So now that SQL Server 2008 R2 has been released, what’s the story for report development?  Fortunately, it’s not quite as confusing.  The primary tool you’ll use for developing reports is Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Report Builder 3.0.  You can download it manually using the link to the Microsoft Download site, or you can install it using ClickOnce by loading your Reporting Services web site (e.g., http://localhost/Reports).  The download is also available as part of the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Feature Pack (along with a wide variety of other tools and utilities).  Report Builder 3.0 supports the creation of reports for both SQL Server 2008 and the R2 version.

If you’re moving to (or testing) the RTM version of SQL Server 2008 R2, Report Builder 3.0 is likely the best way to get acquainted with the new features of this release.  And, thankfully, the migration process should be much simpler than it was for previous versions of SSRS.  A great resource for more information is the MSDN SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services Forum.  Or, if you have any questions, feel free to post them here.

The Microsoft Thrive web site is a free resource that is designed to help IT professionals in a variety of ways.  For example, the site includes the following goals and areas:

• Advance Your Career
• Enhance Your Technical Skills
• Align IT with Business

Some of the content is Microsoft-focused, but much of it applies to just about any area of IT specialization.

I’m honored to say that I’ve been chosen as the Thrive IT Pro of the Month (see Thrive IT Pro of the Month: Anil Desai)!  I recorded a brief (~9 minutes long) presentation that covers, among other things, some recommendations for IT pros to get ahead, how IT pros can demonstrate their value, details on technology-focused topics and even a mention of the importance of hobbies.

The entire audio presentation is available from download using the previous link.  Here’s an excerpt from the written transcript:

As an independent consultant, I’m fairly diversified in the area of IT. I’m also used to the ups and downs in the IT industry, starting from the dot-com days in the late 1990′s to today. I use a variety of different specializations to fill in the inevitable downtime between projects. So, I’m fairly fortunate in that I’ve been able to maintain my business through the recent crunch.

However, the downturn in the economy has certainly had an impact on my clients, especially in the area of prioritization. Many organizations have focused on cost-cutting and many organizations have removed or scaled-back many of their non-essential projects. Those changes can sometimes translate into lay-offs, increased work for remaining staff, and short-term changes at the expense of long-term gains.

All of this provides some serious challenges (as well as some opportunities) for IT professionals. One change is that it really puts the emphasis on IT professionals’ ability to work as a strategic part of their businesses. I’ve heard it said that people know when IT departments are doing their jobs when they don’t know that IT departments are doing their jobs. The idea here is that IT is traditionally seen as a behind-the-scenes force (or sometimes just as a cost center). Business leaders might feel that IT provides little strategic value to the overall business.

Tough economic environments bring this issue to the forefront: IT professionals must understand overall business goals and must be able to apply the right technical solutions to solve business problems. And, they need to demonstrate their value within and outside of their IT groups. For those IT pros that have been able to focus on just the technical aspects of their skillset, this is a good time to branch out into the rest of the business world.

Feel free to e-mail me if you’d like the entire transcript.  And please post here if you have any questions, comments, or recommendations for your IT peers.

Using VSSConverter

The VSSConverter.exe utility is Microsoft’s command-line tool for migrating Visual SourceSafe repositories to Team Foundation Server.  The utility includes analyze and migrate modes and is driven by XML-based configuration files.  The process was simple enough and is documented in the following MSDN articles:

• Migrating from Visual SourceSafe
• Walkthrough: Preparing to Migrate from Visual SourceSafe to Team Foundation
• Walkthrough: Migrating from Visual SourceSafe to Team Foundation
• How to: Migrate Source Control Bindings from Visual SourceSafe

Migration Errors

The basic process went well until I got to the step of actually performing the migration.  That’s when I encountered the following dreaded TF31002 error:

I checked my server name, port, and other settings numerous times but still couldn’t get it to work.  Web searches provided some basic troubleshooting information, but nothing relevant to my issue.  All diagnostics that I ran (including the Best Practices Analyzer from the Team Foundation Server Power Tools) reported that everything was OK.

The Solution…

I finally stumbled upon the solution in an old bug reported via Microsoft Connect.  The defect report is titled VSSConverter cannot connect to the Team Foundation Server and offers the following problem description and solution:

When trying to migrate a Source Safe database to TFS2010 the VSSConverter tool exits with the following error:
TF60070: Unable to connect to the Team Foundation Server: ‘http://ts01:8080/’. Please ensure that the Team Foundation Server exists and try again.
The Team Foundation Server exists but at http://ts01:8080/tfs (default installation) The VSSConverter tool is unable to access this location.

UPDATE!
There is a new configuration option in the TeamFoundationServer element to specify the collection to which the sourcesafe database should be merged. It’s nowhere to be found in the documentation yet.
The solution is to add collection="tfs/DefaultCollection" to the TeamFoundationServer to specify which collection should be used.

After adding the “collection=” attribute, the migration worked flawlessly.  It took about an hour to transfer all of my code and versions, but everything looks good now.  The migration process could be simpler, but (if I’m lucky), I’ll only have to do this once.  I hope this helps some of you that might have run into the same problem.

In many of the apps I’ve written, users are often unaware of keyboard shortcuts, simpler ways to move between fields in web/Windows forms, and efficient methods for entering data.  I often cringe when I see people spend hours trying to manually perform tasks that are easily automated using application features.  Still, many application users will go to great lengths to avoid having to learn anything new (even if it will pay off in the long run).  But what about those who actually want to learn how to best use specific pieces of software?

Enter The Microsoft Office Labs Ribbon Hero.  Here’s a brief description of how it works:

Ribbon Hero is a game for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel 2007 and 2010, designed to help you boost your Office skills and knowledge. Play games (aka "challenges"), score points, and compete with your friends while improving your productivity with Office.  As a concept test, this add-in is not supported, but is an opportunity for you to try out an idea we are working on and let us know what you think.  For additional challenges and the opportunity to earn more points, download Office 2010 Beta.

The idea is somewhat unconventional, but this demo video provides a great example of how you can use it to make yourself a better Microsoft Office user.

While learning is often its own reward, the game also allows you to automatically share and compare your score with others using Facebook.  Here’s a screenshot from within Microsoft Word.

Of course it’s unsupported code.  So, don’t plan to open up a Severity 1 case with Microsoft Product Support Services if you think you didn’t get all the points you deserve.

Overall, I think the Ribbon Hero project is a fun and useful way to stretch users’ abilities with one of the world’s most popular productivity suites.  I’m planning to rack up a pretty high score.  Who’s up the challenge?

Of course, posters can actually be informational and useful.  Microsoft has recently made a Windows Server 2008 R2 Feature Components Poster available for free download.  While it would be difficult to print this out (it’s roughly 44” x 24” in full size), it provides a really clear, concise overview of the new features in Windows Server 2008 R2.  The list of sections includes:

• Active Directory Domain Services
• Hyper-V
• File Services
• Remote Desktop Services
• BranchCache
• DirectAccess

The content helps illustrate that the R2 release isn’t just a minor upgrade – there’s probably a lot more in here than most administrators are aware of.

You’ll also find a sidebar of acronyms and plenty of useful notes and tips.  While it’s no replacement for complete documentation, I think these posters do a great job of providing a lot of information in a limited space. 

You can also view a list of system requirements and your current specifications:

For the most part, users shouldn’t have much trouble when upgrading to Windows 7.  The magnitude of under-the-hood architectural changes is much less than it was during the leap from Windows XP to Windows Vista.  And, third-party hardware and software vendors have finally caught up (for the most part) and are providing reliable drivers.

From my experience, Windows 7 seems to run about as fast as Windows XP (which means it’s much faster than Windows Vista).  I have upgraded numerous desktops and notebooks to Windows 7 without any problems that I couldn’t quickly and easily resolve.  I think it will be a worthy upgrade for most users, and the Upgrade Advisor should be able to provide some warnings related to potential problems before you take the plunge.

Of course, power frugality should start in the home.  When looking into getting a new TV, I noticed that actual power consumption statistics were really hard to come by.  Wattage ratings sometimes give a partial picture, but they’re far from real-world usage stats.  So, taking the problem into my own hands (literally), I used a handy power consumption meter to measure how much juice each of these devices used.  Below are details of my “test environment”.  The information is just for one configuration of devices and is completely anecdotal.  Still, I hope the information will be useful in some way and will inspire others to do the same types of tests.

The Test Environment

My current home theater setup is somewhat outdated (would-be thieves, please take note).  It includes the following:

• A Microsoft Xbox 360: This is one of second generation units with a 120GB hard drive upgrade, obtained after a warranty replacement.  It has been running without problems for several years now.
• Samsung LN52A630 TV: It’s a 52” LCD display; 120Hz refresh rate.
• ReplayTV 5500 Series DVR: A standard-definition hard driver-based DVR.
• Onkyo TX-SR507 Receiver: It’s in a standard 5.1 configuration.
• Yamaha NS-A1738 Speakers: These are single-amped and hooked up to the received.  I also have a Polk center channel speaker and some small Polk Audio rear channels (yes, it’s a Frankenstein setup).

Power Consumption:The Results

The below tables provide details on instantaneous power consumption (in Watts) of each component in the setup.  I have tried to show the various modes, settings, and operations of the different devices.

LCD TV Power Consumption

Below are the results for various modes of my Samsung LCD TV.  The X360 uses component video cables, and the TV’s speakers are powered off (unless otherwise noted).

Xbox 360

Below is X360 power usage, based on various operations.

Replay TV Power Consumption

As a note, the device never spins down the hard drive – it’s always running as long as the unit is plugged in.

Do It Yourself

Power usage meters such as the Kill-a-Watt are readily available and fairly inexpensive ($20 at NewEgg, at the time of this writing).  The general process is to simply place the meter between a plug and a wall socket.  Most of these meters will allow you to enter your cost-per-kWh rates to get estimates on daily, weekly, and annual costs. 

Summary

Hopefully this information is somewhat interesting to readers of this blog.  The fact remains that, at least in the United States, electricity costs are still far lower than they should be (based on the global impact of our consumption).  That makes this information academic, for the most part – it’s unlikely to result in significant costs savings.  Still, I somehow feel better with knowing how much power I’m burning when I’m being thoroughly destroyed in Halo online matches.

I’m also interested in seeing some other results, so please post them if you’ve got them!

Well, Windows 7 is about to hit the stage, and it looks like a winner from a usability standpoint.  A simple web search will return dozens of articles that look at many of the UI changes and improvements and blogs like Engineering Windows 7 go into some of the decision decisions in significant depth.  Rather than repeat the content of those articles, I’ll briefly highlight the features I’ve enjoyed most during my past few months with Windows 7:

• The new taskbar: There are also some features that might not be readily evident.  For example:
• You can see icons for all of your most-used programs, whether they’re running or not.  They’re always right where you expect them, which really saves time when you have a bunch of different programs open at the same time.
• Applications can support jump lists, recent documents, and other special features that are available by hovering over an application icon or right-clicking on it.  Apps such as IE already support this quite well.
• You can easily dock the Taskbar to the left, right, top, or bottom of the window.  In fact, this even works properly with multiple monitors.  So far, I have stuck with the standard bottom-of-screen layout, but I have tried docking it to the left, and it works well.



• Improved multi-monitor support:  Windows 7 makes it much easier to work with multiple monitors but allowing you to quickly drag windows (even when they’re maximized) to other monitors.  In fact, my eVGA USB-to-DVI adapter is working great on Windows 7 (though I did need to download and and install the beta drivers manually).
• Keyboard Shortcuts for Window Management: Using intuitive keyboard shortcuts is far more effective and efficient than using the mouse to arrange windows.  For example, think of all the work it typically takes to view two windows side-by-side (I never bothered to try it manually and relied on third-party utilities like DisplayFusion to help).  Using the Windows Key in conjunction with the arrow keys allow you to maximize, minimize, and move windows to any part of any monitor.  This alone saves a lot of time and really takes advantage of my three-monitor setup.  Finally, you can use Windows Key – # to open the appropriate program or folder on your computer based on its located on the taskbar. 
• Overall Stability:  As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I had been quite disappointed with Windows Vista’s performance and reliability (even after applying both service packs).  On the whole, Windows 7 responds much more quickly and the desktop, UI, and applications are completely reliable.  In fact, I typically reboot my computer (which runs a ton of development stuff) once a week or so.
• New wallpapers and desktop themes: Sometimes, it’s the little(r) things that count the most.  Windows 7 ships with a great collection of default themes and backgrounds.  And, you can also download many more from the Windows 7 Personalize Your PC site.  The download process is seamless and I hope Microsoft will continue to add content frequently (as opposed to the rather missed opportunity with Windows Vista Ultimate Extras).  Furthermore, the UI improvements for switching between desktop settings has been streamlined, making it simple to make changes without third-party utilities.
• Sidebar Gadgets: They can now be placed anywhere on the desktop and seem to use fewer system resources (just a subjective observation – I haven’t done any testing).  Unfortunately, there’s still a relative dearth of useful gadgets, but hopefully that will finally change.
• Expanded right-click menu:  Hold SHIFT and right-click on a file or folder to see some useful new options, such as “Open Command Window Here”.  You could enable this feature in XP/Vista, but it required a Registry change and would always appear in an already long list of options.
• ClearType and Color Tuner: Matching colors on multiple monitors has always been a pain.  While drivers from Nvidia and ATI allow you to change RGB values, these settings never seemed to “stick” for me.  Windows 7 includes built-in functionality for handling this, and it seems to work.  Better yet, it efficiently supports a multi-monitor setup.

Overall, I think Microsoft has done a great  job of balancing usability for less-technical users with the features that those of the geekier persuasions can appreciate.  I have (against some practical warnings and advice) switched to using the Windows 7 Release Candidate as my primary O/S.  I’ve run into very few problems so far.  So… which useful features have I missed?

Over the last couple of decades, practical PC bottlenecks have moved.  I remember a time when upgrading CPUs could provide a near-linear speed increase with respect to clock speed (does anyone remember the thrill of going from a 33MHz 486 processor to a a 486/66?).  Later, keeping the processor fed became more important.  Improved memory bus speeds, lower cache latency, larger cache sizes, and more RAM often provided the best performance increase.  And of course, we had network issues – starting with dial-up performance.  Thankfully, most of those resources are no longer the slowest components in modern PCs.  In fact, CPUs have increased in performance to the point that clock speed increases give little practical benefits for most users (on the client side, at least).

Wringing some[Bottle]necks…

Over the last several years, the primary bottleneck on most of my machines (notebooks, development desktops, and music production machines) has been hard disk performance.  If I was waiting for something, it was more than likely that hard drive.  The high number and frequency of random I/Os often resulted in significant delays.  Even with large amounts of RAM, launching programs, loading web pages, and performing builds in Visual Studio could take a lot of time.  High-speed, low-latency hard disks helped a little.  And, if you can stomach the risk of data loss, RAID-0 configurations could alleviate some of the pain.  But, disk access remained the slow step in many processes.

One of my clients, TechTurn, was kind enough to lend me a Samsung 128GB Solid State Disk (SSD) to test.  At first, I imaged my notebook Windows 7 Release Candidate installation and placed it on the SSD.  I was expecting an incremental increase in performance (at least for random, small reads).  The overall results, however, were amazing!  Applications launched in a just a few seconds, and some basic benchmarks provided all the evidence I needed to place the new disk in my primary development machine (a Dell Dimension XPS 420 with two 500GB, 7200RPM drives).  Now, after just a couple of weeks, I can’t imagine going back to “old school” physical drives.

SSD’s are new to the marketplace and they’re not without significant potential drawbacks.  In the coming weeks, I’ll provide some more details on the experience.  For now, here are a couple of basic benchmarks created using HDTune.  The basic comparison is between a Samsung 500GB, 7200 RPM hard disk (16MB cache) and the 128GB Samsung SSD.  I did absolutely nothing to optimize the performance of the SSD, so consider this just a baseline.

Benchmarks

HDTune – Disk Benchmarks

Figure 1a: HDD Performance (Dell XPS 420)

Figure 1b:  SSD Performance (Dell XPS 420)

HDTune – Random Access Performance

Figure 2a: HDD Performance (Dell XPS 420)

Figure 2b: SSD Performance (Dell XPS 420)

I realize that this data is completely anecdotal and unscientific, but it’s a promising start.  So far, the general performance improvement from using an SSD has been the single most noticeable upgrade in several years.

More to come…

Again, I hope to post some more detailed data (with a focus on benefits for development workstations) in the coming weeks.  Now if only my own sequential writing speed could match that of the SSD drive…

Update: The Engineering Windows 7 blog has a post that covers Support and Q & A for Solid-State Drives.  It helps provide some technical background related to the different between random vs. sequential I/O’s and issues related to random writing.

In today’s economy, ensuring you have a network that is reliable and secure 24×7 can help you to recession-proof your business even with a limited IT budget. Learn step-by-step about how your company can build a cost-effective, energy-efficient and secure network in ’09!

Join us now and learn:

• Easy steps to build a cost-effective, energy-efficient and secure network in ‘09
• Best practices to recession-proof your network on a limited IT budget
• How to reduce your TCO while increasing ROI across your company
• Low-cost ways to maximize and extend your network capabilities

The free webcast is scheduled for 10:00am Pacific Time on Thursday May 7, 2009.  My portion will focus on suggestions for justifying network improvements such as investing in Unified Communications (UC) and ways to sell that idea to the rest of the organization. 

• AutoPager: The page-based nature of the Web can make it really difficult to navigate through large documents.  Often, you’ll have to click through pages one-by-one.  What if the Google Search result you want didn’t make the first page?  You generally would have to manually navigate to the next page of results (or change the default view to include more results).  And don’t get me started on sites that force you to click through a dozen pages to read an entire article.  AutoPager can automatically load content from additional pages without losing context.  It supports hundreds of sites out of the box and provides an easy way to add support for new sites.  I highly recommend it, at least until the Web (and advertising) start supporting better ways to view large amounts of information.
• FoxTab: A great multi-tab browser that allows you to choose from a wide variety of different “gallery” views that show thumbnails of open tabs.  It seems to scale and perform well, even with dozens of open tabs.

• SpeedDial:  Most of us frequent the same sites many times per day.  The default user behavior – typing URLs or choosing them from the Bookmarks list – can be quite cumbersome.  As its name suggests, SpeedDial provides users with thumbnails of their most common web sites whenever they open a new tab.  ~80% of the time, I use the keyboard shortcuts (Alt-# or CTRL-#) to open the sites I use the most.
• Read It Later:  It might seem a little strange, but I’ve all but abandoned the use of bookmarks in my browsers.  I am usually very organized, but I found that it takes too much effort to store and organize separate links (many of which tend to quickly become outdated).  Read It Later provides a great way to keep track of specific articles and content that you plan to read later without requiring you to create bookmarks.  When you’re bored, you can just click on its icon, and you’ll be presented with on of the pages from its list.  You can easily mark something as “read” without having to deal with deleting bookmarks.
• IE Tab: Despite a strong push to work on standards-based sites and browsers, the need to launch IE is sometimes inevitable.  An example that comes to mind is the SQL Server Reporting Services web site which doesn’t seem to render properly in Firefox.  IE Tab allows you to simply click an icon on the status bar to switch to using the IE rendering engine for that tab.  You get to stay in the comfort of Firefox while using IE behind the scenes.

Those are the highlights of my favorite extensions.   You can easily download and install all of these extensions using the Firefox Add-Ons page.  Installation couldn’t be much simpler, and it’s really easy to try out new extensions.

But, wait – there’s more:  So far, my favorite theme is Chromifox Basic.  As its name implies, it’s hardly the flashiest of themes.  But, I really like its simple look and customizations.

There’s certainly no lack of web pages and blog entries that highlight “must-have Firefox.  (There are so many, in fact, that I’m not going to bother to link to any of them.)  Now, I can add myself to that list.

For me, one of the most frustrating aspects of searching the Web is the difficulty of searching for relative information by date.  For example, if I’m searching for information on Windows 7 or something relatively new, I generally don’t want to see information that’s over a year old.  Often, the results can get confusing.  Sometimes, you’ll want to search for a .NET command or T-SQL syntax, and you’ll find outdated results.  Sure, you can perform an Advanced Search to filter by date ranges, but it’s a cumbersome way to find the information you need.

The Timeline still appears to be in a fairly early state, and the search results aren’t quite up to par.  However, the idea is a good one, and I hope it’s significantly improved in the near future.

The company’s  resident IT professional extraordinaire has just returned from a much-deserved vacation but, in a temporary spell of relaxed judgment, has jeopardized their reputation with a poorly placed email and forwarded personal holiday snaps to the entire staff. Now they have to excavate through the email chain to find the offending photos – all while keeping the office online.

In Server Quest II, the sequel to last year’s pixellated adventure, players must hone their technical prowess in order to prove once and for all why the tech pros take the cake.  From software support to sidequests, players will get behind the curtain and live the life of a server genius fighting for respect.”

The game includes several simple mini-adventures that can easily be played online.  The pixilated art style will do little to show off features of Silverlight (such as the powerful zoom capabilities), but players will be rewarded with eight-bit analog sounds and an easy to play game.  And the sense of nostalgia is unbeatable (especially for those of us old enough to remember such vintage machines at the Commodore 64).

In this episode of The Struggling Entrepreneur, we take a closer look into the transition from being a technical specialist in the IT (Information Technology) industry to becoming a successful Entrepreneur from the background and point of view of Anil Desai.

Even if you are not an IT Specialist, but perhaps you are in a field that requires technical skills or in an area of complex products or problem-solving, this interview will be of value to you for its related scenarios.

…

Anil shares with us the obstacles he encountered, as well as how he himself tackles the administrative responsibilities of running his own business–including income taxes and other back-office tasks that many structured IT specialists dread.

Anil also discusses how his skills in communication–especially in technical writing–have added to the success of creating himself as a known Brand. In addition, Anil is also an author of several books and a speaker, as well as a consultant that delivers the right solutions to the customers to solve business problems. He will tell you in this episode about his multiple certifications and the technical skills that he keeps current–but at very little or no cost!

The recording is far from perfect (there’s a lot of background noise), but I hope you find the information to be useful.

Microsoft Dev Labs has released Small Basic, a free, simplified development environment that has a humble goal:

Microsoft Small Basic aims to make computer programming accessible to beginners.

The product provides an approachable development environment and a simple but powerful language based on the ever-popular Basic syntax.  It includes support for variables, different types of output, conditional logic, branching and looping and even subroutines.  These are all extremely valuable concepts for beginners and IT pros to understand.  All programs are saved in single files and there’s no need for a complex development environment, manual compilation, or any other project setup tasks.

Among the features that are supported:

• Command Completion and Reference:  Code completion features such as Microsoft’s IntelliSense are both helpful and fun to work with.  The following screenshot shows an example that provides annotated help as you type.

• Syntax checking: When you attempt to run a program, the development environment identifies bugs and tries to provide some hints on how to find and fix them.  It’s not the most powerful system, but it helps reduce the pain of trial and error.
• A Getting Started Guide: While it’s not context-sensitive, this beginners guide does a great job of introducing readers to basic programming concepts.  The guide is still incomplete in some places, but it provides some excellent examples that can be copied and pasted into the code editor window.
• Text output to a console window via the TextWindow object.
• Graphical output, which allows the use of standard draw commands.  Beginners can easily create lines, boxes, circles, and other common objects with just a few lines of code.
• Turtle graphics:  For those that don’t remember (or never experienced) the fun and simple Turtle language, the code is made up of commands that tell the obedient reptile how to move.  Simple commands involving turning and moving a certain distance.  You can use looping to create some interesting effects.  The following figure shows our obedient turtle running in non-overlapping circles (the source code is in the Getting Started Guide).

Overall, I think the biggest and most beneficial impact of applications such as Small Basic is in its ability to stimulate beginners to learn and experiment.  It helps then think both analytically and creatively.  These are all things that seem to be lacking in "modern" education.  Perhaps some simplified tools are the right "toys" to job the mind and imagination. 

Free virtualization e-learning collection

Take Microsoft E-Learning Collection 6333: Exploring Microsoft Virtualization Technologies for free! Collection 6333 includes the following:

• Clinic 5935: Introducing Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008
• Clinic 6334: Exploring Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008
• Clinic 6335: Exploring Microsoft Application Virtualization
• Clinic 6336: Exploring Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008

Click on the links for the entire Collection, or for individual courses to add them to your e-Learning Library.  You’ll need to login with a Windows Live ID to activate the content.

Personally, I’ve used dozens of e-Learning courses (mostly free ones, I’ll admit) to learn the technical details that aren’t always readily available on the product marketing web sites.  Most courses are fairly in-depth (including code samples where appropriate), but there are usually some rough edges that seem to be remnants from beta versions of the courses.  Overall, though, I think they’re an excellent resources.  And, all of the courses listed above are available for the convenient and affordable price of free.

Struggling Entrepreneur is one such site, and it has recently re-published a CS TechCast interview that I recorded a few months ago.  You can access podcast 67 – Freelance Entrepreneur as IT Consultant and Author for free online.  Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

When you have the technical skills, knowledge, abilities and experience in the ever-changing world of IT, you may have the burning desire to branch out on your own and establish your own services firm in the form of being an IT consultant–either as a specialist or generalist.

But the key questions you may have may leave you pondering:

- Do you specialize or diversify?

- What about keeping your skills up to date?

- How do you ride through the slow times during IT “peaks and valleys” of IT projects and engagements with clients?

- What about the administrative burden of running your own IT consultancy (e.g., taxes, accounting, sales, marketing, promotion, etc.)?

Hear what a successful IT consultant has done in order to stay ahead of the IT technical curve and yet keep loyal customers and accept exciting and key engagements focusing on state-of-the-art IT technologies.

Check out the full podcast and also all of the other great content on Struggling Entrepreneur.  I’m also recording a new interview with Fred Castaneda tomorrow.  I’m looking forward to it and will post a link when it’s available.  Stay tuned!

Obviously, this can be useful for presenters.  When showing code samples or UI elements on a projector (even at relatively low resolutions), it can be helpful to expand upon a section of the screen.  I have also found it useful on my own computer.  I run two monitors: One is running at 1680 x 1050 (horizontal), and the other is running in a vertical 1280 x 1024.  It can be useful to zoom in on sections of web pages with small fonts.  I’m sure it will be more useful as I get older, as well.  Along with DisplayFusion (which I wrote about in a previous post titled Managing Multiple Monitors on Windows Vista) , it really provides some useful capabilities.  Good luck, and feel free to post your reviews/hints here!

• Evaluating Virtualization Tools and Technologies
• Windows Server 2008’s Hyper-V: Inside and Out
• SQL Server Data Protection and High Availability

For more details, see my earlier post, DevTeach Conference Sessions.  You can find some compelling reasons to attend (along with a complete list of presentations) at the DevTeach web site.

The Windows Server 2008 Webcast Express Demo Videos highlights the many different improvements and new features in Windows Server 2008 through some concise videos (most are around 10 minutes long).  It focuses on screencasts rather than PowerPoint slides so you can see various features in action.  I recently checked out the High Performance and Scalable Networking webcast to learn about QoS options and IPv6 updates.  Overall, this is my preferred way of getting information.  I rarely like to set aside 90 minutes or so to attend a webcast, but it’s easy to find 10 – 15 minutes to learn about something new just about every day.

I chose these terms as a simple example of the information that’s available.  In addition to trend information on the number of searches, you can find the source by region/city India and Singapore seem to be really interested in these IT topics), coordination with information about news on the various topics, and a graph of news references over time.  You can also click on a region to drill-down on source locations or limit the years of analysis. 

You could try entering your own name or your blog site, but keep in mind that terms have to be pretty high before the service will return results.  My major complaint with the site is that the y-axis of the graph does not show any scale.  Rather, it just depicts "Search Volume".  I’m sure this is done for competitive reasons, and it’s a reasonable trade-off for the free information.

Of course, stat-junkies would love to see summary information to get their finger on the pulse of the world (according to search terms).  Google Zeitgeist provides just that: Year-end summaries and breakdowns of interesting topics.

Keep in mind that the type of information you can extract from search term statistics can sometimes be misleading.  For example, I’ll bet that people rarely search for the terms "Oracle" and "Microsoft" vs. just going to the respective vendors’ sites directly.  Then again, searches for the term "Google" seem fairly high based on Google Trends results.  Overall, features like this make for some interesting observations.  I primarily use Google, but I’m interested in hearing from readers: What other online statistics services am I missing?

About the Author

Let’s start this off with a little background: I generally like Microsoft and its products.  Especially when compared with other Enterprise software companies, I think Microsoft does many things well.  As an IT pro, I have based a large part of my career on their products and technology.  I periodically reevaluate that focus (generally every few years), but I have always found Microsoft’s development platform, client and server platforms, and other products to be very good.  I certainly have no more animosity towards Microsoft than to any other corporation, and I genuinely think that the company will address and resolve the below issues in the future.  OK, with that out of the way…

Testing Vista (and my patience)…

I have run Windows Vista on several computers, including my primary work machines.  Originally, I upgraded a Dell Dimension 9100 computer from Windows XP to Windows Vista.  I have since purchased a Dell Inspiron 530 desktop machine as my primary computer and a Dell Inspiron 640m notebook for traveling.  Both of these machines shipped with Windows Vista.  I am running the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate on both desktop computers. 

I have very few startup programs and have tested most of my issues on "clean" installations of the OS.  I have also done extensive troubleshooting to isolate the causes of driver and software compatibility issues.

Some Evidence…  Consistently Unreliable

My experiences with Windows Vista’s reliability (or lack thereof) have been extremely poor.  Two tools help highlight this fact.  The Reliability And Performance Monitor provides details related to OS crashes and other major events such as application installations, driver updates, etc.  On both of my Windows Vista desktop computers, the overall index has been extremely low (see screen shots below).  In fact, the only way I can seem to get the reliability to increase is to keep the machine powered off (a "solution" I have decided to use for one of the Vista machines).

More Evidence: Errors

I have experienced literally hundreds of errors on my Windows Vista operating systems.  Granted, some of these can be chalked up to application issues.  But, the number and frequency of issues is just unacceptable.  And, the lack of relevant or useful responses to these issues just adds insult to injury.  I mean, I get it: I need to download updated versions of drivers and applications.  Unfortunately, that simple-minded advice rarely provides any alleviation of the pain.

The List of Issues

OK, so the stage is set.  Following is list of current issues I have with Windows Vista, along with details. 

• General Performance: Overall, Windows Vista is sluggish.  I’m currently running the OS on an Intel Core2 Duo E6550 chip (which has 4MB of L2 cache), and even routine tasks take far too long.  Examples include moving and copying files (either locally or over the network).  File enumeration, transfer time estimates, and just plain UI sluggishness are unacceptable.  Windows Vista SP1 makes some improvements here, but every time I use a Windows XP machine, I reminisce about how well things used to perform.
• Power Management / Sleep Mode: I have been unable to use Sleep mode on my desktop Windows Vista computers for over a year.  In some cases, the systems fail to enter Sleep mode.  In other cases, they’ll enter Sleep mode and either randomly wake up or fail to return to working status.  These problems are consistent, and even after hours of troubleshooting, I have decided I have to leave my computers running all day and night for reliability.
• Troubleshooting tools: It should be taken for granted that any complex technology will have potential glitches.  Software that is as complex as a Windows OS is certainly no exception.  The key, therefore, is to make it easy to diagnose, identify, and resolve potential problems.  Windows Vista takes a few steps forward in this area by segregating event logs based on specific OS and application areas.  Some tools like the Performance And Reliability Monitor can also be somewhat helpful.  Overall, however, troubleshooting in Windows Vista is a poor experience.  It’s really difficult to track down to the root cause of system instability.  As there are numerous driver and software incompatibilities with the OS, much more robust and in-depth troubleshooting tools are a must-have "feature".
• Folder Views: It’s really surprising to me how a feature that is designed to assist users by detecting the types of files (music, video, pictures, etc.) seemingly always guesses incorrectly.  Regardless of Registry hacking, file system changes, and various UI features, I find myself constantly changing the default view for my data folders.  And, the process takes numerous clicks.  I either have to add the relevant columns to the display manually or change the view settings for the folder.  And, there’s a good chance that I’ll have to repeat this process the next time I use it.  This "feature" is broken, and a quick "fix" would be to remove or disable Windows Explorer’s folder view features.
• Switching users: When working on software development and testing, I occasionally create a second user account.  That account will have its own profile which I can modify programmatically or manually to test some behavior.  The idea is to keep from modifying my "real" settings.  Apart from being extremely slow (compared to Windows XP), the chore of switching active users seems to be really buggy.  I sometimes hear sounds that seem to emanate from the other user’s profile (e.g., receiving an e-mail message in Microsoft Outlook).  And, when I log back on to an existing user profile, the video display fails to initialize.  This occurs with numerous versions of Nvidia graphics drivers.  Again, I don’t have a way to effectively troubleshoot the problem.
• Startup Times: One of the key selling points of Windows XP was the quick startup time.  Even of relatively old hardware, I can cold boot a machine and be up and running in around a minute or so.  Windows Vista is a different story.  On my desktop computers, I often have to wait over five minutes before the system is usable.  That means that, unless the computer has already booted, I can’t even load a web page or open Microsoft Outlook.  This, clearly, is not progress.  One of the main culprits appears to be the Windows Media Player sharing functionality (I have a large collection of local music and video files that I stream to my Xbox 360).  The rest of it just seems to be an inefficient and overly-bloated OS.
• Spontaneous Reboots:  On several occasions, I have experienced spontaneous reboots of the entire OS.  It’s almost like a power fluctuation – there’s no warning, no blue screen, and not diagnostic information.  Rebooting seems to provide some stability, but this problem can be downright infuriating.
• General UI Issues: While I can appreciate the time and effort Microsoft put into usability studies for the Windows Vista UI, much of the new organization makes managing the OS far more difficult and clumsy.  And this is well over a year after having time to "adapt" to the new UI features.  Now I certainly recognize that I’m not part of Windows Vista’s core audience.  I am quite technical and often need to do things to the OS that the typical user won’t.  Still, the challenge of viewing IP address settings or managing Control Panel items is painful.  Combined with teh sluggishness of the OS in general, tasks that were quick and easy in Windows XP are a chose in Windows Vista.  Microsoft could (and hopefully will) do much better in the future. 
• Windows Vista Ultimate Extras: Apart from including a full set of OS features, Microsoft promised enhancements and upgrades to users of Windows Vista Ultimate Edition.  So far, this area has been extremely lacking.  Well over a year after the OS shipped, users are limited to just a few pieces of downloadable content (see the details at the Windows Vista Ultimate Blog).  And even those aren’t very compelling.  I can survive without new and exciting features, but I think this really highlights Microsoft’s lack of commitment to its user base.
• User Account Control (UAC): We seem to live in a society where just the mere mention of safety or security gives people carte blanche to do whatever they please.  Computer and IT professionals have a long history of doing annoying things to users in the name of "protection".  Often, these things have marginal value (think of airport security lines), but we do them anyway, since it makes us feel like we’re combating a real problem.  UAC is a great example.  By constantly nagging the user to approve certain actions, it provides questionable benefits.  The real goal, here, is to force software developers to finally follow Microsoft’s security standards.  Though many users will disable UAC, the fact that some might leave it enabled forces vendors to finally follow some best practices.  Still, it puts an unnecessary burden on users and will likely be remembered in the same way as Microsoft Office’s Office Assistant, Clippy.
• Keyboard shortcuts: Gaining true efficiency with a desktop OS involves the use of keyboard shortcuts.  Windows XP did quite well, as far as consistency goes.  I could easily create folders, move files, switch between applications, and work with applications without much trouble.  Several of Windows Vista’s keyboard shortcuts work inconsistently.  And the slow performance of Windows Explorer often leads to "race conditions" which rename the wrong folder or delete an incorrect item.  Shortcuts should be improved upon in future versions of windows, and many more should be added.
• Product Activation / Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA): I often have the need to install, reinstall, and move OS’s.  I have called Microsoft’s WGA hotline on numerous occasions because Internet activation would fail.  My crime?  Often the change was as simple as upgrading to a larger hard drive (yes, just that seemed to trigger it).  In other cases, I need to run Windows Vista in VM to test functionality or to take screen shots for books and articles.  Activation prevents me from easily performing those tasks, and even with an MSDN subscription, I find myself spending significant time worrying about license activations.  Also, I wish Microsoft would stop trying to claim that reducing piracy is somehow improving security or protecting users.  This is marketing at its finest – harm the user and tell that it’s for their own good.  Microsoft prevents unlicensed copies of the OS from being updated.  That causes more security problems.  And, the real goal here is to increase revenue – not to help the user.  Let’s admit that and see these "improvements" for what they are.
• Network issues: Occasionally, my network adapter will stop receiving connections for various services.  I rely upon my Windows Vista desktop machine to serve up audio and video content to devices throughout the rest of my house.  Periodically, the audio and video sharing features will stop working and I’m sometimes unable to connect to the computer using UNC shares.  The issues are typically accompanied with little to no help about the reason.  Rebooting the Vista machine will "solve" the problem, but that’s quite painful when I have a lot of applications open.  Network functionality should be taken for granted – this is no longer a luxury.  I’ll take reliability over performance any day, but this doesn’t seem to be an option in Windows Vista.
• Lack of compelling features: This is, perhaps, the biggest issue to me.  Perhaps most of Windows Vista’s other shortcomings could be overlooked or accepted if the OS provided significant usability, performance, and reliability.  It might be worth the pain to run new applications and use productivity-enhancing features.  Sadly, I just don’t see this in Microsoft’s latest OS.  Developers are barely starting to take advantage of features in Windows Vista, leading to little reason to upgrade.  And, we have given this quite some time.  Windows Vista was finalized over 12 months ago, and industry support is far from perfect.

Conclusion

Admittedly, the purpose of this post is to point out the flaws in Windows Vista.  I do feel that there are numerous excellent features in the OS (and even a few that are keeping me from considering the move back to Windows XP).  Areas such as the network stack have been enhanced significantly and I find myself using integrated search features all the time.  Environments that use Windows Vista (or later) with Windows Server 2008 will see significant benefits.  Still, this situation is far from perfect.

So, in conclusion, I think Microsoft has done a fairly poor job with the quality and features of its latest operating system release.  However, there might be a bright side to all this.  Microsoft does its best work when it needs to catch up or recover from problems, and I’m hoping that the next version of Windows will address these issues.  Those users that haven’t lost faith in the platform (yes, I’m one of them), will hopefully be rewarded.  Unfortunately, a final version of "Windows 7" is years away, and it looks like the wait is going to be a long and painful one…

Update: It seems that I’m hardly alone in my issues with Windows Vista.  Microsplot has a post that quotes numerous industry outlets on the topic.  See Anything but Speechless: 100 Things People Are Really Saying About Windows Vista for details.

For those of you that are interested in keeping up to date with IT goings-on, be sure to check out the Consortio Services TechCasts.  The brief intro blurb from the site reads:

CS TechCast is a podcast series released every Wednesday and is hosted by the Consortio Services experts Eric Johnson, Eric Beehler, and Josh Jones. Each week they discuss the latest IT trends, news, and bring you interviews with key members of the IT Community. Frontline information technology professionals should find the information both helpful and relevant to their careers.

I had the honor of being interviewed for the first episode.  Just click below for details, or access the Podcasts page directly.