AuTechHeads Blogs

The AuTechHeads Events Calendar

Matt Marlor — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 15:45:00 GMT

Have you heard about the AuTechHeads Events calendar? It only gets better as we evolve!

I've been in the process of rolling out a new comments module to the site, which fully integrates with Disqus and with our timeline feature. The developers are the same as those who do our blogs module, and I like their style (and their support).

So far the Webcasts and Events sections have been recipients of the facelift - Blogs is a bit more complex as there are a significant number of comments to migrate across, while the others didn't really have any of note.

In the process of working on Events, I noted that there were a number of user groups that are no longer meeting, and cleaned them up. We also recently upgraded Events to include full timezone support, so I needed to update the existing events to the right timezone. This means that events from other timezones (such as Perth, Adelaide, etc) can be better accomodated, and of course that ical subscribers will see events in their local time.

I also adjusted some recent changes to the ical feature, which will allow broad compatibility with the vast majority of apps that allow subscription to Internet calendars, including Outlook and Google Calendar. We actually use Google Calendar as the benchmark for ical operation, because it's quite strict in validation.

The overall concept with the AuTechHeads Events Calendar is, simply, to provide a single point of reference for Australasian IT Pro and Developer events - be they AuTechHeads exclusives, conferences, web conferences, user groups, meetups, training, vendor events, or others we haven't thought of. There's a lot of noise out there for different events, and it can be really hard to keep track of them from their many and varied sources. As our goal is to be product, technology, and vendor agnostic, we welcome all kinds of tech events.

All members - individuals, vendors, and whoever else - can add events to the calendar, and anyone can subscribe to our ical (or RSS) feeds.

The benefit to putting your events in our calendar is that you get access to a broad audience of interested people. Equally, everyone gets the benefit of an up to date and comprehensive calendar with useful features to help them always keep track of what's on.

One of my favourite examples is the member who travels (or moves) interstate, and wants to discover what's on where they are. User groups and meetups are a great way to meet people, and they generally allow people to drop in out of the blue. And of course, taking advantage of training opportunities and vendor events while you're there has value to all concerned.

We like to keep the Calendar up to date and relevant, so please - if you have a tech event, add it to the calendar! Sign-up is free, and there are no strings attached. We are free for the benefit of our members! If you're interested in bulk import of events to the calendar, this too can be arranged - please contact me.

And, of course, spread the word! The Calendar is a useful resource, and one which we hope will only become more useful as time goes by.

My tweets are their own event: @OhCrap

How to Learn Exchange 2010 (for dummies, and you!)

Chris Brown — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:19:00 GMT

Microsoft Exchange Server. Do you know it (No) ? Do you want to (by golly, yes!)? Do you enjoy videos (I know I do)? Read on then ...

This is a crosspost from my blog at flamingkeys.com.

One of the people I was lucky enough to meet at Tech·Ed Australia 2011 was Mr Paul Cunningham, who runs the popular website Exchange Server Pro. Paul is one of the most respected names going around when it comes to Exchange, and he has the real world experience to back it up. As a favour to the community (and our profession) Paul has decided to produce a free (as in free beer) boot camp for those wanting to learn Exchange 2010. The boot camp consists of four modules containing physical challenges, early morning runs, rope climbs*, text, screen shots and videos to help you learn the basics of Exchange Server 2010. Having worked through this boot camp myself, I can say that this is an invaluable resource for those getting started with Exchange Server, and also those who may have managed an Exchange environment but not installed one before.

Please make sure you check the boot camp out, and also be sure to stick Paul’s blog in your RSS reader, it’s an invaluable resource you’ve probably stumbled on a hundred times whilst Googling (Binging?) Exchange issues.

Exchange Server Pro Boot Camp

Exchange Server Pro

* May not contain any of these strenuous physical activities.

Urist McDwarf cancels Have A Life: playing Dwarf Fortress

Matt Marlor — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 01:57:00 GMT

Matt reviews Dwarf Fortress, a free game that defies logic by implementing its own ...

Dwarf Fortress is a game.

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What? You want more?

Dwarf Fortress is a dwarven life simulation written by Toady One of Bay 12 Games.
If you have enjoyed this review, why not check out ...

…

What? Still not enough? Sigh … okay. Here goes.

…
Slaves to Armok: God of Blood, Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress is a horrendously bug-laden, incredibly inaccessible, and incomprehensible game that's still only in Alpha after many years of development, and with no end in sight to development. At the same time, it's also possibly the single most fun game ever written, and purportedly the inspiration for Minecraft. It's certainly given me plenty of enjoyment.

Like many others, I stumbled on Dwarf Fortress via Something Awful and their Let's Play Forums. One of the most well-regarded Let's Play threads around, Boatmurdered, is often the first introduction anyone has to the game. Boatmurdered was a succession game thread which involved a community of players passing their save game to one another after one year of in-game time, with the intent of building the dwarfiest (or dorfiest) fortress around. Imagine The Sims set in the wilderness, with killer elephants, crazy dwarves, bottomless pits, and magma. Then forget about The Sims. And add more magma. That's Boatmurdered.

Boatmurdered definitely has its place in Dwarf Fortress lore, because it showcased both the strengths and the insanities that the game possessed. It was based on quite an early version of the game, to the extent that (as happened for me) new players expecting a Boatmurdered-style experience will be suitably disoriented. Later - and just as classic - Let's Play threads have certainly made use of newer versions, and showcased even further another strength of Dwarf Fortress - that it encourages players to build a story around their forts, supported by an incredibly rich in-game background and amazingly detailed descriptions - all procedurally generated - that the game throws up all over the place. Great examples are Headsshoots, Syrupleaf, and Gemclod ("let's all get killed and eaten") - all of which could be said to be inspired by Boatmurdered in the first place, but to take on lives and stories of their own. Syrupleaf is perhaps my favourite, a sequel of sorts to Headsshoots that demonstrates both the modding aspects of the game and the player-driven stories that can arise.

To understand Dwarf Fortress takes time and effort. Here's a (somewhat cropped) screenshot of the native version:

As you can see, it's essentially an ASCII-based game. Don't let that fool you, it's very much a modern game, but it arguably doesn't need graphics to provide an amazingly deep and interactive experience. Along the way, however, it's been made somewhat more accessible by community efforts. Here's the same map area with a community tileset applied:

You may find this to still be difficult to understand, but I assure you that it's much easier for a new player to understand. Indeed, it's by far my preferred way to play. I like having to think as much about the game as it demands, but I don't want to have to maintain a mental (or physical) list of what every ASCII character means. If you look closely, you’ll see little dwarves and animals, rocks, grass, trees, and so forth.

This easily showcases what is probably the single thing that makes the game what it is - the community. The developer, Tarn Adams (AKA Toady One), is a one-man band by choice. He's enlisted the help of his brother, and he works with one other developer to allow for cross-platform capabilities (Dwarf Fortress runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux) - but otherwise, that's it. In the process, he's developed an incredibly deep and detailed game. Left to its own devices, though, I suspect that most people would be completely unable or unwilling to play. This is where the community comes in, with an incredible wiki, active forums, and amazing mod community that really give life to Dwarf Fortress.

The same community also helps to directly influence the development of Dwarf Fortress. It's a freeware game, but Toady One lives off income from the game - which is raised solely through community donation. Not a bad gig if you can get it! Along with direct donations, there's also been a sponsorship drive for new animals to be added to the game. From bees and lice to dingos and pandas, platypus and penguin to grasshopper and mosquito, the game's diversity and depth has been directly increased by these sponsorships.

The game is founded upon the generation of one or more worlds. The entire world must be generated, from the highest mountain, through the layers of clay, soil, and rock, to caverns ... well, let's not spoil the Hidden Fun Stuff here. You can directly influence world generation through basic or advanced parameters - for example, increasing the number of volcanoes, reducing aquifers, increasing minerals, and upping the number of megabeasts (and other fun surprises). You can also set the length of world history, which will cause the game to run through that history during generation. Once generated, you can engage in two modes of play, or review legends mode. Legends mode is amazing to read through - it shows just how incredibly detailed the worlds are, with each notable historical figure having their own triumphs and tribulations to read about, each civilization having its rise, wars, and possibly downfalls .. and sometimes, the extinction of entire races.

Dwarf Fortress mode and Adventurer mode are the two modes of play to choose from. Adventurer mode is a roguelike-type game, in the style of classics like Nethack, but based around exploration of the entire world that you've generated. You can encounter civilisations, go on quests, fight monsters, and even visit fortresses that you've founded and abandoned (current versions disable this temporarily). Adventurer mode has recently had some substantial updates to make it more fun .. but frankly, for me, the meat is still in Dwarf Fortress mode.

Dwarf Fortress mode lets you pick an embark site anywhere in the world - except, by default, already-settled or abandoned sites (you can reclaim your own fortresses if they've been abandoned, and there's community mods to let you embark anywhere). From there, you pick 7 dwarves and their starting equipment (or let the game do it for you), and send them on their way.

You start in one of the embark sites within the map area that you've chosen. As the intro screen tells you, you need to prepare suitable lodgings ere the [insert local predator name] get hungry. Strike the earth! And you generally will, unless you somehow managed not to bring a pick, or you decide to try to build an above ground fort (not recommended for new players).

Your miner dwarves - one of many tasks that can be enabled for each individual dwarf - can dig down, or into the side of a hill or mountain. You can carve out walls and passageways - but don't take too long. You need to start developing industries. Typically high on your list: farming, carpentry, masonry, brewing, cooking, and craftsdwarfs.

A typical game goes like this: you only have so much food and booze with you. For dwarves, booze is the top priority, but both have importance. You need to at least collect more raw food - by plant gathering, farming, and hunting/trapping - to satisfy the food needs. Cooking is arguably optional, but your dwarves get happy thoughts from well prepared cooked meals. You also need to start brewing booze, because without it, your dwarves get unhappy thoughts, and will ultimately throw tantrums. Brewing uses certain plants, which are also often used in food preparation - so you need to be careful, because cooking will use up the seeds of the plants as well, making it hard to grow more, and also reducing the amount of booze that you can distill. Be equally careful with the booze itself - it, too, can be used in cooking.

Still with me? Okay, so brewing is all well and good, but you need something to store it in. And you only brought so many barrels with you, most of them still full of food or booze. So you need to chop down trees and have your carpenter make more. You could get more complicated and start a pottery or glassmaking industry for your food containers, but this requires both fuel and either clay or sand, and you need your carpentry industry for beds anyway. Most other things can be made with rock by your masons or craftsdwarfs, but beds are wood-only. Helpfully, your carpenter can also make bins to store your crafts in, which is useful come trade caravan time.

Yes, trade caravans. You need to trade to help your new fortress get off the ground. You can sell a lot of your fortresses stocks - even the food and booze, or the wood you've chopped - but to really afford the trade caravan's goods, you'd best start a craftsdwarf industry. They can make rock items that are, for the most part, useless, but which have value for trade, and they can churn them out at a reasonably high rate. If you play it safe, by the time the first caravan arrives, you'll be able to buy most of the useful goods. And as a bonus, a healthy craftsdwarf industry will tend to attract more migrants. As will artifacts, generated by dwarves that enter “strange moods” – you can’t sell them, but they can be useful, and they increase your fortress value … so long as you meet the dwarf’s demands!

Migrants are the single best way to grow the population of your fortress - which you need to do to sustain the demands of your growing fort. Someone needs to do the fishing, hunting, farming, plant gathering, plant extraction, milling, mechanism building, mining, masonry, engraving, and so on. Oh, and you'll probably need a militia. Soon, before the vile forces of darkness arrive.

Invasions are part of the game, and you'll almost inevitably experience them fairly fast. The most common source of invasions are nearby goblin civilisations, who hate dwarves and everything they stand for. A frequent early warning sign is gobin snatchers, who steal dwarf children and take them back to their dark tower to be enslaved. Generally easy to thwart with some well placed traps, but when they start appearing, be ready for ambush parties and invasion soon after.

Ambush parties are small squads of goblins who'll sometimes appear and kill dwarves that stumble across them. They, too, are frequent precursors of a full invasion. You'll know the difference when you see it, because the typical goblin invasion force is pretty damn big, and often includes trolls.

Hopefully you've trained your militia up and got some good defences in place, and maybe even trained some war animals. The invasion force will path straight toward your fortress entryways- a drawbridge and moat is often a damn good strategy. You can certainly go after them with your militia and defend with ballistae - but early on, battening down the hatches might just be the way to go. The besieging force will hang around, kill any animals and residents of yours that they can find - and maybe incoming caravans and migrants - but eventually they will hopefully get bored and go home. Or, in the case of a predominantly goblin archer-based force, run out of arrows and get slaughtered by your militia once you realise.

Having survived your first invasion, you can collect any goblin gear left on bodies (and arrows or bolts that are lying around). Sometimes you can get some great gear from this, especially in the early game when you need it. The community calls this "goblinite", a renewable resource. Because the goblins will most certainly be back.

If you've lost dwarves with friends or family to the invasion, you may well encounter your first tantrum, or worse still, a tantrum spiral. This is a dwarf, or dwarves, who are upset by their loss - they won't work, they'll pick fights, and they may destroy things. They might even go insane, drop into a deep melancholy, or go beserk (literally - they'll start killing dwarves). It's all part of the fun!

Meanwhile, you need to rebuild as necessary, and keep expanding. Resources are a challenging part of the game - you need water, plants, animals, wood, rock and metal ores, clay, sand, and more. These are incentives to expand your fortress. Rock and metal ores are a big driving force in digging deeper - if you want to make copper, bronze, iron, or even steel weapons, you need metal ores, and for steel you need flux. You also need fuel to power the furnaces and workshops. If you're lucky to find magma - either underground, or in a handy volcano - you can use this to replace some fuel - but you still need fuel for some reactions! Thankfully, wood can also be burnt to create coal, but this is a costly use for a limited resource.

The deeper you dig, the higher your risk. There are caverns below - with interesting plants, water, and beasts - along with more valuable rock and metal ores. There's good reason to find them, but beware - hostile creatures can find their way to your fortress from below as well. You'll find out all about the fun that this alone can create when the first Forgotten Beast appears.

Then there are titans and megabeasts. When your fortress reaches certain milestones, the game will happily start to throw them at you. These are generally enemies, created during world generation, that happen to be in the area. You might get a roc or a dragon, a bronze colossus or a titan .. much like Forgotten Beasts, these can signal the end for a poorly prepared fortress. But defeating them is also incredibly satisfying!

That's just a small snapshot of the game. We won't talk about what happens if you dig too deep, or any of the other fun surprises that can happen. Suffice to say that the official motto of the game is "Losing is Fun" - don't expect to win. Expect to lose, sooner or later, in interesting and surprising ways. And then start a new fortress, or reclaim. This is what Dwarf Fortress is all about.

There is plenty of fun in this game- both by design and as a result of the procedural generation. There's unintentional hilarity. The latest version includes necromancers and evil biomes that raise dead bodies - or body parts - from the dead. New and old players alike are encountering zombie skin from animals that they slaughtered. Which keep rising. Again and again.

For myself, one of my favourite memories is a Forgotten Beast racing up stairs from a cavern to attack one of my farmers - who promptly sidestepped, and the Forgotten Beast dropped off a cliff, landing where it had started (but in a lot more pieces). Another frequently cited example is that of mermaid bones - in a past version, they had as much value as dragon bones, and the community promptly started to figure out ingenious and inventive ways to "farm" and slaughter mermaid offspring in order for their fortresses to profit. Toady One was apparently appalled by this one, and patched it in the very next version.

As mentioned, Minecraft - a game I actually can't get into - was purportedly inspired by Dwarf Fortress. Equally, there are references to Dwarf Fortress in all kinds of games - even World of Warcraft. Skyrim might have its Minecraft reference, but it could just as easily serve as a Dwarf Fortress tribute.

It's fun. It's engaging. It's challenging. And it's free. As I said at the outset, it's bug laden, inaccessible, and incomprehensible. The game’s performance can deteriorate incredibly as your fortress grows, and it uses only a single core on a multicore system – Toady hasn’t implemented multithreading. Equally, as a 32 bit-only process, it’s subject to a 2Gb RAM limit, and crashes if it hits it. That really only encourages the community to come up with solutions and workarounds, though. If you perservere, you'll find that it really is addictive, and arguably deserves the praise that it engenders. Given Toady One's own estimates, I don't know that it'll ever actually move out of alpha and reach a version 1.0 release - but so long as he keeps releasing new versions, adding more and more to the game, it's almost certain to have an audience and a devoted community.

Backup Part Two

Peter — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 13:48:00 GMT

So the last post I wrote was 3 months ago. A lot changes in 3-months. The products I was advocating at the old company (they retrenched me for commercial reasons) are still there, and are great, I am just not selling them anymore. One of the comments on my old post about backup hit a chord. It was about small users, backups and tapes. I am a mac user. I have been for several years, even when I was only using a PC, I would skin it up to look like a mac. (sad, right?) Anyway. Apple gives all apple users a ...

One of the comments on my old post about backup hit a chord. It was about small users, backups and tapes.

I am a mac user. I have been for several years, even when I was only using a PC, I would skin it up to look like a mac. (sad, right?) Anyway.

Apple gives all apple users a product called time machine. Smart mac salespeople convince you to buy an external hard drive. So I back up once a day, all my data is duplicated and goes into the drive. PC users have similar options, home users back up so as to save valuable photos & documents.

The basics of backup are there.

What happens when a small to medium business has lots of data? Do they:

a) Back up every day?

b) Backup once a week?

c) Backup every day to the same tape / drive option?

d) Backup to the same individual Tape or drive?

The answer, unfortunately, is mostly d). The theory is that the tape or disk isn't full, so it must be ok, right?

I have seen first hand over the years the damage that a de-aligned head can have on a tape, making it unreadable.

So... what can a business do? How can they backup and be safe?

Some companies tell end users that Hard drives are safer than tape, then proceed to sell them the mass produced hard drives, you know, the cheap ones, cheaper than the server or desktop drives the client already uses. they also trot out the old line that Tape is slower than disk. DAT Tapes, certainly. Not LTO4 or 5. They are a different breed entirely.

The best option I have seen to date is a Virtual Tape Library (VTL) created on a hyper-v system, storing the VMs on a SAN, backed up by a physical Tape library, storing multiple datasets. This allowed the provider to run multiple VTL instances for several clients, but back them up as VMs to the physical library. VMs backup faster than individual files, reducing delays, and a VM rebuild and restore is easier when the server goes foom.

It is a cloud solution, sort of, more an offsite management solution, and with an investment by most resellers, an easy to implement and run solution.

It is likely that my next job won't be client facing. This idea is used around the country to a lesser extent, and there are companies who can provide you with the VMs if you are a reseller, or the whole solution if you are an end user.

Why did I mention that I am not client facing? so if this idea seems plausible, you won't be fighting with me to make take it to the market...

Awesome IT manager seeks job ASAP

Matt Marlor — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 04:14:00 GMT

What's been distracting me for a few months ... maybe someone can help ...

A belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

Quite a number of people have noticed I've been uncharacteristically quiet of late, both here on AuTechheads and around the social media traps - not to mention offline. The short answer is that I've been job hunting, with increasing levels of desperation. It's distracted me quite a lot, and I'm sure most can understand.

I'm by no means alone in this - my good friend @themolk up in Queensland has been working his heart out to find a permanent job for a couple of years now. His is a tale of disappointment and letdowns which dwarfs my own - but thankfully he's been able to make ends meet for the most part. That said, if anyone has a job lead for him, I know he'd be grateful! There are yet others in the AuTechHeads community that I know of looking for work, but of course each has their own tale to tell. This is mine.

Up until September, I had a job in the public sector as an IT manager. It was quite a good job for the greater duration, affording me the opportunity to perform CIO/CTO-level functions for the most part, while retaining my hands-on skills and knowledge. I left for my own reasons, including that of my health, amongst other good reasons .. all of which I continue to stand by. Ideally, I should have lined up a new role before leaving, but what I needed most of all was a break, rest, and time to regroup. I had a financial buffer which would allow us to at least get by, and it seemed likely that I'd have plenty of time to find a role that was closer to home. My health is so much better for it, and I know it was the right thing to do. The only thing left was to find a job closer to home, which had certainly been a major problem for me. It's clear that while I'd never before had an issue in traveling for work, a 4 hour commute every day was much less an option than it had been in the past.

Unfortunately, I haven't had much luck in jobseeking. In spite of applying for many, many jobs for which I'm very well qualified and experienced, I've struggled to even get to interview stage for the most part. I've had a great many disappointments, and now with the buffer running low, plenty of stress to preoccupy me.

I do blame a large part of the recruitment industry for a large part of this difficulty in getting to interview; this isn't a rant about recruiters, but it becomes strongly evident that many of them don't even understand the segment they work in .. let alone being suited for performing an initial cull of applicants. Some of this shows through easiest via the sheer lack of courtesy in contacting candidates, along with their inability to relate or even communicate with jobseekers. For an industry that works with people first and foremost, it's evident that many are unsuited to the task.

That aside, I've tried many ways of contacting recruiters and companies. I've updated and revised my CV innumerable times, including advice from recruiters. I've cut it down to the point that it omits, by necessity, most achievements of my relatively packed career, for the sake of brevity. I've written and rewritten cover letters. And still no luck. I'll admit to avoiding system integrator-style roles for the most part. It's a part of my past, sure, but I prefer to leave it there. It's nowhere as appealing as it once was.

Regardless of my role, I've always proved to be a major asset to my employers. My most recent employer was still reluctant for me to leave, even though they certainly understood my reasons and supported me. I've managed to acquire a wide range of knowledge and experience across the ICT spectrum through my 16+ years of working in the industry - whether as a system integrator providing professional IT services, manager of infrastructure for hosting/cloud solutions (before they were cloud), or as senior management. I've won awards for customer service. I've been recognised for community involvement. I'm outstanding at managing opex, capex, and W&S budgets, and making sure the business gets the most value from its investments. I've learned a wide range of business skills, and married them with my own honesty and integrity to develop a strong professional reputation. I'm well used to mentoring and managing staff, and imbuing them with my own high standards while passing on knowledge and encouraging them to broaden their own experience.

I've developed well-rounded strategic and operational management skills that have only served to reinforce my excellent record of achievement. I'm dedicated to my job, and driven to excellence, and especially in aligning ICT with the business to ensure it meets and exceeds expectations. I really enjoy making technology work for the business, while also delivering a strong risk- and governance-based approach that makes certain that benefits realisation is far more than just an ideal.

I'm naturally proud of what I've achieved over the years, and I say with total conviction that I'm good at what I do, with plenty of results and achievements to point to as evidence. With everything under my belt, it's extraordinarily disappointing and demotivating to find such a lack of response, especially after so many months. There hasn't been a shortage of job advertisements as a rule, but there's a distinct shortage in follow-ups from prospective employers and recruiters.

So I, and my family, find ourselves with real prospects of massive disruption to our lives. You might imagine that we're hitting some major problems with the money running low, and you'd be right. Naturally the mortgage and other debts hit the forefront for stress, but there's plenty more to follow on. My two young daughters, of course, are the ones I worry about the most in this.

Although my hope has been to find private sector work in ICT management in the Western Sydney or Blue Mountains region, I haven't limited myself to just that - I've been perfectly willing to still travel. Now, though, we've reached the point that we're willing to consider relocation for the sake of our family's wellbeing.

My rule in general has been not to use AuTechheads to pimp for work (other than a possible jobs/recruitment section we've had on the backburner for consideration), till now. As always, though, circumstances change everything, and it's one of the few avenues I haven't yet tried. I can but hope someone reads this and thinks of their company's need for an awesome IT manager, CTO, or CIO... and that it proves to be a match. and quick.

Here's hoping.

Please contact me via matt.marlor [at] gmail.com if you do have anything. Due to the potential spam-attracting nature of this post, I'll be disabling comments as a one-off.

Brisbane AuTechHeads Social Drinks - December 3

Simone — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:20:00 GMT

Quick post to let everyone know that the AuTechHeads are getting together for social drinks on December 3, 7pm after Infrastructure Saturday. We're meeting at the Villager in Brisbane. All AuTechHeads members are welcome, attending Infrastructure Saturday is not a prerequisite so please spread the word and RSVP ....

Hi All,

Quick post to let everyone know that the AuTechHeads are getting together for social drinks on December 3, 7pm after Infrastructure Saturday. We're meeting at the Villager in Brisbane.

All AuTechHeads members are welcome, attending Infrastructure Saturday is not a prerequisite so please spread the word and RSVP so we can book the venue with correct numbers.If you're a new member or you're looking to meet some new people in the group please come along and introduce yourself.

If you're interested in sponsoring this event or future events please get in touch with any of the core team members.

Where: The Villager, 185 George Street, Brisbane
When: 7pm - lateWhat: Drinks (Beer & Wine) + Snacks & a lucky door prize all sponsored by TechSmith !

Numbers are limited
RSVP by November 30

Simone
@kittenstix

Infra Sat: http://www.infrastructuresaturday.com/
Our Awesome Friends over at TechSmith: http://www.techsmith.com/
Click here to RSVP http://new.evite.com/services/links/52OCGP76VS

AuTechHeads Melbourne MeatUp Wrap

Chris Brown — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 11:30:00 GMT

AuTechHeads Melbourne MeatUp WrapLast night was the first AuTechHeads Melbourne MeatUp! At 7.30 a bunch of geeks rocked up to Squires Loft Steakhouse for a night of steak, wine, beer and chat.

Last night was (at long last) the first AuTechHeads Melbourne MeatUp! At 7.30 a bunch of geeks rocked up to Squires Loft Steakhouse for a night of steak, wine, beer and chat. We were fortunate enough to be joined by Microsoft staff Jeff Alexander, Catherine Eibner and Rocky Heckman, in addition to AuTechHeads James Bannan, Chris Brown, Jodie Miners, Ben Ball and Jerome Brown.

Much discussion was had about all things ranging from Xbox to System Center to Golf. Zune Music Pass was the subject of much attention, in the wake of its Australian release last week.

Hopefully last night is a sign of good things to come within the Melbourne end of the AuTechHeads community. If you're in the area, please sing out, we'd love to hear from you. Please don't forget to join the Melbourne Members group.

Thanks again to everyone who came along, we appreciate your support

AUTechHeads Inaugural Melbourne MeatUp!

Hayden McManus — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:50:00 GMT

It’s that time of year again…for the first time. Monday night will herald the first AuTechHeads Melbourne MeatupTM. We hope you can join us for what is sure to be the first of many fantastic foody and geeky occasions. There's a rumour floating around that the one and only Mr Jeff "Jeffa" Alexander, Microsoft IT Pro Evangelist, will be joining us for the festivities. Please come along for a fun evening of geekery and eatery! Yes, we know it's next Monday, and a school night, but hopefully ...

It’s that time of year again…for the first time. Monday night will herald the first AuTechHeads Melbourne Meatup^TM. We hope you can join us for what is sure to be the first of many fantastic foody and geeky occasions. There's a rumour floating around that the one and only Mr Jeff "Jeffa" Alexander, Microsoft IT Pro Evangelist, will be joining us for the festivities. Please come along for a fun evening of geekery and eatery!

Yes, we know it's next Monday, and a school night, but hopefully we will see you there!

Venue has been confirmed as Squires Loft City Steakhouse at 12 Goldie Place, Melbourne 3000, booked for 7.30PM. RSVP is mandatory for numbers reasons, so please use the registration form below or tweet us. Please hit either @hjmcmanus or @chrisbrownie up on Twitter.

Officical hashtag is #MelbourneMeatUp so check it out!

Link to map of venue here.

HP reaching for the cloud

Matt Marlor — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 17:46:00 GMT

The first in a belated series of posts about the HP cloud launch I attended in Singapore!

I was recently privileged to be the guest of HP in Singapore for their Cloud Innovation in APJ event, where they announced a number of new Converged Systems products and services. HP is making a big push toward the cloud in the Asia Pacific region, with some major investments in Cloud Centers of Excellence, and product suites to match.

One of my long standing thoughts on cloud services is that they often don’t consider the existing infrastructure, from the client site(s) all the way through to the cloud’s edge. I’ve always disliked the assumption that ‘everything’ can go to the cloud, and that the WAN or Internet providers in-between the cloud and its customers can deliver 100% availability. Neither of these can be proven true with any level of certainty – especially third party network uptime. You could argue that, in Australia for example, matters have improved significantly and will probably improve even further with the advent of the National Broadband Network. That said, I have yet to see the politicians address our international links and the need to grow them in line with local network capacity. With a large amount of cloud services being based overseas now, and most likely in the future, this is certainly an important consideration.

While HP can’t really address this, it’s clear that they are taking a comprehensive look at the reality of cloud services as a whole. There’s a distinct effort to address what has been split into private, public, and hybrid clouds – and to blur the many and varied definitions of these service types. HP would like to be your port of call from the beginning of your cloud journey onward, and they have developed a number of products and services to this end. It’s very much an infrastructure-level view, which can have both positive and negative aspects for the business looking to make their cloud move.

HP is in a decent position to leverage this. I can talk to any number of people that are massively invested in HP already – Proliant servers in particular have a high brand recognition and adoption. I for one prefer using Proliant in my enterprise, and I’ve known plenty of others to feel the same. It’s reliable, it’s well developed, and it lasts. I’ve seen businesses choose alternatives, such as the ever-competing Dell, but this is often driven by factors such as cost and desktop fleet. A company using Dell at the desktop is more likely to adopt Dell at the data-center – and that’s perhaps a testament to Dell’s sales efforts. It’s by no means the rule.

On the networking and storage side, it’s a bit more of a mixed bag. There are, without a doubt, the enterprises who have deployed HP throughout… but I’ve seen ample evidence of EMC and Cisco solutions in a huge number of datacenters, to name but two competitors. Without a doubt, HP is making inroads, but they have been playing catch up to some extent. I’ll freely admit to being a strong Cisco advocate when it comes to networking, if only through inertia from a time when Cisco was the bee’s knees. They still have great stuff, and most recently I’ve been a fan of the Nexus 1000v virtual distributed switch for VMWare.

The HP announcements were split into 4 key areas;

Transforming data centers for the cloud era
HP CloudSystem
HP VirtualSystem
HP 3PAR Utility Storage

A very big part of this is around the HP consulting practice. I don’t propose to go through this in detail, but the general concept is that HP can help businesses from the very outset of their cloud journey – what HP would like to call “Data Center Transformation”. There’s a lot of sense in this, because HP can position themselves as the “voice of reason” with customers. Adopting a trusted partner approach, they can guide business decision makers through the ramifications of their cloud moves, the business and staff impacts, and ensure that their internal practices and policy are well aligned for the journey. Naturally there’s a strong focus on governance, which from my perspective is a perpetual Good Thing™. For perhaps too many businesses, this could be their first exposure to proper ICT governance, and entirely appropriate before they even remotely consider any form of cloud service (whether internal or outsourced).

If there’s a possible fault with this, it would be that I was left with the distinct impression that it was geared toward large enterprises, and businesses with large revenue. That’s certainly not a problem on HP’s part – they’ll certainly have a lot of customers – but it perhaps ignores a huge potential market for cloud services, the small to medium enterprise. I’ve long felt that small businesses in particular are the best poised to benefit from a well considered cloud strategy, and that they probably stand to make the best saving and most benefit in the shortest time.

In my next couple of posts, I’ll talk about CloudSystem and VirtualSystem. I’m particularly keen on VirtualSystem, so I’ll talk about that next!

iPhone 4S / iOS 5 Battery issue fix!

Keating — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 14:26:00 GMT

Having issues with the battery life in your iPhone 4S? Take a read of these tips to try and improve your battery life.

If you had a read of my iPhone 4S review, you would have noticed my mention of the poor battery life. Since I posted, the battery life has hovered between dodgy and horrible. This has also been noticed by a lot of users - in fact there is a 192-page thread on the Apple forums about it, with plenty of suggested fixes. After trying a number of these, I *seem* to have nailed the problems. I won't guarantee these as complete fixes - as I'll detail later, I think there is more afoot than just a few settings. First, I'll bore you with a bit of history, my first day with the iPhone 4S.

After reading about the improved battery life in the 4S, I had a great first day with the phone. After actually getting it and turning it on from about 8:30am, playing with it for the morning, and then doing a full restore from my old phone. Apart from the charge while the restore was going on, I didn't charge it for the rest of the day. Played lots with it in the afternoon and had about 10% charge left by 11pm that night. From the next day, the battery life wasn't good at all. I even Tweeted about it. In the last day or so I've read through what people have suggested, and I'm pleased to say that there is a definite improvement. Let's take a look.

This setting has been widely reported as a fix for the battery issue - Under Settings -> General -> Date and Time, change "Set Automatically" to off. This setting basically uses 3G towers to detect where the handset is, and if the date and time needs changing. Setting this to off will reduce 3G traffic which should reduce power consumption. Just this setting by itself didn't work much for me, but it has worked for a lot of people. If you don't travel, or are willing to set the time zone yourself, setting this to Off should be recommended.

In theory, collating and sending diagnostic and error reports should be a benefit to help Apple. However, I had a look through my diagnostic and usage data, and found a lot of "awdd" reports, some of them only 10 minutes apart! I'll take a stab in the dark and say that "awdd" stands for "Apple Wireless Device Diagnostics" or "Apple Wireless Device Data". Having these and other reports being generated continuously points towards something crashing, or being enthusiastic on collating data. And of course, sending the reports continuously will drink battery as well. So while it seems counter-intuitive to disable this and not let Apple see the data, I'd take a wager that they know about the issue, given how much data my phone alone was collating. Disabling this has seemed to have stopped the "awdd" reports and certainly has helped battery life.

Disabling Contact sync over iCloud seems to have a pretty big impact on performance as well. From what I have read it appears to be a or several imported contacts that are corrupt, and sync doesn't complete properly. While I haven't had any iCloud backup errors (all reports it completed successfully), disabling this in the short term doesn't hurt, and again has helped battery life.

Here is a left field solution that seems to have worked - if you have imported email settings from a previous backup, deleting and recreating the email account is highly recommended. This seems especially imported if you sync calendars with a remote server. While this is a hard one if you have multiple email accounts, rebuilding the accounts seems to work. This is interesting, as I put my password into the imported email account the day after I set up my phone, and from here my battery life went down. Make sure to also disable push notifications for email. This is also reported as a solution that has helped people, so if it is possible, I would highly recommend rebuilding the email accounts to make sure.

For me, individually these changes didn't really do much for battery life. But when I did all these, the battery life improved dramatically:

Before - note the usage and battery usage

After - again, note the phone usage and battery usage

Once you have played with these settings, make sure you do a full battery discharge! While modern batteries don't have memory, iOS does need to calibrate the battery percentage. Running it flat, and then performing a full charge after will calibrate the battery's capacity with the OS and make sure it isn't reporting it wrong. It's been suggested that the phone has a full discharge and recharge cycle once a month, and I'd probably agree this as best practice.

While some people are having higher battery use with their iPhone 4s and iPads, the issue seems to only really affect the iPhone 4S. I can verify this, as my Girlfriend got an iPhone 4 8GB the same day as my 4S, with iOS 5, and she rarely goes under 50%, even after playing games. So while the above settings will definitely help improve battery life, there is definitely something happening with the hardware or new device drivers that are causing too much battery drain.

Finally, the "awdd" error reports. If anyone is familiar with iOS dump bugs or similar, and have any idea what this dump may mean, feel free to leave a comment. I'm going to take a stab at it myself.

Looking at the dump, it appears to have something to do with the 3G modem that is in the iPhone 4S. Now, reading over some of the reports from America, it seems that iPhone 4S' on one provider aren't having battery issues, while others with another provider are. Looking at all the error reports, they point to the WCDMA modem as the issue. Which is interesting, given Apple's move to a Qualcomm MDM6600 GSM and CDMA chip. In fact, when comparing with the iPhone 4 using the GSM only baseband, there are no "awdd" error/crash reports in the diagnostic logs at all. My gut feeling after looking at all this, is that there is an issue with the software driver for the new modem/baseband that is either crashing, or causing some else to crash, and restart. Naturally, anything that uses data over 3G (such as the Time Zone detection setting) is going to cause whatever it is that is causing what seems to be a crash, and the more that happens, the more battery it uses. This is really where the issue seems to lie, and I dare say Apple should be looking in this area to figure out what is going on.

If you have an iPhone 4S, try out the tips above to see if it improves your battery life. Feel free to let me know how it goes for you, or if you haven't had these issues with your iPhone 4S, by either leaving a comment below, or pinging me on Twitter (@D_Keating). I hope this helps you reclaim your iPhone 4S battery!

Telstra 4G USB: A week in review

Chris Brown — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 10:00:00 GMT

Telstra steps up the game in the Australian wireless data market with its new 4G offering

4G. It's like 3G..but plus one, right? Well actually, closer to "times ten" but we'll get to that. Telstra have, to somewhat less fanfare than I'd expected, released their new 4G (Long Term Evolution, or LTE) network to anyone lucky enough to live in or around a capital CBD, capital airport or "selected regional" arsea.

What's it do?

Telstra introduced their 3G network under the name of "NextG" in October 2006 to replace the aging CDMA network. It uses HSPA+ to provide a (theoretical) downstream speed of a respectable 21Mbps. The network was received to mixed attitudes by users Australia-wide, but has seen significant improvements since its inception. The new 4G network is being implemented alongside the 3G network to expand the speed and connectivity capabilities of Telstra's NextG networks.

What's in the box?

The Sierra AirCard 320U (sold as the "Telstra USB 4G") arrives wrapped in fancy Telstra livery with the new branding and colour scheme. Inside the box, the first thing you'll find is the 320U itself. A sleek device not much larger than a matchbox, the 4G USB is very easy on the eyes. With its chrome and piano black finish, it's sure to fit in with even the flashiest of modern gadgets. It's is a magnet for fingerprints, but that's nothing that can't be fixed with a cursory wipe on your sleeve. At $300 a pop, the 4G is the kind of device you'll likely want to take care of. It feels somewhat solid in the hands, but is made of plastic and has a couple of moving parts. Between the apparent fragility and the fingerprint-loving finish, I'm surprised by the lack of pouch, case, cleaning cloth or anything protective whatsoever. Perhaps Telstra/Sierra know something I don't. The USB connector swivels 180 degrees both vertically and horizontally, ensuring you'll be able to fit it into all but the most unusually placed USB ports.

Underneath the 4G USB in the box, you'll find two accessories; a USB extension cable and a handy belt clip. I'm lead to believe that the belt clip also doubles as a method of attaching the device to your laptop's display for better coverage, but I haven't needed to do this. There's also the obligatory manuals, security warnings, and other such stuff that generally goes ignored.

Getting the thing going

The installation couldn't have been any easier. Plug the 4G USB in, wait for Windows to pick it up, then click through the TRU-Install wizard. It didn't take much more than 5 clicks on my Windows 7 computer (and, interestingly enough, my Windows 8 Developer Preview machine). I didn't have a Windows XP Service Pack 3 machine handy to test on, but the documentation insists it is compatible. After the installer completed I was greeted with a swish new "Telstra Mobile Broadband" application, brandishing Telstra's new colour scheme. Upon pressing "Connect Now" it took all of a second to establish a solid connection to Telstra's network.

So, How's it go?

Initially, I was concerned. I connected faster than I could have imagined, then noticed I had been given an IP address of 10.230.13.1. The network-savvy will know that this is a private IP address, meaning that Telstra are utilising Carrier Grade NAT (CGN) to provide me my service. This, while surprising, is not unexpected given that the internet is running (or to some, has run) out of IP addresses. This means, put simply, that I'll be limited somewhat in connections back to my computer from the internet, and may notice some speed issues if the network is particularly busy. I don't think this will become an issue for most users, though. I certainly didn't notice any problem.

The connection itself is very zippy and seems to do what I need effectively. For example, right now, I have the Nokia World keynote streaming to my notebook while I sit in a shopping center in Melbourne. I also have my DropBox synchronising new data I created today (downloading at roughly 800Kbps), and my Twitter client chirping at me in the background. There is no lag or delay to be found, and the information is all there when I need it. Skype and video calling work well over the 4G connection; in fact, I used it this Monday night to get my fix of Q & A on ABCNews24.

The speed is OVER NINE THOUSAND!

Not quite, but this thing is damn fast. I said earlier that it's more like "3G times ten" . I've even got some figures to back that up. These tests were configured using my tethered iPhone 4 (on Telstra) for the 3G connection, and the 4G USB for the 4G connection. I won't illustrate too much, the numbers speak for themselves:

(all speeds in Megabits per second)

Location	3G Down	3G Up	4G Down	4G Up
Swanston Street	3.26	2.40	20.49	18.67
South Melbourne	1.23	0.5	26.69	17.84
Melbourne Central	5.47	1.56	33.59	18.90

As can be seen, the 4G speed differs between 5 and 20 times as fast as 3G, with upstream being the real improvement. The Telstra USB 4G will fall back to a 3G connection when it can't get to the LTE network, but I didn't have this happen to me during my attempts. Even as far out as Caulfield I was able to get a solid 4G signal, which is impressive.

I've tried hard to find fault with this thing, but apart from the CGN, and general lack of availability of the 4G network, I really can't suggest anything that should be different. I doubt CGN will present a serious issue to most users, and the network will expand as Telstra get to it. 3G is quick, no doubt, but 4G just goes that extra mile and provides a service that is really fast.

Alright, how do I get one?

The Telstra USB 4G is already in abundance in and around CBDs, and you should be able to pick one up from your local Telstra Shop, or failing that, from Telstra.com. Be sure to check the coverage maps to ensure you can actually get a 4G service before you spend your hard earned pennies. With the feature that the 4G USB will fall back on 3G at 3G speeds, and the plans for 4G and 3G being the exact same thing, I'd recommend grabbing one of these if you're in the market for a new device anyway.

All round, it's a great device, and I will certainly not be looking for a replacement any time soon. Even though I've had the Telstra USB 4G little more than a fortnight, I'd struggle without it already.

- Posted from Melbourne Central shopping centre via my Telstra 4G USB.

Disclaimer: I have been given a 4G USB Device by Telstra free of charge to review. The comments expressed by me reflect my own experience and personal opinion and are not made on behalf of Telstra.

Alienware M17x R3 - My new best friend

Matt Marlor — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 23:30:00 GMT

So I finally got my brand new notebook ... and I love it! Here's the rundown!

I recently moved on from my IT Manager job within the NSW Government, and a top priority for me was to buy a new notebook and desktop computer - the old ones having gone back to my employer. I don't use a desktop myself, but the family does for various purposes, and they've fallen in love with the All-in-one touchscreen style; I'll review that one next. I'm in the habit of using a notebook for everything, and I find I need a fairly high powered specification to meet my many and varied needs, including;

A/V editing and rendering
graphics editing
gaming
running multiple virtual machines
and, of course, more general usage

While my work notebooks have grown ever greater in power, they've never totally suited my needs - the closest I'd come was a HP Elitebook, but I've found the HP offerings can be quite inflexible and limiting within my price range. There are plenty of HP notebooks that do suit people, and I feel they're quite good for business use (with a decent SOE), but I really couldn't find something from HP that had everything I wanted within my budget. I was particularly keen to have at least 16gb RAM, dual HDD, Blu-ray, DVD-RW, and a good GPU. I was particularly set on an Nvidia GPU, having had less than satisfactory experiences with the ATI/AMD offering in the past. I also really wanted to move up to a 17" screen - 15" has been sending me blind of late, and I really like to use my notebook anywhere and everywhere. I don't want to be tethered to a monitor.

ASuS came close, but they didn't offer the flexibility for configuration that I wanted, and their site was confusing and unintuitive. I do have an ASuS notebook that my eldest daughter uses, bought second hand and which is really great - but at the end of the day, their specs didn't cut it Much the same with Lenovo in terms of configuration, and I've never really been a fan of the Thinkpad and their ilk. So it was that after a lot of research for alternates, I trundled off to Dell. I've had a mixed bag with Dell over the years - having bought 2 notebooks from them myself in days of yore, and having had them as our PC and notebook fleet at my employer, before they dropped off the contract (temporarily) and we found ourselves having to switch to HP. They have their good and bad, and I certainly have my share of both positive and negative - and a couple of horror stories. Frankly, for service in particular, HP had proven to be more reliable - but still by no means perfect.

These are considered risks, though. I've certainly always found that after making enough noise, I could get my issues resolved, whether by Dell, HP, or whoever else. I question any business that makes it a necessity to make noise as a matter of course in order to get faults resolved under warranty, but as I haven't purchased any desktops or notebooks from Dell for over 3 years - I'm happy to give them the benefit of the doubt. I found that there were two Dell lines which could meet my needs to a lesser or greater extent. The XPS 17 could come close, if I navigated the right way through the Dell customisation to get the specs I wanted. You had to pick the Nvidia 3D graphics, then change the screen type to 3D, then go back to RAM to change it from 8Gb to 16Gb - the only way that this configuration became available.

Not that I really wanted 3D - I didn't. But I was willing to consider it for the sake of getting 16Gb RAM, and on the surface the XPS 17 looks like a nice package. But as I came to understand the various benefits and pitfalls, I did hit a dealbreaker - the 3D package would disable NVidia's Optimus technology, which I absolutely wanted. Good battery life is important to me, as is at least 16Gb RAM, and without the 3D configuration, I was limited to 8Gb. This was a shame, since the XPS with the specifications I as happy to accept was a cheaper price than the alternative - the Alienware. I also noted other issues, including the lack of an inbuilt VGA port - which is still important to me. A Mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter was available with the XPS 15, but not the XPS 17 - one of the typical annoying aspects of the Dell site, along with the inability to purchase it as a separate accessory. This was a minor consideration in some ways, but as this purchase is for a machine to last me for quite some years, I wanted to be totally happy with it, and not to have to hunt around for more accessories after the fact.

For this reason, I also started to think about whether I'd be happy on an ongoing basis with the Nvidia GTX 555M GPU. I certainly saw some negative points from gamers on this, and while I'm not a hardcore PC gamer, I want my games to run well and look as good as possible, preferably for quite some time to come. Equally, I'm aware that GPU acceleration is steadily creeping into many different software packages beyond gaming. On top of this, I noted concerns from various online sources over a low number of USB ports, reports of poor cooling, the keyboard layout, LED placement, and so on - it was enough to turn me against the XPS, in spite of the price point.

So on to Alienware. I was certainly aware of them before their acquisition by Dell, and I'd heard some seriously nice feedback over the years. I can't say I'd seriously looked at them before, and this was a purchase I was putting some serious time into researching before jumping. There were two notebook models of interest to me, the M17X R3 and the M18X. The M18X looks like an amazing piece of hardware, especially with the dual GPU with SLI - but I don't need quite that much power to justify the significant jump in price, which put it outside of budget for me.

The M17X R3, at least, could - just - squeeze within the absolute high end of my budget (after finding a good discount coupon). It allowed a 16Gb RAM configuration without any restrictions on video card, it met the dual HDD requirement, and as a bonus, it offered the high end NVidia GTX 580M GPU. I could configure Bluray with DVD-RW capabilities - I didn't want a Bluray writer. And it essentially addressed all the concerns that had arisen with the XPS - for example, not only did it have the integrated VGA port I wanted, it still featured mini-Display Port, along with HDMI output and HDMI input. It was a tough call, given the price jump from the XPS 17, but in the end I went with it.

If I could pick a real concern that arose, it would be the look of the notebook. I was primarily basing this on pictures from the Dell website - it didn't look quite so professional as the XPS. I'd say that this holds true, but there is certainly a "coolness" (to me at least) to its looks that, on reflection, I don't mind at all. In fact, it's a bit refreshing to have something different from the typical dull gray that my notebooks have had in recent years. I do think it's really cool that you get a custom laser-etched nameplate on the bottom of the notebook, and that you can pick the default wallpaper and user account picture - not that those two aren't easily changed anyway. The nameplate is a really nice touch, though.

The specification I settled on was as follows;

Alienware M17X R3

2nd generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2860QM 2.5GHz (3.6GHz with Turbo Boost, 8MB Cache)
16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM(4x4GB)
17.3" (43.94cm) Full HD (1920x1080) WLED LCD Panel
2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 580M
Internal 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet
Killer® Wireless-N 1103 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO for Gaming & Video
Dell Wireless 375 Bluetooth Internal mini-card
2 x 750GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
Slot Load Fixed Blu-ray BD-ROM / DVD + /-RW Combo Drive
AlienFX® Illuminated Keyboard (English)
3.2 MP Integrated WebCam
Integrated 5.1 Stereo Sound
9-cell Primary Battery
Windows® 7 Professional 64bit (English)
3-Year Premier Service

Ordering and Delivery

Ordering was much the same as it's ever been from my past encounters. I had cause to contact Dell sales while preparing for the purchase - the site started having some problems - who then wanted to push me to order through them. From experience, I'm aware that they get commission this way, while they don't for Internet purchases (although I believe that they used to, if you entered their name during the ordering process). While I wasn't totally averse to this, I actually prefer ordering online. I guess it might be the experience of human error in the past, or perhaps just the simplicity of the transaction. I opted to continue with ordering online.

I have some level of frustration with Dell's customisation process - it can certainly be shortsighted or restrictive in nature. For example, I wanted a dual HDD configuration - but I wanted one SSD and one large SATA or Hybrid drive. You could actually choose a hybrid drive in one of the multiple "bundles" for the M17X R3 that Dell has, and that would have been fine - except that bundle came out more expensive than the best priced bundle, for essentially the same configuration. The best priced bundle, with my configuration, didn't offer a hybrid drive - instead, it offered 2 x 750Gb SATA drives in a RAID 0 configuration, or 2 x 256Gb SSD drives in a RAID 0. You could also buy just a 256Gb SSD, but I'll discuss my issue with that in a minute.

You could perhaps argue that this is where Dell sales could have customised it for me, and you may well be right. I have had mixed results with this in the past, and I didn't really think that they could in this instance. In any case, I was happy enough to have a 750Gb SATA drive, and I could handle the idea of having a spare on hand after replacing one with an SSD. I didn't, however, want to buy an SSD through Dell. My reasoning may, or may not, make much sense. Firstly, I wasn't happy that they didn't identify what SSD would be supplied. There are SSD's, and then there are SSD's. It's quite possible that Dell provide one of the best performance SSD's with the package - but if they do, this then runs into my second point. They seem to add a premium to the price for an SSD. It didn't seem to reflect the prices for which I could get a good SSD separately, which doesn't make a lot of sense if they can get them wholesale. I didn't identify a similar concern with the SATA drives, and I wanted to get at least one high capacity SATA or Hybrid drive with the notebook. Thirdly, I had previously purchased an SSD which was now unused and - although a SATA 2 standard rather than the SATA 3 supported by the M17X - would do the job and allow me to get good speeds without blowing out the budget.

I was also unimpressed by the inability to deselect McAfee's products from the order. I'm sure Dell get a nice bonus from including this, both from McAfee and from the cost they bundle into the price, but I have a very poor opinion of their products (with some good reason) and never intended to use it. I could forgive this, though, as they actually allow you (by default) to not include any version of Office, unlike pretty much any other part of their range. I have access to Office via MSDN and Technet subscriptions, so this was welcome.

My order was placed, and for the first time I opted to do a bank transfer rather than pay by credit card. This would prove to be a minor mistake when Dell failed to note that payment had been settled for the M17X part of the order - while the other order, for an All-in-one, progressed fine. The sale was automatically cancelled, and I had to get Dell sales to place the order again. Happily this was just a minor hiccup and I had no further problems.

One thing I've never been able to successfully overcome with the "build to order" concept, regardless of the company - the pain of waiting for the system to be built, shipped, and delivered. I'm not prone to hitting refresh every 5 seconds on the status tracker, but the time between placing the orders, system build, shipping, and delivery seemed like an eternity - although in reality it was less than 2 weeks. It's just a symptom of the age of instant gratification, I suppose.

But at long last, my new notebook made it through customs and hit the courier for delivery. There was still a slight snag, but it was no fault of Dell's - I was flying to Singapore on the day it would be delivered! While I hoped it might be delivered before I flew out, so I could take my new system on the road and get it up and running, there was of course very little chance at the outset, and it arrived while I was already en-route to the airport. Oh well - it just meant a few more days before I could unpack it!

Hardware

The Alienware notebooks come well packed for shipping - in fact, slightly more than necessary, since they put an Alienware box inside an Alienware box. I couldn't help but be surprised to slide out the second box, wondering what the actual point was. But no problem. I've seen HP pack notebooks into what look like server-sized cartons, so this shouldn't have raised an eyebrow. There are a couple of little "nice to have" bonuses which come with the order that I wasn't previously aware of - an Alienware cap, mouse mat, and sticker. The notebook also comes in a cloth sleeve which is actually quite nice, and easily reusable. I'm tempted to use it to avoid scratches and marks when in my bag, which I'm sure is the actual point.

This is by no means a light notebook - you can really feel the 5kg+ that comes from such a feature packed beast. But I wasn't overly concerned about weight. The battery is very well secured by latch, and it's highly unlikely to become lose and drop out (like a couple of notebooks I've had)! There is no latch to hold the screen in place while closed, but the screen itself is rather solid and the hinges seem well designed, so for once it doesn't feel like one is needed.

The "soft touch" casing of the notebook feels quite nice - nothing like the metal feel of my previous HP Elitebook's exterior, or the plastic feel of its interior bezel. It doesn't really feel like plastic, it's quite a pleasant texture. It feels quite solid too. This carries over to the keyboard and touchpad. The layout of both of these is basically perfect for me - once again I have a full sized keyboard with numeric pad - plus backlight now, which is terrific. The touchpad is larger than I'm accustomed to, which is not at all bad. Keys and touchpad are responsive and tactile, and I'm extremely happy with both feel and operation.

I really love the WLED LCD Panel - it certainly puts me in mind of a typical Macbook screen. It can be somewhat reflective, but this of course is down to lighting ... generally having the backlight at the right level seems to be all that's needed. And the 17" screen, coupled with 1920x1080 resolution, is great for readability (no more eyestrain)! Colours are bright and vivid, and it seems evident to me that it's a high quality piece of work. I have no regrets about not getting 3D. At all.

Both the casing and the screen can very easily attract smudges and streaks. These are quite noticeable, but it’s easy enough to wipe them off.

The inbuilt sound is great - really clear, loud, good bass .. absolutely no complaints. I'm not an audiophile at all, but it really does sound terrific.

No fuss in booting up - quite quick and straightforward, with the usual "Who is your daddy and what does he do" questions that come with any OEM install. I was pleased to see that the Alienware range comes with an absolute minimum of crapware (in which I include McAfee), and what is there is easily uninstallable without leaving a trace. I didn't worry about this during the initial boot, though, since I still wanted to get my SSD installed.

One of the pieces of software included with the notebook is Alienware Respawn, which allows you to back up the recovery partition to a DVD or USB stick for recovery to a factory default state. This was my first port of call, and it was very straightforward. I just needed a 4Gb or greater USB stick - no problem, I had a 16Gb one on hand. Within a few minutes, I had the means to replace one of the SATA disks with an SSD and get the system back up quickly. I removed the RAID 0 configuration and switched off the notebook.

Replacing the HDD couldn't have been much easier. Two screws under the battery is all you need to undo to slide off the bottom cover. The RAM and HDDs are easily accessible. The 2.5" HDDs have a small adapter connected to allow easy drive removal in the limited space, and it's easy to take out the drive, remove the adapter, and remove the HDD from its mounting case. I plugged the adapter into the SSD, put it into the mounting case in place of the old HDD, and slide the case back on. I appreciated how easy it was in contrast to some of the past notebooks I've had!

Up the system came, recognising the SSD and allowing me to boot from USB. In no time, the system was back to factory defaults, and with all the software, drivers, and extras that the notebook originally had. I had my fast system drive, and the large secondary HDD that I wanted. I'm sure a SATA3 SSD would be even more amazing, but frankly, the speed of a SATA2 SSD is perfect for my purposes - and it leaves room for a possible upgrade down the road!

Software

I really appreciated the relative lack of crapware. McAfee was soon gone, to be replaced with the free Microsoft Security Essentials - a product which, along with the business-focused Forefront suite, I have a high regard for (and have only positive experience to report). I uninstalled pretty much anything I didn't need, especially if it ran as a service or a system tray - I want the most out of my battery life! There was some Dell software that I lump into this which arguably isn't crapware for everyone - but I have no wish for facial recognition to login at this point, so it was quickly removed. Equally, I don't really want the 2GB online storage for 12 months that Dell insist on foisting on everyone. I really have no complaints with this though, because it was uninstalled with no fuss whatsoever. Alienware Respawn was also removed, since it no longer served its purpose (no more recovery partition, and I didn't need the optional "upgrade” for backup and restore).

One interesting omission from the factory restore was the Widcomm Bluetooth software. I was puzzled to find that there was no way to quickly switch the Bluetooth adapter on or off, until I realised that I was only running Microsoft's standard Bluetooth stack. One quick download from Dell's support site later, and I had the arguably more functional Widcomm software with its convenient desktop tray option to turn the adapter on or off. But this omission really seemed to be the exception to the rule - nothing much else was missing.

I ordered the Alienware with Windows 7 Professional, even though I had MSDN and Technet entitlements to any version of Win7. Realistically, I could have gone with the minimum option of Windows 7 Home Premium, but I hadn't decided whether I'd subsequently upgrade it to a higher SKU at the time. In any case, I did an Anytime Upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate more or less straight away. I like having the availability of Bitlocker, and this is one of the SKUs that feature it. There's not a lot of massive benefit to Ultimate, but I have licensing for it, so I used it.

The Anytime Upgrade, as always, is a screwy process which has never worked exactly as intended, in my experience. As per past experiences, I plugged in my retail key for Ultimate, validated it, started the upgrade, and was promptly informed that I couldn't do the upgrade. And then, exactly as I've found in the past, I reboot and it promptly does the upgrade during the reboot process. Go figure, but at least it ends up with me running the intended SKU.

I also installed the Windows Home Server 2011 Connector to the notebook, and Firefox 7 soon after. It was here that I did encounter a problem specifically related to the Alienware offering - the WHS 2011 launchpad couldn't connect to my WHS, and Firefox couldn't browse websites. It didn't take much for me to figure out that there was a DLL - BfLLR.dll - which was causing the SMSvcHost.exe process to crash. This process is the Net.Tcp Port Sharing Service, and it would seem that both the WHS 2011 Connector and Firefox 7 are dependent on this service working.

BfLLR.dll proved to belong to the Killer Network Manager app, which is part of the Killer Wireless-N 1103 Network Adapter. Updating the driver made no difference, and there was no option to install the driver without the manager. Ultimately, I took a copy of the Killer Network Manager installation folder, uninstalled it, and then added the driver by searching the KNM folder using Device Manager. This gave me a driver-only installation, and everything then "magically" worked. I've since reported the problem to Bigfoot Networks, the maker of the Killer cards, since of course I'd like for KNM to operate properly and give me the full functionality that it offers.

I'm happy to report that this was the only Alienware specific issue I encountered. Everything else went flawlessly, and it was easy to get my notebook setup to my typical preference, with all my usual software. The notebook runs like a dream, especially with the SSD, and the speeds are just fantastic.

Features

As is my wont, I made a run for driver updates. I like to keep everything up to date, and my experience with Nvidia in the past has indicated that this in particular is a good idea. I did manage to identify one specific caveat though - don't update the Intel HD Graphics driver with the generic Intel version from Intel.com (and, presumably, the one offered by Microsoft Update) when you have a secondary GPU! Use the manufacturer provided driver only, even if it is an older version. The reason? Using the generic Intel driver effectively disables proper operation of the "Switchable Graphics" feature - this is the Intel feature that allows NVidia Optimus to work. Essentially Optimus will ensure you automatically use the Intel graphics for maximum battery life, only using the NVidia GPU for applications that require the performance. I did try the Intel generic driver, and my battery life was *at least* halved. Reverting to the older Dell-supplied driver restored my battery life to a far more friendly 4 - 5 hours of active use.

This is the only real gotcha I could find - updating the Nvidia drivers to newer versions from the Nvidia website seems to have no such side effects. In a lot of cases, there's no reason to hunt down a newer driver than the Dell one - but Nvidia is a definite exception, since they regularly add and improve features and performance.

One aspect of the Alienware notebook that I can't help but love is AlienFX. By default, Dell Australia ship the system with a red backlight scheme for the keyboard, logo, touchpad, and grills - but you can change this directly from the AlienFX software. It splits the keyboard and various other backlit areas into zones that can be set to a wide range of colours, all different if you like, and even add effects such as blinking, or a slow transition between colours. It's cool, and has a lot of features, but in my case I used it to set the backlight to blue across the board. I like blue.

Another cool aspect of the M17X is the Alien head power button. This serves as a visual indicator for multiple purposes, including power on, charging, and low battery (and you can customise this with AlienFX too). The Alien's eyes are the HDD activity indicator! I also like the special function row (eg. volume, track forward/back, eject, wireless on/off).. they aren't touch sensitive like the typical HP layout, which ultimately proves a pain. They're proper buttons, flush with the notebook bezel and depressing slightly when touched. They have a satisfying feel and can't be accidentally triggered like with HP notebooks .. and once again, you can change their colour.

AlienFX also has an optional "dim lighting zones while on battery" setting which pretty much addresses any concern I'd have about leaving it on while on battery. Of course, you can also choose "Go Dark" from the handy system tray icon to switch them off on the fly. Along with AlienFX, there is also AlienFusion (power settings) and AlienTouch (touchpad settings). These are really just themed apps to manage the same settings that you can change elsewhere, but that's fine. It can certainly help to bubble up settings that might otherwise take some finding, so it still makes sense.

The supplied wallpaper and user account pictures are cool – all based on the Alien theme, of course. You do, however, get just the standard Windows 7 taskbar and interface. I stumbled across a download from an Alienware site, though, called "AlienGUIse", which adds some very nice alien-themed effects to your overall interface. It works very well, and I like the look of it - in just a couple of cases, though, it does cause UI problems within applications (like Seesmic Desktop), but you can add exceptions within the MyColors / AlienGUIse app to use the standard theme for this. It really added a nice touch to my new notebook, so I've adopted it!

Battery life is really, really good when Optimus is working properly - and, of course, depending on your usage. For simple word processing, with the Balanced power scheme customised to be fairly aggressive on power savings, and without any breaks, I can easily get 5 hours. Even with relatively heavy usage, I still get respectable results. I'd love a 12 cell battery for this baby, but in truth - the battery life I'm getting is better than I could achieve with a HP Elitebook that had a secondary battery. That's not bad at all.

Conclusion

The M17X R3 can be quite an expensive piece of kit if you want to spec it as highly as I have - but I have to say that I feel it's been worth the cost. It’s by far the best computer I’ve yet had. Adding my own SSD most likely did save me money, especially since I was happy to use a SATA2 SSD rather than SATA3. My final thoughts are that it's high quality, high performance, and packed with value for the power user or gamer. If you can stretch the budget to afford it, it's definitely worth a look.

Fun and Games with Microsoft DFS

Jacob — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 01:02:00 GMT

This is my first real foray into blog posting. This was originally written for someone that had recently implemented Microsoft DFS Replication and was having a bit of trouble. Having dealt with some evil DFS replication issues in my past, I thought it would only be proper to lend a helping hand. I have decided to share these tidbits with the world so that hopefully it helps someone else out in the future. So here goes: File Quotas are a pain - File quotas in DFS replication can burn you – ...

So here goes:

File Quotas are a pain - File quotas in DFS replication can burn you – hard. The DFS health report will come up with an error about being out of disk space, but will not reference anything to do with file quotas. Essentially, DFS will try to replicate a file that has ownership to a user. The user will have filled up it’s quota at one side of the replication. When this occurs, DFS will error out. If you decide to setup user folders with quotas and DFS, make sure that you use FSRM and set up the quotas to email the users when they are reaching their full mark.

Fishing in the DFSRPrivate Folder - When implementing DFS, it is worthwhile investigating into a solution that provides remote file locking – because DFSR replication lack’s this feature. The impact of this is that two users can open the same file at both ends, write to the file, and close it. The result is that one of these files is overwritten which means your service-desk will get a call requesting that a file be fished out of the DFSR private folder – except that the user will just think that the changes they made to their file have disappeared – fun and games.

The evil magic of files being overwritten - The most recent issue that I had with DFS was our DR site overwriting our production site. I still haven’t figured out what truly happened, but it did scare the crap out of me! Having said this though, I think the root cause was that we had set up one way replication in Windows Server 2008 – which isn’t recommended, Anyways, make sure that you have backups (As any good SysAdmin should), and it may even be worthwhile to implement VSS snaps on your shares.

If you are looking for some more information, I found the following sites particularly helpful – Ned Pyle has a great blog site with plenty of posts. I found the ones about the Debug logs particularly impressive:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2010/09/03/replacing-dfsr-member-hardware-or-os-part-1-planning.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2009/03/23/understanding-dfsr-debug-logging-part-1-logging-levels-log-format-guid-s.aspx

Other than that, I would also suggest to read up on the DFSRadmin and the DFSRdiag commands as they are pretty useful tools when you are troubleshooting. I hope all this help somone.

Happy DFS’ing

iPhone 4S on Telstra - One Week in Review!

Keating — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 13:22:00 GMT

If you've been living under a rock, you would probably know that Apple released the iPhone 4S on the 14th of October, to much noise and hullabaloo. I was one of those who trekked out early to pick one up on the day of release. Now the noise has gone away, and I've had it for just over a look, let's take a look at it and see how it goes.

As a point of reference, I had an iPhone 3GS for over 2 years, didn't upgrade when the 4 came out, and have been struggling with iOS 4 on the slower processor for some time. So naturally, an upgrade to a 4S would be a sizeable one, regardless of the features of the new phone.

Image (c) Apple, 2011

The Apple iPhone 4S is the latest smartphone from Apple. In many ways an upgrade from the iPhone 4, the new device sees Apple enter the dual-core mobile processor era, with the 1GHz A5 dual core chip with 512MB RAM. Apple claim the A5 processor improves graphics performance by up to 7 times, and while it's hard to gauge whether that metric is correct or not, it is very, very fast. Games play smoothly with no lag, apps open and close quickly and easily (no doubt helped by the better flash memory that has been reported to be used), and multitasking is a breeze, no doubt helped by the extra RAM as well. Rendering hi-definition video is also quick; a 27-video was rendered to 720P YouTube format in less than a minute. While far from the fastest chip on the market, the A5 handles tasks with aplomb.

The second major upgrade given to the 4S is the camera, up from 5 mega-pixel to 8 mega-pixel. It has also received an upgrade to the lens, with a larger aperture, and a new sensor which promises better white balance and light detection. And it's not just photos that benefit - the iPhone 4S allows you to take full, 1080P Hi-definition videos straight from the phone. The videos are easily edited on the phone, or in the iMovie app (which currently costs $5.49AU on the app store) which lets you do more than just cut and paste. Photo quality is outstanding, even when viewed on a high resolution screen. It is truly nearing the quality of good point and shoot cameras, and often more useful as editing and sending can be done on the device. Here is a photo taken from my iPhone 4S. As you can see, the detail and balance is quite stunning. And here is a video taken of a recent storm over north Brisbane - make sure to change the resolution to 720P. Ironically, the YouTube app doesn't allow full, 1080P videos to be submitted. It seems if you want to upload in full HD, you need to manually upload them. A bit of a shame given the native 1080P recording.

The newest feature that has garnered the most attention is Siri. This is a voice controlled assistant which allows you to ask it questions, set reminders, control your phone, and search for things. Siri is 'in beta' on the iPhone 4S, and as such only works properly in America. This is mainly because the directories it accesses to get map, business and location information are all US based. So for us Aussies, we can't ask Siri for directions, locations of businesses, or much else really. We are limited to asking Siri silly questions (which plenty of others have documented, and some I have managed to replicate), and asking Siri to perform tasks on the phone, such as setting reminders, calling people, and replying to SMS and emails. Once Apple opens up an API it will no doubt allow Siri to access an almost infinite number of functions across its apps.

But for what we miss out on with Siri in Australia, there are just as many uses for Siri and it's voice recognition technology. The biggest is the voice technology itself - this can be accessed anywhere in iOS where there is a keyboard to allow dictation. This works amazingly well, even with noise present. Siri also learns as you use it, so words that it didn't pick up before it eventually recognises. I have had to control the speed of my talk for it to recognise words, and certainly Australian words and place names it does struggle to pick up. No doubt the more it learns the better, and it is very useful as a hands free dictation function. Siri has a long way to go to be functional for users outside of the US, but as a dictation function it works exceptionally well.

iOS 5 has also brought many changes to iOS, with new standard apps, performance improvements and the new Notifications centre - a refined way of dealing with notifications, something Android users have enjoyed forever. iOS 4 wasn't the fastest performer, and certainly junked my old 3GS, but iOS 5 takes a massive leap in performance which was noticeable on my 3GS. The iPhone 4S just improves that even more. But with performance, often comes a decrease in battery life, and that seems to be the case for my 4S. I certainly don't get the use or standby time that Apple have claimed, and I'm somewhat relieved to see others have seen it too. While it has certainly copped a flogging in the last week, I don't feel that I am getting the best battery life possible. No doubt the Notification centre plays a part; I also have a suspicion that the CPU has a 'performance' profile which takes more juice out of the battery to run games and high performance apps. But that is conjecture, it is possible an iOS update may improve the life, but I wouldn't hold out hope.

The other half of my experience is migrating to Telstra from Vodafone. Everyone has heard of Vodafone's issues, and when Telstra released competitive plans for the 4S it was a no-brainer. I was one of the first through the doors of my local Telstra store at 8am, and signup including a number port took around an hour. The 4S was bundled with a Creative D80 Bluetooth speaker set, screen protector, case and car charger. My number port took about 2 minutes to be activated through the system, and was completely removed from Vodafone within 2 hours. Everything was painless and handled very well in the T-Life store. Telstra pre-orders weren't handled as well from reports on Twitter and beyond, which is never good, but my experience was very positive. Hopefully that continues for the remainder of my contract.

Telstra's coverage over Vodafone is also an unexplainable improvement. In my local area, the speed and latency is as good as, if not better, than my home ADSL connection. In some places I was getting over 500KB/s using Speedtest. Using the phone outside of home WiFi coverage felt like it was in WiFi coverage; notifications came through without lag, and no issues downloading large batches of tweets and images. I've been in areas with limited Vodafone coverage and been amazed with the reception from Telstra. Voice quality of phone calls is very good, far improved over what I had previously - this could be the newer handset, not just improved service. The iPhone 4S has received the Telstra Blue Tick for its improved antenna, which certifies the device will work in regional areas where signal may not be as good as metro areas. From my use so far, all has been great with the coverage and speeds.

Given the iPhone 4S is essentially an upgrade over the 4, many people have questioned who should be upgrading to it? Well, for anyone on anything older than a 4, the decision should be a no-brainer: yes! Especially if you have just come off the standard 24-month contract, you are well overdue for an upgrade regardless of what you go to. If you are looking at getting into the iOS ecosystem and are able to afford it, the 4S is the best option. For those on a budget, the iPhone 4 8GB was also released which is great for those wanting a cheaper iPhone option. But for those who have a 4, who aren't concerned about being on top of the iPhone curve, it's a harder choice. Most carriers won't let you upgrade to a 4S easily, being just over 12 months into contract. Breaking out of contract is an expensive way to go for an iPhone 4S, and not everyone is going to notice the speed or camera upgrade, and certainly Siri has limited usefulness at the moment. So it's a tough call. And certainly those with high-end Android devices probably won't see a want or need for it.

I'm quite impressed with the iPhone 4S; it is most things Apple said it would be. As an upgrade over the 3GS it is basically incomparable. The performance, the camera, better antenna, the screen and functionality is brilliant. As for a must-have upgrade for iPhone 4 owners, it's a 50-50 call. Plenty of 4 owners are taking the chance to upgrade, in usual iPhone fashion. iOS 5 is a great update for all iPhone users, and the new OS works wonders on the new phone. So while it isn't an essential upgrade for some, the iPhone 4S is a great phone for the iOS ecosystem. My upgrade from the 3GS to the 4S has been great, and the change to Telstra has been painless (touch wood, so far) and the performance and coverage improvement over Vodafone very well received. Overall, I am a very happy new iPhone owner!

SMBiT Professionals Brisbane Spotlight - GPO and RDS

HiltonT — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 22:45:00 GMT

Geekin' Out At The Chalk - SMBiT Professionals Brisbane, in association with Alan Burchill and Bryce Telfer, present:

Sunday Spotlight Streaming Session 10:00 - 17:00, 23 October, 2011

G'day All (and anyone else listening in),

Just a heads up to let you know that SMBiT Professionals Brisbane is running a Spotlight Session this coming Sunday (2011-10-23) at the Chalk Hotel in Woolloongabba where we're delving into Group Policy with Alan Burchill and Remote Desktop Server with Bryce Telfer as related (in particular) to an SBS 2011 environment.

The event will be streamed live for financial SMBiT Professionals members in our SharePoint site, under the Brisbane sub-site.

For everyone else, the event will be streamed free (of cost, password, however not advertisements) at:

http://www.justin.tv/hiltont

http://www.Ustream.tv/channel/SMBiTPro-Brisbane

So, feel free to get your geek on with us this weekend - the show starts around 10:00 AM and will be over just in time for us to watch the Rugby Union final! :)

My Initial Telstra 4G Experience

Adam Fowler — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 15:55:00 GMT

The new Telstra 4G service, read inside to find out my initial experience and quick tests to see how it performs.

Hi,

Thanks to Telstra, I've been given a 4G card to trial - so let's see how we go! This is just a quick 'Out of the box' experience and not intended as a full review or guide.

First, I've put the SIM into the rather short and fat 4G modem, and plugged that into my laptop. It's autodetected and kicked off an installer. Several minutes later, the installer is done and launches the Telstra Mobile Broadband app! But, it's saying 'Cannot detect SIM card'. What have I done wrong?

I pull out the modem, open it up and switch the SIM card around the other way. It's not too clear as to which way it's supposed to go, but looking at the manual it does confirm I had it incorrectly inserted. Back in it goes, and look it's now detected and showing me signal strength! I click the 'Connect Now' button and am instantly connected.

The Telstra Mobile Broadband program pops up a top news story, as well as giving me links for some Online Services - BigPond Home, BigPond Sport, BigPond Weather, Citysearch and WhereIs maps. Lastly there's a sensis.com.au search window. If you're on the go I can see how this would make it easier just to use a service rather than opening up your web browser first.

Anyway, I don't have full signal strength here. There's 5 bars, but only 4 of them are green. Speedtest.net results: I've used a Telstra 3G card and the new Telstra 4G card to see how they differ.

Here's the results:

3G http://www.speedtest.net/result/1540873854.png

4G http://www.speedtest.net/result/1540891332.png

Ping times are firstly a bit better, 10ms improvement. I've read you can get up to 40ms, so I might try again later in a different spot. Now, download and upload speeds are where the big performance increase is. 3.1mbit vs 12.8mbit for uploads, and 1.3mbit vs 14mbit for downloads (rounded)!

Next up, remote desktopping to home. It works, and works quite well. There's a bit less lag and stutter due to the better response times, so that's a big plus.

Then, a download. I've picked a file from Internode's games.on.net - a Playstation 3 Softawre Update 3.72, The file is 185MB and peaks at a download rate of ~1mbit/s and took 3mins 19 secs. That isn't too far off what I expected.

Finally, a ping test to google.com. 100 packets, none lost. Minimum = 49ms, Maximum = 62ms, Average = 56ms. That's rather stable for a wireless solution.

I'll play with this more in the coming days, and if there's anything you'd like tested let me know.

If you'd like to know more or discuss further, Telstra forums for the 4G are located here: http://crowdsupport.telstra.com/t5/4G/bd-p/4G and here are details about Telstra's plans and the 4G modem: http://go.bigpond.com/wireless/

November is PowerShell Time!

Chris Brown — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 16:01:00 GMT

In the month of November, join Shane Hoey (PowerShell MVP) and Chris Brown as they run some free (as in free beer) PowerShell virtual workshops. If you're interested in learning or refining your PowerShell skills, or you know of any system administrators who may be, this could be well worthwhile.

PowerShell is undeniably revolutionising the way we administer systems, and will, in no time at all, be a mandatory skill for sysadmins everywhere. If you’ve not learned it yet, have a passing interest, or would like to brush up on your skills, please sign up below (did I mention, it’s free?).

Please click here and check out our website, PowerShell Down Under for more info!

Backup - Hard drive, Tape, Online, It doesn't matter where, Just do it!

Peter — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:33:00 GMT

Backups are the difference between happy management & upset management with unemployed staff. Better to do it than not, after all, what have you got to lose?

A few years ago, I had a coffee cup that stated, with a picture of a homeless man busking: "Software Meltdown, Data Destroyed, Didn't do no Backup, Now I'm Unemployed". I used to trot that cup out at meetings with clients, vendors, you name it, the cup was at nearly every meeting I attended. Then it crashed. I didn't drop it, it just died when I was on holidays. When I bought it, there were two cups exactly the same. A smart bet would have been to buy the second cup as a backup when this exact situation occurred. I didn't. When the cup was cracked and unusable, I realised that my attitude was that I would be ok, it would last forever.

I treated data exactly the same way, up until the day the cup broke. I kept everything locally, I didn't use the H: drive set up on the server for me, I didn't even bother to save my Outlook PST file. As is the way with data, it grew. the outlook data grew until one fateful day, without warning, it crashed the system. When I rebooted, I got the chilling message that any user fears...

I had a command prompt, so, drawing on my old basic commands, I tried to see what files were there, if I could find the C: drive, a directory tree, nothing.

I was, to put it mildly, in a large amount of poo. I had a tender to respond to, a proposal to write, umpteen emails to reply to, and I couldn't even see the Operating system, the hard drive or my network. I yelled at the computer, I banged the mouse, the keyboard and cursed it to the lower reaches of hell. I blamed the IT Guys (unfairly, of course) the manufacturer, anyone I could think of. I never ran a rescue disk, I never thought about it and blamed myself.

I managed to hunt down a dusty floppy disk. it had "rescue" written on it. I didn't know if it was this version of windows, DOS, or PS/2. I gave it a go, and windows returned to my screen. I was very lucky.

I completed my work for the week, and went on holiday.

When I returned, my cup was broken, my system was bloated with all the emails people still sent me, even though my out of office was on, and I was confronted with two pressing issues: Replace the cup, (Noooooo) and move my data off the PC and onto the H: drive. I transferred a couple of Gigs of data, then copied and pasted (I know) the pst file on the server. The server was now in serious trouble, it needed data to be backed up. Up until my using the H: drive, the sysadmins had realised that they had a bit of space to play with. when I started using the H: folder, suddenly, they didn't. The server was backed up by a Virtual Tape Library, on a SAN, and had an offsite physical tape library option installed. Overnight, and everything was back to normal.

The company hat taken backup seriously, but they had neglected to create a very important document - a Data Storage policy document, which could have told me that it was mandatory to back up to the server all files created on desktops. this document could have saved a lot of angst for the sysadmins.

It doesn't matter where the data is backed up, by which brand of software, as long as it is. I have seen clients who have monstrous outlook files because they have never, ever backed up, until the damn pst file is too big to move and the backup regime is incremental - archival by month.

Things have changed as well. Before, Tape was very, very, mind numbingly slow. Now, it outperforms hard drives in transfer speeds. It is still slow on fetch specific files, which hard drives are good at, but the backups don't take all night to complete. Hard drives are reliable sources for backup. They meet a specific market need, usually the SOHO or SMB space. One of my old bosses once told me that if the business runs a server, use a tape drive. If they don't, a hard drive is fine.

Now we have online backups, Hard drives & Tape drives. All have specific market niches, but all of them are better than explaining to management that you don't have the report / proposal / response because you didn't back up your data.

Help a fellow AuTechHead in rebuilding a whole town!

Matt Marlor — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 05:20:00 GMT

A chance to help someone achieve their dream, and a chance to really help a town rebuild!

Stepping away from a strictly tech related post for a moment ...

One of our members and long-time friends, Heather Samsa - on Twitter as @i_enigma - has been tirelessly and single handedly helping to rebuild the small town of Marysville - which Australians may remember as being utterly devastated by the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009. She created the Marysville Cookbook, a combination of memories and recipes that is truly charming and unique. The initial print run was for the residents of Marysville, but others wanted to purchase it.

Heather started to sell the book, which costs around $20 per copy to produce, for $30. The $10 "profit" goes directly to Marysville through various community ventures, and so far Heather has raised $4,700 single handedly.

That's no small feat by any means! I actually bought the book as a gift for my wife, and it is simply gorgeous. The recipes are delicious, the photos are fantastic, and my wife absolutely loves it. The fact that it made some small contribution to the rebuilding effort made it just that much more special.

Now, however, there is a chance to help out Marysville to a degree that dwarfs even Heather's sterling efforts. Through the Lenovo "10 Second Hero" promotion, Heather has a chance to win $50,000 for Marysville. She's submitted her entry, strictly following the rules of the competition, and delivers what I feel is a straightforward, direct, and engaging message in the 10 second video allowed!

Heather, for her efforts, gets a Lenovo IdeaPad - which is wonderful, and I feel it's well deserved recognition. This is a reward for being a finalist, and independent of the prize, which is all the better. But wouldn't it be fantastic to see her win that $50,000 and make an even more massive impact to Marysville? Imagine if it were your own town!

Please take the time to vote for Heather's entry - you can vote once per day, and it only requires your name and email address to vote. Voting closes on 5th October, so get cracking and make Heather's dream come true!

VOTE HERE: http://lenovo.promo.eprize.com/hero/like.html?entry_id=434

(you'll need to scroll to find her entry, it's randomly placed in the finalists)

And, of course, please consider buying the Cookbook. From my own experience, I can tell you it's easily worth the $30 - even if you don't cook any of the recipes, it's a great coffee table book!

More Info: http://www.marysvillecookbook.com

Windows 8 for IT Pros - my journey so far

James Bannan — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 19:01:00 GMT

One IT Pro's travels in the world of Pre-Beta...

I am LIKING Windows 8 - everything I love about using Windows 7/Server 2008 R2, except all bright, shiny and new-like.

I'm also liking that the skillz are instantly transferrable, even with the pre-beta. So, I've been tooling around with a couple of IT Pro-related tasks, specifically deployment and virtualisation, and here are my shameless cross-posts to what I've found so far:

Sysprep/OOBE experience in Windows 8 Server

Deploy Windows 8 with SCCM 2012

As ever, there's more to come :-)

A prediction: Personal Cloud Desktops in the next 5 years.

Adam Fowler — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 14:25:00 GMT

I can't be bothered standing on a streetcorner yelling my crazy ideas, so here's one I've typed up instead.

Hello,

Lying in bed last night, I had a revelation about where I can see us heading in the next few years. This is mostly reliant on better broadband though (hello NBN!) but regardless I believe my idea is where we are heading.

Firstly, if you use more than 1 PC/device then you'll know the frustration of having to either do multiple installs of applications you use, or re-do settings. A good example of this is your browser's favorites/bookmarks list. Sure you can type in the websites, but it's nice to have a full list to just choose from. To fill this void, services like Delicious http://www.delicious.com/ popped up - your bookmarks in the cloud! Now it doesn't matter where you are, you can access that same list.

Email went the same way - Outlook is nice to use, but it doesn't help you when you're at work and want to check your personal emails. Again, the solution was to have your emails in the cloud and sync all your devices/PC's to that single point, or even just use a web interface and forget about using any other client.

Twitter is my third example. Personally, at home I use Tweetdeck, work I just use the webpage www.twitter.com and on my iPhone it's the official Twitter App. They all have different options and strenghts/weaknesses, but there's no standard to how I'm reading twitter between all these things. For those of you that attened TechEd Australia and didn't fall asleep in the Keynote, this was one of the points Microsoft made about their future vision - consistency across all platforms.

At the moment, I'm at the stage that if I'm at work, or even in the lounge at home, I can remote desktop to my main desktop with everything set up how I like it. I'd rather do that then have to both installing a bunch of apps yet again, looking for that consistent user experience.

Anyway, I don't see this consistency stopping with just the apps - I see it as being your whole environment/desktop. I believe this will happen one of two ways:

1. All your settings/apps/etc will be synced to the cloud on a single account. You sign in somewhere, and all these settings get pulled down. It's almost like a roaming profile, but with a much wider reach. This may be the first step before #2, because there are many limitations with this.

2. Your own virtual desktop in the cloud. Instead of just syncing bits and pieces - your whole desktop can either be hosted in the cloud, or synced there. Differential Syncronisation would make any changes required back and forth. Think of it the same way you do email, but on a larger scope. You sit in front of a new PC, and either download or plug in your desktop - and everything's there just how you left it. This is already in place in some corporate environments, but as far as I know it's only doing a remote session to a server. This is the next step, where you have the option of still using your local powerful PC because you've got a copy of the desktop on it. If that isn't needed, then you can still just remotely control your little space in the cloud (again, I'm hoping you see the parallels with email here).

So there you have it. My prediction. I want my personal desktop in the cloud, but also don't want to be limited by latency or bandwidth issues.

TLDR; A personalised virtualised desktop that downloads locally on demand, with differential synchronisation for changes.

Why is it that some of the IT Journalists sensationalise mundane things?

Peter — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 04:04:00 GMT

Every day, I get information in my inbox on this new release, that new company on the market. this is interesting to me. I will avidly read about new technology, new companies and news in general. What I have a problem with is the recent spate of IT articles about things that the government is doing, spending money here, making mistakes with tenders, etc, etc.

There seems to be a growing trend to publish articles that are of interest to a select few of the IT industry, and throw it out to the general population, in an attempt to sensationalise mundane events and occurences in the Australian Government.

Recently, I saw a new article talking about the recent tender release from a department where the brand was named. The journalist seemed to think that this was of the utmost importance, as they had contacted the department to advise of the error, and the department had retracted the tender, only to re-issue it without the offending brand. The thing is, regardless of whether the department re-released the tender, their preference was made known by the first document. How does an IT company respond effectively to the tender? they quote the product that the tender originally mentioned.

How does this effect the greater IT community? well, the department made a mistake. the journalist got them to re-issue the tender, the resellers quoted on it and it was awarded to a successful bidder. If the original tender had been allowed to continue on, without being re-released, taxpayers would have saved about $80,000. Pulling tenders out and re-issuing them is not a cheap exercise.

again, how is this in the public interest? does a technical person really care about a mistake on a tender? does this information allow them to sleep at night? For that matter, does it make me, a sales guy, sleep easier at night? not at all. The current foray into the inner working of government departments is as exciting as watching the grass grow, or waiting for a "scanner mouse" to work.

What is of greater concern is the spate of "public interest" stories. Do we really need to know who is tweeting information, writing blogs, and what their real names are?

I think that the news companies that operate in the IT space need to remember their audience. Most of us don't care where the Government spends its money, just as long as it is a worthwhile purchase. We don't care about mistakes in tenders that don't effect us, we are interested in technology. How many people join our industry to learn about government business, and not for the cool new Technology releases?

By the way, the "scanner mouse" sounds good on paper. a review in an industry magazine would probably be a bad thing, if they recommended it. But that is the point. stop focusing on what people are spending and tell me about cool new stuff. I want to know about new systems, servers and technologies. I don't care about government spending, who gets what or how many, I just want to know that the product works, has a use and is available on multi platform environments...

SMS Dead in 5 years, Email Dead in 10?!

Adam Fowler — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 01:28:00 GMT

Will SMS be replaced by Facebook? Will Email be replaced by Google Plus? Read on for my thoughts on the topic, raised on Triple J's Hack program 21/09/11.

27/09/11 Update: Tommy Tudehope has written an article on his thoughts here: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2913064.html

Today I was listening to the current affairs show 'Hack' which airs daily on Triple J at 5:30. One of the topics today was from a Social Media Consultant Tommy Tudehope (on Twitter at @TommyTudehope), who was predicting that SMS would be dead in 5 years, and Email dead in 10.

For the audio of the broadcast: http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/triplej/hack/daily/hack_wed_2011_09_21.mp3

Webpage of Triple J's Hack: http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/hack/podcast/

Tommy's claims:

"... People think SMS is one to one, of course it is, but is it really private, who has access to it, and are you always relying on your service provider Telstra or Optus to connect you through."

"...A lot of businesses have trouble working/collaborating with other businesses so sending mass emails to different people who you're working with. Now with Google Plus, you can have a single group of people in once circle and share that information. You might have an announcement that you got a new CEO."

"This is why I think it will (die) because instead of sending a corporate email to 5000 employees, why don't you just have a group of people on your Google Plus account with in that circle just say all your employees and make the announcement 'Hey we've got a new CEO' saves the cost of the email (which is obviously minimal) but it's also a more direct and informal communication."

This is my response to Tommy's predictions.

I could start and end with siting the example of the fax machine. Invented in 1846, and in the mid 1970's the first fax connected to a phone line via modem was invented. They aren't as common these days, but many businesses and homes still have them. Why hasn't email killed off the fax machine yet?

I do agree that the internet based free services will continue to grow and evolve, but just like the whole PC vs tablet argument - they're an companion, not a replacement.

Now, I agree with the notion that SMS isn't private, but it's no more private than ANY other service that goes through a 3rd party. The security behind SMS is much higher than anything app/web based.

The main claim for SMS dieing from Tommy is that SMS will be killed off by Facebook, Twitter, Skype and other apps. I don't believe this will be the case until another lowest common denominator method of text messaging is around, and this needs to be heavily integrated into ALL phones. Why replace SMS? The telcos have no incentive to do so - it makes them the most money. Mobile phone OS makers have no reason to innovate in this area either unless they can value-add. The growth of Apps lets cosumers choose, but with choice comes diversification and seperation.

The crux of the argument it seems all comes back to smartphones. The technical bar is too high for many people to set this up and use. SMS is easy, and if you can call someone on their mobile you can SMS them. The same can't be said for any of these other services.

Now, for email's 10 year life expectancy, it's almost the same argument. It's too heavily integrated to be replaced. Systems have been built the last 40 years around email and nothing's going to kill it. Email needs to be overhauled to an Email v2 with a lot more security and guarantee of service (instead of being able to fake any address, being sent plain text and hoping the other end received it), but that's not replacing email.

I'm a bit baffled at Tommy's understanding of how this all works. His comments about the 'cost of sending an email' are quite strange - I don't know where he's coming from on this. It raises many questions for me: How is Google Plus any cheaper? How is it easier to set up a group of all your employees in a circle, then require them to check themselves for updates? How is email not direct? Why class email as formal, when surely the content and style of the email shoud demonstrate it's formality? Why would the example of announcing a new CEO not be formal? What is difficult about sending emails to another business (if it's collaboration on a project, surely each end could just create an email group for the members!)?

At no stage was any reason given why Email and SMS would die off, just examples of other services that could do other things (such as one to many communications - Twitter being a prime example of that).

Could you see your business solely communicating on any current method of social media? Is there anything out there that can even be managed, audited, recorded and controlled by a company the way Email currently is?

I hope Tommy reads this and clarifies his position - He didn't recieve much air time, but I get the feeling it's a 'blinkered' viewpoint. His business is Social Media, and anyone I see in that business puts more importance on it than it deserves... and of course, that's in their self interest.

Do you think SMS will die in 5 years, and Email in 10? Please respond in the comments below!

Death of a Power User

Mike Rigsby — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 11:30:00 GMT

As I write this I am sitting here between a Windows 7 Professional x64 laptop and a Windows Developer Preview, aka Windows 8, x64 laptop.

There are literally hundreds of various tech blogs out there right now concerning the new Windows 8 with its radically different Metro User Interface and why it is either amazing or wonderful or why it sucks and people hate it. As such I am not going to go over that here.

I will briefly state that I do kind of like it. It’s amazingly fast. It boots in fewer than 30 seconds which was previously unheard of for a Microsoft operating system. It’s pretty slick and radically different than every version of Windows that has come before it. It’s simple, straight-forward, intuitive, and ‘just works.’ (Aside from expected bugs since it’s not even Beta yet.)

“It’s simple, straight-forward, intuitive, and ‘just works’. ”

That statement is the reason for my blog rant here. Now before I continue I want something understood. I consider myself a self-proclaimed ‘Power User’, a total Microsoft fan, and a supporter of technological improvements.

I consider myself a Power User because I thrive in a tweaking, adjusting, customizing, troubleshooting my PC software and hardware type environment.

I pride myself on having to work for the performance I get from a PC. I figure if my computer runs well it’s because I’ve earned it by “making it mine” and bending it to my will.

I work for a circuit board manufacturer so I am intimately familiar with the advancement of technology and I support it completely.
Now back to that statement. “It’s simple, straight-forward, intuitive, and ‘just works’.”

I’ve seen a trend slowly happening in the industry since back in the Windows 98SE to early XP days that is steadily increasing, as shown by this new Windows 8 Metro UI, and it actually saddens me a bit.

The ‘Joe on the Street’ average consumer is not a Power User. They want a device that is easy to use, simple, and works right out of the box. They do not want to have to work for their performance. They do not want to have to think about their devices. They want it to “just work”.
This is shown by the huge success that Apple had achieved in the industry because their devices “just work.”

This success has rightly driven every other company to follow in this logic and start designing systems that are simpler and just work.
This is the trend I spoke of earlier. Industry popular demand has driven a need for companies to start making everything simpler. The devices are lazier. They’re awesome, yes, but they require no thought at all to operate.

The demand of consumers is so high that not only are devices becoming simpler to operate and not require any sort of customizing but manufacturers are even removing the ability to customize their devices even if you wanted to.

Phones have to be jail-broken or rooted in order to customize them. Software doesn’t even have Advanced features anymore. Operating Systems are being designed so that everything a user could possibly want is right at their fingertips.
I am a Power User and I am dying. As an ideal, at least, not literally.

I am being phased out and replaced by “simple, straight-forward, intuitive, and just works”.
Advanced skills necessary to customize technology are being replaced by the demand of the average consumer to be able to just take a device out of the box and use it.

This saddens me.

This, IN MY OPINION (so keep your flaming comments to yourself because I’m still allowed my own opinion) is a sign of Reverse Evolution.
Regardless of whether or not you believe in Evolution, abandon your beliefs and think as if Evolution is true and consider this example:

It is millions of years ago. I’m some little amphibian creature. I see dry land up above the water I’m in and think it might be cool to go check it out.

But, eh, right now I exist without having to do anything. I live a simple, straight-forward, and intuitive life. Life is easy and it “just works”.

…………….. Guess what …………………

*poof*

You, the reader, no longer exist.

You have been replaced by “simple, straight-forward, intuitive, and just works”.

You are the victim of a society that wants everything spoon fed to them. That doesn’t want to have to think or work for their performance.

You’re ‘dead’, metaphorically speaking.

Mark this day of your reading this post. In 10-15 years from now, remember it.

In 10-15 years from now, hell maybe even less, mankind will have automated systems that do nearly everything for them.

Your children or your children’s children won’t even know what the term ‘rooting’ mean.

They most likely won’t even know how to read, write, or do basic math because technology will have provided them automated tools that do all that for them.

Now you tell me. Do you seriously consider that “progress”?

Windows 8 Developer Preview Hands-On

Keating — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:37:00 GMT

Windows 8 Developer preview has been released. Let's have a look at what's new, whats improved, and what needs to happen to make this new Windows OS a game changer.

Yesterday, Microsoft released the Windows 8 Developer Preview to the general public - Microsoft's first public release of their new Windows operating system. We have seen hints of the new OS in screenshots leaked and posted on their blog, so naturally plenty of people jumped at the chance to grab a functional copy of the new Windows operating system. You can grab yours from here.

Lots has been made of Microsoft's new OS, including what it needs to do to stay competitive against Apple's OS's in both the desktop and mobile space. Microsoft has announced that Windows 8 will be the same platform across x86/64 desktop devices and ARM-based mobile devices - importantly, tablets and mobile phones, which Microsoft entered recently with the Windows Phone 7 operating system.

There's plenty to remember when reviewing any software that is essentially still in Alpha, or brand new Beta. Importantly, it's not complete software. Many people often review software at this stage as completed software, when it isn't! It is far from complete, so bugs come as part of the package. The idea of the Developer Preview of Windows 8, is to allow developers time to develop applications to suit the Windows 8 framework, and to see if their current apps can be certified. Interestingly, there are 2 types of certification - either a Metro-style "app" available in the Store (for use from the Metro home screen, or use on a mobile device with the changing of a few lines of code), or Desktop apps, which are no doubt 'traditional' Windows applications that run from the desktop. It's a great idea for Microsoft to release this, much like Apple does with it's developer builds of iOS, to allow developers time to build apps for certification well before final release. The Developer Preview has Visual Studio 11, as well as a full tool kit of Certification and build tools to help build and certify apps as part of the preview.

Firstly, it's worth pointing out my perspective in reviewing this build of Windows 8. I have used, in one way or another, every Microsoft desktop operating system since Windows 3.1. I've seen a number of UI changes over the years, and while far from being a UI expert, I will admit to growing comfortable with the various changes in the interface over the years. Which isn't surprising, given the basics haven't changed since Windows 95. There's a Start menu, and from there you have several sections that take you to programs, settings, files, etc. Microsoft have made a big song and dance about changing everything for Windows 8, which is a scary statement for a Windows user set in their ways. So lets take a hands-on look, with an open mind, about what they are proposing.

I am running Windows 8 Preview on a virtual machine using VirtualBox. I installed it using 2 CPUs, 2GB of RAM and 20GB of hard drive space. I enabled all hardware virtualization settings in VirtualBox, as well as 2D and 3D acceleration. This was run off my ASUS G53SW, with an Intel Core i7-2630QM, 4GB RAM and a GTX460-M video card on Windows 7 64-bit.

[This review is focusing on the Windows 8 UI and functions. Plenty of other tech sites and blogs have, or no doubt will, look at the more development-oriented features of the release. But for the moment, let's indulge in what Microsoft is giving to us upfront]

Welcome to Metro

From the get-go, you know this is a completely different interface to what Windows normally is. The installation screens are identical to Windows 7's (At this stage, but that isn't really a point). Windows setup, however, is a Metro-inspired process. Green-background, simple screens and words. Even the licensing agreement page begins with "Please read this to make our lawyers happy". This is the first indication that Microsoft has finally found it's sense of humour, while simplifying things again.

Interestingly, you need to use a Windows Live ID to create a user using this preview. I, for one, hope this is for the developer build only, and doesn't make its way into the final build. While it is easy enough to create a Live ID from an email address, far too many users either don't have internet access when they first start up a machine, or, in the case of custom-built machines, users won't be able to be created properly without an ID. The use of a LiveID is to enable Live integration, and importantly Microsoft's cloud storage capabilities through SkyDrive, so the use of an ID is critical for what Microsoft want to achieve. I would hope that this gets changed to 'optional, but recommended' along the line.

While I would hope the need for a Live ID is changed to optional at some stage, the irony of this thought is how easy plugging in a Windows Live ID makes Windows setup. It extracts your Live ID (in my case, a Hotmail address) and even uses the same password as the local password on the machine, and display pic you last used in Messenger as your user icon. I forgot I had one until it pulled it down:

Yes, it's a Hammer Time prompt box. To distract you, here is the Welcome screen that greets you with Windows 8. Hint - to get past it, drag the screen up. This is the first sign that Windows 8 is far more touch and mobile friendly.

So far, so good! Logging into the machine takes you straight to the Metro home/Start screen. This is the main screen you get to, and the screen you return to when you press Start from the desktop. This took a little while for me to get, but it finally clicked. This *is* the Start menu. You have access to the same menu and features, as well as what has been the "All Programs" part of the Start menu, from one screen. It is no longer a menu; but a screen. Optimized for widescreen monitors and tablets, and most certainly touch, it's a radical departure from the traditional Start menu. But its a departure that works on many levels.

Interestingly - no tiles apart from the ones that link to the desktop, would work on a screen resolution less than 800 x 600. And by not work, you could smash on them all you like, and nothing happened.It isn't until you set a resolution at or above 1024 x 768 that apps start working. This is understandable - no doubt Microsoft enforces a minimum resolution for apps to work. But when the system originally set the resolution, you would think that a message of some sort would appear alerting you to change the resolution. Given this is barely a Beta build it can be excused, but after messing with it for over an hour trying to get it work it was somewhat frustrating.

The much-discussed Windows 8 Explorer receives a preview in the Windows 8 Developer build. The biggest change to Explorer is the addition of an Office 2007/2010-style ribbon to the top of the Windows. This has been received with a bit of contention, however when you see and use it, it becomes a very natural addition:

I have often lamented the loss of menu items in Explorer in Vista and 7, so the ribbon makes up for this - and more. Having Move To and Copy To options on the ribbon for quick access, without needing a PowerToy or a change to the registry is a massive boon for power users. Similarly, Sharing and viewing options were often small and confusing in Vista and 7, but no more in Windows 8! Take another look at the Windows Explorer screen, and have a look at a feature that has been missing from Aero boxes since Vista:

The 'Up Drectory' button! Next to the address bar makes a triumphant return as a default folder viewing option. To go up directories you had to click on the previous folder in the Address Bar. While this is still possible, the Up Directory button makes quick navigation incredibly easy. If you can't half tell, I'm a fan of the new Explorer interface. So many options are clearly and easily presented for use. It's a natural extension of the Ribbon interface from later versions of Office, but in this execution it's simple and elegant.

The more you use Windows 8 Developer Preview, the more interesting things you find. For example, if you move the mouse to the far left of the screen, towards the middle, you get a preview of the previous window you had open, and can return to it:

Windows Task Manager has been redesigned for new interface. It comes in both a basic and advanced flavours:

The Performance tab opens up to some user-friendly graphs that display CPU and RAM usage, as well as disk activity - infinitely useful when trying to diagnose performance issues that aren't CPU or RAM related. It also shows network usage statistics. It is a radical departure from the traditional Task Manager that has evolved since Windows 3.1 and remained all but unchanged since Windows 2000. The information is presented quite well and easy to get at. I haven't had a need to use it properly, but I'd say it would be a pleasurable experience if I had to.

The Windows Charm can be accessed by either pressing Windows Key + C, or moving the mouse to the lower left corner of the screen. From here you can see the menu options provided. Importantly, going to the Settings option takes you to Shut Down and Restart options. Originally I didn't know this, so Iogged off and found the shut down options from there! Slightly embarrassing, but slightly confusing nonetheless. Like a lot of things, the more you know, the easier it gets to find things.

In fact, everything seems to revolve around the Windows key, much like the 'Home' button on iOS devices (iPad, iPhone, iPod). When you have an app launched, there is no red 'X' to close the screen; rather you need to press the Windows Key to return to the Metro screen, or either Windows Key + D or Alt-Tab to return to the Desktop. This is something that will take getting used to, as the return mechanism is different depending on what you use. On mobile devices however, this is a no-brainer: use one key to return to the home screen. I'm not sure if the Windows Desktop will be present on mobile devices (I'll take a stab in the dark and say no), but I can see this navigation will be confusing to the average Windows user unless this is smoothed out.

In my travels around the operating system, I even managed to get it not to boot (don't ask me how) and came across a brand new Blue Screen of Death:

I think this is a subtle dig at the "Sad Mac" of old Mac OS's. And even if it wasn't, I love it! Quick description of the error, a nice screen and 3 seconds before it reboots automatically. Much more user friendly than the Blue Screens of Death that has plagued Windows since its conception, but it still gives some diagnostic information. I hope it doesn't go the way of the Red Screen of Death, I would much prefer a user saw this when something went astray!

So far, so good, from Microsoft's new offering. There is a lot going on and being promised for Windows 8, and Microsoft needs it to perform. Key to this, is the new OS's ability to be run on either the x86/64 platform, or ARM platforms, which allows the operating system and any apps designed for it to be run on both desktop PCs and mobile tablets and phones. The touch optimization is evident already in the UI, and from other reports its evident that this preview build works on most touchscreen devices already, which is great news for Microsoft.

Naturally, this preview build of Windows 8 raises more questions than it answers. What other features are planned? What different feature sets can we expect between versions? Plenty of applications, such as Windows Media Center have been bundled previously, haven't been mentioned. Will there be a Professional version? No doubt there will be plenty of desktop-only users, such as in corporate environments who will have no use for a touch/mobile interface, and will only need regular Windows desktops. Dare we mention gaming? Microsoft has given us some hints as to XBox Live integration, but it remains to see how PC gamers will be catered for in Windows 8. Given how much money Microsoft has invested in PC gaming, there will be lots of love given.

Microsoft have learnt from their poor development progression from XP to Vista, and the development of Vista. They took great steps in designing and producing Windows 7, and the transparency they learned seems to be shining through again. It has to; this is Microsoft's Operating System of change. It needs to bridge the gap between PCs they have known for years, and modern, mobile devices. What is better, is Microsoft's want to have apps running on both x86 and ARM platforms natively. This is exciting for developers, as they can sell their apps to desktop, tablet and mobile platforms quickly and easily. It is just as exciting for Microsoft, as this approach will no doubt become a thorn in competitor's sides as this develops.

It was once said, that Microsoft needed Apple to do well, for it to do well. How times change. It's not just Apple that needs Microsoft to do well in developing a new operating system to span the plethora of personal computing platforms there are now. Microsoft needs to do well. From all indications so far, Windows 8 will be a great operating system. It remains to see how well it works on ARM mobile devices; I dare say it will work well. Microsoft's approach to "one OS for all platforms" shines through even at these early stages. As a fan (but not fanboi) of Microsoft's Windows, I really hope it does well. I will glad to follow it through its evolution to retail product.

Do You Trust The Cloud Yet?

Adam Fowler — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 18:40:00 GMT

The Cloud - Monkey (from Monkey Magic) had one, should you use it too?

Has your CIO/CEO/IT Manager done this?

Do you trust the cloud?

I would be surprised if you whole-heartedly said 'yes'. Firstly because you're talking back to a blog post which is quite strange behaviour, but secondly because there's a lot of media attention going on in this space.

Just to rehash the last week, there were two major events, one from Google and the other Microsoft.

Google:

Wednesday 8th September (ish, it's hard to gather what timezone they're all talking about) saw a Google Docs outage. The outage lasted 52 minutes: 23 minutes from being alerted to kick off a rollback proccess which then took 24 minutes to do. Add an extra 5 minutes - the time it took for "the additional capacity restored normal function".

The cause was due to a change they had implemented to improve real time collaboration, but the heavy load of the real world exposed a memory management bug.

Microsoft:

Wednesday 8th September again (although later in the day in America, so the 9th for Aussies) it was Microsoft's turn. Office 365, Dynamics CRM and some other non-enterprise level services (Hotmail, Skydrive, Live stuff) were down for a few hours. This one was not as clear cut - the outage itself was for the North American data centres, which meant genereally that Australians were fine as we use another based in Singapore. The fix was an update to DNS servers, which means we all have to wait for replication of the new records around the world before everyone everywhere is without issue.

The cause for this is a bit less detailed than Google's, with 'DNS issues' being claimed as the cause.

That's scary, how do I cope with these outages?
So, would your business complain about these outages? OK yes, you probably have someone who complains about their keyboard clicking too loudly when they type, so of course someone will complain about this.

If you wanted to jump into the cloud, I'd suggest to look at a hybrid solution. This isn't news to many readers I'm sure - multiple paths of redundancy for "everything" which includes your servers and services. For emails, you can split between your local Exchange (or even hosted) and Google Apps. Postini replays everything that goes through it to Google Apps, so your users can jump onto Google Apps in the event of an Exchange outage and continue working. Then, you're not missing out on the feature rich options of Exchange, but the business critical emails have full redundancy.

My Conclusion:
The real summary here is - go ahead, use the Cloud. BUT - do what you should already be doing (i.e. redundancy, are you paying attention here? Good.). A single provider in the cloud is not reliable enough at this stage to be trusted for it's own inbuilt redundancy. Trust two clouds, or one cloud and the other half on-premesis.

If you're a small business with a portaloo full of staff, then it becomes much harder to justify. Also, is there a manual process that can be used in the event of a service failure? Business Continuity should dictate what's required for redundancy. Maybe writing things down for a day is a completely valid way of coping with the outage, with little or no loss to the business? There's no reason to spend money on redundancy in that sort of situation.

Google Apps and Office 365 both guarantee 99.9% uptime - sounds great, but that's ~42 minutes a month they're allowing for. How much would your business lose if nobody could do their computer based work for 42 minutes during the day, every month on average? Over a year, that's slightly over 1 full working day. If the cost of that outweighs the cost of getting a second cloud service or some other means of redundancy, then it's already paid for itself. Getting a service refund after the event isn't really what people care about, they just want it to work.

Sources:

Google Docs Blog - http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/09/what-happened-wednesday.html
Google Postini: http://www.google.com/postini/continuity.html
Windows Blog - http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2011/09/08/current-hotmail-and-skydrive-issues.aspx
Office 365 Tweet - http://twitter.com/#!/Office365/status/112008132443648000
ZDNet Microsoft Outage - http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/outage-hits-microsoft-crm-online-office-365-customers/10359

LG LSM-100 Mouse Scanner Review

OzDJ — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 18:30:00 GMT

Derek "@ozdj" Jenkins shares his hilarious tale of impulse buying woe ...

Cross-posted from my blog, ClubDUH!

WARNING: Contains rude words tweeted in anger; adult concepts and immature computer hardware. Sharing a few hours of my life that I’ll never get back in the hope that I’ll save someone else from enduring the same saga.

It was shortly after 6pm on Thursday night and I was about to leave the office. I checked my mobile and was excited to find a new gadget, that I hadn’t heard of before, was available at Officeworks, here in Australia. Wh0o0o0o!

I immediately went googling and quicky found a video of the LG LSM-100 in action. Naturally, I tweeted my excitement at what I’d found:

“

Officeworks has these in stock for $129 – #WANT (even if I don’t quite have a use for one 9 days out of 10) — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt4LpLOx0j4

ozdj
September 8, 2011

15 minutes later, Officeworks did a top job of maintaining the emotional momentum:

“

@ozdj @cbibb3 @VeryZoe Perhaps not fair 4 us 2 say, but we reckon the scanmouse is amazing- everyone @ OW wants one! It even recognises text

Officeworks
September 8, 2011

“

@Officeworks As an early-adoption sucker for just about anything, I’ll see if I can grab one tonight on way home. cc @cbibb3 @VeryZoe

ozdj
September 8, 2011

As anyone who knows me will tell you, when my impulse-buy mode kicks in I can be pretty had to stop. So, not surprisingly, I had an LSM-100 in my hands shortly after – and then, of course, Officeworks had my hard-earned:

“

The LSM-100 can allegedly scan up to A3 size! Interesting. cc @limburger2001 @cpkharris @ozmlbplayers @lisrussell @me_in_sydney

ozdj
September 8, 2011

Unfortunately, all of the excitement (including that which I was responsible for generating) was for naught. I got home, settled in and got kicked in the guts over, and over, and over again. Let me talk you through the first 45 minutes or so.

Open box. Cut through a label instructing you to read the instructions about HOW TO UNBOX the item. WHAAA?
Yes, you need instructions to unbox the mouse without damaging it. A matrix of layered cardboard templates surround the device and must be removed in a specific order.
Discover an *80 page* Quick Reference Guide and 14 page User Manual. Oh dear. I should have stopped there.
In the box is a CDROM for the drivers. Not uncommon, but to then fail to put the software package on your website FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE PCs WITHOUT AN OPTICAL DRIVE is downright stupid. Also, so many products have updated apps/drivers since the product went into manufacture and shipped to retailers. Anyway, I headed upstairs and grabbed an external USB optical drive.
Run installer application from CD. Presented with three options: “Install”; “Manual Link”; “Movie Clip”. Figured “Manual Link” must be for a custom install, so I clicked it. Crash. Restart installer application – lesson learned – click on “Install” instead.
Installer confirms my CPU, RAM, VRAM, USB, OpenGL and GPU are OK for the product to perform. Good-o! Product appears and a picture of a mouse appears on the screen.
Out of nowhere, the application tells me “A new version of LG Smart Scan is available!” Wow! Thanks LG – so fscking helpful now. Seems like an important update too, “Improved: Memory usage optimization in editmode [sic]“
Of course, I click on the install now option. Windows downloads the update from mystery undisclosed location on the interweb. Close the main app and run the updater. BZZT! “ExiMsiLauncher Error: Failed to run program patch.exe2” [OK]
Blamed myself. Rebooted PC. Re-run updater again. FAILED AGAIN.
Decide to give it a run with the out-of-box software. While the mouse was being tracked, and the cursor moved about the screen, there was nothing happening when I pushed the SCAN button on the gargantuan mouse.

I tweeted thusly:

“

Attempting to install the LG LSM-100 “Mouse Scanner”. Possibly THE WORST out-of-box experience *ever* for a basic gadget. cc @Officeworks

ozdj
September 8, 2011

“

FFffffffuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Serious, LG, did you even ponder testing this software before you shipped it?!

ozdj
September 8, 2011

Well, a number of people who I chat with were still awake and these poor souls asked a few questions – got a few answers – and, well, endured my babbling tirade of frustration. I’ll let the tweets tell the story:

“

@the_lunatix If it was that easy, seriously, I could almost live with it. 96mins *AND COUNTING* to install a fsking mouse!

ozdj
September 8, 2011

“

@CPKHarris LMAO! At least Samsung let you DL drivers from their website. LG don’t offer it for this device. So, when you start it, it…

ozdj
September 8, 2011

“

To ANYONE that’s prepared to listen to an early-adopter, give that LG LSM-100 mouse scanner a VERY wide berth. #PieceOfCrap cc @Officeworks

ozdj
September 8, 2011

“

@the_lunatix Honestly, I am a VERY patient person. But this has been a horror. Absolutely amazed.

ozdj
September 8, 2011

“

@OhCrap One of these http://www.officeworks.com.au/retail/products/Technology/Peripherals/Desktop-Mice/SYLSM100 – I don’t have the ninja-like IT skills you do, but I reckon you might even struggle with it.

ozdj
September 8, 2011

“

@Me_in_Sydney I simply cannot recommend this product. It is NOT ready for mainstream, I’m disappointed to say cc @Officeworks

ozdj
September 8, 2011

“

@the_lunatix About to throw it into WinXP compatibility mode to see if I can make it work.

ozdj
September 8, 2011

“

The LSM-100 software, now running in XP Compatibility mode under Win7, is consuming almost 350MB of RAM – haven’t attempted a scan yet!

ozdj
September 8, 2011

“

I’m lost for words. Managed to get the LG LSM-100 into scan mode. Lights! Scanner! Action!…. CRASH! This is almost comical, I tell you.

ozdj
September 8, 2011

“

Micro-review of the LG-LSM100 Mouse Scanner. Highlights: Included mouse pad & cleaning cloth. Lowlights: Everything else. cc @Officeworks

ozdj
September 8, 2011

“

@The_Bigfella This piece of shit is so bad, I could put the transcribing job up for tender, go through quotes etc FASTER than a single scan.

ozdj
September 8, 2011

“

I want to stap this LG LSM-100 Mouse Scanner with the kitchen knife I used to open the fsking box. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrdszfkjdshkhdskf

ozdj
September 8, 2011

“

No, LG, really. This is just BRILLIANT! A mouse that is so fricking WIDE that you need Hulk hands to grip it? What gimp designed that?

ozdj
September 8, 2011

“

But at least I’ve managed to acquire SOMETHING of an image now. Sure it looks like papier-mâché done by a drunk seagull but it did acquire.

ozdj
September 8, 2011

“

Oh, yeah, yeah… that’s tops. In attempting to scan the front (A5-sized) page of the LSM-100 user guide, the app gobbles 1.2GB of RAM(!)

ozdj
September 8, 2011

“

The LG-SM100 is labelled “SMART SCAN”, which is an anagram of “RUSHED TO MARKET JUNK” (well maybe not, but it should be).

ozdj
September 8, 2011

“

Update: Repacking LG LSM-100 Mouse Scanner back into its the box for a refund. Hey @Officeworks, you have my permission to slap the LG rep.

ozdj
September 8, 2011

….and so, I went to bed:

“

Going to bed. Stabby as hell. Good night. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz [plink]

ozdj
September 8, 2011

Friday! Yay! What better way to kick off the end of your week than with a walk, in the rain, back to Officeworks with a crap product for return? Again, I’ll let my tweetstream tell the story:

“

For anyone who “missed” my thoughts on the LG LSM-100 Mouse Scanner last night, an executive summary: Horrible. Ghastly. Rage-inducing meh.

ozdj
September 8, 2011

And, well, that’s pretty much where the story ends. The $129.00 as refunded and I trundled back off into the rain.

Which makes me wonder…. have you (or anyone you know you) bought one of these devices and really loved it? Colour me curious. Please leave a comment.

Multiple CAs breached, SSL threats ... what now?

Matt Marlor — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 15:20:00 GMT

Run around with arms in the air and scream the sky is falling? Or think seriously about security ...

You've probably heard of the DigiNotar certificate authority compromise, which has led to the removal of their CA trust from most browsers (apparently Apple is lagging behind on this), and affecting their customers who rely on them for providing SSL to their websites and other services. Prior to that, it was Comodo, and now we hear of a possible GlobalSign breach. It seems that these may be all from the same person (or people) in all cases.

It's easy to observe a common principle in action with any given security breach. One breach occurs, and the floodgates tend to open. Another good example was the Sony Playstation Network breach. A classic example that still holds to this day is Windows, and even Mac OS X is starting to feel it as their uptake continues to increase.

A successful breach flags a company as a potentially easy target. You'll get a mix of followups - from the original attackers, the security researchers, other "interested" parties, and of course what we always called the "script kiddies". Not that script kiddies shouldn't be taken seriously in their own way - just because they rely on premade hacks doesn't make them any less serious.

Some are more attractive than others. Take PayPal, Sony, Microsoft, and others for example. High profile targets, potentially too big to keep a lid on all of their security, and an almost inevitable part of someone's list to try the latest zero day (or even old bugs that've long been fixed). Whether it's a worm or virus (as in the previous 2 links), a hands-on attack, or a script kiddy special, these companies will see it all. It makes it all the more stunning when one succeeds, because you expect companies to learn from the past and improve their security dramatically.

The only foolproof computer security I know of is the complete absence of a computer. There is a perpetual trade-off in any given security, especially when facing the great unwashed of the Internet. As soon as you open a port in the firewall to allow inbound traffic, you've made a tradeoff. In fact, you could say that as soon as you connect, you've made a tradeoff- but then you get worms like Stuxnet which (unbelievably to me) had a great success rate on USB media. Powering off the computer? Sure, but someone could power it back on. That's why the complete absence of a computer is probably the only truly secure computer security.

There are always the arguments of Mac and Linux having greater security. I don't necessarily buy that - Macs in particular have been successfully compromised at each Pwn2Own contest, often through the inbuilt Safari browser as a vector. Linux has a stronger claim, but when you consider kernel.org getting compromised, 13 year old password bugs being discovered, and distro-based OpenSSL vulnerabilities ... well, you can at least make the conclusion that all software can have serious bugs that can lead to a compromise.

No need to defend Mac or Linux here - they have been more successful with security overall, and I make no argument about that. But the more prevalent they become, the more likely they'll be targeted, and that's always been the greatest problem with Windows. Free and Open Source Software like Linux is great for the ability to review the code you're using - provided you actually review the code - but it's unfortunately not immune to security problems.

I remember an old perception of certificate authorities being unassailable. It would be fair to say that they take security very seriously as a rule. The whole basis of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is trust, and they are entirely reliant on trust. If that trust is broken, their business pretty much evaporates. Sadly, this whole concept of trust makes them a very attractive target. And successful breaches make the OS you're using considerably less relevant to the level of risk you might be exposed to.

I make no claims as to knowledge of the security failures of those that have been - or may have been - breached. There are reports that DigiNotar's actual security was pretty dreadful, and that would be unsurprising given the extent of the problem. The developers of web browsers don't revoke CA certs lightly.

A lot of the criticism of DigiNotar has been the lack of notice to customers - seemingly, it took something like 6 weeks to issue notice of the breach. By contrast, GlobalSign has very quickly shut down issuing of new certificates, and announced an audit before they'll resume. Partner Cloudflare has been quick to post a notice to customers, since their SSL feature relies on GlobalSign. And for this it certainly seems they should be complimented.

As a Cloudflare customer ourselves, we just recently added SSL in advance of the main Tech.Ed Australia conference. This is a feature which costs all of $1 per month - pretty cool, and they were really helpful getting it in time! It took a little while to bed it down fully, but the relevant areas of the site switch seamlessly to SSL with no errors. This, of course, means that we have a GlobalSign certificate, so it's something relevant for me to watch for.

It certainly leads you to think about whether SSL is now "broken". I've seen articles in the past declaring the death of SSL, yet it still continues to be used and generally trusted. There are certainly attack vectors, and the compromise of a CA gives good cause for considerable concern - but if dealt with via the well-established mechanisms in place, especially quick revocation of CA certs, this doesn't necessarily mean trust is broken altogether.

So do we replace SSL, or somehow complement it with additional technologies? For the former, probably not. You need everyone - including browser developers - to co-operate for that to happen. For the latter - well, perhaps. If technology like Convergence as browser plugins could help to augment the existing systems with crowd-source trust, that could help - although without researching it, I can think of some potential flaws that I'd be concerned about. Browsers also nowadays tend to check "bad site" lists that can help with this kind of issue after the fact.

I don't think that there's an answer yet. EV (Extended Validation) certs - the certificates that cause websites to display "green" in your browser - won't help against CA compromise, and frankly they come off as little more than a marketing ploy to increase CA revenues. The cost of "purchasing" certificates is kind of ludicrous in itself - the concept being that the cost discourages misuse. Yet there should be some way for CAs to make a buck, and I hardly think that "open" certificate authorities - issuing certs for free to anyone - are a great idea. I think that approaches like Cloudflare's are quite probably the way of the future in this regard, but still not an answer to the problem.

It's not my intent to pretend that I have an answer. There are far smarter people than I who are actively working on this. What annoys me more than anything is that this gives journalists and politicians an apparent excuse to roll out phrases using the "cyber-" prefix. Cyber-crime, cyber-theft, cyber-fraud, cyber-sex ... you name it. It's annoying, passe, overused, and frequently misused.

Breaches like this shouldn't mean a loss of faith in SSL altogether. What it should mean is that those who neglect security get a wakeup call, that people discuss and actively think about it, and that companies learn that communication is king when it comes to these problems. Let's not write off SSL - by all means, improve it, augment it, and make it overall better. Instead, keep the focus where it should be - on the need for proper management of security and risk (and not mandated by politicians, or abused by clueless journalists). That, and customer service, are at the heart of good IT governance.

My tweets are secure because no-one knows what the hell I'm on about: @OhCrap

Tech.Ed Australia Day 3 and Wrapup

Matt Marlor — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 16:25:00 GMT

So finally, I finish up my rundown of the conference, with my thoughts on how it went. Looking forward to next year!

It always strikes me as to how many awesome people I meet at Tech.Ed - whether for the first time, or finally putting a face to a name.

This year was no different. Between the Microsoft people who live and breathe the event for months in advance, the delegates who are excited to be there, and the random people on the Gold Coast who stop and chat - it's one of the best things about the conference and one of the major reasons I really enjoy going. Networking is a big part of any IT conference, and Microsoft are pretty good at it.

The Fun Factory party at the close of Day 2 was great, and I really enjoyed it a lot more in contrast to last year, but I already touched on that. I used Day 3 to catch up with people and content - enjoyed catching @orinthomas in his Interactive Theatre session for DPM client backups - being an area I've not yet played with to the extent he has, I enjoyed it, and it was a great way to pick up even more tips for future presentations.

I also caught up with a bunch of people I hadn't managed to catch previously, and thank a lot of sponsors in person for their support of the AuTechHeads Party. It looks like we might be able to do more events in future, which would be awesome! And it's amazing just how many great people I know.

It was also an opportunity to look over the conference as a whole. The Community Lounge was probably my favourite area, and I think that @nickhodgemsft really made the concept of hygge a strong part of it. It was a good place to look if you wanted to find someone, and it was by far the best place to chill out, have a coffee, and catch up on things. I know @jeffa36 and a lot of the DPE team used it as a place of respite too, and fair enough!

It's evident that Microsoft have really grown into the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre - building on what they've learnt in past years and applying it to great effect. While there are always things that "could" be better, I can appreciate the complexity of keeping 2 - 3,000 people happy in such a small window. Just organising to accomodate 300 people for the AuTechHeads Party was a big enough job in itself. It's no wonder they keep coming back, and I suspect keeping the same venue helps quite a bit.

If there's one thing that I personally would change, it'd be the way the Interactive Theatres are setup. They're nice enough, but the lack of a roof means that a lot of noise can creep in, but having a roof would mean we'd asphyxiate. Equally, it would be great to be able to do rehearsals somehow - I really don't know how either of thesecould be achieved, but it'd be helpful.

Overall, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to speak, and I ultimately got a speaker shirt and backpack of my very own (the latter thanks to @jamesbannan - thanks mate!). I'd love to do it again, but time will tell if I get the chance!

At the very end, it's always jarring to have the "all done, get out, bye" in the locknote (I paraphrase, of course!) ... but I had one final surprise. @generalben let me know via Twitter - and caught me in person - that I'd won the TechQuest prize for the "Spruiker" badge, a Windows Phone 7 device. I'll look forward to receiving it!

It was amazing to see the boost that AuTechheads got from the Party and from being part of the TechQuest badges. It's exciting to see how many new members signed up, and hopefully we'll see a lot of them stick around and get involved. I'm sure we'll work to build on that, too - we love our community!

For me, though, the single biggest highlight of Tech.Ed this year was seeing the awesome week that our own @kittenstix had - especially the runner up for the Women in IT Community Contributor of the Year award. That's recognition that she deserves, and has well and truly earnt, and she didn't even hit me for doing a blog post. Well done Kitty!

Great work, Microsoft. Good seeing everyone. And hopefully I'll see you again next year - and, of course, before!

Insert witty remark about Twitter here: @OhCrap

My first ever AuTechHeads Blog – TechEd Australia Wrap Up.

Simone — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 02:29:00 GMT

I was lucky enough to attend TechEd again this year and had a fantastic week. Like most people I’m heading back to work with tons of new ideas and a renewed enthusiasm in the technology I work with every day. If you missed it this year, this is my wrap up.

Highlight:
The most amazing part of this week for me personally was winning runner up in the Microsoft Women in IT Community Contributor Award. I was genuinely shocked when I was called up and I’m still really touched that people thought of me. For those of you that nominated me, a massive thank you. I meant a lot to me and has really inspired me to keep at it.

Of course the biggest thank you goes to Catherine Eibner (@ceibner) who does lots of hard work to help promote the WIT cause. I think she does a stellar job and deserves to be recognised for her hard work.

Speaker/ Sessions Highlights:
My favourite sessions were delivered by Rhonda Layfeild (@deploymentDr) and Rick Claus (@RicksterCDN). Both speakers delivered technical content that I found useful, relevant and free of advertising. The app compat sessions were a close third and should have been 500’s on the schedule. I loved how all three speakers presented info that was 100% technical. Everything they spoke about could be implemented right now - there’s nothing new to buy and you don’t have to have the latest and greatest. You can take the lessons you learned and implement them as soon as you get back to work. Seeing new tech is great, but I find stuff I can use right away really valuable.

There were also lots of AuTechHeads peeps presenting this year, apologies if I didn’t make your sessions, so much to see, so little time! I’m sure you all nailed it and it made me proud to see you all on the speakers list.

Social:
I can’t believe that just 3 years ago I didn’t know any of you. I was at TechEd, attending sessions, eating in the dining rooms and chilling out in my hotel room by myself. It’s daunting being a first time attendee when you don’t know anyone, there’s a sea of people and not many reach out to say hi. Steven (@themolk) saw me waiting like a loner for a session and introduced himself, dragged me to the WIT lunch and introduced me to a stack of cool peeps. He also got me hooked on twitter and wow! I’ve met so many awesome friends on twitter, I’ve never looked back (you know who you are; I’m not listing everyone for fear of accidently missing someone out).

If you’re an AuTechHeads member and you go to an event, don’t leave the new guy or geek girl standing there in the corner. Go say hi and introduce yourself, invite them over to your posse. It’s what will grow the community and keep the AuTechHeads group unique. I certainly appreciated you all taking the time to say hi and get to know me.

Speaking of social events, this year the AuTechHeads party was a great success. Thanks to all those who came and all of the Core Team who helped out. Of course big thanks to the group lead Matt (@ohcrap) and the sponsors who made the night a hit. If you have any feedback please let us know so we can make sure next year is even better!

And that’s my wrap up. I can confidently say – BEST. TECHED. EVER!

x @kittenstix