Steve Richards: Desktop

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Thu, 26 Aug 2004 18:56:34 GMT

I have a new blog so this blog is now closed down!

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If you want to know why I switched have a look here

http://steves.businessblog.com/blog/_archives/2004/8/25/129522.html

Use Virtual PC, then you need this site!

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 21:26:41 GMT

Absolute goldmine, lists every OS you can image and provides details on whether its works on Virtual PC. I was pretty amazed by the list, especially compared with VM Ware. Where a product has issues it also has notes of workarounds. Even better if you want to keep up to date with the latest additions there is an RSS feed.

Also if like me you have VMWare Workstation, GSX Server and VPC then this is a good review to help you decide which to use. I also suggest checking out the comments on the review.

Linux and thin clients

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 12:52:55 GMT

eWeek reports that Wyse, (a long term user of Windows embedded technologies), is now moving into Linux in a bigway.

"Linux has really grown, and has become 20 percent of the worldwide thin-client marketplace,"

What actually suprised me was that the market share was so low, given that Linux seems to be a perfect fit for the embedded market, but clearly it takes time for things to catch on.

Diagram of my home network

Thu, 15 Jul 2004 18:35:51 GMT

I described my Office in a previous post. In this post I thought I would provide a bit on insight into my home network. The following diagram should give you the basic idea.

The hub of the network is a little 4 port 100MB switch. All three servers and one laptop are plugged into this
There are two dedicated servers on the network

Server 1 is a dedicated application server. It only runs Windows 2003 Server and GSX Server 3.1. All application servers and some test desktops run on top of GSX server.
Server 2 is a dedicated management server, and Active Directory domain controller. This server runs the MOM Express 2005, and acts as a backup of my main file server, using Windows 2003 Volume Shadow Copy.

My desktop PC also happens to run Windows 2003 server, as this allows me the flexibility to access it via Windows Terminal Services from anyhwere in the house, mirror my data files, and also runs as AD domain controller for resiliance. It also runs VMWare Workstaton.
When I need access to my company network, I run up a corporate standard PC in a VM on my Desktop Server and VPN from there, (VMware allows me to share files between my Corporate network and my PC network, with full network isolation).
The Pinter/Scanner is plugged into the management Server and the Desktop application server, one connection via USB and the othere via parallel.
For flexible use around the house and offsite I also have a laptop which runs Windows XP Professional, but can access Linux from the VMWare application server. The laptop and my PDA both connect via WIFI.
My eldest daughters both have PC's. One laptop and one desktop both connected via WIFI.
All machines are part of the home AD Domain and use roaming profiles.
All data access except from my desktop server is via DFS
All print access is via my desktop server
Windows Terminal services is used extensively by everyone in the family
My desktop has three screens all driven from my desktop server. One display via analogue, one via DVI and one via a virtual display adaptor from Maxivista.
I have a KVM switch that allows my Keyboard, Mouse and Secondary display to be connected to either my desktop server or my application server for console access, although its more convenient most of the time just to leave a Windows Terminal Server session open.

In a future post I will explain a bit about my home lab, which is all virtual for maximum flexibility and runs a mix of Windows and Linix servers and clients. I will also expand a bit on my desktop application environment and security.

Microsoft and integration

Mon, 12 Jul 2004 22:32:33 GMT

I have thought for a long time that Microsoft don't make much use of their own software to build pre-integrated solutions for their customers, (unlike Oracle for example). They seem to have caught onto the idea at last, (not from listening to me though :-)). Anyway a few months ago they started to talk about solution accelerators, which are solutions built from sets of MS products with associated processes, procedures and best practices as well as custom systems integration. These solve particular business problems, like for example, the process of hiring new employees. There is also evidence that Microsoft is doing the same at the infrastructure level where the range of tools available to them is even richer, SQL Server, BizTalk, SharePoint etc. This is a good example:

Microsoft also plans to make available to enterprise partners a "zero touch provisioning" accelerator that will enable end users to self-service tasks such as requesting the installation of an application or resetting a network password.
"We built in a rules-based engine based on BizTalk that can automate requests, get approved by a manager, and install a new application," Hassall said. "And the opportunity is not just for desktop deployment but add-ons for server infrastructure using SMS and Active Directory and BizTalk in providing an infrastructure for installation and provisioning services."

The company also plans to make available to enterprise partners a "zero touch provisioning" accelerator that will enable end users to self-service tasks such as requesting the installation of an application or resetting a network password.

"We built in a rules-based engine based on BizTalk that can automate requests, get approved by a manager, and install a new application," Hassall said. "And the opportunity is not just for desktop deployment but add-ons for server infrastructure using SMS and Active Directory and BizTalk in providing an infrastructure for installation and provisioning services."

Microsoft's latest marketting phrase - Integrated innovation is starting to mean something. If you want to see more on this topic then enter "integrated innovation", into the search box on the left, include the quotes!

This is just so cool!

Mon, 12 Jul 2004 22:15:25 GMT

Microsoft research have come up with some really cool tools for capturing and manipulating whiteboard contents captured using low quality web cams. My whiteboard is right behind me, (so my web cam points right at it, so it would work just great, but the downloads are MS only. The best trick is it removes the person writing on the board from the image. Here are some of the key points:

Other systems use expensive cameras or dedicated electronic whiteboards. The Live Whiteboard system, developed at Microsoft Research by Zhengyou Zhang and Li-wei He, uses whatever whiteboard you already have. It only needs an inexpensive Web cam and some clever software.

Live Whiteboard doesn't just deliver a video stream of the whiteboard. The software takes out all the shadows and uneven surfaces that come through on a Web cam, and turns the whiteboard into an image that allows viewers to see the whiteboard notes. Through a series of image processing procedures, the originally captured image is first transformed into a rectangular bitmap to correct perspective distortion, and then color-enhanced to increase contrast, saturation, and to provide a clean uniform white background.

In addition, if the remote viewer wants to focus his attention only on the content, the system can take out the image of the person who is writing on the board. The remote viewer sees only the new content magically appearing, he never sees the person who is writing the content. This saves even more bandwidth.

The full news article can be found here, and the web site for the developer with more info and the research reports can be found here.

3 Monitors is the way to go!

Tue, 06 Jul 2004 23:25:58 GMT

I have been quite happy with my two monitor setup at home, but using maxivista I am now able to drive three monitors from my main desktop PC. This is just great. I can now have my email in one, my RSS feeds in another, be using Office in another etc. I am also using a lot of virtual PC's and I can have these displaying on different monitors. So I can have RedHat on one monitor and SUSE on another and still be using Office on my third. It really must have driven my productivity up 20% when I am doing this sort of work, which is probably 50% of the time. That's at least £100/day. A staggering return on investment - the third monitor, (old laptop), was being scrapped and Maxivista is about $40!!

The other great advantage is that your concentration and focus is not disrupted, you might think it would be, but it seems that by not switching applications all the time, and by being able to focus on the task at hand on your primary screen, the other two monitors just provide supporting information.

We really must get more people to understand the value proposition of multiple screens!

Amazing array of Windows Powered Devices

Wed, 30 Jun 2004 16:28:53 GMT

I was wondering a few weeks ago why the Tablet PC team were moved into the Mobile and Embedded Devices division in Microsoft. Then I saw this web page and the array of Tablet format devices and I realised why! Theres a very good write up of recent news from the Embedded developers conference here. More links to Windows powered devices can be found below:

Tablet PC
Pocket PC
Media Center PC
Smart picture frame
Portable Media Center
Smartphone
Windows Automotive
Gametrac gaming device
SPOT watch
Windows-powered cash register at store
iCEBOX kitchen PC and home controller

Next steps

Mon, 28 Jun 2004 13:33:08 GMT

I had some very good news today. I am to be working for most of my time for probably 6 months or more on alternative desktop solutions, looking at what the viable alternatives are to the Microsoft Desktop solution. This is an end to end review, ie not just looking at the Operating System, but at:

The operating system
The layered personal productivity tools
Integration with peripherals and PDA's
The service and systems management tools
The security tools
The integration issues
Application compatability and portfolio migration issues
The data and personality migration issues
The TCO issues
The user change/culture change issues
Changes to my companies service model and associated technologies
Some of the issues that result from running a mixed environment, or a parallel environment, for example VMware hosted
The architectural changes, eg thick or thin client, application delivery approaches
Some of the strategic differences including those that arise from the different motivations of Microsoft and the alternatives
The decision making process that a client needs to go through before choosing to go the alternative route

I won't be posting much more detail than this in my blog, but you can expect some of the key questions that I am asking myself to be posted along the way as I try and pick my way through such a lot of different factors. Its quite interesting to be starting work on this just a day after my posting on Zealots!

If you look at my blog on posts related to this topic, these are the most important:

Zealots

Rich Versus Reach - my perspective

Personal Information Disaster!

Which Office Suite?

Microsoft: Linux isn't cheaper

More integration of Microsoft Products?

Who will Longhorn appeal to?

In pursuit of personal and team productivity

More integration between WinFS and XML

Wed, 23 Jun 2004 13:52:03 GMT

Jon Udell of Infoworld says in his blog:

Meanwhile I've been working on a story about Longhorn, for which I had long and an extremely interesting interview with Quentin Clark, ~~the architect of~~ director of program management for WinFS. I'd like to transcribe the whole thing to post along with the story, when it runs, but the upshot is that Microsoft is planning more and better integration between WinFS and XML -- both in terms of data definition and query -- than I'd previously heard, which is welcome news

I'm pleased too because it means we are one step closer to the vision of WinFS that I have been talking about in my blog. Complementary and not competetive to the web.

He then goes on to talk about the different types of search experience:

It seems clear, though, that whatever can be accomplished by means of what I've come to call "managed metadata," we'll always want that Google effect to be happening in parallel. When asked about the Semantic Web and RDF at InfoWorld's 2002 CTO Forum, Sergey Brin said:
Look, putting angle brackets around things is not a technology, by itself. I'd rather make progress by having computers understand what humans write, than by forcing humans to write in ways computers can understand.

From my perspective, this isn't an either/or choice. I'd rather make progress by having computers understand what people write and by helping people to write in ways that computers can understand. What's more, I'd like to construe "writing in ways that computers can understand" as a problem for which hybrid SQL/XML technology is a solution. When managed metadata exists, or can be acquired, purely relational query will be powerful. When metadata is implicitly present, for example in XML fragments, XPath and XQuery can leverage it. The combination of relational, XML, and free-text search is the best of all worlds. As I've mentioned before, by the way, Kingsley Idehen has been demonstrating this for several years.

I agree but I don't think its a suprise to anyone that "The combination of relational, XML, and free-text search is the best of all worlds" and its my understanding that that's what MS is trying to achieve with WinFS, but the trick is that they are capturing as much of that relational and XML information automatically or transparently as people go about working with their emails, contacts, calendars, office documents etc.

Rich Versus Reach - my perspective

Tue, 22 Jun 2004 19:04:44 GMT

The Rich versus Reach debate is raging in the blogsphere at the moment. The debate has been very healthy with less of the usual emotional clutter that clogs up most debates that touch on the future of Microsoft. I am an enterprise guy, with a complex home network as well, which gives me an interesting perspective so I thought it would good to pull some of the threads together.

The debate mainly started with a post by Joel on How Microsoft Lost the API War it’s a good article at the start but then begins to lose its focus and starts to make some bold assertions which are hard to substantiate. These are partially rebutted by Olivier Travers in his post Microsoft Lost the API War? Not So Fast and more thoroughly by Robert in his post Seven Reasons Why the API War is Not Lost After All, which comes over a bit evangelistic but is still a good contribution to the debate. Robert introduces a new perspective for me on Avalon where he describes how it may be possible to download XAML directly from the web as an alternative UI experience to HTML but still accessing all of the same server side web services. Piva wraps up most of the discussion with a good summary. Finally there are a few less emotive discussions on the topic of Thick versus Thin which you might like to look at:

So what do I think about it all:

First let’s remember where the debate started which is that Microsoft has missed the boat again, and that the world will be a different place application wise by the time Microsoft finally ships Longhorn. The result Microsoft will have lost its platform advantage and all apps will be delivered to some platform neutral client. My comments:

Organisations, and individuals for that matter do not constantly upgrade their applications, nor do application vendors change platform rapidly. Whilst I have seen a huge number of web applications appear, many of these are new classes of applications that were only practical or economic to deliver via the web, were information delivery applications, or were reach interfaces that complemented the primary rich UI. In recent desktop refresh programmes I have been involved with Win32 applications have dominated and very few of these have had web equivalents that allowed us to ease the migration challenge.
In building Longhorn Microsoft appear to expect this to continue to hold true, hence they:
1. Are providing support for legacy applications
2. Providing UI services today, Winforms, that will still be there in Longhorn and in active use for 5 or so years
3. Expecting it to take 5-10 years before WinFX is considered the mainstream platform
4. I hope providing first class support for web applications and the ability for Longhorn to act as a web services client
5. I hope learning the lessons of the past, see later
I have debated here, my view of the Longhorn value proposition. It’s a lot more than just a platform for the delivery of applications. Longhorn will provide a rich set of UI services, communications services, data integration services etc that will enhance applications in ways that will be difficult to achieve with web apps alone.
There are a whole class of applications, (look at my PC as an example), that need a rich client. This does not of course mean a Windows client but it does mean that some form of rich platform will be around on the desktop for a long time. If this is Longhorn, and for many millions of desktops I guess it will be, then there is a good chance that applications will build on top of these services if there is a strong value proposition there. My feeling is that there will be a value proposition but that it will be a very long time coming for many applications. A lot depends on how much effort Microsoft make to ensure that Longhorn is appealing just with the applications that they supply or hardware vendors bundle with new PCs.
There is a lot of third party activity around thick clients, in the OS client space, (Linux and Windows), and in the application space with Java application platforms.
Personal computing is likely to see a resurgence, with personal information management, device integration, information aggregation from many different sources, news/change/subscription integration from many different sources. Some of this works well server side but some of it is just so much easier at the client side. I have talked a bit about what I want to see here
My hope is that Microsoft and others will make VERY sure that the problems we all face with thick clients and rich applications are largely resolved. With massive improvements in device deployment, device backup and personality restoration, operating system and application maintenance and application delivery needed as a minimum.
Information Bridge Framework gives some hints of the type of UI binding mechanisms we might see with Longhorn and how these can be driven by context that is maintained dynamically on the client based on what you do. I talked a little about IBF here.

Finally let me state my position:

I would like to see less emotion in the debate
Provided Microsoft make Longhorn a first class web client I have no problems with them
There will continue to be a variety of approaches to the delivery of applications, the market will decide based on features and TCO which approach suits which applications
It may be that Microsoft is on to something with their Integrated Innovation concept that will bring real compelling value, it may be something that only a company that sells an OS, Office Suite, Development tools, and application servers etc can see and make happen, good luck to them – Linux and IBM will keep them on their toes.
It maybe that Microsoft invented Integrated Innovation to protect their Client OS and Office suite revenues, in which case they are likely to be caught out in a big way fairly soon. I am debating this point in this blog entry
There are a lot of VERY smart people at Microsoft now, (a lot of them did not start at Microsoft), and they have a lot of money, enthusiasm and vision. Don’t under estimate them.
Microsoft are being extremely BOLD at the moment, they are facing a huge revenue hole over the next couple of years. They are undertaking a huge re-architecting of their platform and the applications that run on it. That boldness maybe born of arrogance, but I suspect not completely!

here is a recent blog entry that gives a fairly thhorough review of the original post by Joel.