I attended a couple of sessions today put on by one of my suppliers. One session was run by Intel and the second was on Mobility solutions. There were several vendors there showing off their products.
The Intel session was very informative and I learned a lot about their new line of Core 2 Duo processors and the architecture in them. Will blog some more about what I saw in the next little while.
Have no fear this holiday season. If you buy a new Vista Compatible PC between Oct 26th, 2006 and March 31, 2006 you will receive a free upgrade to Windows Vista. All the information is available here at the Microsoft Vista site
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/expressupgrade.mspx
Each Tier 1 manufacturer (Dell, IBM, HP, ACER) will have their own programs as well as system builders (like Sysguy).
Also being offered are low cost cross grades, for example XP Home to Vista Ultimate or XP Pro to Vista Ultimate.
Basically if you get a PC with XP Home you will get Vista Home Premium and if you are running XP Pro you will get Vista Business.
For more info visit the Vista info site for more info on system requirements and for tier one contacts.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/expressupgrade.mspx
Stephen
For almost two years Windows Defender (formerly Microsoft Anti Spyware and Giant Antispyware) was available as beta software. This past week the software has gone gold and has been released to the public. If you have no other Antispyware software do yourself a favour and get this. It works half decently and is free! This will also be included in the upcoming version of Windows Vista.
You can download it here http://www.microsoft.com/defender
You also have to run through Windows Genuine Validation processes in order to download.
Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 7.0. While I have not seen it in Automatic Updates yet, it can be downloaded from Microsoft’s web site. It is not showing up in Microsoft Update yet.
As stated earlier we are advising clients not to install IE 7 until they have tested it with applications and sites that they use on a regular basis. THis is especially true for any one using an older version of Quickbooks software as there is some compatibility issues with previous versions.
S
The next update to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (version 7) is going to be released in the next couple of weeks. The update will be a critical update to your system and will download automatically. Before installing though you will have to accept the EULA (End User Licsense Agreement).
While we have been using one the IE7 release candidates on our laptop for the last little while with no real problems, we would like to take this opportunity to advise Sysguy Small Business Server Clients to hold off for a while before intalling, especially if you use web based applications. Our suggestion is install the software on one machine and test all web based applications that you use. It will take a little while before all web site owners update their sites to accomodate some of the changes with IE7 (online banking etc).
IE7 does have some very desirable features. It now includes a phishing filter that will detect if the site you re visiting is legitimate, an RSS feed reader so you that you can view blogs like this one without having to visit the page everytime as well as finally adding tabbed browsing, where you can open different web sites up on tabs instead of in individual browser windows and flip back and forth easily with one click.
Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or difficulties with or in regards to IE7. The latest release candidate is available for download at Microsoft’s site http://www.microsoft.com/ie
Stephen
We have increased our rates for Business clients effective May 1, 2006. We are now charging 75.00 per hour for services in a business.Â
We feel that these rates are very competitive for the solutions we offer and invite our prospective clients to check out our competitors rates.
As usual work that can be done remotely and in less than 30 minutes will not be charged.
Please contact us for personal rates