They already do for bigger businesses, it's called "software assurance". Believe you me, if/when they could figure out how to force smaller business users into subscription Windows they will.
Dont worry, it's coming. You can now get "Microsoft 365" and Microsoft will be forcing companies to it by abandoning WSUS and system center. For instance, after beating my head against the wall for a while it turns out you can't upgrade Windows 10 to the fall update via WSUS - it just.. fails.
Want to keep using SCCM and WSUS? bad luck. My guess is we'll soon see "sorry not supported on Windows 10. but for only $17 to $28 per month per seat, we can do it all for you on Azure."
This is exactly what Australia is trying to do with the National Broadband Network; Telstra - the incumbent last mile monopoly for cable and copper DSL - will eventually phase out their copper network to be replaced with the the government-funded mostly fibre based Nbnco last mile network. Of course, the project is political dynamite, the rollout is massively delayed, has run over budget, and the current government is trying to change the fibre to the premises network to fibre to the node, but the intention is to provide common "wholesale" last mile connectivity that any ISP can resell to consumers.
I've maintained legacy payroll software (Oracle RPT, predates PL/SQL) and have been marginally involved in migrating clients to the new shiny payroll system. Generally it fails where the client wants the new system to behave exactly like the old system.
The new system usually can handle the required business rules (or it's not too much work to make this happen) but all the processes around those rules are different. eg the new system needs to generate report RW200 to lineprinter 6, daily at 6PM and must be formatted just so (no one reads the first 1000 pages, but the summary page is critical to some obscure business process.)
So, the new system has to print unformatted ASCII to a serial line printer, in an obscure way, on nonstandard paper, that's hard to replicate in a modern report writer. Never mind the already written, laser printed, on-demand reports (or emailed, or exported to excel or whatever) have the same information - it's NOT THE SAME - our users will be confused so it MUST BE CHANGED!.
Rinse and repeat for basically everything else in your system and you've heavily modified your new system to behave just like your old payroll system (and killed any performance improvements, worked out all the bugs etc again). because it's so heavily modified you're basically on a unique version of the new system that only certain programmers really understand. Ant they're going to retire / leave because the project was so shit to work on.
Add the usual government oversight/waste and you've blown a billion dollars. (that's impressive though, I have to say.)
Interesting. We moved from Open-xchange (maildir, cyrus imap) to exchange 2010 a while back mostly for political reasons. Our email backups have become a nightmare. We can't backup exchange mailboxes while they're being replicated to our DR site - the exchange server blue-screens BY DESIGN to provent the mailstore from being corrupted. Thanks, Microsoft! After shutting dowen replication we have to backup the entire 200GB database as one blob, every time - this takes at least a couple of hours over the network to our backup server.
The mailbox DAG loses sync fairly regularly, which means you have to dump a replication copy and start again (ie copy the whole thing over the network again.) This kills mailbox performance dramatically.
In comparison we used rsync to replicate our maildir directories to our DR site previously (along with openldap slapd replication) - it worked great. Rsync backup took minutes to complete as it only backs up the changes.individual email deach and recovery from backup is easy, too, just put the emailback int he user's mailbox and re-index the mailbox, compared to recovering the entire mailbox database.
Finally - Postfix appears to crap all over Exchange's MTA in terms of performance and logging/problem resolution. We use postfix in front of our exchange servers and it's regularly waiting for exchange to catch up.
Sure, exchange has lots of end user features but i'm not impressed with the backend storage solution at all. Give me postfix/IMAP/maildir over Exchange any day.
I don't know about the rest of the world but last year, Lenovo Australia changed their support arrangements. Previously Lenovo support was excellent - now it's abysmal. We had a small form factor desktop power supply fail. Our "onsite next business day" support contract ended up being to a three week wait for parts, along with the engineer coming onsite before the part had arrived, twice. It was a joke.
We couldn't get a firm answer from Lenovo support - eg "the part is on route" or "we're out of stock" or "it's been ordered" were all provided as excuses at various times. A 3 week wait for "next business day" support is inexcusable. We also have HP and Dell desktops with NBD support. They also occasionally fail. They get replaced the next day. We're not buying anything from Lenovo again.
I've got an LG Optimus 7, running Win phone 7 Mango - it reboots daily, especially while in the "messages" (ie, SMS) app. Then again I've read that's common on the LG Optimus specifically. I'm using the standard apps, plus Exchange mail integration only.
When it's not rebooting, as a basic phone + email reader, it's not bad. My old Nokia "dumb" phone also worked fine as a basic phone with twice the standby time.
I don't think I'll "upgrade" to Windows 8 phone, though
Why is this interesting / amusing ? Technically using Linux or some other unix as a supernode is fine, probably a better solution than Windows server - but this is Microsoft, the dominant operating system provider; very much the competitor to Linux. they *could* use a competitor's solution but traditionally Microsoft reinvents the wheel rather than do this (see Silverlight, XPS,.NET, Office Open document format, Sync framework for examples)
Choosing Linux rather than their own OS product for this task seems like bad PR especailly after publicly criticising Linux as an insecure, slow, potentially IP-violating OS platform. You may recall they were "caught" using FreeBSD for hotmail after acquiring that service - and eventually migrated it to Windows.
I'm guessing there will soon be a "WinMin" or Windows server core based platform that hosts this instead of Linux.
Can the plex server do it, or does your TV detect the presence of a video signal and turn itself on automatically? Can you turn on the TV (and set the AV channel) without picking up the TV remote or a third party remote?
Besides the screen + AV input, and maybe the amp/speakers in the TV, do you use any other TV features? do you use the onboard tuner at all?
That's my point. Make the TV/Amp/media players work together properly first, before duplicating other stuff other devices already do.
We have a Tivo, Wii and LG Blu-Ray all plugged into a Yamaha AV amp, which is connected to a Metz TV. As a result i need: Two remotes to watch TV (tivo for channel and amp volume, and the TV remote to turn it on/change the AV channel)
two or three remotes to watch a DVD - Blu-ray + Amp remote + TV remote
trying to explain this to my mother-in-law is painful to say the least.
It's 2012 and all these devices still can't talk to each other, unless they're all from the same manufacturer. They all have their own, incompatible remote control technologies.
Please, TV and home entertainment equipment manufacturers, thrash out a common control communications standard and go with it - eg XML/SOAP over bluetooth or zigBee, or even HDMI, so I can control ALL my AV gear from one remote interface. I don't really care if it's a logitech-style remote or an android app; just give us something that works across manufacturers so i can have one remote to control them all.
The computing power is readily available and cheap, the frameworks all exist to do it - just choose a standard and implement it.
1080p 100Hz TV is good enough, I don't need or want craptastic 3D or a smart TV interface i'll never use. Just focus on the user experience. Make it easy for normal humans to use AV gear.
Makes wired magazine ($19 per issue) look cheap in comparison, here in Australia
Can't notice the difference anymore
on
Is Overclocking Over?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I think CPU speed is less of an issue these days; eg Core2 onwards processors are generally "fast enough" for most users. Compare the change in noticeable speed between a 386 and 486, or even Pentium vs Pentium 2 or 3, to today's Core2/Athlon vs Core i5/Phenom. Most people don't notice the jump in CPU performance on modern processors.
The other traditional bottlenecks are rapidly disappearing too, eg a midrange Directx10 graphics card is good enough to play all but the most demanding games these days, and memory and disk speed and capacity are generally outpacing most people's demand.
People will still overclock for the challenge of it, but I think there's no tangible day-to-day benefit anymore.
As someone above mentioned, the real performance battle has moved to portable devices, eg how much performance can you get from a tablet or phone, given a fixed battery capacity?
This does seem especially dumb. I thought that was the whole point -put in insane, unlimited bandwith across the whole country and people will invent ways to use it!
For those that don't understand the significance, Telstra own the "last mile" copper and HFC network in Australia (Optus own a small chunk of HFC too as mentioned above.) If you want wired internet access from anyone, you generally have to pay Telstra (directly or indirectly.) As you'd expect they've used their postion to unfairly advantage their own internet service, while delaying competitors from access to exchanges to install DSLAMS, gouging competitors for access to the copper network,etc.)
The deal means NBNCo can use Telstra's cable ducts, pits and poles to initially rollout fibre everywhere. it also means maintenance of Telstra's crappy and aging copper phone network will be handed to NBNco soon. Theoreticallly all the existing ISP's paying Telstra for access to the copper network will start paying NBNCo, instead, Because NBNCo are barred from offering retail internet services, in theory access to the network should be a level playing field.
Eventually they'll rip out the existing copper phone network, so we'll just have the optical cable.
My understanding is the NBNCo network will be a 'common carrier'; eg they provide the layer 1/2 network, any internet / cable TV / telephony / other data provider can buy access to the network and deliver internet / TV / telephony / data services over that network. It's the same model we use for water and power in Australia, eg the power generation company doesn't own or maintain the wires in the street, and isn't responsible for connection to your house. NBNCo are supposed to operate at the same level, providing teh pipes/trucks only, if you will.
According to the pollies NBNCo can't filter the network it at the wholesale, common carrier level. We'll wait and see.
Adam Internet, Internode and others are touting 25 to 100 megabit connections, 100GB/month data at $60/month, which is significantly more expensive than the equivalent over ADSL/copper phone lines. You can buy these right now in areas that are connected (new suburbs that were prewired in South Australia, eg Lochiel Park, LightsView, etc. ) Prospect, Aldinga and other initial rollout sites in Australia will also be able to get fibre internet over this service shortly.
We have two Eaton Powerware UPS'es running our server room in tandem. They are linked so they stay in phase with each other and incoming mains power. both UPS'es run at about 40% capacity, so if we lose one, or need to shut one down for maintenance, the other can handle the whole server room. We've had problems in the past with UPS'es suddenly failing; so our critical gear runs on the assumption we'll have a UPS fail again at some point, or we can at least keep running whie we change out a UPS and/or it's batteries.
Our setup is designed to keep everything running until our diesel genset kicks in, usually within 2 minutes or so - I think the UPS'es have about 15 minutes capacity at full load. If that fails to start then the UPS monitoring software gracefully shuts everything down. We test everything every three months by simulating a power loss (ie, we put the relevant apps in maintenance mode, throw the mains power switch and watch what happens.)
The genset also powers the airconditioning in the server room. There's no point keeping your servers running for hours if they're not kept cool; they're just going to cook once your server room gets over 50 degrees anyway. If you're expecting to run on backup power for more than an hour or so, make sure your backup power solution can handle your cooling requirements too! Also make sure your cooling comes back on when power is restored!
By the way, some people are saying "secondary site instead" - in my opinion you need both; ie a disaster recovery site and backup power for both sites.
I live in Australia. The 240V 10A / 15A plug design works well, and usually prevents you from plugging in anything rated over 2400W into a standard 10A plug.
15A appliances and sockets are fairly rare, almost all domestic devices are designed for 240V/10A. (2400W is enough for most domestic uses). As a result most houses only have 10A outlets.
The main problem with the 15A plug design is that is *looks* like it should fit, but it doesn't due to the larger earth pin. As you don't often come across a 15A device, Joe Sixpack thinks there's a problem rather than realising the appliance is designed not to fit.
Of course, idiots with a hacksaw handy can just grind down the earth pin until it fits, or cut it off entirely. (I've seen it done for an 3500W electric grill, and the resultant melted extension cord and blackened power outlet.)
Yep, we're using the free, outdated version, and I agree, I can't really complain too much about it, we're getting what we paid for after all. However - my experience so far with the free version hasn't really motivated me to make a business case to move to Sharepoint 2010.
I administer the free version of Sharepoint at work. (sharepoint 3.0)
It's yet another tool from Microsoft where -
All the data is stored in one large impenetrable database blob - most content is stored in two dimensional "lists", which somewhat limits what you can do in terms of building online forms etc. ALL the list data is stored in the one table, which makes it non-intuitive to make that data visible outside of sharepoint. It's easy for end users to generate lists, calendars, annoucement pages, document stores, surveys etc etc to their hearts content, so you end up with a big sprawling mess if it's poorly administered it's easy to add canned 'web parts" but impossble to alter the functionality of those parts. eg, try to prevent staff from seeing survey results, for example. (yes, it's possible but it's not exactly intuitive, and extremely hard without the assitance of Sharepoint designer, which was not free until recently) Microsoft keep changing the search engine strategy for the product; Search has mysteriously failed on our implementation with few error messages to provide clues. It doesn't really work properly unless you integrate it with Active directory, Microsoft Office, Infopath, and ideally MS Exchange. Vendor lockin for the win!
So why are we using it? Our staff love it, as it's easy for the end user to figure out; but it's an absolute pig to administer.
In terms of usage stats, I note it comes with every copy of Windows small business server. Perhaps they're including that in the usage stats?
Having just gone through the corporate PC purchasing vendor circus once again, I find it interesting that you can currently purchase a PC with an OEM Vista licence, which Dell/Lenovo etc will happily factory-downgrade to XP for you. As an added bonus you can also upgrade to Windows 7, for free. Yay! 3 licences for the price of 1, sort of. I assume this is still counted as a "Vista" licence in the statistics as that's waht it was sold as.
I predict a big jump in Windows 7 licences as all the corporate PC OEM and volume licencing moves to the "Windows 7" licence with downgrade rights, as that's the only way you'll be able to get XP. I'm guessing at least 80% of those will still be downgraded to XP for at least the next year. Makes the stats for Windows 7 look good, though.
Btw, I like Windows 7, I use it at home. All our work PC's are XP as our "enterprise-ready" software won't run on Vista. One vendor recently installed their latest document management system onto our Windows 2008 server, only to discover the indexing service had been replaced by "microsoft search". They hadn't tested it on anything beyond Windows 2003/XP as "that's what everyone else runs". Yay for corporate software!
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They already do for bigger businesses, it's called "software assurance". Believe you me, if/when they could figure out how to force smaller business users into subscription Windows they will.
Dont worry, it's coming. You can now get "Microsoft 365" and Microsoft will be forcing companies to it by abandoning WSUS and system center. For instance, after beating my head against the wall for a while it turns out you can't upgrade Windows 10 to the fall update via WSUS - it just.. fails.
Want to keep using SCCM and WSUS? bad luck.
My guess is we'll soon see "sorry not supported on Windows 10. but for only $17 to $28 per month per seat, we can do it all for you on Azure."
This is exactly what Australia is trying to do with the National Broadband Network; Telstra - the incumbent last mile monopoly for cable and copper DSL - will eventually phase out their copper network to be replaced with the the government-funded mostly fibre based Nbnco last mile network.
Of course, the project is political dynamite, the rollout is massively delayed, has run over budget, and the current government is trying to change the fibre to the premises network to fibre to the node, but the intention is to provide common "wholesale" last mile connectivity that any ISP can resell to consumers.
I've maintained legacy payroll software (Oracle RPT, predates PL/SQL) and have been marginally involved in migrating clients to the new shiny payroll system. Generally it fails where the client wants the new system to behave exactly like the old system.
The new system usually can handle the required business rules (or it's not too much work to make this happen) but all the processes around those rules are different. eg the new system needs to generate report RW200 to lineprinter 6, daily at 6PM and must be formatted just so (no one reads the first 1000 pages, but the summary page is critical to some obscure business process.)
So, the new system has to print unformatted ASCII to a serial line printer, in an obscure way, on nonstandard paper, that's hard to replicate in a modern report writer. Never mind the already written, laser printed, on-demand reports (or emailed, or exported to excel or whatever) have the same information - it's NOT THE SAME - our users will be confused so it MUST BE CHANGED!.
Rinse and repeat for basically everything else in your system and you've heavily modified your new system to behave just like your old payroll system (and killed any performance improvements, worked out all the bugs etc again). because it's so heavily modified you're basically on a unique version of the new system that only certain programmers really understand. Ant they're going to retire / leave because the project was so shit to work on.
Add the usual government oversight/waste and you've blown a billion dollars. (that's impressive though, I have to say.)
Interesting.
We moved from Open-xchange (maildir, cyrus imap) to exchange 2010 a while back mostly for political reasons.
Our email backups have become a nightmare.
We can't backup exchange mailboxes while they're being replicated to our DR site - the exchange server blue-screens BY DESIGN to provent the mailstore from being corrupted. Thanks, Microsoft! After shutting dowen replication we have to backup the entire 200GB database as one blob, every time - this takes at least a couple of hours over the network to our backup server.
The mailbox DAG loses sync fairly regularly, which means you have to dump a replication copy and start again (ie copy the whole thing over the network again.) This kills mailbox performance dramatically.
In comparison we used rsync to replicate our maildir directories to our DR site previously (along with openldap slapd replication) - it worked great. Rsync backup took minutes to complete as it only backs up the changes.individual email deach and recovery from backup is easy, too, just put the emailback int he user's mailbox and re-index the mailbox, compared to recovering the entire mailbox database.
Finally - Postfix appears to crap all over Exchange's MTA in terms of performance and logging/problem resolution. We use postfix in front of our exchange servers and it's regularly waiting for exchange to catch up.
Sure, exchange has lots of end user features but i'm not impressed with the backend storage solution at all.
Give me postfix/IMAP/maildir over Exchange any day.
I don't know about the rest of the world but last year, Lenovo Australia changed their support arrangements. Previously Lenovo support was excellent - now it's abysmal. We had a small form factor desktop power supply fail. Our "onsite next business day" support contract ended up being to a three week wait for parts, along with the engineer coming onsite before the part had arrived, twice. It was a joke.
We couldn't get a firm answer from Lenovo support - eg "the part is on route" or "we're out of stock" or "it's been ordered" were all provided as excuses at various times. A 3 week wait for "next business day" support is inexcusable. We also have HP and Dell desktops with NBD support. They also occasionally fail. They get replaced the next day.
We're not buying anything from Lenovo again.
Definitely need another web framework option
I've got an LG Optimus 7, running Win phone 7 Mango - it reboots daily, especially while in the "messages" (ie, SMS) app.
Then again I've read that's common on the LG Optimus specifically.
I'm using the standard apps, plus Exchange mail integration only.
When it's not rebooting, as a basic phone + email reader, it's not bad. My old Nokia "dumb" phone also worked fine as a basic phone with twice the standby time.
I don't think I'll "upgrade" to Windows 8 phone, though
heh, mine is "woof woof woof"
Why is this interesting / amusing ? .NET, Office Open document format, Sync framework for examples)
Technically using Linux or some other unix as a supernode is fine, probably a better solution than Windows server - but this is Microsoft, the dominant operating system provider; very much the competitor to Linux. they *could* use a competitor's solution but traditionally Microsoft reinvents the wheel rather than do this (see Silverlight, XPS,
Choosing Linux rather than their own OS product for this task seems like bad PR especailly after publicly criticising Linux as an insecure, slow, potentially IP-violating OS platform.
You may recall they were "caught" using FreeBSD for hotmail after acquiring that service - and eventually migrated it to Windows.
I'm guessing there will soon be a "WinMin" or Windows server core based platform that hosts this instead of Linux.
yep, that's great.
How do you turn the TV on?
Can the plex server do it, or does your TV detect the presence of a video signal and turn itself on automatically?
Can you turn on the TV (and set the AV channel) without picking up the TV remote or a third party remote?
Besides the screen + AV input, and maybe the amp/speakers in the TV, do you use any other TV features? do you use the onboard tuner at all?
That's my point. Make the TV/Amp/media players work together properly first, before duplicating other stuff other devices already do.
We have a Tivo, Wii and LG Blu-Ray all plugged into a Yamaha AV amp, which is connected to a Metz TV.
As a result i need:
Two remotes to watch TV (tivo for channel and amp volume, and the TV remote to turn it on/change the AV channel)
two or three remotes to watch a DVD -
Blu-ray + Amp remote + TV remote
trying to explain this to my mother-in-law is painful to say the least.
It's 2012 and all these devices still can't talk to each other, unless they're all from the same manufacturer. They all have their own, incompatible remote control technologies.
Please, TV and home entertainment equipment manufacturers, thrash out a common control communications standard and go with it - eg XML/SOAP over bluetooth or zigBee, or even HDMI, so I can control ALL my AV gear from one remote interface. I don't really care if it's a logitech-style remote or an android app; just give us something that works across manufacturers so i can have one remote to control them all.
The computing power is readily available and cheap, the frameworks all exist to do it - just choose a standard and implement it.
1080p 100Hz TV is good enough, I don't need or want craptastic 3D or a smart TV interface i'll never use. Just focus on the user experience. Make it easy for normal humans to use AV gear.
Makes wired magazine ($19 per issue) look cheap in comparison, here in Australia
I think CPU speed is less of an issue these days; eg Core2 onwards processors are generally "fast enough" for most users.
Compare the change in noticeable speed between a 386 and 486, or even Pentium vs Pentium 2 or 3, to today's Core2/Athlon vs Core i5/Phenom.
Most people don't notice the jump in CPU performance on modern processors.
The other traditional bottlenecks are rapidly disappearing too, eg a midrange Directx10 graphics card is good enough to play all but the most demanding games these days, and memory and disk speed and capacity are generally outpacing most people's demand.
People will still overclock for the challenge of it, but I think there's no tangible day-to-day benefit anymore.
As someone above mentioned, the real performance battle has moved to portable devices, eg how much performance can you get from a tablet or phone, given a fixed battery capacity?
Hopefully they're building this over a smallish castle + mad scientist lab with convenient skylights, along with the worlds largest knife switch
That's gold. Thanks for making our day!
This has been done before..
All we need now is one printer that can print solar cells, Batteries and TFT panels.
self-powered, printable televisions, anyone?
This does seem especially dumb. I thought that was the whole point -put in insane, unlimited bandwith across the whole country and people will invent ways to use it!
For those that don't understand the significance, Telstra own the "last mile" copper and HFC network in Australia (Optus own a small chunk of HFC too as mentioned above.) If you want wired internet access from anyone, you generally have to pay Telstra (directly or indirectly.) As you'd expect they've used their postion to unfairly advantage their own internet service, while delaying competitors from access to exchanges to install DSLAMS, gouging competitors for access to the copper network,etc.)
The deal means NBNCo can use Telstra's cable ducts, pits and poles to initially rollout fibre everywhere. it also means maintenance of Telstra's crappy and aging copper phone network will be handed to NBNco soon. Theoreticallly all the existing ISP's paying Telstra for access to the copper network will start paying NBNCo, instead, Because NBNCo are barred from offering retail internet services, in theory access to the network should be a level playing field.
Eventually they'll rip out the existing copper phone network, so we'll just have the optical cable.
My understanding is the NBNCo network will be a 'common carrier'; eg they provide the layer 1/2 network, any internet / cable TV / telephony / other data provider can buy access to the network and deliver internet / TV / telephony / data services over that network.
It's the same model we use for water and power in Australia, eg the power generation company doesn't own or maintain the wires in the street, and isn't responsible for connection to your house. NBNCo are supposed to operate at the same level, providing teh pipes/trucks only, if you will.
According to the pollies NBNCo can't filter the network it at the wholesale, common carrier level. We'll wait and see.
Adam Internet, Internode and others are touting 25 to 100 megabit connections, 100GB/month data at $60/month, which is significantly more expensive than the equivalent over ADSL/copper phone lines. You can buy these right now in areas that are connected (new suburbs that were prewired in South Australia, eg Lochiel Park, LightsView, etc. ) Prospect, Aldinga and other initial rollout sites in Australia will also be able to get fibre internet over this service shortly.
So, if DNS breaks we can blame Canada?
Our site runs 24/7.
We have two Eaton Powerware UPS'es running our server room in tandem. They are linked so they stay in phase with each other and incoming mains power. both UPS'es run at about 40% capacity, so if we lose one, or need to shut one down for maintenance, the other can handle the whole server room. We've had problems in the past with UPS'es suddenly failing; so our critical gear runs on the assumption we'll have a UPS fail again at some point, or we can at least keep running whie we change out a UPS and/or it's batteries.
Our setup is designed to keep everything running until our diesel genset kicks in, usually within 2 minutes or so - I think the UPS'es have about 15 minutes capacity at full load. If that fails to start then the UPS monitoring software gracefully shuts everything down. We test everything every three months by simulating a power loss (ie, we put the relevant apps in maintenance mode, throw the mains power switch and watch what happens.)
The genset also powers the airconditioning in the server room. There's no point keeping your servers running for hours if they're not kept cool; they're just going to cook once your server room gets over 50 degrees anyway.
If you're expecting to run on backup power for more than an hour or so, make sure your backup power solution can handle your cooling requirements too! Also make sure your cooling comes back on when power is restored!
By the way, some people are saying "secondary site instead" - in my opinion you need both; ie a disaster recovery site and backup power for both sites.
I live in Australia.
The 240V 10A / 15A plug design works well, and usually prevents you from plugging in anything rated over 2400W into a standard 10A plug.
15A appliances and sockets are fairly rare, almost all domestic devices are designed for 240V /10A. (2400W is enough for most domestic uses). As a result most houses only have 10A outlets.
The main problem with the 15A plug design is that is *looks* like it should fit, but it doesn't due to the larger earth pin. As you don't often come across a 15A device, Joe Sixpack thinks there's a problem rather than realising the appliance is designed not to fit.
Of course, idiots with a hacksaw handy can just grind down the earth pin until it fits, or cut it off entirely. (I've seen it done for an 3500W electric grill, and the resultant melted extension cord and blackened power outlet.)
Hahaha! We looked at that too, and backed away slowly before it noticed us.. (we're an AIX shop, so IBM are keen for us to have the full catastrophe)
Yep, we're using the free, outdated version, and I agree, I can't really complain too much about it, we're getting what we paid for after all.
However - my experience so far with the free version hasn't really motivated me to make a business case to move to Sharepoint 2010.
I administer the free version of Sharepoint at work. (sharepoint 3.0)
It's yet another tool from Microsoft where -
All the data is stored in one large impenetrable database blob - most content is stored in two dimensional "lists", which somewhat limits what you can do in terms of building online forms etc. ALL the list data is stored in the one table, which makes it non-intuitive to make that data visible outside of sharepoint.
It's easy for end users to generate lists, calendars, annoucement pages, document stores, surveys etc etc to their hearts content, so you end up with a big sprawling mess if it's poorly administered
it's easy to add canned 'web parts" but impossble to alter the functionality of those parts. eg, try to prevent staff from seeing survey results, for example. (yes, it's possible but it's not exactly intuitive, and extremely hard without the assitance of Sharepoint designer, which was not free until recently)
Microsoft keep changing the search engine strategy for the product; Search has mysteriously failed on our implementation with few error messages to provide clues.
It doesn't really work properly unless you integrate it with Active directory, Microsoft Office, Infopath, and ideally MS Exchange. Vendor lockin for the win!
So why are we using it? Our staff love it, as it's easy for the end user to figure out; but it's an absolute pig to administer.
In terms of usage stats, I note it comes with every copy of Windows small business server. Perhaps they're including that in the usage stats?
Having just gone through the corporate PC purchasing vendor circus once again, I find it interesting that you can currently purchase a PC with an OEM Vista licence, which Dell/Lenovo etc will happily factory-downgrade to XP for you. As an added bonus you can also upgrade to Windows 7, for free. Yay! 3 licences for the price of 1, sort of.
I assume this is still counted as a "Vista" licence in the statistics as that's waht it was sold as.
I predict a big jump in Windows 7 licences as all the corporate PC OEM and volume licencing moves to the "Windows 7" licence with downgrade rights, as that's the only way you'll be able to get XP. I'm guessing at least 80% of those will still be downgraded to XP for at least the next year. Makes the stats for Windows 7 look good, though.
Btw, I like Windows 7, I use it at home. All our work PC's are XP as our "enterprise-ready" software won't run on Vista. One vendor recently installed their latest document management system onto our Windows 2008 server, only to discover the indexing service had been replaced by "microsoft search". They hadn't tested it on anything beyond Windows 2003/XP as "that's what everyone else runs". Yay for corporate software!