Dec 14 2007

Windows 2008 Server RC0

A while back now i have been able to install windows 2008 Beta, well RC0 is out and this has the long awited Virtualization, well at least for me, and for an RC0 release i am rather impressed at the stability and speen, however its not without its configuration problems, and we can only hope that microsft will address them all.

I had issues installing the Virtualization,  i was getting the following error ‘The virtual machine could not be started because the hypervisor is not running’

the following could help you

1) be sure that your processor of the physical computer has a supported version of hardware-assisted virtualization. all new duel cores, quad cores etc Xeon processors also support this

 2) you will nee to confirm that hardware-assisted virtualization and hardware-assisted data execution protection are enabled in the BIOS of the physical computer.

And the big one that sumped me for a long while, MAKE sure you DONT use software raid on your boot partion, this will cause the above error.

Infact dont use software raid at all well at least for RC0 the Virtualization just isnt very quick there seems to be to much overhead for it, although it seems as though the processor isntworking.

Speaking of processor We are now running 6 production servers on a Xeon 2.4 quad core and wow the processor is barley working. Insane, the only notable usage is memory, which i suppose is really to be expected.

The other thing thats is funky although i am yet to understand how it actully works, is the snapshots, yes you can take a snap shot of your VM which seems to snapshot within seconds.  however in RC0 there is no scheduled snapshots nor is there any command line support for the Virtualization, but i hear this is comming in the final release…

So microsoft well done you got this one right, big thumbs up from me


Dec 14 2007

Apple ITouch – Not all that bad..

Well I got to have a quick play and preview of the brand spanking new Apple Itouch, and i must say its very nice, it has built in WIFI and i have to say the clarity of the screen is sensatioal the pictures and the rendering is abosulty amazing for a device like this. I streamed a movie from good old you Tube and put it as full screen. And not only did it stream it without having to pause once (which tells me the WIFI chipset is not half bad, in fact alot better then some of the Windows Mobile phones) but it aslo look sensataion.

The other thing i must i say i reall liked is the size of the buttins they are actully made for the normal population, (or at least my fat fingers) so navigation seems easy enough. the screen size it rather nise still in the 16:9 fasion. and the other function i found really smart was as soon as you turn the Itouch on its side in a 16:9 fashion is automaticlly senses it and turn the screen to suit.

The last thing i had a look at whilse my very quick look was the way it rendered a normal webpage, it shrunk it down so the whole page would fit and it did this very very nicly, you can zoon to that part of the page and navigate very eaisly, Microsoft i think you have you work cut out to get IE mobile to act like this!!!!!!!!

The only thing i really dont like is the fact that the bottom is chrome and the screen is black, it leaves a mess of finger prints, i mean sure is looks very neat if its clean and untouched but after 30 seconds of touching, wow is a bloody mess.

My other complaint is the lack of appliactions like there is no pdf viewer, and now flash installed, so any flash websites i would hate to think… and word docs pdfs well you just cant read them on the run if this were your only mobile device and you needed something quick well you might be in a spot of trouble.

But either way i wouldnt hav any complaintes having one of these funky little devices. However i think i would stick to a windows mobile device i just love the versitility and functionality and masses of support and software for it. but then again its only VERY early days for the ITouch.


Dec 14 2007

Windows Mobile 6

Well i know its been out for a while, an i am lucky enough to have a Dopod 838 Pro, and HTC finnally released there offical WM6 (windows Mobile 6 ) compatable OS. So i decided to take the plunge and upgrade from WM5 to WM6. Some of microsofts notble differances are:The new look, which does resemble Vistas skin look, and much nicer and smoother then the old WM5 for me this was a plus.

Serach functionality, now WM6 has a search function, which can crawl your PDA for what ever you are looking for similar to google desktop. To be honest i dont use this, it could be helpful with email, but i find it just takes more room up on my today screen.

WM6 is also said to have better or faster web browsing, really to be quite honest, i am still yet to see this… Although i do connect to my WIFI faster, this could be something that MS did that wasnt really noted.

Some other things they have done, as MSN is now called Messanger LIVE, this also has been intergrated into the WM6 release, and again this looks alot better.

other then what MS has released I have found that there is alot of other very, very nice applications that will make your life alot easier, the one i have found to be sensatioal, and also looks very tidy is the HTC home plugin v1.0.

Performance wise well its the same, maybe a little more stable but essentally the same thing with a few more tids and tads, Do i recommend the upgrade… yes i do, its worth it just for the new look, it really does look a whole lot better, you will only gain functionality.

If you are upgrading just remember to read the instructions very carefully, you could potenally BRICK your phone. There are ways of avioding this by using something called Hard-SPL-V7, I highly recommend using this before upgrading to any new rom. HARD SPL can be found here.

I do not recommend recommend any of this be attempted if you do not feel 100% sure about the whole proceedure of course.

Enjoy


Dec 14 2007

Microsoft Silverlight is here…

What is Microsoft Silverlight? Well to put it very, very simply, its Microsofts answer to Adobe Flash. Although it does have a lot of maturing to do, but i must say Microsoft have so far done a reasonbly nice job, Michael Kordahi recently came in to Elcom Technology  to give a short speal about the latest product from Microsoft.

After a few quick demos of websites and some general demos on his laptop, it was VERY clear that silverlight’s greatest strength is video streaming, it was renforced by Michael, how easy it was to achive. It was aslo shown how to do some movement, mirroring and a few other fancy things, now i have played with Flash, quite a bit and i find the action scrip is rather difficult to grasp, however Silverlight is written with the common XAML and the good old JavaScript, so everything could be coded by anyone that knows these languaes and this is almost any web developer, which is great news. Also the silverlightinterface will also create the required file set rather easily. If you have ever used dreamweaver and flash or even front page / flash (yes i know front page sucks) well its seems like a mix between the 2.

the down fall is that the silverlight applicaion needs to be downloaded before you can see the silverlight in action, very much like flash. it would have been great if MS did bundle it in to a windows update, i mean it is only 2MB after all.

Download the player here: http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/install.aspx

I must say i was intreged about silverlight and now after Michaels demo i am a bliver that in a small amount of time silverlight will be all the rage. And with the Silverlight version 1.1 comming out shortly this should be a very exciting time in the web world, especially the video streaming world…

silverlight can be found here: http://silverlight.net