I was reading this post about how they are moving TFS to Azure to provide a cloud based version of TFS.
I find this very interesting as it provides you with a view of what kinds of problems you may face if you are moving an existing application on to the cloud (esp. Azure)
Some issues like security can have a major impact on your application design, while others like SELECT INTO support may also drain a lot of effort to fix.
And the final big thing that may weigh on your overall effort is testing. Because, now all your previous test results are out of the window and you will have to do a complete regression to make sure that everything works find.
A recent Forrester Report on the BI space puts Microsoft BI on the leaders quadrant and also says the value of Microsoft BI is ‘hard to beat pricewise’.
I have been seeing an increasing trend among customers in adopting Microsoft BI over the past year or so and this seems to be led strongly from two fronts:
1. Price – Since the price of most of the elements required for BI is encapsulated in things that most enterprises already have (SQL Server, SharePoint (for PPS) and Office (Excel+PowerPivot).
2. New UI power in PowerPivot and SharePoint PPS services seem to also add to the overall trend.
If you use multiple computers like me then one of the things you want to do is synchronize certain files and also IE Favorites. Previously I used to use the Live Mesh Beta software to share a directory under the IE’s Favorites directory that I synch with a similar directory on all of my computers.
Now the updated Live Mesh make it even simpler. You now get a option to turn on/off IE favorites synching.
This article has more details on all the other features in the new Live Mesh.
If you are playing around with IE 9 Beta, you may have noticed the multiple UI changes that have been made. Most of these are good, but some may leave you unable to figure out something that you are used to.
A couple of features that I usually use that have changed..
1.Back and Forward History
This is the history that you get for the back and forward buttons. You accessed this by clicking the small dropdown arrows available next to the buttons in IE8.
IE 8
IE 9
But there are no arrows next to the back and forward buttons in IE9. So how do you get to the navigation history. There are no visual indications available and since it is still in beta, documentation is sketchy. So with a little bit of clicking around, I found that you can get the history if you right click the navigation buttons instead of left click.
Now you get the familiar dropdown of the navigation history.
I use this feature a lot as I jump back and forth between pages when searching for stuff and so this becomes very important.
Not very easy to find, but the feature is still there..
2. Closing a non-current tab
You have multiple tabs open and you want to close a tab, but you don't want to switch focus to it.
In the above screenshot, I am currently in Tab 3 (in focus tab), but have my mouse hovering over Tab 2. In IE8 a small cross will appear at the corner of Tab 2 (like the closes button in the right of Tab 3), which you can click to close the tab. The advantage there is that you don't have to switch tabs to close them. In IE9, the close button appears only on the current tab (i.e. tab you are viewing) and to close the non-focus tab you will have to switch to it, for the close button to appear. I had written a feedback around this to MS and got a response saying that clicking the middle mouse button will close a non-focus tab (on my laptop touchpad, I can click left and right button together to do the same).
Again a feature that is not easy to find, but very useful if you know it. Here is a video of this feature at work
Internet Explorer 9 Beta 1 is now available. Till now you could get a look at some features using the developer preview which let you get a peek into features but was not really a full fledged browser yet. Beta 1 is now a fully usable browser (it actually replaces your current IE version you have).
One of the featuers I came across at the start is one small popup window that came up at the bottom that told me that I can speed up my browsing speed by disabling addons. I clicked the button and I got a window that not only listed Addons (like before) but with a load time displayed next to it (with a small graph that show the time making it easy to compare). This is really useful addition as you can now make a call on which addon to disable based on the load times...
I have been using Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) from when it was in Beta. I really like it as it is very quite and most does catch any virus that try to creep in via USB sticks or from PDF files (which the ones I mostly come across)
The only sticky point is that the Virus Definition Updates happen automatically via Windows Updates. Since my laptop is online only at certain periods of the day, I saw that my virus updates were delayed for multiple days.
So I decided to schedule a manual update of the definition files during a specifc time of the day when I would most probably be online at home (I set it up to run at around 8am everyday, at which time my laptop is most probably on and online as I do my morning email checks)
What do you think this is? A manufacturing facility, a water treatment plant (what with all of those tubes??)
Well it is to do with computers and this belongs to Microsoft. These are pictures of the new Microsoft Data Center in Chicago. The new Azure Services run out of this data center.
Photo 2 & 3 - What you're seeing is a tiny section of the 7.5 miles of cooling pipes inside Microsoft's new 700,000-foot Chicago data center, which is one of the—if not the—largest in the world.
This is one of the largest data centers in the world and MS will use this to learn and fine tune its data center strategy as this is just the first in a series of data centers that MS will build
Even the inside of the building doesn't look like that much. The ground floor looks like a large indoor parking lot filled with a few parked trailers.
It's what's inside those trailers, though, that is the key to Microsoft's cloud-computing efforts. Each of the shipping containers in the Chicago data center houses anywhere from 1,800 to 2,500 servers, each of which can be serving up e-mail, managing instant messages, or running applications for Microsoft's soon-to-be-launched cloud-based operating system--Windows Azure.
Ok, you have read a lot about the Win XP mode in Windows 7 and think that you will able to play that old game that you have that will not run on Vista (Yes, I do have a number of those old games sitting around. Railroad Tycoon anyone??)? Well you are wrong!!
First of all, the Win XP mode is aimed at businesses that run LOB (ie. Line of Business) applications that do not run on Vista. So this feature is available only in the Win 7 Professional and up version. (I think you don't even get it in Home Premium, you will have to go for Ultimate)
Why would the games not run on Win XP Mode? Well the answer is in the graphics card. Most games that came out during the XP days (which are the culprits) use DirectX and need a graphics card that supports DirectX. Microsoft Virtual PC and Win XP mode(which is based on the VPC core) do not emulate a graphics card that supports DirectX. From what I can gather they emulate a low end graphics card with 8 MB of video RAM (an S3 Trio 64 Video card with 8mb of video ram).
So if you want to really play those older games/apps that require DirectX support you have a couple of options:
1. If the app runs with compatibility set, you have a easy way out. This option rarely works with games though.
2. You can dual boot between Vista/Win7 and XP. I hate this option as I need to switch reboot my machine just to play a game for a couple of minutes.
3. Use a virtualization program that can emulate DirectX.
Currently VMware officially supports this option in their Workstation product. I tested it out with the trial version and the supports seems quite good. Some of my games did work on, and a few crashed the VM. ( I do expect that as games are well know to use OS hacks and unsupported APIs for speed etc.). My only problem is that the product is quite costly at $189. Do I want to spend $189 to play a couple of games, even if I love them?? This is a product aimed at the business user and not the hobbyist and that is why it is so costly. It would be great if VMWare can come out with a hobbyist product.
The other option I found was a open source/freeware product called VirtualBox from Sun. They currently have beta support for DirectX. The professional version is available for free for personal use and they also have a Open Source version which does not have some features like USB support etc. (You can find the differences here) Since the professional version is free for personal use, I went for that. Though the UI and the website is more open sourceish, the actual implementation of DirectX support seems very Robust. Actually, I think vBox runs the games better in my view.
VirtualBox has been running on my Win 7 Desktop for a couple of weeks with no problem.
