Have you ever come across this site – Portable Apps? I have just put most of them on my USB Pen and how handy they come in. They’re all useful apps with things like OpenOffice and Audacity. What’s the point? Well from a techie’s point of view they come in very handy when you are working on someone else’s computer and you need a certain app. From everyone elses point of view let’s put it this way. I was at college the other day and needed to do some VB stuff, but the machines didn’t have it installed. Now if I had VB on my pen at the time I could have got on and done it.

All I’m saying is check it out. You might find it useful one of these days.

When I heard all about Android it must have only been a month or so ago. So there I was reading through all the news articles, watching the tech seminar video’s and dreaming of a better phone OS. One thought entered my head though and never left. “This won’t be released for years!”. Well, I was wrong and the official release for the T-Mobile G1 is 22nd October. And, just because this is being released so soon it doesn’t mean it’s lacking. It already has features the iPhone could never dream about like a compass. A compass that works with Google Maps. A compass that works with Google Maps and when you turn the image turns to suit. A compass that… well you get the point.

Anyways, this thing looks fantastic. It looks like it’s designed to work and it will be hitting the shops near you.

In case you hadn’t twigged yet I’m going to say now that I do work in IT. On top of my full time job I go to Uni twice a week, play football twice a week and have a band practice every week. Just to top it off and make the week full I have my at home Uni work to do and write new material for the band whenever I get the chance. OK, sounds like I’m juggling a lot but I look at it this way – if there was an 8th day in the week I’d still fill it with rubbish. Anyway, my point is coming:

Why on earth do I say “yes, I’ll see if I can fix your laptop” when any Tom, Dick or Harry phones me up? I don’t have time! I have a laptop sat at home now waiting to be fixed (and has been for a fortnight) and I just can’t find the time to sort it. These kind of ‘fiddle’ jobs never used to bother me but now I’m getting fed up. I work with computers all day and can’t even be bothered to turn mine on when I get home. On top of this, because the work is for friends of friends and the likes the money isn’t even good.

So to finish off this rant I’m going to say this. I still don’t mind fixing the odd PC and laptop as long as the person understands it can only be done as and when I find time. But just because I work with computers don’t expect me to take a look at your TV or even your microwave. There’s a line and that’s where it’s drawn!

So at the minute I’m researching clustering to help load balance our servers, and also virtualisation to create more efficient servers. So I come across Hyper-V. Now Hyper-V does both of these at the same time with its hands tied behind its back. Next, the tag line as such…. ‘Utilise your old servers and bring them back to life with Hyper-V’ – OK, so that may be a made up tag line but this stuff is claiming the same kind of stuff.

So how many ‘old’ servers have 64-bit processing and can handle Server 2008? The latter, probably a lot of them. But 64-bit processing? Out of our servers here, only 1 is capable of 64-bit processing. So, my point is this – How can anyone claim to utilise old hardware when the software they are pushing simply doesn’t support it?

Well, I’m going to open with my first post by plugging another website.
OK, so I haven’t been here two minutes yet but I feel this site
deserves a mention. What is it I hear you ask? Well each day this site
has 1 piece of commercial software available for free! Everyone has a
handful of sites that they visit on a daily basis, just to keep on top
of. Well I can guarantee that if you check this site once a day you
will find some great steals!