Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Notes from a Project
OK here is technology that really worked smoothly.
Bluetooth. I can understand why people would buy Logitech over the MS ones any day. First of all the MS one needs you to keep the original keyboard and mouse installed to get the software driver to run. Logitech I just plugged the stuff in and it works. Pressed the connect button to change channels and no problems (just does it). MS you had to open a software control panel and run an "auto detect sequence" which only worked for the KB not the mouse. The Logitech plug goes into the USB and the keyboard port. Much smarter approach since I can change the BIOS using the Bluetooth keyboard. The MS was USB only so you needed to plug in the regular keyboard to get into the BIOS.
RAID drives. I've been swapping drives and rebuilding them. It gives you a warning screen of a fault if they fall out of synch. It seems to know which drive is the latest one and re-synchs them. I had been doing it manually from a POST menu that comes up after the BIOS but before the Windows boot. It takes about 30 minutes to rebuld one. I was going to do that to the drive before I left but to my surprise the blank drive I had put in in the morning was already synched. I didn't realise the hardware was going to synch it while XP was running. This is exactly what we need it to do. There is no utility or diagnostic in Windows itself for the drives. It appears to be more technology that "just works".
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Bluetooth. I can understand why people would buy Logitech over the MS ones any day. First of all the MS one needs you to keep the original keyboard and mouse installed to get the software driver to run. Logitech I just plugged the stuff in and it works. Pressed the connect button to change channels and no problems (just does it). MS you had to open a software control panel and run an "auto detect sequence" which only worked for the KB not the mouse. The Logitech plug goes into the USB and the keyboard port. Much smarter approach since I can change the BIOS using the Bluetooth keyboard. The MS was USB only so you needed to plug in the regular keyboard to get into the BIOS.
RAID drives. I've been swapping drives and rebuilding them. It gives you a warning screen of a fault if they fall out of synch. It seems to know which drive is the latest one and re-synchs them. I had been doing it manually from a POST menu that comes up after the BIOS but before the Windows boot. It takes about 30 minutes to rebuld one. I was going to do that to the drive before I left but to my surprise the blank drive I had put in in the morning was already synched. I didn't realise the hardware was going to synch it while XP was running. This is exactly what we need it to do. There is no utility or diagnostic in Windows itself for the drives. It appears to be more technology that "just works".
