Posts from October 2009

Microsoft My Phone Premium Service Pricing Confirmed

On a posting yesterday on the Microsoft My Phone forum, a worker from Microsoft confirmed that once the trial for Premium services ends that you can buy the service in full for $4.99.

There is no word on a UK pricing in the thread, but I have posted to ask this to them. The thread is here for anyone interested:
http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/MyPhone/thread/0a1b9a27-9c8a-433c-9eba-5f064f089f44/

The best bit for me is that this looks to be a one time only price, as my original concern was that this was going to be a monthly subscription service.

The fee will be payable via the Windows Marketplace either on the device or from your My Phone account online.

Let’s jut hope that they can fix the locate my phone feature for the Touch HD:
http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-AU/MyPhone/thread/5bf44059-ddb0-45cf-a069-45171293138a

Am I Overdue My MCSE

When I was previously working for Xerox I got into a great little routine – I would churn out an MCP exam to the tune of one every month or other month. This meant I was well on my way to achieving my MCSE, and with my MCSA already in the bag I had only two exams left:

  • 70-294: Active Directory
  • 70-298: Security for a Windows Server 2003 Network

When I moved to Vocera we all agreed that I could carry on with my training to complete my MCSE and maybe even aim to move onwards to an MCITP for Windows Server 2008 which suited me perfectly as I was planning this all along with or without backing.

It’s amazing how time blazes by you without a second thought until it dawned on me recently!

I was looking at my Microsoft Learning transcript just a week or so ago and I realised that it is now over a year since I sat my last exam – 70-350: ISA Server 2004. This made me realise how behind I have gotten, especially when you consider it may only be another year or so before the Server 2003 exam line is discontinued.

As a result I’ve got my butt into gear and this week I have taken one day’s holiday already, with another to come on Friday with the sole premise of training for the 70-294 exam. After Monday it’s all going well and I was achieving about 80% on the practice exams, so assuming all goes well after more studying on Friday I will be checking myself into the test centre on Monday afternoon to take the exam.

I think that finishing the Active Directory exam will be great weight lifted from me, because I actually started to study for this one prior to leaving Xerox, and having only one exam standing between me and MCSE, I think I should be able to master it up pretty quickly.

Disk I/O Performance Improvements from Partition Alignment

Disk or partition alignment is something new to me. I have heard of it before but I have never used nor understood it’s meaning until a colleague at work brought it to my attention for a customer we are trying to help out.

The information in this post is taken from a blog posting entitled Disk Partition Alignment Best Practices for SQL Server by Jimmy May and Denny Lee at Microsoft.

Read more…

Changes to the Blog

Being that I’ve been posting a bit lately with Windows Phone and other related things, I realised that the blog looked a bit dire.

I’ve re-coloured everything to white and it’s looking much nicer. All I need to do now is fix a couple of the Silverlight XAML elements from black to white to match the new colour but aside from that, it’s looking much better.

I hope you all like it.

Yes, Windows Server 2008 R2 is 64-bit Only

I got asked a question yesterday at work regarding the architecture of Windows Server 2008 R2.

Just for the record and to ensure anyone else to who may be interested knows, Windows Server 2008 R2 is available in two architectures:

  • 64-bit (x64)
  • Intel Itanium (ia64)

There is no 32-bit (x86) version of Windows Server 2008 R2, nor will there be 32-bit versions of any future Windows Server operating systems.

This move to a pure 64-bit architecture is also following suit in the server technologies and products including Exchange, SharePoint, SQL Server and more to come no doubt.

I would also anticipate that Windows 7 is the last client operating system to be available in 32-bit and I think that Windows 8 or however it manifests itself will also likely be a 64-bit only architecture operating system.

I don’t know what architect Microsoft Midori will be based on but that’s a totally different subject and one I don’t know anything about yet to comment on.

Windows Phone (Windows Mobile 6.5)

Windows Mobile 6.5, now called Windows Phone is the latest mobile OS revision from Microsoft, and it’s a vast improvement from 6.1

I’ve been using it in Beta form on my Touch HD for about six months courtesy of the folks on XDA-Developers and Miri’s WM6.5 ROM for the Touch HD.

The first thing you notice is the Today screen, now referred to as Titanium. This has been inspired by the Zune interface. The whole thing has designed to be finger friendly and require a stylus as little as possible.

Read more…

Sprawl of Windows Phone

Yesterday (if your American or today if your British) is the official launch of Windows Phone, Windows Phone Marketplace and Microsoft My Phone.

I’ve been using Windows Phone (Windows Mobile 6.5) and Microsoft My Phone for sometime now – Not the Marketplace though as this only opened today.

I’m going to review all three starting with Windows Mobile 6.5, then Marketplace and finally My Phone.

Enjoy x