Make Tech Easier » PC Hardware

TonidoPlug: Your Personal Cloud Server in a Plug

Damien — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:47:39 +0000

Putting all your stuffs and confidential data on the cloud may seems like a good idea as it allows you to access to them anytime, anywhere. However, it can become a totally bad decision when the security of the cloud server is compromised or the third party providers wind up their services and all your data gone down with them. When such things happen, you might wonder why you have not heard of Tonido earlier.

Tonido is a free software that turns your desktop into a personal server and allows you to access and share your files, media, calendar and apps from everywhere. Be it Windows, Mac or Linux, you simply install the software and have your own personal cloud server up and running in no time. Forget all the complicated stuffs you have heard about creating your own server. There are no technical skills required to set up and run Tonido. The best thing is – all the data resides in your own computer and there is no need to worry about security or even data loss (unless your own computer crashes).

Introducing TonidoPlug

On the other hand, if all your important data resides on your external backup drive and you wish to have your own cloud server running at all times without having to turn on your computer everytime, then TonidoPlug is the one for you.

TonidoPlug is the hardware version of Tonido. It is a tiny, low power, low cost home server and NAS device powered by Tonido software. It comes with its own RAM and CPU (and preinstalled with Ubuntu). All you need to do is to plug it into the power socket and there you are, a server ready at your beckoning. It integrates nicely with all the features found in the Tonido software and allows you to access your files, music, pictures from anywhere.

Setting up TonidoPlug

Once you have connected up the respective cables (there are only 3 cables that you need to connect: the power cable, LAN cable and the USB cable), power it up. On any computer that are linked to the home network, go to the URL: http://tonidoplug.com/ip. This will detect your Tonido Plug. In some cases where it doesn’t detect, you can enter the MAC address (at the back of the plug) to get it identified by the network.

Once the plug is detected, you will have to create a new profile for the Tonido. Those who already have an existing profile can use this method to import them into the Plug.

In the dashboard, you will find the exact same interface as the Tonido. The software available in TonidoPlug is as follow:

Many of these apps should be familiar to already Tonido users, (Jukebox, Photos, Search, Thots, Workspace). The newer apps are WebsharePro, Torrent, Explorer and Plug Admin.

Here’s a quick summary of these applications.

WebsharePro: All the power of Tonido Webshare, plus the ability to upload, setting upload quotas for users, zip downloads, viewing currently downloading lists, change thumbnail and photo slide show image size
Torrent: Download Torrent files to your plug and control torrents via your web browser from anywhere
Explorer: Web based File manager and browser that allows common file operations like rename, delete, copy files and folders and even uploads
Plug Admin: Manage your TonidoPlug hardware, recover Tonido Profile passwords, Manage attached USB drives, Share USB drives over the network for access, Monitor CPU loads etc

If you are not in your own home networks, you can also connect to your TonidoPlug via the public URL: http://yourprofilename.tonido.com:10001.

In addition, TonidoPlug is also a DLNA device, which means you are able to connect to your PS3, Xbox, or even XBMC software and stream music over the cloud.

The Tonido software is free to download and use, but the TonidoPlug comes at a price of $99.

Considering that most Web servers with the same hardware spec as the TonidoPlug can easily cost you up to $40-50 per month, at a mere price of $99, TonidoPlug is really a great bargain; not to mention the unlimited amount of storage device you can attach to it and the security issue that you never have to worry about. This is really a no-brainer deal.

Note 1: Thanks to Venkat for sending in a test unit for review and providing a prompt support for all my doubts.
Note 2: MakeTechEasier is not affiliated in any way to CodeLathe, the company behind TonidoPlug, nor do we benefit from any sale of TonidoPlug generated from this article.

TonidoPlug: Your Personal Cloud Server in a Plug originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Understanding Home Networking

Joshua Price — Mon, 04 May 2009 12:22:51 +0000

These days, broadband internet is just about everywhere. Hospitals, restaurants, hotels, and of course homes are all connected with these nice, fast pipes. The problem is that your internet provider likely just gives you a single connection with a single address, no matter how many people or devices plan to use that internet connection. Here, we enter the world of home networking.

Often, just the words “computer network” are enough to draw up images of some complicated mess of cables and boxes with blinking lights. People see acronyms like LAN, WAN, TCP/IP and a host of others, and think this whole network thing must be the domain of pocket-protector wielding geeks. The truth is, once you get the basic idea of how it all fits together, you’ll find that it’s really not that complicated, and home networking can be done by just about anyone.

IP Addressing

Way back in the day, when I first switched from dialup to broadband, I was thrilled. Not only did everything go so much faster, but I had heard that my computer and my family’s computer could be online at the same time! Gasp! So naturally, on the day it was hooked up, I tried to get both computers online. To my surprise, it didn’t work. Each one could get online when they were the only computer connected, but as soon as I tried connecting both through a hub, it failed.

It was then that I began learning the world of IP addresses. Every device on the internet, from desktop computers to cell phones to smart toasters, has an IP address. Typically, this is a unique number assigned to each of those devices. IP addresses come in the form of “x.x.x.x”, each x being a number from 0 to 254. For example, the server that’s hosting Google.com has an IP address of 74.125.45.100. If you were to type that number into your web browser’s address bar, you’d get the Google homepage.

Places like Google, Yahoo, and of course MakeTechEasier.com keep the same IP address all the time. This is because they’re providing content to the world, and we want to make it as easy as possible for people and devices to find us.

Your home computer, on the other hand, is probably not serving web pages or providing some kind of content to the outside world. This means that your internet provider does not have to worry about giving you the same address every time you connect. Each time you connect to the internet, your computer asks your ISP for an address to use. Most of the time, it’s not the same one you had a few days, weeks, or months earlier. They see your computer’s request for an address, search in their system for an available one, and assign you the first unused address they have. For the sake of simplicity in this article, I’m going to use “9.9.9.1″ to represent the IP address given to you by your ISP.

Back to my old internet sharing problem: what was going on was that my internet provider was only giving me ONE address. I could hook up 2, 10, or 700 computers but my ISP was still only giving me ONE address. Well how in the world was I to hook up all my computers when I only have 1 address to use? Network Address Translation.

Network Address Translation

It’s a fancy name for a pretty simple concept. NAT basically means converting that one, single, internet address (9.9.9.1 in our example) into seperate addresses for your home network. To make this easier to understand, I’m going to compare internet routing to the existing postal system here in the US.

In the preceding example picture, we have College University as the destination for our letter. Even though the college is split into multiple buildings, it has a single street address. When the mail room gets a letter, it checks the letter to see which building it should go to, and which department in that building. Compare that to a similar example of an incoming internet data packet:

As you can see, it follows a very similar method to the postal example. The outside world sees every computer in your home only under your “main” IP address, in this case “9.9.9.1″. The router, which equates to the Mail Room in our example, checks all the incoming data to figure out which computer it should go to.

Note: I won’t be covering exactly how it figures that out, as that’s a bit beyond the scope of what I’m covering here, and the postal-to-internet analogy isn’t a perfect 1:1 comparison

You may be wondering about the IP addresses shown in the example. As I said earlier, every device on the internet has an IP address, but your ISP usually only gives you one at a time. Where did these other ones come from?

In short, IP addresses starting with “192.168.x.x” are private addresses. They only exist inside your home network. This is the key part of NAT. Even though you only have one “real” IP address of 9.9.9.1, your router basically “makes up” new ones for all your computers.

I know, I know, we’re getting into the complicated stuff and I said it wouldn’t be complicated. Essentially, what happens is that all the websites you visit or people you chat with on AIM/Yahoo/Skype/etc only see that your “street address”, your real IP of 9.9.9.1. When they send you a message, they send it to 9.9.9.1. It’s your router that knows, when it gets that message, which computer to send it to. The rest of the world doesn’t need to know anything but your main outside IP address. All the 192.168.x.x addresses are completely private and nothing but your router knows, or cares, that they exist.

Understanding Home Networking originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Easily Troubleshoot Your Graphics Card With GPU-Z

Norm — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:11:29 +0000

I recently wrote about a great software utility that opened up a world of information about your motherboard, CPU, and RAM. Well, I have another great utility to tell you about, only this time it’s all about your graphics card.

Though manufactured by different companies, GPU-Z from TechPowerUp does look a lot like the aforementioned CPU-Z. The interface is eerily similar and the name is a perfect match. On the positive side, these two Windows applications bring incredible value at a price that can’t be beat – free! The pair complement each other as incredible tools to have on your belt.

Let me take you on a tour of this powerful graphics card information utility.

Also in line with CPU-Z, this product doesn’t come with an installer. You simply download GPU-Z from the TechPowerUp website, save it to a folder and run it. At the time this article was published, the current version was 0.3.2

Vista users may experience a warning from the UAC security system, which asks if you are sure you want to run the file. No worries, click Run and wait for the application to load. You should see a splash screen while the information about your graphics card is collected.

Now the fun begins. The main window is divided into three tabs. There is the Graphics Card tab, the Sensors tab, and the Validation tab.

The Graphics Card tab is the default tab that loads when the application starts. It also contains the most information about your graphics card. Everything you ever wanted to know, and more, is displayed here.

As you can see in the image below, this tab tells you which graphics card you are using, the GPU, BIOS Version, Bus Interface, Memory Type and Size, Clock Frequencies, and much more. It has everything but the kitchen sink.

This information is great for anyone looking to upgrade their video card, or overclockers looking to get more performance out of their current setup. If you are running multiple video cards, the drop-down list at the bottom lets you select the card that you want to see the details for.

Moving right along in our tour, the next tab is the Sensors tab. There is no shocker here, this tab displays sensor data coming back from your video card. Another great tool for overclockers, you can monitor things like Clock Speeds, GPU Temperature, PCB Temperature, and Fan Speeds.

There is also an option to log the data to a file and another to continue monitoring while GPU-Z is in the background. I like the last feature because it lets me monitor the change in my graphics card temperatures when I am in full screen gaming mode.

The last tab is labelled Validation, and it allows you to submit your information to the GPU-Z website. I couldn’t find any information as to the purpose of this feature, however it does let you share the details on the web and track changes to your graphics setup.

GPU-Z is another one of those lightweight, must-have tools that just about any user can make use of. It really goes a long way to help you understand your graphics card. You don’t have to take my word for it though, try it out for yourself!

Easily Troubleshoot Your Graphics Card With GPU-Z originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Diagnose Your PC With CPU-Z

Norm — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 12:53:27 +0000

If knowledge is power, then CPU-Z from CPUID will make you feel like a superhero. This handy little tool was featured in the MakeTechEasier 101 best free computer software downloads list. CPU-Z is a Windows only tool that gathers information on some of the main hardware components of your computer.

The information that it collects is quite detailed and is focused around you CPU, mainboard, memory and general system info about Windows and DirectX.

Throughout the rest of the post, I’m going to walk you through getting CPU-Z and harnessing it’s awesome power on your own PC.

To get started, head on over to the CPU-Z home page and download the latest version of the software (at the time this article was written, the current version was 1.50). The package comes as a zip file, so you’ll need to unzip it. In situations like this, I tend to just create a folder on my desktop and extract the files from the zip archive into that folder.

This program doesn’t have a fancy installer because it doesn’t install itself into your system. You simply extract the zip contents to a folder and run it from there. When you don’t want CPU-Z any more, you just delete the folder.

Once you have the folder set up and you are ready to go, start CPU-Z by double-clicking on the cpuz.exe file.

You should see the following image on your screen while the program is loading.

Once loaded, the information is readily accessible in and easy to navigate format. The window is laid out as a series of tabs that sort information into logical categories. The tabs are labelled CPU, Cache, Mainboard, Memory, SPD, and About. This can be seen in the image below.

Selecting each tab will open up a world of information, including some things that you never even wanted to know. Try not to be overwhelmed by the data and focus in on what you want to see.

For example, on the CPU tab the average user will be interested in the Name of the CPU, Specification, Instructions, Core Speed, Bus Speed, and Level 2 Cache size. Power users will likely be interested in the rest of the information for various purposes.

The Cache tab elaborates on the cache information from the CPU tab. I’ve never had a lot of use for this data, but it’s here and you never know when it might come in handy.

On the Mainboard tab, you will find a lot of information that is useful when upgrading or replacing components. This covers things like the motherboard manufacturer, chipset, BIOS, and graphics interface. From the screenshot below, we can see that I am using an nForce4 based motherboard that supports x16 PCI-Express.

What that means is that my video card is PCI-E based and not AGP. This is important to know if I was upgrading the video card. Unfortunately for this example, CPU-Z was unable to detect my motherboard manufacturer. This a rare occurrence and I have only ever seen the problem with this particular board.

The Memory tab is also very useful because most people that upgrade their computers add more memory. In the image above, you can see that I have 2 GB of memory in this system (2048 MB). The memory is DDR (as opposed to DDR2 or DDR3), and that it is running in dual channel mode. Most of the other info on this tab is for advanced users. I find it particularly helpful when overclocking.

To complete a memory upgrade, you would probably need a little bit more information. The SPD tab has the rest of it. This tab shows information about the memory stick in each specific slot on the motherboard. You can see the size of the chip, they type of RAM, and the frequency that it’s operating at. There’s also a timing table to show details based on the configuration.

Last, but not least, is the About tab. This tab gives details about the software and also some details about your system. For example you can see the Windows version, Service Pack installed and DirectX version. From this tab you can also dump the data into an HTML file.

This application should be in everyone’s PC toolbox. The data it provides is invaluable and the ease of use makes CPU-Z simple for anyone to operate.

Diagnose Your PC With CPU-Z originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

The Easiest Way To Burn Your CPU

Damien — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 03:45:01 +0000

You have heard that your CPU must be fitted with a cooler fan. Do you have any idea what it becomes without the cooler fan? Basically you can fry an egg on it. Check out the video below.

The Easiest Way To Burn Your CPU originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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Quad-Core CPU For Gaming? Forget About It…

Damien — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 09:42:28 +0000

It is very tempting to get the quad-core CPU for your computer, since it is the latest technology and you get the chance to boost to your friend about how powerful quad-core is.

If for gaming purpose, I would strongly advise not to get the quad-core. The reason being:

You can get to enjoy higher clock speed at a much cheaper price. A 3.0 GHz dual core CPU priced at $279.99 can only get you a 2.4 GHz quad-core CPU whereas a 3.0 GHz quad-core can buy you 4 dual-core CPUs. Do your math and you will know which one is better.
The current games in the market are better optimized for dual core. Though some of the latest games are optimized to quad-core, you don’t really see much improvement in performance.

It just doesn’t make sense to me to spend a great deal of money to get the latest technology and not utilize it fully. Until the time when quad-core CPU becomes more affordable with most games optimized to utilize it, there is really no compelling reason for me to upgrade.

What do you think?

Quad-Core CPU For Gaming? Forget About It… originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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