Dugie’s Pensieve

By now I imagine most Australians have just seen the advertisements for Telstra’s 3G mobile network, with impressive speeds from 1.5Mbpsto 3.6Mbps — and up to 14.4Mbps next year.

Now here’s the odd part, those speeds will cost you $2.05 per Megabyte, or approximately $2099.00 per Gb (Vodafone is $99 a Gb - but their coverage is lacklustre)

So if we put that into perspective - the hi-def trailer of  Dust to Glory, would be roughly $490.00 for the 3:19 minute clip.

Now I have to admit this scenario is a bit extreme, but it does make you stop for a moment,  and say “Hmmm, that’s funny“.  But I imagine, like all good things, lets hope it can only get cheaper.  :)

Yup that’s right, Microsoft is a gold sponsor at VMworld this year.  Check it out for yourself, a snippet is below:

At Microsoft, we look at virtualization as key technology to help customers achieve self-managing dynamic systems. Across the platform, operating system, applications and management layers we’re delivering functionality and capabilities that enable our customers to significantly reduce operating costs, drive up server utilization and achieve better ROI through full featured virtualization solutions. Learn more at http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization

But then again they were at VMworld last year too.  Just a silly bit of trivia I thought worth sharing.

I’m getting ready and looking forward to November.  Lots of really exciting things get announced.  It’s pretty much always been that way.  WinHEC in May and VMworld in November.  Microsoft and VMware go head to head and out-do the other (notice the lack of the keyword: try).  Makes me all warm and fuzzy, and excited on the inside.  :)

November last year (If you remember) saw bunch of announcements, including the release of Virtual Server R2, and the price drop — hey it’s free now, but it was exciting back then.

That brings me to now.  I’m hoping November (and possible December) will bring good news on:

• Windows 2003 SP2 - makes 2003 run better under Windows Virtualization.
• Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 - Beta 2 has been rocketing along quite nicely, time to RTM?!
• SCVMM - can’t wait for updated features in Beta 2!!
• Linux Additions -  KB 917437 was updated, is it a sign?
• ..and any other goodness that spring up between now and Christmas

So I think that’s it?  So much cool stuff!  But lastly, looks like Microsoft SoftGrid found a home on microsoft.com/virtualization - cool huh, bring on the Virtual Machine lovin!

Firstly, I’ve left this review sit in by drafts folder for too long.  Roudy Bob’s post “Parallels Desktop for Mac - New Build” was the inspiration for me to “pull the digit and stop procrastinating“

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I was at a client site last week and I had a very interesting chat about desktop Virtualization technologies.   particularly what they liked and didn’t like — they had tried Virtual PC, VM Player, VM Server, VM Workstation and Parallels Workstation.

In the end they settled on Parallels workstation (at $50 USD), because they “liked the feel of it” better than any of the available offerings (free or otherwise) from Microsoft or VMWare. In their words Parallels, “let them do what they wanted”.

I thought this was weird.  So, with this in mind I set off to review Parallels Workstation for myself.  Here’s my first impressions:

• Install was simple, uncluttered and straight forward
• Nice touch it warns about unsigned drivers (the Parallels Host-Guest Virtual NIC), disables and re-enables them during install if you want
• Also a nice touch that all your options are displayed on the main Parallels Property Page
• I kept finding myself wanting to resize the main page - although it wouldn’t let me
• Really nice I can specify the boot sequence from the property page without going into the VM bios
• Toolbar down the side is easy to get to, and doesn’t waste unnecessary screen real estate if it was at the top
• The toolbar at the bottom tells you what keys to release input (VPC needs to take note of this one)

Overall, I think the product is well thought out, and has Parallels has nailed the OOBE experience very nicely.  I can see why first time Virtualization users would find this product [very] easy to use.  All those little niceties add up, and make a big difference — well worth the $50.

I was going to do a side-by-side comparison with VPC 2007, but it will have to wait for another day.  If you’d like to see a side-by-side review leave comments.

I got my TransAlp back yesterday after her first major service.  She’s all nice an shiny!!  (They washed and detailed her whilst she was in). 

So now everything clicks, slides and rumbles — as apposed to clunks, shudders and rattles :)

If this beautiful weather holds, tomorrow will find me on the bike and touring a back road somewhere.  I can’t wait.