Connected Home EXPRESS, July 9, 2003

1. Getting Connected
- Home Networking--Less Expensive, Simpler, and Faster Than Ever, Part 2

2. News and Views
- Court Keeps Aimster Offline
- Nielsen SoundScan Pledges to Track Music-Download Sales
- RHAPSODY Makes Gains on Apple iTunes Music Store
- International Hacking Contest Proves Tame for Big Businesses
- Spam Comes at a Price
- Some Fun Summer Reading

3. Announcements
- Active Directory eBook Chapter 2 Published!
- Find Your Next Job at Our IT Career Center

4. Quick Poll
- Results of Last Week's Poll: Wireless Networking
- New Poll: Wired Home Networking

5. Resource
- Tip: Consider Linux

6. Events
- New--Mobile & Wireless Road Show!

7. New and Improved
- Add Oomph to Your Music and Movies

8. Contact Us
- See this section for a list of ways to contact us.

==== Sponsor: HP & Microsoft Network Storage Solutions Road Show ====
Missed the Network Storage Solutions Road Show?
If you couldn't make the HP & Microsoft Network Storage Solutions Road Show, you missed Mark Smith talking about Windows-Powered NAS, file server consolidation, and more. The good news is that you can now view the Webcast event in its entirety at:
http://www.winnetmag.com/roadshows/nas

==== 1. Getting Connected: Home Networking--Less Expensive, Simpler, and Faster Than Ever, Part 2 ====
By Paul Thurrott, News Editor, [email protected]

Greetings,

In the first article in this two-part series ( http://connectedhomemag.com/networking/articles/index.cfm?articleid=39382 ), we looked at wired Ethernet networking and Wi-Fi (the 802.11b wireless standard) wireless networking, two of the most popular ways to connect two or more computers to the Internet and share resources such as files and printers. But Ethernet and Wi-Fi aren't the only games in town. This week, I look at some networking alternatives, including those that use jacks you already have in your home.

Here's why these alternatives are important: The wired Ethernet and Wi-Fi networking types we examined last time have inherent compromises. Wired Ethernet performs well, but it requires wiring, which can be expensive and disruptive if you plan to space out computers around your home. Wi-Fi, however, can suffer from often-inexplicable dead spots and much lower than advertised bandwidth because Wi-Fi is shared and distance-based: The further you are from the wireless receiver (usually a base station or router of some sort), the weaker the signal and the slower the connection speeds.

Two major alternatives seek to address these concerns. Both of them, not coincidentally, use the phone jacks or power plugs you already have in your home. And both of them are wired technologies, which typically provide more consistent networking speeds than the wireless options.

HomePNA (Phoneline) Networking
The first alternative--the Home Phoneline Networking Alliance's HomePNA--uses existing phonelines to share an Internet connection among PCs in your home. HomePNA networks run at 10Mbps, although a future version will offer 128Mbps speeds. This type of networking can be convenient if you happen to have phone jacks near your computers. Otherwise, you'll have to have an electrician wire your home, which can be expensive and begs the question, why not just install CAT-5 and get full 100Mbps Ethernet going?

For this reason, I usually think of HomePNA as an add-on technology. For example, I've used HomePNA to connect a Dell Rio Digital Audio Receiver (DAR) to a PC in a home that wasn't wired for Ethernet. The Rio supported Ethernet and phoneline networking but was in a room far away from my home network. I did, however, have a phoneline in my home office, so I added a HomePNA networking card to the PC on which my music was stored, and the DAR had no trouble downloading songs from the PC to play on the other side of the house.

HomePNA is also adequate for LAN gaming and simple file sharing, but it lacks the bandwidth needed for video streaming. For this reason and the possible lack of phone jacks, HomePNA often isn't an option. But don't count it out quite yet: You might find it useful in a pinch, as I did with the Rio DAR.

HomePlug (Powerline) Networking
Another home networking scheme called home powerline networking has more potential because we all have multiple power plugs in every room in our homes. I discussed home powerline networking with Peter Kempf, the president of the HomePlug Powerline Alliance, an alliance of industry leaders dedicated to promoting the use of home powerline-based networking products. Kempf told me that the biggest difference between HomePlug and HomePNA is coverage: Although many homes--especially those with anything other than all-new wiring--have scattershot phone wiring, guaranteeing coverage within a home is often difficult with HomePNA products. But HomePlug products produce almost 99 percent coverage in a typical home. So you can plug in HomePlug networking products at the far corners of a home and be reasonably sure that the network is going to work, something that isn't true of HomePNA or wireless products.

HomePlug also has a performance advantage. Although today's HomePlug products operate at 14Mbps, the alliance is working on a new specification due this fall--HomePlug AV--that will run at 100Mbps or faster. HomePlug AV is specifically designed for streaming video and other next-generation home-networking scenarios, such as game-machine networking and home media servers. At 100Mbps, HomePlug becomes a truly exciting, no-compromises solution. But even at 14Mbps, HomePlug is faster and more available than HomePNA and Wi-Fi. Your computer or video game machine needs power, so we know there's a power plug nearby.

Naturally, HomePlug, like HomePNA, doesn't offer the roaming conveniences of Wi-Fi, but for devices that aren't going to move around much, that restriction isn't a problem. I'm intrigued with HomePlug and hope to test a few HomePlug-compatible products soon. If you're looking into home networking, you should definitely watch this technology, even if it isn't a press darling like Wi-Fi is.

Bluetooth PAN
Another emerging networking technology is Bluetooth, which is finally showing up in enough products that we have to start worrying about it. Bluetooth isn't really a home-networking technology, per se, and it won't take the place of Ethernet, HomePNA, HomePlug, or Wi-Fi. Instead, Bluetooth is designed to silently and wirelessly connect devices such as cell phones, PDAs, computers, and printers in so-called Personal Area Networks (PANs). Bluetooth devices can also automatically detect other Bluetooth devices when they're in range and transmit their capabilities to the devices they find. PANs max out at about 30 feet, so they're typically useful only in small areas.

But the biggest problem with Bluetooth is that it's often a hassle. I've used several Bluetooth devices, including my Apple Computer iMac (thanks to a USB-based D-Link fob), a Microsoft mouse, a Palm Tungsten T handheld, a Hewlett-Packard (HP)/Compaq iPAQ 5450 handheld, and--during an evaluation period--an IBM ThinkPad T40p laptop. Getting these devices to speak to each other has been painful at best. But even when they do work, they're slow. I can synch my Palm device to the iMac in seconds with a USB cable, but it takes 10 minutes to do so wirelessly using iSync. The Microsoft mouse is OK, but I've already replaced the batteries once since I got the unit in early April, and it's connected to a computer that's hardly ever used. Phooey.

In short, Bluetooth is a cool idea, but I think that it's still too complicated for most people. The idea of wirelessly synching is "cool," whatever that means, but my USB sync cable also recharges my Palm device, so I'm not sure what benefit I get from Bluetooth. I'd love to hear from anyone who's happily and successfully using Bluetooth, however. But I think we might be a little early on the acceptance curve for that scenario to be possible.

==== 2. News and Views ====
An irreverent look at some of the week's Connected Home news, contributed by Paul Thurrott and Keith Furman

Court Keeps Aimster Offline
A federal appellate court in Chicago recently ruled that the Aimster (now called Madster) file-sharing service must stay offline unless it can prove that its users do anything other than share pirated music. As with the trend-setting Napster case, the major record labels sued Aimster, charging the company with fostering massive copyright infringement. And, like the Napster case, the case against Aimster is so clear-cut it's hardly worth discussing. This service exists for one reason and one reason only. On the other hand, competing peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing services such as Grokster and Morpheus are still online, thanks to a separate federal ruling that noted that those services aren't centralized like Aimster and Napster and therefore have no control over what files their users trade. Bah. Take 'em down, we say.

Nielsen SoundScan Pledges to Track Music-Download Sales
Nielsen SoundScan announced recently that it would start tracking the sales of digital-music downloads in its "non-traditional" category, which currently tracks Internet, mail-order, and concert-venue CD music sales. The company will use sales data from the Apple iTunes Music Store, the Listen.com RHAPSODY service, Liquid Audio, MusicNet, and pressplay. However, one crucial piece of information will be missing--actual sales figures--making it difficult to determine how well digital-music download sales are doing compared with so-called traditional media like CD albums.

RHAPSODY Makes Gains on Apple iTunes Music Store
And speaking of downloadable digital-music sales, Listen.com's RHAPSODY service announced recently that sales of CD-burnable tracks from its library have doubled since the company lowered the price from 99 cents to 79 cents per track. RHAPSODY made the change in response to the iTunes Music Store, which Apple launched in May with much fanfare, offering users almost unfettered access to songs at 99 cents a pop. RHAPSODY, like most of the previous services, was more restrictive and, therefore, not very popular. No matter how you look at it, one thing is clear: Consumers will pay for digital music if the price is right. All this baloney with peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing piracy never would have happened if the recording industry had embraced new technology instead of trying to pretend it doesn't exist.

International Hacking Contest Proves Tame for Big Businesses
A strange hacking contest launched last weekend did little more than prove that most commercial Web sites are now pretty well protected against security vulnerabilities. So instead of hacking the big boys, enterprising hackers instead went after little mom-and-pop operations around the world, defacing their Web sites in the bid to be declared the top hacker. The hackers successfully attacked thousands of Web sites, but none of them were particularly notable. Yawn.

Spam Comes at a Price
If you're wondering about the true expense of spam (i.e., junk mail, not the suspicious lunch meat), a report from Nucleus Research has come up with a figure: $874 per employee. That's how much a typical US company spends fighting spam each year, the report says. Each user spends an average of 40 minutes a week dealing with the deluge. "If one of out of every 72 of your employees showed up to work and slept all day, you'd be upset about that, but you're losing that productivity simply because you have spam coming through \[your email systems\]," said Nucleus CEO Ian Campbell. Yikes.

Some Fun Summer Reading
Now that we're facing what promises to be the hottest summer in many, many years, it's time to head to the beaches, woods, and air-conditioned getaways and spend some time with a good book (put that laptop down, you geek). Here are some industry titles we're reading and can highly recommend:

Alec Klein's "Stealing Time: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Collapse of AOL Time Warner"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743247868/103-1041665-5031016
David Kushner's "Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375505245/103-1041665-5031016
Martin Campbell-Kelly's "From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262033038/103-1041665-5031016
Joseph Menn's "All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0609610937/103-1041665-5031016

==== 3. Announcements ====
(from Windows & .NET Magazine and its partners)

Active Directory eBook Chapter 2 Published!
The second chapter of Windows & .NET Magazine's popular eBook "Windows 2003: Active Directory Administration Essentials" is now available at no charge! Chapter 2 looks at what's new and improved with Active Directory. Download it now!
http://www.windowsitlibrary.com/ebooks/administeringad/index.cfm?pc=adupd

Find Your Next Job at Our IT Career Center
Check out our new online career center in which you can browse current job openings, post your resume, and create automated notifications to notify you when a job is posted that meets your specifications. It's effective, it's private, and there's no charge. Visit today!
http://windows.itcareerpath.com

==== 4. Quick Poll ====

Results of Last Week's Poll: Wireless Networking
The voting has closed in Connected Home Online's nonscientific Quick Poll for the question, "Do you have a wireless network in your home?" Here are the results from the 246 votes:
- 59% Yes
- 26% No, but I plan to install one
- 16% No, and I don't plan to install one

New Poll: Wired Home Networking
The next Quick Poll question is, "Do you have a wired network in your home?" Go to the Connected Home Online home page and submit your vote for a) Yes, I have an Ethernet network, b) Yes, I have a phone-line network, c) Yes, I have a power-line network, or d) No.
http://www.connectedhomemag.com

==== 5. Resource ====

Tip: Consider Linux
by Paul Thurrott, [email protected]

If you're a tech enthusiast and one of an increasing number of people with two or more computers at home, look into Linux as an inexpensive and fun way to discover your inner techie and learn something about technology. Linux isn't a digital-media champ or even a viable productivity platform for most people, but it excels at network-related tasks. Linux can be an excellent email, Web, firewall, or general-purpose file-share server, and it interacts well with Windows and Macintosh clients. If you want to get under the hood and learn how things work at a lower level than is generally possible with Windows or the Mac, Linux is a great place to start. The OS also works well on the relatively low-end hardware that Windows XP balks at, making it a great candidate for older PCs. Below are some of the major Linux distributions.

Red Hat Linux
http://www.redhat.com
Mandrake Linux
http://www.mandrakelinux.com
SuSE Linux
http://www.suse.com

Got a question or tip? Email [email protected]. Please include your full name and email address so that we can contact you.

==== 6. Events ====
(brought to you by Windows & .NET Magazine)

New--Mobile & Wireless Road Show!
Learn more about the wireless and mobility solutions that are available today! Register now for this free event!
http://www.winnetmag.com/roadshows/wireless

==== 7. New and Improved ====
by Jason Bovberg, [email protected]

Add Oomph to Your Music and Movies
Paradigm Electronics announced the Servo-15 Subwoofer, which delivers deep bass extension to your sound system. The Servo-15 features a 15" servo-controlled bass driver. The Kevlar-fiber composite cone measures 15", and the die-cast aluminum frame measures 16" to 17". The cabinet is a sealed medium-density fiberboard (MDF) enclosure that measures 20" x 18" x 23" and weighs 80 pounds. To prevent excessive clipping and gross overload, the built-in 400-watt power amplifier contains servo circuits that work in conjunction with an accelerometer that corrects any incongruity in the driver's motion. Pricing starts at $1500. For more information, contact Paradigm Electronics on the Web.
http://www.paradigm.ca

==== Sponsored Link ====

AutoProf
Jerry Honeycutt Desktop Deployment Whitepaper
http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;5790077;8214395;s?http://www.AutoProf.com/Update_TextLinks_2003_06_23.html

==== 8. Contact Us ====

About the newsletter -- [email protected]
About technical questions -- http://www.winnetmag.com/forums
About product news -- [email protected]
About your subscription -- [email protected]
About sponsoring [email protected]

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Copyright 2002, Penton Media, Inc.

HP & Microsoft Network Storage Solutions Road Show http://www.winnetmag.com/roadshows/nas

1. Getting Connected - Home Networking--Less Expensive, Simpler, and Faster Than Ever, Part 2

2. News and Views - Court Keeps Aimster Offline - Nielsen SoundScan Pledges to Track Music-Download Sales - RHAPSODY Makes Gains on Apple iTunes Music Store - International Hacking Contest Proves Tame for Big Businesses - Spam Comes at a Price - Some Fun Summer Reading

3. Announcements - Active Directory eBook Chapter 2 Published! - Find Your Next Job at Our IT Career Center

4. Quick Poll - Results of Last Week's Poll: Wireless Networking - New Poll: Wired Home Networking

5. Resource - Tip: Consider Linux

6. Events - New--Mobile & Wireless Road Show!

7. New and Improved - Add Oomph to Your Music and Movies

8. Contact Us - See this section for a list of ways to contact us.

==== Sponsor: HP & Microsoft Network Storage Solutions Road Show ==== Missed the Network Storage Solutions Road Show? If you couldn't make the HP & Microsoft Network Storage Solutions Road Show, you missed Mark Smith talking about Windows-Powered NAS, file server consolidation, and more. The good news is that you can now view the Webcast event in its entirety at: http://www.winnetmag.com/roadshows/nas

==== 1. Getting Connected: Home Networking--Less Expensive, Simpler, and Faster Than Ever, Part 2 ==== By Paul Thurrott, News Editor, [email protected]

Greetings,

In the first article in this two-part series ( http://connectedhomemag.com/networking/articles/index.cfm?articleid=39382 ), we looked at wired Ethernet networking and Wi-Fi (the 802.11b wireless standard) wireless networking, two of the most popular ways to connect two or more computers to the Internet and share resources such as files and printers. But Ethernet and Wi-Fi aren't the only games in town. This week, I look at some networking alternatives, including those that use jacks you already have in your home. Here's why these alternatives are important: The wired Ethernet and Wi-Fi networking types we examined last time have inherent compromises. Wired Ethernet performs well, but it requires wiring, which can be expensive and disruptive if you plan to space out computers around your home. Wi-Fi, however, can suffer from often-inexplicable dead spots and much lower than advertised bandwidth because Wi-Fi is shared and distance-based: The further you are from the wireless receiver (usually a base station or router of some sort), the weaker the signal and the slower the connection speeds. Two major alternatives seek to address these concerns. Both of them, not coincidentally, use the phone jacks or power plugs you already have in your home. And both of them are wired technologies, which typically provide more consistent networking speeds than the wireless options.

HomePNA (Phoneline) Networking The first alternative--the Home Phoneline Networking Alliance's HomePNA--uses existing phonelines to share an Internet connection among PCs in your home. HomePNA networks run at 10Mbps, although a future version will offer 128Mbps speeds. This type of networking can be convenient if you happen to have phone jacks near your computers. Otherwise, you'll have to have an electrician wire your home, which can be expensive and begs the question, why not just install CAT-5 and get full 100Mbps Ethernet going? For this reason, I usually think of HomePNA as an add-on technology. For example, I've used HomePNA to connect a Dell Rio Digital Audio Receiver (DAR) to a PC in a home that wasn't wired for Ethernet. The Rio supported Ethernet and phoneline networking but was in a room far away from my home network. I did, however, have a phoneline in my home office, so I added a HomePNA networking card to the PC on which my music was stored, and the DAR had no trouble downloading songs from the PC to play on the other side of the house. HomePNA is also adequate for LAN gaming and simple file sharing, but it lacks the bandwidth needed for video streaming. For this reason and the possible lack of phone jacks, HomePNA often isn't an option. But don't count it out quite yet: You might find it useful in a pinch, as I did with the Rio DAR.

HomePlug (Powerline) Networking Another home networking scheme called home powerline networking has more potential because we all have multiple power plugs in every room in our homes. I discussed home powerline networking with Peter Kempf, the president of the HomePlug Powerline Alliance, an alliance of industry leaders dedicated to promoting the use of home powerline-based networking products. Kempf told me that the biggest difference between HomePlug and HomePNA is coverage: Although many homes--especially those with anything other than all-new wiring--have scattershot phone wiring, guaranteeing coverage within a home is often difficult with HomePNA products. But HomePlug products produce almost 99 percent coverage in a typical home. So you can plug in HomePlug networking products at the far corners of a home and be reasonably sure that the network is going to work, something that isn't true of HomePNA or wireless products. HomePlug also has a performance advantage. Although today's HomePlug products operate at 14Mbps, the alliance is working on a new specification due this fall--HomePlug AV--that will run at 100Mbps or faster. HomePlug AV is specifically designed for streaming video and other next-generation home-networking scenarios, such as game-machine networking and home media servers. At 100Mbps, HomePlug becomes a truly exciting, no-compromises solution. But even at 14Mbps, HomePlug is faster and more available than HomePNA and Wi-Fi. Your computer or video game machine needs power, so we know there's a power plug nearby. Naturally, HomePlug, like HomePNA, doesn't offer the roaming conveniences of Wi-Fi, but for devices that aren't going to move around much, that restriction isn't a problem. I'm intrigued with HomePlug and hope to test a few HomePlug-compatible products soon. If you're looking into home networking, you should definitely watch this technology, even if it isn't a press darling like Wi-Fi is.

Bluetooth PAN Another emerging networking technology is Bluetooth, which is finally showing up in enough products that we have to start worrying about it. Bluetooth isn't really a home-networking technology, per se, and it won't take the place of Ethernet, HomePNA, HomePlug, or Wi-Fi. Instead, Bluetooth is designed to silently and wirelessly connect devices such as cell phones, PDAs, computers, and printers in so-called Personal Area Networks (PANs). Bluetooth devices can also automatically detect other Bluetooth devices when they're in range and transmit their capabilities to the devices they find. PANs max out at about 30 feet, so they're typically useful only in small areas. But the biggest problem with Bluetooth is that it's often a hassle. I've used several Bluetooth devices, including my Apple Computer iMac (thanks to a USB-based D-Link fob), a Microsoft mouse, a Palm Tungsten T handheld, a Hewlett-Packard (HP)/Compaq iPAQ 5450 handheld, and--during an evaluation period--an IBM ThinkPad T40p laptop. Getting these devices to speak to each other has been painful at best. But even when they do work, they're slow. I can synch my Palm device to the iMac in seconds with a USB cable, but it takes 10 minutes to do so wirelessly using iSync. The Microsoft mouse is OK, but I've already replaced the batteries once since I got the unit in early April, and it's connected to a computer that's hardly ever used. Phooey. In short, Bluetooth is a cool idea, but I think that it's still too complicated for most people. The idea of wirelessly synching is "cool," whatever that means, but my USB sync cable also recharges my Palm device, so I'm not sure what benefit I get from Bluetooth. I'd love to hear from anyone who's happily and successfully using Bluetooth, however. But I think we might be a little early on the acceptance curve for that scenario to be possible.

==== 2. News and Views ==== An irreverent look at some of the week's Connected Home news, contributed by Paul Thurrott and Keith Furman

Court Keeps Aimster Offline A federal appellate court in Chicago recently ruled that the Aimster (now called Madster) file-sharing service must stay offline unless it can prove that its users do anything other than share pirated music. As with the trend-setting Napster case, the major record labels sued Aimster, charging the company with fostering massive copyright infringement. And, like the Napster case, the case against Aimster is so clear-cut it's hardly worth discussing. This service exists for one reason and one reason only. On the other hand, competing peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing services such as Grokster and Morpheus are still online, thanks to a separate federal ruling that noted that those services aren't centralized like Aimster and Napster and therefore have no control over what files their users trade. Bah. Take 'em down, we say.

Nielsen SoundScan Pledges to Track Music-Download Sales Nielsen SoundScan announced recently that it would start tracking the sales of digital-music downloads in its "non-traditional" category, which currently tracks Internet, mail-order, and concert-venue CD music sales. The company will use sales data from the Apple iTunes Music Store, the Listen.com RHAPSODY service, Liquid Audio, MusicNet, and pressplay. However, one crucial piece of information will be missing--actual sales figures--making it difficult to determine how well digital-music download sales are doing compared with so-called traditional media like CD albums.

RHAPSODY Makes Gains on Apple iTunes Music Store And speaking of downloadable digital-music sales, Listen.com's RHAPSODY service announced recently that sales of CD-burnable tracks from its library have doubled since the company lowered the price from 99 cents to 79 cents per track. RHAPSODY made the change in response to the iTunes Music Store, which Apple launched in May with much fanfare, offering users almost unfettered access to songs at 99 cents a pop. RHAPSODY, like most of the previous services, was more restrictive and, therefore, not very popular. No matter how you look at it, one thing is clear: Consumers will pay for digital music if the price is right. All this baloney with peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing piracy never would have happened if the recording industry had embraced new technology instead of trying to pretend it doesn't exist.

International Hacking Contest Proves Tame for Big Businesses A strange hacking contest launched last weekend did little more than prove that most commercial Web sites are now pretty well protected against security vulnerabilities. So instead of hacking the big boys, enterprising hackers instead went after little mom-and-pop operations around the world, defacing their Web sites in the bid to be declared the top hacker. The hackers successfully attacked thousands of Web sites, but none of them were particularly notable. Yawn.

Spam Comes at a Price If you're wondering about the true expense of spam (i.e., junk mail, not the suspicious lunch meat), a report from Nucleus Research has come up with a figure: $874 per employee. That's how much a typical US company spends fighting spam each year, the report says. Each user spends an average of 40 minutes a week dealing with the deluge. "If one of out of every 72 of your employees showed up to work and slept all day, you'd be upset about that, but you're losing that productivity simply because you have spam coming through \[your email systems\]," said Nucleus CEO Ian Campbell. Yikes.

Some Fun Summer Reading Now that we're facing what promises to be the hottest summer in many, many years, it's time to head to the beaches, woods, and air-conditioned getaways and spend some time with a good book (put that laptop down, you geek). Here are some industry titles we're reading and can highly recommend:

Alec Klein's "Stealing Time: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Collapse of AOL Time Warner" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743247868/103-1041665-5031016

David Kushner's "Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375505245/103-1041665-5031016

Martin Campbell-Kelly's "From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262033038/103-1041665-5031016

Joseph Menn's "All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0609610937/103-1041665-5031016

==== 3. Announcements ==== (from Windows & .NET Magazine and its partners)

Active Directory eBook Chapter 2 Published! The second chapter of Windows & .NET Magazine's popular eBook "Windows 2003: Active Directory Administration Essentials" is now available at no charge! Chapter 2 looks at what's new and improved with Active Directory. Download it now! http://www.windowsitlibrary.com/ebooks/administeringad/index.cfm?pc=adupd

Find Your Next Job at Our IT Career Center Check out our new online career center in which you can browse current job openings, post your resume, and create automated notifications to notify you when a job is posted that meets your specifications. It's effective, it's private, and there's no charge. Visit today! http://windows.itcareerpath.com

==== 4. Quick Poll ====

Results of Last Week's Poll: Wireless Networking The voting has closed in Connected Home Online's nonscientific Quick Poll for the question, "Do you have a wireless network in your home?" Here are the results from the 246 votes: - 59% Yes - 26% No, but I plan to install one - 16% No, and I don't plan to install one

New Poll: Wired Home Networking The next Quick Poll question is, "Do you have a wired network in your home?" Go to the Connected Home Online home page and submit your vote for a) Yes, I have an Ethernet network, b) Yes, I have a phone-line network, c) Yes, I have a power-line network, or d) No. http://www.connectedhomemag.com

==== 5. Resource ====

Tip: Consider Linux by Paul Thurrott, [email protected]

If you're a tech enthusiast and one of an increasing number of people with two or more computers at home, look into Linux as an inexpensive and fun way to discover your inner techie and learn something about technology. Linux isn't a digital-media champ or even a viable productivity platform for most people, but it excels at network-related tasks. Linux can be an excellent email, Web, firewall, or general-purpose file-share server, and it interacts well with Windows and Macintosh clients. If you want to get under the hood and learn how things work at a lower level than is generally possible with Windows or the Mac, Linux is a great place to start. The OS also works well on the relatively low-end hardware that Windows XP balks at, making it a great candidate for older PCs. Below are some of the major Linux distributions.

Red Hat Linux http://www.redhat.com

Mandrake Linux http://www.mandrakelinux.com

SuSE Linux http://www.suse.com

Got a question or tip? Email [email protected]. Please include your full name and email address so that we can contact you.

==== 6. Events ==== (brought to you by Windows & .NET Magazine)

New--Mobile & Wireless Road Show! Learn more about the wireless and mobility solutions that are available today! Register now for this free event! http://www.winnetmag.com/roadshows/wireless

==== 7. New and Improved ==== by Jason Bovberg, [email protected]

Add Oomph to Your Music and Movies Paradigm Electronics announced the Servo-15 Subwoofer, which delivers deep bass extension to your sound system. The Servo-15 features a 15" servo-controlled bass driver. The Kevlar-fiber composite cone measures 15", and the die-cast aluminum frame measures 16" to 17". The cabinet is a sealed medium-density fiberboard (MDF) enclosure that measures 20" x 18" x 23" and weighs 80 pounds. To prevent excessive clipping and gross overload, the built-in 400-watt power amplifier contains servo circuits that work in conjunction with an accelerometer that corrects any incongruity in the driver's motion. Pricing starts at $1500. For more information, contact Paradigm Electronics on the Web. http://www.paradigm.ca

==== Sponsored Link ====

AutoProf Jerry Honeycutt Desktop Deployment Whitepaper http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;5790077;8214395;s?http://www.AutoProf.com/Update_TextLinks_2003_06_23.html

==== 8. Contact Us ====

About the newsletter -- [email protected] About technical questions -- http://www.winnetmag.com/forums About product news -- [email protected] About your subscription -- [email protected] About sponsoring UPDATE -- [email protected]