I've nearly had enough of Outlook 2007 and am seriously considering something like Firebird instead.
The guys appear to have added quite a few new features in 2007 over 2003 but have also created far more problems than I'm prepared to put up with.
I've now solved one of the most annoying which was performance related - how can anything run slowly on a 2.2 GHz Dual Core with 4GB RAM and a 64GB solid state disk!
The problem appears to be that Outlook offline data files were designed for very small mailboxes - I suspect the underlying architecture is very similar to that in a PST file. Somewhere in the design must be a hash-table and leafs of a b-tree and that b-tree is very much overflowing in a modern email environment.
I'm a power user and don't deny it and I like to keep almost every non-spam email I receive - they are an invaluable resource on a day to day basis. For that reason my .OST file was nearly 8GB - large - but not unreasonable with the bloat that is a XLS or DOC file.
The issue is that performance drops to unacceptable and although I can't hear the thrashing I can see that the SSD is being worked ridiculously hard by the flashing disk activity light.
The answer has been to do the following, and although it works for me because of the way I store my emails it won't work for everyone.
I personally like to keep archives in a chronological manner - maybe it's just me but I find it fairly easy to guess a date for something and from there honing in on the right thing is fairly easy. For that reason I simply have subfolders under the inbox and sent-items for 1997, 1998, 1999 etc through to 2007.
I generally keep 3 months worth of current emails in my Inbox and Sent Items and archive into the subfolders every month or two.
What I've ended up doing is copying the data (not moving) from all of the yearly folders into a PST file (with the exception of 2007).
This has resulted in a 2.7GB PST file.
The next thing I've done is to set the synchronisation filter for the yearly folders to only synchronise unread emails - in other word nothing. This leaves the emails where they belong - on the Exchange server - in an appropriate folder but means that my OST file has shrunk to just over 1GB.
Maybe it's an indication of how bad the OST structure is that the disk space required for this solution has almost halved. I can't think why other than Unicode/ANSI text issues.
I've made the PST file read-only and will copy it to each of my machines as an offline copy of data that won't change (well only at the beginning of each year when I move a whole additional years worth of mail into the PST).
The main reason the solution is acceptable is that Windows Desktop Search is able to index PST files and seamlessly integrates the results with those from the Inbox.
Windows Desktop Search is one of those applications I love to hate - but it works - which is why it annoys me as it really does solve problems such as these by bringing together results so effectively.
A solution which so far is proving far better than Outlook alone would provide - all I need to solve now is why Outlook keeps forgetting my favourite public folders...
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
Sage Line 50 on 64bit Windows
Well my 64bit laptop is gradually coming together - only a few more 64bit niggles to iron out and then it's fully up and usable.
The one I've solved today involves Sage Line 50 - and specifically the rather ancient version that I'm fully licensed for - v7.
The installers appear to be a 16bit app (is that possible?) and 16bit apps don't run at all on 64bit windows so that installer just starts setup.exe and does absolutely nothing.
Since I've done a fair bit of installshield work in the past I though the best route would be to monitor the install on a clean machine and reproduce the steps on the new laptop.
Using WinstallLE (from the Windows 2000 Server CD) I built an MSI but more importantly gathered the registry changes that were made during the installation. As always there were lots more than required so I trimmed out everything referencing parts of the registry that weren't relevant to the install.
In addition to the contents of the Line50 folder there are a bunch of files mostly matching SG*.dll in the system32 folder and also SW7*.dll which is the ODBC driver.
I copied these into the main installation folder and got a working Sage - but I knew that the hardest part would be to get the ODBC working.
It turns out that the ODBC driver was built against the MS VC RTL 2 so I copied that and also an unknown dll called MSIMTF.dll.
Once those dependencies were copied across (again into the Line50 folder) I was able to run the 32bit ODBC administrator which cunningly lives in c:\windows\syswow64\odbcad32.exe.
Unsurprisingly the ODBC driver wasn't yet registered which can be performed with the following statement:
C:\WINDOWS\SysWOW64>odbcconf INSTALLDRIVER "Sage Line 50 v7|Driver=c:\work\line50\SW7DBC32.dll|Setup=c:\work\line50\SW7DBC32.dll"
Where "c:\work\line50" is the installation folder.
And hey presto - a working Sage Line 50 complete with reports!
The one I've solved today involves Sage Line 50 - and specifically the rather ancient version that I'm fully licensed for - v7.
The installers appear to be a 16bit app (is that possible?) and 16bit apps don't run at all on 64bit windows so that installer just starts setup.exe and does absolutely nothing.
Since I've done a fair bit of installshield work in the past I though the best route would be to monitor the install on a clean machine and reproduce the steps on the new laptop.
Using WinstallLE (from the Windows 2000 Server CD) I built an MSI but more importantly gathered the registry changes that were made during the installation. As always there were lots more than required so I trimmed out everything referencing parts of the registry that weren't relevant to the install.
In addition to the contents of the Line50 folder there are a bunch of files mostly matching SG*.dll in the system32 folder and also SW7*.dll which is the ODBC driver.
I copied these into the main installation folder and got a working Sage - but I knew that the hardest part would be to get the ODBC working.
It turns out that the ODBC driver was built against the MS VC RTL 2 so I copied that and also an unknown dll called MSIMTF.dll.
Once those dependencies were copied across (again into the Line50 folder) I was able to run the 32bit ODBC administrator which cunningly lives in c:\windows\syswow64\odbcad32.exe.
Unsurprisingly the ODBC driver wasn't yet registered which can be performed with the following statement:
C:\WINDOWS\SysWOW64>odbcconf INSTALLDRIVER "Sage Line 50 v7|Driver=c:\work\line50\SW7DBC32.dll|Setup=c:\work\line50\SW7DBC32.dll"
Where "c:\work\line50" is the installation folder.
And hey presto - a working Sage Line 50 complete with reports!
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Dell Precision M4300
My existing Dell Latitude D600 is nearly 4 years old and as it's Dell's year end and the discounting is good I though I'd treat myself to a new laptop.
My main requirements are 1400x1050 LCD, 4GB RAM, Core-2 duo and good battery life.
Dell appear to have left us developers in the dark these days and the choice of laptops with a decent vertical resolution has dwindled considerably - you either have the choice of a huge 17" screen and a luggable rather than portable machine or a D520 class machine which I've never been impressed at.
Being D Series compatible is important to me as I've got a number of peripherals that fit in the d-dock and docking stations at various places where I work - so I've ended up opting for the 1680x1050 resolution 15.4" screen of the precision M4300.
My first impressions are that it's big - much bigger than I was hoping for and next to my D600 it really is in a different league. I really hope that there's a revolt to continual use of wide-screen displays - they're very nice - but you do end up with an impractical display configuration. As a developer we always work on "tall and thin" code and how many people you know work on word documents in landscape mode? Is the modern laptop really dedicated to people who watch DVD's? If so how about those of us who actually work on our laptops for a living?
Well it's a big laptop and unfortunately that also means it's a heavy laptop - it's got a good array of ports - everything you'd imagine really from 3xUSB, eSATA, firewire, PCMCIA and Cardbus, VGA, serial, NIC, modem, and s-video. What's dissappointingly missing is a card reader of some variety which means I'll end up installing the little PCMCIA flash readers that I've used in my previous machines. A shame really given the huge amount of empty space there must be inside the case.
Performance wise though the size does have it's advantages - the screen is good, and the processor (2.2 GHz core-2 duo) is spot on - as is the 4GB RAM. I'm running Win XP 64bit so I can actually use all 4GB unlike many with 4GB installed. This laptop also has a nVidia QuadroFX 360M with 512MB onboard so I won't be sharing core RAM with the video card. You'd also have hoped that they'd have got a 370M into it but no such luck so this machine won't be the fastest around for Vista - personally I see that as an advantage rather than a disadvantage as I'll be switching to Windows Server 2008 once it's finally released rather than going anywhere near Vista.
The machine came with a 160GB 7200RPM SATA disk from Seagate which is about as good as 2.5" disks get these days - I did some performance stats with H2BENCHW and it really is a good disk, shame it's had to be removed to make way for an SSD.
Which cunningly leads me onto the most crucial bit - the Samsung 64GB SATA SSD - supplied by overclockers.co.uk at the whopping price of £499+VAT (that's 2/3rds of the cost of the laptop on top). Overclockers.co.uk have found a way of supplying these disks to the general public and this disk turned up Dell branded - they must be purchasing direct from Dell which sounds about right as I believe Samsung have agreed to supply to OEMs only to start off with.
Compared to the 32GB PATA SSD that I have in the D600 the 64GB SATA SSD is a far more polished product - rather than exposed chips in a plastic case the SATA model appears to be a single billet of aluminium with space carved out for the electronics - a much more appealing thing to behold but still far too expensive for the average user.
The first thing that I've really noticed with the SSD compared to the mechanical disk is how quiet the machine has now become - I hadn't realised quite how much noise the original disk was contributing whilst I was benchmarking and testing the original disk but now that the SSD is in I realise that the CPU fans only rarely cut in so the noise from the machine was almost entirely from the disk - not the sound of the heads moving but just a background noise of the spinning disk which has now thankfully gone - I'm finally beginning to like this machine.
Speed I guess is the reason for the SSD and I'm a bit dissappointed with the benchmarks - it's not looking any faster than the PATA model. I thought I was buying the Samsung 100MB/s model but it looks like that isn't the one in the market right now and 50MB/s is what I'm getting. That's slower than the 105MB/s I got from the 7200 RPM disk but as with any SSD it's the access times that count. Average Random Seek times have gone from the original 14.4ms (very respectable for a 2.5" 7200RPM disk) down to the almost insignificant 0.26ms - that's 55x faster which means that it can truly sustain 50MB/s at all times rather than just the occasional burst to 105MB/s that a rotating disk can manage.
In the real world what this means is that I'm booting from on-switch to login prompt in approximately 20 seconds - not forgetting that this is a machine with a 6GB page file, a full array of development tools including SQL 2k5 developer edition and then from login prompt so usable desktop is almost instantaneous and gloriously silent. That's quick enough for me.
So to rate the Precision M4300 - I'd have to score it:
Processor 9/10
Screen 9/10
Weight 4/10
Size 4/10
Disk 7/10 (original)
Disk 9/10 (SATA SSD)
Overall 8/10 - it's the size and weight of the machine that's dissappointing especially when you consider what Apple can do with the MacBook Air and what Asus can do with the Eee PC.
My main requirements are 1400x1050 LCD, 4GB RAM, Core-2 duo and good battery life.
Dell appear to have left us developers in the dark these days and the choice of laptops with a decent vertical resolution has dwindled considerably - you either have the choice of a huge 17" screen and a luggable rather than portable machine or a D520 class machine which I've never been impressed at.
Being D Series compatible is important to me as I've got a number of peripherals that fit in the d-dock and docking stations at various places where I work - so I've ended up opting for the 1680x1050 resolution 15.4" screen of the precision M4300.
My first impressions are that it's big - much bigger than I was hoping for and next to my D600 it really is in a different league. I really hope that there's a revolt to continual use of wide-screen displays - they're very nice - but you do end up with an impractical display configuration. As a developer we always work on "tall and thin" code and how many people you know work on word documents in landscape mode? Is the modern laptop really dedicated to people who watch DVD's? If so how about those of us who actually work on our laptops for a living?
Well it's a big laptop and unfortunately that also means it's a heavy laptop - it's got a good array of ports - everything you'd imagine really from 3xUSB, eSATA, firewire, PCMCIA and Cardbus, VGA, serial, NIC, modem, and s-video. What's dissappointingly missing is a card reader of some variety which means I'll end up installing the little PCMCIA flash readers that I've used in my previous machines. A shame really given the huge amount of empty space there must be inside the case.
Performance wise though the size does have it's advantages - the screen is good, and the processor (2.2 GHz core-2 duo) is spot on - as is the 4GB RAM. I'm running Win XP 64bit so I can actually use all 4GB unlike many with 4GB installed. This laptop also has a nVidia QuadroFX 360M with 512MB onboard so I won't be sharing core RAM with the video card. You'd also have hoped that they'd have got a 370M into it but no such luck so this machine won't be the fastest around for Vista - personally I see that as an advantage rather than a disadvantage as I'll be switching to Windows Server 2008 once it's finally released rather than going anywhere near Vista.
The machine came with a 160GB 7200RPM SATA disk from Seagate which is about as good as 2.5" disks get these days - I did some performance stats with H2BENCHW and it really is a good disk, shame it's had to be removed to make way for an SSD.
Which cunningly leads me onto the most crucial bit - the Samsung 64GB SATA SSD - supplied by overclockers.co.uk at the whopping price of £499+VAT (that's 2/3rds of the cost of the laptop on top). Overclockers.co.uk have found a way of supplying these disks to the general public and this disk turned up Dell branded - they must be purchasing direct from Dell which sounds about right as I believe Samsung have agreed to supply to OEMs only to start off with.
Compared to the 32GB PATA SSD that I have in the D600 the 64GB SATA SSD is a far more polished product - rather than exposed chips in a plastic case the SATA model appears to be a single billet of aluminium with space carved out for the electronics - a much more appealing thing to behold but still far too expensive for the average user.
The first thing that I've really noticed with the SSD compared to the mechanical disk is how quiet the machine has now become - I hadn't realised quite how much noise the original disk was contributing whilst I was benchmarking and testing the original disk but now that the SSD is in I realise that the CPU fans only rarely cut in so the noise from the machine was almost entirely from the disk - not the sound of the heads moving but just a background noise of the spinning disk which has now thankfully gone - I'm finally beginning to like this machine.
Speed I guess is the reason for the SSD and I'm a bit dissappointed with the benchmarks - it's not looking any faster than the PATA model. I thought I was buying the Samsung 100MB/s model but it looks like that isn't the one in the market right now and 50MB/s is what I'm getting. That's slower than the 105MB/s I got from the 7200 RPM disk but as with any SSD it's the access times that count. Average Random Seek times have gone from the original 14.4ms (very respectable for a 2.5" 7200RPM disk) down to the almost insignificant 0.26ms - that's 55x faster which means that it can truly sustain 50MB/s at all times rather than just the occasional burst to 105MB/s that a rotating disk can manage.
In the real world what this means is that I'm booting from on-switch to login prompt in approximately 20 seconds - not forgetting that this is a machine with a 6GB page file, a full array of development tools including SQL 2k5 developer edition and then from login prompt so usable desktop is almost instantaneous and gloriously silent. That's quick enough for me.
So to rate the Precision M4300 - I'd have to score it:
Processor 9/10
Screen 9/10
Weight 4/10
Size 4/10
Disk 7/10 (original)
Disk 9/10 (SATA SSD)
Overall 8/10 - it's the size and weight of the machine that's dissappointing especially when you consider what Apple can do with the MacBook Air and what Asus can do with the Eee PC.
LED Bulbs
The time has finally come when the GU10 halogen bulbs in the office have died and I've decided to replace them with LED bulbs.
The deciding bit is easy - the choosing and purchasing is much much harder.
I've ended up going for some that I found in a local DIY store - they are branded - Philips Deco - and are 1W "Warm White" retailing at £6.99 each.
They consist of 9 LED's within the GU10 package and run at 240V AC - according to a spec I finally located in German they appear to be 6000cn rated - which is obviously quite low - but as they're installed three at a time I though I'd give it a go.
Compared to the 3x 35W bulbs that were in there before the light being emitted is almost negligible but that's not really surprising - 105W vs 3W is a considerable power saving.
I've manged to burn through 3 of the existing halogen's in 12 months so it'll be interesting to see how these LED bulbs compare. They are rated between 5,000 and 100,000 hours so it would be nice to think that they'll easily outway they're initial cost.
I'm also considering some of the bulbs that screwfix.com supply - they do two varieties - a Halolite one at 1W and also a Sylvania one at 1.5W.
The deciding bit is easy - the choosing and purchasing is much much harder.
I've ended up going for some that I found in a local DIY store - they are branded - Philips Deco - and are 1W "Warm White" retailing at £6.99 each.
They consist of 9 LED's within the GU10 package and run at 240V AC - according to a spec I finally located in German they appear to be 6000cn rated - which is obviously quite low - but as they're installed three at a time I though I'd give it a go.
Compared to the 3x 35W bulbs that were in there before the light being emitted is almost negligible but that's not really surprising - 105W vs 3W is a considerable power saving.
I've manged to burn through 3 of the existing halogen's in 12 months so it'll be interesting to see how these LED bulbs compare. They are rated between 5,000 and 100,000 hours so it would be nice to think that they'll easily outway they're initial cost.
I'm also considering some of the bulbs that screwfix.com supply - they do two varieties - a Halolite one at 1W and also a Sylvania one at 1.5W.
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