OK - it's Christmas

I'm not ashamed of it!

Our BNI Chapter is one of the top in the area but we do like to be a bit unconventional at times. So here is the video gleaned from our special "Panto" breakfast last week. Enjoy it or don't.

Chrome OS - first impressions are lasting impressions!

There has been a lot of buzz around the release of a new operating system from Google and this week saw the first Beta being made available to the community for review. Downloading a VM build from the excellent gdgt.com I loaded it up in VBox in anticipation of seeing a slim and quick OS with new features that would really get the industry talking. Well I think it got us talking but maybe for the wrong reasons.

To get it to work at all I had to allocate double the memory of my VBox XP implementation. And while the build is under 800Mb, admittedly a quarter of the size of my XP SP2 build, it clunks along at a snails pace and crashes after about 5 minutes. Perhaps I'm being unfair, this is after all a very early beta release, but I do not think Google are doing themselves any favours in releasing this until it is at least a stable build.

As for the OS interface itself, well here is a screen shot for you:

Well blow me down if it isn't a Chrome Browser with an extra tab that has link icons to online Apps. If you're a Google Apps fan and use Gmail etc. then the integration is actually quite good, you log in to the system using your Google Id and it connects you directly to your mail apps etc.

But it isn't really an Operating System as we all know it. You cannot browse your local disk drives, save any files locally or attach a variety of hardware devices. You cannot install local applications or store Music/Photos/Movies to play offline. The sole purpose is to give you a gateway to a completeley online world.

The only OS like controls I could find were hidden away in the top right corner. A battery meter and the ability to turn network connections on and off. There appears to be nowhere to set personalised stuff like Language and Keyboard, screen resolution etc. And if you were to turn off the networking, well then you'd have an OS that does not actually do anything. And that is the problem really. While Google and others would like us all to move more rapidly towards the cloud computing model, where nothing is stored locally and all your applications run online, the quality of internet access, and to a certain extent the Apps available, is just not there yet. Even with my 50Meg Virgin connection, opening and editing a Doc in google docs is like wading through treacle compared to using Word 2007 on Windows 7. And if I can't get online I can't do any work!

The truth is, at the moment the Chrome OS offers nothing that cannot be achieved through using a Chrome browser on another OS. And with many excellent options available (such as OSX, Ubuntu and even Windows 7) all of which give us a choice of how we work, what browsers we prefer and where we store our documents, I'm not sure that Chrome will survive if this is all it does. Even the Android Phone OS does more and I would be loath to buy even the cheapest of netbooks that did less than a phone.

Windows 7E becomes 7EU

With the addition of U for U-turn of course, as Microsoft rapidly changed their position last month to allow the European edition of Windows 7 to do an in-place upgrade from Vista instead of requiring a full Rip and Replace approach. To overcome the European ruling on browser inclusion, the installation now incorporates a selection of Browsers from which the user can select and set default - thus no longer forcing IE8 onto every Windows 7 user.

With many partners like myself expressing concerns over the lack up an upgrade path (see previous blog from July ) perhaps they felt some pressure to make the change from their partner community. More likely, though, is that they reviewed the impact on the home user market and the fact that, while many enthusiastic early adopters would happily upgrade if it was automated, having to back everything up and re-install from scratch was a bit beyond them. The road to global domination was somewhat hampered by this simple fact.

From the technical point of view, the Rip and Replace option will still almost certainly give you the best results in terms of maximising the performance of the machine, but at the cost of time, and therefore money, I reckon a number of Small Businesses will take the upgrade option too. (Particularly if thay have recently purchased a machine with "free Windows 7 upgrade" included).

Corporates need to be on the "Twitter Ball"

A recent personal experience helped bring home to me the importance of the latest social networking tools to corporate business.

The road to completion of a car scrappage deal on behalf of my Father in Law was proving a long and winding one - with barriers at every turn. Although largely due to DVLA and Dept for Business, Innovation & Skills rules, my frustration was turned towards Toyota, from whom we were trying to buy the car. After venting my frustrations on Twitter, I was pleasantly surprised to get a response from Toyota Europe, with contact information for some people who may be able to help. And they had not just posted a reply on Twitter, but had gone out of their way to check out my website and use my response form to get hold of me via email.

I was then called directly by the Commercial Director of Toyota UK and entered into Twitter dialogue with the UK head of PR. Both of them helped enormously and negotiated with DVLA etc. on my behalf to sort the problems out, with the result that the deal finally went through smoothly.

This is a great example of how important it is to monitor the Social Networking space. Toyota were able to turn a disgruntled customer into one who has a great story to tell about the quality of their customer service but only because they were looking out for any mention of their brands on Twitter. Any business that is not doing the same is missing a huge trick, particularly as there are so many free tools out there to enable you to do it.

So if you are in business with a recognisable product that people may be talking about, make sure you monitor the Social Networking feeds for your company keywords and take action if you find something amiss. You could do yourself a lot of good.

Windows 7E (Europe) - a double edged sword?

Having recently been to a Microsoft Partner event in Reading to look at the launch of Windows 7 it has become clear that the European legislation regarding browser inclusion in the OS will definitely mean Europe gets a different version of Windows 7 to the rest of the world.

The key difference is that there will be no "in-place upgrade" option in Europe so for businesses that want to move to the new OS (something I would recommend if currently using Vista) each machine must be wiped and re-installed.

For the larger corporates this poses little problem as they will have tightly locked down desktops that can be re-installed from a centrally managed disk image through a network boot. But what about the smaller business. Many do not have the IT resources or budgets to implement centrally managed technologies such as the Windows Deployment Server. While IT guys like me could help them do so, is the time and cost really appropriate for an SBS network of 5 users?

Initially I felt that we were being put into a disadvantaged position by Microsoft in having to "Rip and Replace" by default due to the restrictions of the 7E version; and if I'm honest I think they could have produced a product that would upgrade on the basis of maintaining the existing browser choice of the user and still satisfied the European courts. But on reflection maybe it is not such a bad thing. At least by doing a clean install you know that there are no malingering issues picked up by the previous OS that may impact on the new system, so the customer is guaranteed the best possible Windows7 Experience for the hardware they have. It also gives us the opportunity to review just what is installed on our machines and the plethora of sample bits of software etc. that have just been left hanging around will all disappear.

Having played with the RC, I do think they have a really good product (at last) and the value of upgrading will be high. Although our upgrade path for small business may be a bit more time consuming than the rest of the world, I think that being forced to clean install could mean we actually get a better experience than they do.

Just don't forget to download a browser onto a memory stick or CD before you install as there is no way to browse the Internet for one after!

Waiting for Windows 7?

This week Microsoft have made the Release Candidate of Windows 7 available for download so it won't be long now before a full release date is announced and machines start shipping with this new operating system. (You can get the RC here if you have a spare machine to try it on http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/)  .

And once it is established, Vista will have been and gone almost as quickly as Windows ME, although Microsft are encouraging us to continue with Vista upgrades if they are already planned. I for one am hoping that Windows 7 will finally fulfil the promise of Vista without all the technical upheaval that has surrounded the introduction of their current offering.

We are promised that Windows 7 will upgrade directly from XP, so even Microsft have recognised that the business uptake in particular of Vista has been very poor and most organisations have not ventured as far as running Vista on any desktops if they can avoid it.

We are promised a smaller footprint, by which they mean it will require less resource than Vista or even XP - which can only be a good thing and means that compatability will be less of an issue.

We are promised improved networking and a revised approach to the UAC (User Account Control) so the system will not constantly prompt users for permission to run updates etc.

And we are promised a system that is graphically drifting more and more towards the Mac desktop look and feel, with full floating gadgets and a taskbar that is transparent showing just the Icon of the application running. It also has a preview feature to help you quickly select between mulitple documents.

As usual there are a lot of promises, but Microsoft learnt a lot from the Vista release (OK I know we've heard this one before) and will be looking to ensure the uptake of Windows 7 is far more succesful. I'll be testing it at K-meson labs and will post again with a more detailed report but for now, ignore the Microsoft plea to carry on upgrading to Vista and wait a few months for this!

Feeling a bit of a Twit?

Well if you're not then maybe you should be. 

The latest social networking tools are all about micro blogging and the most prominent is Twitter. If you have never been into FaceBook, MySpace or perhaps more appropriately for the business user, LinkedIn or Ecademy, then maybe the emergence of tools like Twitter will change your view.

Behind a very simple interface that does away with all the clutter of the major social networking sites lies a powerful tool that can do more than just entertain. Alongside the Twitter superstars like Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) and Jonathan Ross (@wossy) are networking guru's such as Ivan Misner (@imisner) who clearly see the value of reaching a potentially huge international audience.

The premise is simple, type a short message up to 140 characters long and Tweet it. Follow others and you see their Tweets and your followers see yours. The use may not seem immediately clear but non followers can also see your Tweets through searches, and by using tools like TweetDeck, the people you follow can be grouped and viewed separately.

So if you have a special offer, Tweet it. People searching for your product will pick it up and will be able to reply to you for more information. Want to keep in touch with a particular group of colleagues or friends, get them on board and following each other and put them in a group. 

All of this can be done while on the move with Twitter applications for iPhone, Windows mobile and most other mobile phone formats.

I almost forgot the best part - it's all totally free! So follow me (@kmeson) on Twitter and find out more.

SBS 2008 Premium install

I've just spent the last couple of days doing my first SBS 2008 install and to make it really tough I decided that this would be a dual virtual server configuration using HyperV.

The initial set up went very well and apart from a minor glitch caused by me inadvertently adding the same physical DVD mapping to both machines (soon spotted and resolved) I managed to get them up and running fairly quickly.

I used the second server physical licence to instal a basic server running HyperV role only and then created two virtual Machines for the SBS box and the Second server which is primarily to be used as a Terminal Server for remote users.

Once up and running there were the usual tasks of setting up users and mailboxes and configuring the Firewall to allow traffic through.

I had a lot of trouble getting the TS server to appear on the Remote web Workplace until I realised that there was a new feature in SBS 2008 that means you need to allocate users to the machine from the SBS Control panel (you used to be able to just add them to the RWW Users group but this did not work). 

Then there were a number of issues with the RDP ActiveX client which needed an IE Reset and re-registration of mstscax.dll - who knew?

I thought there would be a number of issues like this - there always are with new versions of Microsoft Products - but so far it's not been to bad and progress has been relatively quick.

It looks like the solution I proposed way back before the release of the software is finally coming to fruition and I'm pleased to say - it's going to work.

Annoying splash screen on remote desktop

If you are the proud owner of a Dell server you may have already found that running a remote desktop or terminal service session to it requires that the Dell desktop image has to load before you can log on. This is a pretty big file so it slows things down to an annoying level and you may want to get rid of it - here's how.

Log on to the machine and run regedit. Browse to the following key:

HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop

Look for the String Value "Wallpaper" and either delete it completeley, delete the value or replace the value with a smaller bitmap file reference.

This will get rid of it and next time you log on - no more waiting.

This fix has been posted on numerous sites by numerous people - my thanks to those that posted before me. I figure the more people posting the easier for others to find a fix and that's what it's all about right?

Don't lose your data!

I'm always telling people about this - so I thought I ought to Blog it too.It's common sense to make sure you back up your data on a regular basis but a lot of people forget to do it. So here's a couple of ways to make it easy to do.

First off, try a data synchronisation tool like SyncBack SE. At just £23 it allows you to synchronise your changed files to a portable hard drive, FTP location or Network drive automatically. It can be triggered in the background as frequently as you like so if you are changing a lot of files regularly you can do an hourly snapshot. If you just want a daily backup though, you can set it to run when you plug in a drive or at a specific time of the day.

Your second option would be to go for an on-line back up service such as Carbonite. For those with a single machine (particularly a laptop) this type of install and forget system is well worth looking at. With unlimited data storage for just $49.95 per year it may take some time to do your initial back up but once it is done you will not even notice it is there.

So don't leave things to chance - back up your data and keep working.

A sticky subject

More and more people exchange data using memory sticks these days and guess what – those friendly Virus writers have designed a new type of Trojan that takes full advantage of a basic feature of Windows, the Autorun.

Autorun is a feature originally intended for use with CD Drives. It scans the disc when you put it in and tries to decide what action to take. If it finds a file called Autorun.inf it follows the instructions in the file. Unfortunately the existence of an Autorun.inf on any drive, including memory sticks and your own hard drive, will be recognised by windows and provide the perfect place for hackers to launch their unwanted code.

The latest version, called Downadup or Conficker, disables a lot of important Windows features and attempts to capture key data, such as passwords from your machine. It spreads to other machines by copying its own autorun.inf to any drive it comes into contact with including network drives and, of course, memory sticks.

To protect against infection you can disable the ability of Autorun.inf to work by making a change in the registry. Go to http://antivirus.about.com/od/securitytips/ht/autorun.htm for detailed information on how to do this or call your friendly local IT man.

If you are already infected then a really good (free) removal tool is MalwareBytes Anti-Malware available from http://www.malwarebytes.org/. This can be run in conjunction with existing antivirus products and often finds a lot of things missed by the mainstream products such as MacAfee etc.

As always the best way to avoid viruses on your PC is to be vigilant. So think twice before sticking your stick into someone else’s computer or letting them stick it to yours.

 Hope this helps.