Add a couple of AirPort Express base stations for AirTunes and you can control both music selection and multiple sets of speakers from the iPhone. AirPorts can just be setup to join an existing network, rather than creating their own, to provide an additional set of speakers to send music to.

The main problem with iTunes is it’s not really designed to run as a server application. For example you must log in and run the app after every restart, a necessity for Windows Update. Admittedly you could set the computer in question to auto-login and add iTunes to the startup group, nor is it even practical if the computer in question is an office server as well.

It is, however, possible to successfully run iTunes as a service. The trick is to use a service wrapper utility called SrvAny from the Windows 2003 Resource Kit. This runs when the computer starts up and starts iTunes as a service in the background. We set up a separate user account for iTunes and SrvAny to run under, and set permissions on this account to lock it down so it could only access the music files. To set up iTunes as a Service, copy ‘srvany.exe’ to c:\windows\system32, add the following to the registry (customising for your system as necessary), and then in the Service to login as ‘iTunesServer’:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\itunesservice]
"Type"=dword:00000010
"Start"=dword:00000002
"ErrorControl"=dword:00000001
"ImagePath"="C:\\Windows\\System32\\Srvany.exe"
"DisplayName"="iTunes (Media Server)"
"ObjectName"="NT Authority\\LocalService"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\itunesservice\Parameters]
"Application"="C:\\Program Files\\iTunes\\iTunes.exe"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\itunesservice\Enum]
"0"="Root\\LEGACY_ITUNESSERVICE\\0000"
"Count"=dword:00000001
"NextInstance"=dword:00000001

This has been tested on a Windows 2008 Server here, but should work fine on any version of Windows, desktop or server. If you need to access the iTunes UI for any reason, stop the service and run the app interactively from the ‘iTunesServer’ user account.

The other minor annoyance of iTunes is the speaker list that comes up in Remote.app. You can specify a name for AirTunes speakers, but the ones attached the computer iTunes is running on are always called ‘My Computer’. Fortunately this can be customised too by editing the iTunes localisation file. Locate the file below (selecting the correct .lproj folder for your language):

Windows:
c:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.Resources\en.lproj\Localizable.strings

MacOS:
/Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/Localizable.strings

And search for string ‘163.035’ (without quotes)—that is the name for the built-in speakers. Change it to whatever you want. In iTunes 10 and newer the localisation files are commented, so it’s easier to find and edit these text strings.

However, there’s a difference between a plug-in you’ve chosen to install, and one that just installs itself along with another piece of software. Worse still are those plug-ins that you just can’t uninstall. iTunes is particularly annoying in this regard, there’s no uninstall and deleting the plug-in files causes iTunes to reinstall itself (and the plug-in) on next run. Sure you can disable the plug-in in the browser, but I’d prefer it not to be there in the first place.

After looking into this further, there is a way to permanently block unwanted plug-ins without deleting the files (which just causes iTunes, the .NET Framework Firefox plug-in, and many others to reinstall themselves). The trick is to create another Administrator user account on your machine, and use that account set file permissions on the plug-in to block access from your normal user account. Without ‘read’ rights to the plug-in file, there’s no way it can load into your browser disabled or not.

Locating the plug-in files to block is pretty straight forward if you know where to look. In Internet Explorer it’s under: Tools > Internet Options > Programs > Manage Add-ons. Once in the ‘Manage Add-ons’ dialog you’ll see a ‘File’ column with the plug-in’s filename, right clicking on the column heading and checking ‘In Folder’ will also show you the paths to these files. In Firefox the plug-in list is displayed by typing “about:plugins” in the address bar. Unfortunately you’ll need to figure out the file paths yourself, as Firefox doesn’t tell you this.

Once blocked, your browser plugins list will be reduced to just those that you need and want, in doing so making your browser more stable and secure.

Of course one can sync between the two using iTunes, but this is tedious to say the least and not exactly practical if you use your Calendar and To Dos a lot.  The iPhone OS 3.0 introduced Exchange ActiveSync, allowing medium- to enterprise-sized businesses with an Exchange Server installation to do 2-way wireless sync.  For smaller enterprises this may not be an option, even if they have Exchange, due to the increased security concerns of making their mail server internet facing.

It is possible to have 2-way sync without Exchange, by using a Google Calendar as intermediate store and synching both the iPhone and Outlook against that.  Internally we use ‘Google Apps for Business’ for our e-mail, mainly due to the excellent spam filtering, and that also provides calendar accounts.  However any Google calendar account will do.

The process is as follows; as with anything, make sure you have a full backup before you start and that you have synched with iTunes first so both calendars are in sync:

1. Setup a Google Calendar Account
2. Use Google Calendar Sync to synchronize between Outlook 2003 (or newer) and your Google Calendar.†
3. Setup Exchange ActiveSync on your iPhone to sync between the iPhone/iPod Touch and Google calendar

† At the time of writing Google Calendar Sync doesn’t work with Outlook 2010 beta, however it is expected that this will be resolved by the time Office 2010 is released.

Google Calendar Sync

This can be downloaded from the URL below.  The configuration is very simple, just enter the username and password of the Google Calendar you wish to sync to and save.  The program is automatically added to your ‘Startup’ group and will run in the background, synching your calendar every 2 hours by default (this can be changed to any timeframe that suits).  The only caveat is it will only sync your primary calendar, so if you have multiple calendars in Outlook you may wish to consider consolidating those and using Category labels if possible.

http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=89955

Exchange ActiveSync for Calendar

Google’s servers now support Exchange ActiveSync communication, which unlike previous calDAV setups support data ‘Push’.  This means that, when Google Calendar Sync updates the Google Calendar online from Outlook, Google’s servers will push the updates down to your device immediately (even if it’s asleep) so reminders work straight away.

1. Open the Settings from the home screen.
2. Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
3. Tap Add Account…
4. Select Microsoft Exchange.

Account Info

• Email: your Google account address (usually somebody@gmail.com) or Google apps email address
• Domain: leave blank
• Username: same as the email field, your Google account address
• Password: your Google account password
• Server: m.google.com
• Choose Accept if the Unable to Verify Certificate dialog appears.

Sync

• Mail: no
• Contacts: no
• Calendars: yes

If you’re just synching calendars as described, the Mail sync options can be ignored and left as the defaults.

Once Exchange ActiveSync is set up your iPhone/iPod Touch and Outlook calendars should automatically stay in sync without intervention on your part.  And best of all, without having to use iTunes.

The problem is the write performance, and it gets worse with time. Writing data to a SSD* first involves first clearing a whole block and then writing data to it, and this block clearing is slow. To compound the issue, the filler/more used the disk the less likely there will be an already clear block. To the end user this clear/write cycle is worst with small random writes (e.g. a web browser writing to its cache, or version control software updating meta data—yes Subversion I’m looking at you!), and causes the whole machine lock-up for as much as 10 seconds at a time.

Windows 7 having been designed with SSDs in mind, includes support for the ATA Trim command. This allows Windows to tell the disk ‘the data here isn’t needed anymore’ and the disk can clear the block during idle time, providing available clear blocks for write operations. The catch is the SSD must support Trim, and none of mine do. Annoyingly I have one of the first generation 50nm Intel SSDs, which they have [apparently] have no intention of supporting Trim on; the newer 34nm drives released about 9 months later do support Trim.

So what can you do if you don’t have Windows 7 and/or a drive that supports Trim? On the face of it nothing, however then I got thinking… if you erased the whole disk with a tool that cleared all the blocks (a secure erase) that would get the drive back to factory and full performance. You’d then need to reinstall Windows and your applications, buying you about 3 or 4 months before the performance nose dived again. And after a reinstall there’d still be logical fragmentation on the disk, sure SSDs have no seek time, but if Windows thinks the file is fragmented it’s still going to issue 2 or more read operations, wait for 2 or more responses and reassemble the file.

I was reading about the image based backup and restore in the business/ultimate editions of Vista and 7. This takes your existing Windows install, with apps, data and all, and backs it up as a disk image to an external hard drive or dvd(s). The premise being if your disk fails or data gets corrupted you can restore from this image to exactly where you were before. And that was the solution I’d been looking for, a why of maintaining the disk without the major hassle, and without trim or Windows 7.

The SSD Optimistion Process †

1. Delete unneeded temporary files and junk
2. Defragment your SSD to remove any logical fragmentation
3. Do a complete image based backup to an external usb drive (Control Panel > Backup and Restore Center > Windows Complete PC Backup)
4. Boot off a MS-DOS CD
5. Run a Secure Erase tool on the drive (like Secure HDDErase—v3.3 is required for Intel SSDs)
6. Restart with the external drive attached
7. Boot off your Vista or 7 Ultimate DVD
8. Select the restore image backup option

Obviously this isn’t an instant process, but every few months it’s relatively painless especially compared with how annoying the lock-ups are.

* For those that are interested I have both SLC and MLC drives, and the lock-up issue seems to occur with both. The performance did degrade faster with the MLC unit though.  And yes, I’ve done all the SSD related system and registry tweaks.

† Disclaimer: while this process worked fine for us, we take no responsibility for you trying it, and Timeshifting Interactive will not be held liable for any data loss or damaged drives resulting from your use of the above information. Always back up your data before trying something like this.