Today Apple release the long awaited iPhone in America.

This launch will be one to watch to see if both Apple and AT&T can pull off a quite complicated consumer launch.

It involves:-

a) Buying a phone at a retail Apple store from 6pm

b) Activating the device at home on a PC or Mac running the most up to date version of iTunes.

We now live in an age of blogs and YouTube. If this thing is going to go bad we are all going to know about it.

Apple like to get things right however they are partnering with another company AT&T so they wont have access to the full control they are normally used to.

They cant control:-

AT&T Customer Services

Connectivity and Cell Coverage issues

It’s not like the iPod. Apple Hardware using the iTunes Music Store (both Apple properties). But to their credit they have a lot of experience in the Windows arena due to iPod’s and iTunes running on hundreds of millions of PC’s.

So here we go…….

See Also
http://www.colindiponio.com/2007/07/12/video-review-of-the-dell-xps-m1330/

As an XPS user I should love the sound of this but something’s not sitting quite right with me. 

The design team behind the XPS M1330 model also did the M2010 I have publicly stated I think the M2010 was a horrendous design based on a stupid concept. (see pic below).

I have see a couple of video’s of the XPS M1330 over at www.direct2dell.com but they didn’t really sell it to me. Opening and closing a laptop and saying the same thing over and over does not make for a good tech demo.

Maybe I need to see one in the flesh. The things I do like are:-

The Screen (although I want 12.1 not 13.3)

Slot loading DVD (about time if you ask me).

HDMI

I assume the SSD hard disk is going to be really expensive and having the choice of a really expensive 32gb (fast hard disk) or a 250gb normal one makes that a non decision.

I would also need to see the LED screen in the flesh, it sounds good but it’s one of those things you really need to see for yourself before you can comment.

Its not out in Europe yet. If any of my Dell buddies know the release date, drop it in the comments. I see the UK site now has the XPS 1330.

The Spec’s

13.3-inch screen, configurable with LED backlight! (300cd/m2, or 220 with CCFL backlight)

Next month see’s the launch of TV on Demand from the BBC.

This is going to be a watershed in broadcasting in the UK. Sure it’s going to start slowly but 5 years from now my kids are going to watch TV on the web I have no doubt about it.

People in America have lots of legal downloadable TV content but in the UK due to licensing issues we have very little.

You can find a good round up of what’s currently available here.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6318625.stm

I love the BBC.

Another Link: BBC web downloads set to launch

There are lots of companies offering Microsoft Exchange hosted solutions these days.

There are some good reasons to consider outsourcing and the outsourcing trend is expected to grow rapidly over the next 5 years as gradually more software as a service offerings take place.

I have been pricing up various solutions from companies and the costs do vary widely from 4.99 per user, per month 14.99 per user, per month.

For your vanilla 25-50 users on a single site then perhaps keeping it in-house would be best as it would be better for cost and manageability (assuming you have access to good I.T people).

But if you’re a small to medium sized business you start to deal with 50+ remote users you have some tougher choices to consider.

I am doing  some exchange hosting trials to check the services for myself I will let you know how I get on.

My main desktop PC (a Precision Workstation 390) has a 120gb Hard Disk and I was reaching the upper limit of storage.

The Precision 390 can easily house a couple of Hard Disk’s in it’s bays. So I purchased a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB S300. The S300 bit stands for SATA 3.0. The Precision 390 has handle this.

So now I have the problem of one big hard disk 500gb and one smaller 120mb and Ideally I want to swap the roles of these around. The new 500gb is a faster drive than the existing Maxstor 120gb and I want the option of removing the 120gb drive for spares in the future.

Now Seagate offer a free tool on their website called Maxtor MaxBlast.

This is a Hard Disk Cloning tool. This allows you to create an exact mirror of your existing drive on a new drive. It’s a 100% copy so all your software, data and settings are moved.

So how do you do it.

1) Plug the the new Hard disk in the PC

2) Download Maxtor MaxBlast.

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=MaxBlast_5&vgnextoid=7add8b9c4a8ff010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

MaxBlast PDF Link:Learn more

3) Install MaxBlast

4) Go through a wizard that prepares the new drive.

5) Then Clone Disk that starts the operation of cloning one disk to another. This wizard took about 40 minuets.

6) Once completed I disabled the original hard disk in the bios and the PC booted from the new 500gb drive.

All in all a very easy process to follow. It appears MaxBlast will work as long as one of your drives is a Maxstor. If not you would have to use something like Symantec’s Ghost to perform a similar task.