I spent most of last week and will likely spend the rest of 2007 on the dark side.

Google

If you are looking to chat with me and don’t do business with OwnWebNow, you can find me on Google Talk. My address is vlad@vladville.com, which consequently is also my community-related email address. Please do not send indirect/junk/newsletters to that address, thats what v@vladville.com is for. Likewise, don’t send personal (or email that needs my immediate attention) to v@vladville.com because I am unlikely to see it.

The new company will run on completely open and free technologies. Considering that OWN almost exclusively operates and sells closed/Microsoft technology I feel this gives me a more balanced experience… and to that end:

Mac OS X 10.5

I have been trying to use it for the last few days and I must admit I am hating it. On the other hand, I am not nearly as disappointed with it as I imagined I would be. What I believe I am saying is that if you need a serious business collaboration platform, Vista is the way to go. But if you need something to do the basic computer stuff quickly (check mail, burn a DVD, browse the web and play videos) Mac is your tool.

I am half/switching to the Mac for 2007. I say I am half switching simply because the tools I rely on to do my business do not exist on the Mac and I can’t justify switching to the platform completely just so I could virtualize the production platform on top of it.

The biggest leg up Mac has on Vista is the elegance factor. Case and point, Katie came down to my Office yesterday to help me do some last minute things before skipping town. She sat at my table, I turned on the Mac, she turned on the PC. I remembered that I had completely powered things down so I cycled the router. The Mac immediately got the connection and started. The Windows, not so much. So, dig through four menus to get to the network connection properties. Disable adapter. UAC prompt. Enable adapter. UAC prompt. Nothing. Open properties, set static IP. UAC prompt.

Just a brief update on the progress as I’ve made some changes to the original hardware in my Building my Hackintosh blog post due to some unforseen compatibility issues. The major change is to the motherboard, I got a Gigabyte GA-945GCMX-S2 and it works flawlessly. The original Asrock motherboard worked perfectly fine as well but the kernel driver that was written for it did not support line in or mic, and the sound itself was shaky.. so $50 down the shute.

Few other notes:

• Nearly all motherboards need to be flashed back. Asrock ConRoe 1333 needed a BIOS of less than 1.50 in order to support Leopard.
• The vanilla rollout (default) needs to be tweaked to work with the standard PC AMI or Phoenix BIOS, so when you create the partition make sure you use MBR instead of the other options.
• The “hack” post-install scripts are nothing more than dd and bootloader provisioning, for some reason the setup doesn’t set the partition as active or bootable.
• While getting the boot loader to work can be challenging, you can just boot into the OS by using the boot loader that spins up on the DVD. Same basic process used on Linux, BSD, etc, go to the boot loader options and let it know where to load the kernel from. If you have a single hard drive and single partition this will do it: rd=/disk0s1
• Make sure your hard drive is on the first or second SATA port, if your board has more you’ll run into issues (or at least I did)
• There is a huge scene / community around OS X, perhaps its finest quality. One forum I spent a lot of time on was http://forum.insanelymac.com
• There is also an IRC channel, though as with all IRC channels, stupidity is not welcome and they won’t hug your dumb away like most other places tend to. So if you haven’t read every topic on the problem you’re having at Insanely Mac, don’t bother. The server is at irc.osx86.hu and channel is #leopard
• I was not aware that the beast works with AMD chips; Apparently, it does, there are a few cooked DVDs that will work.
• The basic requirement is SSE 2 / SSE 3 instruction set, so technically anything from a $35 Celeron on up will work. For home browsing purposes I don’t see much of a reason to go beyond it.
• The ICH7 chipset I picked worked out of the box, sans sound. The Realtek 888 chipset on the Asrock did not have the kext to make it work, but Azelia (880) does and requies just a slight patch. Video, network, USB and other fun stuff worked out the box without tweaking of any kind.

Overall, works as advertised. I am not particularly impressed with the operating system, way too cartoonish and simplistic, yet practically useless (something so simple as expanding zip files stacks them on top of one another, doesn’t expand the window as more files are populated, makes it impossible to tell what came from which archive); for the life of me I can’t figure out why people like this garbage but hack accomplished.

P.S. I can’t say enough good stuff about Arctic Silver, I love that stuff. I used the retail kit for the processor/heatsink/fan assembly and its provided thermal compound had the unit smoking at 46 on the average in BIOS (80% load); When I moved the processor and assembly to the new motherboard Katie cleaned off the stock termal compound and I applied AS5 – haven’t gone above 26 degrees. Can’t beat that.

HTH, Vlad.

Microsoft has made the long awaited Windows Server 2003 SP2 available as a release candidate (read: beta, broken, not for production) with some fairly interesting and worthwhile updates.

Click here for the SP2 site.

MMC3 is going to be a must for those that will be early adopters of Exchange 2007 but most of the improvements are going to be a hard sell initially. I can tell you from experience of thousands of Windows Server boxes we manage that they are rock solid and have performed remarkably well. Still nice to see Microsoft continue development on its flagship server product and adjust to the market needs. Niiiice.

If you have Windows Mobile 5 and Vista RC1 you might find that the Windows Mobile Device Center is missing from Vista RC1. As a matter of fact, you won’t even be able to get your device to be recognized by Vista RC1, it will keep on prompting you for a “Generic Serial” driver when you plugin your device. This was not the case in previous versions of Vista and there are some great details on why/what/who/where at Mel Sampat’s blog.

There’s just one little problem. If you try Windows Update today, it will not detect the WMDC download. This is because one additional step needs to be performed to allow this detection to take place. Unfortunately that step is restricted to internal Microsoft beta testers at this point. The friendly Program Manager for WMDC, Lydia O, sits in the office next to mine. So I asked her what was preventing external RC1 testers from using WMDC. She explained that they’re still working on some critical issues which make it necessary to restrict public testing. Judging from the steady stream of people walking in and out of her office all day, it looks like Lydia’s team is working as hard as possible to resolve those issues and release WMDC publicly to Vista RC1 testers very soon. We don’t want to keep you from enjoying the great WMDC experience, but it simply isn’t available externally at this time. When it’s ready, it will automatically show up in your Windows Update list without any further action on your part. WMDC will certainly be ready in time for Vista RTM and hopefully long before that - sometime in the next few weeks.

Mel also points out that the Windows Mobile Device Center download for Vista RC1 is available as a separate download on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile site. WARNING: still a beta but if you’re running Vista that’s not a major concern now is it? On the positive side, the feature set for mobility on Vista looks very impressive:

• Streamlined setup - A simplified new partnership wizard and improved partnership management.
• Robust synchronization - Synchronization of business-critical data such as e-mail, calendars, contacts, tasks, favorites, and files.
• Photo management - Picture management helps you detect new photos on your Windows Mobile powered device, tag and import them to the Windows Vista Photo Gallery.
• Media synchronization – Use Microsoft Windows Media Player to synchronize and shuffle music files on your device.
• File browsing - A new device browsing experience enables you more quickly browse files and folders and open documents on your device directly from your PC.
• Enhanced user interface – A simple and compelling user interface helps you to quickly access critical tasks and configure your device.

I have Outlook 2007 on my laptop and Outlook 2003 on my main workstation – and the latest Technical Refresh seems to be causing a slight bug that made my Outlook 2003 view ugly. If Outlook 2007 fires up first with Outlook 2003 being offline it resets the default font on the default Inbox view from Tahoma 8pt to Segoe UI 8pt…. a font that looks really ugly in Outlook 2003. Anyhow, here is how you reset it back: (click on the screenshot to enlarge)

Right click on From/Subject/Received header in your inbox and select Customize Current View.

Click on Other Settings button to adjust fonts.

Click on Row Font button and reset it back to Tahoma 8pt.

Thats it. Bugged…

Beta software, suicidal only, yada yada yada.

Latest version of Vista beta (build 5456) is up on Connect. If you have no life and are reading my blog on Saturday ~9 PM EST you’ll be happy to know that. Also, in case you can’t do the math, it also helps to remember that most of Europe is asleep right now. So instead of hitting the USA mirror that most  will attack, aim for the European mirror to get the really beefy transfer rate. USA ~60 KB/sec with Europe kicking butt at 522 KB/sec  I installed the first really useful build of Vista at TechEd and promptly turned off UAP – according to the few that have been working on this latest build the UAP has really undergone a severe amount of changes to make it more appealing to the end user and still adequately protect them.

I’m a big fan of Microsoft Messenger – sure, it has some bits and pieces missing (like ability to sign in from multiple computers) but its the only thing that has made me leave Trilian and dump all the other networks. I downgraded back to beta because the production release of Messenger Live! blows (or leaks) to the tune of allocating 160 MB ram and 40% CPU if given the chance. Um, no thanks.

Anyhow, if you have already upgraded you’ll be happy to know that the Messenger Plus Live 4.0 extension is going to be out this weekend. This is a must-have extension without which I could not live. Until the latest betas you could not rename contacts, you had to live with the way they chose to “display” their name. So if your friend was showing his state pride and changed his display name to “Choking the Chicken at 16th Annual Gordo’s Mule Day & Chickenfest” you’d have to live with it.

P.S. Yes, it’s real. This year they even had a 5K run. I am NOT joking here, if you’ve never been in the South, these kinds of things actually do happen. We often get looked down on because off things like Daytona and Gator meals but man does it get worse. A lot worse. I am not sure how the chain reaction happens but essentially you take a large density of rednecks, add Budweiser and they’ll blow up a f’n bridge. And you thought that the “BP Gasoline & Crazy Ed’s Fireworks” was the worst idea possible…

Update: Someone called BS on this one so here you go. Official Muleday / ChickenFest web page, with a live webcam and children tractor race to boot. I'm a creative guy but even I could not come up with something this good.

It’s been a while since I talked about G vs. M, but little has changed since then. Google is still whipping that llama.

If you’re a Microsoft Small Business Specialist I hope you remember the IT Basic questions from the Sales & Marketing assessment. If you’re truly one of us you also know that most small business owners, regardless of size, tend to be IT Basic, if not to an extent even IT ignorant. 

If that turns out to be true, there are bad times ahead for these guys.

Google is launching a (beta) of Google Spreadsheets, a web-driven ajax spreadsheet program that at least for my needs is superior to Microsoft Excel. Yes, superior. Look at some of these modern features that are available directly from a web site: access control, instant sharing (enter an email and send out an invitation), realtime collaboration via IM. No application to install, no viewer.. just the web browser. I don’t need to link data in 3 books, I don’t get easily impressed by shiny objects and I have not built my entire business and accounting system on top of Excel – but what I do often is edit the sheets with multiple people, work from systems that do not have Excel installed, create backups and save my work at every turn. For me, this is perfect and its enough.

More importantly, as I use this I will invite others to look at the Spreadsheets and edit them in a browser instead of piling on attachments and thus starts a viral elimination of Microsoft Excel.

Now I usually caution against trying out beta software for consumers but considering that this runs out of a web browser it just might be worth a try. Honestly, I’d pay for Google Spreadsheets over Microsoft Excel, just based on the few screen shots that I’ve seen. Although ads don’t bother me much I really don’t click on them often and I’d rather pay and get all the screen real estate I can. Really, it is that good… except… Google Talk is just awful which means I’ll be sticking to Outlook until Google admits that their chat is weak and figures out a way to totally rip off MSN Messenger.

Now will an established small business jump at this? Highly, highly unlikely. One thing you start to appreciate about small business IT ignorant cases is that they will run their business out of an Excel spreadsheet. That spreadsheet eventually becomes a full blown application and a CRM and a toaster and a babysitter when the child grows up enough to be able to do basic data entry. Forget about “switching” to Google Spreadsheets for most established small businesses. However, if you ask 9/10 people they will admit that the behavior I just described is detrimental to their business and that there must be a better way. So to all the doomsday predictions in links above, I don’t think Microsoft has much to worry about here. For the new business, IT basic and everyone not living in a spreadsheet… there seems to be less and less of a reason to buy Office 12 with each passing day. Don’t worry about Steve or Eric, they’ll still sell millions of copies of Office 12, in the short term they got nothing to worry about.

In the long term, this is pretty bad for Microsoft. Where is a live.com equivalent of Google Spreadsheets? “Our goal is to make our customers more productive with bloatware” is the likely quote from Microsoft PR because, lets face it, do you think they would really sacrifice their cash cow to win a little fight with Google? Of course not. But in the long term, that same stance of “our customers need features, our customers need integration” will make live.com part of their initiative largely irrelevant. What is more likely here? Microsoft kills its cow and succumbs to Google’s killer online portfolio… or Google rips off MSN Messenger and pushes forward with Gmail, Gcalendar, Gspreadsheet, Gpowerpoint and Goutlook? I’d bet on Google. Which, in essence, is a bet against me and my business.

Who are you betting on today?

Are you experiencing this problem on a beta or pre-release program?

One of the particularly unpleasant parts of my job as an ISP/ASP is the fact that since about 1996 every problem my clients experience is my fault, until I can prove otherwise. The tradeoff is to tell them that there is nothing wrong with the systems and that there is nothing more you can do for them as you cannot replicate the problematic behavior. This is not great customer service and practically impossible to say to a long time or VIP customer. One such case woke me up today:

Vlad,

 

There is something wrong with webmail.

 

It kicks you out after 10 seconds and you have to re-login.

 

Also, I set my reply address to sean@domain.com and the e-mail messages arrive with only sean@domain as the reply address.

 

Please let me know when it is fixed so I can let people know.

 

Thanks

Vlad,

 

I guess the problem lies with me at MMMM.  What could be causing me to be disconnected from webmail so quickly from inside MMM?

 

When I connect from the outside my session is not terminated like it is from inside MMM.

 

Thanks

Vlad,

Perhaps its an IE 7 issue.

I’ll just wait to see if the next beta version fixes things.

Thanks

Without going through connect.microsoft.com as well. Follow this link to either download a copy or have them mail you a few disks. Now, watch out because they are really being weasels about this:

In software development, a "beta release" of a product is one that is still in development but is published for testing purposes. Evaluate the next release of Microsoft Office products for testing and planning purposes with 2007 Microsoft Office system Beta 2. The beta release contains all the functionality of the regular release, but is not the final product."

Oh god I hate PR weasels. What they fail to mention in the above text is that Beta, Microsoft for "broken", is a mirracle of software development when software actually works. Should you be stupid enough to test their hypothesis and destroy your system Microsoft will send you to a newsgroup where you will have to rely on kindness of strangers to get yourself back to normal. Or perhaps it will work flawlessly the first time. Thats the risk, feel free to gamble if you wish.

Now that I've covered this for end users, if you're an IT Pro I'm sure you're already brewing that image of XP to try this on. The interface, interaction and behavior of 2007 is drastically different and in two simple words - kicks ass. Downloading as we speak!