March 2009 - Posts
Today, after 15 years of giving our companies money to Vodafone and its previous incarnations, we are leaving them for O2 Ireland.
Why?
iPhone.
Simple as that, we are not saving any money by making the move but we are getting a better customer service from our representative and we get all the iPhone features our company needs. I have officially given up on waiting for Microsoft and phone providers to come up with something better. I am putting my bet in the Apple / O2 pot.
I would have stayed with Vodafone if they could have got me iPhones or they reduced their price significantly to our company, but alas… they did neither.
Just yesterday I was demonstrating Power Pack 2 RC at a Microsoft event in Dublin (TechDays). The great news is that it has been released to Windows Update today and will be offered up to your Windows Home Server for install.
For more information, read the Windows Home Server Blog
Here are the details I have so far….
- Unlimited calls and texts for €109.00 ex VAT per iPhone
- Calls to all national fixed lines and mobile numbers included (I am presuming only O2 mobiles, but am waiting to find someone with clarification on that).
- Texts apply to all fixed & mobile numbers
- 1GB of data usage included, as well as BitBuzz access around Ireland.
- 8GB Phone on this plan is €49.00 Inc VAT.
- 16GB Phone is €99.00 + VAT.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx
Get it! Seriously, I have been running it on my Vista machine and my Windows 7 Machine for a month or so now. You can kind of consider it like IE7 was a beta for IE8 
I shall be there, doing Q&A with Will ons SBS and EBS virtualisation!
Its free!
http://www.microsoft.com/ireland/technet/techdays.aspx
OK, A quick issue I found today with Windows 7 and Sage 50 2009.
If you export invoices, statements, or in fact any report to email using the PDF Sage driver you will get an error that says:
“Unable to install printer”
As a work around for the moment, you need to run the application as administrator. Grrrrrr. Lets hope that Sage fix it, and don’t blame Windows 7 for trying to protect you from an administrative change.
So, I was over at the Game Studios very briefly at this years MVP summit. It is great to see that at least they have retained a good core group of people that can make “something” happen in the future…. what that something is, well… I don’t know.
But I have a “community question” that I would like as many people to answer here for me. It may give me at least some weight to take to the new team.
If the former flight simulator team at Microsoft made available, in a rough form, an unsupported set of tools that they may (or may not) have that would improve the current design tools available to FSX right now, would that at least soften the blow of ACES closing as we knew it and would it be helpful in keeping you all developing for the platform ongoing?
Post your thoughts here….
This is a chance to be heard, but ONLY for this specific question. I won’t publish rants etc!
Remember this post
Microsoft have released a hotfix patch now as promised. It really must be installed on SBS2008 setups and will be included in SP2
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=967358&kbln=en-us
So yesterday at the MVP summit, I upgraded my Vista Laptop to Windows 7 beta… the one that everyone got their hands on recently from Microsoft.
This product rocks! Vista is coming off my machines….
But even better than that, late yesterday I managed to lay my hands on a newer build with a new desktop. Whilst the bunnies are lovely…. there is something more to know about the build I am now running. It is even faster again than the beta build which was already fast!
Seriously…. when this product releases, people should be queueing to get it!
On talking with the Windows 7 team, and everyone here, I can tell you that never before have I seen a real drive within a company to get a product so right and well built!
OK, I am on twitter. I gave up as everyone else just kept at me about it.
I still don’t see the point, but I am a Lemming……
http://twitter.com/nickwhittome
Updates from the MVP summit currently