When I had my previous smartphone, I decided I'd try running Satellite Navigation software on it. ALK were the first to support the phone with Co-Pilot. Co-pilot 5 had it's foibles but basically it worked. It didn't work with Windows Mobile 6 which is what my current phone uses. I looked at the upgrade to version 6, but then ALK made me an offer buy Co-pilot, get version 6 now and version 7 when it's shipping. Version 7 dropped on my doormat last week.
Installing proved to be a bit of a challenge, as the version ALK shipped didn't have a version for non-touch screen smartphones, only Pocket PCs. 10 minutes after calling ALKs support I had the files I needed, installation was unremarkable and hey presto I was up and running with the new version. ALK didn't make changes with version 6, but version 7 is practically unrecognisable. After the initial disorientation - "Why are you adding that to the display ?" - I'm starting to prefer it. I'll try to post something more about it at a later date. One of the things in Version 7 is it has more pre-configured voices. You can have Australian, British or US English and various European languages in Male or Female voices. I think the voice files used to be WAV files (they might have been WMV) and Windows media player on my PC was prone to deleting them if I told it to shuffle music onto the device. In changing versions the format has gone to .ogg
Recently, Emma Clarke has been in the news, famous as the voice of London underground Emma recorded some spoofs of things announcers might say. You can read on her blog how a combination of sloppy journalism and stupid management cost her that job. (follow the links to announcements). Someone at ALK thought it would be a great idea to have some spoof Sat-nav announcements - there are a couple of additional ones on Emma's site. They'll have a full set of voice announcements by Emma soon. I quite like the idea of replacing "You have reached your destination" with "Are we there yet ? Are we there yet ? AreWeThereYet ?" Sadly they say one should use the Co-pilot central software to put it onto the device, and after installing 3 GB of it I discovered it doesn't work with 64 bit Vista. Grrrr.
More coverage: BBC, BBC (again), Jason
I guess I'm not the only person in Microsoft who thought that stopping software working when it seemed to be pirated was a good idea. To be honest, I still do. However, the process has to be infallible. If it's 99.9% correct and you sell 100 Million copies that's 100,000 people who get the wrong experience. There have been enough documented cases of the system going wrong to create worry in people's minds. In reality the risk of a legitimate system getting dumped into reduced functionality mode (and then only until you had called the activation line) was very small in indeed, but people felt like it could happen to them.
So it's changing... Here are two quotes from the press release.
All copies of Windows Vista still require activation and the system will continue to validate from time to time to verify that systems are activated properly. What is changing with SP1 is the nature of the experience for those systems that are never activated or that fail validation
and
Users whose systems are identified as counterfeit will be presented with clear and recurring notices about the status of their system and how to get genuine. They won’t lose access to functionality or features, but it will be very clear to them that their copy of Window Vista is not genuine and they need to take action
In other words if your system looks like it's pirated you'll get nagged until you sort it out.
The BBC picked up the story. Over at ZD-Net everyone seemed to be talking about it. Mary Jo had the story with some interesting quotes very early. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, had a piece called See, complain loud enough and Microsoft will listen (people often think complaining to a huge company, Microsoft or anyone else, won't achieve anything. It can, but it takes more than person to do it). Ed Bott said "The case for Windows Vista Service Pack 1 just got a lot stronger" A lot ? my first reaction is that Ed's over-stating it. He is not the only person who calls the feature a "Kill Switch" either, he notes that "The Softies responsible for WGA, wince when they hear the term “kill switch.” They prefer a more benign description, reduced functionality mode". Ed does have a track record of knowing what he's talking about. I'd flag his recent piece Five secrets to faster Vista starts as evidence of methodical research and a knowledge of Vista (ditto his piece How green is your PC). So I'm wavering a little in my conviction that we had it right to start with. But if we can't convince legitimate customers that the system won't accidentally treat them as pirates, then we need to change.
In my quest trying to find something for an earlier post, I found this image which was too good not to share.
In the Credits was a link to Janina Köppel's Excellent SP-Studio site. It's done in flash, which proves that although flash is often put to bad uses, that's not always the case.
We had a lot of fun at home doing members of the family, characters from Robin Hood, and finally other our the team - and that includes George while we're on the Road (her picture is rather too flattering after the one she posted of me).
Last year I was trying to draw some cartoons for this blog ... Now at the weekend I was looking through a book of Banksy's work, in which he poses the question "Many artists are prepared to suffer, but why are so few prepared to learn to draw ?" This might see the cartoons making a comeback
*Thames Valley Park is the address of Microsoft in the UK
I had a mail overnight from the Microsoft Connect service saying that as registered user Vista SP1 Release candidate is now available for download for suitably registered customers. It doesn't seem to be on the technet site at the moment. In any event the news is out that we've reached that milestone.
*** UPDATE *** SP1 RC is now on the Technet site. I was told it would go onto technet and MSDN together. I can't check MSDN, but I'd expect it to be there too.
I also saw a press release yesterday about the launch of Server 2008, which contains the nearest thing to naming a release date.
Windows Server 2008, which is scheduled to release to manufacturing (RTM) by the Feb. 27 launch event, reached the RC1 milestone today and is available to customers for download at http://www.microsoft.com/ws08eval.
That's it.. go and download it! Apparently 1.8 Million people already have tried the earlier builds.
It's widely understood that some of the stuff in Vista SP1 is linked to Server 2008, so they should ship pretty much together, but exactly when each of the ships is still to be decided. The launch event is the big fanfare thing which has to be booked months in advance. Release to Manufacturing happens when the product is deemed ready, and if you're looking to buy the product, the date it appears on the price list / in the shops is different again.
I got grumbled at for talking to much about Virtualization futures, so to prove I never learn ... the RC0 and RC1 builds of Server 2008 contain the same preview code for Virtualization. Hyper-V will go into beta at the release of Server 2008 and it will release with 180 days. We've been pretty clear about this for months. That doesn't give us much of a date for the release though - we might RTM server 2008 as soon as we get back from the Holiday season, and within 180 days could mean "the very next day" - theoretically at least - or we might not release Server 2008 until Feb 27th (it could even slip from that schedule) and Hyper-V might need the full 180 days. So its release could fall anywhere between January and August. I have nothing to indicate where in these ranges it will come [note. This isn't a "know but can't say", but a "really don't know"]. It's stating the obvious to say that System Center Virtual Machine Manager wants to support Hyper-V as soon as possible after it launches, but how soon they can finish their product is one unknown, when Hyper-V is a second unknown, so predicting the gap is doing algebra with no knowns.
It's always nice when someone says James O'Neill, IT Pro Evangelist at Microsoft, reveals that Virtual Server 2005 support will end in 2014 - except that then people come and demand to know why you're revealing product plans.
So, lets start with a basic question. "Where do I go to find out when support for [Product X] expires ? (or if it has already expired)" Answer: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy , It's quite a long FAQ but two key pieces are:
Microsoft will offer a minimum of 10 years of support for Business and Developer products. Mainstream Support for Business and Developer products will be provided for 5 years or for 2 years after the successor product (N+1) is released, whichever is longer. Microsoft will also provide Extended Support for the 5 years following Mainstream support or for 2 years after the second successor product (N+2) is released, whichever is longer. Finally, most Business and Developer products will receive at least 10 years of online self-help support.
The Support Lifecycle policy went into effect October 15, 2002, with a major revision on June 1, 2004. This policy revision covers most products that were available through retail purchase or volume licensing as of June 1, 2004, and most future products versions. For information about end-of-support timelines and Extended Support options for all products, visit the Select a Product for Lifecycle Information site.
I commented recently on the life of Virtual Server 2005. Since it released in the last quarter of 2004, you can easily do the sums and work out that mainstream support runs to the end of 2009 and paid extended support runs to the end of 2014 - in fact because of the way we set the dates support ends early the following year. The dates are given here , 12th Jan 2010, and 13 Jan 2015.
What about the R2 versions ? It's simple: Windows server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 R2 are treated as one product. Since the product is getting near to it's 5th birthday, mainstream support will be covered by the "2 years after its successor" rule. Virtual Server 2005 R2 is listed as a separate product with its own expiry dates. Because it was launched in Q1 of 2006, mainstream support ends at the of Q1 2011, and extended support at the end of Q1 2016 (again the actual end date is a few days into the next quarter).
You may be thinking ...What about applications which launch late in the life of an OS ? as the FAQ puts it
If the problem is specific to the program, Microsoft will provide support. If the problem is a result of the combination of the operating system and the program, that particular problem will not be supported.
The other question is What about Service packs ? from the FAQ again.
Microsoft will provide 12 months of support for a service pack after the successor service pack is released.
There's a detailed break down here. So when Service Pack 1 comes out you have 12 months before we require that service pack in order to be supported.
However if we need to support a product or service pack beyond these limits we will. For example, because we knew that Windows XP Service Pack 2 was a bigger change than most service packs we extended that one year deadline.
Spare a thought for the people in Redmond who have to test software on different OS/Service pack combinations. If we are have service packs coming out frequently (as was the case with NT4) then they might have to test on as many as 4 different service pack levels. Testing becomes so long and so complex that another service pack is out before you've finished testing your product. If the service packs are widely spaced, you might be lucky enough to have only one supported version of a given OS. When new service packs or Operating Systems come along they have to test their product against those. Generally it is acceptable to say a product will not work against a whole new OS (e.g. Exchange 2000 didn't work on Windows Server 2003), but we don't like to say that something only works with an out of date service pack - that tends to bring a patch for the application. [And please note these are generalizations].
It was an interesting journey to work. Between the fog, ice and roadworks and traffic police who seem to have become suicidal of late, I was listening to my e-mail through Outlook Voice Access. The time really has come to buy myself a Jawbone headset: OVA is perfect when I use the mobile handset (illegal in the car) but using my Jabra it can take 6 attempts to get words recognizable: "Next" sounds like "Help", or "Delete" sounds like "repeat", and "e-mail" is indecipherable. Reading works well and the mechanical voice read me this:
Microsoft announced publicly this week that Office 2007 SP1 is available on Microsoft Update for interactive, user-initiated installation, but will not be pushed for automatic installation for a few months. However soon after the release on Tuesday, customers began to report that the service pack had been automatically installed on some of their systems.
After thoroughly investigating the reports, we determined that the Office service pack was operating as expected on Microsoft Update but that some customers were confused about the expected behaviour of interactive and automatic updates on Windows Vista due to changes from the Windows XP functionality. We also confirmed that Office 2007 SP1 will automatically install on systems running a beta version of Windows Vista SP1 since those systems use a different Microsoft Update server for their updates and that server always pushes out all Important and Recommended updates to keep the beta products up to date.
Further public communications on this issue will be posted on the Microsoft Update blog at http://blogs.technet.com/mu/.
The Microsoft update blog has a post with more detail. Darren also has more on his blog.
In the UK we take the Mickey Bliss out of the Americans for saying they are super-excited. For once I'm super-excited myself , in another Window I'm watching the build of Server 2008 WITH BETA HYPER V download from an internal server. The news is out. The following is straight from the press release
REDMOND, Wash. — Dec. 13, 2007 — Microsoft Corp. this morning delivered a holiday surprise for customers and partners, unveiling a public beta for its hypervisor-based server virtualization technology called Hyper-V, a feature with some versions of Windows Server 2008. Customers and partners today can download Windows Server 2008 RC1 Enterprise with the beta version of Hyper-V to evaluate the new technology, test applications and plan future consolidation, business continuity and high-availability projects. The beta was previously expected to be ready in the first quarter of 2008 with the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Windows Server 2008. The beta is available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/ws08eval.
However at the time of writing, the original RC-1 build is the only one linked to at the WS08Eval URL. 6001.17051 is the original RC-1 with the CTP. The build with the Beta will be 6001.171xx. There is a separate link from that page to the new build, which is 6001.17119
Mike Neil, the GM for virtualization has posted a lot more detail to the Windows Server Team blog in the last few minutes. He's also announced a web cast next week which should be well worth attending, and has been clear about which OSes have integration components today, and that there are more to come (exact OS revisions still to be decided) . When it comes to what is happening with System Center Virtual Machine Manager, Mike plays a very straight bat, and leaves it to that team to announce what their plans are. When they have news I guess it will appear on on their blog.
I'm presenting (again) in a few minutes, and still have a link which my friend David sent me on my mind. (No doubt the Apple antagnophiles will pounce on the negative iPhone link on that page) Entitled How not to use PowerPoint it has a brilliant item embedded in it called "Death by PowerPoint and how to avoid it" - it looks like a flash movie, but it's actually a silent slide show. It starts:
And the rest is what you can do about it. Well worth a look... It points out that people use PowerPoint as Prompter, Handouts, data-dumps.... All true. I need to get away from PowerPoint decks which could stun an Ox. I'm already feeling sorry for this afternoon's audience But people ask for hand outs. Road-shows and similar events should always have the slide decks posted via http://technet.microsoft.com but not all my events fall into this category. So for those people who want the decks that I have used recently here are
If the link to skydrive below doesn't show up in your RSS feed it's http://cid-1efe2682bfbbd817.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Presentations
**Warning** Neither I nor Microsoft will take any responsibility for what happens if you follow these instructions. I am not recommending this, just reporting my experience.
For ages now I've had a bookmark for a hack to make a "USB Battery". I wrote ages ago about making up cables to power things from USB... but and I have both mains to USB and car cigar lighter to USB power Adapters. But what if I'm stuck miles from either. I prefer devices rely on AA batteries and SD cards to minimize the risk of being stranded. But what about my USB dependant things, like my phone. Wouldn't it be good to be able to plug in a standard PP3 battery.
I thought I would do something equivalent so went to my local Maplin and bought the following (stock codes in brackets)
I stripped some of the insulation off the negative lead from the clip to solder it to the ground pin on the regulator. I clipped the positive lead off and soldered the two parts to the in and out pins on the regulator, and then the free ends go onto the USB connector: A check of the voltage showed I'd soldered them back-to-front initially (see the pictures below), so having fixed that and clipped off the USB data pins from the socket I just needed a wrap round with insulating tape to protect everything. I Plugged my smartphone in and hey presto I can charge it. One more home made gizmo for the travel pack.
Left to right - first attempt to connect the socket, Second attempt, with the pins clipped off. I wrapped it once with tape, and then folded the leads back on themselves and wrapped round again. The regulator is taped to the PP3 clip, and you can see how the leads are connected to it. These also got wrapped in tape. In Final frame, the adapter is finished and charging the phone ...
**Repeat** Neither I nor Microsoft will take any responsibility for what happens if you follow these instructions.
Silly me believing stuff I read on the Internet. First there was the The register's story about only 26,000 iphones being activated in the UK.
Next came Electronics weekly's usual "Made by Monkeys" e-mail - I'm not sure how I ended up on the list for it, but I haven't unsubscribed because once in a while there's a gem in there like Gender specific user interfaces, which people seem to find funny on multiple levels. Directly below that there is something about An Apple Power Mac G5 Oozing Coolant.
Then Russ came along with a comment to my iPhone post At least the iPhone isn't packed with 'toxic chemicals'! That smartphone is making me feel ill! and a link to a Greenpeace report where Microsoft got a pretty bad review. We've made some environmental progress (especially in software packaging) but Microsoft can't claim to be up with the leaders in the hardware industry. But (Russ) Microsoft doesn't make Smartphones and PDAs we only supply the OS to companies like Dell, HP, HTC Motorola, Palm, Samsung and Toshiba, (HTC and Palm aren't on the Greenpeace survey, off the others only Motorola ranks below Apple). Having seen that corrosive coolant story I wanted to find the link to it. Being sure I'd seen it on The Register I couldn't find it, a quick search turned it up , but not before I'd got side tracked into two other items....
One was from Greenpeace (again). Titled "Missed call: the iPhone's hazardous chemicals" it says that in May "Steve Jobs, the boss of Apple, claimed: "Apple is ahead of, or will soon be ahead of, most of its competitors" on environmental issues. Yet when the iPhone launched in June there was no mention of any green features of the phone from Apple. So they tested one and criticized it's use of PVC and brominated fire retardants. [Their criticism of Microsoft's hardware centred on the presence of these two, and the slow schedule we have for phasing them out]. They also comment "The disassembling also revealed the iPhone's battery was, unusually, glued and soldered in to the handset. This hinders battery replacement and makes separation for recycling, or appropriate disposal, more difficult, and therefore adds to the burden of electronic waste.". I thought a non-user changeable battery was bad, but soldered and glued ? That's just perverse.
The other was back at The Register, this time about Dell shipments of Ubuntu Linux. The Linux community bombarded Dell with 130,000 requests on their Idea-storm web site, but as the register put it only a fraction of these zealots were willing to back their votes with cash. Dell have sold something 20 Million PCs in the last six months, of which - if the register is to believed - 40 thousand are running Ubuntu. That's 2 PCs in every thousand. 0.2%. Now I don't want to big up Linux's market share, and I don't know what proportion of that is accounted for by Ubuntu; but I would have bet that it had more than 0.2% of the market. Do people who want Linux work build their own PC (Or have it built to their own spec) rather than go to the likes of Dell ? I don't know. But what about those 130,000 requests? Were they all distinct individuals ? Were they potential customers ? Or did Dell fall victim to an astroturf campaign ?
Every now and then I get forewarned of some news, and with due warning not to be the one who breaks it. So I'm saying nothing, but Thursday morning Redmond time (late afternoon in Europe) I'm going to be watching these very closely
Windows Server Division blog
Windows Virtualization team blog
System Center team blog
and of course Press Pass
UPDATE The news is out. The following is straight from the press release
I got the news when the press release was mailed out 16:30 GMT: however at the time of writing, the original RC-1 build is the only one linked to at the WS08Eval URL. 6001.17051 is the original RC-1 with the CTP. The build with the Beta will be 6001.171xx.
Update 2, There is a separate link from that page to the new build, which is 6001.17119
One of our Redmond product managers was visiting today, and since he's old friend of mine from my days in consulting we took a chance to grab a Coffee. In putting the world to rights we took in the problem of one part of Microsoft not knowing what another is doing. It always amuses me that people outside Microsoft assume what it thought in one place ripples out everywhere else. And it frustrates us when we don't get that right.
A great example was Windows Mobile 6. and Office 2007: released at more-or-less the same time, you might have expected WM6 to support the latest office... er No. It didn't.
We've now got the download available for Windows Mobile 6 to support Office 2007 files. I've found that this is a US version and I had to change the regional settings on my phone before it would install.
My carbon footprint has got worse: after the travel of the Road-show, I popped up to Leeds last night to talk to BCS. A round trip of 400 miles.
While I was there Dave threw me one of those questions... the kind where you know the answer. You know that you know it. But the harder you think about it, the more the answer refuses to come to you. And not remembering bothers you: it bothered me most of the way home. The question was simple. "One of my clients has poor sight and relies on Windows Magnifier. He managed to dock magnifier on the side of the screen and resize it down to zero width. He couldn't find the edge of magnifier to resize it."
Darn it, I know you can change the border size, on a window, it's useful if narrow borders don't work with your eyes or hands. And it makes it impossible to lose a window. But where's the settings ?
So today I dug the settings out in Vista, it's Control Panel, Personalization, Window Color and Appearance Classic Appearance properties, Advanced. In XP it's Control Panel, Display, Appearance tab, advanced. Then you can click the window border and set it to any size you fancy.
And Magnifier does respect the size of the border so now if it suffers the same mishap it's easy to sort out. Phew. That's one question off my mind, now to deal with all the other queries I got during the road-show.
When Steve and I were on tour talking about Microsoft Virtualization, we were asked similar questions about Server 2008's virtualization several times: "Since this is running on Windows, you still need to patch it, right ?". To which the answer is "Yes". If Hyper-V is running on server core there are fewer things to be patched; and we've reduced the number of patches which need re-boots. Windows VMs will need patching at the same time and with proper management the whole process can be streamlined. But there is no getting away from it. A few people seemed to think that VMware doesn't need patching.
Virtualization.info quoted me the a few days ago and I'd like to return the compliment. They have a story "Patch Tuesday for VMware" which explains how a couple of VMware experts realised that "it is starting to become a trend in some ESX environments; not all patches are installed by the admins" ... "this is VMware's ESX server! The product that we used to tell people didn't need patching that often since there wasn't much code to have to patch."
It makes an interesting read - so go read it!. Although they point a server built 5 months ago would have been patched 8 times (once every three weeks), the authors say they're not out "to beat VMware over the head for patching/updating their product." so it would be a cheap shot for me to do so. But I will observe that getting patching right for all the products you use is a key part of any IT managers job. Don't get to thinking there are any you can ignore, whatever their advocates might have you believe.
Eileen has made here own pick of Gimundo's "What I've learned" page (oddly termed the URL is "Thankful"... ) - though for pity's sake clicking through 700 plus thoughts 5 at a time (140 clicks) must mean she's read all the Christmas books. (Maybe next year I'll buy some people in the management chain Up the organization - or just led them my commemorative copy , that and Plain words)
When asked to contribute anything to these I usually joke that the four words on my tombstone will be "None the bloody wiser". Or send people to the "All I ever needed to know I learned from Blake's 7" which has gems like A man who trusts can never be betrayed, only mistaken.
At this time of the year I like to go back to the Mayfly project - sum up your year in 24 words. It's quieter this year than in the past and I'm finding it hard to write something myself. Just a few hours left of the year to do it. ...
* The title is a corruption of something in one of Anne Clark's pieces
Another day comes to another endingAnother kiss seals another goodbyeWe'll retrace our stepsOnly separately nowYou spoke so enchantinglyYet you let me smother your words with kisses .