What a day! Super-car driving and Super-phone integration.

It’s been a busy day today. Today, I was at the iT Showcase Live event at Mercedes-Benz World, Brooklands. It was fairly quiet for an exhibition, although the exhibitors didn’t give much away, Mercedes did - running rides of their AMG performance vehicles all day long. I managed to get a free pass and a spine-tingling face-breaking trip in a lovely new supercharged 500bhp CLS 63 AMG. When I finally got home, news was breaking that Apple had licensed the Activesync technology from Microsoft for use in their iPhone. This means a great deal for the IT industry, and I shall explain later. First however, the car.. Read more

Noise, what noise? Introducing the Jawbone Bluetooth Headset

It was time this month to look for a noise cancelling headset that would allow me to continue to hold productive business conversations while driving, walking near traffic, near construction/building sites, near noisy air conditioning units and while looking after my 7 month old son. I also wanted something that I could wear whilst at the gym to listen to my podcasts and music as well as taking telephone calls while I’m on the treadmill.

I needed noise cancellation in my life. Something which could take away the sounds of road traffic, air conditioners, screaming kids and building sites. What could be better than military technology, designed by DARPA to aid front line battlefield communication between infantry units in the midst of a war zone?

A war zone. I imagine helicopter-rotor noise and gunfire… But can it handle screening out a busy office worker’s life noise, or my hungry 7 month old baby?

It arrived this morning, so here’s my review of Aliph’s Jawbone Bluetooth Headset:

What’s in the box?

• The Jawbone (with earpiece and ear hook pre fitted)

• Instruction materials

• USB Charging cable and power plug adaptor

• Four ear loops (standard and large, one for each ear)

• Five ear buds (two round, three lipped)

 

Suspiciously missing from the package was a carry case, box or bag to store the Jawbone when not in use.

The box design is amazing. Even better than the new iPod Nano box. The Jawbone is held in place by a plinth like some a trophy piece in a museum or an award. The packaging design suggested good things to come.

“Most highly rated Bluetooth headset ever”

The manufacturers of the Jawbone, Aliph, claim that the Jawbone is the most highly rated headset on the market today. It certainly received a rave reception back in early 2007 when CNN and ABC both made live reviews on their news channels; anchors were amazed at how the Jawbone’s “Noise Shield” technology allowed uninterrupted conversations despite the overwhelming background noise from while leaf blowers, strimmers, vacuum cleaners, loud music and motorway driving with the window open.

 

Aliph’s engineers certainly put sound quality first on their priority list. This is a very good thing.

Design and Noise Cancellation

The design of the Jawbone is excellent. It has a clean and high quality build using premium materials - the plastic is very hard and yet smooth with a glossy finish very much like the type of material used for optical glasses. The device itself is very light, it weighs just a measly 14 grams and is lighter than many of the other Bluetooth headsets on the market. This is impressive given the hardware incorporated within it. I chose black to help reduce it’s apparent size, but it is available in silver and red.

Coming to the size, this headset is one of the bigger headsets. It’s not small and dainty like the Apple iPhone headset. The main reason for this is that the device has a small silicon nipple which needs to rest on your jawbone, hence the name. This silicon nipple detects when you are speaking and automatically shuts off the microphone when you are not talking, eliminating all noise from reaching the listeners ear. During my tests I noticed that there was some very light noise being transmitted from the device during this time, in such a way as you know that the Jawbone user hasn’t hung up. When the user is talking, the vibrations on the nipple are used to determine what noise is speech and what isn’t; the digital signal processor in the headset works its magic to eliminate sounds that are not expected. As if that’s not enough, the Jawbone has two additional background microphones to measuring ambient noise. It uses these to automatically adjust the volume coming through the earpiece - loud if you’re in a supermarket - quiet if you’re in a library. And it’s all automatic, switching on automatically whenever you make a phone call.

During my tests nothing got through the noise shield. Music played at high volume through my Creative Gigaworks S750 set could not get through, no classical, no hip-hop, no jazz. The air conditioner couldn’t be heard by the caller on the other end of the line. I received an unplanned call from my 80 year old grandmother during these tests, and she could hear me very clearly, despite the pounding rhythmic rap of Missy Elliot in the background.

You could be driving down the highway with music blasting and your windows down, on a call to your boss and no-one would know that you were not already sat at your desk. That’s how good this is.

The headset is operated with only two buttons. One button at the back (with ‘Jawbone’ written on it) is used for binding (press and hold), adjusting volume (press once to cycle through manual modes) and turning off noise shield (press and hold during a call). Once bound you won’t need to bind again, volume works automatically depending on your environment and you only need to turn noise shield off to demonstrate it’s abilities to your friends. In short, you never need this button.

The main bulk of the device is another button, this is used for placing calls, hanging up and making push-to-talk commands to your phone/PDA. The buttons are a little hard to press and could be made more tactile.

There are two LED status lights in a strip between the two buttons which light up or flash white and red, depending on what you’re doing. The device also beeps at you to tell you it’s on, off or hanging up or answering a call, etc. You can also with a bit of work get all your PDA/Phone sounds to stream directly to your headset so that you can get your music, movies (sound), or PDA sounds directly to your ear. TomTom Navigator for example can give you (just you) turn by turn directions directly into your ear without having to compete for the sound waves in your vehicle. Further to this, Microsoft Voice Command 1.6 can read you your incoming text messages, appointments, emails, and tell you who is calling.

Fitting and Comfort

The Jawbone comes with four different ear hooks, large and standard, one for each ear, as well as a selection of ear pieces.

I would be surprised if you couldn’t get this device to fit your ear out of the box. I have above average ears and wear glasses, and still the large loop doesn’t feel tight and the Jawbone is well fitting enough to take with me to the gym for an active workout. The ear buds aren’t in the ear, but sit just over your ear entrance. This is a good thing, since the Jawbone has a rather loud startup beep which would be be unpleasant if the speaker was positioned any closer to you ear. Some of the buds have lips to place against your tragus (the bit of cartilage covering your ear canal entrance). If you need a more snug fit, you can contact this company to who will send you some putty to mould your ear and send a custom silicone earpiece to you.

The earpieces themselves are impressive, unlike in the ear headphones these rubberised earpieces are fairly rigid and have a solid plastic twist-mounting mechanism so you are unlikely to lose them. Good thinking.

Performance

The battery life on this device is advertised at up to 6 hours talking (with noise shield on) and 120 hours of standby. Other reviews that I have read tend to agree with this estimate or have found the claims to be exceeded. If anything, Aliph appear to have underestimated the battery life of their device. Bear in mind this fantastic battery life, with the digital sound processing has all been achieved at under 14 grams…

The Bluetooth range is specified as up to 33 feet (10 meters), which is consistent with the Bluetooth v1.0/1.2 specification. This device also supports the Bluetooth v2.0 specification, but I only managed about 10 meters away from my Bluetooth v2.0 phone before getting an unusable amount of static in my earpiece. I could easily put my phone downstairs at home and walk a room or two away and continue the conversation - more appropriately, at the gym the phone will live in my gym bag whilst I wear the headset to the gym equipment. This is the best performing Bluetooth headset I have seen, but I am left wondering if Aliph adopted the 2004 Bluetooth v2.0 specification with its reduced duty cycle, if they could have seen lower power consumption and thus longer battery life? I wonder why they didn’t support a better 2004 technology, choosing a slower 1998 revision instead.

Design Flaws

Every product has areas which are not so good. I admit I knew about these flaws when I purchased the Jawbone, but the flaws are not so big that they were a deal breaker for me. For 95% of people, the Jawbone is the best Bluetooth headset on the market today (and has been for a year).

• Fragile ear hooks - The ear hooks mount by pushing a thin piece of metal into the spring loaded body of the Jawbone. It is at the point where the metal halves in thickness, that it can be prone to snapping. The ear hook feels rigid to me and mine haven’t snapped yet, but I can see the potential in the future if somewhere were to twist the ear hook by snagging it or sitting on it
  

• Proprietary charging cable - The charging cable, although one end is a normal sized USB cable has a proprietary 4 pin charging connector socket at the other end. Aliph could have used a standard micro-USB connector like those found on phones and digital cameras. So here is another type of proprietary cable I have to have cluttering my desk. By the way, replacement cables (as per ear hooks) can be purchased from Aliph and I understand they could be very expensive (I couldn’t see a price on the Aliph website)
  

• The rubber protective cap - This is going to get lost within a day or two of usage. I therefore have taken all the pictures for this review without it attached, since everybody is going to be losing theirs pretty much instantly. How ridiculous is that?
  

• Expensive - this technology and premium design (despite the flaws above) doesn’t come cheap, baby. If you’re in the UK and want to buy one from the high street, expect to pay through the nose at the Carphone Warehouse (they have exclusive rights to sell this in the UK). Alternatively, check the prices on Amazon.co.uk and Expansys for comparison.

• Windows Mobile A2DP - Not really a design flaw as such, but this device does seem to support the A2DP protocol (playing audio through Bluetooth), but it took a bit of playing around with my phone to get it to work. By default, the device presents itself as a “hands free” service - which means it integrates with phones for picking up, calling and hanging up and not much else out of the box. However, it will work out of the box as a simple hands free set exactly as planned; but us techie geeks want to innovate with our devices just one step further… For home users, this device is unlikely to improve since it doesn’t support flashing the firmware, so the software cannot be upgraded (unlike one or two of the competing headsets).

Pros:

• The best noise filtration on the market. Filters out almost everything but your voice

• Automatic volume adjustment

• Very light

• Very comfortable (comes with numerous fitting accessories to customise your fit)

• Impressive battery life

• Excellent call quality

• Multiple uses: Use with your mobile, but also your home and work PC, laptops, Play Station 3, XBox 360, etc)

• Compatible with Bluetooth 2.0 and 1.0 (old!) devices

Cons:

• It’s rather expensive. RRP £79.99 GBP / $150.00 USD

• Fragile ear hooks

• No carry case

• Proprietary charging cable

Conclusion:

If you’re looking for a Bluetooth “hands free” headset for your mobile phone, you have only three choices on the market today; whether to buy your Jawbone in red, black or silver.

The noise reduction has to be experienced to be believed, it really will filter out everything but your conversation. It is light enough to be worn all day and can go for several days without a charge. It’s wireless, stylish and robust.

Whilst this device does have its flaws, I would encourage anyone looking for a Bluetooth headset for mobile, PC, gaming console or war-zone battlefield use to strongly consider the Aliph Jawbone Bluetooth headset. If Aliph can continue to innovate in this space, and the next Jawbone addresses the design flaws above, they will be set to lead the Bluetooth headset market well into 2010.

Mike’s rating: 9/10

How to build a cheap and low power server for Windows Home Server (WHS) or Server 2008 (also works for a home media center)

We’ve built a variety of desktop computers and servers in the past to run Windows XP and Windows Vista. With the performance of computer components increasing and the price falling it is now possible for small business to obtain very secure and stable machines for less than the price of a second hand laptop. Since HD-TV compatible technologies are now the mainstream, and with cheaper and more reliable storage devices, we are now seeing more people adopting servers for the home; a place to store all your media content and serve it around your home or small office network.

In this article, I am going to walk you through building your own small office / home network server. A 500GB RAID-protected 2.1Ghz dual core server with HD media capability. All for less than £300.00 inc VAT.

Now Is A Good Time To Invest

Last month, Microsoft released Windows Home Server (WHS) for home users and next month, Windows Server 2008 is due for release for business users. Windows Home Server (WHS) is built on Windows Server 2003 and is designed for users who have multiple Windows Vista computers and laptops at home. It serves as a single place for all your media content and also as an automatic backup server, taking images of all your machines and files and storing them in such a way that you can restore your machines or lost files over your network automatically. Windows Home Server would be great for businesses, except that it doesn’t support the most useful business server software: Microsoft Exchange for Email.

For business users, Windows Server 2008 is due to be the most reliable, secure and easy to use Windows Server platform ever. By the summer of 2008, a special “Small Business” edition of Windows Server 2008 will be released, which should have Exchange, Fax Server, IIS (for hosting websites) all pre-loaded.

On the hardware side, Intel has the Core 2 Duo line of chips leading in the mainstream and performance segment, and AMD (unable to compete on performance) has dropped the prices of all it’s CPU’s across the range, and started developing “green” energy efficient processors with a 45 watt thermal design point (even less at idle). (By contrast, Intel Xeon’s in this segment draw over 100 watts).

Green energy efficient design is important, not just for the planet, or your pocket book, but there are good technical reasons for buying green. Lower power means less wasteful heat is generated and therefore less noisy fans are required. This means that silent or near-silent designs are possible - especially important for Home Servers which are likely to live in the living room.

Choosing Your Server Hardware

To all the geek’s reading this, I’m sure you’re already running your own home server, made from bits of old junk that you have lying around. I’ve certainly done this previously. However getting parts that have high reliability, low power consumption (and high definition compatible media output) are not likely to be found in your old computer parts bucket, so we first need to go shopping to find new components with warranty!

Doing your research and choosing the correct components that are all compatible and work together is the hardest step and one that I’m not going to go into in detail here. Suffice to say that I have chosen the very best bang for your buck branded parts that were available in the UK at the time. The components I chose were:

The Case - Antec NSK3480 MATX Micro Tower (£46.46)

Antec are well known for creating professional, high quality cases. This case is tiny and very heavy. It has room inside for two 3.5″ hard disk drives (which means you can use RAID 0 and 1, but not 5) and one optical drive and one floppy drive. The drives are mounted on supplied silicone spacers to minimise vibration (which causes damage and noise) and to improve airflow around the drives (reduces heat and improves disk life expectancy).

The Antec NSDK 3480 comes with a 380 Watt EarthWatts PSU which has a fan that spins down if it is not required - saving energy and reducing noise.

There are other cases that would do just as well. If you are building a server for the home, you might want to get one of the newer DVD-player style cases which are designed to sit in your living room next to your existing DVD player or Hi-Fi system. These cases are more expensive, however.

The Motherboard - ASUS M2A-VM HDMI 690G Socket AM2 (£34.35)

The choice of motherboard is the most critical choice of researching your build. Also because of the way in which the markets for motherboards are so cleanly split, there is usually only one or two choices for the motherboard that you should choose, all the others will not be appropriate.

Since we are building an AMD based system (low power and low cost), we need an AM2 motherboard. We also need a small motherboard as we have a small case. We also need a motherboard that supports RAID 1 - drive mirroring - so that if one of our drives fails, the server can continue to run whilst we replace the broken disk. We need an Integrated Graphics Chipset (save power and money as opposed to a dedicated card). If you want to play media directly from the server to a TV, HDTV or projector then you need a fairly decent graphics processor. Since AMD now own ATI, all modern AMD/ATI chipsets contain fairly advanced integrated graphics processing solutions. They might not be suitable for gaming, but this is a server. This motherboard comes with a Radeon x1250 integrated graphics chipset, which gives us up to 1900×1200 output resolution and can output high definition content via VGA, DVI, s-video, and HDMI connectors.

The Processor (CPU) - AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ Energy Efficient (£34.00)

AMD processors over Intel was an obvious choice for this segment. Almost all processors nowadays are 64bit with 32bit compatibility. Windows Home Server is only available in a 32bit version, and Windows Server 2008 is available in both 32bit and 64 bit versions. What is more important for a server is that the processor has two cores. Servers with only one core can often bottleneck at the CPU, tasks can be waiting for permission to execute. Dual Core resolves this problem. Quad Core is a waste on a home or small office server, as these small servers are most often used to serve files or host applications, not to perform heavy computation.

We continue to maintain that Intel Core 2 Duo chips are the technology of choice and are also capable of very low energy consumption. However, Intel Core 2 Duo chips cost more than twice the price of the AMD rival. Intel Chipsets (for motherboards) also don’t have the advantage of high performance integrated graphics, so we would need to purchase an additional graphics card if we were going Intel. In the low energy / low cost segment, AMD is the market leader.

CPU Fan - Arctic Cooling AC-FRZ-64 (£15.00)

The Arctic Cooling AC-FRZ Freezer range are fantastic fans. Very quiet and relatively small (although larger than a stock fan). You’ll notice from my photographs that I’m not using an Arctic Cooling Fan. This is because my supplier ran out of stock. Instead I went to Maplin for a basic Akasa fan. Works just as well, but not quite as quiet as the Arctic Cooling Freezer.

Storage - 2 x Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB (£105.98 for 2)

There are currently two choices for the title of “1/2 Terrabyte storage king” - the Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200.11 and the Western Digital WD5000AAKS. Both companies have excellent reputations for reliability, and both drives have almost exactly the same specifications - 7200 RPM spin speed, 16MB of Cache, SATA II, low seek times, and are the same price.

The Western Digital drives are slightly quieter and don’t “click” as much as the Seagate drives, so for this build I went Western Digital.

Since the case we are using is a small case, it only has space for 2 drives. This means that both drives will be running in RAID 1 mirrored configuration. So we will have a total of 500GB of available space. This is more than enough for a small office server. If you wanted more space, 1TB drives are available - at a cost. If you wanted to spend more on a larger case, get three 500GB drives and use RAID 5. It is just as reliable as RAID 1, but 3 x 500 GB in RAID 5 would give you 1TB of storage (1000GB).

Memory - 1 OCZ 2GB DDR2 800Mhz/PC2-6400 (£30.00)

It doesn’t really matter what type of RAM you get for a home server. Even a small office server won’t notice much difference between EEC (server type error-correcting) or non-EEC RAM. The key thing to note is that you should purchase RAM that has the same clock speed frequency as your Front Side Bus (FSB). The FSB of our motherboard is 800Mhz, and it takes DDR2 RAM. So that limits our choice. The OCZ brand of RAM is well respected, and it’s on special offer - so I went with it. It is rare to find performance RAM available for less than value RAM. However, performance RAM tends to need to be worked harder than value RAM - this particular model needs 1.9V to be applied across it rather than the default 1.8V. I don’t think using 1.8V would cause many problems, and I would still rather have used value RAM, but we’re making a cheap PC remember? So in the real world, this was the best deal.

DVD Drive - NEC Optiarc AD-7170S-0B SATA (£13.86)

I chose a cheap DVD writer. It turned out to be out of stock, so my order was shipped without it. The Sony DVD writer you can see in the images I had to borrow from another office machine.

If you’re looking for a Blu-Ray, HD-DVD or combination high density drive, these are available. However, they cost more than £13, and we’re building a cheap server. If you wanted a more expensive server, you could go ahead and use a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD drive and it would work well with this setup.

Uninterruptible Power Supply with AVS - Plexus MV 500VA (£20.41)

Plexus make a line of cheap and cheerful UPS’es. This one in particular comes with enough juice to keep the server running under power outage conditions for several minutes and has a built in automatic voltage regulator. The voltage regulator is very important for server applications as it prevents spikes and under-voltage (brown-outs) from reaching the server. It gives the server nice clean power and ensures that your server is going to live a nice happy life!

Operating System

You’ve got a choice:

Linux - Free

Windows Vista Home Premium - about £60

Windows Home Server - about £150

Windows Server 2008 - Price TBC (will be more than £150).

Miscellaneous Bits

Don’t forget to order your SATA II cables, Thermal Conductivity Paste and some CAT-6 cables (for Gigabit Ethernet).

Click More.. to move to building the server!

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