Google Apps for Domains Problems for the Enterprise and Business

In my business we are a heavy Google Apps for Domains user with several domains setup, some business and some free. I moved across from hosted Exchange a few years ago and everything has been pretty great until the last few weeks which caused me to question whether Google Apps for Domains was suited to Business in general.

The start of my problem was the in my use of Google Sync for Outlook, a tool that gives almost native desktop integration for the Google mail features. This has worked great and I noticed no problems until about three weeks ago I noticed that my laptop was sucking battery and ran hot all the time that Outlook was open. A little investigation found that the Sync of Notes was always running and syncing despite the fact that I don’t use the Notes feature of Outlook or Google at all (I prefer Evernote). Further checks found that I had a significant amount of Notes that I discovered was actually all of my .txt files that I had stored in Google Docs/Drive (I use Google Drive desktop sync and Insync to sync my main files, something I had added a load of files to about three weeks previously). The penny dropped, that because Google Apps Sync for Outlook syncs all ‘notes’ found in Google Docs to Outlook, all of the many text files (many GB by the way) that I sync were between machines and the cloud using Insync were also being synchronised into my Google Mail and because there were many GBs, it was taking a very long time and killing my laptops in the meantime.

I had to stop the synchronisation of Notes and contacted Google Apps Enterprise support for help (because I could not find anything online about how to do it). Their response was sort of expected and not expected… Google Notes sync is beta and the disabling of the sync was not supported. The last point is the killer for me, and what led me to think that Google has a big problem. They activated without my control a Beta feature (Notes Sync) but don’t provide a single way for me (a Live user) to disable a Beta feature, at least they don’t support it! Not Enterprise friendly and that has to change Google.

Anyway, they did provide some ‘unsupported’ registry settings to disable it in the end, so fine I used the settings but unfortunately it did not work – in fact the modifications were supposed to allow me to disable the sync of one or all features of Google Sync for Outlook but NONE of the changes did anything. I contacted Google again but their response was that they could not provide support on the unsupported registry modifications and I was ON MY OWN! Not friendly at all, they effectively hung me out to dry to a problem caused by their enforcement of the use of a Beta feature AND providing a fix that simply did nothing. Google, you have a problem right there in the use of your services with the Enterprise and you need to fix it right now. Don’t deploy Beta features without the ability to enable/disable them, and don’t leave businesses high and dry without a resolution caused by your own ineptitude otherwise you will LOSE to everyone else. I had to consider stepping back from Google Apps for Domains, back to a traditional hosted Exchange solution before I found the fix (we also considered stepping back from Google Docs/Drive as a smaller step).

Anyway, for those who need the fix I hunted over several nights through multiple Google Groups looking for a solution and finally found it, but that was no thanks to Google. For those who are looking to be able to enable or disable individual syncs in Google Sync for Outlook you need to modify the follow the instructions:

1. Go to http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?answer=1041455 , go to Enable/Disable Import Options.

2. Follow Step 1 to Create the “SyncFlagsEnabled” value with DWORD value set to 1.

3. Skip Step 2 because it is redundant to what you want to do

4. Follow Step 3 for each of the services you wish to control (NotesSync in my instance) but add the following to the registry key for the service:
registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Apps Sync\NotesSync

Modify HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Apps Sync\TasksSync by adding the following DWORD Values:
DWORD Value: UploadEnabled
Modify the DWORD Value as follows:
Set the Value data = 0

DWORD Value: DownloadEnabled
Modify the DWORD Value as follows:
Set the Value data = 0

All I then had to do was remove the almost 3GB of notes from my Notes folder and then compact my PST to get everything back to where it needs to be, and then go an provide a registry import for these settings to provide to all of my users so that they don’t have the same problem of the laptop whizzing about synchronising a whole load of nothing, using processor and bandwidth a plenty. All I need to do now is watch Google for the next Enterprise mess up with Google Sync for Outlook.

Notebook Performance

I had cause recently to have an online conversation with a reader who believed that the only worthwhile computer equipment was the very fastest thing you can get. This person was looking at the needs equation from their own perspective which was as a gamer. This is so small a percentage of computer users, particularly mobile computer users, that all I can say is that they were completely and utterly wrong for the vast majority.

The vast majority use a computer to process documents (either read or create or both), browse the internet, read email, access social networking sites (business and/or personal), play music and play video. This is self evident in so many ways, and points to the fact that today a computer, particularly a mobile one, only has to be fast enough. In the old days the development of software outpaced the hardware periodically, requiring the hardware to be replaced just to get an acceptable basic performance. Today even a five year old laptop can run the latest word processor, web browser, email program, and music/video player. The issue is now so much more about battery life, weight, and ease of use.

So what is good enough today? Well as many have shown, most users are perfectly happy with netbook/notebook/notbooks that run with single/dual core 1.5/1.6GHz processors with 1-2GB of RAM. You can see these sorts of PCs still being heavily sold and also cropping up in most homes and schools. I will say though that the experience is not really swish with the lowest specification but they are good enough for almost everyone.

What do I use? Well I do have a number of netbooks with a minimum of 2GB RAM and 1.6GHz Atom processors and they run well enough although can be a little sluggish at times with some software combinations. For my main machine, I have a 1.2GHz Dual Core processor with 4GB of RAM and this is perfectly fine and gives excellent performance (along with the fact that I get excellent battery life at the same time). This is even good enough for some light encoding work (albeit slower than having a 2.2GHz Dual Core). This is what you should go for and nothing less. It is going to take more than a couple of years for people to come up with software that needs more than this. The most important things to have are RAM and Dual Core for that snappy response, as the enemy of all machines is having lots of disk access due to swapping and having a processor locked up doing something else.

Key Performance Factors for the Mobile Worker

I was an instant convert to the netbook concept – the low cost, ultra light and small laptop with good battery life and excellent connectivity, at least when combined with 3G cards. I still am, and I keep my Asus 1008HA charged up and available whenever I am travelling and suspect I need a PC but not needing to carry anything larger. In fact, I used it for a very long time as my primary machine – and very capable it was once I upgraded it to 2GB memory. Over all this time, if I had to pick out its most important performance feature I would have to pick out its battery life.

I come from the depths of time when battery life was measured in less than 3 hours, but the Asus provided me with between 4 and 6 hours of good PC time depending upon whether I was Internet connected or not. This gave me the taster however, and I have just moved across to a slightly larger but still very compact and light machine, the Asus UL30. The key factor in this move? its battery life, the headline value of 12 hours of use.

In reality, it has given me 8 to 10 hours depending upon Internet usage but this has meant I have the ‘all (business) day battery life’. I have proved it in the last couple of weeks with an all day trip by train to Cologne and back, and several days of all day meetings where the power sockets were in very short supply. I survived without a single sweat.

This makes battery life the most important or key performance factor for me, and I suspect that this is the case for many other mobile workers. Which is why the industry is pushing more and more products out with longer and longer lasting batteries, notable of which is the latest netbook products from Asus:

ASUS makes EeePC 1015P and 1015PE official, endows them with 13.5 hours of battery life — Engadget.

Of course, this has to be hand in hand with good keyboards, screens and processor capability and I believe firmly that all netbooks with 2GB are plenty fast enough for office and information worker tasks, although going with multi-core and even the higher performance CULV processors gives a welcome boost without impacting the battery life.

What do you think? Is battery life primary? or is it performance? or light weight? and are netbooks the ultimate for all three?

Netbooks and Performance

Almost all netbooks (apart from some of the early Acer and Asus devices running Linux) are supplied with 1GB of RAM. Microsoft has further cemented this by defining lower license fees for Windows XP for computers with small screens and only 1GB of RAM, which means that this is the most popular memory configuration for netbooks.

At the same time, many people rule out netbooks as low power, sluggish computers that cannot replace a main machine. After my experience of the last month and a half, I would agree. This is when I purchased a new netbook after a problem occurred with my first one … the venerable Advent 4211C, an MSI Wind U100 rebrand. Amazing how I can call a computer that is less than 15 months old as venerable!

The netbook I purchased was the Asus EeePC 1008HA, a very nice and thin machine which I did not originally desire, but my options were limited. The machine I wanted was the Asus EeePC 1005HA but that was not in stock in the timeframe I needed. The problem with the 1008HA is the shorter battery life and the higher price, but I was desperate that evening for a machine. The other problem is that it came with 1GB of RAM compared to my upgraded Advent machine that had 2GB.

The other problem I quickly discovered was that it is closed up harder than a coconut. The machine is basically not upgradeable by anyone but the brave. Needless to say I proved braver than most, particularly after I managed to pierce the keyboard ribbon connector and cut two wires whilst trying to get at the memory. This is because you have to crack the case open after removing the keyboard, disconnecting multiple connectors and making sure that you use the dip switch to disable the battery feed to the machine (thus avoiding blowing the whole thing). Who needs the left CTRL, Alt, Windows, Fn, function, delete and backspace keys anyway! After all the fun with doing that I found I had the wrong 2GB memory stick. Putting my slightly crippled machine back together, I had to focus on my day job and with it using the still 1GB Asus.

What I noticed quite quickly is that the machine perpetually struggled with the lack of RAM at a scale that virtual memory could not help. The machine has had a minimum physical memory used of between 700MB and 930MB, and I now know what happens when the physical memory starts to run out… a machine that goes into coma for 30 seconds plus as it struggles to unload a program, to load another one. This has not been a good experience. If this was all the experience I had ever had with a netbook, I could understand saying that netbooks are useless.

Let us be honest, the sweet spot for Windows XP is 2GB ( just like the sweet spot for Vista I have found is 3GB ). This means that all netbooks are not as performant as they could be, and it will stay this way as long as manufacturers keep with supplying them with 1GB. I have started to see however netbooks and their like coming through with 2GB and this seems to be tied to supplying the machine with Windows 7… At least, Windows 7 Home Premium. I hope this continues.

So my best advice out there for the netbook owner? Get yourself upgraded to 2GB… you will then have a very functional, low cost, very portable machine that will perform every duty you throw at it except really heavy duty graphics/video or gaming. The other advice? Make sure that your netbook is user upgradeable. Me? I now have the machine I need but no warranty.

Instant on boot systems

There has been some discussion in recent months about developments in making laptops and other computers start instantaneously. These developments seem to be based around fiddling the shut down mechanism so it part starts or by implementing a mini-Linux OS in flash like with Splashtop Linux, to give an option to the standard start mechanisms that are in the main OS (mostly Windows of course).

Somehow, I believe people have gotten things messed up. My last four laptops all made good use of Hibernation and Suspend modes, and I have had few difficulties with the startup aspects of these (well at least since Windows 2000 came on the scene). These mechanisms work really well. The focus on boot up time is a bit of a non-issue for me, particularly when mobile as I am not normally rushing to get started up with the machine, I am normally getting a coffee and talking with people on entry to an office and the machine can start up in pretty much whatever time it wants to (well a couple of minutes would be good).

The problem area for me is shutdown. This is what takes time and needs focus on by engineers. Shutdown speed is governed more by how long it takes poor applications to notice the OS wants to go bye-bye, and this can be a reaaalllllyyyyy long time. So come on, make sure apps shut down quickly as well as start-up and then I would be really happy. This is really important of course because leaving offices are when we are in a hurry, and the time really drags by waiting for the end of the hibernation or the shutdown – when it is then safe for your disk to move, or for the machine to be placed in your bag (without the dreaded machine was still on syndrome noticed when the bag is really hot).

So this is where the effort needs to be expended – shutdown/hibernate, not start-up. What do you think?

Netbooks Returns update

This is an update on a previous post about Netbook Returns. Well it seems that more information about Netbook returns has come available and this was actually based on machines that are not short of RAM or performance, as the quote from MSI’s Director of Sales, Andy Tung found on the Digital Home Thoughts site. Their MSI Wind is one of the leading devices and comes with 1GB of RAM as standard, and the Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz processor. This does confirm that the ‘familiarity’ issue is prevalent amongst ordinary consumers and causing this returns problem.

Well the idea I pushed in the previous post could be a stopgap measure for those persons who feel uncomfortable with Linux after use, where a flash device with the install media of Windows XP could be used to step upgrade the Linux based device. However, it seems certain that a move to Windows XP is naturally going to happen for most new Netbooks, well at least until a new version of Windows is made available that solves Vista’s performance problems – whether that is Windows 7 or not.

Netbooks Returns

There has been some noise floating out there about the return rate on Linux based netbooks. Now I would like to see some more detail about this, as I could expect a certain lack of familiarity causing some people to return machines, but not at the scale being reported.

What is interesting about the date from the latest news, is that there is focus on one specific type of netbook that is being sold via the Carphone Warehouse stores. This netbook is the Elonex Webbook, a machine that is notable for using the Via C7 processor. Although clocked at a healthy 1.6GHz, machines based on these processors are really not fit for purpose and I feel that this is more likely to be behind the high return rate, as well as the miserly 512MB of RAM.

Using Linux is no excuse for being miserly with processor or RAM, and this can be shown that the newest releases of netbooks are pretty much Intel Atom Processor only, and have at least 1GB of RAM.

My own experience has shown that the machines with lower processors (in my case Celeron 630MHz) and RAM (512MB), do not work regardless of the OS – the applications that ordinary people want to run (basic wordprocessing and Internet) quickly uses that up. I can see the same thing happening with Netbooks with Vista running on them, these things are proven not to be functional for lightweight machines.

Upgrade Packs

For those people who have purchased machines with Linux on them, and truly feel the need for running a Microsoft product, there should be upgrade packs sold which include Windows XP Home on an SD Card or Memory stick which would allow in-place upgrade of these units. This should not cost more that £50 as long as Microsoft got over its hang-up about XP. Of course this is only for those machines that have the realistic minimum of RAM – 1GB. This is all possible, after all my current main machine, the Advent 4211, has a recovery mechanism based on a 2GB SD Card.

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