Virtually Alex

Chrome Day 5

2012-01-03T10:36:00.000-08:00

So I've been using Chrome for a few days now. On day 2 I jumped deep into extensions and themes and quickly found that they just made Chrome busy and messy. For example, I found a 49er theme. Problem is, it installed a toolbar that I had no interest in. I hate tool bars. I like keeping screen space available for actual work. I also tried Tweetdeck. I like Tweetdeck, but once again... too busy. I prefer using the Twitter app for MacOS.

I lasted about a day before almost all of the extensions I installed.

On a good note, I don't find myself missing Firefox. Chrome has been fast. My biggest complaint is that there is no drop down on address bar. I find that I use that quite often in Firefox and not having it in Chrome sucks. Anyone know of an extension to fix this?

Chrome Day 1

2011-12-30T10:30:00.001-08:00

Started my day with my Internet service being down. Go me! Obviously it's been restored now, so I'm off to the races.

Firefox vs Chrome

2011-12-29T16:03:00.000-08:00

I'm not your typical user. I've not used MS Windows as my primary desktop for years. These last 2 years my primary laptop is a MAC. For the decade before that, it was Linux (RedHat, Fedora, or Ubuntu). That doesn't mean I don't use Windows, it's just in a VM. Sadly, there are some things I can't do without Windows. For example, Outlook 2010 on Exchange is a much on Win 7 than Mac. Visio is another example.

That being said, I'm not 100% opposed to Microsoft products. I've just found them to not work as nice as non-MS products. An example of this is Internet Explorer. I've been on the web since I found the computer lab at college in the early 90's. Back then I used Netscape Navigator... then when it morphed into Netscape Communicator... finally it went open source and Firefox was born. I've never used IE as my primary browser, and dislike when a website forces me to use it. Don't get me wrong, I've used IE and check it out from time to time. I just always find myself going back to Firefox.

With Google's release of Chrome I've played with it from time to time. I've even downloaded and tried to play with the Chromium OS (but that's another post). It seems nice, but there's never been a reason to move. Especially since Linux and Mac versions were always behind the Windows version. Now it seems like it's time to give it another look. With all of the cool extensions being released it looks like I might be missing out on something good.

Therefore, it's time. Time to download, install, and test Chrome. Tomorrow, I will start a 7 day Chrome-exclusive test. The only time I will use IE or Firefox is to find a bookmark, saved password, or the annoying IE only sites I come across from time to time.

Let me know what your favorite features and extensions are. I'm gonna need them!

Google+ Privacy Options

2011-09-27T15:24:00.000-07:00

I've often wondered what my Facebook profile looks like to others, especially those who aren't my "friend". G+ has a great privacy tool that allows you to view your profile as someone else would see it. Just type a name into the box and hit preview. Way cool!

New Gartner Magic Quadrant for Virtualization

2010-05-28T15:48:00.000-07:00

Gartner recently released a new Magic Quadrant for Virtualization.

As expected VMware is the clear leader with vSphere, both in terms of "Completness of vision" and "ability to execute". Even more interesting is the placement of Microsoft and Citrix.

Microsoft is the only company listed in the "challengers" quadrant. Gartner doesn't place them very high in terms of "completeness of vision". In my humble opinion, Microsoft does a great job of "just getting a product into the marketplace" and worries less about stability, features, etc.. However, they are Microsoft. With the exception of Vista (which was just to horrible for anyone to use) they have the ability to push technology like no one else. This allows them to rank high in terms of "ability to execute", and places them in the challengers quadrant and not Citrix.

Citrix gets ranked in the "Visionary " quadrant, simply because XenServer is a much better solution than HyperV. That being said, being a visionary isn't going to make you a leader. Nor will it necessarily make you money.

As for Oracle, RedHat, Novell, Solaris, and Parallels, they all get to share the "niche players" quadrant. I rarely see these in my travels, but when I do it's because the fill a "niche".

Thanks to virtualization.info:
http://virtualization.info/en/news/2010/05/gartner-publishes-a-new-magic-quadrant-for-virtualization.html

VMware Workstation 7.01 Support for Linux Hosts

2010-05-28T14:06:00.000-07:00

I just upgraded My copy of VMware Workstation to 7.01 and noticed a performance degradation over the previous version. It's not enough to declare the VM unusable, or to impede my ability to get work done. That being said, the performance hit is noticeable.

I am currently running Ubuntu 10.04 as my host OS and Windows 7 as a guest. Ubuntu 10.04 is not listed as a supported host OS. Last time I had an issue like this VMware Tools was having a problem access the hard drive causing excessive I/O. That doesn't appear to be the problem here. When I run "iotop" I don't see anything odd.

Top Virtualizaiton Myths

2009-10-07T11:23:00.000-07:00

Just found a great article on the top myths around virtualization.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/05/vmware-microsoft-servers-technology-virtualization-09-myths.html

Palm WebOS 1.2.10

2009-09-30T13:31:00.001-07:00

Upgraded yesterday afternoon and so far, so good. I haven't tested any of the new features, but I also haven't had any problems which is a good thing.

New Palm Pre Update

2009-09-29T13:20:00.000-07:00

Palm just release Update 1.2.0 for the Pre. I'm excited about this release for a few reasons. One of my biggest complaints about the Pre is the inability to tap on a phone # listed in a calendar event and automatically dial it. I always have to write the # down and manually dial it. This update fixes this issue.

This list of features in webOS Update 1.2.0 copied from:
http://www.wirelessandmobilenews.com/

You can buy from Amazon MP3 over a phone network connection you don't have to do over Wi-Fi any more.
Credit card number storage in profile and sharing options.
If you buy an app you can download it again for fee.
Web browser bookmarks are now backed up to your Palm profile.
Copy and paste of web pages.
Car kit changes and you can make a Bluetooth connection to a computer even if the computer's Bluetooth device name field is blank.
More calendar view options, glitch fixes and features.
IIf a calendar note contains a phone number, you can tap the number to dial it
More send, detail, copy and direct dial features in contacts.
Automated LinkdedIn syncing.
Better email search, as well as cut/copy paste functions.
If playback of an audio file is paused or interrupted, when you resume playback, playback resumes at the point where it was paused. This applies to audio files for which the Genre field is defined as podcast, speech, spoken word, netcast, or audiobook only.
You can use music playback controls on the dashboard even if the screen is locked.
If the ringer switch is turned off, music playback is not interrupted by an incoming call.
You can now turn carrier data services on or off .
The Photos app can now display photos in JPG, BMP, and PNG format.
Sprint Navigation now pulls Google contacts from the phone, as well as Exchange and Palm profile contacts
The browser now supports downloading files from a web page.

Linux ext4 Banchmarks

2009-08-19T15:13:00.000-07:00

My buddy Dimitris posted a great article about ext4 performance on Fedora 11.

http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2009/06/14/new-ext4-vs-xfs-benchmarks-using-fedora-11-leonidas/

Thanks D!

Whitepapers

2009-07-29T16:28:00.000-07:00

Earlier today I finished a whitepaper I've been working on about storage design for virtualized data centers. Once the marketing people have approved it, I'll post a link to it here. In the meantime, here is a link to some whitepapers that have already been published.

I finally made my choice

2009-07-21T08:32:00.001-07:00

I finally made my choice last week. For months I've been trying to decide if I should go with the new Palm Pre or the new iPhone. Last Wednesday on my way home from Sacramento my Blackberry broke. The phone still worked, but the place where you plug the charger into snapped and the phone wouldn't charge any more. At that point I had a choice, pay $50 for a replacement or get a new phone. Since I hate my Blackberry, I decided to go for a new phone.

Over the past few months I've been weighing the choice of Pre or iPhone. My thoughts on the iPhone were:

Tons of apps available for it. I really like the idea of this, but realize that I probably won't use many of them. I'll install tons, but only use a few.
It's AT&T. I only know 1 person who has an iPhone and doesn't complain about AT&T coverage. Most people I know put up with it so they can have an iPhone.
I can always get an iPod Touch.
There is NO insurance available from AT&T. Right now I pay $6 per month to get a $50 replacement if I lose of break my phone.

My thoughts on the Pre are:

New OS. I used to have a Palm Treo and loved it. New OS means new features, but also means bugs.
Sprint coverage. This is good.
Lacks apps. There are some, and more are on the way.
Way small keyboard.

In the end I went with the Pre. Both had great features, but I tend to break phones and I can't stomach paying full price for a replacement iPhone.

2009-07-13T11:43:00.001-07:00

I need to start updating via SMS more often. I'm at Momo's in SF right now thinking about how I haven't hit a baseball game all season.

Open View Client

2009-07-02T12:53:00.000-07:00

Finally installed and started testing the open source View client on my laptop. So far it seems to work pretty good. Not as good as on the X90 though. There could be a few reasons though...

Linux based RDP client vs Windows based
I'm on my Wireless connection
Lack of Wyse TCX optimizations

More to come as I keep testing.

30 Days - Final Thoughts

2009-06-30T22:06:00.000-07:00

Tonight ends my 30 days using a thin client laptop, so I guess it's time to share my final thoughts.

I had some challenges during these last 30 days, which I expected. As I worked to resolve them, I tried to employ solutions that I could recommend to a customer. Back doors and workarounds are something I could personally use, but any real solution would need to be something that an IT department could roll out and manage.

My biggest concern during this experiment was that my ability to connect to my virtual desktop was going to a challenge. I have to admit, I did have some challenges. Making some changes to our VPN configuration allowed me some options when faced with a customer network that was being "less than friendly". It didn't work 100% of the time. That's where a wireless broadband card would be helpful. I was unable to get my Blackberry to work with the X90 which was a disappointment. I was tempted to get myself a broadband card, but Apple just released a new iPhone, Palm released the Pre, and I'm still weighing my choices. From what I've read, I could use either access the Internet from my laptop. I really like the iPhone and all the apps that are available for it, but AT&T doesn't offer insurance. I usually drop my phone and need a replacement once a year. I can't afford the cost of a new or refurbished iPhone. I'm not sure which way to go. If I had one, it would have eliminated my connection issues. Having said that, once I modified my VPN, I had good success connecting where ever I was.

I also found that there were some applications that I just needed to have at a moments notice. I do a lot of presentations, but face to face and remotely. I had some issues using GoToMeeting over a VPN connection. I also had a presentation where I didn't have time to boot up and log into a virtual desktop. I needed to just start the presentation. My workaround was to install GoToMeeting and the Powerpoint Viewer directly on the X90. In a corporate setting, these could be pushed out using the Wyse Device Manager.

Flash proved to be a bit of a problem. I tried two different options, but neither worked as well as I hoped. The Wyse Flash Optimizer crashed my browser. This was because I had already upgraded IE to version 8. I have a lot of hope for this piece of software though. All of the other Wyse software worked great, and the Flash Optimizer is still beta. The other was the new Flash management options in View 3.1. These helped out, but only in IE and only when I had a decent connection. Firefox and Opera weren't helped out, and when I had a low bandwidth connection the flash content consumed a ton of bandwidth and slowed my whole VM down. I tried playing with the quality and bandwidth throttling options, but didn't find the right blend that would make the end user experience great. When I was connected to the same LAN as the virtual desktop, this was not an issue at all. Was this enough to make me unproductive? No.

One thing I'd like to see is the ability for the end user to control more of the options RDP offers. Using RDP (mstsc.exe) I can modify screen resolution, disable audio, and a few other options. This are handy when you have a slow connection. Being able to modify these would be helpful. Even if the user was presented with a choice of connection options that are pre-defined would be great.

I guess the real question it, will I keep using this? Yes and no. Typically I have Linux installed on my laptop, and I use VMware Workstation for an XP desktop. I'm definitely going to continue using my virtual desktop located at the corporate data center instead of using VMware Workstation. There is an open source VMware View client for Linux which I am looking forward to testing. I'm going to switch back to my Lenovo for a few reasons:

My Blackberry works with it, and I can connect to the Internet.
I can listen to music, this is big for me.
It's Linux based.

Having said that, I still plan on keeping the X90. It's great not having a heavy laptop to carry around. I would also recommend this to my customers for some use cases. On a LAN the experience was great. Remotely I had some issues, mostly with multimedia. However, many organizations block a lot of Internet sites that are not work related (YouTube, Facebook, etc..). They also shutdown audio services and sites. This eliminates most of the experience issues I was having.

I'm still going to continue to blog about mobile VDI. Once I'm using my Lenovo again, I'm going to test the open source View client and test this with my Blackberry.

Almost a week

2009-06-29T16:58:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe it's been almost a week since I've blogged last. I also can't believe it's been 29 days since I started this. It went pretty fast.

Not a lot has changed in the last week. Installing GoToMeeting on the X90 was the fix I needed. Once I did that, I've done a few GoToMeeting sessions since then. It would be nice to have this inside my virtual desktop, but I can live with the way things are now. In an enterprise deployment, GoToMeeting could be pushed to the clients.

Over the past week I also tested using iTunes to sync music on my iPod. I have a very large mp3 collection, so I didn't test my whole collection. I recently got my hands on some early Elvis Costello albums and wanted to add those to my iPod. Everything worked. No problems. I was on my home wireless when I did the test. It took longer than if I had used my laptop, but that's to be expected.

What about listening to mp3s? I tested this, I even went so far as to test listening to Pandora Radio. It worked in some situations. While at home there was a noticeable pause to the music when I changed windows. The pause is about a 1 second pause. This is because RDP needs to push a lot of new screen data to refresh the screen. When I'm at the office and not over the WAN this isn't an issue. If I were using a broadband wireless card this would eat away at my data plan. At times like right now, while I'm using a single Firefox window to write this blog post, Pandora works GREAT. If I were switching windows a lot, I would just grab my iPod.

Tomorrow is the final day of this experiment. I'm going to be sure to blog tomorrow night with my "final thoughts".

The Application I couldn't Live without.

2009-06-23T23:36:00.000-07:00

So today I realized that I was going to have a challenge. I was going to be doing an executive presentation at a client's site today. I was going to have 15 minutes to do my presentation and get out. As I was thinking about this I realized that I wasn't going to have time to find an Internet connection if there wasn't one already in place. I needed to be able to get on, do my preso, and get out.

My first thought was that if I could get my Blackberry working with the X90 this wouldn't be a problem, but once I thought about it I realized that even if the Blackberry worked, I might not have a signal. That's when I realized that I needed Powerpoint ready to run, right on the X90.

My first choice was to use ThinApp and make a portable version that I could keep in a USB key. So I ThinApp'd Powerpoint, but think I did something wrong. I didn't want Powerpoint to be too large, so I selected ONLY Powerpoint during the MS Office install. No Word, Excel, or even "Shared Tools". After I finished ThinApp-ing Powerpoint I tested it to find that there were no spaces between the letters on the slides. The letters were just stacked on top of each other. Maybe someone else has seen this?

By then I was running out of time, so I installed the Powerpoint Viewer directly on the X90. This wasn't what I had wanted to do, but it worked perfectly, and for many organizations this might be better choice. Powerpoint Viewer is only good for doing the presentation, but you can't modify the presentation. This means you can do your preso, but have to do your "work" on your virtual desktop.

Either way, everything worked. The presentation looked perfect.

Mystery of the embedded quicktime video

2009-06-22T23:38:00.000-07:00

I have an issue. When ever I hit a website that has an embedded quicktime video it locks up my web browser. Doesn't matter if it's IE, Firefox, or Opera. They all lock up.

Stolen Laptop

2009-06-22T15:05:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine just had his laptop stolen. Like most people, it's been a long time since he's done a backup. If my X90 gets stolen, only the unit is gone. None of my data is lost.

GoToMeeting over VDI = FAIL

2009-06-19T11:08:00.000-07:00

At least that's what the GoToMeeting support guy is telling me. I've had GoToMeeting working from my virtual desktop before. Not sure what's changed though. None the less, once he found out I was on a VM, he announced that was the problem. That my VPN connection to an RDP connection was forcing GoToMeeting to tunnel through my SSL connection.

It all sounds fishy to me. Especially since his own diagnostic tools said something else.

Cruise Tonight

2009-06-18T16:12:00.001-07:00

Tonight is my companies 2nd annual customer appreciation cruise. It takes off out of SF, circles Angel Island, our the Golden Gate Bridge and then back into SF. Last year was great, the weather was perfect!

Hopefully the weather gods will be with us tonight!

Upgraded View Today

2009-06-17T23:33:00.001-07:00

I upgraded my VMware View environment today. It didn't take very long. 5 minutes to upgrade Composer on my vCenter server, 5 minutes to upgrade VDM, then 5 minutes to update the Agent in my VM.

Once this was done I started testing the flash quality and bandwidth throttling features. These are 2 very powerful features. The View Manager will allow you to set the quality of Flash media, and also throttle the amount of bandwidth it takes.

My first test was to set the flash quality to low, and set the bandwidth throttling to aggressive. I then went to VMware's website since I know they have flash content on their home page. My ThinApp'd copy of Firefox was brought it's knees. The page too forever to load, so I tried IE8. IE loaded the page with no issue. The flash quality was reduced as I expected, but not enough to make it look cheap. I did notice it was taking forever to load because of the throttling. So I increased that to moderate and the content loaded at a decent rate.

I then tried YouTube and was unable to get the content to load.

I then decided to test YouTube. YouTube's home page caused IE to stop responding. So I Googled for a video and tried to play it. No luck. So I increased the bandwidth throttling to conservative. No luck. Finally I disabled bandwidth throttling. No luck.

I'm concerned that this feature seems to help IE more than Firefox. I'm not sure if this is because I'm using a ThinApp'd version or not. I wasn't able to test this any further tonight.

2009-06-16T21:36:00.000-07:00

So I still haven't gotten my Blackberry working with the X90 yet. Since June 10th I've used roughly 1.5 GB of of bandwidth. This includes all the time when I am at home connected to my home network. This makes me pretty comfortable with getting a new broadband wireless card. However, I think I'm gonna wait for some reviews on the new Palm Pre before I move on anything. I will be a happy man when I can use my cell phone as a modem.

While on a call with a customer today talking about VMware View the need to use local printers came up and I realized that I haven't played with ThinPrint yet. I also haven't had the chance to test printing to a local USB printer.

http://www.thinprint.com/

I'm also going to be a happy man when I can get the Wyse Flash Optimization to work without crashing IE8. Tonight while reading the View Admin guide for information on setting up ThinPrint I noticed a previously unnoticed section on Flash Quality settings. This isn't meant to optimize flash, but to reduce quality to improve performance. The reason I didn't notice this before is because it's for the latest version of View which I do not have installed in my lab yet. Maybe I can get this done quickly and test these new settings.

Visio Latency

2009-06-15T11:38:00.000-07:00

I've had to work on a few large Visio diagrams over the past few days and I've noticed some latency in my mouse speed. Nothing that has really been noticeable until I started using Visio. It makes it hard to place a stencil at the right location on the drawing. This can be annoying when you are trying to line finish a drawing. Performance hasn't been bad enough to call it unusable though.

I have customers who've tested using CAD over RDP wtih no success. RDP just isn't fast enough.

VPN Success!

2009-06-12T09:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was able to get my VPN to connect over TCP port 80 from a client site! Connectivity has been my biggest issue, so this was a big step towards making sure I can connect to my virtual desktop.