Microsoft today announced a new product for Cloud Computing, called Windows Azure, which is going to be a cloud-computing platform, or cloud computing Operating System.

Cloud Computing is a buzzword I vaguely understand, so I looked around for a definition of it.

Firstly, Cloud Computing has nothing to do with Microsoft Flight Simulator.

There were over 150 articles on Cloud Computing on Knol (Google’s answer to Wikipedia).

Sam Johnston of Australian Online Solutions wrote:
“Cloud Computing is the realisation of Internet (’Cloud’) based development and use of computer technology (’Computing’) delivered by an ecosystem of providers.”

The next definition, from Kirill Osipov, seemed to sum it up nicely:
“Growth in adoption of software delivered over the Internet resulted in the situation where people depend on Internet for services that enable everyday activities like document editing, photo sharing, banking and so on. To the users, the computing and storage resources needed to power the service software exist in the “cloud”, that is the users are spared the details of where and how the software actually runs.”

In my previous blog entry I quoted from Dian’s GottaHave blog, and will be doing it again, as she gave an interesting reference to in her Blog “Ultra-Low-Cost, Ultra-Mobile Computers, Part 1“: “..Expectations from some companies are that you’ll do your computing “in the clouds,” relying on free services from Google and a hundred other dot-com companies to give you productivity applications and maintain your data.”

Just for reference, the Wikipedia article on Cloud Computing is here.

Last week I found myself having to store over 30GB of computer files offline. They weren’t anything nefarious, mainly freeware and shareware computer programs, including Linux distributions. Writing the files to DVDs was out of the question, as I needed to be able to add or remove files. I could have used 4 cheap 8GB USB thumb drives, but it would make it difficult to keep the files organized. Then I thought of a portable external hard drive.

Less than 5 months ago I mentioned a portable hard drive in a blog entry about backups. Then I was  more interested in a cheaper, non-portable external hard drive, although the Western Digital Passport Portable Hard Drive intrigued me. Since then numerous other hard drive manufacturers have entered this market, so there are a number of portable external hard drives available.

After doing some research, I settled on a Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini 250GB portable hard drive. It has a number of good user reviews, as well as a 5 year warranty. While it is nowhere near as small as a portable thumb drive, it is small enough to fit into a pocket. It also cost less than 4 cheap 8GB USB thumb drives!

Databases, what can I say? Since getting drawn into computers and programming while using dBase III Plus, I’ve used many a database. Starting with the xBase family of databases (Clipper, FoxPro and others), then on to a mainframe hierarchical database I’d prefer not to name, then onto SQL.

For those who have not heard the term “xBase“, “xBase is the generic term for all programming languages that derive from the original dBASE (Ashton-Tate) programming language and database formats” according to this article in Wikipedia

One database I’ve worked with since version 1.0 was Microsoft Access. It is such an easy to use database it can be addictive in itself. I’ve often had to rewrite applications using Access as a database to use SQL Server. Otherwise Access is a good database management tool.

FileMaker is supposed to be the easiest database to use, but I haven’t had an opportunity to try it.

Then there are the big boys, the “SQL” Servers. Confusingly, only one is called “SQL Server”, and that is Microsoft SQL Server. The others are MySQL, Sybase SQL Anywhere, Oracle, PostgreSQl and DB2 (of course this is far from a complete list).

Naturally a database is preferable to a spreadsheet when the number of rows is more than 65k, or relationships are required.

It is less than a month ago that I wrote about a USB thumb drive. I mentioned that I use one almost every day. They are becoming almost as commonplace as floppy disks.

Occasionally though, I come across one that is quite unique. This time it is the Corsair 16GB Flash Survivor USB Flash Drive. This flash drive is water resistant up to depths of 200 metres (almost 219 yards) and has shock protection. Housed in a cylindrical aluminum casing, it comes with Corsair dog tag (to wear along with the Flash drive). Also, the flash drive has a generous 10 year limited parts and labor warranty, and will be replaced if you somehow manage to destroy it (as long as you have the broken pieces). From what I’ve read it has withstood being run over by a car, boiled in water, hit with a hammer several times and thrown off a building. If you want to keep your data safe this is definitely an option.

Another Corsair USB thumb drive, the Corsair 16GB Flash Voyager USB Flash Drive, apparently does even better at being thrown off buildings, as it is entirely encased in rubber (and tends to bounce a lot!). However it will not survive being driven over by a car.

Maybe it is one of the surest signs that I’m a computer geek: I find backups interesting. Not quite as interesting as cool tech gadgets, but interesting enough to be watching the increase in capacity of the largest drives as well as the portable and colorful Western Digital Passport series of hard drives with interest.
So here is BBE – Backups, Boring but Essential.

It always helps to keep your backup formats simple, for example I use True Image for drive images (full backups of a drive or partition) and the Zip format (which can be created and read by WinZip and countless other programs) for incremental daily backups. Many backup programs use the Zip format. For secure backups my preference is the RAR format. WinRAR can be found online, and can also be read by numerous utilities.

Once backups are created, they need to be copied off the computer. Here’s where external drives are the best option. I use a Western Digital My Book Essential Edition External 250GB Hard Drive for data backups and a SimpleTech SimpleDrive External 500GB Hard Drive for larger files and media files. Since I’m using Windows, I’ve formatted both of the drives to NTFS (they both came in FAT32 format), so I can store files larger than 4GB on them.

These drives meet my needs and the SimpleTech drive was on sale when I was buying, but you may find another drives more suitable to your specific needs. Reading both expert and users reviews of hard drives helps immensely. Make sure you can return a drive if you have problems. Out of three external drives purchases I have returned one and bought another drive from a different manufacturer. Also keep in mind that currently prices are falling as larger drives come out. At the moment 1 Terabyte external drives are really tempting, but they will drop in price as soon as 2 Terabyte drives become available.

Usually people only buy a new computer after their old computer gets too slow or crashes. I seem to have done it the other way round. My old eMachines Desktop computer just died about a week ago. It had been playing up for well over a year now. It would just suddenly cutout like the power had gone. After unplugging and re-plugging the AC power cord, it would work again. At first I though it was a power supply problem, but it was just too erratic. More research found some possible hard to fix problems. It wasn’t overheating, as it would sometimes cutout just after I switched it on, but work after that. Sometimes it did this once, sometimes twice. Occasionally I had to wait for half an hour before trying it again. Since I couldn’t trust it I bought cheap Compaq desktop computer on special, and used the eMachines Desktop as a secondary machine. I only used it occasionally, mainly for an important application which I intended to move off the eMachines Desktop.

When it happened, the eMachines Desktop wouldn’t turn on, no matter how many times I tried. I left it for an hour, then a day. Eventually I gave up: it was dead, never to boot up again. Of course the software I meant to move off was still on it.

One of the reasons I had kept the unpredictable machine around for so long was that up until a few weeks ago, it had the largest hard drive of any of my computers; 160GB. That doesn’t sound like much now, with 1 Terabyte hard drives available, but in 2005 when I bought it that was a lot of space.

Now I’m thinking of removing the hard drive and turning it into an external hard drive with a kit like the AcomData 2163 External 3.5 inch Hard Drive Enclosure. That saves me from trying to figure out how to erase the data on the hard drive in a machine which won’t boot.

The editors at PC World are running a contest through the end of the month offering some lucky reader a “dream” PC. This is a custom desktop machine they thought up that would cost about $30,000 to build.

As usual, I ambled through the description of this computer and thought to myself, what the heck is this stuff?!

So I’m going to spend a few blog entries dissecting some of the more interesting components from the list.

First up, the system will contain two OCZ Technology 64GB internal solid state disks. What stopped me was the price tag: $3,000. Holy-moly! That means each disk will be $1,500. Could a drive really be worth that much?!

Why is the OCZ worthy of going into a dream PC? Here are the company specs:

• Read up to 58MB/second (very fast compared to a traditional hard drive, which has mechanical parts to it)
• Write up to 35MB/second (same here)
• Slim 2.5″ design (making it small enough for a notebook computer)
• Lightweight 77g (less than 3 ounces)
• Low power consumption (which means your notebook battery will last longer)
• Shock resistant 1500G (which makes it durable for hauling around)
• High-capacity 64GB (not a bad size for a drive, but I can see why PC World plans to double that)
• RAID support (makes sense when you have two drives in the machine)
• MTBF 2 million hours (always just an estimate, but this particular meantime between failures equates to about 228 years; expected when you don’t have any moving parts)
• 1 year warranty (you’d think the company would go longer than this if they really believed their own hype about durability)

One other advantage of the solid state drive. They’re the Prius of the drive world — incredibly quiet even when they’re in operation.

Of course, there’s that price. That’s the primary disadvantage. The cost is about $18 per gigabyte vs. $2 or less for a hard drive. The new MacBook Air notebook has an optional solid state disk that adds just about $1,000 to the price.

Considering that solid state drives are real plus for notebooks but offer a lot of benefits that are sort of irrelevant to desktop machines, classify this particular feature as truly dream-machine worthy.

My spouse is a cautious person. She’s the one who makes sure our life insurance policies are paid up. She dragged me to the hardware store to pick out a fire safe for the valuable documents. She foists vitamins on me in the morning. In other words, she always believes the worst could happen. And as Clare Booth Luce once said, “I’ve found that the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is that the pessimist is generally better informed.” In other words, my spouse is smarter than I am.

In that spirit, I think I’ve found the perfect birthday present for her: the Sentry Waterproof 160GB Hard Drive. This tough puppy lives inside a case that’s immune to dust, dirt and moisture. It’s been certified to handle 30 minutes at up to 1,550 degrees of heat and a full 24 hours of submersion in water.

You hook it up to your computer via a USB 2.0 cable and it automatically synchs files between the computer’s drive and its drive. Security features on the drive itself include password protection and encryption.

And should your drive ever experience fire or water damage, the company says it will attempt to recover your data free of charge and send you a new unit. I don’t exactly know the details on that, but it sounds reassuring, which is usually sufficient for an optimist like me.

Wonder if they offer gift wrapping…
 

I’ve always marveled at ultra-lite travelers — those people who take off on weeks-long international jaunts with seemingly nothing more than a change of shirt, underwear, socks, comb and passport. Their necessities could be sherpaed by a shih tzu. I, however, am the kind of traveler that gauges appropriate packing by zipper strength. If I can zip the bag shut and it doesn’t burst before it’s handed over to the TSA folks at the airport, then I have just the right amount of clothing and gear for a good time.

That doesn’t necessarily hold when it comes to what I’m hauling in my carry-on. In that department I’m the essence of minimalist. One carefully chosen book or magazine, a miniature tube of toothpaste, a single energy bar, a thin sweater, an empty water bottle to refill past security, and, of course, my notebook computer, without which life has no meaning (or at least no paycheck). I pack no computer accessories, however. Those get shunted into the suitcase.

That’s why I’m most curious about the Cruzer Contour U3 USB drives put out by SanDisk. SanDisk isn’t the only company selling U3 drives, but it is the one that created the spec. What U3 allows you to do is run applications directly from a USB flash drive.

For example, a 4-gigabyte model can hold your wallpaper, preferences, profiles and favorites and comes pre-installed with applications such as Skype, an email program, a Microsoft Word viewer and editor and a synching utility. You can download other apps, such as Firefox, or buy them. Then you simply plug it into that internet café computer next door to your B&B and up comes the environment you know so well. (Mind you, that environment has to be Windows; U3 doesn’t work with Linux or Mac, as of this writing.)

Interestingly, the reviews for the drives on PriceGrabber.com focus on their performance (yes, USBs do vary in how fast they work in read-write jobs) and the cool design, in which the connector retracts into the body of the drive (so you don’t have to worry about misplacing those goofy little caps you always get). Many of the reviewers uninstall the U3 functionality, because they’re not using the built-in apps — they just want a fast backup device — and it annoys them to have to shut it down each time they use the drive.

But me — I’m just looking for an excuse to leave that computer of mine at home. The meaning of life doesn’t have to be so heavy, does it?

You know the feeling — the sense that maybe you should be concerned because your hard disk is filling up with stuff: important documents, notes, applications, service packs, PST files, PDF files, MP3 files (totally work-related, of course)… To paraphrase a quote attributed (but not really said by) the late senator Everett Dirksen, “A billion bytes here, a billion bytes there, and pretty soon you’re talking real storage.” We can never have enough.

But Fujitsu is working to change that. Come the first quarter of 2008, this company that pops out new models of hard drives like microwaves produce popcorn will be making available the memorably named MHZ2 BH series mobile hard disk drive for notebook and PC use. Why does it matter? Because it’ll come in storage capacities up to 320 gigabytes. Now, I’m not going to go into one of those comparisons that tells you just how much storage that equates to (”This hard drive will be able to hold the equivalent of 1,300 entire BitTorrent show catalogs and still leave you room for your Flickr backups…”), but I will tell you that that size of hard drive is big, REALLY BIG.

Then again, could I be revisiting this same topic in three years, asking just how much storage is enough? Perhaps. Or perhaps not. As poet William Blake pronounced: “You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.” Of course, he also did add, “Enough! Or Too much.”