• 17 inch wide-screen WUXGA 1920×1200 LCD screen
• nVidia Geforce 280M-GTX with 1GB DDR3 RAM
• Intel Core i7 975 Extreme 3,33GHz, 8MB Cache
• 12GB Tripple Channel 1066MHz DDR3 memory
• 3 x 500GB 7200rpm SATA Harddisks (RAID0, 1, or 5)
• 8-speed DVD±R/RW LightScribe writer
• Intel WiFi 802.11b+g+n Wireless LAN
• Bluetooth
• 10/100/1000Mbps Fast Ethernet
• 12 cel Smart Li-ION Battery
• 2M-pixel Webcam built into the screen
• 7-in-1 Card Reader
• 4 x USB, FW, DVI, HDMI, etc.
• Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

The original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of all these models is Clevo, a company with a long history in creating some of the most powerful and amazing laptops you’ll ever see. They come with a somewhat high pricetag (almost 4200 Euros / US$5900 for the above configuration) and considerable weight and bulk but you certainly get a laptop that can compete with many a desktop and workstation. Especially considering that these laptop use the Intel i7 desktop processors and will support up to 3 harddisks (or SSD’s) and up to 12GB of RAM!

Does it work as I expected it would? It certainly seems so! It has the full performance of the Intel Core i7 975 Extreme and the benefit of 12GB of RAM should be evident. In addition to several bootable VHD’s I use on this system it is a real pleasure to have a laptop that is actually able to run VM’s (using VMware Workstation) fluently. Granted it is not nearly as great in performance as my real workstations it certainly works better than any other laptop I’ve ever owned (which at the time I bought them were all high-end mobile workstations from either Sony or HP).

The only downside, apart from the size of the laptop is its weight. Yes, 11 lbs, about 5.5kg. But a Kensington Contour Roller laptop bag  should take care of transporting it without it becoming a real chore. You certainly get a very solid and sturdy laptop with a Clevo D900F or ones of its various models. A lot of the weight is probably also because of the heatpipe and cooling system used in these (which does indeed perform very well in keeping the i7 975 Extreme cooler than you’d think is possible in a case this small).

For some images of this ultimate mobile workstation, check out the large images over at notebookreview.com and xoticpcforums.com.

The battery? Oh, yeah, you should not think of it as a battery to run the laptop on for a while, instead you should consider the battery as a UPS (uninterrupted power supply) with an average running time of about an hour. You definitely need the power brick to keep this baby powered. It’s not called a power brick without a reason, though. It’s about the size of a brick and close to its weight as well. The power supply alone makes any netbook look like a slice of bread.

I travel with an extra replacement 7200rpm 500GB SATA harddrive (a Seagate Momentus)  just in case one of the 3 inside the system breaks down. They’re disks, they always break and when they do it’s usually the most inconvenient time imaginable. Since I am using the system in RAID0, for performance reasons, I always keep a current image backup of the system on two external 500GB Western Digital Passport drives (those small 2.5″ USB powered ones). Performing a repair and a restore should be a breeze. What I would really like to see and test, and use, is this system with 3 x 512GB SSD’s in RAID0 but with the current price of those it wasn’t worth it to me at this time to get four of those (one as a replacement in case of failure and 3 in the system). But I do suspect the performance would be amazing in this system.

Of course, if you really want to you could do what this guy has done; triple boot Mac OSX, Windows, and Ubunto from your D900F. Most of the reviews and tests of the Clevo D900F appear to be very favorable towards it, describing it as the world’s fastest laptop, and after having had some time to install and play with mine I can say that I defintely agree. However, instead of me copying all the great statements and nice words about the D900F I’m just going to link to several other reviews that I support and endorse. These full reviews can be found at:

• gophn.com
• notebookreview.com
• another one on notebookreview.com
• our-picks.com
• engadget.com
• cnet.com (video review)
• anandtech.com
• thei7.com
• maximumpc.com

There are many crucial aspects to the new version 4, the biggest of which is no doubt the full support for 64-bit (the virtual display drivers installed by MaxiVista 4 are digitally signed) and WDDM graphics cards. One of the things that the previous version had to battle with were the restrictions in Vista and the requirement to use XPDM drivers instead of WDDM. Well, those days are over with version 4.

Of course, all this also applies to Windows 7, not just Vista. So I will be looking forward to running an upgraded layout using Windows 7 once I get to the point of being done with that. Expect to see a more in-depth description and review of MaxiVista v4 in the next weeks. In the meantime, don’t take my word for it, try out MaxiVista yourself.

However, if I wanted to centralize the storage for the systems in the network, whereby the systems themselves were smaller, less top-heavy computers, I would certainly be looking at something like StarWind Server or StarWind Enterprise Server (probably the latter because I like the replication features). Also, if I were to overhaul the way my virtual machines are managed and stored throughout my network, and if I wanted to create a single cluster of systems to run that, StarWind would certainly get an even closer look.

So what is StarWind Server, you might ask. If you’ve familiarized yourself with the concept of a SAN, the short version of the story is that StarWind Server is a software product that turns a Windows 2003 or Windows 2008 server into a fully capable iSCSI SAN system.

Read the rest of this story over at Sallie’s blog.

You will need:

• A Windows 7 or Windows 2008 Server installation DVD
• The WIM2VHD script
• The Windows Automated Installation Kit for Windows 7 (WAIK)

Preparation:

Extract or copy the installation DVD somewhere (e.g. S:\W7INS).

Put imagex.exe and bcdboot.exe (from the WAIK) and the WIM2VHD.WSF in the same location (e.g. S:\AIK). Also put bcdedit.exe in the same location (it can be found in C:\Windows\System32).

The reason for putting bcdboot.exe in the same directory is because I have had one system where the WIM2VHD script failed when it had to call bcdboot.exe which certainly was present in C:\Windows\System32 but not found by the script.

Create the VHD and install the Windows 7 image:

cscript WIM2VHD.WSF /wim:S:\W7INS\sources\install.wim /sku:ultimate
/vhd:S:\MyDisk.vhd /size:50000 /disktype:Fixed

Note that the above should be one single line. I broke it up for page layout reasons. Make sure you keep a space between “ultimate” and “/vhd:” up there.

The VHD will be created as a 50GB fixed size file as S:\MyDisk.vhd. If you wish to use a dynamic VHD you can specify Dynamic instead of Fixed for the disktype, or simply not specify the disktype (and have it default to dynamic). Also, if you do not have to specify the size a 40GB dynamic VHD will be created by default. Check the documentation on WIM2VHD for more information. After a few minutes your VHD will be ready and should contain a nearly completed pre-installation of Windows 7. But now you still need to make it bootable.

Making the VHD bootable:

First we need to get a new GUID for the boot option:

bcdedit /copy {current} /d "My New VHD Installation"

Copy the GUID that is shown and use it as a replacement for {guid} below to create the boot entry. Note that the [brackets] around the drive letter SHOULD BE there!

bcdedit /set {guid} device vhd=[S:]\MyDisk.vhd
bcdedit /set {guid} osdevice vhd=[S:]\MyDisk.vhd
bcdedit /set {guid} detecthal on

After doing all the above you should now have a bootable VHD that you can boot into for final configuration and setup. If you want to check what the boot list looks like, just use bcdedit /v on the command line. If at any time you need to remove the bootable VHD you can simply do the following. First check the boot entries using:

bcdedit /v

Look for the VHD file in the output and copy the GUID that is shown for it. Use it as a replacement for {guid} below:

bcdedit /delete {guid} /cleanup

The quick start outlined above should get your started with VHD’s. But it doesn’t end there. For advanced use you can use VHD differencing disks, mount VHD’s locally on the system, and basically have yourself an abstraction of your storage, the use of which will vary depending on your requirements.

For quick testing and discardable VHD’s I tend to go with the default 40GB dynamic disks but for performance and sustained VHD’s that I use as a more manageable alternative to multi-boot scenarios I tend to use a fixed size VHD, usually something in the range of 35GB to 120GB, depending on my purpose.

Instead of creating disk images for backup and emergency restore purposes I tend to just keep a copy of the VHD’s around and save myself the hassle of having to restore an actual image when all I need to do is copy a VHD back to its original location, if needed by overwriting the existing copy if it has been banged up badly duing some extreme development activities.

One of the benefits of native VHD support is that you can mount a VHD to a drive letter on your system and conduct maintenance and repair without having to boot into the OS on the VHD. I have found this to also be very helpful in testing various critical doomsday scenarios where an OS gets corrupted from the outside. I also use VHD’s as bootable systems on my workstations to deal with beta software that I would not allow to run free on the native system itself and would otherwise not perform too well inside a VM. Since many of these beta things in my case revolve around graphically and computationally intensive software you can understand why I would like to use the full resources of the host system, in particular graphics drivers and all the CPU’s and cores available in the system.

I can hear you thinking, why would I copy entire 100GB VHD files around while at the same time assuming that is why I have so much storage in the home office. Sometimes I do, if I want to be really quick about it. But the way I keep and store copies of VHD’s that were created with a fixed size is by converting the VHD file to a dynamically growing VHD file using Starwind’s free V2V utility. I select the VHD I wish to convert, I select what I want to convert it to, wait around for not too long, and that generates the VHD that I will “shelve” on the server or backup to long term backup storage, ready to be used and taken off the virtual shelf whenever I need it. Likewise, when I take a dynamic VHD off the virtual shelf I will use V2V to expand the VHD to a pre-allocated fixed size, again, to gain the maximum performance.

Starwind V2V is an extremely useful tool for anyone who frequently shares disk images between VMware and Windows 7 or Windows 2008 Server, Virtual PC, or the 2008 Hyper-V. It can convert VMDK (VMware) images to VHD and vice-versa, either as pre-allocated fixed size files or dynamically growing files, including support for VMware ESX Server and Starwind’s own IMG format that is used by their Starwind Server and Enterprise Server SAN solutions (but more about those next week, in another place).

Another thing that V2V will not help you with, but that should go without saying (even though I’ll make a note of it here anyway) is to share installed operating systems between VMware and Virtual-PC and/or Hyper-V. If you wish to share operating system virtual disks you should go the full route and use sysprep and properly administer the deployment process. This, however, goes a little beyond the scope of what I was writing about here.

Those of you that know of my past week’s hunt for a suitable transport solution will wonder what I settled on. It’s the Lowe Pro Rolling Computrekker AW Plus. Gee, isn’t that a mouthfull for a product name, eh! The previous Slingshot 200 was just too small and my other Computrekker AW backpack managed to barely fit everything and as a result it was just too much to carry around on my back (especially with airports and scanners and also traveling with a laptop bag with the HP8710w and assorted other bits in there). The Rolling version, which is also larger and has a bit more space is definitely the better solution. Still heavy but I don’t have to lug it around on my back.

Of course I still can’t get all my stuff in there but on my current trips I’m going to bring mostly the professional lenses for a change so I’m leaving various others at home (like the Nikon 18-200mm, Nikon 70-300 VR, Sigma ‘Bigma’ 50-500mm, etc.) and instead I’m going to rely on a two camera solution with, mostly, the Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 and 70-200mm f2.8.

For reference (and others googling around for this camera bag and what it can hold) the bag contains:

Nikon D200 + MB-D200 Battery Grip + Optech Strap
Nikon D300 + Optech Strap
Nikon MB-D10 Battery Grip (in the zipped compartment)
Nikon 24-70mm f2.8
Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 VR
Nikon 50mm f1.4D
Sigma 30mm f1.4 DC HSM
Sigma 10-20mm f4.0-5.6 EX DC HSM
Expodisc 77mm (White Balance)
Nikon SB-600 Flash + Diffuser, Stand
Nikon SB-800 Flash + Diffuser, Stand, SJ-800 Filters, 5th Battery Addon
Nikon SB-900 Flash + Diffuser, Stand, SJ-3 Filters + Filter Holder
2 x Nikon EN-EL3e batteries in the MB-D200
1 x Nikon EN-EL3e battery in the D300
1 x Nikon EN-EL4a battery in the MB-D10
2 x Nikon lens and body caps (zipped compartment on top)
2 x Nikon EN-EL3e extra batteries
1 x Nikon EN-EL4a extra battery
2 x Nikon MH-18a (EN-EL3) chargers
1 x Nikon MH-21 (EN-EL4a) charger
4 x Sandisk Extreme III 4GB CF cards
2 x Sandisk Extreme III 8GB CF cards
2 x Sandisk Extreme IV 16GB CF cards
3 x Power cables (for the chargers)
2 x USB Camera cables
2 x Microfiber Lens cleaning cloths
12 x Visible Dust DHAP Sensor Cleaning Swabs
1 x Visible Dust Vdust Plus fluid
1 x Visible Dust Smear Away fluid
1 x Visible Dust Arctic Butterfly Brush

After getting all that through airports and security I don’t plan on taking the rolling bag along at all. For actual shooting I’ll rely on my trustworthy Think Tank modular belt solution. I can mix and match the modules based on what I want to bring along and only take those things along that I need or think I’ll need. Sling two cameras over the shoulders and the Pixel Racing Harness will take care of most of the weight. For simple situations I also have one of those Digital Holster 50’s around in case I’m expecting bad weather.

For reference, there are now new and updated pages:

• The new office (current) page.
• The updated FAQ page.
• The special ‘making of’ section with many more pictures as things progressed.
• The old office (archive) page.

And a note of warning for the less than honest (a.k.a. thieving wannabe’s), all the pictures on my site(s) are Copyright (C) 2008 and all rights are reserved. Use these images for commercial purposes and I will take legal action and then some! As recently this lame individual (Andre/Arthur Leite Alves) and his company (Aware Bear) have discovered.

I’m still waiting for new computer equipment to arrive at my dealer and decided to wait until the new office setup reflects the actual working conditions before I start shooting proper pictures and updating the site. In the meantime, here are a few shots of the new layout with the new extreme multi-monitor configuration. And before you say it… yes, it still looks like a mess.

These pictures are part of the “making of” page that I plan to add to the website when I get some time to do so, hopefully along with the new photographs of the entire office in full operation.

While you are waiting for me to produce some real functional pictures, check out Dennis Klein’s site. He’s been doing an office overhaul at the same time I was.

The first two days were spent clearing everything out and moving the most essential services running on servers from the living room. Then another day to give everything a paint job. The past two days have been cable hell. Laying out all the cables at the right lenghts, using lots of Velcro to bind it all together, and of course installing the new Ergotron arms for four of the new screens. Whoever said that working with computers isn’t physical labor is so very wrong about that! Ha!

The new workstations aren’t ready yet so those will have to wait and I’m considering delaying the udpate of the site until everything is as it should be so it reflects my actual working conditions. In the meantime, here’s some shots of the current state of the Home Office 6.0 (beta, I guess you could say).

My dealer doesn’t have all the new equipment ready yet but did get me the imporant stuff I need to start, namely the new monitors. However, the various three and five meter DVI cables that were sent to them were white instead of black so we’re waiting for the arrival of the correct black cables. Without the cables there’s not much point in clearing out the office. The RAID backplanes have also not arrived yet but adding new workstations is not a requirement for starting this overhaul so that can wait. The cables are definitely more important.

In the meantime the house is turning into a warehouse of hardware with lots of new stuff still in the boxes. Below is a shot showing the four boxes with the HP LP2475w 24″ S-IPS monitors, two Eizo FlexScan S2431WE-BK (black 24″ screens with the EZ-UP base), and four boxes with Ergotron LX monitor arms. The other stuff in the middle there are unassembled bookshelves (I agree, much less interesting than the hardware).

Everyone from a certain age group and have been involved with computers from the early days will no doubt know of, have heard of, or has experienced, the phenomena known as the OS zealot. You know, those people who consider the brand they like to be similar to how certain other individuals find themselves immersed in various forms of religious fundamentalism.

Back in the day there were the PC zealots, a common creature often found bashing and insulting hardware by manufacturers who believed in proprietary hardware designs. And of course there were the Amiga and Atari fanatics that represented two other groups where certain sections of these different groups were always at each other’s throats about who had the better hardware. And, let’s not forget the Apple zealots. Most of these fundamentalist fanatics died out and faded into the background during the late 80’s and early 90’s as their religious sacraments that came in the form of material objects found their way into obsoleteness (or a museum, in many cases). And who can forget about Linux zealots, though that is a group that is still very much alive and out there, sometimes a bit TOO FAR OUT there.

You might understand my surprise that I recently discovered a real live one. An Apple fundamentalist. You know, Apple, the company that didn’t bring you the Lisa but did give us the Macintosh, the iPod and iPhone, and of course people who prefer to work with computers that do not require a full understanding of everything inside and outside the box. Out of the blue I received this funny e-mail from Terry C Mele. Or, Terry Cillian Mele a.k.a. “ovomac” which said;

Wow, that’s a shame. I don’t see an Apple logo.
Thus, your computer is nothing fascinating.

Not that I ever considered any of my fleet of computers to be fascinating, even though many other do, but of course, because the religious fundamentalists with a preference for any particular hardware or operating system had died out so long ago it could only be either someone with a sense of humor or someone very ignorant. I figured I’d check it out first and responded by saying the only logical thing (well, logical to those who have the power of critical thinking, considering I don’t develop for Apple’s OS) there was to say;

I’m quite pleased there are no Apple logos around here.
I wouldn’t be able to do my job if they did!

The response I got to that really says it all. Though, after a quick check it seems Terry Cillian Mele is not joking about his fanaticism that leads to such subsequent behavior. Especially considering that his response to my obvious remark was this;

Well then your job must not consist of anything very fascinating.
No high-end graphics, no music editing, no video production.

All of that is not possible on your Machine.
Can’t be done correctly. Just get a Mac, and get a brain.
Quit embarrassing yourself. That computer is just a big calculator.
Nothing to be proud of.
It does, however, make a wonderful Solitaire opponent.

It’s amazing to see that so many years after the various zealot groups have faded into the void that you can still run into a real live one. It boggles the mind. Then again, I don’t have any Apples to unboggle it so maybe Terry Mele has a point. It might be very difficult for these misguided fundamentalists to understand that in the normal day to day world, people of different technical backgrounds and product/system preferences get along just fine. Then again, that would be the real world, not the Matrix in which zealots have an alternative perception based on a personal blinding rage of having to feel in some sense superior.

But what’s absolutely fascinating is that the same quick check shows that Terry Mele is just a kid. Now, normally zealots who haven’t shaken their bad behavior and habits are in an age range that is normally twice the age of Terry. Maybe these things have a tendency to “run in the family”, I don’t know. Are there any technological anthropologists out there who studied this? Is this what schools teach kids these days or is this just some random permutation that occurred due to an excessive combination of butterfly effects? Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be overly pervasive.

All in all, I think we should all take a moment to remember the zealots of yesteryears, the arguments on Usenet back when it was still a discussion platform, bitnet, relaynet, IRC, and what not. Back when tech savages and scientists went toe to toe. For all those zealots that have faded or discovered that their sense of ideology and behavior was unfitting. Others notice too (see comments).

Then again, seeing in Terry’s own words, “I can often be found at the bar, getting drunk”, I might be led to believe that poor Terry should perhaps not try interacting with others who do not share the same fundamentalist feelings, especially if Terry is intoxicated. I can only hope for Terry Cillian Mele’s sake he too will grow up and realize the foolishness of his embarrassing behavior. Especially since we all know how employers these days search the net to check up on their job applicants.

An Apple a day keeps… well, just what does it keep away?

Two days later the second of these small APC backup UPC devices, an identical model, decided that the battery needed to be replaced (what, not even 3 years after initially installing them?). Except this UPS decided it wasn’t just unhappy but extremely pissed at me because instead of just sounding the beeping alarm and flashing the error lights it decided to temporarily, for about 5 seconds, pull the power from the server it was providing with current (it wasn’t running on batteries but on pass-through current). Needless to say I’m not amused by devices that misbehave like that and considered it an attempt at intentional sabotage. I consider the act of pulling the current from my server and sending it into a straight reboot without a proper shutdown to be an act of war.

Since I had decided I wanted to start using a different machine as the main server it was a good time to get a completely new, different, and bigger UPS so I ended up ordering the APC SC1500i model (1500VA, 865 Watts) which arrived at my dealer within a few days. At close to 22kg in weight this was not the kind of device you just carry back home. Let that be a lesson to misbehaving devices, misbehave and you’re out! Replaced! Too bad we can’t do that so easily and in a matter of days when it comes to politicians who complain too much about the citizens they’re supposed to be working for.

So right now the battery in the SC1500i is charging and tomorrow I’ll hook it up properly in its temporary new position. Temporary because later this year, around September or October (2008) I’m going to be conducting an overhaul of the Home Office. And yes, I will be uploading new pictures of it but I’m not yet going to tell what the changes are… other than that if you think it’s insane now, wait until I’ve completed the next upgrade cycle. The overhaul that includes a complete replacement of power cables and distribution will also include some changes to the mega multi-monitor configuration. Large changes. Size changes. Number changes. Ergotron changes. Oops, I might be writing too much now! But you’ll just have to check back here when I’m done to see those results.

Sallie said I should write blog posts describing the planned overhaul and what it involves because there’s all sorts of issues to deal with regarding space, metrics, ergonomics, power requirements, power distribution, monitor placement and cabling, etc. but I’m afraid that doing so would possibly fry the minds of some people and I don’t have a legal disclaimer for any physical or mental affliction caused by exposure to the planning details in my mind. I will, however, take pictures during the overhaul process for a little “making of” page in which the details of constructing the whole configuration will be described. For those who dare be exposed to the guts and gore details of utter Home Office Madness.