Horrid piece first: the Blackberry Storm 2 sucks! Hate hate, HATE! the keyboard interface and SureType technology. My poor co-workers had to put up with me muttering (none too quietly) under my breath about my intense desire to throw the idiot device across the room. My hands and arms are still twitching from having to simply activate the damn thing. It is the most horrendous piece of junk I've had my hands on yet and I've worked on a lot of junky prototypes in my time.
Bad piece: the new Curve device is so cheaply made (and is obviously coming out of China) that I dread the day I have to get rid of my Curve. The latest Curves are about 1/2 the weight of my 8360 and feel like a kid's plastic play phone. I don't think the replacement that I just activated will last long for the user in question as he's about as hard on his phones as I am on mine. The worse part is he received a Curve as a replacement to his World Edition unit which is even more hardy and has a better keyboard than my Curve. But when the main USB port fails, what can you do?
Good news - finally! BlackBerry has announced their new PlayBook that we've been hearing rumors about for a few weeks now. I prefer the name Richard Bliss came up with, but I guess RIM wasn't paying attention. Either way, it looks pretty sweet, and may actually have a chance at giving the iPAD a run for Apple's money. I'd like to get my hands on one, but I'm not holding my breath just yet. I expect they won't be in any stores for a month or so, and that runs up against the holiday season and those that know me well know how much I 1) hate shopping in general and 2) really hate shopping during the holiday season.
Want to see more on the PlayBook? Check it out here:
http://na.blackberry.com/eng/?2&RMID=MR00300_GL_EN_MU_2010-09-27_BB_Teaser&RRID=49B1D1D763F233FEE10000000A659D4A
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Novell purchase rumors abound
Novell is understandably quiet on the potential sale of the company. As they should be for legal reasons. Messaging Architects had put out an invitation for a webinar to discuss the sale further, but has since retracted that invite after talking to their advisers - wise move.
Anyway, the scuttle-butt now is that VMWare wants to purchase up the Linux portion of the business and everyone's chiming in on the good/bad/ugly of the deal. And the reporters keep mentioning Attachmate to pick up the NetWare side of the business. Apparently the reporters don't realize that Novell is FAR more than NetWare, and that NetWare end of lifed this year. They have yet to discuss GroupWise, Teaming, Conferencing, Pulse, IDM, eDirectory, ZENworks, Access Manager, SecureLogin, Sentinel, Storage Manager, and all the new cloud offerings. And anything else I missed. Perhaps that's why people are stressed out over the sale.
I still don't understand all the kafuffle about the potential sale. First, it's a potential sale. No one who would know anything has said "boo" (it's close to Halloween, gimme a break!) about it. And secondly, how many of you weren't around for the mid-80's massive M&A in all industries? Maybe I'm just showing my age, but really, IT changes all the time. IBM used to be the "big boys", then Apple was the rage, Microsoft took over PCs, Novell started LANs, and now Apple's popular once more. It's all a big circle; centralized IT, decentralized IT, centralized IT (via cloud services)...it'll come around again. New players will pop up...heck will Google even be around as Google in 10-20 years? Who knows? That's part of the thrill of being in IT.
Whether Novell as a brand and a company survives is yet to be seen, but there's been a lot of big players before who've lost out and the sky still hasn't fallen.
So take some advice from my favorite professor, Dr. Don Medley (who learned COBOL direct from Grace Hopper). Paraphrased: you're in an industry that not only requires, but demands life-long learning, pay attention, keep your skills current and sharp, and go after every certification that you can - the paper proves you know the topic at some level. Stay marketable!
Now, back to stick my head in my Active Directory book and hope I don't get a headache while I work at staying marketable. If I only learned one lesson from my college days it's to "Pay attention to Dr. Medley - always!".
Anyway, the scuttle-butt now is that VMWare wants to purchase up the Linux portion of the business and everyone's chiming in on the good/bad/ugly of the deal. And the reporters keep mentioning Attachmate to pick up the NetWare side of the business. Apparently the reporters don't realize that Novell is FAR more than NetWare, and that NetWare end of lifed this year. They have yet to discuss GroupWise, Teaming, Conferencing, Pulse, IDM, eDirectory, ZENworks, Access Manager, SecureLogin, Sentinel, Storage Manager, and all the new cloud offerings. And anything else I missed. Perhaps that's why people are stressed out over the sale.
I still don't understand all the kafuffle about the potential sale. First, it's a potential sale. No one who would know anything has said "boo" (it's close to Halloween, gimme a break!) about it. And secondly, how many of you weren't around for the mid-80's massive M&A in all industries? Maybe I'm just showing my age, but really, IT changes all the time. IBM used to be the "big boys", then Apple was the rage, Microsoft took over PCs, Novell started LANs, and now Apple's popular once more. It's all a big circle; centralized IT, decentralized IT, centralized IT (via cloud services)...it'll come around again. New players will pop up...heck will Google even be around as Google in 10-20 years? Who knows? That's part of the thrill of being in IT.
Whether Novell as a brand and a company survives is yet to be seen, but there's been a lot of big players before who've lost out and the sky still hasn't fallen.
So take some advice from my favorite professor, Dr. Don Medley (who learned COBOL direct from Grace Hopper). Paraphrased: you're in an industry that not only requires, but demands life-long learning, pay attention, keep your skills current and sharp, and go after every certification that you can - the paper proves you know the topic at some level. Stay marketable!
Now, back to stick my head in my Active Directory book and hope I don't get a headache while I work at staying marketable. If I only learned one lesson from my college days it's to "Pay attention to Dr. Medley - always!".
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Novell Pending Sale - New or Old News? Depends on your POV
This morning the NY Post, in a very short article, heralded the 2-part sale of Novell. This news very quickly hit the NGWList, but has yet to hit the TTP list. Of course, we'd been warned way back in March during Elliott's somewhat-hostile takeover bid attempt that Novell would court other offers. The good news on this is that the stock price is up to about $6/share.
ZDNet responded later with an article about this news, basically calling it "stale bread" (to paraphrase). The most interesting point I found in the ZDNet article is the rumored news that Red Hat is also on the block. That, in itself, is far more interesting news.
Whether or not Novell is sold is yet to be seen. For my own selfish reasons I hope it's not, but I'm not holding my breath. If it is sold, I hope that both Ron and John will let me continue to happily pester, bug, tease, and somewhat (but not in a scary way), "stalk" them if they move on to new digs somewhere else. And that the rest of my Novell "homies" keep in touch as you never know where I might turn up at any given time. Especially given that I usually have some freshly made cookies with me.
Link for NY Post article: http://tinyurl.com/2b23lx7
Link for ZDNet article: http://tinyurl.com/2c7rkwq
ZDNet responded later with an article about this news, basically calling it "stale bread" (to paraphrase). The most interesting point I found in the ZDNet article is the rumored news that Red Hat is also on the block. That, in itself, is far more interesting news.
Whether or not Novell is sold is yet to be seen. For my own selfish reasons I hope it's not, but I'm not holding my breath. If it is sold, I hope that both Ron and John will let me continue to happily pester, bug, tease, and somewhat (but not in a scary way), "stalk" them if they move on to new digs somewhere else. And that the rest of my Novell "homies" keep in touch as you never know where I might turn up at any given time. Especially given that I usually have some freshly made cookies with me.
Link for NY Post article: http://tinyurl.com/2b23lx7
Link for ZDNet article: http://tinyurl.com/2c7rkwq
Friday, September 10, 2010
Data Synchronizer Mobility Pack - SHIPS!!!
Just a short blog post here...it's finally shipped! And after Alex Evans had a rough night of little sleep. Thanks Alex and team!
If you don't see it in your Customer Center list, be patient, they're working on getting everyone's accounts updated ASAP. You should see it within the next 24 hours or so.
Here's the link to Alex's blog on the subject:
http://www.novell.com/communities/node/11861/groupwise-mobility-pack-shipped-today
Now perhaps I can get my project moving forward (if I still have a job after October).
If you don't see it in your Customer Center list, be patient, they're working on getting everyone's accounts updated ASAP. You should see it within the next 24 hours or so.
Here's the link to Alex's blog on the subject:
http://www.novell.com/communities/node/11861/groupwise-mobility-pack-shipped-today
Now perhaps I can get my project moving forward (if I still have a job after October).
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
BlackBerry Desktop Manager v. 6 and GroupWise 8.0.2 client woes
In addition to my distaste for Windows 7 and some bozo's choice to move to "libraries" rather than consider how the real world tends to work, I've run into a RIM generated issue that's causing me to improve the profit margins for the makers of Excedrin.
My work laptop was recently reimaged to Windows 7 (don't get me started on what a pain Windows 7 is to access a Windows XP machine in a workgroup) which meant I had to reinstall my BlackBerry Desktop Manager to sync my GroupWise calendar to my Curve. I've been very happy with the RIM DTM product - until this change. I decided to update my GW client to 8.0.2, even though we're still at 8.0.1 on the backend. The GW update went just fine, as usual, and gave me the ability to help end-users who also have this one-off type of configuration.
I happily went on to download the latest version of the DTM, which happens to be 6.0 and was released on 8/10/10, so I figured it should work just fine with GW 8. WRONG! DTM 6.0 doesn't like GW 8.0.2 client and gives the "oh-so-helpful" error of "The operation terminated unexpectedly" when trying to sync for the first time.
After fiddling with it for a while, and having an end-user with the same issue state that it worked just fine until we did "something" to her machine a few weeks back, I knew it wasn't an issue with the server side of things. A back rev of the client to 8.0.1 HP1 allows the DTM to work fine without the insidious error. So, if you need to run the DTM from RIM, make sure your client is 8.0.1 HP1 or earlier to have it work properly.
Yes, we do have a BES. No, I'm not allowed to use it as I'm using a personally owned BlackBerry. My employer expects me to support them, but won't provide me with one to provide support with.
And yes, I've reported the "bug" to Novell, even though I place the onous of this "bug" squarely on RIM's proprietary shoulders.
Now I'm headed off back to my MS AD self-study for the MCITP. If you know who the author MaryJanice Davidson is, you'll understand when I say reading MS Press guides is kind of like reading the "Book of the Dead" for Betsy...only without the totally insane parts.
My work laptop was recently reimaged to Windows 7 (don't get me started on what a pain Windows 7 is to access a Windows XP machine in a workgroup) which meant I had to reinstall my BlackBerry Desktop Manager to sync my GroupWise calendar to my Curve. I've been very happy with the RIM DTM product - until this change. I decided to update my GW client to 8.0.2, even though we're still at 8.0.1 on the backend. The GW update went just fine, as usual, and gave me the ability to help end-users who also have this one-off type of configuration.
I happily went on to download the latest version of the DTM, which happens to be 6.0 and was released on 8/10/10, so I figured it should work just fine with GW 8. WRONG! DTM 6.0 doesn't like GW 8.0.2 client and gives the "oh-so-helpful" error of "The operation terminated unexpectedly" when trying to sync for the first time.
After fiddling with it for a while, and having an end-user with the same issue state that it worked just fine until we did "something" to her machine a few weeks back, I knew it wasn't an issue with the server side of things. A back rev of the client to 8.0.1 HP1 allows the DTM to work fine without the insidious error. So, if you need to run the DTM from RIM, make sure your client is 8.0.1 HP1 or earlier to have it work properly.
Yes, we do have a BES. No, I'm not allowed to use it as I'm using a personally owned BlackBerry. My employer expects me to support them, but won't provide me with one to provide support with.
And yes, I've reported the "bug" to Novell, even though I place the onous of this "bug" squarely on RIM's proprietary shoulders.
Now I'm headed off back to my MS AD self-study for the MCITP. If you know who the author MaryJanice Davidson is, you'll understand when I say reading MS Press guides is kind of like reading the "Book of the Dead" for Betsy...only without the totally insane parts.
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