon XP 3200, it would one day overheat and take my data with it. Considering price as the most limiting factor, I set out to setup a new Windows Server and found some interesting choices along the way. For example new Intel based Shuttle Box models were intriguing, but the small form factor is limiting and not all that cheap. Intel based servers are fast and reliable, but their price ranges are high for all but entry level Celeron based systems. I have had good experiences with AMD’s Athlons, so I decided to give AMD another chance and looked for Opteron based servers.

The Flavors of AMD Opteron

Seems like AMD is quite popular in the small business server market. You have choices, like the HP ProLiant ML115 Server and at the time I was able to find a lowend Opteron based IBM System X server as well. Almost all of the Opteron servers used an NVidia based chipset and featured similar motherboard specs, so the only decision came down to price and extras. The HP ProLiant had one major difference on the Dell PowerEdge T105, it came with built-in SATA RAID. In end, I waited for Dell to have a sale and the price range ended up being significant. The T105 on sale goes for $349, while everyone else had a $500 or more price tag. At this price it is hard not to buy a Dell. Note that this does not include an operating system or any hardware upgrades like more memory and bigger hard drives. Do not forget to add $20 for shipping, so we are now at around $380.

Server Upgrades

For computer upgrades, you really cannot beat Newegg.com. They have great service and their site has pretty much everything you could ever want when it comes to components. I ended up ordering a 500GB Western Digital SATA hard drive for around $105. The only problem with buying an Opteron based machine is that it uses ECC memory and not regular DDR memory. This ended up costing me twice as much. Instead of the $40 or so for 2×1GB DIMMs, I had to pay around $80 for the same memory and only Kingston has DD2 800 memory ECC DIMMs. The same ECC DIMMs now cost around $50, so they have gotten cheaper in the last six months.

Eventually I will upgrade the DVD Drive and add another internal hard drive. I am still waiting for 2GB ECC DIMMs to become cheaper. The T105 can take up to 8GB of RAM.

Windows2003 Server Performance

At first I had a lot of problems with Windows2003 stability on the new server. Hard drive access especially was slower than expected. The fix ended up being to go into Device Manager and for disk drive, choose Optimize for Performance. This ended fixing the weird pauses I saw in Explorer. Comparing the system to the old Athon XP 3200, which ran at 2.2GHz, the dual core Opteron 1210 18GHz is more stable and application wise feels faster. Some apps do perform better than others, so performance is always relative to the application and if both cores are being utilized. Since this is a server, other than terminal server RDP, I really do not run much in the way of desktop applications. Apache 2 is definitely better on dual cores.

Overall the new server was a good bargain. It is quiet enough for the home office and while the size factor is that of a normal tower, it is very expandable compared to a small form factor PC. I guess it is true, you can’t beat Dell on price.

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When dealing with website upgrades, one of the main concerns is trying to make the upgrades go as smooth as possible, but the other concern is that upgrades need to be executed as fast as possible to minimize down time. When it comes to the web, it is a 24 hour cycle, and even 15 minutes of down time can cost web site owners money. Given this, I have come up with the following upgrade process for minor WordPress upgrades, that minimizes down time for web site users, and makes the process a little easier on me.

Verify Backup

Never perform any kind of upgrade without a backup! In the case of WordPress, make sure you have a current database backup and a backup of your wp-config.php file. Now on with the upgrade process…

Prepare Your WordPress Upgrade Files

1. The first thing I do is delete any unnecessary files from the new WordPress release. I do not use the classic theme at all, so I usually delete that theme.

• wp-config-sample.php
• license.txt
• readme.html
• wp-admin\install.php
• wp-content\themes\classic
• wp-content\plugins\hello.php

2. Rename the following folders:

• wp-admin to wp-admin-new
• wp-include to wp-include-new

Uploading Files

3. Upload the two folders that you renamed to your WordPress root directory. Note that this will not overwrite the current folders, since they are named differently. This results in not interrupting the up-time of your site until the next step.

4. Upload all the root files to your site, overwriting the current files already there. Sometimes, it is best to delete the root files first instead of overwriting them, so choose whatever method you prefer. Note that you should keep the wp-config.php file; do not delete this file ever or it will cause problems.

5. Upload the contents of the wp-content folder, meaning you now have to upload the contents of the wp-content/themes and wp-content/plug-ins directories.

Finish Upgrade

6. Most WordPress upgrades want you to confirm the upgrade.php file. This usually runs database changes and such, but for minor builds, it is a good way of confirming the upgrade process worked.

• Run domain_name/wp-admin/upgrade.php

7. Lastly if all went well, you just need to delete upgrade.php and you are done!

Some Notes

Make sure you are familiar with the upgrade process for WordPress and note that some major upgrades may require changes to theme files and such. You may need to modify this upgrade process for a particular WordPress release.

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Three months ago I posted my Apple iPhone Review and detailed my initial thoughts of Apple’s entry into the cell phone market; now with a few months of usage I thought it would be a good time to write down some afterthoughts on what the iPhone experience is all about. First let me state that I have only personally used only three cellphones in my entire life: a Blackberry, a Samsung Blackjack, and an old style cell phone, none of which I personally owned. The irony of course is that back in college I worked at a major electronics chain store and sold cell phones as part of my job. Back then I use to sign up people for Motorola phones all the time. Somehow though I never really thought I would ever need a cell phone until now!

Most Used Features

Without a doubt, the feature that I use the most is Safari. I love being able to read my favorite tech news sites and blogs anywhere I go. Everyone is talking about how some day eBooks will become popular, but in reality the real medium is the news site and blogs that get updated daily and which are read more often than most newspaper columns. The iPhone allows you to do what you have always wanted to do, which is catch up on your favorite sites when you are away from your computer. In many ways it reduces the need for people to use their work computer for idle web browsing and lets people be informed anywhere they go.

I personally hate talking to people on the phone, so I prefer SMS texting to actually calling anyone. Sometimes SMS seems more fun than actually talking. I much more prefer to send coworkers a quick message than to actually bother them during a meeting or worse at home in their private time. The iPhone’s keyboard takes a little getting use to, but it soon becomes second nature and you find yourself quickly adopting to its limitations.

As a manager, you often need to catch up on email or learn more management skills, but lets face it there is never enough time in the day to do this. One trick that I use is to email myself anything I don’t have time to read to my GMail account and then later when I get stuck waiting somewhere with nothing to do, I pull out my iPhone and check my email. This way I catch up on everything I wanted to read eventually without interfering with my regular work routine.

Probably the feature I use the most that is not work related happens to be the camera. Like most people I have a digital camera and it is stuck in a drawer somewhere. The iPhone camera is nothing to rave about, but it allows you the freedom to take a few pictures of the family, especially when they least expect it. For the first time I actually I am using iPhoto weekly.

The Annoyances

The biggest annoyance is the battery life, until you discover to live within the limitations of the iPhone battery. If you find your battery draining like mine, try the following tips:

• Turn Wi-Fi off when you know there are no access points
• Lower your screen Brightness
• Turn Bluetooth off if not needed
• Do not setup Mail to Auto-Check
• iPod: Turn off Sound Check
• iPod: Turn off EQ
• iPod: Turn off Volume Limit
• If you do not need to take any calls, enable Airplane Mode

The other problem that I use to run into is with Safari. At times Safari would just quit without warning trying to load a webpage. I think this is more of a problem with Safari 3 then the actual iPhone. Safari 3 in Mac OS X is still a work in progress and you will find that while Safari 3 improves on the previous version’s speed, it seems to be a lot more prone to long freezes and random quits. A good cure for this on the iPhone is to clear your cache and shutdown your iPhone completely. Once your power it back up, Safari seems to work just fine for a couple a days at least. The problem only gets worse if you switch constantly from Wi-Fi and AT&T.

Don’t Use It

Other than my kids who seem to think it is hilarious to watch SouthPark cartoons with Pokemon character voices, I really don’t use the YouTube feature much. The iPod part of the iPhone plays better video and unless you are connected to Wi-Fi, YouTube does not work very well at all through AT&T.

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I recently got a new 2007 Intel Mac, which I have yet to review, but which I already updated. Apple has a reputation for gouging customers on extra memory configurations, (much like every other computer maker), and even though Apple now sells their computers with at least 1GB of RAM, this proves to be insufficient for Mac OS X 10.5 at least. However with today’s memory prices, you can easily find a good deal on DDR2 667MHz SO-DIMMS. The best deal I found was from NewEgg: 2GB Transcend DDR2 667MHz SO-DIMM for $36.99. When purchased there was also a $10 Mail-In Rebate that cut the price to $26.99, (with $4.99 extra for shipping). The aluminum Intel iMacs can handle up to 4GB of RAM, so if you do not mind throwing away the original 1GB DIMM, you can max out your iMac for less than $80.

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One of the major reasons Adobe bought out Macromedia was to get Flash. Without a doubt Flash is one of those technologies that makes the whole Internet experience that much more enjoyable for the end user. On the other hand, Flash can quickly become a headache when it does not work properly or if you are trying to work with it and it keeps changing. Given that I have put together the following list of resources and tips on dealing with Flash.

Flash Implementations:

The first thing to understand is that there are really two implementations of Flash. There is the Flash ActiveX control which is used by Microsoft Internet Explorer and the Flash Plug-in. Firefox and Safari use the Flash Plug-in and not the ActiveX control. The ActiveX control is the Flash9x.ocx file and the Plug-in is the Flashplayer.xpt file.

On Windows, Flash is installed to:

• C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\Macromed\Flash

On Mac OS X, Flash is installed to:

• /Library/Internet Plug-Ins

Uninstalling Flash:

The best way to uninstall Flash from Windows and Mac OS X is to use Adobe’s own uninstaller. This can be downloaded from Adobe’s Tech Note 14157 page. Proving that nothing is easy on Windows, by default the Windows uninstaller does not remove registry entries. In order to wipe registry entries for Flash, you must run the uninstaller using a clean switch:

uninstall_flash_player.exe /clean

Installing Flash:

Since there are two implementations of Flash, there are essentially three installations of Flash. For IE (the ActiveX control), you can simply go to Adobe.com and look for the Get Flash Player logo and click on it. For other browsers, when you go to the Adobe.com page, it will instead download an installer for the Flash Plug-in. There is a third installer which is only for developers who want to include both the ActiveX control and Plug-in with their applications. You can usually download the latest installers here:

• Windows MSI installer
• Mac Universal installer

For testing purposes, Adobe does offer archived versions on their Tech Note 14266 page.

Once you have actually installed Flash, if needed you can also disable Flash Auto Update Notifications. This is done by creating a text file named mms.cfg and placing it in the following directories:

• Windows XP: C:\WINDOWS\System32\Macromed\Flash
• Mac OS X: \Application Support\Macromedia

The mms.cfg file should have: AutoUpdateDisable=1 to disable Auto Update Notifications. Information on doing this can be found on Adobe’s Tech Note 16701594 page.

Resources:

• Mozillazine Knowledge Base Flash Page
• Adobe Tech Note 14157: Uninstalling Flash
• Tech Note 14266: Archived Flash Installers
• Tech Note 16701594: Disable Flash Auto Update Notifications

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