UK customers click here.
US customers click here.
We are pleased to announce the publication of our new guide: 'Synology Setup Guide for Small Businesses'. It is a comprehensive, well written, fully illustrated book that takes you through all the steps involved in setting up a Synology NAS in a home environment. It is available exclusively from Amazon Kindle. UK customers click here. US customers click here. Microsoft's cloud service - SkyDrive - is shortly to be no more, but will be instantly re-incarnated as OneDrive. This is as a result of a court case between BSkyB and Microsoft which the latter lost. BSkyB Group - more commonly known as Sky in the UK - considered the name 'SkyDrive' an infringement of copyright and that people might believe it was something to do with them. The judge agreed, so Microsoft were ordered to rename it and they have now announced that it will shortly become OneDrive. It is a rebranding exercise only; everything will work as before without change and no data will be lost. A home network is a great way of sharing all your photos, music and videos among family members. Imagine – all your DVD movies ripped and available to be watched from any computer at any time. But what if your needs are a lot more modest, such as sharing a few photos and documents? And you don’t want to spend any money on NAS or a file server? Plus you’ve only got 10 minutes or so to spare on setting it up? Sound impossible? Not at all!
The secret to doing all of this is to use Dropbox. Dropbox is a popular cloud-based service; place files in the Dropbox folder on your computer and they are automatically copied (synchronised) to a private, corresponding folder on the internet. Now install the Dropbox client on another computer; as if by magic your files start to appear there. Add a third computer and they appear there, too. At the most basic level, one of the main purposes of a network is to provide a shared area in which items can be stored and Dropbox constitutes that shared area. Assuming you are starting from scratch, the first thing to do is to create a Dropbox account, which you can do by going to the Dropbox website. Then, install the Dropbox client on all your devices - Windows PCs, Macs, iPads, Smartphones etc. Decide which items you want to share and copy them into the Dropbox folder on your computer and shortly thereafter they will appear on all the other devices. On the PCs and Macs, make sure that LAN sync is turned on, as this will improve performance. To do so, choose Preferences and go to the General tab of the Dropbox clients. What are the possible pitfalls? Well, keep in mind that the files in the Dropbox folder are 'live'. That is, if someone deletes a file on one machine then it will shortly vanish from all the others. For this reason, be sure to keep separate copies of important items outside of Dropbox. The other main consideration is storage space: this is not a solution for people who want to share movies and stuff. With the standard free Dropbox account there is just 2GB of space (but if you haven't got an account yet send an email here with the word 'Dropbox' as the subject and we'll send you a link to start off with 2.5GB instead). Once you are up and running you can obtain additional free space by recommending your contacts and by linking your Twitter and Facebook accounts, up to a maximum of 16GB. Thereafter you would need to pay for space, but at that point you might be better off considering a proper NAS system. Leading NAS supplier Synology have announced the latest version of their acclaimed DiskStation Manager operating system, known as DSM 5. Likely to ship during the Spring, the UK launch of the beta version took place in London on 16th January and CTACS were in attendance. DSM is a highly regarded piece of software and is considered to give Synology a huge advantage over other NAS suppliers. Most NAS systems are controlled using static web pages and as such are rather clunky to use. In contrast, although accessed within a browser, DSM provides an experience much like using a regular computer, complete with a Desktop, multiple windows plus a drag-and-drop interface. Synology were the first to do this and although other manufacturers such as QNAP and Netgear have been playing catch-up, Synology remain ahead of the curve. DSM 5 features a new interface. The fashion these days is for simplified, cleaner look, as seen in Apple's iOS 7 and Microsoft's Windows 8 and DSM 5 is very much within this vogue. But it is more than a pretty face - a lot of effort has gone into making it easier to install, configure and manage the system. As it is still early days, it's probably inappropriate to run through all the changes in detail, particularly as things are still subject to change. But one very useful new capability is the so-called "hybrid" cloud. Most people will be familiar with public cloud services such as Dropbox, SkyDrive and Google Drive. Synology have Cloud Station, which provides a totally private cloud solution. But DSM 5 supports both, offering the best of both worlds plus providing a means to backup key data from the DiskStation to Dropbox, Google Drive and Baidu (the latter is a sort of Chinese equivalent to Google). This is a very exciting development indeed. We will provide more information on DSM 5 as the official launch date approaches. We are pleased to announce the publication of our new guide: 'Synology Setup Guide for Small Businesses'. It is a comprehensive, well written, fully illustrated book that takes you through all the steps involved in setting up a Synology NAS in a typical small business. It is available exclusively from Amazon Kindle by clicking here. Sometimes Microsoft ships operating systems that a lot of people don't like and which are widely perceived as being dogs. Examples that come rapidly to mind over the years are Windows 8, Windows Vista and Windows Me. But sometimes they produce real gems that don't get the sales or publicity that they really deserve. One such product was Windows Home Server, which was withdrawn from retail sale on 31st December 2013 (but stocks are still available, so move quickly). Windows Home Server - WHS - started life in 2007 with an announcement at the CES show, although it was the best part of a year before it was readily available. It was based on a slightly cut-down version of Microsoft's then flagship server operating system, Windows Server 2003 R2, supplemented with a number of innovations to make it more useful and easier to use in a home environment. These included the Dashboard, providing at-a-glance status information and a simplified way to manage the system, and the highly-acclaimed Drive Extender. Usually on a Windows computer, each disk drive has its own letter to identify it. So, the first drive is C, the second is D, the third is E and so on. In a server environment there might be multiple drives; what Drive Extender did was transparently merge them all into one single pool. Add another drive and it became part of the pool, without any need to worry about whether it was G: or M: or whatever. Additionally, WHS would make multiple copies of files and store them on different drives, such that data would not be lost in the event of a drive failure, must like the way a RAID system operates. At the same time, HP announced a range of 'baby servers' running WHS. They were joined by a handful of other, smaller manufacturers, but it was painfully obvious even in the early days that there was no widespread support for this innovative product. A few years later, Microsoft released a follow-on product in the form of Windows Home Server 2011 (WHS 2011). In some ways this was more of the same, but updated to use grown-up Windows Server 2008 R2 and with additional polish. But - to the shock of enthusiasts and pundits - the innovative Drive Extender technology was gone. This time round HP did not launch a supporting server, and shortly afterwards pulled out of the market altogether. An even bigger shock took place in 2012 when Microsoft announced there would be no further editions of WHS. Instead, home users were pointed in the direction of Windows Server Essentials - at ten times the price... Retail sales of WHS 2011 would end on 31st December 2013, although the product would be supported until 2016. Intriguingly, manufacturers can still supply "embedded" versions until 2025, although none appear to have chosen to do so. Much of the technology pioneered in WHS has subsequently appeared in other Microsoft operating systems. For instance, the Dashboard appears in other server products and Drive Extender has re-appeared in Windows 8 under the name Storage Spaces. WHS failed for several reasons. Firstly, it was ahead of its time. There is now a proven market for home storage solutions, but it is satisfied by NAS products that are simple and easy to use. Secondly, because of its complexity, WHS appealed mainly to technical people and enthusiasts, who appreciated being able to purchase a "real" server operating system for a fraction of the normal price. And thirdly, Microsoft did not really put a lot of weight behind the product in terms of marketing. As stated at the beginning of this article, stocks of WHS 2011 are still available from the likes of eBuyer, CCLonline, Amazon and others. It costs between £35-£40. Some people are buying it not for use as a server, but for use as a general purpose operating system on a desktop or laptop. This is an attractive proposition for people who really do not like Windows 8 and are prepared to put in the effort to get it working. WHS 2007-2013. R.I.P. |
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