Thursday, February 23, 2006

Vista 5308 is here!

Downloading from MSDN right now!  I hope it's a bit more stable and I'm
looking forward to playing with the side bar.


Also, anyone know any good Pocket PC RSS sync software?

Tuesday, February 7, 2006

Windows Nonsense Issue #7652

I use Windows Server 2003 x64 R2 for my daily work since I'm very focused on
the .NET framework but sometimes Windows gives you a little glimpse into it's
internal workings.  I give you exhibit A.



Should I be expecting an upgrade to my recycle bin soon?  It's clearly
defective.

VMWare plays the free card

Virtualization has been a key part of my development process for the last
couple of years.  I've used Virtual PC since way before Microsoft bought it
but usually just to check how a web app looks under an ancient build of
IE.  Developing code here at MySQL means that code needs to work under
Windows and Unix and since I run Windows Server 2003 x64 R2 as my main OS I need
to run some flavor of Linux under some virtualization software.


Before I shifted to an x64 build of Windows, that choice was Virtual
PC.  Why?  It came with my MSDN so it was an easy choice.  The
Linux support under Virtual PC is understandably non-existent but since my needs
were relatively small I didn't have any problems.  Enter Windows x64
and exit Virtual PC.  Yup, not x64 compatible.


No problem. VMWare runs perfectly on x64 (and if I had the right generation
of Opteron I could even run x64 guest OS) so for the past little while I've been
using Workstation 5 and 5.5 (various betas and RTM).  Then comes the
announcement that Microsoft Virtual Server can be had for $99.  Wow, that's
a great price.  Now if it just didn't suck for running X on Linux. 
Yes I know about the support for Linux they just announced but with VMWare's
newest announcement I don't really care.


Yesterday VMWare topped the $99 pricetag by giving the server product away
totally free.  You read that right.  If you have not already done so,
head on over here and get your copy. 
VMWare has certainly raised the bar in the virtualization market.  Now
let's see what Microsoft does.