I finally made it to the end of the video version of the roadmap presentation from March 6th.

The video was so long (78 mins) I was watching a bit here and bit there due to being very busy.

Well all I can say is I am surprised this isn’t getting more news.

Apple clearly are heading for Enterprise and business customers. Their big untapped markets.

Its simple to shrug off the iPhone as a consumer gimmick but some of the business applications shown in the roadmap presentation were very compelling.

Example: The Salesforce.com application, beaming new leads to remote sales people then tracking the new contacts location with Google maps all within a new finger gestures.

All Apple need to do is keep going and they seem to be pretty good at delivering on promises.

The next problem is the iPhone/iTouch form factor but that can be solved by making a  12″ tablet version with multi-touch and it’s game over.

If you have  iTunes installed you can use the link below to download the video (its about 800mb).

This is proper next generation stuff. No one else is innovating on this level.

iTunes Link: Apple March 6 Event_ iPhone Software Roadmap

Well I took the plunge, I backed up my laptop and and installed Windows Vista SP1 on my Dell XPS M1210 running Windows Vista Ultimate (32 Bit).

The entire install took about 70 minutes in total and about 40 minutes into the process I get a Blue Screen of Death the faulting file was ks.sys The laptop automatically rebooted and continued the service pack install.

ks.sys is associated with video and kernel streaming, but beyond that I am not really sure how significant the error is.

All I can tell you you is a blue screen isn’t the best start in life for Windows Vista SP1.

Thankfully the rest of the install completed without a hitch.

I have installed Windows Vista SP1 on my main computer so I am going to find out pretty quickly how stable Windows Vista SP1 is. Bookmark the link at the bottom of the post for future SP1 Coverage

The first good news is the file copy bug seems to be fixed and accurate times now show when coping files.

Before SP1

After SP1

The install required several reboots, the onscreen indicator gave me a good sense of what was going on. Example Stage 3 of 3 70% complete.

Screen shots from the install

Summary.

I would have a lot more confidence in Windows Vista SP1 if it didn’t blue screen on me. So I am holding back from recommending people install Windows Vista SP1 at least for several weeks. Lets see some other anecdotal evidence of the success or failure of the in place upgrade.

So now the real testing begins by actually using it.

Link: View all posts in Windows Vista SP1

The long awaited Service Pack for Windows Vista has just been released to the public.

You can get it from Windows Update and also as a Standalone Download.

Assuming their isn’t a rash of “SP1″ killed my machine news stories about to be released around the globe I will be updating to SP1 shortly.

Download links below.

Link: Standalone 32 Bit Version of Windows Vista SP1

Link: Standalone 64 Bit Version of Windows Vista SP1

Tech Tip: Before considering upgrading to Windows Vista with SP1 do a backup first.

And if you get irony, I’m backing up my Vista machine over a 100mbit network connection to another drive.

Only 19 hours to go.This is one of the things I hope get fixed.

It gets worse

Ill get Windows “7″ quicker at this rate.

I was helping one of my remote clients with a intermittent ADSL fault. I thought I would write it up as it covers a lots of the basic problem solving techniques.

Description of the Fault: Between 18:00 and 8am the router would go offline completely. However during office hours the connection stayed up.

So we have a consistent set of circumstances (always good when problem solving).

What we did.

The end user was remote so I haven’t actually been to his site, so the pre-configured router I shipped might have not been micro filtered properly at his end.

So we go into an in-depth conversation about what is plugged into what.

I get a detailed map written down on a bit paper. Sometimes its easy to mix up a telephone double adaptor with a micro filter to most users they look very similar.

From his description  it sounds like its correct. So why does it go offline during that period.

So I remotely connect to the routers management page and look for signs of a bad connection. Either a SNR or Loop value.

The connection is slow but this can be accounted for by the users distance from the telephone exchange.

Sure enough come six o’clock the router gets kicked offline.

So we contact the ISP and get them to run a line test, which passed ok.

So back to problem solving on site.

Tech Tip: Next up was to remove all other telecommunications equipment from the sockets, leaving only the router plugged into a micro filter plugged into the wall. This would eliminate any other in-house interference.

Once again come six o’clock boom, it goes offline.

So we arrange for the ISP to do another line test during the outage period.

They report back it failed a copper line test, which would indicate a PSTN fault and problem with the line going into the customers premises.

So the following day when the system was working another line test was done, which also failed. So we then get a BT engineer to site. They rewire the line coming in to the premises and the problem is solved.

Conclusions

The weird on/off nature of this problem was confusing and misleading. The faulty external telephone cabling must have been picking up some interference from something like a nearby street light or something that was active during those periods.

We did 3 line tests at the ISP 1 passed, 2 failed. So inconsistent results again the initial pass took the problem solving off course for a bit.

The problem is now fixed but it did cause some head scratching for a bit.

The BBCi Player. Using the devices built in WiFi you can browse to a web page designed to work on the iPhones small screen (pictured above).

Then you can browse through the last seven days worth of viewing and choose the show you are interested in.

On Windows the BBC iPlayer can download or stream, on the iPhone you can only stream.

Now if you have ever experienced streaming video on a handheld the quality is usually quite poor.

But this streaming model has been designed for WiFi only so they can deliver much better quality video as the target connection would typically at broadband speeds.

I had a chance to play with this the other day on someone else’s iPhone.

First the user experience, you click, you play its that simple.

The quality of the Video has the WOW factor.

For those interested the streams are 516Kbps streams (400Kbps H.264 video, 116Kbps AAC audio).

My advice is till avoid the iPhone 1.0 its still a 1.0 product, better will come. But its great to see Apple allowing innovation like this on the platform. Especially as some of the content is in direct competition with paid for content on iTunes.

Link: BBC Article About iPhone and the BBCiPlayer