I had an email conversation with Graham Jones - President of the Vancouver Technology User Group around Build or Buy your own PC. It's something that we as IT Professionals get asked by peers and by family members all the time. I'm from the Build mindset myself, mainly because I like to tinker. That being said - I recently went the BUY route, just because of lack of time and a good price on a Dell...

This week I criss-crossed the country with the Future of the Desktop Tour events in Quebec City and Edmonton. Capacity crowds filled the theaters in both cities, which was amazing to see and really made me feel good. However in both cities demo gremlins struck, though in different areas. I have tamed both of them but want to share the cause with you. In Edmonton some of the Windows Vista demos behaved...

Adam Galant is a great guy to know when it comes to Visual Studio Team System… He works in my group in Mississauga on the Developer Tools side of the house and maintains his own blog . I asked him to write up a post specifically about Tem Edition for DB IT Pros in response to a press release and announcment at TechEd next week. ————— OK, so this isn’t...

One of the most asked questions on the Future of the Desktop tour is when can I download the bits for Windows Vista Beta 2. The best way to stay informed on the 3 major Betas being released in the near future (Office 2007, Vista 2007 and Exchange 2007) is to stop by the Windows Beta Central page . If you check that page right now – it still says “coming soon” for the availability...

Ottawa is always a fun stop on any tour... not just because it gives me a chance to pop in and say hi to Rick Claus and his family, but because we always get such a great turn-out. What impressed me most was the number of questions and interest of the attendees! Several people asked me similar questions at the User Group meeting with the Ottawa Windows Server User Group ( www.owsug.ca ) and the...

Bruce and I are doing a double whammy tomorrow with him doing a Future of the Desktop Tour event in Ottawa and me in Quebec City. Sitting here in my hotel room in Quebec City reflecting on last week's two stops on the west coast - Vancouver and Calgary - wondering how a Quebec audience will take to an anglophone, I remember some questions I got on BitLocker last week. As Bruce and I showed during...

I noticed there is a new resource out there for IT Professionals looking for info (evaluate, plan, deploy, maintain and secure) on Networking with windows operating systems. It has info on: Network Access Protection with “Longhorn” server Domain Isolation using IPSec Setting up secure wireless networks IPv6 Scalable networking It has content ranging from introductory...

They both can make a big mess of your environment and you will eventually have to deal with the issue head on. I had to take them both on this week. On the raccoon front, I’ve had problems with them for a while – getting into my garbage and rooting around making a mess of things. I finally got annoyed enough (and had time enough) to get a live trap and remove the first of what I am sure...

After attending some of the latest technology conferences and hearing comments from my team, friends and lots of input from our events... it seems everyone is in agreement that it's time to try something new. Well… here we go! We decided that now was the time. We took in all the feedback, ideas and comments from some very passionate people and we decided to try, a more focused event on the individual...

I wanted to share some thoughts on a little bit of a different event I presented at last week. I was asked to come and deliver a workshop on “Mobile Messaging – Changing the way we work” to 100 or so Public Sector employees at their DPI Professional Development conference . I’m one of the Windows Mobile 5 enthusiasts on the team and I live and breath the Mobile worker lifestyle...

I hope you have heard about this cool site called www.seewindowsvista.com talked about on the blogsphere and on the Internet. Tom Skerrit (probably dating myself, but I remember him from Top Gun) guides you through a number of ISV offerings working on Vista solutions TODAY. Nice site – interesting interface. Great showcase of what people and companies are already doing / planning to do with...

I have been a busy guy of late. With the other team members doing their various national tours – I was holding down the fort with local work. The past two days were busy with the second anual Canadian Public Sector Security Summit here in Ottawa. I’ve got a post or two with additional resources in my drafts folder – I’ll be publishing them later today. This post is a simple...

Montreal was an amazing start to the Future of the Desktop Tour and Vancouver just kept the momentum going. We had just under 600 people show up to the event and it rocked!! The night before the tour we also had 90 people attend the Windows Vista Chalk Talk held in conjunction with the Vancouver IT Pro User Group ( http://www.vantug.org ) and that was awesome. At both events I spent some time talking...

I have received a number of emails and comments from those that attended the Montreal stop of the Future of the Desktop Tour wondering about the availability of the Beta 2 bits for Office 2007 and Windows Vista. During the tour I mentioned that Beta 2 of both Windows Vista and Office 2007 was announced last Tuesday, May 23. However, both are not currently available for download. If you go to the...

I REALLY love coming to Montreal. Having lived in Ottawa and frequently visited Montreal for both personal and business reasons over the years before I moved to Toronto, the city never looses its appeal. It has great people, great food, and we always have a great time. For these reasons I am really happy that we decided to kick off the Future of the Desktop Tour in Montreal. The response to this...

As part of most of the tours we do across the country, we typically will have a session the night before the main event at a user group in the local city. In Montreal we held a session called Windows Vista Chalk Talk with the Montreal IT Pro User Group ( MITPRO ). For those of you that may not have attended a Chalk Talk type session, it is very interactive and very free form. We really don't have much...

In case you didn't get it yet - I believe User Groups are integral to your IT support system and strengthens the local community / economy. I am big on supporting user groups any way I can. When I was in Winnipeg, I had the good fortune to meet Rodney Buike at the Winnipeg IT Pro UserGroup. Rodney is a Microsoft MVP for Windows Server and the publisher of http://thelazyadmin.com (Great Site!). He...

The Future of the Desktop Tour gets under way this week with the first stop in Montreal on Thursday. The response has been unbelievable!! Looks like IT pros out across Canada are interested in seeing what Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office System have to offer and how to deploy it. Bruce and I look forward to seeing and meeting many of you as the tour crosses the country. One thing that...

I have been promising an update on this to lots of people I have been in touch with since the TNX:Technet Exchange tour. The common question was “ Where can I get the device emulator to try Mobile 5 MSFP stuff without having to invest in a device? ”… It used to be that you had to get a copy of Visual Studio 2005 and then get the development kit for Mobile 5, but you still were missing...

I had the opportunity to attend the Microsoft Management Summit this past week in San Diego, CA and it was a GREAT event!! I was able to sit in on a number of sessions and the presentations and content was great but so too were the questions at the end of each of the presentations. I find it fascinating to hear how others are using a product that I work with. The one thing about the questions...

I'm really excited!! In three weeks Bruce Cowper and I will start touring the country for the Future of the Desktop Tour . The tour kicks off in Montreal with a special guest keynote and then criss-crosses the country to finish in Toronto on June 15. The Toronto event will also be streamed live to anyone who registers for the webcast. This means that though we may not be coming to your city on this...

This slipped past my RSS reader until the weekend (I had a busy Friday). Service Pack 1 for Virtual Server 2005 R2 is in Beta right now. Why should you care? The big thing for me is Intel Virtualization support with a single checkbox … A friend of mine from the UK who now works in Redmond as a Program Manager for Virtualization posted some good details on his blog . At first, Beta 1 will...

Besides working with IT Pros while on tour – I’ve also made it a priority to connect with schools and schoolboards. My son started Jr. Kindergarten this year and my twin girls are close behind. I took the opportunity to “adopt” their classroom to make their hand me down computers more stable. I talked with the principal and toured their more powerful computer lab that is shared...

When I was in Winnipeg, I had the good fortune to meet Rodney Buike at the Winnipeg IT Pro UserGroup . I also killed his Dell Laptop harddrive (which he fixed by smacking it on the desk a few times) and shared some pints of the local Fort Gary brew while debating virtualization technologies and various other topics. Rodney is a Microsoft MVP for Windows Server and the publisher of http://thelazyadmin...

As promised to those that attended last night's TechNet Monthly in Mississauga, you can download the PowerPoint slides for the event here . For more information on Identity Management on Windows Server 2003 R2, visit the Identity Management web page on the main Microsoft web site at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/r2/Identity_Management/default.mspx . From a developer point of view...