Australian Premier Support customers: Join us for an overview of the new stuff in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8! This series of events will run for the entire day in each city and showcase 4 sessions of about 90 minutes, on a range of Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 client topics. All topics...

I’ve been working on the Windows 8 Application Excellence Lab circuit recently, helping push Metro-style apps from good to great! Metro apps look visually simple, but conveying your app’s information in a simple and visually appealing manner isn’t just a matter of “removing stuff”. The best apps look...

Holy ger-burble, splatman! Windows 7 Professional Upgrade for $30 (at the bottom of the block). Office 2010 for $80. Academic editions, with student-friendly pricing. Qualifying student ID required. http://www.microsoft.com/student/office/en-us/default.aspx

The Shiny New Phone I bought an HTC HD2 sight-unseen from the Telstra online store yesterday, and the “five business days” for delivery worked out to be one in total. Score! With the phone as supplied, aspects of the phone are uncustomizable , and the Internet connection is one of those things...

Awesome, in a word. Max Payne® 2- The Fall of Max Payne Wins my award for most heartbreaking game ever. With some pretty funky action along the way. I wasn’t as much of a fan of the first one, though if you play them back to back, they run very well together. (Though the part in MP2 that always troubled...

Hi Everybody! I've been laying low for a while, in read-only mode, sorting, filtering, evaluating and generally catching up on stuff! So, why break radio silence now? Well, I'm popping up to offer a quick endorsement for the Mesh platform, which was recently opened up to Australian testers. I'm excited...

A new year, another new laptop, incorporating the lessons learned from last time . Interesting choice of nomenclature for the new Dell tablet range. <memory lane> My first PC (mostly-)compatible was an XT-class machine . I think we got it in 1988, maybe 89. I had no idea that 286 and even 386s...

Back in the day, software used to be quite cheap around here for employees. Then, due to a confluence of unfortunate factors, all involving complicated acronyms (like FBT), Aussie 'softies started paying what could be politely described as unspectacular rates for personal copies of Microsoft software...

The Media Center dev team have been working to address a couple of problems that have particularly affected some Australian Media Centre users, and we now have updates available from Product Support. While the fixes are available, the KB articles documenting them aren't yet published (at the time...

Before I get into the rant: I am thoroughly ignorant of any and all video standards. Do not expect this post to contain much in the way of factual value. I'm housesitting at my parents' place at the moment. They have a recent-ish 32" Panasonic LCD TV. They have my old XP Media Centre PC driving it. Until...

Sunshine on IMDB . Well . If it had ended about four minutes before it did, it would have been a classic in my book. In fact, when I buy the DVD, I might make a "Tristank's Cut" version that skips the very end. Or maybe mashes it up with Jurassic Park, or something. Yes, dinosaurs were on the spacecraft...

"Experience" is a lovely word for a corporate blog. Discuss. Anyway, my experience was that it didn't work the first time round. That was at 7pm. it's now 9pm, and I've just finished my first laps around Barcelona in RFactor , using the Wireless Racing Wheel and TrackIR . Awesome? You betcha! Easy? Not...

About time! March brings us Aussies the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on. $249 looks like the magic number - nicely equivalent with the US RRP. Can't wait to watch MI3 and Superman Returns... And Kotaku said it even ships with King Kong in the box ! Awesome! I needed to type this sentence to make the formatting...

On Wednesday, my care package from Tegatech arrived - a brand new P1610! I thought there must have been some sort of mistake when the Mail Guy handed me the package, as it was obviously far too light to be a laptop and included bumf. Plus, it was just one box, and it wasn't big enough! Well...

If you've got an Xbox and broadband but haven't upgraded from Silver, give it a go! It's free until 10pm Sunday. I've been playing Gears of War this week, and am *itching* to take it online, but my phone line decided to suddenly choke my ADSL connection on Sunday night, and Telstra didn't get to fixing...

Back from Fiji. The resort and the people were lovely, the snorkeling amazing, and I'm told the diving was pretty good too. Right back to business: I need some serious retail therapy. I went away with a powerful laptop I barely used (I actually set a personal record for "least PC use in a given week...

Today: 1. Saints Row should become available locally for the Xbox 360. Liked the demo. On the subject, did anyone try out the Just Cause demo from Marketplace? That was really over-the-top latin american fun! I wonder if it'll have Live capabilities, so I can scream things like "Miguel! You keeeled my...

Quick reminder that it's The Day Of The Mother for Australians this Sunday the 14th May. If you haven't bought a gift yet, well, lunchtime is good, right? I got mine a Logitech Harmony 880 remote (kinda a both parents present really) and spent 4.5 hours fighting their Panasonic TV on the weekend...

I was really keen on getting a Samsung Q1 Ultramobile (Origami) until I learned a little more about the specs from Samsung's UK site: Damn. I was kinda hoping for an ultra mobile PC I didn't need to use a semi-trailer to haul around! :) (from here , close to the very bottom). No word on Aussie...

Note #1: This post links to discussion boards that use colourful language. If you don't like that sort of thing, don't click any non-numerical links below. Note #2: If Elected, I Solemnly Promise: As a suggestion to governments for next time around: If the objective was to get the Closing Ceremony...

The Nvidia DVD Decoder (now called Purevideo) store is back, and better than ever *. It only took three months more than originally promised, but that's OK . I'd signed up for the "when we're ready, we'll email you" email from them. I got it last night. Dear Customer, Thank you for your previous...

I'm sure I've missed someone, but either way, the grand total of Aussie IT Pro bloggers (that's people that design, deploy and maintain the stuff, and blog about it!) is 15. The most recent additions were (as I recall): Dugie , Parky , Angus (Dev/IT Pro overlap is fine) and today's new victim contributor...

(Australian time) Or today, US time. We are aiming to release the demo before 11:59pm GMT on 9th of September 2005. Here's a few time zone conversions: 23:59:00 Friday September 9, 2005 in GMT converts to: 16:59:00 Friday September 9, 2005 in US/Pacific 19:59:00 Friday September 9, 2005 in...

Just running through my newly-broken phone (dropped from booth height to the hard, unforgiving floor below) to pull the interesting bits off it. It wasn't a good week for the phone, which now can send voice and play any type of noise you can imagine via the speaker, other than what the person at the...

Andrew McLaren 's decided to share some of his vast - and sometimes even useful - selection of knowledge on technologie and matters arcane via his new blog. I like to think of him as being the old and wise mainframe to us junior burger microcomputer support engineers. Actually, I don't really like...