Windows Netbooks: The Path to Low Cost Computing
Published May 30, 2010
Author: James Floyd Kelly
Publisher: Apress
ISBN: 978-1-4302-2399-3
My usual three criteria for judging a book are:
- Is it technically accurate?
- Does deliver the material it claims to deliver?
- Is worth the cost of purchase and the time I spend reading it?
I came to this book more intrigued than anything. I’d not really considered using a netbook – they are too small to do what I want. Right? So I wanted to learn more and find out if my ideas were right.
At 202 pages this isn’t a massive book and the ratio of screen shots to text is pretty high so it is a fairly quick read.
The book contains 12 chapters and three appendices:
- 1 The Netbook
- 2 Netbook Hardware Option
- 3 Netbook Maintenance
- 4 Netbook Software Options
- 5 Netbook and Google Docs
- 6 Netbook and Malware Protection
- 7 Netbook Web Browsers
- 8 Netbook Email
- 9 Netbook Calendar
- 10 Netbooks and OpenOffice.org
- 11 Windows 7 and Netbooks
- 12 Finding Great Netbook Apps
- A Netbook manufacturers
- B Upgrading a Netbook to Windows 7
- C additional Netbook Apps to consider
Chapter 1 opens the discussion with a review of exactly what a netbook is and why they are so useful. A jog through the main hardware components and a look at how they can influence your purchasing decisions completes the chapter. Chapter 2 follows straight on with a look at the extras you may want – USB hub, pen drive, external CD\DVD, mouse, keyboard etc. Chapter 3 gives a few hints on the watering (not literally) and feeding of netbooks.
By chapter 4 we’re looking at software. A computer’s great but you can’t do anything without software. Open Source and Cloud computing get the most space here – especially openoffice.
Chapters 5, 8 and 9 are straight advertising copy for Google Docs, Google Mail and Google Calendar respectively. Ok so as the author you love these but there are alternatives and in some cases much better alternatives.
Chapter 6 covers Malware with so good information on free AV products. The section on SpyBot is overdone. If your netbook runs Windows 7 it has Windows Defender – works for me.
The brower is next with chapter 7 mainly given over to a discussion of Firefox. Chapter 10 returns to OpenOffice but agian doesn’t mention alternatives.
In chapter 11 we look at windows 7 on netbooks – good recommendation to get one with it installed. A check at a PC retailer today showed most have it installed. The book was published in October 2009 and is already showing its age.
Chapter 12’s discussion on applications spends too long explaining how to search the Internet. The bit at the end on online software repositories was worth waiting for. I also tried Attack of the Buggles (page 182) the book was almost worth it for that alone!
The appendices do what they say with Appendix C being an extension of chapter 12.
So in summary what do I think of the book:
- technically it is accurate but on the light side. Don’t look here for an in-depth discussion of the technologies. I’d give it 7/10
- does it deliver on the material – yes. After reading this you would have a good idea of waht a netbook can do and if its for you - - 8/10
- is it worth buying and reading. Not sure if I’d be totally happy if I’d bought it but it was worth the read. – 8/10
Overall, it made me think about netbooks and their place in the scheme of things – I might actually be getting one soon as I can see so uses for one – especially now I can get Windows 7 on one. - - 8/10
I think the book will suffer because of the rapid changes in this area of technology. Another edition in 12 months wouldn’t go amiss – if it was an ebook it would be quicker to update.
PowerShell in Practice ebook deal
Published May 26, 2010I know there isn’t much of today left but if you are quick its possible to get an ebook version of PowerShell in Practice for $15. See the deal of the day at http://www.manning.com/
Query me no more
Published May 24, 2010One of the things I noticed in the recent Scripting Games was that a lot of the scripts would do things like this
$query = "Select MaxClockSpeed from Win32_Processor"
$proc = Get-WmiObject -Query $query
Write-Host "Speed: " $proc.MaxClockSpeed
Create a query to access the Win32_Processor class to get the MaxClockSpeed. Run the query and then use Write-Host to format and output the results. We’ll come back to use Write-Host like this another time.
This construction is based on the way things used to be done with VBScript. With PowerShell we have much easier ways to get to the same result.
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Processor | Format-List MaxClockSpeed
will produce the same answer. if you really need the formatting
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Processor | Format-List @{Name='Speed'; Expression={$_.MaxClockSpeed}}
or even
Write-Host "Speed: " (Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Processor).MaxClockSpeed
Get-WmiObject does a great job of returning the information from a WMI class. Use its power and simplicity to make your scripts quicker to write and easier to understand
Quick ping
Published May 21, 2010If you’ve used ping before you’ll know that it normally returns four replies from the target. In PowerShell we have Test-Connection which does the same job. It also normally returns four replies.
When I’m working with remote machines I often want to check they are available before sending a command – especially a WMI command that can take a long time to time out.
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001
002 003 004 005 006 007 |
"rslaptop01", "127.0.0.1" |
foreach { if (Test-Connection $_ -Count 1) { Get-WmiObject -ComputerName $_ -Class Win32_LogicalDisk -Filter "DriveType='3'" | select SystemName, DeviceID, Size, FreeSpace } } |
To speed up the process use the –Count parameter on test-connection and only get 1 reply. Quick test to see if he system is there and then run the rest of the code
UG May 2010 Recording, Slides and demo
Published May 18, 2010Thank you to everyone who joined the Live Meeting this evening. Hope you enjoyed the session on PowerShell events.
The slides and demo files are available from
http://cid-43cfa46a74cf3e96.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/PowerShell%20User%20Group/May%202010
The recording can be viewed on line
View Recording
Recording Details
Subject: PowerShell Events
Recording URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/view
Recording ID: 39Q7T9
Attendee Key: Q&x!_63dP
PowerShell UG reminder
Published May 16, 2010
Next Live Meeting is Tuesday 18 May at 7.30pm BST
Subject is PowerShell Jobs and Events
Details of the Live Meeting from: http://msmvps.com/blogs/richardsiddaway/archive/2010/05/03/powershell-ug-may-2010.aspx
hey ho hey ho its off to print we go
Published May 15, 2010PowerShell in Practice will be going to the printers next week.
Between now and 21 May 2010 you can get 40% off of PowerShell in Practice (and other Manning books that are in the final stages of production)
Use promotional code m1440 at checkout from www.manning.com
PSCX 2.0 install
Published May 12, 2010I mentioned last time that PSCX 2.0 was available. There is a very wide range of functionality available in the form of functions and cmdlets:
Cmdlets
Add-PathVariable Clear-MSMQueue ConvertFrom-Base64
ConvertTo-Base64 ConvertTo-MacOs9LineEnding ConvertTo-Metric
ConvertTo-UnixLineEnding ConvertTo-WindowsLineEnding Convert-Xml
Disconnect-TerminalSession Expand-Archive Export-Bitmap
Format-Byte Format-Hex Format-Xml
Get-ADObject Get-AdoConnection Get-AdoDataProvider
Get-AlternateDataStream Get-Clipboard Get-DhcpServer
Get-DomainController Get-DriveInfo Get-EnvironmentBlock
Get-FileTail Get-FileVersionInfo Get-ForegroundWindow
Get-Hash Get-HttpResource Get-LoremIpsum
Get-MountPoint Get-MSMQueue Get-OpticalDriveInfo
Get-PathVariable Get-PEHeader Get-Privilege
Get-PSSnapinHelp Get-ReparsePoint Get-ShortPath
Get-TabExpansion Get-TerminalSession Get-TypeName
Get-Uptime Import-Bitmap Invoke-AdoCommand
Invoke-Apartment Join-String New-Hardlink
New-Junction New-MSMQueue New-Shortcut
New-Symlink Out-Clipboard Ping-Host
Pop-EnvironmentBlock Push-EnvironmentBlock Read-Archive
Receive-MSMQueue Remove-AlternateDataStream Remove-MountPoint
Remove-ReparsePoint Resolve-Host Send-MSMQueue
Send-SmtpMail Set-BitmapSize Set-Clipboard
Set-FileTime Set-ForegroundWindow Set-PathVariable
Set-Privilege Set-VolumeLabel Skip-Object
Split-String Start-TabExpansion Stop-TerminalSession
Test-AlternateDataStream Test-Assembly Test-MSMQueue
Test-Script Test-UserGroupMembership Test-Xml
Unblock-File Write-BZip2 Write-Clipboard
Write-GZip Write-Tar Write-Zip
functions
Add-DirectoryLength Add-ShortPath Dismount-VHD
Edit-File Edit-HostProfile Edit-Profile
Enable-OpenPowerShellHere Get-Help Get-PropertyValue
Get-ScreenCss Get-ScreenHtml Get-ViewDefinition
help Invoke-BatchFile Invoke-Elevated
Invoke-GC Invoke-Method Invoke-NullCoalescing
Invoke-Reflector Invoke-Ternary less
Mount-VHD New-HashObject Out-Speech
QuoteList QuoteString Resolve-ErrorRecord
Resolve-HResult Resolve-WindowsError Set-LocationEx
Set-ReadOnly Set-Writable Show-Tree
Stop-RemoteProcess
Download the zip file, unblock it, unzip and copy the pscx folder and all sub folders to a folder on your modules path. Couldn’t be easier. To get the functionality
Import-Module pscx
PowerShell Community Extensions 2.0
Published May 11, 2010I’ve mentioned the Community Extensions many times in these posts. Version 2.0 is now available http://www.codeplex.com/wikipage?ProjectName=Pscx.
It installs as a PowerShell module – much easier and neater.
I’ve blogged about the beta a few times – if you didn’t try the beta go and get the RTM
Hex Subtraction
Published May 11, 2010Again this takes the pattern from the binary function and adapts it to work with hex
|
001
002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012 013 014 015 016 |
## this will always subtract value2 from value1
function Get-HexDifference { param( [string]$inputvalue1, [string]$inputvalue2 ) ## check valid hex numbers Test-Hex $inputvalue1 Test-Hex $inputvalue2 $diff = (ConvertTo-Decimal -inputvalue $inputvalue1 -hex) ` if ($diff -lt 0){Throw "Hex subtraction produces negative number"} |
As with the binary subtraction function we test to see if we’ve gone negative – if so reject the value.
That’s the end of the math module for now. As soon as I’ve done the help files I’ll post it on codeplex.