Blog:: Craig Pringle

Previously I blogged about the lack of a 64-bit Cisco VPN client. 

In the comments of that post yaz points out that NCP has a Beta Client that works on 64-bit clients – and that includes Windows 7.  It also supports 3rd party VPNs and that includes Cisco.

The NCP beta client is available via this page.  Install was simple and there is even a UI to import your existing Cisco VPN profile. 

It appears to be a 30 day trial – which is a bit odd for a beta product.  It does appear to work though.  I’ll give it a good work out over the next couple of days and report back.

There is a new user group coming to town and starting the right way – with touch related demos and fresh Windows 7 goodness.

Nicholas Rayner and Craig Bailey have joined forces to create the Sydney Windows User Group.  From the site:

The aim of the SWUG is to support and provide advice to consumers, power users and small business in regards to the Microsoft Windows Operating System and related products. The user group will showcase the Windows Operating System and provide demonstrations of key components of Windows can be used both at home and in your business.

The User Group will also focus on related Microsoft Products including Windows Mobile, Windows Home Server, Microsoft Office, Windows Live and XBOX 360 and how they can be used to enhance the Windows user experience.

The first meeting will be at Microsoft in Sydney on the 13th of May, 2009.  Here’s the details.

Meeting details

Date: Wednesday 13^th May 2009

Time: 6pm – 9pm

Venue: Microsoft Australia - 1 Epping Road, North Ryde

Agenda:

6:00pm – Introduction

6:10pm – News with Q&A session

6:30pm – Windows 7 RC Demonstration

7:20pm – Break

7:40pm – Windows Touch including a demonstration on the HP Touchsmart PC

8:20pm – Close

If you can make it to the first meeting, please RSVP to nicholas@windowsusergroup.com

I’ve already put it in my calendar so if you can make it I’ll be seeing you there.  You may also want to add the RSS Feed from the SWUG blog to your feed reader, so you can keep tabs on future meetings.

Previously I blogged about an issue I was having on one of my PCs with Live Mesh.  The problem was that Moe.exe (the process behind Live Mesh) was consuming excessive CPU when ever it was running.  This has obvious ill effects on the battery life and overall system performance.

I was hoping that the recent update to Live Mesh would of fixed it.  Unfortunately this was not the case.  However since I was only experiencing this issue on one of my machines I decided to see if I could find a fix.  I did.

What I did was remove my problematic machine from my Mesh.  I then copied the contents of the synchronised folder to another location on my hard drive (as a precaution) and deleted everything in the target folder.  I then re-added my machine to my Mesh and set up synchronisation for that folder again. 

In the Before shot below the yellow line shows the percentage of the CPU that Moe.exe was using.

After the fix it consistently looks more like this:

A vast improvement and suddenly Live Mesh is useful to me again.

For over a year and a half a small but dedicated group of IT professionals have been meeting for coffee once a week.  This has always been an open invite, but I thought that it would be worthwhile reiterating the invite.

When:

Every Wednesday @ 1PM

Where:

Jet Cafe Bar
Druit St
Queen Victoria Bldg, Level Ground, Shop 55, Sydney, NSW 2000
Here's a map
We are usually at or near table 11 or 12, which is outside on the Druit St side of the cafe.  Just look for a table with three or four geeky looking people on it and say hi :)

Who:

Generally it is a mix of Developers and IT Pros from all walks.  Specifically some of the long standing members include:

• Craig Bailey
• Nick Randolph
• Justin King
• Neil Carey
• Craig Pringle (Me)

There are several others who have floated in an out over time.

If you’re in the area stop in and join us.  If you are on Twitter keep an eye on the #sydgeekcoffee tag – I’ll be posting when I am heading to geek coffee.

The Live Mesh process, moe.exe,  is hammering my CPU.  The screenshot below shows this – an average of 51%!  Moe.exe’s usage is the yellow line on the CPU graph.  You can also see that even though it is hammering the CPU there is no moe.exe network traffic.

Something tells me moe.exe is about to get killed off…

That’s better, but I’d rather figure out why this is happening so I can keep Mesh running.

While I was pleased to see that there was, after a fashion, native ISO support in Windows 7 as I’ve previously noted it does not go far enough.  I have been seeing in my blog’s logs lots of referrers coming from searches for the likes of “Mount ISO in Windows 7”.

Here’s the bad news – Natively, you can’t. 

Here’s the good news – the key word there was natively.  You can mount ISOs in Windows 7 and previous versions of the OS, you just need to use a third party tool to do so.

My ISO Mounting tool of choice is Virtual Clone Drive by SlySoft.  I like it because it is light weight and easy to use. It is also free – but that is not a reflection on quality.  It is an excellent advert for SlySoft’s paid offerings like CloneDVD.

After downloading and installing Virtual Clone Drive (and I find rebooting is a good idea) you will find that you can mount an ISO file just by double clicking it (if nothing else is associated with ISO files) or by right clicking it and selecting Open With > Mount file with Virtual Clone Drive.

Once mounted the ISO will show up as another DVD drive in Explorer.  If autorun is enabled this does, of course work as well.

There is also a management application where you can add additional virtual drives or change the UI language.

Don’t ask me what the Virtual Sheep do – but it is a checkbox I’m sure some of my Aussie mates would tick ;)

According to the website Virtual Clone Drive supports the following Operating Systems:

Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000/XP/XP64/VISTA/VISTA64

I have found it runs fine on Windows 7 build 7000.

I'm not Australian - but I live in Australia and as such I am an Australian Internet User.  I have to agree with my friend Chris on this one...

I am a little surprised that there has not been more noise made about this.. thought I would do my bit as I am a totally against internet censorship..

The Australian Federal Government is pushing forward with a plan to force ISPs to censor the Internet for all Australians.

Like Chris I am totally against censorship.  Apart from squashing my civil liberteies, this is a hairbrained scheme at best and won't work...

For those of you who may be running the M3 build of Windows 7 and using either hosted Exchange or accessing a corporate Exchange environment via Outlook Anywhere (nee RPC over HTTPS) there is an issue you may run into. 

When you try to open Outlook you are prompted for credentials.  With most hosted Exchange providers you use your email address as the username.  If you do this on Windows 7 (M3) I have found that you are repeatedly prompted for your credentials but no matter how carefully and correctly you type your password it just keeps prompting you. 

If you run into this issue try entering you username in the DOMAIN\Username format instead of your email address.  I don't know why this works, but I know it does for at least two Hosted Exchange providers.  Contact your hosted provider if you are not sure what the domain name is.

I'm holidaying with family in NZ and I just got the news that I have been renewed as a MVP.

This is great news and - as always I am thrilled to be honoured and I am humbled by the exceptional caliber of my fellow MVPs. 

Thanks very much to Microsoft - I look forward to another year as a MVP.

I stumbled across quite a cool feature in Windows 7 today.  I was copying a large amount - about 11 GB - off my video camera to my tablet.  The video camera I have connects via USB and just shows up as an external drive. 

While the data copied I switched across to another window to carry on working.  Then I noticed that the button in the taskbar for Explorer was partially shaded.  I flicked through the open explorer windows and realised that one of them was the progress bar for the file copy.  The shading in the taskbar button was the same percentage as the copy progress window as the screen shot below shows.

This is a handy way to keep an eye on progress of a file copy.  Unfortunately it does not seem to shade the IE taskbar icon for Internet downloads.

Sony has a cool concept laptop that features a screen that is transparent when the device is off. 

I think that is very cool technology.  This came from a list of conceptual technologies on PickMore.

It's that time of year again - Movember.  While I have decided not to "grow a mo" this year, because I looked way too dodgy as you can see from this photo when my son was born,  I still think it is great cause. What is it?

From the website:

Movember (the month formerly known as November) is an annual charity event held during November.
At the start of Movember guys register with a clean shaven face. The Movember participants, known as Mo Bros, have the remainder of the month to grow and groom their Mo, raising money along the way to benefit men's health - specifically prostate cancer and male depression. 
Movember culminates at the end of the month at official Gala Partés, Mo-Office and Mo-Town parties where Tom Selleck and Borat look-a-likes battle it out for their chance to be the Man of Movember.
While growing a Mo is left to the guys, Mo Sistas (ladies who support their guys or just love Mo's!) form an important part of Movember by recruiting Mo Bros, helping to raise funds and attending the highly anticipated Gala Partés.
But it' s not all fun and games, so why the extreme behavior?
Which ever way we look at it, men are far less healthy than women. The average life expectancy for men is five years less than for women.

The obvious question is why?

Men lack awareness about the very real health issues they face. There is an attitude that they have to be tough - "a real man" - and are reluctant to see a doctor about an illness or go for regular medical checks.
Movember aims to change these attitudes and make men's health fun by putting the Mo back on the face of fashion and in the process raise some serious funds for key men's health issues, including:
Prostate Cancer: because every year 2,900 Australian men die from prostate cancer and over 18,000 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer. [ FIND OUT MORE ].
Depression in Men: because one in six men experience depression at any given time but most don't seek help.[ FIND OUT MORE ].

It is a great cause - even if you don't know anyone taking part you can still donate via the website.  Get over there and show your support for this great cause.

This is either a creative way to carry your geek gear or an excellent way to get shot.  I don't think I will ever try travelling through a US airport with one of these.  That said the e-Volve Nylon Gadget Shoulder Holster might be just what you are looking for.

James over at JKontheRun lists the key features.

• Comfortable to Wear – The e-Volve Nylon Gadget Shoulder Holster is designed to be highly ergonomic and is extremely comfortably around the body. The left side of the holster rests comfortably on the top of the left shoulder allowing the holster itself to hang below the left arm. This is a very natural and comfortable way to carry your gadgets. The right-side adjustable strap positions over the right shoulder and under the right arm to comfortably control how the left side of the holster sits and stays on the body.
• Highly Durable – The e-Volve Nylon Gadget Shoulder Holster is constructed with this highest quality of heavy-duty ballistic nylon materials to withstand the bumps and grinds of everyday life.
• Keep Gadgets Safe & Secure – Each of the e-Volve Gadget Shoulder Holster's quick-access pouches are strategically positioned vertically on the holster to keep your gadgets safe from others and secure as you move around doing your day-to-day chores.
• Large Gadget Quick-Access Pouch – The e-Volve Nylon Gadget Shoulder Holster is designed with a large quick-access pouch that securely fits most smartphone devices (such as a Apple iPhone, Blackberry, Palm Treo or other smartphone device), compact digital cameras (such as Canon Powershot, Panasonic Lumix, Sony Cybershot, Fuji Finepix, Olympus Stylus and others), larger digital music players (such as Apple iTouch or iPod Classic and Microsoft Zune 80 or Zune 120), Sony Playstation Portable, Nintendo DS portable, and most standard sized men's wallets.
• Small Gadget Quick-Access Pouch – The small quick-access pouch will fit most small cell phones (such as Samsung cell phones, Motorola cell phones, Nokia cell phones, LG cell phones, and others), small digital music players (such as Apple iPod Nano, Microsoft Zune 4, Zune 8 & Zune 16), digital voice recorders and other small personal electronic gadgets.
• Zippered Pouch – To help control loose items that are normally kept in your pant’s pockets, the e-Volve Nylon Gadget Shoulder Holster provides a unique zippered pouch to quickly store and control change, currency, memory cards, zip drives, sunglasses, reading glasses, and much more.
• Quick-Clip Key Ring – The e-Volve Nylon Gadget Shoulder Holster also offers a convenient key ring clip to quickly clip and unclip your keys to and from the holster.
• Elastic Pen Holder – The e-Volve Nylon Gadget Shoulder Holster includes an elastic pen holder at the bottom of the holster to easily and comfortably carry a pen.
• Fully Adjustable – The e-Volve Nylon Gadget Shoulder Holster is designed to fit all body types and sizes. Worn on your left shoulder, the top of the holster can be adjusted with Velcro straps to accomodate all shoulder sizes - from petite shoulders to large shoulders. To adjust how the holster lies on your left shoulder, the holster back strap can be easily increased or decreased to fit your body comfortably.
• Side-Release Buckle –The quick-release back strap buckle allows you to quickly unbuckle the holster back strap to remove the holster from your body. It can be reattached just as easily.
• Color - Black.

Mobile PCs have come along in leaps and bounds in the last few years.  We've seen a lot of innovation in a lot of components, but batteries have not change much at all.  Battery life has improved, but that has been largely due to improvements in the amount of power the screen, hard drive and processor is using rather than how much the battery holds.  However Warner over at GottaBeMobile points to an advance in battery technology that may change all that.

The Energizer Bunny might keep going and going and going, but mobile pc users have been waiting and waiting and waiting for an advance in battery technology that will yield a jump in battery life. If researchers at South Korea’s Hanyang University have their say, we might just see that. They different approach involves silicon instead of graphite in making lithium batteries. That core change is supposed to yield 800% more storage capacity.

This can't come soon enough for me.  There are plenty of ultra portables that can give you 2 hours of battery life, so this advance could make all day computing in a small device a reality.

One of the things I was very pleased to see in the Windows 7 pre-beta is that .ISO files have a file association.  Right clicking an ISO file shows you that the default action is to burn the ISO to a disc.

 

I burned off an Office 2007 CD using this - just to see if it works - and it did work a treat.

It is certainly good that support for ISO files has finally made it into the OS and I have to say it is about time.  Especially when you consider that Microsoft distributes a massive amount of software as .ISO files through the MSDN and TechNet subscriptions.

Unfortunately the support simply does not go far enough.  It is simply not safe to assume that everyone has a blank CD or DVD lying around.  It is not even safe to assume that they have a burner.  Many mobile devices don't have an optical drive.  What really needs to be added in to Windows is the ability to mount and ISO image.  Until Microsoft sorts this out you will need to continue to use 3rd party software like Slysoft's Virtual CloneDrive (which is great freeware) to mount ISOs. 

I am going to be co-presenting a session on OCS Edge Services with my good friend and fellow MVP Derrick Buckley.  The session is on Friday the 5th of September at 11:45.  Here's the details.

UNC316

Office Communications Server 2007 Security: Architecture and Edge Services

One of the core value propositions for Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007, is the fact that unified communications can be used anywhere - at work, at home, or on the road. In this session, we discuss the edge aspects of OCS 2007 for voice, media conferencing, remote access, public internet connectivity and federation, along with the edge server roles. We discuss various edge server deployment topologies. We also discuss NAT and firewall traversal with discussion on how OCS 2007 uses ICE, STUN and TURN for audio and video.

If you are coming to TechEd in Sydney this year then make sure you get it in your session builder now!

Nick Randolph has posted that the Australians have won the Imagine Cup for 2008.

Australia took out the2008 Imagine Cup Software Design competition.  Team SOAK took on a fierce competition and came out successful - well done guys!

Well done team SOAK. A huge effort.

Check out Nick's post for a raft of phone from the final day.

I've just had a reminder of the next meeting of SWIG from my friend Derrick, who runs it.

See you all at SWIG on Tuesday for great talks, prizes and free food and drink.....

We have a great talk on preparing for your Windows 2008 MCITP exam with Ken Schaefer

Ken’s Bio - Ken Schaefer is a systems engineer consultant for global systems integrator Avanade. Avanade is a joint partnership between Microsoft and Accenture and focuses on enterprise projects across the Microsoft product stack.

Ken has worked with IIS for around 10 years, and been a Microsoft MVP for IIS since 2003. He has presented at numerous Microsoft Tech.Ed events across the US, Australia and Asia, written articles for Microsoft TechNet and spent countless hours talking about IIS at other events, user group meetings and roadshows. He was lead author for Professional IIS 7 (Wrox/Wiley) and co-author of Securing IIS 6.0 (Syngress Press)

He is currently an MCITP (Win2k8 EA), MCSE+Security, MCDBA, MCTS and holds a Masters in Business and Technology from UNSW. Ken blogs about IIS at http://adopenstatic.com/blog

I have yet to finalise the second talk but am hoping for a confirmation on a Hyper V talk!

We also have a Demo from Chris Mohan on File Server Resource Manager for Windows 2008. Have a look at Chris’s blog - http://www.chris-mohan.com/

I will send an update soon

See you on Tuesday
Derrick Buckley

Should be good. Details are:

When: Tue 15/07/2008

Where: Healey Room, AMP, 50 Bridge Street, Sydney

See you there!

As I previously mentioned I am putting together a Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) environment to enable me to rebuild my Vista machines at will. 

I now have  a Windows 2008 Server machine running inside of Virtual PC that is a self contained MDT environment.

To do this I had to configure the Server with the following services.

• Active Directory - I promoted it to a domain controller in its own domain.
• DNS - required by AD
• DHCP - to give out addresses, required by WDS.
• Windows Deployment Services (WDS) - this is an optional Windows Component you can add on Windows Server.  WDS responds to network boot PXE requests from clients and sends them a Windows Pre-installation Environment (PE) boot image.
• MDT.

There are a number of other components that MDT needs to be able to deploy anything, but it is ridiculously easy to add these in.  The main management console of MDT is the Deployment Workbench, which contains a node in the navigation pane called components.  Clicking on that shows the current install status of the various things you need and you can download and install them inside the Deployment Workbench.  Click the image below to see what this looks like.

Once all the required software is in place it is a matter of creating a distribution share, adding the OS images (which you can do by right clicking Operating Systems and selecting New..  You then just pop in the CD and follow the prompts in the wizard.) and creating a build.

Another cool thing with MDT is you can import drivers in much the same way as operating systems.  These can be added to the build so that they are inject into the image before the hardware detection takes place, so if you have more recent drivers than those included with Vista you can insert them and it will never load the older driver.  Much cleaner.

To do this you right click on the Out-of-Box drivers node in the Deployment Workbench and select New...  This will launch a driver import wizard.

You fill in a path and optionally assign one or more groups that the drivers will belong to and then click Finish.  MDT will search the directory and any sub directories and import any drivers it finds.  Also by default, when you build your boot image it will include all Network and Storage drivers so that you should have the bare requirements to perform a network install once the Windows PE image boots.

I've got my build going on the Acer laptop I've been testing against to the base OS level with no input required from me beyond pressing F12 to initiate the network boot.  Now it is time to start working on the applications.

The MDT Team has a blog - so if you want to find out more that might be a good place to start.

It is time for another round of MVP awards and some great people have been recognised by Microsoft for their tireless contributions to the technical communities. 

Sierra Modro and Matt Faulkner- both from GottaBeMobile.com have both been awarded a Tablet PC MVPs.  Welcome to the team guys - it is well deserved for both of you!

Also awarded was my good friend and colleague here in Sydney - Derrick Buckley.  Derrick runs the Sydney Windows Infrastructure User Group and was awarded as a Communications Server MVP. If you are in Sydney, head along to SWIUG some time as there is always great content there.

Great stuff from all of you - keep up the good work!

For my money UAC is a good thing Or rather it is a painful and annoying intrusion, but there is a good reason it is there. It helps to address a very real threat. But, I've often thought that it should have a way to mark an app as trusted, so it always runs as admin without prompting. Thankfully the how-to geek has a way.

Create Administrator Mode Shortcuts Without UAC Prompts in Windows Vista
One of the most talked about annoyances in Windows Vista are the UAC prompts that constantly pop up when you are trying to make system changes. It's especially irritating when you often need to run a particular tool that requires administrator mode in order to run. Thankfully there's a simple hack that you can do to create an administrator mode shortcut that doesn't prompt for UAC.

Read More...

Great tip!

One of the things that has annoyed me about the podcast functionality on the Zune is that I could not find an easy way to unsubscribe from a podcast from the device.

The post from Kevin @ jkOnTheRun about sharing and subscribing to podcasts (which I just posted about) from the device gave me an idea.

Sure enough if you press and hold the centre button on the Zune while listening to a podcast one of the options presented is unsubscribe.  Excellent.  The Gong Show for podcasts.  That is exactly what I needed.

As I just posted Motion have reached out through me to one of their customers who posted a comment here about a poor experience he had with their support.

I think it is great that Motion are paying attention.  And not just to the bloggers, but to the comments as well.  This is a very good thing. 

Often we as customers feel like we are nothing more than nameless, faceless numbers to the companies we buy products from.  When they show that they are listening and want to help it is truly gratifying.  I don't know why more companies don't keep their finger on the pulse.  Good work guys.

When I posted the other day that I was meeting with Motion's CEO, Scott Eckert, I called for questions.  One comment came from another Scott who has been less than satisfied, shall we say, with the battery life of his LE1700.  Worse, when he tried to raise the issue with Motion support he found them "terse--and unhelpful".

Good news Scott - I've been contacted by someone at Motion that wants to help you get a resolution to your issue.  They asked me to forward their details on to you so that you can contact a person who will own the issue and get it resolved.  Here's the rub - I don't have your email address as your real address was not provided with the comment.

I don't mind that at all.  I respect people's privacy.  But it does mean I can't reply to you directly.  If you email me using the link at the bottom of the left hand column of my blog pages, or leave a comment and specify your email address in the appropriate field I'll forward you the details of someone who wants to help.

Just to clarify for everyone out there - anyone who comments on my blog is asked to provide an email address.  There is no checking that it is a real address and if you choose not to provide your actual address that is fine.  However, just so you all know, if you do provide an address it will never be used by me for any purpose other than replying directly to you comment if I think that is appropriate.  I will never provide your address to any third party without your express consent.  I will never sell any email addresses (I hate spam).

The last couple of weeks have been pretty full on.  I never made it bat to CeBit after my previous post as a project I am working on ran into some issues and that demanded my full attention.

However, while I was there I talked with the guys from Motion Computing (who had a great stand at CeBit, BTW) and on Friday I got a call from the country manager here in Australia.  He tells me that Scott Eckert, the CEO of Motion Computing, is going to be in Sydney next week and asked if I would be keen to meet and talk to him.  Heck yeah!

Now it is no secret that I have long been a slate fan and that I've had a couple of Motion slates in my time.  My Motion LS800 is still one of my favourite devices and I've always wondered why there was never another in the LS line...  I've got plenty to things to talk to Scott about.  But then I'm sure some of you do as well.  So if you do have any questions, leave a comment here and I'll see what I can do.  I'm meeting Scott on Wednesday - Sydney time.

At CeBit I'll be experimenting with Windows Mobile blogging using Kevin Daly's new version of his Windows Mobile blogging app Dairist 2.

The application supports inserting images, which are uploaded to your blog on the fly straight from the device.  to make the process a little more seamless I have configured the camera on my HTC Tytn II to capture at 240x320.  I then just need to rotate the image and insert it into a post and click publish.  Very cool.  Thanks to Kevin for this great app.

I dropped into CeBit in Sydney yesterday. Here I am in front of one freakin big plasma screen from Panasonic. I will be heading back again today and tomorrow... Stay tuned.

SPAM is a pet peeve of mine.  If you manage a mail server or can influence someone who does - make sure they have configured SenderID.  For more information I refer you to a lengthy post I just put on my other blog.

To put it simply an email server that supports the SenderID framework queries a special DNS record to validate that the computer submitting an email is allowed to send for that domain.

Spread the word.

While I was at the MVP Summit in Seattle Rob Bushway invited me to do some posts on GBM. What tablet blogger could say no?

I'll be contributing over at GBM semi-regularly now, though. I'll still be maintaining this blog as well.

Rob announced this on GBM and my first post is now live. Check it out.

I just spotted this in the sidebar area on my blog:

Somehow I don't think my readers are the audience this company is aiming for!

I was pleasantly surprised yesterday to see a Motion Computing F5 on stage at the keynote for Interact 2008.  It was used as part of a great demo.

There followed a great demo of the real value of UC. what was great about it was that it was not run from Office Communicator or from Outlook. It was a demo of a Point of Sale application that had been "Communications enabled" and it was run from a Tablet PC.

The demo scenario was a customer asking a staff member if they had a particular product. From their tablet pc the employee can check stock in other nearby stores.  He could then see who in the other store was online and available to take a call.

The call was then initiated from within the PoS app using the tablet's speakers & microphone. On the receiving end the incoming call had a subject indicated that the call was a stock enquiry for a particular product and the app automatically displayed info that was contextually relevant - their stock level for that product. This means that at the time the call is answered the person already knows what it is about and has the information required to help at hand. A very compelling demo.

This sort of scenario is perfect for a slate style device - which is more usable when you are standing or moving than convertible style devices. My full post on the keynote is here.

I'm sitting in a departure gate in Sydney International Airport.  I'm on my way to the US for two weeks.  First up I'll be going to San Diego (where it is warm) to attend Interact 2008. 

Then I'll be heading to Seattle (where it is not so warm) to catch up with a couple of thousand more geeks at the MVP Summit. 

Should be a great time, but as with all trips from this part of the world to - well pretty much anywhere - it starts with a long flight...  In about 24 hours I should be touching down in San Diego - albeit a bit jaded.

 Kevin Tofel points to TabletPCReview, who have the low down on a great travel accessory from Belkin.

On the run in your car with mobile devices all the live-long day? Belkin's Travel Power Adapter might be the best friend your glovebox every had based on this overview at TabletPCReview. For around $100, you get the adapter that fits in your vehicle's cigarette lighter and 11 interchangeable tips. Simply plug in your notebook or other device while you're driving and you'll be charging up your laptop on the go.

What a great accessory for the mobile geek.  I could of used this for a few long road trips in the past!

I've been out of the look for a few weeks.  I had a couple of exams to sit before the end of the month to renew one of my technical certifications. 

I even had my hands on some cool tablet gear last week and was too busy to do a review - how unfair is that.  I'll have to arrange a second sitting.

I passed both of them and now I can return to having some semblance of a life again.

I previously reviewed the Jabra JX10 headset - which I loved before.  However I have to say I am now blown away.

I left my JX10 in my jeans pocket and it went through the wash.  Easy enough to do because the device is so small and light that it could easily be missed when checking your pockets.

Incredibly the headset still works after it's submarine adventure.  This completely floored me.  This is a truly robust little device and I am more impressed than ever.

I have come across a command line tool in Vista that has some potential in the fight against the dreaded Vista Insomnia issue.

The tool is called powercfg.exe and there is a TechNet article about it here.

Running powercfg /? provides the following usage information.

POWERCFG <command line options>
Description:
  This command line tool enables users to control the power settings
  on a system.

Parameter List:
  -LIST, -L   Lists all power schemes in the current user's environment.

              Usage: POWERCFG -LIST

  -QUERY, -Q  Displays the contents of the specified power scheme.

              Usage: POWERCFG -QUERY <SCHEME_GUID> <SUB_GUID>

              <SCHEME_GUID>  (optional) Specifies the GUID of the power scheme
                             to display, can be obtained by using powercfg -l.
              <SUB_GUID>     (optional) Specifies the GUID of the subgroup
                             to display.  Requires a SCHEME_GUID to be provided.

              If neither SCHEME_GUID or SUB_GUID are provided, the settings
              of the current user's active power scheme are displayed.
              If SUB_GUID is not specified, all settings in the specified
              power scheme are displayed.

  -CHANGE, -X Modifies a setting value in the current power scheme.

              Usage: POWERCFG -X <SETTING> <VALUE>

              <SETTING>   Specifies one of the following options:
                          -monitor-timeout-ac <minutes>
                          -monitor-timeout-dc <minutes>
                          -disk-timeout-ac <minutes>
                          -disk-timeout-dc <minutes>
                          -standby-timeout-ac <minutes>
                          -standby-timeout-dc <minutes>
                          -hibernate-timeout-ac <minutes>
                          -hibernate-timeout-dc <minutes>

              Example:
                  POWERCFG -Change -monitor-timeout-ac 5

              This would set the monitor idle timeout value to 5 minutes
              when on AC power.

  -CHANGENAME Modifies the name of a power scheme and optionally it's
              description.

              Usage: POWERCFG -CHANGENAME <GUID> <name> <scheme description>

              If the description is omitted only the name will be changed.

  -DUPLICATESCHEME
              Duplicates the specified power scheme.  The resulting
              GUID which represents the new scheme will be displayed.

              Usage: POWERCFG -DUPLICATESCHEME <GUID> <destination GUID>

              <GUID>  Specifies a scheme GUID obtained by using the powercfg -l.

              If <destination GUID> is omitted, a new GUID will be
              created for the duplicated scheme.

  -DELETE, -D Deletes the power scheme with the specified GUID.

              Usage: POWERCFG -DELETE <GUID>

              <GUID>  obtained by using the LIST parameter.

  -DELETESETTING
              Deletes a power setting.

              Usage: POWERCFG -DELETESETTING <SUB_GUID> <SETTING_GUID>

              <SUB_GUID>      Specifies the subgroup GUID.
              <SETTING_GUID>  Specifies the power setting guid.

  -SETACTIVE, -S
              Makes the specified power scheme active on the system.

              Usage: POWERCFG -SETACTIVE <SCHEME_GUID>

              <SCHEME_GUID>  Specifies the scheme guid.

  -GETACTIVESCHEME
              Retrieve the currently active power scheme.

              Usage: POWERCFG -GETACTIVESCHEME

  -SETACVALUEINDEX
              Sets a value associated with a specified power setting
              while the system is powered by AC power.

              Usage: POWERCFG -SETACVALUEINDEX <SCHEME_GUID> <SUB_GUID>
                                               <SETTING_GUID> <SettingIndex>

              <SCHEME_GUID>   Specifies a power scheme GUID and may be
                              obtained by using PowerCfg /L.
              <SUB_GUID>      Specifies a subgroup of power setting GUID and may
                              be obtained by using "PowerCfg /Q."
              <SETTING_GUID>  Specifies an individual power setting GUID and may
                              be obtained by using "PowerCfg /Q".
              <SettingIndex>  Specifies which of the list of of possible values
                              this power setting will be set to.

              Example:
                  POWERCFG -SetAcValueIndex <GUID> <GUID> <GUID> 5
                  This would set the power setting's AC value to the 5th entry
                  in the list of possible values for this power setting.
  -SETDCVALUEINDEX
              Sets a value associated with a specified power setting
              while the system is powered by DC power.

              Usage: POWERCFG -SETDCVALUEINDEX <SCHEME_GUID> <SUB_GUID>
                                               <SETTING_GUID> <SettingIndex>
              <SCHEME_GUID>   Specifies a power scheme GUID and may be
                              obtained by using PowerCfg /L.
              <SUB_GUID>      Specifies a subgroup of power setting GUID and may
                              be obtained by using "PowerCfg /Q."
              <SETTING_GUID>  Specifies an individual power setting GUID and may
                              be obtained by using "PowerCfg /Q".
              <SettingIndex>  Specifies which of the list of possible values
                              this setting will be set to.

              Example:
                  POWERCFG -SetDcValueIndex <GUID> <GUID> <GUID> 5
                  This would set the power setting's DC value to the 5th entry
                  in the list of possible values for this power setting.

  -HIBERNATE, -H  <ON|OFF>
              Enables-Disables the hibernate feature.  Hibernate timeout is not
              supported on all systems.

              Usage: POWERCFG -H <ON|OFF>

  -AVAILABLESLEEPSTATES, -A 
              Reports the sleep states available on the system
              Attempts to report reasons why sleep states are unavailable.

  -DEVICEQUERY
              Return a list of devices that meet the specified criteria.

              Usage: POWERCFG -DEVICEQUERY <queryflags>

              <queryflags>  Secifies one of the following criteria:

              wake_from_S1_supported  Return all devices that support waking the
                                      system from a light sleep state.
              wake_from_S2_supported  Return all devices that support waking the
                                      system from a deeper sleep state.
              wake_from_S3_supported  Return all devices that support waking the
                                      system from the deepest sleep state.
              wake_from_any           Return all devices that support waking the
                                      system from any sleep state.
              S1_supported            List devices supporting light sleep.
              S2_supported            List devices supporting deeper sleep.
              S3_supported            List devices supporting deepest sleep.
              S4_supported            List devices supporting hibernation.
              wake_programmable       List devices that are user-configurable
                                      to wake the system from a sleep state.
              wake_armed              List devices that are currently configured
                                      to wake the system from any sleep state.
              all_devices             Return all devices present in the system.
              all_devices_verbose     Return verbose list of devices.
              Example:
                  POWERCFG -DEVICEQUERY wake_armed

  -DEVICEENABLEWAKE
              Enable the device to wake the system from a sleep state.

              Usage: POWERCFG -DEVICEENABLEWAKE <devicename>

              <devicename>  Specifies a device retrieved using
                            "PowerCfg -DEVICEQUERY wake_programmable".

              Example:
                  POWERCFG -DEVICEENABLEWAKE "Microsoft USB IntelliMouse Explorer"

  -DEVICEDISABLEWAKE <devicename> disable the device from waking the system
              Disable the device from waking the system from a sleep state

              Usage: POWERCFG -DEVICEDISABLEWAKE

              <devicename>  Specifies a device retrieved using
                            "PowerCfg -DEVICEQUERY wake_armed".

  -IMPORT     Imports all power settings from the specified file.

              Usage: POWERCFG -IMPORT <filename> <GUID>

              <filename>  Specifiy a fully-qualified path to a file generated by
                          using "PowerCfg -EXPORT parameter".
              <GUID>      (optional) The settings are loaded into a power scheme
                          represented by this GUID. If not supplied, powercfg
                          will generate and use a new GUID

              Example:
                  POWERCFG -IMPORT c:\scheme.pow
  -EXPORT     Exports power scheme, represented by the specified GUID, to the
              specified file.

              Usage: POWERCFG -EXPORT <filename> <GUID>

              <filename>  Specify a fully-qualified path to a destination file.
              <GUID>      specifies a power scheme GUID and may be obtained by
                          using "PowerCfg /L"

              Example:
                  POWERCFG -EXPORT c:\scheme.pow 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e
  -LASTWAKE   Reports information about what woke the system from the last
              sleep transition

  -HELP, -?   Displays information on command-line parameters.

  -ALIASES    Displays all aliases and their corresponding GUIDs.
              The user may use these aliases in place of any GUID on
              the commandline.

  -SETSECURITYDESCRIPTOR
              Sets a security descriptor associated with a specified
              power setting, power scheme, or action.

              Usage: POWERCFG -SETSECURITYDESCRIPTOR <GUID|ACTION> <SDDL>

              <GUID>       Specifies a power scheme or a power setting GUID.
              <ACTION>     Can be one of the following strings:
                           ActionSetActive, ActionCreate, ActionDefault
              <SDDL>       Specifies a valid security descriptor string in SDDL
                           format. Call POWERCFG -GETSECURITYDESCRIPTOR to see
                           an example SDDL STRING.

  -GETSECURITYDESCRIPTOR
              Gets a security descriptor associated with a specified
              power setting, power scheme, or action.

              Usage: POWERCFG -GETSECURITYDESCRIPTOR <GUID|ACTION>
              <GUID>       Specifies a power scheme or a power setting GUID.
              <ACTION>     Can be one of the following strings:
                           ActionSetActive, ActionCreate, ActionDefault

Some useful things in there for looking into the Vista Insomnia issue are the following commands:

powercfg -lastwake

returns the name of the last device that woke the system.  Here's a screenshot of the output from one of my machines:

As you can see in this case the machine was woken up by the USB hub (in this case this is an expected resume - not a random one)

You can also enumerate the devices that can wake the machine with the following command:

powercfg -DEVICEQUERY wake_from_any

If you think that you have found the culprate then you can disable the device with the following command:

powercfg -DEVICEDISABLEWAKE <devicename>

you can then reverse that with

powercfg -DEVICEENABLEWAKE <devicename>

As you can see there is lots more you can do with powercfg, including tuning, exporting and importing power schemes; enabling and disabling hibernate and finding out what sleep states your device supports.  All told a very useful and very well kept secret.

The folks at Jabra have been good to me.  They sent me a JX10 headset to evaluate.  This is a great little headset, but it is soooo much more as well.

The headset itself is small and light, but very easy to use.  The answer/hang-up button is located in the indent on the bottom of the headset.  There is no button in the top indent - it is just there to make it easy to find and press the button.  There are volume controls on the back of the ear piece, as is the USB connector for charging.

I've paired this with my Dopod C710 Smartphone and it works a treat - but as I said before there is so much more to this baby.  Lets take a look at what is in the box.

 

In addition the the usual assortments of cables and chargers that you find with every Bluetooth headset is something called "the hub".  That is this oblong box on the left.  This enables you to use the JX10 headset with your desk phone as well as your mobile phone!  How cool is that?

Looking closer at the hub...

The top cover comes off and reveals controls that let you tune the headset to the desk phone and adjust the headset volume.

Depending on your phone you may not use all the ports on the front.  If your phone has a headset port you just use one cable to connect the hub to the phone.  If it does not then you plug the handset into the hub and the hub into the phone - you can use it either way.  To make or answer a call on the desk phone you hit the button on the headset and then either hit the headset button on the phone (if you have one) or lift the receiver if you don't.  To answer a call on your mobile phone you just press the answer button.  You can also redial and voice dial from the headset if your mobile if you device supports those functions.  One little gotcha is that when you finish a call on your desk phone you need to remember to hit the headset button on the phone and the hang up button on the headset.  You get use to this soon enough.

The cable you need to connect the hub to your desk phone is, of course, included.

Also included is a charger that can either plug in directly to the headset or into the included desktop stand.

Another little gotcha here is that you need to make sure the headset is off when you charge it (as stated in the manual).  I have found that if you charge it while the headset is switched on then the next time you try to answer the desk phone it does not bring the audio to the headset.  It does not really matter as the battery life is spectacular so there is no need to have the headset sitting on the charger all day.

There is also a USB cable so that you can charge your headset when are on the go.  I love the way that the cable actually has a little "Jabra" label on the cable so that you can find the right cable in your kit bag with ease.  That is such a simple and practical little touch, and they are often the best. 

All told I am very impressed with this little unit - it is small, functional, stylish and very innovative.  Best of all - it just works!

It's that time of year, CES is in full swing, new tech is surfacing left and right and damn I wish I was there! Lucky for me the GBM team have things covered. I'll be hanging on every post!

I got some very welcome good news this morning - I was renewed as a MVP for another year.  I'm very pleased to be re-awarded and humbled by the company that I share.

I celebrated by going fishing (actually I was going fishing anyway and happened to check my mail before I left at 5am...) and even had my first catch in Australia - a lovely little Souther Calamari squid.  What  a fine day.

I've taken a week or two off slogging and have even been neglecting my feeds & email. Initially this was due to the end of year rush at work, but then it was a conscious choice to get some family time over the Christmas period.

It has been fantastic and I feel rested and energised - well as much is one can with a newborn in the house.

Seasons greetings one and all - I'm bracing myself for a big year!

This very sad news.  Tablet evangelist, blogger, podcaster and all round great guy Marc Orchant has passed away a week after his heart attack. Marc was funny, intelligent and had such passionate, contagious enthusiasm for the things that took his interest.  He was a bright light in the world. 

This terrible event is made all the more tragic because it is so sudden, and because Marc leaves behind a wife and two children.  I have never had the pleasure of meeting Sue, Jason or Rebecca, but my thoughts and best wishes are with them, none the less.

Rest in Peace my friend...

Warner Crocker points out some of the highlights in Vista SP1 for mobile users.

 As Microsoft prepares to roll out the Release Candidate of this to users soon, it might be worth taking a look. Some highlights that might be of interest to mobile users:

• Improves the effectiveness of a Windows ReadyBoost™ device in reducing the time to resume from standby and hibernate by increasing the amount of data stored in the ReadyBoost device that can be used during a resume cycle.

• Includes improvements to Windows Superfetch™ that help to further improve resume times, in many environments.

• Improves the time to resume from standby for a certain class of USB Hubs by approximately 18%.

• SP1 reduces the number of UAC (User Account Control) prompts from 4 to 1 when creating or renaming a folder at a protected location.

• SP1 addresses issues many of the most common causes of crashes and hangs in Windows Vista, as reported by Windows Error Reporting. These include issues relating to Windows Calendar, Windows Media Player, and a number of drivers included with Windows Vista.

• Improves power consumption when the display is not changing by allowing the processor to remain in its sleep state which consumes less energy.

Long Zheng of istartedsomething has posted an extensive list of fixes and it is on view here.  Worth checking out, methinks.

Warner has pointed out an update on Marc's condition posted in the comments of the original post by Michael Sampson.

Thanks Michael for posting an update.  Thanks also to Warner for pointing it out.

Thursday December 6, 3.45pm Pacific
I called the hospital for an update, and spoke with Ed, Marc’s brother from the East Coast. He said that it is still very touch and go. There has been some physiological improvement, some organs have stabilized, but Marc has still not yet regained consciousness. As such, they still have no update on brain functioning, or how long he was without oxygen. He has opened his eyes a few times today and tracked light. Ed and all the family who are there are hopeful that every hour brings improvement. Someone is with him all the time, and they are looking forward to him opening his eyes and saying, “so what’s happening?”.

Marc’s iPhone is in his pocket, playing the music that he loves constantly.

The family is grateful for the worldwide support network.

My best wishes and hope continues to be with you Marc.  Come back to us soon, buddy.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about the tablet and UMPC form factors lately.  I have always been a fan of the slate tablet form factor.  For my main machine I prefer slates.  I currently use a Motion Computing LS800 - which is a real gem of a machine.  Of my other previous and current tablets (and there have been a few) the only other one I think as highly of is the venerable HP TC1100.

There have been a number of events of late that have got me thinking about what my next tablet will be. 

Firstly, Motion have announced that they are discontinuing the LS800 - however they have not yet announced a successor.  Will they step up and plug the gap?  As Warner has already pointed out there are very few options for those of us looking for a small form factor device with a great ink experience. 

The other events that have had me thinking lately are the recent reviews I've done.  The Motion LE1700 has re-ignited my love of the larger slate.  That is a great unit.  A full sized slate with an active digitizer gives you the best inking experience you will find on a tablet PC.  Generally speaking slates are easier to hold and more natural to write on when they are being held.  You can comfortably use the device as you actually move.  That is mobility. 

In addition two UMPCs - namely the Fujitsu U1010 and the HTC Shift - have convinced me of the need for and utility of a keyboard on the small touch screen devices.  The ink experience is not good enough for me.  I would not use a UMPC for extended note taking or data entry.  So if the handwriting experience is not there - why wouldn't you want some kind of a keyboard for text entry?  Until that issue is fixed - either by hardware or by software - the original Origami dream of the super small, super light slate tablet will not be realised.

So where I am leading with this is I think that the ideal device combination for me on the market today is contrary to the market trends.  For my main machine I would favour a full sized slate with a good docking solution over a convertible.  Embedded 3g would be highly desirable.  For a secondary device I would go for a very small, touch screen convertible. 

Of course mobile devices are by their very nature a very personal choice.  YMMV.

This is very sad news from Blognation:

At some time between 7:30 and 8:10 AM on Sunday Morning December 2nd, 2007, Marc Orchant, my fellow author on this blog, as well as one of my closest friends sustained a massive heart attack while working in his home office. At this time Marc is in critical condition at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Critical Cardiac Care Unit, Bed 3. He is not expected to regain consciousness for the next 24 to 48 hours.

For those who have not met him Marc is a great, intelligent guy with a huge rest for life. That makes this sad news all the more shocking. My thoughts are with Marc and his family.

Hang in there buddy - I'm looking forward to seeing you again!

Because I have a HTC Shift in my hot little hands for the weekend.

I'm really excited to have this opportunity. I think the Shift is an incredible and innovative device. Packed into it's tony frame are two operating systems - Windows Vista and Windows Mobile. It has embedded 3G wireless. There is a lot to play with.

Unfortunatly there is also a lot of confusion in the market about it as well. I aim to try and help clear someof that up. If there is something about the Shift you want me to check out while I have it leave a comment.

The new software update for my first generation Zune has finally addressed one of the gripes I've always had with the Zune.  Namely the complete lack of integration with my Windows Vista Media Centre.  Because there was no support for recorded TV I never installed the Zune software on the Media Centre.  Since the new update supports this I installed it and set about syncing my Music, Pictures and Recorded TV to the Zune.  It took an age and I held my breath and navigated to the Videos folder on my Zune.  I played an episode of Futurama...  I marvelled at the spectacular picture - crystal!  Only then did I start to wonder why I could not hear anything...

As it turns out none of my recorded TV had audio.  I did some investigating and found that this was because all of my recorded TV was recorded from HD channels.  It is not that the Zune does not support HD, per se, but it does not support Dolby Digital audio that inherent in the HD stream.

As an experiment I recorded a movie off a channel that is not HD and lo and behold it plays fine.  This at least gives me a work around.   All of the channels that are available in HD are also available in standard format.  Now I can semi easily get my recorded TV on the train.

Well I don't know about that - but whatever takes his interest I'm sure he will be outspoken... It runs in the family.

My wife Patrice and I were very lucky on Wednesday afternoon to welcome a healthy child into the world.  This is number two for us and Sylvie is proving to be a very doting big sister.

Our new addition has been named Oliver.  Both Patrice and Oliver are healthy and well - and I'm currently on paternity leave and enjoying some time with my growing family.  As you can see in the above photo my Movember moustache is coming along well - I almost shaved it off for the new baby photos, but it is too good a cause!  It's not too late to donate to my Movember fundraising effort - and many thanks to those who already have.

GottaBeMobile have posted an entertaining recap of the Tablet Pc's short 5 year wishy:

Five years ago, on November 7 2002, Microsoft launched Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. Bill Gates himself was on-hand to launch the new platform at a large press event.

"The launch of the Tablet PC marks an exciting new era of mobile computing that is limited only by the imagination of its users," Gates said. "The Tablet PC is a great example of how computers are adapting to how people really work, whether they're taking notes in a meeting, collaborating wirelessly with colleagues or reading on screen. We're just scratching the surface of what is possible."

As it comes time to celebrate the 5 Year Anniversary of Tablet PCs, it's only natural to look at how far we've come since that first operating system release. So let's take a brief walk down the dusty paths of Tablet PC history and look at how far the OS has evolved in five short years.

Sierra recaps the major milestones of the tablet PC. whether you have been there from the start or have just joined us, it is well worth a read.

My, how far we have come!

Source: GBM 5 Years of Tablet PC: Operating Systems

You may remember my colleague Lee, who cut a deal with his wife - give up smoking and buy a tablet.  Sadly Lee is off the wagon. 

His wife it threatening to sell off his LS800 - I reckon that she should find out if it will blend and then sell the dust on eBay.

Are they you ask?  I think so and, quite frankly, it really annoys me.

SilverLight is a platform that offers a lot of potential to the tablet community as it opens the door to real ink on the web.  It is also a direct competitor of Adobe flash.  Flash is well established and SilverLight is the new kid on the block. 

To gain real acceptance in the market Microsoft need to convince developers to choose SilverLight over Flash.  The more developers that are using it the more widely the browser plugin will be deployed. 

So why are Microsoft still using flash on their sites?  I've seen this on a couple of MS sites lately - but tonight it was on Zune.net.  I don't get it.

We are a few days into Movember and the moustache is coming along well.  What am I talking about you ask?  Here's some more information:

Hi All,

During Movember (the month formerly known as November) I'll be growin a Mo. That's right I'm bringing the Mo back because I'm passionate about changing men's health and the fight against male depression and prostate cancer. Why...

• Depression affects 1 in 6 men...Most don't seek help. Untreated depression is a leading risk factor for suicide.
• Last year in Australia 18,700 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer and more than 2,900 died of prostate cancer - equivalent to the number of women who die from breast cancer annually.
• Men are far less healthy than women. The average life expectancy of males is 5 years less than females.

To sponsor my Mo please go to http://www.movember.com/au/donate, enter my registration number which is 150854 and your credit card details. Or you can sponsor me by cheque made payable to the "Movember Foundation" clearly marking the donation as being for my Registration Number: 150854. Please mail cheques to: PO Box 292, Prahran VIC 3181. All donations over $2 are tax deductible.

The money raised by Movember is donated to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue - the national depression initiative, which will use the funds to create awareness, fund research and increase support networks for those men who suffer from prostate cancer and male depression.

For those that have supported Movember in previous years you can be very proud of the impact it has had and can check out the detail at: Fundraising Outcomes.

Movember culminates at the end of the month at the Gala Partés. These glamorous and groomed events will see Tom Selleck and Borat look-a-likes battle it out for their chance to take home the prestigious Man of Movember title. If you would like to be part of this great night you'll need to purchase a Gala Parté ticket .

Thanks for your support

Craig

More info is available at www.movember.com.

Movember is proudly grown by Commonwealth Bank, Holden, Schick and VB.

Movember is proud partners with the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue - the national depression initiative.

There are a few of us at work joining in the cause.  I'll post some photos as the weeks progress - if seeing me looking like a cross between Kojak and Magnum P.I. gives you a laugh, then consider donating a few alms to the cause.  Don't forget to use my registration number 150854.

One of the authors of StudentTabletPC.com - Andrew Ferguson - is guest blogging at GottaBeMobile.

His first post is about the myth of battery life - or lack there of.  I agree with many of the points an I have to admit that I operate in a similar fashion to Andrew: 

Most of the time when my tablet is on, it's plugged into the wall. At home, I drop it in my port replicator and it basically becomes a glorified desktop. I have a separate power cable in the living room that I plug into when I do homework. Another brick remains in my bag for when I'm out and about and I'm pretty sure I have a fourth one floating around somewhere "just in case."

I've managed to get away from the brick in the bag now, as I have an extended battery for my LS800.  I only carry a brick in the bag when I am travelling.

In short, my life revolves around power cables and where the electrical outlets are.

I've been known to favour cafes, airport gates and even airlines where I know I can get power.

I completely agree that the focus needs to be on better battery technology rather than better power management.  I want all the performance, brightness, bells and whistles - for 12 hours without plugging in.  No amount of power setting tweaking is going to get us that.

The technology that looks the most promising in this area is Fuel Cells.  I know of at least two vendors who have working prototype notebooks.  One will run for a month on a full fuel cell. 

However there are a number of challenges here.  Fuel cells are not charged by plugging them into the wall.  There is no infrastructure in place yet to manage this, but the process would probably be more akin to recycling inkjet cartridges than recharging a battery.  There is also the small matter of fuel cells not being allowed on planes yet by the FAA - which effectively kills the business market.  I can't see how fuel cells could be viable until these two significant issues are resolved.

I was just reading a cool article on Stuff about a New Zealand company and Microsoft teaming up to help smokers kick the habit.  From the article:

The alliance between Auckland software firm Healthphone and Microsoft has born its first fruit, with the two companies teaming up to create a text-message service that will encourage smokers in the United States to kick the habit.

Smokers will be able to sign up to receive personalised text messages throughout the day encouraging them to quit, or text a number to get back instant advice on beating cravings.

The service, called Stomp, will be launched early next year and will be one of the first interactive applications that will be made available to people who register their details with Microsoft's HealthVault website.

Of course this is not the first time mobile tech has been used to help people kick the habit, but it is a good idea none the less.

Nick Randolph and I met on Wednesday for the first Sydney Geek Coffee. We are going to make this a regular occurrence every Wednesday at 1 pm.

The next Sydney Geek Coffee will again be at 1pm next Wednesday.  However, the venue has changed to JET (map: http://www.eatability.com.au/au/sydney/jet_cafebar/map.htm)

Come along to the next one if you can make it. I've got a recurring meeting So if you want it in your calendar then email me or comment here and I can add you to the invite.

Looks like my comments are broken.  They were working because I had notifications 2 and a half hours ago.  Thanks to Guy who gave me a heads up.

UPDATE: Comments now fixed.

 Mauricio over at Geekzone points out that you can get free Wi-Fi with purchase at some Esquires Cafés in NZ.

I found out other day that you can get one hour (or 60 MB) of free Wi-Fi when you purchase anything at some Esquires Coffee Houses around New Zealand.
The wireless Internet access is being provided by Tomizone. You just have to buy something at Esquires and ask for your One Hour Pass card with an access code. Connect to the Tomizone hotspot, enter the code and off you go...

Good deal! Just last week I was looking for something similar is Sydney. So far without luck. Sydney - get your act together!

Not all of the Esquires stores offer, but the store locator tells you if they do or not.

Still keen for a geek coffee meetup? I’ve got a few people keen to come.

1 PM on Wednesday 10th of Oct.

We’ll try here this week, but open to suggestions going forward.

Mecca Espresso Bar

67 King St
Sydney NSW 2000

Map:

http://www.eatability.com.au/au/sydney/mecca_espresso/map.htm

Come along if you can make it!

This is a post I have been meaning to write for a while. 

There has been a lot of discussion of late about Vista and its readiness - or lack of - for the public.  Lots of people have lamented that Vista is just not there yet.  That it came out too soon.  That it is a failure.  Some have even reverted back to Windows XP as they believe that it is more stable and performs better.

Lots of people have voiced opinions one way or the other.  James Kendrick was one of the first to speak out against Vista, and his post  included most of the key gripes.

First and foremost in the area of performance.  I have not seen adequate performance running Vista on anything less than a Core 2 Duo processor.  Those are only available in the larger Tablets so the UMPCs and smaller Tablets are out of luck.  Vista also needs 2 GB of memory to run well and the smaller mobile devices usually are only offered with 1 GB, which isn't enough. 

...

If you use Sleep and Resume you quickly fall victim to the dreaded Vista la-la land where the device fails to resume properly.  Sometimes the device comes back fine but without a screen which is oh so useful.  Other times it comes back but hangs the entire device up in just a few seconds. 

...

One of the most beneficial things you can do to improve the mobile device experience is use it with a dock.  Don't even get me started with how badly Vista handles docking and undocking of these mobile devices, especially if you hang an external monitor off the dock.

Other general concerns are performance, battery life and mysterious disk thrashing. These are all real and valid concerns.  However, they are not the end of the world and they are not unique to Vista.  In fact - I believe that many of them are not the fault of Vista at all. 

I disagree with those that say that Vista is a dog and I will not be going back to XP on any of my machines - ever.

The first point I will make in Vista's defense is to point out that not everything bad that happens in on a computer is the fault of the OS.  On every single computer there are hundreds of device drivers and bits of software that could be the culprit for some of the issues outlined above.  Specifically the resume from sleep and docking station issues described above are most likely driver issues.  XP has been around for a while and hardware manufacturers have had a lot of practice writing nice, stable and functional drivers for the XP platform.  Vista is both new and very different.  I am disappointed, but not very surprised, that driver support is not that great.

Secondly, none of this is new to Vista.  I am an IT consultant.  I worked on a very early Windows XP deployment for a government client in New Zealand.  And guess what?  Driver support was appalling across the board, but it was worse for mobile PCs.  Performance was a joke.  There was no way Windows XP could really run on a machine that just met the minimum specs.  Blue screens and hangs were common.   When XP shipped it was worse than my experience working on a project with Vista in the Technology Adoption Program using beta code.  The released code is far and away more stable than Windows XP was at the same time in the product lifecycle.  What is significantly different is that the flaming and debate happened in the newsgroups rather than on the blogs we have today, which was much more of a closed community.

When Microsoft ships a new OS they tend to lead the hardware.  By that I mean that it is the hardware that comes out 6 months after the OS that runs it really well.  I think this is probably intentional - perhaps because it then extends what they can include in the product at ship date, bearing in mind that it will need to be a viable product for a couple of years.  I suspect that this will be the same for future OS releases.

The short version of all of that is that the issues we are seeing today are normal for a new OS and they are much more complex than "Vista is Bad".  Some of the blame rests with application developers.  Some rests with hardware manufacturers and some rests with Microsoft, but it will all be fixed in the fullness of time.

Until then I won't go back - simply because the benefits out weigh the pain.  The tablet functionality is way better.  The networking is better.  The Mobility Center is better.  Presentation mode rocks.  All of that functionality is nothing compared to the security enhancements.  When XP shipped the world was a different place.  The general public knew about viruses but had never heard of root kits, malware or spyware.  The Internet was not the efficient distribution system of nasties that it is today.  User Access Control (UAC) and protected mode IE go a long way to preventing then initial infection and Windows Defender makes it easier clean up after the fact.

Vista is here to stay.  I'm not going back and the experience will get better as the hardware catches up.

Last night I upgraded the version of DasBlog I'm running here to 2.0. Everything is looking OK. If you are reading this then posting still works.

looking for a venue for the previously mentioned Geek Coffee in Sydney. Can anyone recommend a cafe in Sydney CBD that has WiFi? Not a must have but nice to have...

I'm still here - honest!

I have been snowed at work. Travelling a bit, doing way to many hours. I have to admit that the down time I have had has been spent with my family, not my blog!

There's a light at light end of the tunnel, I'll be back soon.

I'm a big fan of keyboard shortcuts, so it should come is no surprise that like Chris I love the Vista search box. 

Press the Windows Key -> Type What You Want -> Hit Enter

But I did not know this little tidbit...

Just got a hot tip from Kate Gregory that pressing Ctrl-Shift-Enter runs the program 'As Administrator'

Excellent tip! Thanks Guys!

It was a beautiful day in Sydney today and I had a few friends around for a BBQ. Among them was fellow MVP Nick Randolph.

Both Nick & I were pretty active in the communities in our respective cities and we have both recently moved to Sydney.

While chatting we talked about setting up a weekly mobility geek coffee in Sydney for a bit of informal networking. How many readers out there are working in the Sydney CBD?

lf you are and you think you may enjoy catching up with like minded souls to talk geek stuff leave a comment or send me on email via the button down the bottom of the left menu. Right now we are thinking of having the first one on the 10th of October, the and venue TBA.

Silverlight 1.0 was RTW'd (released to Web) recently and is available for download here.

The 1.1 alpha was also refreshed. you con get both runtimes here.

what's the difference? Check the features matrix here.

At TechEd Australia in the Gold Coast I had the chance to talk tablet on camera for the Virtual TechEd crew. The only catch was I had to bring my own interviewer. No problem Lee Williams was at TechEd with me and stepped up to the plate.

We had a good fun chat. Check out the video here.

You can also check out the other Virtual TechEd videos here.

Because of APEC which was held in Sydney last week, Friday in a holiday. I took advantage of the long weekend and headed up to the Hunter Valley - or the Hunter Belly as my 2 1/2 year old daughter calls it.

Her description proved quite apt as we just ate good food, drank good wine and spent time together as a family. Man I feel refreshed! I'm off to the Blue Mountains tomorrow for an internal work conference so connectivity way be a bit spotty from then as well.

Another of my co-workers has started blogging about all things mobility. This time it is Lee Williams of "using an LS800 to keep warm" fame.

I'm sure that Lee will continue to find many new and interesting ways to use technology to enhance his life. I look forward to hearing all about it.

Hat tip to Ash.

Well - one web site specializing in selling electronic e-books thinks so.  They are launching - you guessed it - the world's first smelly e-book. 

In an attempt to win over skeptical college students, CaféScribe.com today announced plans to launch the world's first smelly e-book. CaféScribe.com CEO Bryce Johnson says that beginning in the back-to-school month of September the company will send every e-textbook purchaser a scratch & sniff sticker with a certifiably musty “old book” smell.

“Students who use CaféScribe download our software to read and annotate e-textbooks and other documents on their laptops,” explains Johnson. “By placing these stickers on their computers they can give their e-books the same musty book smell they know and love from used textbooks – without any of the residual DNA you sometimes find stuck to the pages of used textbooks.”

3 in 10 of the surveyed students associated “mustiness” with the books they most loved, although 16% -- possibly those most likely to hit the books early in the day – associated best-loved books with the smell of “freshly-ground coffee.” Other smells mostly failed to bring books to mind, although respondents were more likely to associate pleasant smells (cut grass, freshly baked bread, cookies baking) with books than unpleasant ones (sweat, mildew, grease).

CaféScribe commissioned the survey to understand why consumers continue to prefer paper books to e-books. The poll carries a +/- 4.1 percentage point margin of error and was conducted by Zogby International using an online panel representative of the adult population of the U.S. A total of 591 college students completed the survey between August 15-21. For more detail on the methodology and results, please see Book-Love Poll Data and Methodology.

Of course if you really want to get the most out of your e-books then you should try reading them on a nice slate tablet and doing those annotation in ink with the stylus.  I personally prefer digital content to paper based content these days.

That said, I read about this in today's MX - which is a free daily paper handed out to commuters.  I can still smell the newsprint :)

 Skype is claiming that the recent outage was caused by Windows Update:

On Thursday, 16th August 2007, the Skype peer-to-peer network became unstable and suffered a critical disruption. The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users'€™ computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update. The high number of restarts affected Skype' s network resources. This caused a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain reaction that had a critical impact.

Loren the Incremental Blogger sounds a bit skeptical and I agree.

I thought that the Windows Updates weren't all done at once--I doubt Microsoft would want the load either. I don't doubt Skype's word that there was a significant load in their app being launched and then users signing on, but it sure would be interesting to hear from Microsoft whether there was any unusual traffic from their perspective that pacth Tuesday.

I think this explanation from Skype is weak. We know the vast number of consumers don't change the default settings, which are to automatically update at 3am in their local timezone. This is going to cause the updates to be fairly well distributed over a 24 hr period.

A high number of login requests does not necessarily mean that lots of machines restarted. Simply that they lost their connection with Skype. It would seem that if this were to happen to a large number of users around the globe simultaneously the root cause would most likely be at the one thing all these machines connect to - Skype itself.

One of my co-workers at Gen-i Australia has started a new blog.  His name is Ashley Armitt and he is a Blackberry guru and a self confessed Blackberry nut. 

Should be a good one to watch. 

 Warner over on GBM is pretty excited about fuel cells. Lets face it, when you are talking about an exponential increase in battery life, what mobile geek wouldn't get excited?

Hmmm? Samsung is showing off a new fuel cell battery (DMFC-which stands for Direct Methanol Fuel Cell) that will supposedly run your laptop for a month of 8 hour days. Yeah, you read that right. I love, and we need, to see advances in battery technology, but when I say that I’m thinking on a smaller time scale, like 24 hours or so. I mean within in 30 day period you would think you could plug in once or twice, right?

There are two major barriers to widespread adoption of fuel cells, as I understand it.

1.  Infrastructure- with fuel cells you don't plug in per se. The process is more akin to getting your printer cartridges refilled. Therefore there needs to be a battery exchange infrastructure and pricing model around that before this will be really viable.
2.  Airlines. Fuel cells have bad things in them. Even if you could go out and buy fuel cells today you could not take it on a plane.

The problem is that fuel alls contain reactive chemicals. That is how they worts. From Wikipedia:

Fuel cells differ from batteries in that they consume reactant, which must be replenished, while batteries store electrical energy chemically in a closed system. Additionally, while the electrodes within a battery react and change as a battery is charged or discharged, a fuel cell's electrodes are catalytic and relatively stable.

Many combinations of fuel and oxidant are possible. A hydrogen cell uses hydrogen as fuel and oxygen as oxidant. Other fuels include hydrocarbons and alcohols. Other oxidants include air, chlorine and chlorine dioxide

So for now the two issues above are implicitly causing a third problem -the lack of critical mass in the market. The technology is actually there today, logistics are the problem.

I'm hanging in the speaker room and my session is in an hour.  This is the first chance I've had to look at my feeds and do a quick post.

Tablet PC is here in force this year - I am doing a session about positioning Tablet PC for Enterprise Mobility, which I will blog more about after the fact.  Hugo did a session focused on UMPCs and he was his usual, enthusiastic self.  He had a huge number of devices with him - which was great because it really showed off the diversity in the UMPC form factor.  Like tablets, you really need to get a UMPC in your hands to really understand the value.  I've got 5 tablets of various types with me so people can get a feel for different form factors.

The other thing that strikes me about tablets here this year is the number of speakers and attendees using them - there are heaps!  Other than my own I've seen:

• Motion Computing LS800s
• Toshiba M4s
• Toshiba M400s
• Toshiba R400s
• Lenovo X41s
• Lenovo X60s
• one HP TC1100
• HP TC4200s
• HP TC4400s
• and even a Panasonic ToughBook convertible!

I was also interviewed on camera for Virtual TechEd so that should be up there soon.

The party last night was at the Movie World theme park.  I ran around like a mad man trying to get on as many rides as possible.  We've got a great photo from the Lethal Weapon ride that I will post up once I can scan it in.

The new version of OmniPass for Windows Vista seems to have a few issues with IE7.  My friend Lee identified this issue and - having just rebuilt my LS800 I installed OmniPass to see if I could reproduce the issue.  I can, and not just with IE.

When secureapp.exe (the OmniPass tray icon application) is running then whenever IE has the focus iexplore.exe hammers the processor.  The same thing happens with Windows Live Writer and Feed Deamon - when they have the focus then they hammer the CPU.  If secureapp.exe is not running then they don't.

With both apps running, but with IE minimised task manager looks something like this:

The CPU is pretty idle at 13% and secureapp is there, but idle.

Maximising IE cause the CPU to get hammered until IE is minimised again.  It looks like this:

If you kill off the secureapp.exe process after you log in then this does not happen.  The down side is that you cannot store application passwords in OmniPass and authenticate with fingerprints without this process running.  You can, however, still log on and unlock you machine using fingerprints without the secureapp.exe process running.

In Windows Defender you can prevent the secureapp.exe process from running at start up, which will save you killing it off manually.  In the Control Panel click on the Change startup programs link under Programs.

In the Windows Defender dialog click on the Show for all users button to enable the disabled controls.

Once you have confirmed for UAC that you want to allow this you will be able to select the Softex OmniPass item and then click the disable button.

Well - I think it is exciting anyway...

Great news everyone! I have managed to get myself slotted in as a speaker this year in TechEd Australia.

If you are attending try to stop by and catch my session @ 11:30 on Friday 10th of August:

UNC320 - Positioning Tablet PCs in Enterprise Mobility

Mobility has long since ceased being about push email and RAS. Unfortunately that is how is mobility is approached in many organisations. This session will explore what mobility really is, what enterprise mobility is and where UMPCs and Tablet PCs fit in the enterprise mobility strategy. In addition we will crush a few Tablet PC myths and have a few cool new devices you can get your hands on. You will go away with a better understanding of what Tablets are (and aren’t) and where they would fit in your organisation.

If you already have aticket then I'll see you there! If not then my, its sold out.

I've got my LS800 back and I'm in the process of rebuilding it.  So far I've got the following installed:

• Windows Vista Business
• Office 2007 Ultimate
• Nod32 AV to keep the bugs out
• FolderShare to sync my Documents and Favorites between my work computer and the LS (so I don't have to use my pen challenged laptop too much...)
• FeedDemon to get my daily RSS fix
• Windows Live Writer to give a little back
• Windows Live Messenger to keep in touch

Of course I have done a ton of patching and countless reboots as well.  Painful.

I have a stack of things yet to install - I'll have to do them as time permits over the next couple of days...

Hello Kettle?  This is Pot...  You're black!

When I read comments by Acer president Gianfranco Lanci stating that the PC industry is 'disappointed' with Vista I openly scoffed. 

I have worked with Vista since about November 2005.  Given how long partner organisations - including OEMs - had access to prerelease code before it shipped I was pretty disappointed with the availability of drivers and supporting applications when Vista shipped.

In fact around about launch time I was one of the group of MVPs and bloggers that received an Acer Ferrari to test Vista on.  A beautiful 64-bit laptop.  One of issues I have with that device is that the driver support is crap and the all the supporting applications (such as the Voice Call Manager) are 32-bit.  Hey Acer - is your software mature?  Get your own house in order before attacking other. 

In truth I think much of the onus for Vista's initial luke warm reception lies with the hardware vendors.  There has been quite poor support for existing models - I point to the likes of the Motion's still absent driver for the SD card reader on the LS800 (hello?  it has been 7 months since you guys updated your KB article?!?!) and the madness of vendors like Creative charging for Vista driver.  The cynic in me thinks that most vendors are more interested in trying to get you to buy new hardware than in supporting the user base they have.  I think this is short sighted and basically sends your customer out to market again with a negative impression of your products.

Warner Crocker over on GBM has spotted a press release from Qantas announcing that it will be offering Wi-fi and electrical outlets in the premium economy section on some of their new fleet...

Don’t you wish every airline would do this? No word on how much this will add to the cost of the flight.

While I don't know how much it will cost for PE on Qantas I do know that Air New Zealand has offered power in their PE section for quite some time.  On a Auckland to LA flight booked at the last minute I know that this adds about NZ$600 one way.  With the way the NZ dollar is at the moment (about US$0.80) this equates to US$480.  If you are travelling for work having power on an 11hr flight is well worth it.  As a bonus you get more leg room and better food as well.  That said when I fly for work they always stick me in (false) economy.  The only time I've flown premium was when I upgraded on my airpoints.

Air New Zealand don't offer Wi-Fi though - I wonder how effective that is going to be?  I am hanging out to try it.

Unified Communications is becoming a pretty hot buzz word in the industry these days.  On my other blog I recently posted about how and why UC and Mobility are converging. 

This is something that mobility professionals should have on their radar.

I was just reading over an interesting article on Computerworld NZ listing the 10 biggest technology flops of the past 40 years.

It is an interesting article and the author - David Haskin Framingham - gives some interesting background on each technology as well is explaining why it is on the list.

The list includes:

1. The Apple Newton - before it's time.
2. DIVX - not what you think...
3. Dot-bombs
4. The IBM PCjr
5. Internet currency
6. Iridium
7. Microsoft Bob
8. The Net PC
9. The paperless office
10. Virtual reality

The thing that caught my attention is that the Tablet PC was not on the list.  For years the Tablet has been much maligned by the "mainstream press" and I would not have been too surprised to see the tablet listed, though I would have disagreed bitterly.  Two or three years ago the tablet would have likely featured.

Could it be that the mainstream press is coming around to what we the tabletscape have been saying for ages?

Anyway - it is a good read, so check out the full article here.

A while ago I blogged about my friend Lee - who gave up smoking so he could buy an LS800.  Last night Lee found a creative new use for his tablet that possibly saved his skin.  There is a bit of a story behind it...

You see, we had a few drinks after work to celebrate a customer win.  It was a messy night.  I had to be poured into a taxi fairly early and some of the others, including Lee, carried on.  Now, Lee lives way out of Sydney - about 1 1/4 hours by train out.  He got on the train in his merry state and fell asleep.  He awoke about 40 minutes after the train trundled passed his stop.  In a panic he jumped off at the next stop intending to catch the next train back in the opposite direction.  He fired up the LS and jumped online to check the timetable and discovered that that was the last train for the day.  The first train for the next day was two and a half hours away!  It was dark and it was cold and there was no shelter at the train station.  Too far to catch a taxi - Lee was stranded, with nothing to do but wait it out. 

As he shivered on the platform Lee had an idea.  He turned the brightness up to full and kicked of a defrag on his LS800 and stuffed it inside his jacket - as a heater!  With the extended battery on it there was more than enough juice to keep Lee mildly warm until the next train.  So if ever you find yourself a drunken idiot stranded on a train platform at two in the morning - make sure you have a tablet to stuff into your jacket!

Amazingly Lee still showed up to work on time the next day.  Needless to say we have been giving him a very hard time.

The good folks at TechSmith have a cool new project called Jing.  What is it?  Good question as I have not installed it yet...  but the concept sounds great.  From the website:

The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere.

It’s something we want to give you, along with some online media hosting, to see how you use it. The project will eventually turn into something else. Tell us what you think so we can figure out what that is.

Try it, you’ll like it. Find out more.

I'm in the process of installing it now so I'll feed back my thoughts when I've had a play.

The last couple of weeks have been a bit intense.  I had a major customer presentation that ate about a week.  And I have about a million unread feeds.  Here are some links that are worth looking at that I've just caught up with.

On GottabeMobile.com

• Warner Crocker points to a cool add-inthat makes sending to OneNote mobile a bit easier.
• Warner also reviews his first week with the Lenovo X61
• Motion Computing get FCC approval for HSDPA in the LE1700.  I understand this is also underway in Australia.
• Please don't wear a OQO Model 02 on your belt.  Here here.
• Demo of touch screen pen flicks.  I love pen flicks...
• Creative charging for Vista drivers!  Dispicable - my advice is vote with your feet and buy something else.
• Interactive Whiteboards vs. Tablet PCs
• Hugo gets his hands on the Raon Everun
• Frank Garcia becomes a tablet MVP, as does Matt Faulkner.  Great stuff guys!
• MS are going to address a flaw in ReadyBoost in SP1 for Vista.
• Dell to release a UMPC?

On jkontherun.com

• Beautiful beer girls with Tablets.  Am I dreaming?  Actually - if I was dreaming it would not be an American beer!
• Samsung are getting ready to release a 64GB SSD - now we are talking!
• Tweak OneNote for a little bit more battery life.  Who'd of thunk it...
• Read your feeds faster on a UMPC - I need to be doing this!
• Touchscreens with hover are on the brink - using projected capacitive touch.  In other words it can tell when your finger is almost touching the screen - how cool!
• Intel and MS teaming up on a new slate platform called the "Edy Personal Computer" platform - will be watching to see where this goes.
• Use your smartphone as a bluetooth webcam.  Groovy Baby (sorry - Austin Powers is on in the back ground.  Britney Speirs just exploded.  Good job...

That's about half my unread items.  I'm off to bed...

I am finding that there are plenty of things that I want to blog about that just don’t fit into the theme of my current blog. This is largely because I have just started a new role, in a new country with a slightly different focus to what I was doing. So here I will be blogging about joys, trials and tribulations of Messaging and Collaboration, Unified Messaging, and Communications.
This is an exciting time in this space as we are finally beginning to see products that start to deliver on the convergence buzz word what has been floating around for the last five years or so. In my new role much of my focus will be on Exchange 2007 including Unified Messaging, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Groove and Office Communications Server so I would expect many posts around those products and integrating them into environments.

Check out my new blog here.

There has been a bit of a post drought here on Blog:: Craig Pringle for the last two months and much of what I have posted has been around the challenges I have faced relocating myself and my family from Wellington, NZ to Sydney, Australia.

What I have not posted much info about is why I made the move and what I am doing now.

The impetus behind the move was my job. In NZ I worked for Gen-i, which is an IT company owned by Telecom New Zealand as a Senior Technology Consultant specialising in Mobile Computing and the infrastructure that enables mobile workers to function. I became aware of a position in our Sydney office that was a bit of a step up and a slight change in career direction. I applied, was interviewed. accepted and moved country in the space of about 6 weeks.

My new role is Messaging & Collaboration Practice Lead for Gen-i Australia. As a Practice Lead 50% of my role is still hands on consulting, which is essential to stay on top of the technology. The other 50% is developing our capabilities and our go to market strategy around Messaging & Collaboration technologies. This includes MS products like Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communications Server & Groove. It also includes concepts such as Unified Communications, Collaboration and Mobility - well as far as I'm concerned it does!  At any rate, try shutting me up about mobility.

This is an exciting time for these technologies and IMO Gen-i - as an IT company owned by a telco- is ideally placed to deliver on the promise of the convergence of voice and messaging services.

This is a newly created position so I am starting from scratch and have no shortage of things to do.

Passing this on as it may interest some of you:

Exchange MVPs will be on hand to answer your questions about Exchange Server, Outlook and Exchange for Small Business Server.  So if you are thinking of upgrading to Exchange Server 2007 or have questions about Exchange Server 2003 we hope you can join us for this informative online chat!

Chat 1

When:   Tuesday June 19^th

Time:    5pm PST or 8pm EST

Where:  TechNet Chat Room www.microsoft.com/technet/community/chats/chatroom.aspx

No password required

Add to your calendar:

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/chats/vcs/07_0619_TN_ES.ics

Chat 2

When:   Thursday June 21st 

Time:    10am PST or 1pm EST

Where: TechNet Chat Room www.microsoft.com/technet/community/chats/chatroom.aspx

No password required

Add to your calendar:

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/chats/vcs/07_0621_TN_ES.ics

=============================================

Q&A with the Security MVP Experts

We invite you to attend an Q&A with the Microsoft Security MVPs. In this chat the MVP experts will answer your questions regarding online safety issues such as phishing, spyware, rootkits as well as server related topics. If you have questions on how to protect your PC, please bring them to this informative chat

When:   Thursday June 21^st

Time:    4pm PST and 7pm EST

Where:  TechNet Chat Room www.microsoft.com/technet/community/chats/chatroom.aspx

No password required  

Add to your calendar:

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/chats/vcs/07_0621_TN_Security.ics

 if you one running Vista ultimate on a system that supports Dreamscene then you need eye candy! Checkout Background Motion. Darryl Burling provides more info...

What is it?

Backgroundmotion.com is two things. 

Firstly it is a community website to allow you to share backgrounds and background video for the DreamScene features of Windows Vista Ultimate.

Secondly it is a great example of a modern web application built on .Net 2.0.  When I say example, I also mean sample - the source code for the site is available on codeplex for you to download and pull it apart. 

There is also a "Code" tab on the site to help you get up and running with the source code.  The developer section of the site includes sample code, short introduction videos and resources to lower the bar to use these technologies.

Technologies used

One of the things that the guys did was to build in all the latest technologies and making the code available means that you can go and see how they did it.  Specifically, the technologies and tools they used include:

• .Net Framework 2.0
• .Net Framework 3.0
• ASP.Net 2.0
• ASP.Net AJAX 1.0
• Silverlight
• NUnit
• LINQ (May CTP)
• Web Client Software Factory (Composite Web Block)
• Lucene.Net
• RSS Toolkit (which was extended for the solution)
• Virtual Earth
• Sidebar Gadgets

Background Motion - now live!

Very cool. Well done guys!

I had a great time at the Influencers party at Tech Ed last night. I caught up with fellow Tablet MVPs Terry Stratton and Frank LaVigne, and lots of other great people.

Here's me with some new friends.

Photo courtesy of Frank's Tech Ed 2007 Photos

Whoops - I'm not getting any comment notifications! No wonder it has been so quiet! Apologies to anyone who has commented and not had a response. I'll look into it and get it fixed toot sweet.

At TechEd, as you might imagine, there is a lot of wireless noise. There is the conference wi-fi, but there are also a bunch of ad-hoc or computer to computer networks with remarkably similar names. In the wireless list infrastructure and ad-hoc networks have different icons.

You have to question the motives of people trying to fists for wi-fi users like that. while I know better than to go connecting to ad-hoc networks willy nilly, I wanted to remove the risk of accidentally connecting to one with the same name.

In Vista you can, via the command line, filter the list of available wireless networks. To filter out ad-hoc networks run the following from a command line (running as admin, all on one line)

netsh wlan add filter permission=denyall networktype=adhoc

to reverse this again run the following:

netsh wlan del filter permission=denyall networktype=adhoc

What does one do when they are in Orlando for a day before the big conference starts? Hit the theme parks!

I decided to go to Disney's Magic Kingdom for a bit of nostalgia, I went there as a kid 20 something years ago. What a blast! There are plenty of things there that I remember from my last visit and lots of new things, too. If they could somehow fix the massive lines and long waits it would be a lot better.

One thing that has not changed - Space Mountain is still my favorite ride.  However, since it is a bit hard to do a self portrait with a cell phone camera in the dark, here I am on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

Some people never grow up, and it sure is fun being one of them!

In case you had not worked it out (with all the posts I composed offline appearing) I have now arrived in Orlando.  Some 24 hours of traveling, with only a few broken hours of sleep on the flight across the Pacific - and yet I feel way too awake.  I've had some food and a nice glass of red wine (for medicinal purposes of course) and now I'm off to bed to try and force myself to sleep.

The billion dollar question - what sort of presence will the tablet PC have at TechEd this year?  If my room key is anything to go by I think we are going to see a couple...

TechEd here I come!

Tablet PCs are great for artists. And doing a quick sketch is a cool way to demo your device to the uninitiated. Just one problem... Everything I draw ends up looking like a monkey drew it. And not one of those talented monkeys you see on Discovery channel from time to time, either!

Sound like your own artistic lack of talents? This might help!

One of my favourite tablet artists Chad Essley points to Mark Chong’s Ten Minute Drawing Blog!  Mark does some really cool screencasts on his blog showing the process he goes through to draw, explaining it as he goes.  Very cool.

Check out Mark's great blog and brush up on those drawing skills.

I see via Frank La Vigne that there is a new beta of Windows Live Writer available for download.

From frank's blog:

The new version includes a ton of new features, including:

New Authoring Capabilities

• Inline spell checking
• Table editing
• Ability to add categories
• Page authoring for WordPress and TypePad
• Support for excerpts and extended entries
• Improved hyperlinking and image insertion
• Paste Special

Integration and Compatibility

• SharePoint 2007 support
• New APIs enabling custom extensions by weblog providers
• Automatic synchronization of local and online edits
• Integration with Windows Live Gallery
• Support for Blogger Labels

Plus...

• New look and feel
• Available in 6 languages
• Improved accessibility and keyboard support
• Many other frequently requested enhancements!

You can download it for free at http://writer.live.com/

If they only included better inking support. ;)

Here here Frank! I'll download it and try it out when I am online again. I working offline in the old beta somewhere between San Fran and Orlando.

Since arriving in Sydney I have been too busy getting set up and too disconnected to stay on top of my feeds. As a result I'm using some downtime on a flight (to TechEd. yeah baby!) to catch up on a backlog of things that I either have not gotten to yet or flagged to follow up and have not gotten back to.

As such I am reading about things that have happened in the last couple of weeks all at one. I've noticed a trio of events that are unrelated, but that I think speak volumes about the future of the tablet experience.

The first event was the release of the Gateway CX210X Tablet PC for only US $899.99 as reported by GottaBeMobile. While certainly no light weight this is an impressive entry level tablet at a very good price. Event 1: the entry level tablet price drops.

The next event that caught my eye - of course - was the announcement of Microsoft Surface.

Picture a surface that can recognize physical objects from a paintbrush to a cell phone and allows hands-on, direct control of content such as photos, music and maps. Today at the Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference, Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer will unveil Microsoft Surface™, the first in a new category of surface computing products from Microsoft that breaks down traditional barriers between people and technology. Surface turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, dynamic surface that provides effortless interaction with all forms of digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. Beginning at the end of this year, consumers will be able to interact with Surface in hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues.

The intuitive user interface works without a traditional mouse or keyboard, allowing people to interact with content and information on their own or collaboratively with their friends and families, just like in the real world. Surface is a 30-inch display in a table-like form factor that small groups can use at the same time. From digital finger painting to a virtual concierge, Surface brings natural interaction to the digital world in a new and exciting way.

“With Surface, we are creating more intuitive ways for people to interact with technology,” Ballmer said. “We see this as a multibillion dollar category, and we envision a time when surface computing technologies will be pervasive, from tabletops and counters to the hallway mirror. Surface is the first step in realizing that vision.”

Undeniably cool. Also undeniably not a tablet. Make no mistake though, this is an important innovation and it is only a matter of time before multipoint touch technologies arrive in the mobile PC space.

The third event that struck me as really important was the release of the Google Gears beta. Kevin Tofel over at jkontherun provides the official Google description:

• A local server, to cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) without needing to contact a server
• A database, to store and access data from within the browser
• A worker thread pool, to make web applications more responsive by performing expensive operations in the background

The exciting thing about Gears is that it offers another approach for developers to provide offline capability to their applications when they are running on occasionally connected mobile PCs. More tools will lead to more apps that are mobile friendly, and that will lead to more you can do when you are moving between pockets of connectivity.

In short these events portend a richer tablet and touch experience, more flexibility at a cheaper price. Bring it on!

I'm in San Francisco airport awaiting my fight to Orlando. The flight from Sydney to SFO was a grueling 13 and a half hours. I'm sure I've gotten taller because there seemedto be even less leg room than usual this time!

I've just had a surprisingly drinkable double espresso (for airport coffee) and I've got time to check and cache my feeds to read on the plane. On that note Nick Bradbury - the brains behind FeedDemon -has released a screencast of the new offline features in FeedDemon 2.5.

Keep an eye out for me @ TechEd, I'll be the slightly tall guy with the LS800.

Like Greg Hughes I am planning to head to TechEd in Orlando next week.

All though I've been booked for the conference for ages my flights got stuck in an approval loop and were only booked today. Phew! Don't get me started on what I think of that!

'spose I should do something about a Tablet Meet-up @ TechEd!

There is a new version of FeedDemon available and it includes a greatly improved offline reading experience. you can use a feature called 'Pre-fetch' to download your unread feeds, including links and embedded images.

Finally! I've tried a lot of readers and FeedDemon remained my favourite, but it away irked me that the images were not available when working offline. At last they are. You can get FeedDemon here.

The coolest piece of technology on show at CeBIT Australia this year is an easy pick.

The EyeStep by EyeClick is a massive interactive display projected onto the floor. Sensors mounted with the projector allow users to interact with the display.

This can be used for eye-catching advertising or simple (but effective) games.

I watched these two little guys playing for about 20 minutes. It was great! They had a blast!!

The EyeStep has been a commercial hit, too. Both the units brought to the show have already been sold.

There is also a wall projected version called EyeTouch.

Just bumped into fellow Tablet PC MVP and all round tablet enthusiast Hugo Ortega in BloggerZone at CeBIT Australia.

Looking sharp, Hugo

One of the things that is quite striking about CeBIT Australia is that many of the Mobile PC vendors are noticeable by there absence.  Motion Computing and Panasonic have sizable displays on show, but there is no sign of Toshiba, HP, Acer, ASUS, Samsung, Fujitsu or any of the other big players I was hoping to see here.

Those who are in attendance are reaping the benefits as both the Motion and the Panasonic stands are packed every time I walk past.  I hope the competition is at least attending the show and learning that they should be here next year.

A MP3 player that looks like a banana. for all those people who don't want an iPod because everyone else has one... This is the MP3 player for you!

see it at CeBIT Australia or see if you can find it on the website.

Also at CeBIT Australia...

Panasonic have a good range of Toughbooks on show. 

There is a Toughbook 19 in a Perspex case and you can press a button and spray it with water.  Rather ominously it appears to be either off or dead...

How do you keep a gaggle of bloggers fueled during CeBIT? 

Caffeine, water and jelly beans (blogger beans)...

So I've arrived at CeBIT Australia, congregated with the scruffy looking people outside (the other bloggers) and entered the BloggerZone inside the exhibition hall.  I must look a bit scruffy, too.  When I walked up someone quipped - you must be a blogger!

The BloggerZone is an are inside CeBIT that has been set up so that invited bloggers can come in and, well, blog.  All good.

Great to see CeBIT embracing the community and getting bloggers on board.

I'll be heading along to CeBIT on Tuesday and attending a special launch that Hugo Ortega is hosting as part of an initative called Blogger Zone

I will be hosting an Official Breakfast to launch Blogger Zone (a CeBIT initiative designed to get bloggers blogging, FROM the show.)

That's not all Hugo is doing at CeBIT - he's right in amongst it.

Good effort Hugo!

So I have arrived today in Sydney and I'm in the process of looking for a house to rent.

Man it is hard to find good wi-fi in this city!  I'm not just talking about open networks here, either.  I'm in the CBD and willing to pay for access, but it is just hard to find.  I did find a Telstra hotspot in a McDonalds, but it would not take the type of credit card I wanted to pay for it with. 

I've been to Sydney many a time before, but for the last few years I have always been roaming with my work provided EVDO phone and connectivity has not been a problem.

This time however I had to hand back my work provided device and I only have a data challenged pre-pay phone until I get into the office next week.  I thought no problem, I'll just buy wi-fi for the weekend and then pick up my work phone on Monday.  No joy there.

This is quite a surprising contrast to Wellington - which has the CBD fairly well blanketed by CafeNET, with the odd Telecom hotspot thrown in for luck. 

Frankly I would expect more from any city the size of Sydney.  The crazy thing is that there appears to be demand.  I'm staying at a backpackers in town.  I went up to the common room and asked the people there if they knew where to get access.  They have been having the same issues and directed me to Everywhere Internet. I finally found it and that at least gives me a wired connection for my own device.  But the place is packed!  There has to be a business opportunity here for someone

It's 6AM NZ time. I'm sitting in the lounge at Wellington airport. My flight to Sydney boards in 20 Minutes and I'll be house in Sydney later today.

So long Wellington! It has been great and to all my friends and family... Take me and keep in touch.

More later...

...then you are browsing my freshly migrated blog.

Previously I posted about the preparations I had to make so I could turn off my server and put it in a container for shipping.  I had several offers for temporary hosting - thanks to all of those who were so ready to help.

I ended up migrating to OrcsWeb Managed Complex Hosting.

We had a couple of niggles getting dasbBlog to play nicely in a hosted environment, but the team at OrcsWeb were just fantastic.  They were responsive and very helpful in the troubleshooting.

Big ups to the team at OrcsWeb for all the assistance during the setup.

If it works out well I may simply leave the blog hosted there from now on. 

Things are going to come down to the wire in my exit from New Zealand - I can tell.  I have been snowed organizing things, selling off stuff that is surplus to requirements and tossing out other stuff.

One of the immediate issues is around finding a place to park my blog for a month or so.  You see I run my own server and host my blog and an email server on that.  This is all well and good and gives me plenty of control over my own blog destiny, but it poses a wee problem when you have to take the server out of the rack, box it up, put it in a container and ship it across the Tasmania Sea.  I could not get a container with a broadband connection - what's with that!?!  :)

The mail server is easy - I am going to copy Nick Randolph at Softeq and move the domain to a hosted Exchange environment for a few months and migrate back when I am up and running across the ditch.  There dose not seem to be such a thing as Hosted DasBlog, so the blog presents a bit more of a problem.  Right now I'm looking for web hosts that can accommodate my blog for a similar period of time - at least.  I may move to external hosting permanently...

I've previously posted about alternate uses for RSS such as driver update notifications and package tracking.

Now that I am moving to Sydney I've found another use -house hunting.

I've found a real estate site called Domain that lets you create a search specifying property type, price, number of bed rooms and suburb and generate a feed from the result. Any new properties that match your criteria show up in your RSS Reader of choice. Very cool.

Watch out Orlando, here I come!

That's right, I've confirmed that I can attend and have now registered for TechEd US! Can't wait, I had such an awesome time last year and learned heaps!

Tablet meet-up anyone?

 I'm catching up on screeds of feeds that I have been neglecting for a couple of weeks. I just came across a cool post and photo of NZ's Prime Minister using a tablet PC in Redmond. Hail to the chief!

From Nathan Mercer:

The Rt. Hon. Prime Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark, met with Microsoft’s senior executives at the company’s headquarters in Redmond.  The group exchanged a broad range of ideas around technology solutions designed to create opportunities for New Zealand’s continued economic development and growth plans. 

Helen Robinson (MSNZ MD), Helen Clark (NZ PM), Chris Liddell (MSFT CFO exNZer), Steve Ballmer (MSFT CEO)

This photo is taken in the Microsoft Centre for Information Work (CIW) click here for a virtual tour and here for an image gallery of the facility.

Source: New Zealand Prime Minister Tablet PC-ing in Redmond
Originally published on Sun, 25 Mar 2007 04:13:55 GMT by nmercer

Among the things in my backlog of "things I should be blogging about but have not had the time" are a couple of new gadgets that I have acquired of late.

First up is a Zune that I purchased while in the US recently. 

So far I am quite happy with it - apart from the absolute debacle of trying to install the software on my tablet while I was in Seattle.  Both my "Documents" and "Pictures" folders were offline copies of a network drive.  This is not something that the Zune software could cope with - it would error out with an error with words to the effect that the drive was invalid. 

Being a long time media centre user who has never owned an iPod I find the interface exceptionally easy to use.  I have yet to "squirt" anyone yet as I only know one other person with a Zune in Wellington.

The other device I picked up is a Samsung Q1P that has been provided for evaluation (of hardware and software).  This is running Windows Vista Ultimate and has a bunch of evaluation software - much of which is of little use to me outside the US unfortunately.  This warrants a whole series of posts but suffice to say for now that I am having a pretty good Vista-gami experience on the Q1P at the moment.

The last few weeks have been crazy. A week in Seattle for the Global MVP Summit. I passed through Wellington briefly then over the ditch to Melbourne and Sydney. I stopped in the Gen-i offices in both cities, in addition to attending the Toshiba MobileXchange conference.

On the back of those visits I have been offered a position in Gen-i's Sydney office. I've accepted and my family and I are moving to Australia in a few short weeks.

Crikey!

Needless to say I have rather a lot to get done in the next four weeks. Moving countries and all... On the other hand I have tons of things I want to blog about, but I'll just have to do those as I can.

After two weeks away (well I had a 20 hour stop in Wellington last weekend) I am back home again.  The last two weeks have been really hectic.  I have screeds of feeds to catch up on and a whole pile of things to blog about that I have not gotten to yet.

Two weeks ago, of course, I was in Seattle for the MVP Global Summit.  I then flew back to Wellington.  I arrived home last Sunday and flew out again the next morning.  This time I was bound for Australia and I spent Monday and Tuesday in Melbourne and Wednesday through Friday in Sydney.

I packed my schedule in Australia and had some very long days.  I spent some time in both the Melbourne and Sydney offices of Gen-i.  The other thing I did while in Australia was attend Toshiba's MobileXchange conference.  Toshiba kindly gave me entry into the conference and paid for a couple of nights accommodation so I could extend my trip and attend.  Unfortunately the whole conference was wrapped up in an NDA agreement so I can't even blog about some of the cool things I saw there.  I had an excellent time working the floor of the Expo hall though and had some great conversations.

I've had a fantastic time meeting up with some most of my fellow tablet MVPs over the last couple of days.  I've been jamming as much as I can into the time here in Seattle and have not had a chance to blog about it much.

Fortunately Hugo is doing a great job of this - having already posted a video from one of the early meet-ups and the unscheduled dinner we had last night.  The official event was a regional dinner, which I hated to miss.  I need a clone...

That said the dinner with the other Tablet MVPs and some other key players in the tabletscape was a definite highlight of my trip so far.  The conversation was intense, interesting and - not surprisingly - extremely pen and touch centric.  Oops - forgot to mention that the food (and wine - hic!) were excellent.

Big shout out to GottaBeMobile.com and JK on the Run who picked up the tab for dinner.  That was both unexpected and much appreciated.

Tonight the fun just keeps on coming - we are all off to Boeing Field to the Museum of Flight for the Big Party.  Should be a great night.

In in the lounge in Auckland waiting for my flight to LA. On my way to Seattle for the MVP Global Summit! Yay!

I'll be packing my geek bag this weekend and heading off to Seattle for the MVP Global Summit.  This is a conference for all the MVPs and IMO is one of the major benefits of being a MVP.  I can't wait!

For one thing you get to hobnob with the product teams from Redmond - which should be fantastic.  I'm also really excited for an opportunity to actually meet the other Tablet MVPs in person.  So far the only one's I've met in person are Hugo Ortega - he's in Sydney so only a 3 hr flight away - and Terri Stratton, who I met in Boston at TechEd last year.

Can't wait!!!

When I arrived at work today I was greeted with a welcome sight.  There was a new device sitting on my desk.  No explaination.  No note.  Just a toy in a plain white box.

When I opened the box I was reunited with an old friend.  The Padle.

The Padle - as it was sold in New Zealand by the now defunct (?) Lingo Computer Systems is quite dated, but when it first came out it was a really cool device.

I'll take some photos tomorrow, but suffice to say the Padle looks like a small slate tablet - slightly smaller than a Motion Computing LS800 - with an 8" screen.  Very thin and light.  Instead of Windows XP Tablet Edition, however, it is running CE.Net.  Basically it is a giant PDA.

As I said it is quite old - Circa 2001 I think - so as you can imagine the specs leave a bit to be desired.  It has 64MB RAM - Shared between storage and programs.  No Bluetooth, no WiFi.  It does have a PCMCIA card slot so you could potentially add something in to gove you connectivity, but as it is running CE.Net drivers could be an issue.  None the less I feel honour bound to find a use for it.  Right now I am thinking either digital picture frame or uber remote for the media centre.  Any other suggestions?

A couple of months ago I blogged about Converting a Physical Machine to a Virtual Machine using the beta version of the VMWare Converter.

The beta worked flawlessly and it has now been released.  Even better it is free!  Check it out here.

Yesterday I recieved a new addition to my mobile kit bag - a Think Outside StowAway Sierra BlueTooth Keyboard.  I'm already in love with it.  Used in conjunction with my BenQ Wireless Travel Mouse and my Motion Computing LS800 my new mobile desktop for trips away would look something like this.

The bump case for the LS800 includes a built in stand - this is what allows the LS800 to be easily propped up.

One of the key reasons I opted for the Sierra over other folding keyboards is the inclusion of the number keys.  This additional row, in conjunction with a Fn key that converts many of the keys to a secondary binding, give a full complement of keys including Funtion keys 1-12.  This is very useful on a keyboard that is going to be used in conjunction with a PC.  Many of the foldable keyboards on the market are designed primarily for use with PDAs such as Windows Mobile and Palm devices and for that reason do not include the full complement of keys.

Setup was very easy.  You press a button on the unit to make it discoverable and then tell your PC to search for devices.  Once the device is located you specify the pin on the tablet using the TIP and then type the same pin on the keyboard and press enter.  Done. 

Folded, the Sierra is about the size of a chunky PDA.

To use the keyboard you flick a latch on the right and unfold...

Then you push the red tabs towards the middle to join the three sections of keys together.  The Bluetooth is not enabled until the key sections are joined, so there is no risk of the Sierra transmitting keystrokes, and thus wasting battery, when it is folded up and put away.

On the subject of battery the entire unit runs of a single AAA battery, which works well with my mobilisation strategy of standardising on accessories that use a common battery type.  Several other device I own use AAA batteries, so a have a number of rechargable AAA batteries and a USB powered charger.  Currently I'm using the included alkaline battery but all I can tell you on battery life at this stage is that it is more than one day of light use.

We hope you had enjoyed your holiday break and are ready for another year… The WMUG starts the year with a couple of very interesting presentations:

• Origami anyone?  Eric Ryder from Vantex introduces the range of Tablet PCs and Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPCs) that Vantex are now distributing in New Zealand.  The range includes the Tablet Kiosk range, the Samsung Q1 UMPC and the Raon UMPC.  Should be a great session with lots to of interesting things to look at and a first chance to have a look at these new products only now available in New Zealand.
• Si Partners will then talk about BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) installs with Microsoft Exchange Server, and demonstrate a few products, including the Impatica Showmate (http://www.impatica.com/showmate/) which has just been released for Windows Mobile as well as BlackBerry, a digital pen which uses OCR to convert handwriting and drawings to pdfs and MS Word documents (www.PaperIQ.com) and fieldforce automation.

When: 25 January 2007 6pm

Where: Gen-I (109 Featherston Street, Wellington)

Drinks and pizza available after the meeting.

Please RSVP to wmug@geekzone.co.nz and pass this forward to anyone you think may be interested.

Update: I had a brain fart when typing the name of the tablet I was using.  I can't even call it a typo, it was just a mistake.  The correct model is a Wacom Graphire 4.

In my review of the Acer Ferrari 1000 one of my criticisms of it was that it was not a tablet.  This was only partially tongue-in-cheek.  The fact is that I would not buy a pen and ink challenged computer as my main Mobile PC.  But since I have this one, lets see what we can do about ink enabling a Vista machine that does not have a digitizer.

Full Disclosure:  To do this I am using a Wacom Inspire Graphire 4 graphics tablet that was provided to me gratis by Wacom Australia. 

This graphics tablet is one of several that were provided to selected MVPs for the purpose of demostrating Windows Vista pen functionality to their respective communities.  I have a session prepared for my user group to be presented next time we have a speaker gap.

What you Need

On the computer side you need a Vista Machine that is running one of the following SKUs:

• Windows Vista Home Premium
• Windows Vista Business
• Windows Vista Enterprise
• Windows Vista Ultimate

In other words, not Home Basic or Started as those SKUs don't have the tablet functionality such as the TIP and pen flicks.

In addition you need some hardware to replace the missing digitizer hardware.  This is where the Wacom graphics tablet comes in.

The Process

1. Connect the external tablet to the laptop.  In the case of the tablet I have this is via a USB cable.  At this point the pen will move the mouse pointer, but the position of the pen on the tablet will not relate to the position of the cursor on the screen.
2. Install the Wacom driver and software (Note: I am currently using pre-release software, but I would expect that Wacom will release the drivers in the very near future.)  At this point the position of  the cursor on the screen is relative to the position of the pen on the tablet, but it still acts like a mouse cursor. There is a restart required. 
3. As Vista restarts it must detect the new hardware and enable the Tablet functionality automatically.  You will see the TIP docked on the left.  Pen flicks will now work.  You will be able to use Jounal and if you have OneNote or any other ink enabled apps you will be able to ink directly into them.

If you want to turn it off again...

1. Go to the Control Panel and select the Programs group
2. Under the Programs and Features heading click on Turn Windows features on or off
3. Clear the checkbox for Tablet PC Optional Components and click OK.

Some of you may have noticed that this blog was offline for a while. The outage was caused by a corruption on the ISA server that caused the Firewall Service to poo its pants (that's a technical term).

The fault was easily rectified, but the length of the outage was due to the timing.  The firewall service seems to have stopped accepting connections around midnight, my time.  I did not notice until after I arrived at work and the nature of the fault meant that it could not be resolved remotely.

At any rate it is working again now.  Hope you didn't miss me too much!

I recently started a series of posts detailing what is in my geek bag.  In part 1 of the series I explored my "traveling light" load, which in fact does not include a bag at al per se.

CES is running this week and I really wish I was there.  So much so, in fact, that I am packing my geek bag (virtually, at least) with a different load - what I take for an overseas conference.

Here's the the gear I would be taking for this trip if I were going.

So what have we here?  Here's the rundown:

1. The Oakley Vertical Computer Bag 2.0 that AMD sent me for my trip to CES even though I'm not going.  If I were I would take the bag to give it a good test run.
2. 3 x AAA NiMH rechargeable batteries.  Through some prudent device selection I have several devices that take the same sized batteries.  Hence I just need to carry one sort and I can use them in whatever goes flat.  In this load the MP3 player, wireless mouse and noise canceling headphones all use the AAA batteries.
3. SD GPS Receiver and leather pouch.  I won this at a user group meeting I attended once.  Used in conjunction with an old PDA (7) with Pocket Streets and Trips installed I can find my way around strange cities with ease.
4. A pair of Panasonic RP-HS11 headphones.  These are my favorite headphones for everyday use and for use while exercising.  They are very light and have an over the ear hook that keeps them in place even if you jog with all the coordination of a computer geek :)  Another thing I like about them is that the pads are soft rubber rather than foam - nothing to absorb sweat.  Good sound, too.
5.   A pair of Jensen noise canceling headphones.  These fold up relatively small.  They are great for planes and trains (and include an adaptor that you can use to plug them into those weird airplane armrests) where the noise canceling feature is worth the extra weight.  Not great if you are moving around a lot though.
6. My Telecom HTC Apache (aka Sprint 6700) phone.  Not as much use in the States as it is here in NZ because the data does not roam, but I still like being contractible by phone.  Also included a spare battery and stylus for the phone that pretty much just live in my bag full time.
7. My old HP hx4700 PDA.  Great VGA screen that makes it a perfect partner for the SD GPS Receiver (3).
8. Minolta DiamgeX Digital camera.  This is actually our old camera, and is not as full featured as our new one, but it is so small and light that it is great for trips away where you are only doing point and shoot photography.  And besides, I was using the other one to take this photo!
9. Targus 4 port travel USB 2.0 hub.  I've got stacks of USB hubs but this is my favorite for traveling.  This also pretty much lives in my bag. 
10. Short USB Extension cable - always in my bag.  Useful if you need to connect a wide device to a USB port that would then obstruct the other port or to make travel USB hub sit on the desk.
11. Adaptor for my NZ power cables to make them fit into US plugs.  I actually have a couple of these, but I only included one in the photo.
12. Canary Wi-Fi detector.  I won this at a stand at TechEd Boston last year.  Actually I won an Xbox game that was no use to me because it was zoned for the US - so I negotiated and got this instead.  Press the button and it gives you the name of the best wi-fi network and tells you if it is open or secured and what channel it is on.  Keep pressing the button to cycle through available networks.  Great to see if it is worth getting the tablet out to try and sync your mail and feeds!
13. USB 2.0 SD card reader.  Unfortunately one of the things that does not work on my LS800 with Vista is the SD card slot.  I use this reader to get photos off my camera without carrying the cable. 
14. JNC MPio MP3 Player.  Great little device I've had since before iPods dominated the digital music world.  I've not felt the need to replace it because it works so well.  Runs off a single AAA battery and in addition to it's tiny 128MB internal flash (that was huge when I bought it of course) it has an SD card slot.  Naturally I just use the SD.  It also has a FM Receiver, which is handy.
15. A device that should need no introduction.  This is my Motion Computing LS800 slate in the bump case. 
16. Wacom Cross Executive stylus - a really nice tablet stylus that lives in my bag.  This one in particular was given to me by Dr. Neil Roodyn the first time I met him.
17. 80GB External USB HDD.  Used for on the road backup, mostly, but you never know what you might be able to grab a copy of from someone on a stand if you have one of these with you.  "I'd give you a copy, but we only have the one CD..."  Well...  Again, through some cunning device selection the cable that connects the drive to the PC can also be used to charge my phone (6)
18. A Targus keyboard.  I won this (along with (9) and some other bits and pieces I gave away) by dropping my card into a fishbowl at a trade show.  This is a USB keyboard that feels like a laptop keyboard and is only slightly bigger.  I'm one of those weird people who prefers a laptop keyboard when I have to suffer one.  While I would probably take this (in my checked luggage) I may well not use it at all and it would remain in the room of the Hotel the whole time.  Basically it is just there in case I feel the burning need to write up a really long blog post about the coolest thing I have ever seen in my life.  I want to replace this with one of the ThinkOutside Bluetooth keyboards, but I have not had the toy money to spend on that yet.
19. SwissBit 512MB USB fob and trusty Swiss Army knife. Of course this would be in my checked baggage too.
20. BenQ Wireless mouse.  I love this little guy.  Great portable mouse.  The receiver slots into the body of the mouse when not in use, making it a nice compact unit.  Also it is automatically turned off when the receiver is in the body, so it does not waste battery power. And of course, because it is red it goes faster.
21. Extended battery for the LS800.  This gives me 5-6 hours and the standard battery gives me 2.5-3.  Between the two I get a whole day of Show Floor walking without running out of juice.
22. Half of the power cord for my LS800
23. The other half of the power cord for my LS800
24. Business card case.  You have to have business cards if you want to win anything good and network with people.  Why do we go to these shows anyway?

In addition to all this there are a couple of items that should be.  They are in at work and I would have to go and pick them up on the way in.  These are:

• Sync and charge cable for the hx4700.
• USB battery charger for the AAA batteries.

There are a couple of strategies I have employed to simplify things.  Look for synergies.  For example my MP3 player, phone, digital cameras, laptop and both my tablets have have SD Card slots. 

Similarly, selecting devices that all use AAA batteries, such as my mouse, MP3 player and noise canceling headphones allows me to buy a number of rechargeable batteries and share them among devices.

Lastly by using USB charging I don't have to carry lots of power adaptors.  I carry the power supply for my tablet and charge my phone, the PDA I use as a GPS and my battery charger off that.

The other day AMD sent me a bag for no apparant reason.  On inspecting the bag I realised it was not a cheap mass produced bag, rather it is a Vertical Computer Bag 2.0 manufactured by Oakley that has had the AMD logo printed on it. 

Even though I am a big fan of the Oakley brand (it has to do with my mountain biking roots) I did not even know that they made computer bags.  So, what's it like?

As the name suggests the Vertical Computer Bag 2.0 is, well, vertical.  Rather than looking like a traditional satchel type bag where the computer sits "landscape" in the bag it designed so that the device will sit vertically, or in "portrait".  Personally I think that this ia a great way to carry a slate.

There are a number of storage compartments.  I'm going to work back to front, where the front is the flap and the back is what will be againt your hip if you are carrying the bag with the shoulder strap.

Right at the back is a document pocket that is big enough to take paper up tp A4 (or letter).  There is also a webbing pocket in this that according to the pamphlet that came with the bag is for travel documents.  I'm not sold on this - while it is good to have your travel documents in a pocket opens against your body, the large document pocket is only sealed with velcro in the middle and the webbing pocket inside it does not seal at all.  I would not feel very comfortable storing my passport and paper tickets in a pocket without a zip.

The next compartment towards the front is the main compartment.  This is a very well padded pocket large enough to take a laptop or tablet with a screen up to 15".  The pocket is sealed with a zip and by the carry handles which are joined together with a canvas wrap that joins with two domes.  Unfortunately the zips do not allow you to fit a padlock on them.

The next compartment is accessible by lifting a flap and unzipping a large rectangular pocket on three sides.  The front of this pocket then folds (or flops due to gravity) down.  There are 4 pockets of assorted sizes on the inside of this flap.  (on the left of the picture below.

The bottom two are webbing.  The largest of the four is actually kind of interesting in a geeky way.  It is sheilded to prevent unautorised access to your bluetooth devices.  And it actually works.  I have my phone paired with my LS800 so I put the phone in the pocket and tried to connect to the internet using the phone as a bluetooth modem.  I tried 4 times from varing distances.  For the last attempt the tablet was sitting on top of the bag.  No connection.  I removed the phone from the pocket and tried again and it connected strait away.  Geek neat.  That said I like being able to connect to my phone without getting it out of my bag, so I configure security on my Bluetooth devices to prevent unauthorised access!

The remaining area exposed in the photo above has a number of pen loops, a key holding clip and three flat pockets.  This is where I would probably choose to store my travel documents - it is inside a zipped area.

On the front of the flap with the sheilded pocket is another unsealed document pocket.  The front flap of the bag drops down over this and is held in place by a bar that is on a bit of elastic.  For such a simple closure this gives a pretty good seal.  I don't think it will pop open on you.

There are three canvas loops on each side of the bag that you can slot a carabina through if you want to hang lots of stuff off the sides of your bag.  There are also two bungie cord enclosures you could put things in, but they are very narrow.  I'm not sure what you would put there.  A travel umbrella or your suglasses case may fit.

The last bit of storage space is a bit tricky.  There is a short zip on the right side of the bag.  If you unzip it there is a webbing bottle holder tucked away inside so you can store a water bottle on the outside of the bag and tuck the holder away when not in use.  Quite nice.

Overall I think the bag is very well constructed.  The body of the bag is a fairly rugged nylon canvas and the hardware - such as the strap fittings - are metal.  The stiching looks to be first rate and I think this bag will stay in one piece for a long time.  And so it should - the price of this bag on the Oakley webiste is US$90.

The Acer Ferarri that Microsoft and AMD have sent me has arrived at last after a lengthy delay in customs.

I've already lost it again, just after I closed the front door my daughter Sylvie rushed over and said "Man delivered my 'puter!" and then proceeded to attempted to horsey ride the box!

The first thing I noticed (because it is printed on the box) is that the unit shipped is the Ferarri 1000, not the Ferarri 5000 I was told was coming.  This is a little disappointing as I would have rather had the "desktop replacement" model than the "ultra-portable" model.  The 5000 also has an HDMI interface and an integrated HD-DVD optical drive, which makes it better for one of the things I was going to explore and blog about - Media Centre.

At any rate any exploration and blogging is going to have to wait.  My wife and I are taking Sylvie to Te Papa today so the (now unboxed) Ferarri gets plugged in to charge and gets put aside for later.

 This had me cracking up.  A very cool use of mobile tech that only a true geek would think of.  That's not an insult - I am safe in the knowledge that true geeks don't mind being called geeks.

...the problem: how the heck can I tell what eyeglass frames look good on me? Truth is: I can't because the frames have clear glass in them, which obviously does nothing for my eyesight. I usually bring someone with some fashion sense with me, but today I couldn't. What to do, what to do......

The answer hit me while I was waiting to be helped. I had my XV 6700 Windows Mobile phone with me and it has a 1.3 Megapixel camera in it, right? I decided to snap pics of myself in potential frames, and then put my glasses on to view the actual pics. Heck, if I wanted to, I could have do a whole little fashion show and recorded a video!

So that solved the majority of my dilemma. Using the camera, I could take pics and then review them with my corrected vision. The other issue I had was getting a second opinion on my choices. Barb couldn't join me at the store, but once I had the pics, it was a simple matter of sending her the pics in an e-mail via the EV-DO connection. Sure enough: I got the thumbs up in about 3 minutes.

Good to see that you also check with your fashon advisor

Source: Mobile tech just solved a 28 year old problem
Originally published on Thu, 04 Jan 2007 20:18:50 GMT by Kevin C. Tofel

A courier arrived today with a large box, but alas it was not my Ferrari. In fact it was another present from AMD - though I have to admit I'm at a bit of a loss as to why.

Inside was a really cool Oakley Vertical 2.0 computer bag and a postcard that read:

Happy Holidays from AMD and safe travels to CES 2007! Well see you there.

Er, no you won't! This is the confusing bit. I'm not going to CES. I've never said I was, either. I'd like to but it's not going to happen this year.

Oh well - as I said it looks like a good bag. I didn't even know Oakley made computer bags. I'll write up a review of the bag when I get a minute. Ore thing that looks quite interesting is this, from the Oakley site:

... and the shielded accessory pocket blocks Radio Frequency (RF) waves to help protect your BLUETOOTH® enabled PDA or mobile phone from unwanted access.

This I will have to test. Of course properly configuring Bluetooth on your phone or PDA will also prevent unwanted access.

James Andrews - who use to work at Gen-i and is now contracting in the UK - left a lengthy comment offering some feedback on my decision to keep the Ferrari and my blog in general.  I don't agree with all of it so I'm going to re-post it here and add my commnets.  James' coment is in blue - my comments are in black.  I have not edited Jame's post save adding a link to the other post he refers to and interspersing his original text with my comments in black.

<--Snip-->

Bit disappointed in this to be honest...

Sorry to hear that.

No offense Craig, but seems to me that Joel has a point when it comes to blogs like this one. I Have read your stuff on and off for a while now and while I do find it very informative and a good source of tablet and mobility goss I also notice you do tend to litter your posts with comments about free trips here and there, free kit you have had "donated" etc. And whether you keep stuff or not is often not clear.

I'm not offended - in fact I agree.  In reviewing some of my old posts recently I drew the same conclusion.  I have been learning as I go and have not always been as clear as would be now.  Most stuff is either sent to me to review and return or is passing though my hands for work so I review it while I have it.

Most of the tech you talk about and review already reads like you have been lead there by a 3rd party and taking such high value gifts does nothing for the credibility of your site. The Acer Laptop is not even anything that special, its not a tablet so it wont even really appeal to your demographic, in fact from what I have read it is almost counter to your entire ethos! Sure it has Vista on it, but your site appears very much dedicated to the tablet aspects of Vista.

My blog is a product of my experience.  If a company sends me something to review, thereby creating the opporunity for me to experince it and blog about it then that is fine by me.  I don't promise to only say nice things about it.  If I slam something and it means that I never get anything else from that company, so be it.  I may not get anything from HP again after this review of the TC4400. :)

I might be totally wrong but your blog sometimes reads like so many others dedicated to the cause of maintaining MVP status and garnering junkets and toys from the vendors. If this is the case then fair play, I suggest you make that clear. Otherwise I think your position on accepting such "generous" freebies is morally wrong and a poisoned chalice for tech blogs.

As a simple example, the companies most IT pro's work for (mine does and I know yours does) have strict policies of not accepting junkets and freebies from vendors to prevent an "overt" bias being shown in product selection and tender processes. My opinion is that tech. blogs and other publications should follow the same rules otherwise they aren't worth the paper (or electrons) they are printed on. You will end up turning yourself into a low information content web based infomercial, rather than a trusted adviser.

An overly simple example.  While some bloggers do earn their crust from their blog the vast majority (mine included) are labours of love by people who are passionalte about a topic.  The majority of bloggers by far are not paid a salary to write content as authors in "legitimate publications" are.  Journalists and IT Pros are compensated financially for not being able to accept gifts.  You can't apply the same rules to blogs.  The things that make blogs valuable is not that they are always 100% unbiased - they are not.  The thing that makes them valuable is that they are written by people who really know and are truley passionate about a topic - even though that passion will certainly introduce some degree of bias.  My advice to people reading my blog and any other information you are reading for free on the internet is to apply a great big BS filter to everything you read and make up your own mind. 

And that is Joel's point. Its an easy beat for people wanting to influence the output of blogs and tech publications if all they have to do is woo them with "beads and blankets" and it brings down the credibility of the whole medium.

Except that it is not.  Blogs are extremely self regulating.  A BS post will get slammed by other bloggers.  If someone searching for information they may find the BS post in the results but if they are applying the aforementioned BS filter and doing a thourough search they will find the posts bagging it as well.  There are also comments.  I don't delete any comments except ones that are clearly comment spam (gambling sites and Russian brides) so if anyone disagree's with something in a post they can comment here or - even better - start their own blog and bitch about me there (Where did your blog go James?)

While there is no harm in using resources provided for free by whatever party, when you are in a position of power or influence (and you may argue you are not) there is a duty of ethics and responsibility when accepting "gifts" in the course of wielding your "influence" (just ask Juan Samaranch!). Whether you like it or not, putting up a public blog that attracts hits comes with some influence and therefore responsibility.

I disagree.  I do try to be fair and balanced and to keep an open mind, but even with the best intentions I am still biased towards that which I have more experince with.  You would be a mug to expect blogs to hold the same ethical standards as legitimate press just because it is public.  There is no disclaimer on the Internet that everything posted here must be unbiased.  Nor should there be.  I don't try to mislead, nor do I pertend to be right all the time.  That is why I don't delete comments.  The burden of validating data still lies with the reader. 

What's with this assumption that because journalists are forbidden to accept gifts that their content is somehow more valuable?  If I got a dollar for every tima a misguided member of the legitmate press wrote something along the lines of "I played with a Tablet PC for 10 minutes and didn't get it therefore they won't work for anyone and it is a dying platform" I'd be a rich man. 

Journalist or no, you put a stuff in the public domain for a reason. And that reason is probably why you got offered the laptop in the first place. But you must decide how you conduct yourself in that public domain and be prepared to be judged by your actions. I commend you for stating your position, but I think you are wrong. You should review the laptop and give it away... Otherwise you set a bad precedent.

I blog because I love mobile tech.  The more I blog the more passionate I get about mobility.  I have decided how I will conduct myself and I am comfortable with it.

I think you should take the MS employee's advice and give the Laptop away on your blog once you have reviewed it. To be honest that is a much better way to serve MS and further their Vista marketing campaign.

Firstly, you're assuming that I got the same email - which I didn't.  Some of the Acers were allocate directly to MVPs.  Mine was one of those and the communications were different.  However I don't post emails as they are private communications - this is another thing I learned after getting it wrong.

Secondly, I don't mind serving Microsoft's marketing campaign, but it is not a priority.  I'd rather serve my community.

Thirdly, If I were to give it away it would not be via my blog.   Most of my readership is overseas and I would not want to do a contest that excluded them.  However shipping costs and legal issues means that giving away a big ticket item via my blog is just too hard.

Lastly, my community is tablet focused - had they given me a free tablet with the same conditions I would have felt more complled to give it away.

I hope you take this criticism in the constructive manner it was intended!

Hope you had a good Xmas and New Year!

James

I appreciate you taking the time to post such a lengthy comment, even though I don't agree with all of it.  I will certainly try to be clearer about what given or loaned as I think that is an area I could improve upon.  Have a good 2007.

I've just gotten an email from Microsoft telling me that I have been reawarded my MVP Award for 2007.  I am tremendously pleased and honoured to be reawarded.

I was first awarded in January last year and the renewal has led me to reflect on my year as an MVP.

2006 was an amazing step forward for me.  The access to information and expertise as an MVP is positively taggering.  My brain hurt for the first couple of months. 

Being an MVP has opened other doors as well and through these opportunites I have met some fantastic people and made some great new friends.

In March Toshiba sponsored me to attend their MobileXchange event in Sydney.  While I was in town Hugo Ortega (who has since been awarded as an MVP as well) invited me to join him at the Sydney Windows Mobile User Group (SWMUG).  On the flight over there I had one of those chatty little old ladies who was amazed that I was being pick up at the airport by someone I had never met in person before.  I'm sure she was expecting to read in the Sydney Morning Herald the next day that I had been brutally murdered!

In the car on the way to the User Group meeting Hugo informed me that he had arranged for me to "talk tablet" for 10 or 15 minutes.  I mind mapped out some things to talk about in the car on the way over!

At the meeting I also met Dr. Neil for the first time.  Hugo, Neil and I also recorded this hilarious podcast sitting in the corner - you even hear the pizza arrive!

Later on in May I was offered the chance to attend some Vista Readiness Training in Singapore.  The training was great and I also met several Asia pacific MVPs and Microsoft employees while I was there. 

Also while in town I hooked up with Soon Jinn of local ISV Heulab who gave me an unforgettable tour of their "Classroom of the future".  Truely remarkable.  Unfortuantly the link seems to be broken - I'll investigate.

June saw me taking advantage of the MVP discount for TechEd Boston and putting together a proposal for myself and Active Directory MVP Tony Murray (who also worked at Gen-i) to attend the US event.  In a brain crushingly stupid move managment decided to only send one of us.  I was the lucky one and Tony no longer works for Gen-i.  What a waste - people like Tony are impossible to replace.

However I had an amazing time in Boston and met with the tablet team, the exchange team (Exchange being a strong side interest) and lots of other MVPs and Microsofters.  Three MVPs in particular that took an interest in looking out for me were three of the four Mobility Guys: Steven Hughes, Jack Cook and Don Sorcinelli and I had a great time with them.

In August I spoke at TechEd New Zealand.  I had some issues with the then current build of Vista and the KVMs that were being used (as did everyone else) but I still delivered two sessions which were both well revieced.  My lunchtime session allowed me to talk about what is new in Vista for Mobile and Tablet users (lots) and on the final day I delivered a session on getting started with Tablet Development.

Thanks to all the people who have made it such a memorable year.  My MVP friends I look forward to meeting more of you in person at the Summit in March.  2007 looks to be just as good.

For a bit of fun I took the superhero quiz after Batman and Spidey both took it.

I'm Iornman.

Inventor. Businessman. Genius.

Rather disturbingly the superhero next on my list was Catwoman but I'm not rushing out to buy a PVC suit just yet.

If you would like to know which super hero you are most like then take the quiz!

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

I just posted about using RSS to track a package and it begs the question.  Where else should organisations be offering RSS feeds that they are not now?

A couple spring to mind for me.

Firstly I have not found a really good RSS enable local (NZ) news site.  This irks me.  Stuff.co.nz is a really good news site, but it lacks feeds and consequently I never visit it.  I am often better informed on world events than local events.

Shipping companies should also be offering their own tracking feeds so that we don't have to use 3rd party ones.

What about online retailers?  They could (and some do) be offering RSS feeds for new items, specials and the like.

Lastly, one that I have blogged about before - hardware drivers!  If I have a Motion Computing LS800 (which I do) I should be able to go to the Motion site and subscribe to the LS800 drivers feed.  Every time there is a new driver I would see it in my feeds and make an informed choice about installing it.  There is a win-win here for the vendor if you assume that their new drivers resolve more issue than they create.  Allowing your clients to easily stay up to date will reduce the support calls related to driver issues.

Any more?

I know I am not going to recieve my Acer Ferrari until at least Thursday NZ time as there are no deliveries on weekends, Monday and Tuesday are public holidays and DHL Express are not doing any deliveries Wednesday due to "lack of demand". 

However I was thinking about the mechanisims available to track packages with DHL (from experience UPS and FedEx are similar).  The most common method is to visit the webiste and enter in you tracking number and you get a summary of where the package is now and all the points it has passed through on the way.  I might just be getting picky, but to me that just seems sooooo 2002.  I mean having to visit a website and enter a code every time I want an update?  DHL offer email tracking and you would think that this would update you when the package status changes, but it does not.  You send an email and you get an email back with it's current status.  You want an update you have to send another email.

I would much rather "Subscribe" to a package and be notified each time the status changes.  And what is the perfect technology to facilitate this? RSS feeds.

So I did a little googling and guess what...  I'm not the first person to think of this.  In fact I found several people who had already coded up web services to generate a feed based on a tracking number.  I tried several, but finally settled on isnoop.net's rather cool Package Tracking With Google Maps and RSS

Basically you enter in a UPS, FedEx, USPS or DHL tracking number and you will get the same summary you get via the vendor's site, the path and location of the package shown on a map and an RSS feed to track the continued journey of the package.  Very cool.

As previously blogged I am one of the lucky few who is recieving a shiney new Acer Ferrari 5000 from Microsoft and AMD.  What am I planning to do with it after the review?  Well the options included in the email offering it to me were:

1. Send it back to Microsoft
2. Keep it
3. Give it away

Of these three it was instantly down to options 2 and 3.  The idea of sending it back - to paraphrase Douglas Adams - never even began to speculate about the merest possibilty of crossing my mind.  In the end I have decided at this stage to keep it.  For what it is worth, here are my reasons.

Reason One - I have a need...

• I have a need for another computer in the house.  What use to be the family desktop computer was pressed into service as a server to keep my blog on air when the PC it was running on began showing signs of an imminant drive failure.  We have been wanting a shared computer but financial circumstances at the moment do not permit purchasing another computer at this time.
• I also need a development machine.  Since the loss of my desktop the only machine I have for development is my work provided M400 (the Motion Computing LS800 I use as my main machine if fine for normal use but struggles with Visual Studio).  Developing on a work provided machine is suboptimal because according to the terms of my contract that means that work technically owns the IP, even if I do it in my own time!  This has not been an issue so far as I have not been trying to sell anything I have developed, but I still don't like it.

Reason Two - It creates opportunity...

• I use Vista Business on my LS800.  This is the free copy I was given for participating in the beta program and filing more than one bug.  My work computer also has Vista Business on it.  Being provided with a machine with Vista Ultimate allows me to explore the features that are not in the Business SKU and that gives me more to blog about.  I am interested in exploring Media Centre, for instance, and blogging about integrating that into my mobile life.

Reason Three - I am a gadget geek...

• I have to be honest about it - the Acer looks like a really cool machine "on paper".  It has some nifty features that I can't wait to check out. 

I have no great moral dilemma about keeping this machine.  I will review it, providing a fair and honest review of the hardware and the bits of the OS I am exploring.  I feel no need to only say nice things about either the machine or the OS - that does no favours for anyone.  I will provide feedback and I will - as always - try to provide it in a constructive manner.

I do want to clear up some misconceptions.

• Some of the Acers were sent to selected MVPs.  I'm one of those.  I am not an A-List blogger (my list may be a bit further down the alphabet ;) ).  I am an MVP that happens to blog. 
• I do not make my living (or any significant money for that matter) from my blog.  Every now and then my Google Adsense money lets me buy a new gadget, but by that I mean the headphones, not the iPod!
• I do not consider myself to be a journalist.  I blog my opinion.  Everything on my blog is editorial at best.

I have an issue with comments on this blog at the moment.  Basically hitting the "Save Comment" button just does nothing.  This only seems to affect some IE/OS combinations.

IE7 on Vista - does not work.

IE7 on Windows 2003 works.

Looking into other.  Appologies if you have issue posting comments.  I hope to have this resolved soon.  

Thanks to those who have brought this to my attention.

Trying out a new blog theme here.  Because this is a Tablet and Mobility site I have tried to optimise the Stylesheet for a wide range of screen resolutions and orientations.  I think the layout works quite well down to 800x600 (in landscape).  Feedback appreciated.

After posting the other day about my plans to migrate my physical blog server to a virtual server I had a comment asking if I was planning to document the process.  Well the migration is all done and it went really smoothly.

I used VMWare's (beta) VMWare Converter to accomplish the task.  Before I started I backed up the source server.  This took about 5 hours but if I hadn't then I'm sure it would of all gone to hell in a handbasket.  After that I stopped some of the services (and set them to manual) on the source server to prevent inbound traffic during the import.

After that I installed VMWare Converter onto a Windows 2003 Server that is alreadly running VMWare Server.  After installing I launched VMWare converter.  Basically from there I just clicked on Import Machine button and followed my nose.

 

This kicks off a wizard (of course) to import a machine in to VMWare Server.

 

I started off by specifying that I wanted to import a Physical computer.  As you can see there are also options to import other VMWare formats, Microsoft's VirtualPC and Virtual Server and Backup Exec System Recovery Images.  Pretty cool.

 

To import a Physical Machine the source machine needs to be powered on.  In the wizard you specify the machine that you want to import and provide credentials for that machine.

 

After that you can chose which disks to import and whether or not to resize them.  The default is to import all the disks at their current sizes, which is what I did. 

You then provide details of the target.  The only option I had was to import to a stand alone VM.

 

After that you specify where to create the machine.  This needs to be a UNC path that is accessible to both machines.  I shared the "Virtual Machines" folder on my VMWare server box and specified the path to that share.  By default it will use the credentials you specified to connect to the source server, but you can change this by clicking the Connect As.. button.

 

When creating the disks I opted to allocate the space now - having the contiguous disk space prevents fragmentation of the vmdk and gives much better performance from the virtual disk.

 

From there it is pretty easy - for each NIC in the physical machine a virtual NIC will be created.  I skipped the customisation step, so I can't comment on that.  The import took about 2 hours to import a machine that was about 30GB in size across a 100Mb switched network.  After the copy completed it was simply a matter of opening the machine in VMWare Server, powering on the VM and restarting the services.  It was that easy.

If you are a fellow MSDN subscriber then would you mind not downloading Vista just yet? It is really killing my download speed. I grabbed something from another US site earlier and pulled it down at about 200 KB /s. Vista is coming down at about 20 :(

Update: Now it is down to 4! And only 144 hrs remaining....

When did I switch back to dialup!

There will be some brief outages of the blog tonight (NZ time).I'm in the process of budding a VMWare Server box, and thenI'm going to virtualize the physical server (and that is being very generous) that is currently hosting the blog. The server being replaced is really an old desktop, doesn't have enough RAM and is thrashing the disk. The new virtual server will have more RAM and the underlying host will be much faster. This should improve performance.

Something I'll be doing a bit of this week I'm afraid. My nearly 2 year old daughter has come down with chicken pox.
Poor wee girl. She is feeling a bit miserable!

In my previous post I pointed out that the Office compatibility pack released today.
Guys if you use Office 2000, XP or 2003 in your organisation, deploy this patch now! Even if you have no plans to deploy Office 2007 (and you should - it rocks!) unless your line in a bubble other organisations you interact with will.
Deploy this pa tch and you can open, edit and save the new XML formats. Documents created in the new formats will start making their way into your environment. Your can either have them break or just work. Your call.

Just read on Marc Orchant's Office Evolution Blog
Microsoft has released a Compatibility Pack for Office 2000, XP, and 2003 that lets those older versions open, edit, and save to the new XML file formats used in Office 2007.
It's a free download available in English, Japanese, French German, and Spanish and provides users of older Office versions to the following formats:
Word
.docxMicrosoft Office Word 2007 document
.docmMicrosoft Office Word 2007 macro-enabled document
PowerPoint
.pptxMicrosoft Office PowerPoint 2007 presentation
.pptmMicrosoft Office PowerPoint 2007 macro-enabled presentation
.potxMicrosoft Office PowerPoint 2007 template
.potmMicrosoft Office PowerPoint 2007 macro-enabled template
.ppsxMicrosoft Office PowerPoint 2007 show
.ppsmMicrosoft Office PowerPoint 2007 macro-enabled show
Excel
.xlsbMicrosoft Office Excel 2007 binary workbook
.xlsxMicrosoft Office Excel 2007 workbook
.xlsmMicrosoft Office Excel 2007 macro-enabled workbook
.xltxMicrosoft Office Excel 2007 template
.xltmMicrosoft Office Excel 2007 macro-enabled template
.xlamMicrosoft Office Excel 2007 add-in
The download links and more information can be found here.

Yay! Techsmith have released a new version of Camtasia Studio
This is one of my favourite apps and I've used it to bring you guys some cool screen casts in the past.
Can't wait to see what's in the new version (first hand)
In the meantime here's what's new according to TechSmith's site:
What's New in Camtasia Studio 4
Share with Anyone, Anywhere
We live in a mobile world, and Camtasia Studio 4 helps you keep pace by making it easy to publish videos and MP3 files for portable media players. Now your message, lecture, or just-in-time training video can reach your audience practically anywhere on the bus, in a coffee shop, or while theyre jogging. Camtasia Studio videos are designed to share.
Click here to watch video

Give Your Audience Playback Choices
Sometimes its hard to predict what your viewers will need. Will they watch your videos on a laptop? Or would they prefer an MP3 or iPod video file to take along? Now you can stop guessing and give your audience a variety of options. Choose the primary file format you want, then add iPod and/or MP3 to the production list, and even attach a PowerPoint presentation. Then, produce them all at once.
 Click here to watch video

Seamless Publishing through Integration with Screencast.com
Camtasia Studio 4 provides a fully functional screening space for your videos. Directly from within the production wizard, you can publish videos to Screencast.com, where others can easily view your content. Screencast.com has built-in RSS and iTunes functionality, so you can deliver videos directly to your viewers desktop or portable media player. With this seamless integration between Camtasia Studio and Screencast.com, sharing your videos, screencasts, and more, is just a click away.
Click here to watch video

No More Background Noise
Even in "reasonably quiet" conference rooms, offices and classrooms, unwanted room noise can seep into your recordings, making them sound less than perfect. Camtasia Studio 4 can edit out background noise to drastically improve the quality of your video. Either choose one of the many presets to automatically remove the noise, or manually select the noisy portion of the timeline. Then, Camtasia Studio will identify this sound pattern in your recording and remove it across the entire audio track.
Equalize Volume Levels
Its easy to speak too softly or sit too far from your microphone during recording. Its also common to experience volume variations when two or more voices are being recorded. Camtasia Studio 4 can remove volume variations across the timeline to ensure consistently good sound throughout your video. Advanced users can manually control volume ratio, threshold and gain.
Click here to watch video

Compare Results before Producing
Have you seen Camtasia Studios perfect-quality Flash SWF or new Flash Video (FLV) files? How about the incredible results of QuickTime's H.264 compression? With so many choices, it can be difficult to decide which is best for your situation. Camtasia Studios new production preview feature lets you explore options beforehand and quickly compare the results of different formats and compression settings.
Its Your Video Customize It!
Choose from a variety of playback bars and Flash pre-loaders to create a presentation thats just right for you. And, Adobe Flash users can access our source files to easily customize our pre-loaders.
Faster and Easier than Ever
Click here to watch video

Survey your viewers
Camtasia Studio 4 lets you add open-ended survey questions to your videos to engage viewers and gather feedback. Quizzes and surveys are now also easier to create and more professional in appearance.
View and adjust audio volume
An audio volume indicator and an Audio Setup Wizard make it easier to choose the best audio settings for your needs.
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Produce in three clicks or less
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From GBM:

"GottaBeMobile.com will be opening forums this Friday, October 6. The GBM Team has been working hard to create a great community resource for the Mobile, Tablet PC and UMPC community. Over this past weekend we invited a few friends to take a sneak peek and give us feedback. Now we are looking for a little broader feedback from GBM readers."

If you are interested in signing up details are here: http://www.gottabemobile.com/WantedForumBetaTesters.aspx

See you there!

From GBM:

"GottaBeMobile.com will be opening forums this Friday, October 6. The GBM Team has been working hard to create a great community resource for the Mobile, Tablet PC and UMPC community. Over this past weekend we invited a few friends to take a sneak peek and give us feedback. Now we are looking for a little broader feedback from GBM readers."

If you are interested in signing up details are here: http://www.gottabemobile.com/WantedForumBetaTesters.aspx

See you there!

Well not quite, but sometimes I wish I had...
It has been a week and a half since my loss post- a long time in the Blogosphere... By now people are probably wondering if I'm still around - Indeed I've had a few ping me on IM to check that all is well. Thought I'd post something before I was fogotlen all together!
I am fine but I've been more than a little snowed with interesting work. I'm the technical lead for a Vista TAP deployment. That's really cool but the downside is that it is a TAP that should have started in December last year that for reasons I won't go into here has just really kicked off in the last 3 weeks. Nothing like a challenge!
To top it all off we are currently deploying a Beta Os (vista) with a beta deployment tool (BDD) and then laying down beta office! When things go wrong where do you look?
Anyway that is what I'll be doing for the next few months... Hopefully I get time to post now and then!

I'm trying FeedDemon out as an RSS Aggregator. I've been using RSS Bandit and I really like it but I have a pressing need to have the same feeds available and synchronized on two tablets. Because FeedDemon integrates with NewsGator Online and syncs Read unread status it looks promising

Dennis over at GBM has bogged about an app I've been meaning to try for a while. It's one of the tools in his GBM Mobile Toolkit - Roboform
I'm goring to give RoboForm a try and I'll report back.
But let's face it - if Dennis recommend it then it will probably be pretty good!

I in-place upgraded my Toshiba M400 to Windows Vista RC1 and I've be having a couple of bluescreens. I analyzed a couple of crash dumps and they both pointed to DLAIFS_M.Sys
After a bit of research I leaned that this was part of the Sonic DLA package that is included with Sonic Record Now. I've un-installed it for now and I'll feed it back if stability improves.

LOL
I'm just catching up on my feeds after a really busy time in Auckland last week. After reading about the "Boob on Bikes" parade Sumocat proclaims:
Might change my stance on parades
The really sad thing is that I was far too busy at TechEd NZ to pop down to watch it myself. I would of missed a really good session if I had gone! Yes I am that much of a Geek, and darn proud of it!
(BTW Mark, if you ever are in the country then drop me a line!)

For both testers there is a new build available via Connect. I've just downloaded 5536.16385 and will be installing it tomorrow. Will this be RC1?

Well TechEd NZ is still running but my sessions is all done. My Getting Started with Tablet Development session went over pretty well. I had a couple of little issues but nothing serious. I had a great time and have already had some good feedback. Now I have a bunch of feeds to read and lots to catch up on on my BIog.

Before I started messing around with the touchscreen Motion LE1600 I wanted to create an image of it so I could resotre it to a known good state if I broke it.  Normally I would either use the restore CD that ships with the device or an imaging product like Ghost32.  Given that Motion shipped this to me with a Vista build that is a work in progress I was not surprised that a restore CD was not included. However Windows Vista includes a great new feature called CompletePC Backup and I thought I would check it out.  I recorded the process to kick off a CompletePC Backup - here is the screencast (9MB - AVI format).

There are a couple of things that make this a really cool feature...

1. You can create a PC image from within a running OS.  Most other imaging software you need to boot of a floppy/CD/network to create the image while the dsk is not in use.  CompletePC Backup uses volume shadow copy to allow you to image the machine "hot"
2. The procedure is easy.  This is going to be great for non-technical users.  (the restore procedure is marginally harder but it is much more important that it is easy to create the image - users can always seek help to restore it if need be)
3. Very fast - the first image I created took about 6 minutes.  Subsequent images leverage the volume shadow copy snapshot and record changes, so should be even faster.
4. Compact - the LE1600 is using about 11GB of disk - the backup is about 5.5GB on my USB hard drive.
5. The format of the disk image is - get this - VHD, the same format as virtual disks in Microsoft's Virtual PC and Virtual Server products.  In theory you are suppose to be able to add your CompletePC image to a virtual machine and boot it - how cool is that?!?!  I have not tried that yet, but I will.

The backup files wizard looks pretty cool too.  It leverages Windows Search and backs up files of the specified types where ever they sit on the PC.  No more losing data because you forgot to include a folder.  Again - great for the novice user.

WNewquay has launched what looks to be a great new site http://tabletwiki.com/
"This is a place where you can find, add, and edit knowledge about your mobile technologies. The initial focus is on Tablet PCs, Ultra Mobile PCs (Origami) and Media Center PCs. As various technologies converge, we may see articles on other gear, but for now our focus will be on Windows Tablet and Touch Technologies. "
Now all that is needed is for people like you (and me) to start adding content to make this a great resource for all.

I'm on the train on my way home and I can't help musing about the irony of it all... I'm the mobility guy in a team of consultants and I often end up all but immobilized by all the technology I'm carting around.
Today I have two geek bags with me and I'm lugging around no less than four tablets. I've got my Motion Ls800 that is my primary machine and which I'm using to pen this post. In addition to that I have my new work provided tablet-a Toshiba M400 that I'll be using as my primary Vista machine going forward. I also have my trusty HP TC1100 which is my old work provided machine that I have not relinquished yet. Lastly I have the touchscreen LE 1600 that Motion sent me to use @ TechEd NZ.
I've concluded that Tablet PCs are a bit like some of their pharmaceutical counterparts. After using them for a while it is necessary to up the dosage to get the same effect. :)

Some very good news on Geekzone.
"Hitwise has just revealed the results of traffic measurements for New Zealand-based websites, and Geekzone has qualified as Hitwise #1 for the quarter ending June 2006.
During this period, www.geekzone.co.nz ranked No. 1 by visits in the News and Media - IT Media category against other New Zealand websites."Well done Mauricio and the rest of the team!
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=6537

I was just reading this article on stuff.co.nz about a series of incidents where Dell laptops have experienced spontaneous combustion. 

I am suddenly very glad that Dell don't make tablets!

Check out this article for more details and photos of a Dell doing half a Pheonix act at a conference in Japan!

Great news, the Geekzone 2006 Event is all confirmed. This will be a fun and informative event I'm sure.
from Geekzone:
Geekzone has confirmed the geek and technologists gathering, Geekzone 2006, will be happening in Wellington, New Zealand on 16th September 2006.The event brings together a small group of IT enthusiasts, geeks in general to discuss, share and learn more about technology, mobility, blogging and other topics.The event will take place at the Paramount Cinema, Brooks Lounge, in Couternay Place, the centre of the entertainment district in Wellington, New Zealand's capital.Currently schedule to speak are Jay Templeton (Mabode) speaking about content, media devices, and Juha Saarinen (The Techsploder) talking about the media move to the Internet, blogs and other related topics. Geekzone 2006 will be a free event, with limited capacity due to the venue size. Advanced registrations will be required, and more information is available in the official Geekzone 2006 Blog.

In moving to the LS800 I thought I would take the opportunity to try out a different RSS reader. I tried the native support in the IE7 and Outlook 2007 betas and found them lacking. I have now installed Rss Bandit and I really like it!
One of the coolest features I've found so far is its support for NNTP newsgroups. I am liking having all my news and info is one app. I am already toying with the idea of a "Blog this in BlogPad" plugin...

It you are interested in Windows Mobile you may have heard of Crossbow... This is the best thing I have seen on the subject...
"If you read Geekzone for some time you will find out that is our policy not to publish rumours or information we have under NDA. That's why you won't find out much about the upcoming Windows Moble Crossbow, which is rumoured to be "Second Edition" release of Windows Mobile 5.0.Some say the MSFP is the Blackberry killer. Some say it may be Crossbow. Perhaps this page about Crossbow actually tells us what it is?"
Via Geekzone: Crossbow to kill Blackberry?

Warner over at GBM links to a CNet article that indicates Office 2007 has been slipped again.
I'm very sorry to hear this as I think it is already a great app
I only hope they can stick to this new timeframe!

Had a great session of the Wellington WMUG tonight. Compact framework MVP Nick Randolph shared with the group some of his learnings from MEDC Australia.
Topics covered included:
-Options for data storage formats
-Connectivity Options
-SMS Message trapping
-UI design on mobile devices
-Orientation awareness

Nick included some code samples and demos and talked about some of the gotchas he has encountered along the way.
There were some interesting discussions along the way.
Maurico gave us a brief overview of the Archer rugged Windows Mobile Device. Very cool device by Juniper running Windows Mobile 5.
As always we wrapped up with some prizes and Beer and Pizza.

I've just added a new feature to my blog - just for kicks...  Ink Smilies:

Feel free to copy to use on your own blog.

Darryl Burling writes that Tech Ed is filling up fast.
So if you havent registered, do it now!

Steve over at the CarryPad blog has had another attempt at making the case for calling all small computers Ultra Mobile PCs.

I think the most important point of my last post on this subject was missed, so Ill repeat it here.

At the end of the day, however, it does not matter where we draw the lines in the sand or what labels we use. What is important is that we understand the relative strengths and weaknesses of devices so we can help people get the right device for their unique set of needs.

We have a real problem with confusing terminology here. Let me be crystal clear on this next point Steve, and others like him, did not cause this problem. Microsoft did.

Microsoft dont make the hardware in question they just write some software for them. The problem is that they chose a name that is a description and there are plenty of devices that fit that description that do not run the touchpack software.

Imagine MS wrote some software for cars. They would allow car-makers to distribute cars with the software, provided these cars met certain requirements - including being red. Imagine that this all happens under the banner of a project team and the codename for the project has nothing at all to do with red cars, Project Haiku.

Of course before Haiku ever becomes public there are cars on the road that are red lots of them. And some of those meet some or all of the other requirements of Project Haiku.

Ok, so Haiku matures and as part of the launch the project Haiku name is used to hype things up. Then the big announcement Haiku devices are really Very Red Cars! VRCs are a type of car running MSs new software.

But wait a minute, there are lots of very red cars already on the market that dont run MSs software. Instant confusion. Stupid, right? Well thats exactly the situation we are now in with Origami and UMPC and the confusion will likely get worse before it gets better.

I cant fix that and, frankly I dont care enough to try. What I do care about is having people who read my blog be dear about which devices I am and am not talking about in each post. What Steves posts have convinced me of is that UMPC is a universally bad term to use if you are hoping to achieve clarity.

IMO it would have been easier for all concerned if MS had just stuck with Origami! Unfortunately I cant fix that either. What I can fix is the terminology I use. Scratch my statement from my previous post::

When I use the term UMPC I mean something running the touch pack. I use the term Ultra Portable to describe other devices like the LS800.

From this point on I am going to avoid using the term UMPC at all. For devices running the MS touchpack Im going to revert to the term Origami. For other really small computing devices In going to stick with the term Ultra-portable.

As to Steves original call for a definition for UMPC that we can all agree on can I suggest this:

A product category name used by Microsoft that caused a great deal of confusion in the marketplace.

I had lunch on Tuesday with Pete Wright.  It was the first time we met face to face, though we have exchanged emails and blog comments in the past.

Pete was a really nice guy and we had a good chat.  He did have me on a bit though.  A while back I posted an open letter to Authors and Publishers calling for them to ensure that they make their books available in digital format, too.  Pete listened and his previos book and his current book are now available as ebooks.  The reason Pete had a go about me is that he posted about this and I did not pick up on it.

I admit it - I missed it.  But I'm rectifying that now and I've subscribed to Pete's blog to ensure it does not happen again.  It was really gratifying to learn that my post had directly motivated someone to release an their book in digital format.  Thanks for listening Pete!

I've been meaning to learn a bit of C# (so far Ionly know VB.net) so I'll have to put my money where my mouth is as well and put Beginning Visual C# Express on my shopping list.

Pete was telling me about some cool things in the pipeline so you might want to add him to your feeds, too.

 

I'm sitting in my new favorite cafe in Boston. Espresso Royale offers Great Coffee and free wifi! What more could a jetlagged geek ask for? It you need a caffeine and or connectivity fix in Boston you way want to check it out. (It's in Newbury street)

I'm in the Red Carpet lounge in Terminal 7 of LAX. Just crossed paths with Peter O'Dowd an exchange MVP based in Wellington. Were both on our way to Boston for TechEd - But we are on different flights... Almost there now!

This Friday I'm off to Boston for TechEd 2006.  Needless to say I can't wait!

I leave Wellington at 4:30pm NZ time, which is about 8:30pm on Thursday Boston time.  I arrive in Boston at 5:40am on Saturday.  Yikes, that is a long trip.  Clearly I am going to need some strong coffee that day - anyone where I can get a good espresso in Boston?

If you are heading to TechEd drop me an email - I'm always keen to meet up with like minded tablet types!

If you are testing Vista Beta 2 then you may be interested in this:
"CA, Inc. (NYSE: CA) today announced an offer to provide Microsoft Windows Vista Beta customers a no-charge, one-year trial subscription to CAs eTrust EZ Antivirus. The distribution has the potential to reach millions of projected Windows Vista Beta 2 customers and can be downloaded starting today at: http://ca.com/windowsvistabeta."
The free subscription is valid for a year, including updates and web based support. Good stuff CA.

I'm home - in body anyway!
Had a great time in Singapore and I have much to blog about.
More Soon...

I've just arrived in Singapore.  I'm here for a few days - and I have some really cool activities planned.

Tomorrow I am going to visit Heulab to see their "Classroom of the Future" showcase.  I'm getting a guided tour and I'm really looking forward to it.  I have seen the Heulab products in action before, including the flagship product Fun with Virtual Classroom.  It is an amazing tool that allows teachers to empower students to colaborate without relequishing control.  Best of all it has been written from the ground up to take advantage of the Tablet PC.

Friday and Saturday I am attending Vista readiness labs being run by Microsoft for selected influencers.  I'll be blogging more about that later.

Sunday I don't fly out until 8PM at night so I intend to have a good poke around Singapore before I go.

I've just received word of a Wellington office user group meeting. Here's the details:

"Pizza and drinks will be provided, along with some great information.

When: Wednesday 24 May 2006, 6:00-7:30pm
Where:
Microsoft New Zealand
Level 12, 157 Lambton Quay
Wellington

Topic 1: Ryan Duguid, Microsoft Technical Specialist.
Microsoft Office InfoPath is a Windows-based application for creating rich, dynamic forms that teams and organisations can use to gather, share, and reuse XML based information. This session will cover the basics of InfoPath forms and look at advances in InfoPath 2007 that support the gathering data from email forms and browser forms.

Topic 2: Steve Schapel, Microsoft Access MVP
Where does Microsoft Access fit in? A brief discussion from the point of view of the user/developer, with some real-world example scenarios of where Access is found a niche.
This promises to be a very informative and entertaining evening!"
Convenor: Steve Schapel
www.woug.info

Jk links to BetaNews who are reporting that Samsung will be demonstrating hybrid hard drives @ WinHec next week.  From BetaNews

Hybrid hard drives eliminate the need for the disk to spin continuously, which would contribute to a longer usable life as well as less risk of data loss from dropping or jarring. This is due to the NAND flash memory acting as a cache.

Either a 128MB or 256MB cache would act as the first step in storing data. The hard disk would only need to spin to save data when this cache is filled, roughly once every 10 to 20 minutes. The cache could also assist in allowing a PC to boot quicker.

I look forward to these being widely available. I suspect that if you have an older machine you want to breathe a little extra life into then – in addition to more RAM – this will be a very worth while upgrade.

I previously posted that I was going to compare the relative merits of four types of mobile PCs.  It is my opinion that the distinct types of devices are evaporating as the spaces between the types are populated.  Instead of distinct types we now have broad and overlapping categories populating points along a continuum of mobile device.

In this post I am going to compare the relative merits of the traditional laptop and the convertible tablet.  Before I begin let me start by stating the obvious.  I am speaking in general terms in this post.  If I make a sweeping, general statements like “Laptops are physically bigger than convertible tablets” I fully accept that it does not apply in every case.  For example there are some ultra-portable laptops.   That’s fine – as I said we are dealing with broad and overlapping categories.  The exceptions to sweeping statements are the overlaps.

 

The Laptop

Lets start looking at the traditional laptop.  The laptop has been around for 20 + years and has come a whole heck of a long way.  So what’s the good and bad?

Pros

The main advantages of the traditional laptop as I see them are:

·         Cheaper – This is the big one.  If you look at two machines that are of similar specifications and one is laptop and one is a tablet then the laptop will likely be cheaper.  There are good reasons for that – well look at those later.

·         Larger screen sizes available – where tablets models are pretty thin on the ground at 14” and above.  By contrast laptops abound at 15” and above.   If a large physical screen size is important to you then dropping back to 12-14” may be unacceptable.

·         Lighter - for similar physical size and battery life a laptop will usually be lighter than a convertible.  This is largely due to the engineering of the hinges – I’ll explain this later, too.

Cons

Where does the laptop fall down?

·         Not as flexible – I use my tablet on a daily basis in situations where it would not be possible or practical to try and use a laptop.  Flicking a convertible into slate mode simply gives you another option that you lack on a laptop.  An example situation where this is handy is sitting on a train (on my train the seats are too close together to use a 15” notebook comfortably because you can’t open the screen all the way.)

·         Takes up more physical room – the downside of 15”+ screens is that they make the device physically bigger.  This extra size can be a limitation if you often work in situations where space is at a premium. 

·         The barrier effect – few people use laptops in meetings.  Why?  If you sit down facing someone then open a notebook you have an instant barrier between you and them.  For meetings with clients this is rarely acceptable.  For internal meetings it depends on the culture of the organisation.  If you have to check your laptop at the door you will be reduced to capturing data on paper then at best you will double enter that data or any actions.  At worst you will lose it.

 

The Convertible Tablet

Convertible Tablets embody device comprimise.  They may not be quite as sleek and light as a their slate cousins but they also lack some of their limitations.  Be sure to check back for my next post in this series pitting convertibles against slates).

Pros

Advantages of a convertible:

·         Added hardware fleibility – as I aluded to earlier convertible tablets have an edge over the traditional laptop.  Simply put the fact that the screen can be rotated 180 degrees and closed with the screen out gives the users another option.

·         Increased software flexiblity – as the hardware offers increased flexibiltiy the tablet gives developers more options.  These options include adding ink markup, inserting drawings or sketches and capturing gestures.  Properly implemented these features add real power to applications.

·         Additional input methods – there are additional input methods available to the tablet user.  These include direct ink input, handwriting recognition and speech input. 

Cons

On the down side of the convertible tablet:

·         Weight – the additional engineering that goes into the swivel hinge adds a considerable amount of weight and probably a bit of cost as well.

·         Cost – tablets have something that laptops don’t.  A digitizer.  This adds additional cost in manufacture and this cost is passed on to the consumer.  All else being equal a tablet will cost more than a laptop.

 

When to Pay the Extra

Some use cases that will benefit from the additional flexibility include:

·         Replacing analog forms with digital versions

·         Users that spend lots of times in meetings.  Especially if using a laptop in meetings does not gel well with the culture of the organisation.

Next up – I’ll compare the merits of Convertible Tablets and Slates.

I seem to have exceeded my monthly download limit and my broadband connection has been throttled back to dial-up speeds - ouch!  :(  That's the terms of the plan I selected - I would rather be throttled than hit with a hefty excess usage bill.

It's my own fault for not monitoring my usage.  Downloading 2 different Vista builds in this billing cycle was enough to push me well over the edge.  Oh well - my billing cycle ends on Monday - I'm sure I can cope for 2 days.  After all I do have an EVDO card as well :)

Nathan Mercer has posted details for Vista and Office 2007 Technical training sessions being held in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. 

"The Connect ’06 Technical Training Sessions are coming to Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland during May:

Wellington – 11th May – Intercontinental

Christchurch – 17th May – Grand Chancellor

Auckland – 22nd May – Sky City

Agenda, registration and more info at www.microsoft.co.nz/techsessions

The event is completely FREE, but you must register.

Checkout the event agenda here and also the event technical content here."

Nathan is one of the presenters so it should be a good day.  If you are going to the Wellington session - see ya there!

Back in February I posted a review of the fablulous Toshiba M400.  I then had three attempts at installing Vista and trying to get the Aero Glass effects working.

Take 1 was a clean install with build 5270.  The build used the Standard VGA driver so there was no glass.

Take 2 was a clean install of build 5308.  No glass.

Take 3 was an inplace upgrade of XP with build 5308.  Nice try, but still no glass.

Today I managed to get hold of a Toshiba M400 again for a short period of time.  I also managed to get hold of a "Pre-Alpha" version of the WDDM driver for the M400.  After installing it I can confirm that Aero Glass effects do run on the M400.  I can also confirm that it is very, very pretty :)  The experience is pretty good, though there is some flickering in some situations - but hey it's not even beta yet!

Clearly I have no control over whether this driver ever gets released, if it will be released with Vista, or if it will be released before/after Vista.  I would hope that it will release with Vista.  When it is released M400 owners will be able to enjoy Glassy Vista Goodness.  Till then here is a screenshot of Glass running on an M400.  Notice how the sidebar (down the right) is transparent, too?  Click on the image for a full size version...

What else is in Vista for tablet users?  I wrote a post about just that - check it out here.

A final note - I will not redistribute the driver to anyone, so please don't ask.

I see there is a new Vista build released - 5365. I better try and get this downloaded and installed before investigating Vista: What's in it for me?

There has been much discussion of late centred around whether the UMPC will displace the Tablet PC.  It started with the now infamous prediction number 10 in this post on Ultranauts.com. 

I don’t think it will and I outlined my reasons in my rebuttal here.  Colin, jk and Warner also added their thoughts.  The whole discussion left Dennis Rice over at GottaBeMobile.com wondering why we can’t all just get along.

In OnTheRun with Tablet PCs show 20 Marc Orchant hoped that people would start looking at the relative merits of the various devices rather than declaring theirs to be the best and closing their minds.   Well – I mused about doing just that at the end of my rebuttal so I guess now that Marc wants it I have to do it! 

Before I get into weighing up this against that I want to refer back to the model I’ll be using to frame the discussion.  I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how we should stop thinking about specific categories of devices.  Instead think in terms of where a particular device sits on a continuum of mobile devices.

I’ve tidied up the graphic somewhat and – in the interest of keeping the series of posts shorter – I’m going to leave out PDAs and SmartPhones.  Other than that this is the same continuum that I referred to previously. 

 

I’m going to work through this diagram left to right and weigh the pros and cons of each pair of devices.  Here are the posts – I’ll add the links after I post each one.

• Introduction – this post.
•  Laptop vs. Convertible Tablet
• Convertible Tablet vs. Slate Tablet
•  Slate Tablet vs. UMPC
• Conclusion