I get to play with clients Smartphones

Today I have an Orange SPV E650

This is the first non stylus driven phone I have used in a long time. I do seem to be getting used to it.

It runs Windows Mobile 6.0 Standard. I don’t really like the pared down user interface of the standard version.

One benefit of Mobile 6.0 is the calendar, its much easier to view appointments.

So coming from a SPV 3100 to a SPV E650 is a mixed bag for me. If I was getting a new phone this year it would be the HTC Touch.

So this phone would be great for the people who want a more phone like phone (if that makes sense).

Review Link: TrustedReviews - Orange SPV E650 Windows Mobile Smartphone

One of our partners Eset who make the great Anti-Virus software Nod32 have had their main UK website (www.eset.co.uk) offline.

The site is housed somewhere in Gloucestershire and the area currently has no electricity.

I am sure they are busy putting their disaster recovery plan into action.

I cant imagine the number of small businesses who must be really in trouble due to the recent “freak” flooding.

If any small business owners are struggling and need some lateral thinkers on the case - give me a call 0n 01606-841-587 I cant conjure electricity or broadband but I am good at solving I.T business infrastructure problems.

I wish you all the best of luck.

Colin

Due to the shockingly bad summer we are having this year a couple of shiny faces in my house said lets get Sky.

This gave me a chance to review Sky Anytime PC, Sky’s Video on Demand service for computers.

It uses the same Windows Media DRM Kontiki system as Channel4’s 4OD

Download speeds seem poor compared to 4OD about half as fast. 

The video quality is about the same as 4OD, so make that “just passable”.

The free content was very limited and due to be re-run on Sky anyway.

One benefit for movie subscribers is they give you access to 300 movies you can download for free.

So if you have a media center PC in another room you could use it to download the free movie content and therefore extending the reach of sky into another room without having a set top box.

Once again the big mistake these companies make is with VOD TV Episodes: IF YOU CAN PURCHASE THE SAME CONTENT ON DVD CHEAPER, WHICH IS HIGHER QUALITY, WHY BOTHER.

2.50 for a episode of a TV show is a Joke. Particularly if you pay a subscription fee for the same channel it runs on.

Summary

Just another company playing in the VOD market. What consumers want is tons of content at  low cost. Example 5000 movies to choose from at .99pence each or .49pence for an episode of a TV show.

If you don’t give us quality then make it cheap.

Pro’s

Some free content but not enough

300 movies downloads for movie subscribers

Cons

Slow Download speeds

Can only install on one PC

Only just acceptable picture quality

No Windows Vista Support 

I was truly amazed when I read this Microsoft support document. If you install the Scalable Networking Pack on your Windows 2003 Small Business Server a whole bunch of stuff can just break.

If you work in technology support, just read the below list, basically a list of your worst nightmares all in one place.

From the article:-

After you install Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2) or Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Scalable Networking Pack on a computer that is running Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 (Windows SBS), you may experience many network-related symptoms.

These symptoms may include one or more of the following:

• When you try to connect to the server by using a VPN connection, you receive the following error message:Error 800: Unable to establish connection. 
• You cannot create a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connection to the server. 
• You cannot connect to shares on the server from a computer on the local area network. 
• You cannot join a client computer to the domain. 
• You cannot connect to Microsoft Exchange Server from a computer that is running Microsoft Outlook. 
• You can only connect to Web sites that are hosted on the server or on the Internet by using a secure sockets layer (SSL) connection. In this scenario, you cannot connect to a Web site that does not use SSL encryption. 
• You experience slow network performance. 
• You cannot create an outgoing FTP connection from the server. 
• The DHCP Server service crashes. 
• Clients experience slow domain logons. 
• Network Address Translation (NAT) clients that are located behind Windows SBS 2003 experience intermittent connection failures. 
• You experience intermittent RPC communications failures. 
• Clients that are configured as SecureNat clients may be unable to connect to the Internet. 
• Some Outlook clients may be unable to connect to Exchange.  
• You cannot run the Configure E-mail and Internet Connection Wizard successfully. 
• Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server blocks RPC communications. 
• Clients cannot visit the http://companyweb Web site. 
• You cannot browse Internet Information Services (IIS) Virtual Directories. 

Link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936594

I picked one of these up a few weeks ago for about 35 pounds.

Initially I was really disappointed with this device as it was much slower at reading and particularly writing than my 2 year old 1gb USB thumb drive.

Without being scientific it was about half the speed of my old 1gb device. (I tested using the same test file on the same machine).

However having 7 times more storage  is a bonus. I have a Software support repository of about 7 gig. This includes Windows Service Packs, Office Service Packs and I have started keeping all the Dell drivers for each model I support, so having access to all that on a device this small is great.

I think my mistake was assuming that all these drives would operate at more or less the same speed these days. I think next time I would seek out some benchmark data before buying.

Pro’s: Low Cost and High Capacity

Cons: Slow Performance.