Upgrading my Acer easystore H340 to WHS 2011

Posted on August 15, 2011 by dragonwyntir

иконописПравославни икониHello Internet! I recently took the plunge and upgraded to WHS 2011 (from the WHS PP3 version that it shipped with) on my Acer easystore H340. The ordeal was far from painless, and I’m still hammering out a few bugs, but I thought I should share my thoughts about the process with any enthusiasts/fellow geeks that might be thinking about making this pilgrimage.

A few notes:

1. – While I’ll be naturally sharing my thoughts about WHS 2011 throughout this post, I won’t be doing a thorough or comprehensive review of Windows Home Server 2011. I’ll leave that to the folks who have the energy to whine about Drive Extender being dropped.

2. – I claim absolutely no credit for the various steps I went through to get this working. I did scour the Internet for related experiences from others, and I will do my best to link to those (far smarter) people and their posts as I relied on them. I’m also going to attempt to document the things that didn’t work in a way that won’t confuse the steps that do. *crosses fingers* Please feel free to reach out to me if I haven’t been clear.

3. – I don’t believe this journey is quite over; I am overall positive about the change, and I do recommend it to anyone who doesn’t really care about DE (or is willing to live with one of the alternatives), but I don’t believe this will the last post I write about WHS 2011. My sincere hope is that there will be more folks who

All-you-can Listen Music. Why Rhapsody is still the best.

Posted on July 23, 2010 by Khidr

Rhapsody is a dinosaur. The recently emancipated (disenfranchised?) and price-cut child of Real Networks, Rhapsody has been around for a long time. Since they’ve started, dedicated Mp3 players have rapidly become less important, as smartphones – all-in-one convergence devices – have found their way into more hands. The mobile revolution has also brought stiff competition in the music subscription space. From bargain basement offerings like grooveshark with it’s $3.00 a month subscription, to upstarts like Rdio and Mog. Let’s not forget about Spotify, the once and future king of subscription services that is almost/any day now/never coming to the U.S. At the other end of the spectrum are the custom radio sites like Slacker and Pandora. Finally, let’s not forget that Rhapsody is also competing with Zune on both the subscription and store sides, and Amazon and iTunes.

But this article is about why Rhapsody still beats them all. So let’s get to it.

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The Twilight Decryption (part deux): Attack of the Cheesburger

Posted on July 4, 2010 by Chicanerys Muse

I thought I was done with the whole mess, I read about the Movie for the final book (Breaking Dawn) will be made into two movies. I really thought this could use a bit of a cliff note because the final of the 4 books has the most OMGWTFBBQJEFFGOLDBLUM moments out of all of them..

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Dante’s Inferno…well, there are boobs

Posted on December 26, 2009 by dragonwyntir

I will start this rant with a disclaimer: I really, REALLY love me some Dead Space. Visceral Games (the developer for both Dead Space and Dante’s Inferno) created a really freaky, memorable and engrossing video game experience; it really is one of my favorite games this generation, easily competing with Gears of War 2 and Bioshock.

One of my favorite games of LAST generation has unequivocally got to be God of War 2. I have not owned a single Sony console in my life, but I did borrow a PS2 from The DLB and worked my way through the entire game, a full two years after the launch of the Xbox 360. While the God of War series isn’t really a poster child for subtlety and restraint, the execution of the action, the breathtaking boss battles, and the ever-changing-but-always-well-delivered set pieces made me feel like we had actually moved the ball forward to the endzone known as True Cinematic Gaming™.

You can imagine, then, that I had (perhaps unreasonably) high hopes for Dante’s Inferno. A combination of God of War-style gameplay and a studio that created one of this generation’s coolest games? Instant win, yes? Continue reading →

Try The Bayonetta Demo…I think…

Posted on December 5, 2009 by dragonwyntir

Whoa.

So, not really for the kiddies…keep THAT in mind when you think about downloading/playing it.

There is a basic tutorial mode in the beginning that demonstrates what a badass bitch you are in the game. After that, they dump you into the most intensely confusing and difficult 3 minutes of gameplay you’ll ever play. I played it twice and nearly turned the demo off because I was SURE this was not a game for me.

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NXE 2009 Preview Program Impressions

Posted on October 23, 2009 by dragonwyntir

Can’t a guy just get to bed at a decent hour? After a somewhat ho-hum episode of FlashForward last night, I stopped my Windows Media Center Extender DVR session on my Xbox 360 and booted back to the dashboard, ready to do a quick check for new content before SleepyTime. Alas, I was kicked from Xbox Live and prompted for an update! Almost 2 hours later, here’s what I stumbled across.

As a sidenote, I have NOT tested the Facebook app, Halo Waypoint, or the MSNBC.com news feed. (In short, I am not a Facebook member, and the other two options are not available as of yet). Moving on…

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The NewER Xbox Experience: Preview Program Impressions

Posted on July 29, 2009 by dragonwyntir

It’s that time again! What’s “New” with the Xbox Experience!

I just got into the preview program last night, and I think “modest update” would be the correct term for this most recent dashboard update. Here is a quick breakdown of the features I’ve stumbled across so far (this list isn’t exhaustive, but these are most of the major points):

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My life with the Pre

Posted on June 18, 2009 by Khidr

So I guess it’s a good time to throw out some initial impressions and thoughts now that I’ve had the Pre for a few days. I’ve never owned an Iphone and I think that some of the reviews that compare the pre to the Iphone are at least slightly misleading for a few reasons. First, the Iphone is a 3 year old platform. Many of the reviews ding the Pre for not having oodles of apps, but ignore the fact that the Iphone also didn’t have oodles of apps three years ago. That’s as far as I’m going to go there. If you love your Iphone, I’m happy for you. It’s a great platform, but it is not for everybody and competition is good.

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