Real World Computing
Recovery for HP
As always, Windows is at least one hardware release behind the discs and drives. Remember when XP could write to CDs but not to DVDs? Well, Vista can now write to DVDs but not to Blu-ray or HD DVD data formats. The drive itself works well as a DVD burner, but extra software trickery is required to get it to burn a Blu-ray disc in the shape of the latest version of Nero. Now to burn some data: fire up Nero, choose Blu-ray from the disc format list and then pop in a blank disc. At this point, your wallet had better be feeling strong, because at about £10 a pop for a read-only disc (and the same again on top for a read-write disc), this isn't a format you'll be wanting to bung a few megabytes of family photos onto, then drop it into a dusty drawer never to see the light of day again. Yes, I agree that 25GB is a useful amount of storage capability, and it's certainly more practical nowadays than the 4.7GB of a DVD or the 8.5GB of a DVD dual layer.
In terms of performance, however, I was a little underwhelmed. I'd hoped this drive would suck data off the hard disks and shovel it on to the optical disc at a rate that made the light beams sizzle, but this wasn't to be. The burning time is comparable to that of burning a DVD, which is probably a reasonable compromise for most people. So there we have it: a 25GB DVD-alike disc that suffers from all the same problems as a data-archiving medium as the DVD itself. The discs are naked and you have to handle them directly to put them into the drive tray. It's all too easy to set one down on your desk in a pool of coffee or inadvertently stand a large mug of coffee on top of it, thus crushing desk debris into the reading side of the disc and leaving a dribble of cappuccino on the reverse side.
I also remain to be convinced that this format has the longevity I look for in an archive medium, from the points of view both of physical life expectancy of the media and whether the format will survive commercially. Is the winner going to be Blu-ray or HD DVD? Or will something else entirely take us all by surprise? I don't know, and such worries, particularly over the physical handling issue, would make me wary of using this technology for any sort of long-term archive.
So for the time being I'm sticking my oar in by saying that Plasmon's 60GB UDO2 drive (30GB per side on a shuttered cartridge disc, with 120GB coming next year) remains my favourite archival medium, despite the higher cost of its discs (about £40) and drive (nearly £2,000). If blank Blu-ray discs fall in price to around £1, I might be swayed - after all, the earliest CD-R discs cost £15 each, but today they're cheaper than chips.
Exchange 2007 SP1
Exchange 2007 is something I've seen very little of in terms of deployed systems. It came to market earlier this year and brought with it a whole new set of architecture and design changes compared to the previous Exchange versions. It is, in effect, a ground-up rewrite of the product. To run it, you need 64-bit Windows, which put off a lot of people because they were thinking of going 64-bit in the Server 2008 timeframe rather than moving from 32-bit to 64-bit under Server 2003.
Nevertheless, SP1 for Exchange 2007 has been released, and there's lots of interesting stuff in it, especially on the client side of Outlook Web Access (OWA), the web browser-based interface into the Exchange engine. Microsoft's notes claim "the following features have been added to Outlook Web Access Premium in Exchange 2007 SP1: Users can create and edit Personal Distribution Lists. Users can create and edit server-side rules. WebReady Document Viewing has added support for some Office 2007 file formats. Users will have access to the dumpster from Outlook Web Access and will be able to use the Recover Deleted Items feature. A monthly calendar view has been added. Move and copy commands have been added to the Outlook Web Access user interface. Public Folders are supported through the /owa virtual directory. S/MIME support has been added. Additional customisation features as follows: Ability to integrate with custom message types in the Exchange store so that they are displayed correctly in Outlook Web Access; Ability to customise the Outlook Web Access user interface to seamlessly integrate custom applications together with Outlook Web Access."
