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Upgrade Your BlackJack II

2008-09-05T19:19:13Z

If you're sporting a Samsung BlackJack II, you can now upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.1 by going here.

Serious Issue With VMware 3.5 U2

2008-08-12T21:35:13Z

UPDATE: A patch as been released to fix this issue. You can download it at http://www.vmware.com/go/esxexpresspatches.

Just landed in my inbox:

Problem:

An issue has been discovered by many VMware customers and partners with ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2 where Virtual Machines fail to power on or VMotion successfully. This problem began to occur on August 12, 2008 for customers that had upgraded to ESX 3.5 Update 2. The problem is caused by a build timeout that was mistakenly left enabled for the release build.

Affected Products:

VMware ESX 3.5 Update 2 & ESXi 3.5 Update 2
Reports of problems with ESX 3.5 U1 with the following 3.5 Update 2 patch applied.
1. ESX350-200806201-UG
No other VMware products are affected.

What has been done?

Product and Web teams pulled the ESX 3.5 Update 2 bits from the download pages last night so no more customers will be able to download the broken build.
VMware Engineering teams have isolated the cause of the problem and are working around the clock to deliver updated builds and patches for impacted customers.
A Knowledgebase article has been published (http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1006716), but traffic to the knowledgebase is causing time outs. A new static page has been published at http://www.vmware.com/support/esx35u2_supportalert.html that customers and partners will be able to view.
The phone system has been updated to advise customers of the problem
Vmware partners have been notified of the issue.

Workarounds:

1. Do not install ESX 3.5 U2 if it has been downloaded from VMware’s website or elsewhere prior to August 12, 2008.

2. Set the host time to a date prior to August 12, 2008. This workaround has a number of very serious side affects that could impact product environments. Any Virtual Machines that sync time with the ESX host and serve time sensitive applications would be broken. These include, but are not limited to database servers, mail servers, & domain administration systems.

Next Steps:
VMware to notify customers who have downloaded this version and provide an update every two hours.

Resolution:

VMware Engineering has isolated the root cause and is working to produce an express patch for impacted customers today. The target timeframe is 6pm, August 12, 2008 PST.

New Version Of Windows Live For Windows Mobile Available

2008-07-24T15:28:11Z

The Windows Live for Windows Mobile team has released a new version of their software. According to the notes, you'll need to uninstall any version you may currently have on your device before installing this new one. Here's a short list of features:

Synchronize Live contacts with your contacts on the device
Synchronize your Live email (msn, hotmail, live)
View graphics, web links and contact photos in emails
Respond to emails with voice recordings
Upload photos to your Windows Live Spaces

You can get the new version by pointing your WM browser to http://wl.windowsmobile.com.

Microsoft Pro Photography Summit

2008-07-09T16:36:12Z

Scobelizer is broadcasting a speech by Microsoft CTO David Vaskevitch, and I'm having trouble focusing on what he's saying. Because of the pants he's wearing:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/scobleizer/2652483935/sizes/l/

I wonder if you can get those at the company store?

Windows Mobile Smackdown

2008-06-16T22:58:42Z

I've been following Jason Langridge's blog for some time now, and it was great to get to finally meet him at TechEd this year. I went to a few of the sessions he was conducting, one being "Windows Mobile Smackdown", which is a public version of the event that they have internally at Microsoft.

Jason has been kind enough to post up the list of things he demo'd in that session, such as:

Celio Redfly - http://celiocorp.com - A cool PDA Extender

Windows Mobile 6.1 - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/6-1

Zumobi - http://www.zumobi.com - a great new interface for Windows Mobile

Check out his post for the full list. And check out the video too. You've likely heard that Microsoft is big on eating their own dogfood, well, in that video, some of them do, literally, to win Windows Mobile swag.

New Exchange Troubleshooting Tool

2008-06-12T06:00:26Z

For those of you wanting to test out a new Microsoft tool for Exchange issue diagnosis, go to https://testexchangeconnectivity.com. As the presenter emphatically emphasized at TechEd today, this tool is a prototype and has not been run through the normal battery of security tests. If you want to use this tool, create an account and mailbox specifically for testing purposes, and delete it once you have completed testing. DO NOT use your own Exchange mailbox or any other "production" mailbox with this tool. That being said, check it out, it looks pretty cool.

TechEd Exchange Backup Announcement

2008-06-11T20:39:02Z

Those of you who have deployed Exchange 2007 on Windows Server 2008 may be aware of an issue involving the backup software that Microsoft includes with Windows Server 2008 where it no longer supports streaming ESE backups. So unless you're using a 3rd party product, you're not able to back up your Exchange servers. Microsoft today announced that they are working on an Exchange-provided VSS-based plugin to Windows Server Backup that will enable the ability to back up your Exchange servers.

If this problem affects you, or you're holding off deploying until a fix is ready, Microsoft says it will be available some time this summer.

HTC Diamond On Display Starting Tomorrow

2008-06-10T20:19:14Z

For those of you at TechEd who are into Windows Mobile, Microsoft is having a few HTC Diamonds Fed Ex'd in for tomorrow. There will be one on display at the WinMo showcase and at least one for use during Theater sessions in the Yellow areas. Of course, that's if the info I received from the WinMo guys is correct.

UPDATE: Stopped by and saw the Diamond. The TouchFlo scrolling was REALLY slow, and I wasn't the only one who noticed.

LiveBlogging The TechEd IT Pro Keynote

2008-06-10T12:34:38Z

8: 35 Right now, African-style drums and dancing. Audience not as enthusiastic about shaking their maracas as the girl on stage would like. Glad I'm sitting in the press room.

8:40 Bob Muglia takes the stage

No more time stamps during this post, too distracting

Discussion of how Microsoft software (Groove and SharePoint) helped out with Katrina relief efforts

Dynamic IT - Employing new solutions and technologies to boost the agility and speed of their IT Systems

Identity Lifecycle Management Beta 3 Demo - I haven't used it, but it looks pretty nice, automation of creating new users, setting up mailbox, add to groups, etc.

Web Services - Demo of SOA Interoperability with .NET 3.5

Virtualization is a transformational technology for IT. When properly deployed and managed, virtualization creates IT systems that are highly efficient and cost-effective

Hyper-V on schedule to release within 180 days of Windows Server 2008 RTM, Muglia says it benchmarks well against VMWare ESX and in some cases out performs it

Moving on to application virtualization and modeling, demo of Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, built on top of PowerShell. Moving a VM from one host to another really simple, took about 10 seconds, can also do VMotion moves of VMWare VMs

Moving on to application virtualization and SoftGrid. I've used SoftGrid, it's pretty sweet. Version 4.5 coming this summer.

Demo of Kidaro, which will be included in MDOP

Demo of Microsoft Online Services - Enterprise apps hosted by Microsoft like Exchange

Demo of SQL Server 2008 data compression and policy-based management

Keynote over - not bad, Muglia did a pretty good job keeping it going

Cluster-Funk

2008-05-21T20:22:33Z

Double Take software is again throwing their customer appreciation party during TechEd. This year they are having it at Margaritaville and they're calling it Cluster-Funk in Paradise. You have to register to attend, and you can do that here.

Microsoft All-Star Community PIT STOP

2008-05-21T18:55:45Z

Trikah just posted the details for the Pit Stop party for MCPs, MCTs, and MVPs during the IT Pro week of TechEd. You can register here using the following codes:

TechNet Plus subscribers use code TECHNET

MCP/MCTs use code MCPMCT

MVPs use code MVP

Make sure to have your membership number handy, you'll need it to register.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that only the first 1000 people to register will get an invite, so if you want to go, you should register el pronto.

Install Vista On Your iPhone

2008-05-21T15:06:43Z

Well, sort of. There's a new theme for the iPhone called Vista Perfection 2.0, and it will give your iPhone the visual appeal of a Vista desktop.

The installation instructions sound pretty convoluted, but the end result looks pretty sweet. I think I'll install it on our iPhone loaner, because hey, who wouldn't want Vista on their iPhone?

Windows Mobile 7 Sneak Peek

2008-05-13T20:59:53Z

Speaking of Live Mesh, in one of Microsoft's promos for it, there is a sneak peek of what looks to be an HTC Touch Dual running Windows Mobile 7. Take a look, it's about 32 seconds in:

BitLocker Drive Preparation Tool Available For Download

2008-04-30T19:05:42Z

BitLocker is a great feature to have to keep your data safe, but if you don't partition your drive correctly before the OS install, you won't be able to install it, because you need an unencrypted partition to boot from. This tool will create another volume to boot from so that you can get BitLocker set up.

Previously this tool was only available by calling in on a KB article, but now Microsoft has made it freely available without the hassle of having to call and ask for it. You can get it here.

Coming Soon To An iPhone Near You

2008-03-12T17:08:52Z

As I suspected, back at the time of this post, Apple has licensed ActiveSync, and it will be available on the iPhone when the 2.0 software update becomes available, which should be some time in June.

Also, since that last post, I've gotten quite a bit of time to actually use an iPhone and I have to say that I really like it, but as I see it, there are two things wrong with the phone as it exists right now. First is the lack of ActiveSync, which won't be an issue in about three months. The second is that you can only attach it to AT&T's crappy EDGE network. Granted, they did try to beef it up in the run up to the iPhone release, but at best you're still probably only going to get about 80k down, which is pretty slow when compared to 3G networks. When iPhone 2.0 comes out with HSDPA and ActiveSync, I will seriously consider purchasing one.