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alexpgpA while ago I got one of those new FreeAgent portable drives from Seagate, hoping that the advertised ability to take your work environment with you was something more than just a rewarmed version of U3 technology, which has been applied with almost imperceptible success in the thumb drive market (at least in my limited view). While hoping for the best, I was prepared for the worst, and figured that the "worst case scenario" was my acquiring a reasonably priced drive with twice the capacity of my laptop.
What I wanted to do was offload my iTunes application (and library) from my laptop to something that would hold both without leaving any permanent footprint on my VAIO. (Basically, this means installing iTunes on the FreeAgent drive so that no residue finds its way into the VAIO's registry.)
The FreeAgent add-on software - whose name I have forgotten - was only a trial version, requiring yet another module to implement the functionality that I sought. So I installed trial versions of the add-on software and the add-on to the add-on, and attempted to install iTunes.
No joy.
Somewhere in my gyrations about the Web, I picked up the name of something called MojoPac, which I downloaded and installed as a 30-day trial. I was pleased that iTunes installed like a champ. Office 97 installed like a champ as well, onto a drive called "C" that has nothing to do with the drive installed in my VAIO (and which drive is inaccessible while Mojo is running).
With the ability to switch back and forth between Mojo and my VAIO (as "host") it's like having two environments running on one piece of iron.
It's not all fun and games, though.
Primo, if I leave the system alone for a while, Windows (on the "host") will eventually try to go into standby mode, but is prevented by the Mojo application. If the host system is trying to go into standby because of a low battery condition, the results could be unpleasant (loss of data, file corruption).
Secondo, the ability to carry your environment with you, with your music, applications, data, etc. is a double-edged sword. An external drive is much easier to forget to take with you when you go on the road (I mean, it's not a computer, see?), and for the same reason, I imagine it'd be easier to misplace or have someone misplace it for you, if you get my drift, while you are on the road. I'll post more about this issue in some other rock, later.
Terzo - and this is a big one - there is iTunes.
In order to be able to synch purchased data with one's iPod, one's computer must be "authorized." No problem there, except that if I plug my iPod into my old, half-broken proust running Mojo, I am informed by iTunes that my computer is not authorized, which makes sense (different CPU, motherboard, network card, etc. although it is the same Mojo drive).
But authorizing the iPod on proust overwrites the authorization valid for of the new VAIO (whose name, by the way is webster, though I generally refer to the beast as, simply, "the VAIO," but I digress...). That's because while the authorization is tied to the MAC on the machine's network card, the authorization data ends up being written to the Mojo drive!
This means that, after authorizing proust, relocating Mojo and my iPod back to webster means that... I'm back on an... unauthorized computer. Ye gods.
What's worse, if iTunes finds that your iPod is unauthorized on the computer it is connected to, iTunes will delete from the iPod any and all tracks that have been purchased, even if they exist in the iTunes database and reside on the disk. Grrr.
Now, aside from the fact that this constant "authorization two-step" is annoying, and that having files deleted is a further major annoyance, it turns out Apple will only let one authorize up to 5 computers, after which, well, you can reset your authorizations to zero (i.e., deauthorize all computers while logged into the iTunes store), but only once a year. Alternately, you can deauthorize the computers your iPod has visited, one by one.
By the time I finally figured out what was truly happening, I'd lost one opportunity to deauthorize when I wiped iTunes from webster, and a second as a result of switching machines back and forth and back again, leaving me with one "active" authorization on proust, but 3 out of 5 authorizations "in use."
To make sure I understood how this works, I hooked back into proust, deauthorized successfully, moved the Mojo drive to webster and authorized successfully, i.e., I still have 3 of 5 authorizations "in use."
Ya gotta love that DRM! (And I'm sure it's only going to get "better" as time goes by... but not for us poor users, but again, I digress...)
Quarto, portability only extends as far as the administrator of any given machine allows. You can't take the Mojo drive and connect it to a machine that has a lot of restrictions on it, because despite the fact you are isolated from the machine's drives, you are still running a program on the machine and are making use of resources such as network cards. Still, this really isn't a limitation of Mojo, but of Life.
* * * The loaf I made earlier today... oops, yesterday, came out pretty well, except that the very top looks like it collapsed. I suspect there may have been too much water in the mix, this time. The product, however, is edible. I look forward to more experimentation.
So, it's just after midnight as I type this, and I have a pile of stuff that has to get done tomorrow, since today turned into one more of those "days off" that folks have from time to time. (This may be an indicator of burnout, I suspect, but I'm going to enjoy such indicators while I can!)
I plan to get up early tomorrow (around 5 am) and really hit it hard, and then try to get some sound sleep late in the afternoon, as another week of MSR night shifts starts tomorrow night.
Cheers...
What I wanted to do was offload my iTunes application (and library) from my laptop to something that would hold both without leaving any permanent footprint on my VAIO. (Basically, this means installing iTunes on the FreeAgent drive so that no residue finds its way into the VAIO's registry.)
The FreeAgent add-on software - whose name I have forgotten - was only a trial version, requiring yet another module to implement the functionality that I sought. So I installed trial versions of the add-on software and the add-on to the add-on, and attempted to install iTunes.
No joy.
Somewhere in my gyrations about the Web, I picked up the name of something called MojoPac, which I downloaded and installed as a 30-day trial. I was pleased that iTunes installed like a champ. Office 97 installed like a champ as well, onto a drive called "C" that has nothing to do with the drive installed in my VAIO (and which drive is inaccessible while Mojo is running).
With the ability to switch back and forth between Mojo and my VAIO (as "host") it's like having two environments running on one piece of iron.
It's not all fun and games, though.
Primo, if I leave the system alone for a while, Windows (on the "host") will eventually try to go into standby mode, but is prevented by the Mojo application. If the host system is trying to go into standby because of a low battery condition, the results could be unpleasant (loss of data, file corruption).
Secondo, the ability to carry your environment with you, with your music, applications, data, etc. is a double-edged sword. An external drive is much easier to forget to take with you when you go on the road (I mean, it's not a computer, see?), and for the same reason, I imagine it'd be easier to misplace or have someone misplace it for you, if you get my drift, while you are on the road. I'll post more about this issue in some other rock, later.
Terzo - and this is a big one - there is iTunes.
In order to be able to synch purchased data with one's iPod, one's computer must be "authorized." No problem there, except that if I plug my iPod into my old, half-broken proust running Mojo, I am informed by iTunes that my computer is not authorized, which makes sense (different CPU, motherboard, network card, etc. although it is the same Mojo drive).
But authorizing the iPod on proust overwrites the authorization valid for of the new VAIO (whose name, by the way is webster, though I generally refer to the beast as, simply, "the VAIO," but I digress...). That's because while the authorization is tied to the MAC on the machine's network card, the authorization data ends up being written to the Mojo drive!
This means that, after authorizing proust, relocating Mojo and my iPod back to webster means that... I'm back on an... unauthorized computer. Ye gods.
What's worse, if iTunes finds that your iPod is unauthorized on the computer it is connected to, iTunes will delete from the iPod any and all tracks that have been purchased, even if they exist in the iTunes database and reside on the disk. Grrr.
Now, aside from the fact that this constant "authorization two-step" is annoying, and that having files deleted is a further major annoyance, it turns out Apple will only let one authorize up to 5 computers, after which, well, you can reset your authorizations to zero (i.e., deauthorize all computers while logged into the iTunes store), but only once a year. Alternately, you can deauthorize the computers your iPod has visited, one by one.
By the time I finally figured out what was truly happening, I'd lost one opportunity to deauthorize when I wiped iTunes from webster, and a second as a result of switching machines back and forth and back again, leaving me with one "active" authorization on proust, but 3 out of 5 authorizations "in use."
To make sure I understood how this works, I hooked back into proust, deauthorized successfully, moved the Mojo drive to webster and authorized successfully, i.e., I still have 3 of 5 authorizations "in use."
Ya gotta love that DRM! (And I'm sure it's only going to get "better" as time goes by... but not for us poor users, but again, I digress...)
Quarto, portability only extends as far as the administrator of any given machine allows. You can't take the Mojo drive and connect it to a machine that has a lot of restrictions on it, because despite the fact you are isolated from the machine's drives, you are still running a program on the machine and are making use of resources such as network cards. Still, this really isn't a limitation of Mojo, but of Life.
So, it's just after midnight as I type this, and I have a pile of stuff that has to get done tomorrow, since today turned into one more of those "days off" that folks have from time to time. (This may be an indicator of burnout, I suspect, but I'm going to enjoy such indicators while I can!)
I plan to get up early tomorrow (around 5 am) and really hit it hard, and then try to get some sound sleep late in the afternoon, as another week of MSR night shifts starts tomorrow night.
Cheers...
