On behalf of the team at Microsoft we would like to wish you Happy Holidays for the upcoming break. For those going away have a safe trip and make sure you take plenty of happy snaps! Let us know if you have set up a travel blog.
Thanks for reading the TechNet Australia Blog in 2007 and we hope to keep you informed in 2008. See you in the New Year.
Before I tell you about the HTC Touch Dual please note this is my first time back into the world of Windows Mobile since Windows Mobile 2003 for Smartphone. I had a HTC Canary which I used for a while. Since the Canary I have had a few Motorola's and a Sony Ericsson K800i. So when Grace (our Windows Mobile Director) handed me the HTC Touch Dual I had to see what all the fuss is about with Windows Mobile 6.
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The HTC Touch Dual has a touch screen and a slide out keypad
The first thing I did was set up my ActiveSync for my Email, Tasks, Calendar and Contacts. Something I am new to is Direct Push Technology. This is a direct connection with my Exchange Server which is all encrypted of course. So I actually get my email when it hits the exchange server.
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My daily Aquabumps email displays nicely on the touch
I also set up Office Communicator Mobile 2007. I'm loving this because I can IM and hassle anyone back in the office from anywhere I am! I also installed a few Live Services such as Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Maps which works a treat.
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Office Communicator Mobile 2007, Windows Live Maps and Windows Live Messenger keeping me in touch on the go
The touch screen is really handy, it has a feature called TouchFlo which you can use your fingers to scroll down pages etc. Surfing the web on the device is great because the HTC Touch Dual is a 3G device (also supports HSDPA and GPRS/EDGE/GSM).
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The Australian viewed through Internet Explorer
This wouldn't be a Smartphone without its phone functionality. I can actually make phone calls! (this was a big issue with my Canary I had a few years ago). I like using smartdial, this is handy because if I needed to call Jeff I would just press 5,3,3 it then displays the contacts in my address book matching those characters.
I'm really happy with this device and couldn't go back to my Sony Ericsson K800i because I would definitely miss being so connected.
As I was walking past one of our corridors I noticed a Windows 2000 Banner: 
Now I know Windows 2000 (originally called Windows NT 5.0, then Windows NT 2000) was a good OS for its time so I assume we have kept this banner up to keep its memory in peoples minds (or we could have been lazy and forgotten to take it down). 
I rung up our Internal Communications team and I found out that the banner will be taken down by our facilities department!
Do you want it? Its probably one of the only ones left in the world. Email us and let us know what you would do with this banner. We will send out the banner to the most creative entry! (Australia only sorry). Entries close 24th December 2007.
This Beta version has more features and capabilities not available in the previous Community Technology Preview of Hyper-V:
Download it today or Learn more about it
Yes, that is a Pac-man xmas tree...
Check out the worlds most isolated IT operation - The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antartica. I gather Server cooling isn't really an issue?
Looks like something from the Planet Hoth. 