Most people underestimate how versatile the optical drive on their computer is. Most, if not all computers purchased in the past 5 years have a built in optical drive which will not only read optical media but also write or burn it.

Naturally, over the years the type of media has evolved. In the early days of Windows XP, the only writeable optical media were CD-Rs and CD-RWs. These had just taken over the pole position from 1.44MB floppy drives and higher capacity magnetic media such as ZIP Drives.

But even the simple 700MB CD-R media was versatile, allowing users to store data in multiple sessions or as a finalized disc. Windows XP offered limited built-in support for writing CD-Rs. This prevented users from doing tasks such as creating bootable CDs or writing ISO images onto CDs. Users also could not write other media such as DVDs and HD media.

Windows Vista and Windows 7 have addressed some of these shortcomings but still lack many of the features present in commercially available third-party disc authoring software. However, this posed another problem as users feel they should not have to pay additional money to be able to utilize their optical drives to the fullest.

This is where StarBurn Disc Burning Software comes to the rescue. Developed by StarBurn Software, this disc burning software comes with a very wide range of features. Some of these include, the ability to write to any optical drive format available today including CD, DVD, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Naturally, all media formats are supported as well including CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, BD-R/RE, HD-DVD-R/RW and DVD-RAM media, including high-capacity double layer DVD+R and dual layer DVD-R.

The software can also perform audio processing including ripping of CD Tracks and on the fly burning of compressed audio formats such as MP3 and WMA without having to decompress them on the hard disk first. This translates into less time spent waiting for the burning process to complete.

It also supports additional features such as importing of previously recorded sessions on multi-session discs, Track-At-Once and Disc-At-Once recording modes, creation of bootable discs, and the ability to convert a Double-Layer DVD (also known as DVD9) into 2 regular DVDs.

StarBurn Software offers two versions of their award winning dvd burning application, StarBurn Free edition and StarBurn full edition. The best thing about this is that the Free Edition is a very usable and rather complete application in itself, and contains all of the features mentioned above.

The only feature which StarBurn Free edition does not have is the ability to record to a remote CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD burner over TCP/IP. What this means is that the Full Version of StarBurn allows you to network your optical disc burner much like you can network your printers. The StarBurn Full Version costs USD 25, but helps lower operational costs and provides better control over security and media usage by centralizing the optical media recording process over the network. This translates into cost savings many times over the cost of the software.

For software developers, StarBurn Software also provides a cd-dvd burning SDK or Software Development Kit. This too comes into two editions, namely, Free and Full. StarBurn Software is one of very few software developers to release a fully featured free edition cd-dvd burning SDK.

Supporting Microsoft Visual C/C++, Microsoft VB.NET and C#, Java and JavaScript, Borland C++ Builder and Delphi, this SDK will allow developers to easily integrate optical drive burning features right into their applications easily. This is especially useful for providing features such as backup to discs or to export and archive large file formats to optical media.

The Full Version of the StarBurn SDK provides the additional feature of being able to write to a remote CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD burner over the network, much like the equivalent full featured application.

To find out more about this free, excellent and easy to use product, visit http://www.starburnsoftware.com

Over the past decade, higher network bandwidths and processing power has resulted in a significant increase in the demand placed on storage requirements. Plunging storage media costs and the mission-critical nature of data have both spurred the implementation of redundant data storage, or better known as storage replication to ensure higher availability of reliability of stored data.

Another important concept which has evolved alongside storage replication is storage virtualization. Simply put, storage virtualization allows a user or an application to access a storage volume as if it were connected physically to the host computer or server, where in fact, the physical storage device is residing on a set of one or more network connected servers.

Typically, storage virtualization is achieved using one of three implementations, namely host-based, storage device based and network based. Host-based virtualization has been around in operating systems for a long time. To illustrate with a simple example, a single 2 TB hard drive can be partitioned into multiple logical or virtual drives of smaller sizes. Users and applications utilize the logical drive as if it were an actual physical storage device. The operating system or host handles and interprets the I/O requests which are translated to the physical level.

Storage device based virtualization is best explained with RAID devices where a set of physical devices can present themselves as a single abstracted storage location to the host computer or server. Besides virtualization, disk arrays can also provide cloning, snapshots and remote replication.

Network based is the third and most popular implementation of storage virtualization, and is achieved using high availability storage software. In this implementation, existing server and network resources are utilized to create networked SAN typically utilizing iSCSI or FC or Fibre Channel technologies. Fibre Channel technology requires storage servers to be connected using dedicated Fibre cabling which is expensive but guarantees high data throughput. iSCSI Storage is the more popular implementation which is also known as SCSI over IP. This technology allows organizations to leverage existing server and network infrastructure to create highly available and reliable Storage Area Networks or SANs.

StarWind Software is the developer and vendor of StarWind 5.0, an SAN Software utilizing iSCSI Storage that turns any industry-standard server into a highly reliable and highly available enterprise-class SAN or centralized storage. StarWind 5.0 works extremely well as a centralized storage system for Server applications such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Sharepoint Server or any other data-driven server application.

Additionally, StarWind 5.0 is also well suited for use in conjunction with application server virtualization platforms such as VMWare, Microsoft Hyper-V R2, creating robust, high-availability virtual servers, minimizing downtime and maximizing productivity.

On either implementation scenarios, users are provided with an entire suite of features which include Synchronous Data Mirroring, Automatic Failover, Failback with Fast Synchronization, Remote/Asynchronous Replication, CDP & Snapshots, Server Clustering and Thin Provisioning.

If you would like to maximize your IT infrastructure utilizing iSCSI Storage, StarWind 5.0 from StarWind Software is your platform of choice for high availability storage software.

To download a trial copy and to obtain additional information, visit StarWind Software.

*UPDATE : You might experience difficulty connecting to Maxis 3G. This is because Maxis has made some changes to the Maxis Data connection settings. You might also get new settings messages from Maxis asking you to update the GRPS/MMS/3G settings on your phone. If you are not experienced with the settings, you might want to save and activate them. If however, you are technically inclined, you can just make the following changes to your existing settings : Remove the username ‘maxis’ and the password ‘wap’ from the settings. Leave both of these blank and you will be able to connect to the Internet immediately.

Summary : You no longer need to include a username and password (traditionally ‘maxis’ and ‘wap’ respectively) for your Maxis 3G/GPRS/MMS settings.
I just got this SMS from Maxis, saying:

NEW monthly Mobile Internet plans available. RM 58 for 500MB, RM 78 for 1.5GB & RM 88 for 3GB worth of usage. Details on maxis.com.my. You may stay on your current RM 99 monthly Unlimited Access Mobile Internet plan (Fair Usage Policy applies).

Very interesting. A quick check on the Maxis website shows the new plans. But the million dollar question I had was can I switch back to the Unlimited Plan if I choose to switch to any of the limited plans. A phonecall to the Maxis Call Center revealed that NO, you cannot switch back to RM 99 unlimited plan.

Basically, Maxis has stopped offering the RM 99 Unlimited plan, if you are on it, you can continue being on it. If however, you choose a limited plan, there’s no turning back to the Unlimited plan. You can however, switch between the limited plans.

Interesting. I initially thought of switching to the RM 78 for 1.5GB plan, but considering its only 21 Ringgit less a month, PLUS not being able to switch back to RM 99 for the unlimited plan, I will probably stick to the unlimited plan for now.

So if you are considering switching to the limited plan, you may want to give the above points a thought.
FYI : I rely on the Mobile Internet not just for surfing on my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, but also for surfing on my laptop via Bluetooth (I shall cover how to do this soon).

If you have been a Windows application developer for the past 10 years, you would remember that when building a small, desktop sized application database driven application, perhaps the only viable option for a database would have been the Microsoft Jet Engine, which is what Microsoft Access is based upon. It used to get the job done, but with multiple users, the typical problem was that since it was file-based, the database would get corrupted as multiple simultaneous record updates took place.

Then at the turn of the century, along came a well-kept secret, the free Microsoft Desktop Engine, also known as MSDE 2000. This was essentially a scaled down version of the SQL Server 2000, with a size limit of 2GB. Microsoft did not over-advertize this database, and it did not even come with its own Management Tool. So you either had to use Microsoft Access as a front end (yes its possible, we will cover this in another post), or you had to purchase a third party tool such as MSDE Manager by Vale Software. This allowed many people to develop desktop and web applications on the Windows platform, with a more reliable database.

Subsequently, Microsoft a similarly scaled down version of the SQL Server 2005 database and branded it as Express. So it was called Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express edition. This worked just as well as the MSDE 2000, and was also Vista compatible, in addition to having a larger data limit of 4 GBs. These two factors moved a large number of developers to switch from MSDE 2000 to MS SQL 2005 Express edition.

Currently, SQL Server 2008 Express edition is the latest free database offering from Microsoft. It comes with many more features compared with the humble MSDE 2000, including its own Management Tool, reporting, and full-text search. To obtain a copy of this database, head over to : The SQL Server 2008 Express homepage.

The database is powerful enough to handle most desktop and workgroup applications. The good thing is that if you start off with the Express edition and find that you need a more robust database, you can easily switch to the one of the many versions of the full-fledged SQL Server 2008. Click here for a full comparison of all the versions of SQL Server 2008, including the free Express edition.

Just a word of advise, SQL Server 2008 Express edition starts in a “lockdown” mode. To prevent security risks, you will need to enable any features which you need on the server. Even simple network access within a local area network is disabled. Its designed to work only in Shared Memory mode when first installed. To get access to the server over TCP/IP, you will need to fire up the SQL Server Configuration Manager. Under SQL Server Services, first make sure that the SQL Server Browser service is running. Next, expand the SQL Server Network Configuration, and under Protocols for SQLEXPRESS, right click on TCP/IP and click on Enable. Now, double click on TCP/IP and under the IP addresses tab, you will see all the IP address which are associated with your server. Make sure you change those which you need to Enable and Active. Phew talk about lockdown security. If you still cannot access your SQL Server, you may also want to enable the NetBIOS protocol on your network connection, and also Enable the Named Pipes protocol in your Protocols for SQL Express.

Hopefully these steps you help you save some frustration in connecting to your SQL Server 2008 Express edition. Would love to hear from your on your experiences.

I have had my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic for 3 months already now, and absolutely love it. It is truly one of the best deals in the mobile market today in terms of both price and performance.

Every now and then I browse through the Nokia Ovi Store and download new application and utilities on it.

A couple of days ago, a strange thing began happening on my device, it began displaying seemingly random digits in a gray box in the top right hand corner of my phone, be it in portrait or landscape mode. The digits are displayed in NN.NN format, where N can be any digit from 0-9.

I immediately fired up my browser and Googled it up,  and no one seemed to have an answer for this problem. I somehow felt it was something I did recently on my phone, like installing a certain software. So I began to uninstall programs on my phone one by one until I found the culprit! It was none other than the Nokia Mobile Web Server.  Its a nifty application which enables you to run a webserver on your mobile phone, and allows you and your friends to access your phone over the Internet with a simple web browser.

Immediately after I uninstalled it, the weird digits in the top right hand corner of the phone screen disappeared! So if you are experiencing the same issue on your phone, this quick fix will cure your phone from the annoying digits. You may want to install the Nokia Mobile Web Server after it comes out of beta.

Yesterday I encountered a very strange behavior in Microsoft Office 2007. I was about to save a document I was working on in a particular folder in my D: drive, and I found that the save file dialog box was taking forever just to show me a list of folders in my D: drive.

Once that list loaded, it took equally long to show a list of subfolders within a particular folder I double-clicked on. This kept happening until I reached the folder in which I wanted to save my file.

It would take about a minute or two for the screen to display the contents of each subfolder. Frustrated by the delay, I did a quick search on Google and discovered that the delay can be caused by network drives which are not currently available.

I then realized the source of my problem. I had recently purchased a HP Color LaserJet CP1518ni color laser printer, which comes with a built-in memory card reader. The printer driver had automatically created a mapped network drive to the card reader on my computer with the drive letter X:.

Each time I would explore the folders on my computer through the file save dialog box, it would try to connect to the network drive. This was the cause of the delays! I right clicked on the mapped network drive and clicked on Disconnect, and voila, the file save as dialog box begun working speedily again.

Hopefully this will help you save time and frustration if you ever come across this problem. By the way the HP Color LaserJet CP1518ni is an excellent color laser printer which I purchased for RM 1200 from Sri Computers in Low Yat Plaza.

Firefox helped redefine the rules of web standard compliance when it first came out, fighting a David and Goliath battle against IE 6 then. It has come a long way now, and is the second browser in market dominance today.

Firefox 3.5 was released recently, promising double the processing speeds of Firefox 3.

I breezed through the upgrade process and hastily tried navigating around in Gmail. Decidedly faster.

Then, I realized the Offline Gmail feature was not working. I figured I needed to reinstall and resync the whole thing again, so I tried downloading Google Gears. That’s when I bumped into an error message and after Googling it up, I realized Google Gears has not been released for Firefox 3.5

This means users who rely on Google Gears (eg GMail Offline and Wordpress) are left in the dark. People have been complaining on message boards but somehow Google has yet to release an update for Google Gears on Firefox 3.5.

The Solution:  Geza Kovacs from MIT has released his own plugin for Firefox 3.5 which works perfectly well! If he could build it, I’m sure Google could have too. Perhaps they are trying to get people to switch over to their browser, Google Chrome. Anyway, Geza Kovacs’ solution is here : http://groups.google.com/group/gears-users/msg/70f164020c0f8f4e?pli=1

Just click on the appropriate link for your operating system, and you’re good to go!

In today’s post I am going to share with you how to get a free upgrade on your new Dell Laptop. This is based on my personal experience, so if you are intending on purchasing a Dell Laptop anytime soon, now is a good time to do it, since I will show you a loophole to get a free upgrade

This is what happened. I placed an order for two Dell Inspiron 1420 laptops on the Dell Online Store at www.dell.com.my. The order completed successfully. However,  the next day, a Dell sales personnel called me to tell me that the Dell Inspiron 1420 is out of production, and they will give the exact same specifications but on the Dell Studio 14 laptop for the same price!

I did a quick check and with the same specifications as the Inspiron 1420, the Studio 14 was costing about RM 500 more. So here I was being offered a free RM 500 upgrade! I asked the sales personnel if the model was out of production, then why still offer it online? That’s when she explained that Dell Online store is actually beyond their direct control and the offers they place are for 3 months at a time.

So, ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is what I call a window of opportunity! I just checked, and the Insipiron 1420 is still being offered at RM 2499 with a Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz processor, 3GB RAM, 320GB HDD, WiFi, Bluetooth, 2 MP Webcam, DVDRW Drive, the works! And the best part is that if you order, they cannot deliver it to you since its out of production and you will get these specs in the Studio 14 laptop.

So, if you want a free upgrade to your brand new Dell laptop, now is the time to grab it!

I have been using AVG for a good number of years now and it has worked trouble-free for me. Out of the blue, a couple of days ago, a strange thing began happening to my AVG 8 Free Edition antivirus. It would refuse to update itself. A popup kept appearing saying Update failed. The connection with update server has failed.

Initially, I thought it was just due to the update server being too busy, with AVG boasting over 80 millions users worldwide. The next day, the symptoms were exactly the same, and I thought there was something wrong with my Internet connection, or perhaps the updater was being blocked by the firewall. I quickly ruled that out when it still would not update even using my wireless connection at home.

A search on Google revealed many other disgruntled users with the same problem, but no solution was to be seen. I then decided to check through every option in the Tools…Advanced Settings menu in AVG. Under the Update settings, I discovered that a checkbox saying ‘Use dial-up connections’  had somehow become selected. I unchecked this and restarted AVG, and voila! It was hungrily downloading the updates it had been deprived of the past few days.

So if you don’t know why your AVG 8 antivirus decides to stop updating all of a sudden, double check this setting to make sure it didn’t get switched on somehow.

Today’s post is about something I have wanted for a long time… Being able to access Gmail offline. You see, I use Gmail to send and receive email from multiple addresses (you can add up to 5 other email addresses). So yes, you could use Gmail to send and receive your Streamyx email or any email service that supports POP or IMAP.

So, this morning when the option to enable offline access to Gmail appeared under my Google Labs options in Gmail, I quickly grabbed the opportunity. You see, Gmail has been the perfect solution to all my email needs, especially with the virtually unlimited storage and multiple email address support. But the biggest gripe was it was not available offline since the emails are stored on Google’s servers. This was a major disadvantage compared to downloading emails to an email client, such as Microsoft Outlook.

So lets see how to go about enabling this feature for your Gmail account. First of all, you will need to check if this feature has been rolled out to your account yet. In typical Google style, the features are rolled out to their users in batches. Just click settings in Gmail, and then click on the third option from the right, Labs.

Here you will see a list of fascinating features which have not been officially released as part of the Gmail offering, but are available for mass user testing. While the title at the top says experimental features, based on my experience, all of Gmail Labs features work very well. That’s Gmail just being extra careful with which features they deploy.

Anyway, coming back to the Offline Gmail feature, click on the Enable radio button to enable this feature for your Gmail. Make sure you scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click on Save Changes. Next, go back to your Gmail inbox, and you will see the word “Offline 0.1″ on the top right hand corner. Click on this to start the entire Offline installation process.

Essentially, the Gmail Offline feature uses Google Gears, an application designed by Google to help bridge the gap between web-based and desktop programs. If you do not already have it, you will be prompted to install Google Gears. Based on your usage, Gmail Offline will automatically decide how much email it will save on your desktop for offline access. In my case, it decided it would fetch email from up to a year ago.

While the synchronization process is running, you will see a green rotation icon indicating the sync process is in progress. Placing your mouse pointer over this icon will show a quick status on how much of your email has been synchronized, including attachments. After the initial sync process is complete, it will continuously and intelligently sync your emails between the Google server and your computer to ensure you always have access to your emails, be it online or offline.

So if you thought Gmail was incomplete because it was only accessible online, think again, and enable the Offline mode access to enjoy Gmail in its fully glory.