iphone 3g and Enterprise Computing

I have been playing with the enterprise features of the 3g iphone and I'm having very pleasing results. I recommend grabbing a copy of the iphone Configuration Utility as you need it to expose the settings you need to configure. Bear in mind it is a bit of a pain to publish the configuration file to the iphone. I used an IIS 7.0 webserver and an appropriate bookmark on the iphone to solve that issue. However the good thing is if you uninstall an iphone profile, you clear out all those settings. This makes it easy to troubleshoot and experiment with different generated configs.

These are the features I've configured:

Wifi: I have setup multiple wifi profiles, one for home and the other for work. I had no trouble configuring settings for both a basic wep profile and a WPA Enterprise / PEAP profile. The iphone is quite intelligent in switching between cellular and wifi networks.

VPN: Again, I had no worries configuring settings for a CISCO IPSec VPN via a Safeword token and group authentication. One downside is you may need to configure the server-side connection profiles as the iphone doesn't support all the IPSec features. I was disappointed I couldn't specify backup VPN servers.

Exchange: Fortunately I already have a properly configured ActiveSync Exchange 2003 sp2 setup so configuring this part was easy.

Credentials: I quite like this method of installing the appropriate root certificates you'll need for setting up the above features.

All in all the enterprise features are very encouraging. I like the profile management and it's quite capable. Apple has a good base to work from to improve these features in later updates. Certainly a fuller implementation of the Exchange ActiveSync would be warmly received.

 

Hackintosh

I'm currently playing with the Kalyway Leopard 10.5.2. The exiting thing is that with the right hardware running Mac OS X on standard PC parts is very doable. With plenty of Mac knowledge on the web plus Usenet binaries on our side it is straightforward and rewarding to give it a shot.

Windows Movie Maker and mpeg2

Windows Movie Maker 2 (MM2), for all its limitations can be a really handy tool. One thing this is a pain is a lack of native support for mpeg2 video in the WinXP version.

Here's a method I found to be able import mpeg2 encoded video into Windows Movie Maker 2. The basic idea is if you install the appropriate DirectShow compatible filters, then MM2 can handle the video. You read more about it here. The trick is finding the right filters. I had success with this combination:

• Mpeg2 Splitter - Install Nero Burning ROM.
  
• Video Filter – GPL mpeg-1/2 from sourceforge
  
• Audio Filter – AC3 Filter from sourceforge
  

New certs!

The upgrade exams for the MCSE and MCSA2003 will be released on Monday 29^th October. For those with the MCSE cert exam 70-649 will cover exams 70-640, 70-642 and 70-643 and grant you the title of a Windows Server 2008 Technology specialist. Later down the track you can do 70-646 to earn MCITP Server Administrator and 70-620 and 70-647 to earn MCITP Enterprise Administrator. I don't believe release date has been set for these MCITP certs. Microsoft has made it quite straightforward to pick up the new certs so I'm pretty happy about that. I'm less happy about the MCITP Enterprise Messaging which requires three exams to pass. It's a real rip off that there is no upgrade from MCSE: Messaging and it's a big disincentive to it. I have already spent $360 on the two Exchange 2003 exams so to spend a further $540 is crazy - plus the cert only is good for three years!

Yorkfield

This thread over at Xtremsystems shows how promising the new 45nm quad cores from Intel will be. Intel's pricing charts show that the Q9450 will debut at US$316 and I'll sure that will drop quite a bit through out 2008. There's a good chance that Intel will drop the cost of the Q9450 to either the $213 or $183 price point. I just can't see how AMD will stay in business at these prices. On a overclocking note you can drop a Yorkfield into current P35 motherboards but I reckon overclocking will be difficult. The Q9450 has a multipler of 8x and 1333FSb. With cheap as chips DDR2 800 a standard P35 board will only reach around 450mhz to 500mhz fsb leaving quite a bit of headroom in the new chips.

Windows Server 2008

I've been running Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 x64 at home for a few months on cheap ($400!) Dell sc430. Originally I was running Window Server 2003 Std x68 on only 256mb RAM and it ran sweet for my purposes (rdp, utorrent, emule, ftp and smb). For longhorn I replaced the 256mb stick with 2x1gig sticks. Longhorn uses more memory with the default build needing about 512mb of RAM. I've found the new server manager a big improvement over Add/ Remove Windows Components as a way of adding roles and features.

A few nice things surprised me. There is very good x64 driver support out at the moment. I even found a signed driver for my yum-cha usb wireless adapter. The new policy based QoS feature works well. For instance with the appropriate policy RDP remains responsive over the internet even if I max out my upload with torrents. SSL based Terminal Services gateway is great when behind a firewall as is the new sstp vpn tunnel. Terminal services are much improved with application publishing and better scrolling and support for big screen sizes. On the file server side of things the reporting is much better.

Server core is a good concept and should work well with the new virtualisation. It's a bit dodgy having to configure a number of server core options via pre made vbs scripts but there are a good number of roles already support. I'm disappointed that the alpha build of the viridian hypervisor that shipped with RC0 doesn't support server core as of yet as I would like to test that.

There is something for everyone in longhorn and it's shaping up to be a very good product.

NZBPlayer

I urge anyone with a faster than 1.5mb broadband connection to get themselves a usenet subscription and check out NZBPlayer. This program is a real beauty and really leaves bittorrent for dead for movie and tv content. As most scene releases are posted to the newsgroups NZBPlayer is just an ideal way to stream them down to your PC. NZB files are also easy find (the built in search is very functional) with there are a number of search engines available. On a standard 8mb adsl connection most NZB's start within 30 seconds (the start time is determined by the size of the individual rars.) which is great for the x254 720p stuff. I also like ninan for grabbing non video content or formats not supported by NZBPlayer.

This program really changed my TV viewing habits. It gives you a lot of freedom as you don't have to schedule time to download the day's torrents or fool around with RSS based auto-torrent loaders. It evens works a treat over NextG on the train!