Microsoft’s Essentials Backpack

I just had to put something up on my blog about this as I think it has to be one of the best ideas I’ve seen in a very long while.

The other day I was having a quick scout on Microsoft’s website about their new SQL Server 2008 database system. I’ve been reading for ages how apparently brilliant it was going to be so I thought I’d read up a bit on it. What I found was the Essentials Backpack.

“Who cares?” I hear you all cry and who am I to stop you? The essentials backpack is a simple but I think brilliant idea. Put simply, its a compressed file containing information that someone who just wanted to know what the product was all about can download.

Inside the backpack are things like a podcast about the product, a videocast, a case study (McLaren Electronics – the guys who make all the engine management units for all the F1 teams no less), a whitepaper detailing the product and so on. Basically, an information pack, using multiple delivery methods to get you up to speed on the idea of SQL Server 2008 and its basic principles.

Whether Microsoft were the first to have this idea I don’t know, what I do know is that its simply a brilliant bit of marketing, a way of getting people the information you know they’ll need if they’ve never seen your product before, in one place. Who among the IT or any other community for that matter hasn’t experienced the sinking feeling that is trying to find out about a product but not knowing where to start? The Essentials Backpack completely solves this issue in one elegant (and surprisingly small) download.
Have a look at it on Microsoft’s SQL Site, its the Essentials link on the right.

I for one can see the value of backpacks for numerous uses. Working as I do at a college, I can see it as a useful, downloadable resource for our students starting this month. Travel details, student handbooks, podcasts by our events and sports team, all of this could be available to our students in a single download containing all the information the student does or doesn’t know they need.

Its a simple idea but by ‘eck is it a good one! 😀

Massa’s Revenge – Valencia 2008

As first races go, it looked like Valencia had spent quite a bit of money and time getting the track and paddock areas fitted in time for the start of the race weekend. Shakedowns had already taken place with the GP2 and other races that had taken place there but I don’t think a circuit can truly be considered ready for F1 to descend on it unless they’ve done it before. As was the case in Canada, even a track that’s held races before may not be able to cope with the forces exerted on it by this season’s cars. The tarmac literally being torn up by them in that case.

This race definitely had its good and bad parts. The fact that Massa managed to take his car from pole to the win was a plus, the explosion of a second Ferrari engine due to a con rod failure from the same batch as Massa’s last one wasn’t! The promised overtaking was nowhere near as evident as any F1 fan would like it to be and to be honest, I was rather disappointed with the whole thing.

As it stands, I really think we’re going to be in a position soon where the title goes down to the wire once again and bravo for that. If the teams can set up their cars and the drivers still in the hunt can pull the kind of driving they all have over the past few races, we’ve got a formula 1 season finale to look forward to!

Speaking of looking forward. F1’s off to Spa next. Can’t wait……..

I’m Getting a Laptop

I’m a desktop PC kinda guy, I don’t spend all my money on clothes, I don’t really worry what I look like, I use a desktop PC. They’re cheaper, faster, stronger and better than laptops. I don’t need to buy a new one every time I think a new graphics card would be nice. Hell, I can add a blu ray player when they get cheaper without needing anything more than a cross-headed screwdriver.

So, why am I looking to get a laptop? What on Earth is possessing me to go and spend all that money on a glorified battery back with some microchips stuck on it?
Simple really, they’re brill and I want one. Not for the looks or the street cred (showing my age there!), no, its because I’ve been tapping away far more merrily on this here laptop I managed to borrow from work than I ever do on my desktop PC. I can type while watching TV, I can use that little mobile Internet dongle thingy I bought (I’ll post about that another time) to connect to the world and check out the web. I can still work in a power cut for crying out loud.
I need a laptop as its a portable DVD player, an MP3 jukebox, a portable link back to work, a useful tool and yeah, they’re cool!

So, internal conversation over I thought I’d have a look around for a suitable device that will do what I need and be in my budget. I knew with the release of Asus’ Eee PC prices would probably be affordable for a laptop of the type I was looking for. So with that in mind I went and had a shop around for a cheap and cheerful laptop.

The one I’ve decided I’m probably about to buy is Dell’s Inspiron 1525 you know the one, its on the TV every two minutes but that wasn’t why I chose it. Aside from being manufactured by Dell (a company I’ve always rated highly having supported numerous ones in previous jobs), the Inspiron is an affordable laptop like many others but its got some touches I quite like. It has a dual headphone socket, cheap as chips to put in, a brilliant idea nonetheless, that totally ticks the box DVD playback wise for me as it makes it a definite possibility for playback of movies for more than one person discreetly. It has an 8 in 1 card reader on the front that takes all the memory cards I use, that alone is a selling point when I think that I want to use my flickr account more. Its got a very, very good LCD, wi fi, bluetooth and its on sale at the moment for a price that starts at only £329! That’s a bargain!

Of course, I’m not going to buy the base specification, I’ll save some more pennies and get one that is a little more swanky/functional. Dell do better laptops but this is all I think I’m going to need. Its only really going to be for entertainment, Internet browsing and typing blog posts. Anything else I can use my desktop PC for…. 🙂

Who says Government should be boring?

As one of the 49,447 people who signed the petition to Make Jeremy Clarkson Prime Minister, you can imagine my surprise when I got an email the other day telling me the government had considered the proposal and had created a YouTube video in reply. I was merely expecting a knock on the door and a trip to jail on some kind of anti terrorist legislation!

I though you might like to see it:

Personally, I think its brilliant. Nice to see someone in government still has a sense of humour!

Windows Explorer Command Line

Just because I’m that sad, I thought you might like a couple of handy ways to launch explorer so its where you want rather than drilling down to places.
Many people know the “Explorer X:\” trick that takes you to whatever you have as your X drive but have you noticed it doesn’t have the folders listed in the left hand pane? Useless!

Here’s a few that you might not know. Let’s start with solving the problem above:

Explorer /e, X:\
That’s open explorer, with the default view (i.e. showing folders) to the X drive

Explorer /e, X:\Work in Progress
Open my X drive, open the Work in Progress directory, showing folders in the left hand pane (interestingly, there’s no need for speech marks even though the path contains spaces)

You can do:
Explorer /root, \\server_name\share
To open that file share, however you could just type in the path to the run box instead and it should open correctly anyhow!!

There you go, sad but may come in handy one day (when making shortcuts for users or whatever). You never know.

Update: For more, have a look at Microsoft’s Site where it details additional things like opening Explorer with a particular file highlighted and stuff. Genius!