I have a laptop, which has plenty memory and disk space. It was bought with a licenced copy of Windows 7 installed.
I have repartitioned the hard disk into a Windows area and a separate area where I have installed Linux Mint. It is of course a duel boot machine now. The Windows area is hardly used at all now, and is there mainly as a fallback.
There are one or two programs that I like and am used to that only run under Windows, Windows Live Writer being one of them. To avoid constant reboots, the obvious answer is to install a Virtual Machine within Linux. This leads to my little question regarding ethics.
I need to install Windows 7 within the VM, as that is the whole point of the exercise. Technically, under strict interpretation of the law, I should buy a new copy of Windows 7. I see from Amazon, that this would cost me around $180, which is quite a lot for the privilege of running one free program. However, I already have a licenced copy for this machine, which by definition cannot be used if I am within Linux.
Legally, I presume I should purchase a new copy of Windows, but ethically, I don’t think that should be necessary.
I have mentioned before how I get occasional surges of traffic from Stumbleupon. The page in question was posted in October 2007, but periodically it rises in the ranks of Stumbleupon.
Last Monday, at 4 in the afternoon, the latest ‘storm’ started. I call them storms, as the usual pattern is a sudden peak in traffic before the page slides into obscurity again.
This time was different however. What emerged over the last week is a quite remarkable pattern of traffic. The Monday evening storm developed into one of the biggest since 2007, and instead of subsiding, it developed into a whole series of cycles.
Hourly traffic over seven days
For some reason, traffic drops to a minimum at around ten in the morning before rising to the next peak.
Daily traffic over thirty days
The decay in traffic is also quite remarkable in that it follows a mathematically precise curve. I took the snapshots a couple of days ago, but the traffic is still following the same very precise pattern.
Monthly traffic over a full year
As the second illustration shows, the quantity of traffic is quite significant too. In fact the site is receiving more traffic in one day than it would normally receive in a whole week. Even more startling is that by the 9th, January’s traffic had already created a new twelve month record.
The traffic is still pretty heavy, but the rate of decay has slowed right down. Mathematically, it is indicating that I can expect a permanent increase in traffic of around 500%. However I recognize that is extremely unlikely which probably indicates why I’m not a climatologist?
I have noticed quite a few people landing here as a result of a search for Iomega iConnect.
After a lot of tests, trials and tribulations, I finally got my iConnect to work. In fairness to Iomega, their support was second to none, as between us, we tried just about everything in the book. It was Régis in Iomega who finally cracked it. I sent him a few software dumps and he noticed that the device was rebooting itself on a regular basis.
The solution, while not ideal, works. All I had to do was disable the Media Server. That’s all.
It’s not quite the end of my problems, as at the moment anyway, I can’t access the management area of the hub. I have tried connecting directly using my browser, but it just says “server not responding” or similar. I can’t connect using the dedicated software either – it connects and displays the iConnect but claims that the “device is currently unavailable”.
However……
The iConnect has been running now for around 72 hours. I can access the drives that are plugged into it and it seems to be stable. Leastwise, I have been copying large numbers of files back and forward across the iConnect without a single failure.
Seeing as that is all I require of it, I am happy.
It has been a busy couple of weeks with my iConnect.
After a lot of emails back and forth between myself and Iomega, we decided the unit was faulty. I returned it to the shop yesterday and got a replacement. The difference is amazing.
By now, I am somewhat of an expert on the Iomega iConnect! I hooked it up to the laptop and lashed through the setup. This time it went smoothly and it is now sitting on a shelf in another room with all its wee blue lights in the right places. (One of the symptoms of the previous unit’s problems was that a port light would remain lit long after a device had been removed from it).
One of the “features” of the iConnect is that it can be incredibly slow to do things. A reboot takes quite a while and external drives can take a couple of minutes to appear after being plugged in. But then this is a device that really can be forgotten about once it is set up, so in the long term that isn’t a problem.
I must say I was impressed with the support I got. Granted, my initial approaches met with a certain level of indifference, but once my status had been escalated, they pulled out all the stops.
A couple of weeks ago, I bought myself an Iomega iConnect.
I had been sniffing around for a while for a USB hub, and I happened to be in PC World so I bought that model for the pure and simple reason that it was the only USB hub they had in stock.
Basically all I wanted was the ability to plug my external drives directly into the network, and this seemed to be ideal for the job.
I brought it home, unpacked it and plugged it in. I installed the management software and away I went.
Simple?
No!
I have had nothing but trouble with the damned thing.
Initially, I connected the yoke directly to my laptop in order to configure it. Documentation was crap, but it was a fairly straightforward process. I gave it a static IP address, and named it FServer. That was about all I had to do. I moved it into the area where I wanted to keep the drives (which happens to be beside my router), plugged it in and connected all the drives. I then went back to my laptop to start the process of mapping the drives backing up software.
I did a network search for the drives, but there was no sign of them. I could see there was a device on the network called FServer but that was it. No hard drives.
Since then I have……
Moved the iConnect between the office and my laptop.
On the rare occasion I could connect to it, I tried static and dynamic IPs.
I have tried it with and without hard drives attached.
I have tried resetting it, but nothing happens if I do it as per instructions (holding in the reset button for 15 seconds – I went up to two minutes but the reset never happened)
I have tried resetting it by de-powering, and then re-powering with the reset held in. That at least turned the status light red (which is the required result) but the damned thing stays on red and the only way to get it back to normal is to re-power it again, but the reset still hasn’t happened.
I have tried accessing it using Linux, Windows 7 and Windows 2000. Same results on all systems.
I have trawled the Internet looking for help. Iomega have a users forum, and I found quite a few roughly similar problems, but Iomega’s response seems always to be that a static IP should be used. Tried that. No good.
I connected it directly to my laptop again today to have another go.
I plugged it in, and nothing happened. The Management software can see it all right. It lists it as FServer with an IP of 192.168.1.9 (correct!). However it says that it cannot be managed, nor is there any sign of the USB devices. I tried pinging that IP and get no returns. If it weren’t for the management software, I would say it didn’t exist at all.
I can see it in the Management window –
I can see it in Windows 7 Network mapping –
But that is all.
I think it’s about time for a return trip to PC World?