My needs for a blog have out grown what a live space can do so I am moving my blog over to a hosted WordPress solution.

To find all my Group Policy related material over to the web site http://www.grouppolicy.biz

All my other IT related blog post can be found at http://www.smartergeek.info

So please update you RSS feeds to the new sites and thanks for visiting this site over the past 18months.

I have just setup a new web site called “Group Policy Center” that you can see at http://www.grouppolicy.biz this site is now where I am going to post all my tutorials and news articles. I have also migrated all my existing Group Policy articles on this site over this site so you don’t have to keep coming back to this web site.

However this site is not going away so please don’t delete it from your favourites as I still plan to use this site for all my non-group policy relates tech news and information…

If you are interested in Group Policy please add http://feeds.feedburner.com/GroupPolicyCenter to your RSS reader.

Well 2010 (pronounced “twenty ten”) has rolled around and now I can say that this year Project Natal will be coming out for the Xbox 360. WOOHOO!!

So with the impending release of Natal for the Xbox 360 this year I have been thinking about this device some what and here are some predictions I have about the device…

Natal will be for the Xbox 360 and for Windows. Project Natal is probably going to be a USB device (see cable from the device below) as this would be the most convenient way to provide power and data to the camera/microphone array. Now granted this might be a wireless device for the Xbox 360 like the standard controllers and that cable might be a power lead but if this is true you could still connect it to a PC via the USB Xbox 360 Wireless receiver.

So if you can connect the Natal to a PC this would be a way of providing 3D motion capture, facial recognition, voice recognition using the cameras and acoustic source localization and ambient noise suppression via its microphones. These sorts of capabilities would greatly help Microsoft implement NUI interface to Windows  like the Microsoft Office Labs 2019 Video that was released early last year…  See about 1 minute 30 seconds.

So imagine being able to sit down at your computer and have it recognise to who you are and log you on with you face and a voice print identification then use your hand to move around and organise the windows on your screen…. The future is here (soon)…

My other prediction for Project Natal is that it will enable new gaming titles such as Dance Hero which could be done via a full body motion capture dance. This is something that has been done before but it does away with the tacky floor pads (see image below) that were previously needed to make this work.

This weeks (and first for the year) Group Policy Setting of the Week is a Group Policy setting that configures Group Policy. The “Group Policy refresh interval for computers” can be found under Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > System > Group Policy and is used to control how often the background computer refresh interval of a performed.

By default the refresh will happen every 90 minutes however it has a 30 minute random offset so it could potentially take between 1 to 2 hours for a policy refresh to occur. Keep in mind however that if configured the policy refresh to a shorter interval it will potentially not take affect to all your computers until the longest refresh interval of the last refresh interval setting. Normally this setting it set to a short interval before a major change to group policy setting is made to an SOE so that any rollback of the change can be implemented faster (example see How to use Group Policy Preferences to set change Passwords).

Now that Microsoft security initiates are paying off and Windows and Internet Explorer more secure that the rivals. It seems that hackers are changing their focus as McAfee labs have said “Adobe product exploitation will likely surpass that of Microsoft Office applications in 2010.”. What is even more disturbing is that these security issues are platform independent which makes any security vulnerability even more appealing as it will work on multiple platforms (Windows and OSX).

In response to all the security issues that have recently come out for Adobe products they announced that they will be releasing security patches second Tuesday of the first month of every quarter unless the patch is deemed to be critical enough to release an out of cycle update… GREAT!!! Why they don’t just say second Tuesday of every month like Microsoft does so that all these patches can be released together is beyond me but at least its a start.

Problem is there was for a long time no way to automatically update these products as WSUS and Windows Update support updates of Adobe products. This often results in companies in having to manually patch the software via sneaker net or worse not at all leaving some gaping security holes on their computers.

Thankfully Adobe with the latest release of Adobe Reader 9.2.0 now supports Automatic Installation of updates. To enable this option you need to select “Automatically install updates” option under the "Updater” categories under Preferences menu option.

For large scale enterprises this option is still not an practical option however for the mum and dad and SOHO’s this will at least mean they no longer need to manually check for updates every month to stay secure.

For more information on Adobe Reader Security Issues Details see:

• http://securitygarden.blogspot.com/2009/10/adobe-reader-and-acrobat-critical.html
• http://securitygarden.blogspot.com/2009/05/critical-update-adobe-reader-and.html

Today on Group Policy Setting of the Week we are going to be taking a look at “Exclude directories in roaming profile” which can be found in the deepest darkest regions of User Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > System > User Profiles. This setting is useful in organisations that have Roaming Profiles configured but want to make sure that the roaming profile size does not blow out thus slow doing the users logon and log off or the computer. This option can be used to exclude specific folders of poorly written application from the roaming profile if they write large amounts of data (e.g. caches) to incorrect locations.

A classic example of this was when Google Earth was first released it saved cache files to the users roaming profile folder which meant their profile size quickly swelled to over 1gb. User then quickly started to complain that it took a a long time to logon and logoff their computer (go figure). Enabling this option allowed the specific cached folders to be excluded from their roaming profile and therefore a much smaller roaming profile was copied to and from the server making their login’s and logoffs much quicker. The side affect of this is that the setting saved to the folders you exclude will no longer roam with the user when they logon a new computer.

Very handy if you want to keep roaming profiles to a small size which in turn will speed up the users logon and logoff processes.

This setting will work with Windows 2000 or greater and multiple paths can be appended with a ; as a delimiter between the entries.

Microsoft have now released a Bing iPhone app that allow you to use the Microsoft services from your iPhone. The app itself is actually a few apps in one with a launching pad to numerous Bing services:

• Standard Search (Voice or Text)
• Image Search
• Movies
• Maps (and directions)
• Business
• News

Home Screen

Navigation Controls

The navigation buttons are always present when you are navigating in the app. The home button is very useful for coming back to the launch screen and the simple navigation buttons are also nice. My only complaint was that the back button is next to the home button so it is really easy to press the wrong button.

I have to also wounder if this application is also a preview of the look and feel for applications running on Windows Mobile 7.

Search

The search feature works as expected you tap in the search bar up the top and you start to type. You also start to see search results as you type.

Search (Voice)

Next the the search bar you see a microphone that can be used to perform a voice search via BING. Press the button and just start to say what you want to search then press done when you have finished talking.

Now if you are not in the USA after a few seconds of thinking the app will crash and dumps you back to the home screen for now if you change you region setting of the iPhone to the United States it will work. When you do this voice searching will then work and searching for terms like "PIZZA" work really well. Microsoft have come out and said that they will be releasing a fix for this soon.

Images

As expected the image search allows you to search for images via BING. I tried searching for my name and was happy to find that a photo of me came up first… The image search results also faded in nicely as the phone loaded the images.

Movies

I can only assume this is an USA only feature for now as when I select this option I immediately get a “We did not find any results for Movies” popup. Hopefully localised Australian information of the movie times will be coming soon.

Maps

This certainly looks a lot like the Silverlight map web application that Microsoft recently released on the http://bing.com web site. The maps have integrated the  seadragon deep zoom technology which makes the whole experience very smooth. The map has full multi pinch to zoom and GPS support. The settings for the map are very similar to those seen on the included Google map app in the iPhone. I do wonder what the “Shaded” view  is as this seems to be no different to the “Road” map view.

BING maps settings screen compared to the inbuilt Google maps setting screen. Very similar.

Businesses

This option for searching for different types of business near your location but again it seems that there is no localised data for Australia for it to use yet.

News

This option was another a disappointment as when you launch it you are immediately presented with the “We did not find any results for (null)” message box. Not sure if this is also an issue for just Australian users but the error message is less than graceful.

Directions

Again this seems to mirror very closely the inbuilt Google map app however you launch this separately from the “Directions” option from the home screen.

Another disappointment here as the search feature will only direct you to the suburb instead of the exact address that you typed into to the search. What I really don’t like about this is that it does not warn you that it is not sending you to the exact address just to a random point in the middle of the suburb….

Just like Microsoft releasing Photosynth for the iPhone and licensing active sync they continue to demonstrate that they are willing to compete by innovation and not by exclusion. This makes me wounder how long it will be until we see Microsoft Zune App for the iPhone.

Overall

This is a really nice looking app and it is great to have an alternative to the inbuilt iPhone/Google apps. Its buggieness can be forgiven as this is Microsoft first really shot at making a mainstream iPhone app and this only needs to have a updated version deployed to fix the voice record issues. However it is really dissapoininting that a lot of the feauters dont work in Australia and what Microsoft really needs to do is get the localised services for Australia up and running ASAP.

UPDATE: Looks like these issues are going to be fixed soon as Microsoft have come out and said they will be soon fixing the issues of the voice search crashing outside the USA and enable the ability perform searchs outside of the USA. 

If you want to try it out you can install the app right now from this iTunes Link for free.

At long last my Intel X-25 M 160gb Solid State Disk (SSD) drive arrived in the mail and I joyfully ripped open the packaging like a kid on Christmas morning to see what had arrived (like I didn’t already know). To my absolute delight it was a brand new box with what I hoped contained the saviour of my now aging (slow) Dell Dimension 9150 with a 2.8ghz Dual Core CPU which was in desperate need of an upgrade.

As you can see below the drive is 2.5” so it will fit into most laptops but it also comes with a 3.5” caddy for installing into desktop computer. While I did not take the smaller size into account when I bought the drive i realise this is a real bonus as I can easily use it in a laptop in the future if I ever decide to get something more portable to replace my current desktop at home.

I also decided to the get the 160gb model because it now has a faster write speed than the 80gb version with the release of the its latest firmware from Intel.

It also comes with a very important “my SSD Rocks!” sticker to show as a badge of honour (or to tell someone that your computer it worth stealing for the parts).

As I was un-boxing the drive I kept think to myself that “gee I hope this drive was worth it” and “I hope it will make a difference with my computer”. My initial worry was that the drive was not going to be able to run at 3gb/sec to take advantage of the full throughput of the drive. But I was relieved to see that the drive and motherboard were 3gb/sec capable and so it negotiated its link speed at full speed. nice… so I continued my tests…

Benchmarks

OS Load Time (12m:09sec)

So I found my USB stick of Windows 7 64bit, plugged it in an turned it on…

12min 9sec (see timer below) after I pressed the power button I was at a default desktop…. Nice…  This was good and I was starting to feel a little confident that the drive was going to make the system faster. Note that this also included all the time it took me to click the buttons using the OS install Wizard. I would estimate that this would have added at least an extra minute to this overall time.

Windows Experience Index (7.8)

The Windows Experience Index is a bench mark that was introduced with Windows Vista that allows people to assess the performance of the individual pieces of hardware in a computer. This benchmark helps people determine what part of their computer is slowest and can help guide people to what upgrade they perform next to get some more speed out of their system. In Windows 7 the rating numbers go from a minimum of 1 to a maximum value of 7.9 (which is up from 5.9 in Windows Vista).

As you can see the drive rated very well with a 7.8 although I was hoping for a 7.9 because I have to wounder what drive on the market could possibly be better that this drive (maybe 2x Intel X-25 M in a stripe).

OS Boot Time (20.1sec)

The other really important stat about the drive is how quick it takes to boot up and shutdown. Now Google claims that it can get 8 seconds boot from with it uses a SSD drive so I was really keen to see how fast it compares with Windows 7. Now the total overall boot time from power on to desktop was 32.8 seconds however this included the 12 seconds BIOS post tests. Now bear in mind that my system is almost 5 years old and BIOS start up time for computer now are a lot quicker.

If you take a look at the lap time (top right) the whole OS boot only took 20.1 seconds.

OS Shutdown Time (3sec)

Now this I have not measured exactly yet however this is now a near instantaneous from fully loaded desktop to powered off takes no longer that 3 seconds.

Windows Media Center (much better)

Now my desktop computer also acts as a server for Windows Media Center on my two Xbox 360 which was always bit sluggish to navigate through the menus which I put this down to the lag from the IR remote to the Xbox 360 via the Ethernet to the Computer back via the Ethernet to the Xbox and onto the screen. However even though my media files are stored on a 1tb 1.5gb/sec SATA WD Green plater based drive the over all navigation and load time has much improved.

Better with Windows 7

Its also one of the first SSD drives to offer native support for the Trim SATA command with Windows 7 which all but eliminates any performances degradation over time with SSD drives.

Windows 7 also recognises SSD based drives and disabled the defragmentation option as this offers no benefit due the drives low random seek speed and can even cause premature wear out of drives if performed to often.

Overall (5 Stars)

Needless to say I am very, very, very impressed with the performance of the drive and this upgrade has now turned me into an absolute speed demon. It definitely seems that drive I/O is now the most constraining factor with computer as ever relatively slow CPU’s on a modern Operating System such as Windows 7 seem to be more than capable.

I also find that doing multiple tasks at one is much smoother and seems to have almost no performance impact at all. This is obviously due to the less than 1ms random seek time of the drive and the native command queuing that allows the drive to handle a massive amount of simultaneously commands.

Another advantage of the drive is that is has no moving parts which should mean that the reliability of the drive is (hopefully) going to be more reliable with a predicted 1.2 million hours Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) which is nearly double that of 750,000 hours MTBF that most other spinning platter based drives have.

This is a drive that I will probably using in my next 3 computers so I really see it as a long term investment even though it cost a little (ok a lot) extra. If you are looking for an upgrade to your system that will really give it a killer punch in performance then this is it even thought its a bit pricey still it is totally worth the cost.

But for I can truly say I no longer wait for my computer to load program anymore… 

Rating 5 out of 5 stars.

For a more in-depth review of the drive including some of it’s issues (which have been fixed via the latest firmware) see the following PC Perspective Articles:

• Intel X25-M 80GB Solid State Hard Drive Review
• Long-term performance analysis of Intel Mainstream SSDs
• Intel Responds to Fragmentation with New X25-M Firmware
• Intel X25-M G2 TRIM firmware is out, really, we mean it this time, honest!

Intel’s specification sheet on the drive can be found Here

Link tot he latest firmware that  the drive Here and instructions can be found Here

Link to an eBay store stocking the drive can be found Here

Disclosure cmp.ly/0/llruwy

   Asa Dotzler one of Firefox’s (Mozilla) co-founders has recently did a blog post that recommends that all Mozilla’s users should

“switch Firefox’s search from Google to Bing”

due to the privacy issues with Google.

No…  Really, really!!!!

I have to admit that this is just about as believable as Bill Gates praising Apple Computers or Microsoft saving Apple from Bankruptcy. Asa makes some good points however on his Blog that Google and it certainly seems to be getting complacent with data private after the video of Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO said

"If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

I think the reason that Bing’s privacy policy is better than Google’s is that they have already been through the anti-trust ringer and don’t want a repeat of history. Where as Google still thinks it can do know wrong and are willing to push the boundaries a little further.

I also have to wounder weather this means that Microsoft are also paying Mozilla just like “Google (and Yahoo and others) pay for search traffic”. This would be very interesting if this was the case as it would mean Microsoft would effective be paying IE’s biggest competitor. While this sound unlikely just remember that the Exchange team licences Active Sync to both the iPhone and Android even thought they compete against Windows Mobile so I think it is definitely possible. 

You can read Asa’s Blogs articles below:

• if you have nothing to hide…
• follow-up on schmidt
• privacy context and other concerns