As is typical, July has been a slow month in front of the computer and therefore on the quest. During the month I’ve had two minor, but annoying problems. The first was that one drive in my Windows Home Server wasn’t reporting SMART info, although seemed to be working fine otherwise. The second was a problem with a PC I was building – when it was powered on it would freeze when looking for the hard drives. Turning it off and immediately back on would resolve the problem after which it would run just fine.
In the case of the Windows Home Server the problem started after I did some hard drive maintenance and re-arrangement awhile back. Since I had pulled and re-arranged all the drive cables I figured it was a bad cable. So I spent some time last Saturday doing some troubleshooting. The bottom line is that SATA ports 5 and up had the problem, ports 1 through 4 were fine. Everything else seemed to be fine with the port but I rearranged the drives so I have only four internal drives and have four external. At one point I had retired the external bays to save power and space, but they slowly came back and are now here to stay. At least until Vail (WHS version 2) is released and I build or upgrade my rig for that.
The PC I was building ended up having a similar problem. I had figured it would be a hard drive issue since the problem started when I added the drive. But first I switched the cable to another SATA port and the problem went away. A little more troubleshooting and the problem was isolated to the port.
In both cases I had spent a lot of time mucking with hard drives in each box. In the case of the WHS this meant moving cables on the motherboard at different times. This was less so on the PC since I was just swapping drives for testing purposes. In the case of the Windows Home Server I know the ports worked in the past, so the problem was probably self inflicted. I can’t say I remember the PC port as ever working since I don’t remember ever using it. Unfortunately both boards are out of warranty. On the plus side I probably won’t need the failed ports during the remaining lifetime of those boxes,
Microsoft has released a beta for their next release of Microsoft Security Essentials. I’ve installed it on a couple of my test and play machines, It looks and acts a lot like the previous version. Which is good. I’ve been using Security Essentials as the anti-virus for all my PCs because it’s light weight and doesn’t get in the way. The next version seems to continue that tradition and avoids bloat.
I was also able to install it on my Windows 2003 Server box, something the earlier version wouldn’t do. I’ve also seen reports that it installs on Windows Home Server although I haven’t tried that myself. Hopefully this is expended support and not a beta “bug” that will get removed.
I haven’t installed it on my primary Windows Machine since it’s beta, but it seems stable enough to do so. If I see any benefits on my test machines I may go ahead and install it on my primary machine,
Not much else in the way of new software in the past month.
I like Apple and Apple products (I’m writing this on an iPad), but the frenzy over iPhone 4 has got me avoiding Apple sites and news. I’m not an iPhone hater. If the iPhone was on Verizon when I upgrade my phone earlier this year I would surely have gotten the iPhone instead on my Droid. If the iPhone was on any network other than AT&T I would certainly have looked into switching networks, so I don’t hate the iPhone.
Enough already, the hype over iPhone 4 and the hype over it’s problems have sent me looking for iPhone free zones. But this isn’t one of those zones:
Along the lines of people liking to see market leaders fail, first there was the hype back when Apple’s market capitalization exceeded Microsoft’s. This past week there’s was the hype when it appeared Apple’s revenue would exceed Microsoft’s. Apple’s revenue is still lower than Microsoft’s and Microsoft’s market cap popped above Apple last week (but is again lower).
I have two problems with these stories. Both numbers are meaningless as a comparison between companies. Microsoft still makes a ton more in profits than Apple does. That’s the number that matters. A company can have tons of revenue and still lose money. Market cap is perceived value (in as much as stock can by hyped or beaten down). While market cap may bring bragging rights and some prestige, it only benefits those who bought stock as the price rose.
My second problem with these comparisons is that Microsoft and Apple are not similar companies. Yes, they compete is some markets, but their primary markets are different.
Apple is a consumer products company. Microsoft is a software company that makes most of it’s money from the enterprise and through oem’s. Apple doesn’t even really compete with Microsoft in computers. Apple sells hardware that runs their own OS and software. Microsoft doesn’t sell hardware, only software. Hence the greater profit margins for Microsoft since they only sell bits and don’t need to deal with expenses associated with hardware.
Microsoft has tried to compete with Apple in music players and phones so there’s going to be comparisons. But Microsoft’s revenue and profits come from the enterprise and software platforms, Apple’s revenue and profits come from consumer electronics. Seems to me Apple is more like Sony and even more like Dell than Microsoft.
While it may be fun to think about Ballmer going nuts that Apple’s market cap exceeds Microsoft’s, it doesn’t mean much. Both companies make tons of money and they make most of it in different sandboxes.
That ends the commentary and hopefully I’ll get back to having some PC fun on the quest. August will continue the dog days of summer, so probably not much quest activity next month either, but we’ll see.
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