Today Apple launched Movies into their iTunes music store in the UK. You can:

Purchase Movies from between £6.99-£10.99 or Rent from £2.49-£3.49

They also offer 720p Hi-Def Movies but these require you to have and AppleTV.

Their implementation of Hi-Def is flawed. You need their hardware and the content is 720p/1080i only as I understand it.

This is semi-understandable as 1080p content is just too fat to fit down the Internet pipes we have today.

The non HD content is more geared up for the iPod generation who want to watch content on their video enabled iPods/iPhones.

The UK is now no longer the poor digital relative.

I am not a big fan of Microsoft Desktop Search but if you are running Office 2007 on Windows XP then you pretty much need it for basic things like searching for e-mails in Outlook.

There are other Desktop Search options (Copernic and Google Desktop Search) but better the devil you know.

Microsoft have just released Version 4.0 for all their major platforms (XP, Vista and Server).

Windows Search 4.0 includes the following improvements:

• Support for indexing encrypted documents of local file systems:-
• Reduced affect on Microsoft Exchange when you index e-mail in online mode, and there is no local cache (.ost) 
• Support for indexing online delegate mailboxes
• Support for client-to-client remote query to shared indexed locations 
• Improved indexing performance
• Faster preview updates for Windows XP
• Per-user Group Policy settings
• Windows software updates for Watson errors
• Support for the following new enterprise Group Policy objects

Download Links are available on the link below.

The 5mb download for Windows XP requires the system to reboot after the install.

Tip: The new version rebuilds the index so be you may not be able to do proper searches in Outlook until fully complete (see below). It will index quicker if the computer is idle.

Link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940157

Every time I use Dell Technical support I write up my experience both good and bad. Hopefully this will help potential customers of Dell’s equipment get a feeling for the aftercare that is on offer.

You can read other reviews here

In this case I had a client with a Dell Optiplex GX280 about 3.5 years old that had 5 years on-site warranty.

The user turned on the PC and within a few moments detected a strong burning smell followed by a visible cloud of smoke.

The user quickly turned off the machine and contacted me.

I manage the Dell Technical support process for my clients so they don’t have to.

Once again my support call was miss directed to Inspiron support when I clearly gave them an Optiplex Service Tag.

It took me a while to get to Optiplex support.

The quality of the phone line to India wasn’t great so the support agent had to call me back.

I described the case as above, he then gave me two choices:

1) If I wanted to elect a part to be replaced like a power supply he would send an engineer. The onus was placed on me to identify the faulty part.

or

2) Replace the entire machine.

After discussing the options with my client they chose to get the new machine.

The only problem is they have to wait approximately two weeks for it to be ordered and delivered.

I then sorted the on-site logistics with my client of getting the user setup on a spare PC.

***Update 11th June 2008***

Dell contacted me to discuss this issue. Apparently they have a Safety Capture Procedure that supercedes any Next Business Day warranty.

In the event of a “Safety” based problem they want to replace and recover not repair the machine.

In this case I should have not been given the option of an on-site repair.

Dell originally offered to replace the faulty machine with a Dell Optiplex 330 but have now upgraded that to a Dell Optiplex GX755 instead.

I appreciate the time taken by Dell to explain in detail how “Safety Capture” works.