The product has been in development since 2006  and the beta has been around for a while. The release candidate (RC) version was made available to MSDN testers on the 5^th of February.

Microsoft have also announced that customers purchasing copies Microsoft Office 2007 (from authorised resellers) between between 5^th of March and the 30^th of September will be able to download Office 2010 at no extra cost when available. So anyone who is looking to purchase the productivity suite software now need not worry about having an old version. For full details see here.

We have, of course, been testing out Microsoft Office 2010 for ourselves here at Glo (in fact this blog post was drafted in Word 2010). Keep an eye for out for a blog on our thoughts sometime soon!

We were part of the closed beta back in late 2007 and even then I remember wondering why a customer would want this. Where as SBS is perfect for small businesses most companies want the extra control of the individual applications. Interestingly though we’ve started moving customers away from even SBS an onto Microsoft Online (first one goes live this week) !

Glad we never recommended it for sale to any of our customers.

Of course Windows Phone 7 isn’t Windows Mobile so they may well change their mind when it comes out.

But with a supposed $1 billion investment on the way from Microsoft in the mobile market things could get interesting.

Usually we find that an ad-hoc network is initially built by someone within the company who ‘knows about computers’ and they then end up being responsibile for them. Alternatively IT support will be provided by a “man with his van” IT company.

Time and time again we see the following problems that a small business can encounter with this sort of support. This includes -

• Users and networks suffering when an IT person is busy, ill or on holiday!
• Back ups are unreliable and many companies think their back up works because they see the tape ejects every night !
• Many IT issues faced by companies cannot be resolved by their in house resource or their current engineer because the complexity of the network over time, has out grown their understanding of the issues involved. New technology brings more efficient solutions saving time and money, unfortunately often the knowledge and expertise is not avaliable and the company IT resilience suffers.

Glo Networks IT Ousourcing does of course solve all these problems and provides these extra benefits -

• As a Microsoft Certified Partner we have Microsoft behind us to provide support for all their software. That means always getting a solution to your problem.
• Don’t think about who you need to report the problem to, just give us all your IT problems. We will manage, solve and advise you on the issue keeping strong lines of communication with you – all of the time.
• Our online resolution system – Glo Help – enables us to rectify most problems remotely, ensuring costs for our service are kept to a minimum – no more expensive call outs by engineers, jsut an immediate response. All problems raised on Glo Help are responded to within ten minutes, indeed the average time taken is 3 minutes.

If any of the above sound familiar, we would love to show you how we can provide cost effective support for your IT requirements. Give us a call today.

After some investigation we found our chosen faxing software, GFI Faxmaker, could also be configured to send SMS. This is done via a third party SMS gateway, namely Clickatell.

SMS credits are purchased from 3rd Party supplier and Faxmaker is then setup to forward outgoing SMS to the online gateway. Now all the user has to do is send an email to mobileno@specifieddomain.com and the body of the email will be sent to the mobile as SMS.

We’ve already set this up for one customer and would be more than happy to discuss/answer any queries regards the solution.  Please feel free to contact us for more information.

‘In fact the quality of the Zune UI makes me wonder why on earth Microsoft doesn’t just trash the entire Windows Phone platform and replace it with something based around the Zune UI.‘

Now either he’d seen the Windows 7 Phone Series UI before it was announced last week or we have a modern day Arthur C Clarke in the making .

fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify

If it returns 0 then it is on in Windows.

However that test really isn’t any use as run it on any Windows 7 / Windows 2008 R2 server and you get 0 returned. So apparently it’s on and working on standard HDs also ? ! ? Also spotted this on the internet -

1. Right click on a disk drive, go to properties.
2. Select the Tools tab and click on Defragment now…
3. Click on Configure schedule…
4. Click on Select disks…
5. The SSD should not show up in the list of disks if Windows recognizes it as an SSD.

Amazes me that there’s obviously a lot of money being invested into SSD and rightly so as they do have obvious benifits. However if having TRIM support on your SSD is really that important then there should be some real way to check it’s working. Or is TRIM support just marketing hype and doing nothing ?

Anyone have the real answer ?

PS. Could all end user devices be exclusively SSD powered in the next few years with all bulk storage only done in the cloud or on your corperate servers ?

The OS is not due for release until Q4 2010 and currently no devices which will run it have been announced.  As such the OS was demo’d on a prototype device, however several device manufacturers and phone networks have already pledged their support.

The look and feel of the Windows 7 Phone is a departure from the previous Windows Mobile OS’s, with the interface looking looking less like the previous incarnations and more like the one sported by the Zune HD media player.

The OS uses user configurable, dynamically updating, tiles on the homepage. These tiles can be linked to an application, media gallery, people and probably much more. They can displaying information such as new calls/texts, emails and even status updates automatically pulled from social networking site like Facebook and Windows Live.

Delving further into the interface will reveal another new interface feature of the OS, something Microsoft is calling Hubs. These have been described  as an ‘app that make sense of your apps’, what this seems to mean is a Hub is a page that links to other functions or media. Each Hub will  have it’s own emphasis and can link to both local content (stored on the phone) and cloud-connected content (stored remotely and delivered via the web).

Although Microsoft have yet to reveal it fully, it seems applications on the OS seem to be dealt with in a similar way to the iPhone, coming pre-installed with the essentials, with further apps available from a Marketplace. Office has been confirmed, though so far only the Office Hub has been shown so it’s still unknown how the individual apps (Word, Excel etc.) will look/feel.

Searching is contextual depending on what is currentlydisplayed on screen (eg. when viewing photos the search will default to a photos search) but pressing the Search button ( a MS requirement for any devices which wish to run the OS) from the Home screen will launch the confirmed Bing Search app. This can search the device and the web and will try to intelligently guess which you are trying to perform. All results are displayed in the app rather than launch the browser, keeping the same aesthetics as the rest of the OS in order to make this feel seamless.

Here at Glo-Networks we have mixed feelings on Windows Phone 7 . Currently it is looking very pretty and quite innovative but Microsoft have been quite stingy with the info on certain aspects (Sharepoint link up, gaming capabilities, Xbox 360 link up etc..). We will be reserving our overall judgement on it until more information is available, however from what’s currently known it seems people who use the current version of Windows Mobile (v6.5) will definitely find the new OS massively different and, potentially, lacking in the features that have kept them loyal.

All Windows Phone 7 devices will be a Zune (Microsofts iPod). There’s a lot of Office related apps and screens built in.

More info coming shortly.

Of course those that have paid for a legit copy of Windows 7 need worry about nothing but if you have a problem in the next few days give us a shout and we’ll get you sorted (the right way).