One thing I immediately noticed was how much quicker my internet connection was. I’d typically get around 12Mb/s average but I quickly got 16Mb/s and it seemed to hold that value for the whole duration of Speedtest.net’s test. Very cool. Wireless networking was running nice and quickly, and there’s a whole host of features and tweeks to play with.

Saturday monring came and I had no Internet. Argh! What happened. I spent a good few hours when I should’ve been decorating messing around with routers, firmware, raising tickets with Be etc. Internets is the number one priority really isn’t it Basically the router would get an ADSL connection then drop it very soon after this. My old router was showing similar tendencies but with a lower frequency of dropped connection. I was beginning to think I’d need to send the router back. However I think this was all a coincidence and I had a temporary line fault on Saturday morning as it’s been fine ever since.

So in summary the router is great, fast and is packed full of features. Wireless signal is much stronger around the house and transferring files on wired and wireless is far faster than the Linksys ever managed. So far, I ‘d recommend one of these routers if you’ve the cash and want all the bells and whistles.

I wanted a ADSL2+ modem router with 4 gigabit hard-wired ports and dual band wireless N capability. There’s still very few of these around, but I did find some that fit the bill.

I did look at the Linksys E3000, Netgear DGN3500, and the Belkin Play Max but these all seemed to have some reviews around the Internet that said they were unreliable in terms of wireless connection and this is something I’m trying to get away from by changing from my Linksys.

So after a bit more of a trawl around 2 manufacturers kept popping up. Draytek and Billion. Draytek stuff seemed a bit out of my price range and Vigor 2710Vn was close to my specs but only had 100Mbit LAN; but the Billion 7800N seemed to be perfect and was reasonably priced. Also it has a large number of glowing reviews with very little negative to be found about it. OK so it’s not the best looking box in the world, but it’s not very visible in my set-up and it’s the performance and reliability that matters to me. The order’s placed and hopefully it should get delivered tomorrow. Will be very interesting to see if the wireless performance is noticeably better and also if my Internet connection speed maintains it’s full potential.

Once I get a feel for it I will try and publish my impressions here, and maybe also update the network diagram set-up. And maybe, I might even get around to updating the browser benchmarks as there’s been quite a few browser releases since I did those tests. Ho hum, one day eh.

The same computers were compared as before

Overall Test Results

And the results of the tests are shown below. These are the fastest results I can obtain after running the benchmark 3 times. I had many problems running the benchmarks on the Windows PC as it would freeze the browser after the rendering test, and it wasn’t always easy to get it restarted again. I had no such issues on the Mac. Also IE8 refused to run the test, so I had to run it in compatibility mode. Larger numbers are better (It’s in numbers of operations).

IE is left far behind the rest, running barely 26% of the speed of Firefox in Windows, and 21% of the speed of the fastest overall which was Safari on the Mac. Firefox isn’t that far behind Chrome and Safari, although it’s does seem a lot slower on the Mac than Windows. Chrome also shows a similar trend, although the Mac version is a few iterations behind Windows, so this may change when the releases level up. Safari is the fastest overall on the Mac, being a little slower on the Windows PC.

Those numbers in full are

Individual Test Results

The overall score doesn’t take into account Complex Graphics test as some browsers don’t support it yet (Looks at Internet Explorer). A comparison of the indvidual ascpects of the benchmark are shown in the chart below.

From the FAQ, the tests are

Rendering - These tests measure your browser’s ability to render and modify specific elements used in typical web pages. Rendering tests manipulate the DOM tree in real-time. The tests measure display updating speed (frames per seconds).

Social networking - Social networking sites use JavaScript to provide navigation, forms and other features. These tests measure typical webpage functions, such as loading, sorting and searching for data. The purpose of these tests is to show the relation between the tests and real life. Performance in these tests is measured in frames per seconds.

Complex graphics - These tests use ‘Canvas’, a new web technology for drawing and manipulating graphics without external plug-ins. Canvas is not yet supported by all major browsers so the scores from these tests are not included in the overall Peacekeeper score.

Data - Almost everything you see on a dynamic webpage uses JavaScript arrays. These tests measure your browser’s ability to add, remove and modify data stored in an array. The Data suite consists of two tests:

DOM operations - DOM, or Document Object Model, is the standard API JavaScript uses to create dynamic webpages. These tests emulate the methods used to create typical dynamic webpages. The DOM tests are based on development experience and the capabilities of the jQueryframework.

Text parsing - These tests measure your browser’s performance in typical text manipulations such as using a profanity filter for chats, browser detection and form validation.

The main stand out items are the Complex graphics scores for Firefox and Chrome on Windows beating anything else around it, and IE7 can’t do this so it scores “nil point”. Again Firefox and Chrome on Windows shows high scores for Rendering compared to the other browsers. IE seems to lose out on the Data, DOM Operations and Text Parsing end of the tests. Safari on Mac and Chrome on both platforms edges the rest in Text Parsing, and again Safari and Chrome for Mac lead the way in DOM Operations.

Acid3 Test

As an aside I thought I’d run the Acid3 test which is meant to show how a browser is confirming to the standards (100 being the maximum score)

As you’d expect there’s no difference between the platforms on the browsers. Chrome and Safari are fully compliant with scores of 100, Firefox 3.6 is a little way behind with a score of 94. Quite what Microsoft are up to with Internet Explorer is beyond me. OK so IE7 (Effectively what IE8 compatibility mode is) is pretty awful at 12, but why on earth is IE8 only at 20. Are they asleep in Redmond? Why do they even bother these days.

Summary

So in summary Internet Explorer is hopeless being dreadfully slow (And it really feels it) to process Java and not following much of the W3C standard for a modern browser. Firefox fares much better and is nearly fully W3C compliant. The 2 best browsers out there that I tested are Chrome and Safari, being fully compliant and really speedy. Personally I prefer Chrome’s cleaner interface and it seems a lot quicker to get going than Safari. However I could easily live with Safari if I needed to. It was also interesting during the testing to discover how unstable the tests were on Windows. This may have been down to my particular Windows PC which isn’t the best thing I’ve ever used. It has to be said the Mac was stable throughout.

When Chrome for Mac is updated to an equivalent version of the Windows release I’ll add the results to see if it can catch up.

Anyway I couldn’t help myself; I had to test the browsers on my Mac. The relative specs of the PCs are outlined below.

In reality the Mac should be the quicker machine, the processor is a slightly faster model even at the same clock speed. So the results from the benchmarks (Shown in the chart below) surprise me a little.

It’s interesting to see the Mac version of Firefox is quite a bit slower than the Windows version, it’s also interesting to note that it slows a little from 3.5.1 to 3.5.7 and then 3.6 picks up it’s game again. However Firefox is still no match for Safari or Chrome.

Again the Windows are that little bit quicker than the OSX versions. Even Safari which is running in 64bit mode on the Mac is a little slower. Safari also turns out to be the faster browser on the Mac. However it’s a little unfair to directly compare the Chrome versions as the Windows version is ahead of the Mac version, so I’d expect Chrome to edge closer with the next equivalent release.

I’ve also put the raw numbers below for those that are interested.

Very interesting stuff though. I’ll keep using Chrome on the Windows PC and the Mac. I’ve really grown to like the interface, and it feels a lot snappier to use on the Mac than Safari. The interface is also really clean which is a big plus for me.
The next step is to compare the overall browser speed using the Peacemaker benchmark. The results from that should be very interesting too.

The PC has the following specs

• Lenovo T61P
• Windows XP SP3
• Intel Core2 Duo T7700 @ 2.40GHz
• 2GB RAM

Overall results below (Please note the IE6 result is scaled from another machine, so it may not be entirely accurate)

and looking a little closer at so we can see the relative difference between the modern browsers

The new browsers are a little faster than their predecessors, but Chrome 4 keeps the lead.

Here’s the numbers for a more detailed perusal.

I’ve had to split the table to make it readable in the blog

One thing I should try is this test on my Mac at some point to see how that compares.

(Updated to show Safari 4.0.4 results)

This setup has the following issues for me:

• Manual backups, which means I’m sure I’ve missed files from being backed up and my backups are frequently out of date.
• Time Machine backup is manual and relies on me plugging in the USB drive to the MacBook
• Running out of space (Again) on the server
• High power consumption (~100W continuous), meaning I don’t leave it on, reducing the convenience of having a server.
• All data only on 1 disk in the server, meaning it would take some time to recover the situation if the disk failed.

I’m looking at replacing the Windows PC server (Which is just running XP) with either a basic Mac Mini and a Western Digital MyBook Studio 2 2TB (Originally I was going for a Drobo with 2 x 1TB HDDs but there’s some scary stories on the Internet about the robustness of this device), or a QNAP NAS of some sort (Maybe a TS-219P). There’s also been some mention of the Netgear ReadyNAS RND4000-100EUS and Synology NAS DS410j which I’ve listed up as well.

For me to make the switch from Windows to Mac, or all in one NAS I need to make sure all the software I have on the server either works on the new solution or has an alternative.

Obviously the Mac option is the most expensive, and the ReadyNAS isn’t all that cheap either. The QNAP and Synology solutions do have an attractive price and power consumption (It’s quite difficult to find actual power consumption in use data), but my main concern with these is the flexibility of the various functions I want it to perform and the reliance on the manufacturers or others to come up with some software for that specific hardware. The Mac will have far more users, and therefore far more options open to me to solve some of the functions listed above.

I’ve looked at a few solutions for the Mac to stream the FLACs, videos and photos to my XBox 360 and PS3. PS3MediaServer looks the best solution but it’s not quite working yet with sending FLACs to the 360. Whilst that’s not ideal it’s not something I do regularly, and am sure a future update will incorporate that feature.

The other item I need to look into is syncing files and folders between the server and my Mac, and the server and external drives. Currently I’m having to do this manually and there’s obvious flaws with this in that I’m sure I’m missing files out. On the Windows side I use Beyond Compare which I think is excellent, but on the Mac side I’ve not found a solution yet (Well not a free one anyway). ReekoB receommends ChronoSync, so maybe I’ll just have to shell out if it’s the right solution, but it’s going to be something I need to look into further.

Whilst the Mac will be more flexible in the long run, it is more expensive than the integrated NAS setups. However my experience with a LinkSys NSLU2 in the past has put me off these integrated boxes somewhat as setting it up was more involved than I’d like these days as it meant quite a bit of Linux was needed, and the results were never ideal. Having said that the NSLU2 is a low end solution to this, running a modest processor instead of the more powerful solutions in the NAS systems mentioned above.

On balance I would prefer to have an easy to install solution that will do all that I want with flexibility to upgrade in the future, this leads me to decide on the Mac Mini solution. My proposed solution is shown in the diagram below.

The only other issue is that of off site backup. My current idea would be to backup to the external USB drives I have and keep them off site. Not perfect, as it relies on me bringing the drives back, updating the data then taking them away again. This would mean the data was not always up to date, and there’s a risk everything could be lost if a major catastrophe occured while the drives were on site. Ideally I would backup through the Internet, but with only a 1Mbps upload speed this just isn’t practical. So I’ll just have to stick with the USB drives for the moment.

Apologies if any information on here is inaccurate. Drop me a mail and I’ll fix it as soon as I can.

Once I have all this setup and running I’ll try and post up my experiences.

There’s a lot of moaning that the iPad doesn’t do this and that (Flash, multitasking, has no camera, microphone etc.) and that it’s just a big iPhone. I think that is missing the point of the device. Apple aren’t trying to replace the laptop or smartphone, it sits between them. An accompanying gadget.

While my iPhone is great for quickly browsing the net it can be a hard to get an the full experience of a website, a bigger screen would make that easier. And while it’s fine to have a laptop to browse the web the bulk of the keyboard isn’t needed when all I want to do is browse websites. Touchscreen interaction should also enhance the experience. Yes there’s a lot of Flash content on the web, but I’ve rarely had a good experience with Flash, and Apple are staunchly opposed to using Flash in mobile devices due to the vast amounts of CPU resource it needs, which in turn eats batteries. Now YouTube has turned on HTML5 and with the iPad and iPhone not supporting Flash I do hope we are seeing the end of Flash. Watching videos on a bigger screen would also be a great benefit as all you really want is a screen, not a keyboard.

Whereas the Windows tablets are trying to be a touch screen PC, the iPad is being it’s own device with it’s own solution to how you’d operate a device purely through touch. The most logical OS for this was the iPhone OS which is built around a touch screen, so really it’s a logical base to use for the iPad. I’ve not experienced a Windows 7 tablet yet, so I can’t say whether it’s a successful solution. However if the iPhone is anything to judge this by, the iPad experience should be marvellous.

I’m also impressed with the price they’ve managed to introduce it at. Starting at $499 makes it a much more palatable price for many people, me included, and it’s really making me think hard about buying one. The price certainly positions itself nicely between the iPhone and a MacBook. Although it does put it on par with some higher end netbook or low end laptops, but none of these will be the same polished experience as the iPad. This also makes it far cheaper than Windows tablet PCs, which are at least double the price, although really they are full computers going against traditional laptops. What the iPad price translates to when it comes to the UK is still a bit of a guess and apparently won’t be announced until end of March time. From my quick rough estimate the UK prices of Apple products tend to be £100-£200 more than the direct exchange rate value from $US on the Apple store, so we’re probably looking nearer £400. MacWorld has come up with a similar price based on the same theory.

I’m also not saying everyone will want one, or find a need for one, but for me I think it will be a great gadget to have around. Although I have a laptop, I still tend to prefer to work on it at my desk rather than on my lap. My thought would be that I could use the iPad in my lounge in more comfort whilst listening to music on my stereo etc or even while lounging in the back garden. It’s not an essential gadget, but a lifestyle choice (Aren’t most of them though).

But all this is supposition until I get my hands on one and can really judge if apple have nailed it. I like Apple products, as my you can probably already tell. They make excellent quality gadgets that are well thought out and designed, and the design quality is something people tend to easily dismiss as unimportant. However after struggling with PCs for years trying to make them just work, my switch to Apple really did open my eyes. In my opinion this is how computers were meant to work, and I’m hoping the iPad continues this trend.

With the ever decreasing cost of computers and electronic devices we now have the ability to hold all this media in boxes no bigger than a matchbox. In fact scratch that, have you seen the size of a microSD card, and they’re easily able to hold hours, if not days worth of music in something the size of my thumbnail.

But I see the future of actually having to be in possession of the music drawing to a close, whether that’s on a plastic disc or electrons stored on a memory device. The future is streaming! No really it is. All people really want is to listen to the music, watch the film or play the game of their choice when they want. The way this is delivered to them is ultimately unimportant. As long as the quality and reliability are there, then streaming will be able to satisfy everyone.

Spotify has already proved how popular free to stream music is, with it’s simple and fast application on the computer, now moving on to pretty much every smartphone going, it’s taking the music scene by storm. There’s even rumours of Apple adapting iTunes to have streaming elements in as well.

Video streaming is now becoming the new normality as well. YouTube, BBC iPlayer, BT Vision, Netflix (In the US anyway), Lovefilm, AppleTV and the XBox 360, etc. all allow streaming of some sort of TV program or film straight to you with no downloading so pretty much instant access.

And gaming is looking to move this way as well. The often criticised Steam games distribution system is starting to allow you to play games before it’s completely downloaded, but that’s only half way there. The future appears to come from OnLive, where you don’t have a powerful console or computer to play the games, just a basic I/O box which takes in your commands and then sends them to the big number crunchers somewhere else in the world, which then send back the images and sound to your TV.

So the future is here then? Well in the UK not quite, whilst the facility to do all this streaming is available, it’s not available for all because of our relatively tedious Internet connections speeds in the UK. Apparently we’re averaging just 3.5Mb/s which puts us 26th in the world. But this is an average; whilst I’m pretty comfortable with around 12Mb/s, I know many people whose speeds are around 500kb/s or below, and this is a maximum with it sometimes just dropping out or big delays in responding to simple web page requests. So whilst it will be a while before we become a complete streaming nation, IMHO the first nations that will eventually lose all forms of physical media will be those in the South Korea who easily have speeds of over 10Mb/s across the nation (Which is faster than wired networks were a few years back).

Just to add where I fit into all this streaming, yes I use Spotify to listen to some new music. But if I like I will buy a CD and rip it to FLAC. It’s the best quality and if you are prepared to wait a few months for new releases, ends up cheaper than buying MP3s.

TV I tend to record to a hard disk recorder, but if I’ve missed an episode of a series, then iPlayer or any other catch up system will do. However when it comes to films, I’ll stick with Blu-Ray for the moment. I’ve invested a fair amount of time and money in my TV and surround sound, and to play a highly compressed film through the system doesn’t make any sense to me. The sound and picture quality fo Blu-Ray truly are stunning. Having said this the 1080p streaming service from XBox Live’s Zune service does sound interesting, but again it’s more expensive than the physical media rentals I get from Lovefim. So physical media is cheaper for better quality again.

Gaming hasn’t quite reached the streaming setup yet, but the prices will also need to drop. XBox Live have some of their older titles available to download on demand, however they are double the price you can find them second hand (Oblivion, I’m looking at you); and you can always resell the physical item if you are finished with it.

I’m looking forward to a future where I don’t have to worry about backing up my files, or not scratching my discs, but it’s going to be a few years yet. And I believe it’ll be an interesting few years too.

Select Case prtDefault.DeviceName
Case Is = sPrinterName
  lPrinterCurrent = lPrinters
Case Is = "PDFCreator"
  lPrinterPDF = lPrinters
Case Else
  'do nothing
End Select

to

If prtDefault.DeviceName = sPrinterName Then
  lPrinterCurrent = lPrinters
End If
If prtDefault.DeviceName = "PDFCreator" Then
  lPrinterPDF = lPrinters
End If

Before I printed the report I did perform a check to see if the PDF Creator printer existed, and ask the user if they wanted to install it before continuing. This uses code by Terry Kreft for shelling the install executable (The Internet truly is a superb resource for this kind of code).

'***************** Code Start ******************
'This code was originally written by Terry Kreft.
'It is not to be altered or distributed,
'except as part of an application.
'You are free to use it in any application,
'provided the copyright notice is left unchanged.
'
'Code Courtesy of
'Terry Kreft
Private Const STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW& = &H1
Private Const NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS = &H20&
Private Const INFINITE = -1&

Private Type STARTUPINFO
    cb As Long
    lpReserved As String
    lpDesktop As String
    lpTitle As String
    dwX As Long
    dwY As Long
    dwXSize As Long
    dwYSize As Long
    dwXCountChars As Long
    dwYCountChars As Long
    dwFillAttribute As Long
    dwFlags As Long
    wShowWindow As Integer
    cbReserved2 As Integer
    lpReserved2 As Long
    hStdInput As Long
    hStdOutput As Long
    hStdError As Long
End Type

Private Type PROCESS_INFORMATION
    hProcess As Long
    hThread As Long
    dwProcessID As Long
    dwThreadID As Long
End Type

Private Declare Function WaitForSingleObject Lib "kernel32" (ByVal _
    hHandle As Long, ByVal dwMilliseconds As Long) As Long

Private Declare Function CreateProcessA Lib "kernel32" (ByVal _
    lpApplicationName As Long, ByVal lpCommandLine As String, ByVal _
    lpProcessAttributes As Long, ByVal lpThreadAttributes As Long, _
    ByVal bInheritHandles As Long, ByVal dwCreationFlags As Long, _
    ByVal lpEnvironment As Long, ByVal lpCurrentDirectory As Long, _
    lpStartupInfo As STARTUPINFO, lpProcessInformation As _
    PROCESS_INFORMATION) As Long

Private Declare Function CloseHandle Lib "kernel32" (ByVal _
    hObject As Long) As Long

Public Sub ShellWait(Pathname As String, Optional WindowStyle As Long)
    Dim proc As PROCESS_INFORMATION
    Dim start As STARTUPINFO
    Dim ret As Long
    ' Initialize the STARTUPINFO structure:
    With start
        .cb = Len(start)
        If Not IsMissing(WindowStyle) Then
            .dwFlags = STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW
            .wShowWindow = WindowStyle
        End If
    End With
    ' Start the shelled application:
    ret& = CreateProcessA(0&, Pathname, 0&, 0&, 1&, _
            NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS, 0&, 0&, start, proc)
    ' Wait for the shelled application to finish:
    ret& = WaitForSingleObject(proc.hProcess, INFINITE)
    ret& = CloseHandle(proc.hProcess)
End Sub
'***************** Code End ****************

Function CheckPDFCreator() As Boolean

    If FindPDFCreatorPrinter = -1 Then
        vMsgRet = MsgBox("PDFCreator printer not found, so a PDF report cannot be created." & vbCrLf & _
            "Would you like to install PDF Creator automatically now?", vbYesNo)
        If vMsgRet = vbYes Then
            sPDFInstallPath = "Path to install program\PDFCreator-0_9_9_setup.exe"
            ShellWait (sPDFInstallPath)
            'Check if it was successfully installed and return true is it was
            If FindPDFCreatorPrinter = -1 Then
                CheckPDFCreator = False
            Else
                CheckPDFCreator = True
            End If
        Else
            CheckPDFCreator = False
            Exit Function
        End If
    Else
        'Printer exists
        CheckPDFCreator = True
    End If

End Function

Private Function FindPDFCreatorPrinter() As Long
    'Check if the PDFCreator printer exists
    Dim appAccess As Object
    Set appAccess = CreateObject("Access.Application")

    For lPrinters = 0 To Application.Printers.Count - 1
        If Application.Printers(lPrinters).DeviceName = "PDFCreator" Then
            lPrinterPDF = lPrinters
        End If
    Next lPrinters

    If IsEmpty(lPrinterPDF) Then
        FindPDFCreatorPrinter = -1
    Else
        FindPDFCreatorPrinter = lPrinterPDF
    End If

    Set appAccess = Nothing

End Function

value = sAddress & "#" & sAddress & "#"

didn’t work either. I ended up keeping it as a simple text field, and formatting with Blue Underlined text so it looked like a link. Then on the OnClick event adding the following code

Private Sub txbReportLocation_Click()
On Error Resume Next
    Application.FollowHyperlink txbReportLocation.Text
End Sub