Tail Gate at BrainShare 2012

Well, someone pointed out that the start of BrainShare falls on the same day as the Super Bowl. Novell and it's partners stepped up and there will now be big screen TV's on site to provide you with your Super Bowl fix.  Check out the Facebook page on BrainShare for more details. BTW, on FB it is spelled Brainshare because FB in their infinite wisdom has decided how things are to be capitalized.

I hope you all have a blast. More urgent, and important, issues will be keeping me home this year. I had been looking forward to going and will miss catching up with everyone. Someone will have to be my mooch-replacement...at least it will save the shipping folks from some back strain.

Is it a TimeWarp?

It's beginning to feel a bit like the late 80's/early 90's to me when it comes to Microsoft and hardware vendors.  It may be time for me to Time Warp back to the olden days when I built my own desktop and moved to only the PC platform from Apple due to the OS being too locked down from my POV.

Windows 8 is here and while it may be a good "consumer" grade OS, it's not a gamer's OS (heck World of WarCraft won't run on it, but it will run on Linux), nor is it an OS-centric IT tech's OS. I can't run the vast majority of my tools on it, not to mention that color explosion makes my eyes water.

I need to be able to get to a command prompt. I need to see how my machine is performing. I need a keyboard.  What I don't need is what I consider a dumbed-down UI, that's what I have my iPad for. And I like my external mouse, my fingers are simply too fat to deal with the on-board touchpad let alone a touch screen device (have you not seen some of my text messages?) ,and don't get me started on those pencil eraser styled doo-hickeys.

HP is what's triggering this potential shift back to building my own desktops.  They've recently announced that consumer grade laptops and desktops are to be left at Windows 8 and that they are not to be back revved to Windows 7. For those of us who've been around long enough, we recognize that this latest version of Windows is nearly pre-destined to be a "bad" version, and one to be skipped in our larger environments. Makes me wonder what M$ is doing on the backside in terms of licensing with the OEM vendors. I had the "oh-so-wonderful-joy" of dealing with licensing M$ on OEM hardware when we also sold an OS2 version of our solution. 

We're just starting a big Windows 7 roll out at my new gig, I can't imagine the headache if we get forced into Windows 8.  Just thinking about it makes my head hurt! Will someone please pass the Excedrin?

ComputerWorld has a good article on this:
HP to consumer customers: don't downgrade new PCs to Windows 7

BrainShare 2012

Well, if you're not planning for it yet, you should get started on it.  Rooms tend to book fast.

At Novell's request (okay, Kim's request...might as well blame the "guilty" here), I now have a BrainShare page on my blog that is a compilation of all my tips from over the years.

Alas, do to a lackluster board WMNUG is not doing BrainShare Buddies this year, which may work out okay as it looks like I won't be making it to BrainShare this year either.  All travel has been put on hold by my employer, which includes BrainShare.

For those of you traveling from the MidWest, you might want to check out the train.  My buddy Rusty and I took the train out last year and had a wonderful trip.  Saw things we wouldn't normally see. Our standard line was "Look! Can't see that from the plane!".  It was really wonderful...much more leg room, no security pat-downs and all our luggage was accessible the entire trip.

If anyone else wants to take up the reigns of the old BrainShare Buddies program, give me a holler. I'll be happy to tell you how we've done it in the past.

Conference Reminder and Wow!

The wow is that I've got nearly 11,000 page views.  Amazing!

Now, a reminder of a local users group conference coming up in the MidWest:

Novell is sponsoring the Illinois Valley Network User's Association Fall Conference which is on October 17 in Utica, IL. This year's conference is on the topic of Mobile Device Management. I'll be
giving the keynote address in the morning and will be there all day to demo ZENworks Mobile Management.

This is a conference that's been going on for a long time now, and worth the trip if you're in any "nearby" state.  Nearby being a relative term for this native Californian.

Anyway, here's the link to get more info and/or register:

http://www.ivnua.org/training-seminars.php

BrainShare Registration Now Open!

Registration for BrainShare 2013 is now open and they're updating the web page as well.  Just a reminder that it's in February this year so if you're a skier or snowboarder plan some extra days around the trip to hit the slopes!

Also, believe it or not, my blog has surpassed 10,000 views.  Surprised the heck out of me I must say.  So perhaps it's time for a contest?  It may have to be limited to USA though as I've not had to deal with customs in forever and have forgotten all that I knew about getting stuff to other countries (other than letters that is).

Been busy in ZCM land and doing POC work lately.  I almost missed the announcement that SP1 for GroupWise 2012 is now available.

AlienWare Disappoints Me

I've been rolling around the idea of getting a newer desktop than my current i3 Aurora box that I've had for less than 3 years now.  Mainly because the new "consolidated" server farm of SWTOR has caused my machine more than a few hiccups and I'm a spoiled brat who wants a faster machine because my little MX11 laptop runs circles around my desktop now. Since I'm paying for it, I figure I should be able to get what I want.

As I went through the build process for a new Aurora just to see what the price is roughly going to be when I'm ready to pull the trigger I run into the MS Office (augh! bloatware!) options. One of the big reasons I've kept going back to AlienWare has been the ability to not have that odious piece of filth trash up my system's registry causing me to do a fresh, untainted install right after getting the new machine.  To my dismay the option of "None" is no longer there, by default you get stuck with a trial version.

So, I guess it's back to finding the lowest price point with the hardware that I want and face the possibility of going back to building my own desktops.  I haven't really missed my days of building machines (I've frankly done enough of those, starting back in the day when a chip puller was a necessary piece of equipment), so there remains the possibility of buying a warrantied machine from one of the larger vendors (no eMachines allowed at my house tyvm!).

Hmmm....wonder if I can find one of those cute little Penguin cases around anywhere and if their power supplies would be sufficient.

Mary's been slacking!

I've been ignoring my blogs for far too long.  So much has happened out there in the world of Novell that I haven't updated you all on, that you probably already know all the stuff I'll be posting here today.  Been too busy in ZCM-land and not busy enough in GroupWise-land.

Today I'll catch you up with two posts of Dean's that you should be aware of, one of which was just posted today, so I'm kind of on top of it.

A new version of Data Synchronizer is out - 1.2.4 is officially Released!  Several new enhancements like support for Android Jelly Bean (yay!) and improved log management. Expect to see iOS 6 support soon too.  Here's the link to Dean's post:

Data Synchronizer 1.24 Released

Another really good post on Dean's blog comes from Kari Wolff who I had much fun working with a few months back.  Discussing the true cost of migration, she pretty much nails it.

Don't shake your head just yet; while I am admittedly a devout GroupWise user, that doesn't mean I can't see the value in other solutions or that I haven't used other solutions.  (Remember I'm a cranky-old-broad I've used LOTS of other email solutions). Anytime you are migrating from one email system to another, regardless of vendor, it will cost a pretty penny - above and beyond licensing costs.  Kari has some really good points here, you should take a peek at it.

GroupWise Migration: Ready, Set - Wait, it costs how much?

If you haven't seen GroupWise 2012 yet, you should go take a peek at it, it's pretty sweet.  Also, you might want to take check out GWAVA since they now support both GroupWise and Exchange and can help you with a migration in either direction.  (No, I don't get paid to promote GWAVA, I just really like their products).  I haven't seen a date for GWAVACon 2013 in America yet, but chances are it will be in Torrance in January.

I must admit though, Microsoft's best kept secret seems to be their pricing. They even have a certification for Microsoft licensing, which caused me a major headache recently as I was trying to work on a CBA and ROI for a dummy project and was wanting only MSRP prices for all the vendors involved. Even the MS partners came back with differing numbers, what the heck? I finally did get it done, but with the way MS pricing is setup, they were at the bottom of the pack for both CBA and ROI numbers. I wasn't looking for any clear winners, I was just trying to get an idea of how much a certain type of project would cost in terms of licensing across several vendors...I vaguely remember this being a whole lot easier when I was in charge 3rd Party products for a proprietary medical system many, many moons ago.