Starting with the basics, both of these products are mobile OS’ that are designed to make life (business and personal) simpler and more efficient. At the end of the day, both Android 2.2 and the WP7 will help you accomplish this, but which is easier to live with? Which one of these products will make you smile, or rather which one of these products won’t make you wince every time you require mobile services?

There are obviously a lot of similarities between Android 2.2 and WP7; both offer free maps functions and email. Both operating system are GSM and CDMA capable as well as offering their own version of the Office Suite. So then, the differences: each one of the products listed above as a similarity are similar in function, but because each is made by its respective parent company, Google and Microsoft, each is different in its own idiosyncrasies. For example, the email function for Android is through Gmail whereas WP7 offers Outlook.

Further differences include the fact that WP7 will let you directly access the Zune store and Xbox Live, whereas Android has no comparable services in the areas of music and games. On the other hand, as an advantage for Android, it offers tethering through USB and WiFi. Although, it is a possibility that WP7 may also have this functionality it is at the moment unknown. Another advantage for Android is that WP7 will not be upgradable, meaning that if you currently have a WinMo phone you won’t be able to use WP7 on it.

Thus, it would seem that the slight edge would go to Android 2.2 especially seeing as it is already available. But consider this, the mobile marketplace is a bit of an arms race and as a consumer you can’t really go wrong with buying up-to-date technology. So I would suggest going after the best deals, or be like me and get one of each!

DSL stands for digital subscriber line and is a method of providing data transmission over traditional phone lines while maintaining telephone services. Cable provides data transmission through coaxial cables. While on the surface DSL and cable may be very similar, once you dig deeper you will find that cable internet is generally preferred to DSL. However, this preference also depends on where you are, because prices and performance depends on where you live. Therefore, DSL loses the first battle because DSL performance suffers the farther you are from the central hub.

DSL provides connection speeds at a minimum of 768 Kb/s to 1.5 Mb/s whereas cable can provide speeds starting at 2 Mb/s. However, getting cable internet means you have suffer the installation process and charge from the cable company, whereas DSL has much easier installation.

So what about the new guy? WiMAX is where it gets exciting. There is a potential for future WiMAX to provide up to 1 Gb/s of connectivity. The idea of WiMAX started with the forum sharing the same name that promotes the interoperability of WiMAX technology. Recently, speeds on WiMAX have been seen at about 12 Mb/s in Australia, but realistic speeds in your neighborhood may be much slower. WiMAX is based on the new IEEE standard, IEEE 802.16, which was created to promote “Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks.”

Obviously, one of these technologies is better than the other, however, it will take some time for WiMAX to become fully available and the general standard for internet access to change.

Additionally, Microsoft has further improved the collaboration tools. For example, it is now possible to simultaneously work on Word documents and PowerPoint presentations. The calendar functions have also improved with added drag-drop functionality of events and multiple calendar views as well as group calendaring. The new SharePoint workspace also allows you to work on sites, libraries, and lists offline only to be updated the next time you access your network.

It is also possible to manage wiki pages and blogs from SharePoint. The new version also has social networking to improve your business and contacts with new content management as well as a new search function that is supposed to be a “social experience.” This search will include the FAST Search technology created by Microsoft which involves features that include visual search, metadata extraction, and advanced linguistics. Very Nice!

Microsoft’s newest installation of SharePoint offers an easier interface to do site management and enhanced SharePoint designer. Additionally, Microsoft is providing a new database that can support usage reporting and logging. Finally, SharePoint will now recognize more browsers, IE 7.0 and 8.0, Firefox, and Safari.

After a handful of fairly complex SharePoint 2010 implementations for CyberStreams clients, we’ve been very pleased that the Microsoft SharePoint team has given us the features and functionality that our clients have needed and we’ve been asking for!

Small Business Server 7 offers the same type of old school on-premise support which will be appealing to businesses already using Small Business Server. SBS has always been geared towards providing easy back-up and collaboration for small businesses, but, Microsoft seems to think that new customers to SBS products will prefer Aurora. As Microsoft advertises it, SBS 7 is “Designed for people who want enterprise class technology in an affordable, all-in-one suite,” and Aurora is “Designed for people who never thought they could use a server.”

When you take a look into features of these two new products, you realize that both Aurora and SBS 7 are based on Windows Server 2008 R2, and are both only available as 64-bit operating systems. Both new branches of the small business server family have all of the necessary features of a server product. Small Business Server 7 has the on-premise capabilities for Exchange and SharePoint, whereas Aurora will not have these features on-premise. Aurora will thus provide Exchange and SharePoint on a cloud. This is part of the reason why Aurora only supports a maximum of 25 user accounts when SBS 7 can handle up to 75.

Additionally, Microsoft is only making Aurora available to new clients meaning that Aurora can only be used to as the first server in a new domain in either a new business or one that has not previously had a server infrastructure. Just as Microsoft has advertised, Aurora is easy-to-use with an interface similar to the Windows Home Server and is ideal for the newly formed business.

Both Aurora and SBS 7 are currently in the beta testing phase.

The difference starts with the processing power of the computer. Not all computers are capable of handling 64-bit applications. Take Windows, for example, the 64-bit version can handle more hardcore processing involving large amounts of data. This means that the computer running 64-bit Windows will run its applications faster and more efficiently, however, a user may only notice the difference when using large applications that use up a lot of computing resources. Generically, 32-bit processing involves 2 GB of memory at any given time, where 64-bit processing can handle vast amounts more.

Thus, 64-bit processing sounds impressive but it requires somewhat impressive hardware to back it up. As technology improves, all computers are slowly making the move towards 64-bit processing. However, if you want to run a 64-bit application, say professional video editing software, you need hardware that is capable of handling 64-bit processing as well as an equivalently geared up operating system.

Generally, you should be able to run 32-bit software on a machine that has a 64-bit operating system. Based on your needs, 64-bit computing may be a vast improvement, but if you don’t require that kind of intense computing power, it may be a waste.

Whatever the previous reputation of Windows Mobile products may have been, it is about to change with WP7. The new user interface is a huge step up from previous models because it seems intuitive and easy to use. It looks a lot like the new Zune interface and can also be synchronized to Xbox Live. Most importantly, Microsoft has put in a lot of work into having the phone do the work of organizing your life for you, like all smartphones are supposed to. For example, instead of a contacts option in the menu, there is a “People” option which not only shows you all of your contacts, but also, their newest updates via Facebook, Windows Live, etc.

Then comes Microsoft’s party piece, Office. With WP7 you will have access to the full Office Suite including Outlook and Sharepoint as well as increased usability of all of these programs. The obvious target for a lot of these features is the businessperson who is trying to synch with their business network. This is the advantage that WP7 has over the new and already available Droid 2.0 and iPhone 4.

Due to its tardiness and its subpar predecessors, some believe that Windows Phone 7 will have to be a great and popular product or it may become the next Kin. So, you decide, is this exciting new Windows product going to be fashionably late or too late to matter?

Where are we today, more than 26 years later?

It is apparent that for most people the trend for casual use technology is going to be a handheld device, be it a smart phone or a tablet like the iPad. They’re not good for writing long pieces of text, but for short messages, FaceBook posting, or general surfing they can work well and are a lot more convenient to drag around than a laptop. Apple has set itself up well in this device space, whith their various iPods, iPhones, and now the iPad. But there is a fundamental lie that is going on that should be questioned.

If Apple is into innovation and creative freedoms, why are they so totalitarian with the uses of their devices? iPhones that users have hacked to work with other cellular networks are intentionally broken by Apple if they attempt a software update on the phone. Programmers who write apps for the iPhone or iPad have to give 30% of their profits for that program to Apple. And, most recently, they have adopted the position that Adobe’s Flash will not be allowed to run on the iPad.

This is not automatically a bad thing; Flash allows some severe security vulnerabilities and had a less than useful upgrade system (No centralized “Adobe Update” site such as what Microsoft does for their products). However, this is counter to the image Apple has portrayed in the past, it’s also hypocritical, and more importantly, it is bad for the health of the internet and consumers.

To the point of the stance being hypocritcal, There are a couple of points to bring up. One reason Steve Jobs gave for barring Flash from the iPad is that it is not Open, meaning the standards and hows of Flash are controlled by a single entity who has say over how it is designed and how it works…. which is exactly how the Apple devices and App Store function.

To the last point about it being bad for the internet, this goes back to the open architecture and standards that originally allowed the internet to flourish. Hardware and software manufacturers had the ability to innovate and came up with many wild ideas, some of which were good, and some of which were bad, but all of them were a showcase of individual innovation. The world’s most popular web server, Apache, came out because of the freedom to innovate without shakles, for example.

The message from Apple is different; we will control what you are allowed to do and how you will do it. They control what can or cannot run on a system regardless of what the owner desires. They are the moral police. They seek to create a world  where, directly from the “Big Brother” featured in the 1984 commercial, “each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths..”

So we ask, who is the evil Empire now?

It’s funny how people just don’t like change, and how technology changes every day.  Assuming “no harm”; “no foul”, this is a fascinating and humourous dance playing out within our increasingly wired society.  If you like to occasionally reflect on that type of thing objectively. 

CyberStreams is obviously an advocate of change, however often our efforts to convince people go ‘unheard’ or misunderstood. 

This article on CNN highlights a web design company whom is really having fun with the concept: they are having a funeral for IE 6 today in Colorado!

Check it out!: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/04/ie6.funeral/index.html?hpt=Sbin

Send Connectors
Exchange 2007 won’t let you remove it until you remove the Send Connectors manually.  Probably to make sure you’ve established some other way to send email first.  You can either remove the Send Connector in the Console under Organization Configuration-Hub Transport, or you can use the Shell and run this command.

Remove-SendConnector -Identity “Name of Connector”

 
Routing Group Connectors
Just like with Send Connectors, Exchange 2007 insists you either delete or move Routing Group Connectors before you uninstall.  I assume for the same reason.  Connectors are the links to other servers or the outside world.  You can remove the server until you’ve accounted for them in one way or another.  Removing the Routing Group connectors must be done in the Shell using the following.

Remove-RoutingGroupConnector -Identity “Name of Connector”

 
Public Folder Replicas
This is the tricky one. Even after you’ve done all the normal steps to replicate public folders to a database on another server and then configured it to no longer replicate back to the old server, the replicas still exist on the old server and Exchange won’t be able to uninstall the database.  Even trying to manually remove the database will fail.  There is a sure fire way to remove it, but it involves using the Adsiedit tool which must be used very carefully.

First install Adsiedit, which is part of the Windows Support Tools package that can be downloaded from Microsoft.  After launching Adsiedit.msc, browse to the location of the Public Folder Store on the old server and delete it.  The normal location would be: Configuration, Configuration, Services, Microsoft Exchange, First Organization, Administrative Groups, Exchange Administrative Group, Servers, Servername, Information Store, Second Storage Group.  Delete the Public Folder Store on the right hand side.

 
Uninstall Appears to Hang
If the uninstall runs for a long time and doesn’t appear to be doing anything, check Task Manager and find the Powershell.exe process.  End it.  The uninstall should finish shortly.

Affordability – Business technology requirements significantly differ from personal technology requirements. Business innovation today should allow elite outsourced IT service providers to research, certify, and implement enterprise level technologies within the constraints of a small business budget.

Simplicity- “Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.” Elite outsourced IT service providers IT process simplification recommendations are designed to achieve increased productivity, higher profitability, less errors, reduced stress, happier staff, improved communication, and client longevity.

Continuity – In today’s competitive business environment IT continuance and security are essential. “Security in IT is like locking your house or car – it doesn’t stop the bad guys, but if it’s good enough they may move on to an easier target.” The value of stored business data far exceeds the value of the hardware it resides on. Hardware can be quickly and affordably be replaced, but data cannot. Elite outsourced IT service providers need to be able to effectively apply these IT security and continuance principles to all their client’s continuance plans.

Flexibility – Business improvement based on IT optimization evolves with time through education, adoption, and application. Elite outsourced IT service providers use this cycle to foster business growth by recommending technology that small businesses can affordably grow into without forklift type replacements.

To achieve the elite IT provider status using these four concepts it is vital that IT service companies are successful at immersing themselves into each of their client’s business plans, goals, and challenges at management levels. Without being successful at this, your client’s technology has no chance to be transformed from a mere expense into a valuable asset.