2008-12-21 Sunday - My Next Laptop...

I know what I want in my next laptop:

• Quad-Core cpu processors


• 1TB of storage, via solid-state drives




2009-03-06 Update: Hmmmm...SSD Disadvantages




• Running a 64-bit version of Linux (Fedora or perhaps Ubuntu)

This looks like a promising candidate:

Lenovo to release ThinkPad laptop with 2 LCD screens

The ThinkPad W700ds appears to be the first laptop ever to sport two LCD screens -- a 17-in. primary and a 10.6-in. secondary screen.

The souped-up "mobile workstation," as Lenovo calls it, also comes with customers' choice of quad-core Intel Core 2 processors and Nvidia Quadro mobile graphics CPU with as many as 128 cores. It also comes with as much as 8GB of DDR3 memory and a pair of hard drive/solid-state drive bays for up to 960GB of storage.

The W700ds is expected to be available in January starting at $3,600.

Perhaps by next summer there will be even more competitive choices.

2009-03-10 Update:
Living free with Linux: 2 weeks without Windows

Living free with Linux: Round 2

Installing Linux software 101 for Windows users

2008-12-17 Wednesday - Communicating SOA Concepts

In my SOA consulting practice I recently needed to find a better way to communicate the concepts of SOA and the benefits its realization can bring to an organization - without requiring extensive, acronym-laden, reading by the very busy executive management team.

In my research, I came across this excellent animated presentation that beautifully captured the essence of what I wanted to communicate:

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/eframework/soa

(JISC develops partnerships to enable the UK education and research communities to engage in national and global collaborations to overcome the challenges of delivering world-class ICT solutions and services)

2008-12-17 Wednesday - Microsoft Business Intelligence

A recent question asked on LinkedIn:

Business Inteligence costs
How costs are lowered with Microsoft Business Inteligence?

There are several links to white papers and case studies on the Microsoft Business Intelligence web site: http://www.microsoft.com/bi/

You may also be interested in this Gartner report:
Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms, 2008
http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/microsoft/vol7/article3/article3.html

Case Study: Community Health Network Saves Time and Improves Performance of IT Services Using Microsoft Business Intelligence Solution
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000002023

2008-12-15 Sunday - Presentation Tools

I've given a lot of presentations in my career. Often those presentations were given in well designed multimedia-equipped board rooms and conference rooms - and quite often - using a wireless mouse and a laptop was sufficient. But I've noted the benefits recently of other presenters relying on a wireless presenter control, so I stopped and picked one up today:

Targus Wireless Presenter with Laser Pointer




Product Description

The Wireless Presenter with Laser Pointer features all of the necessities that other competitive presenters offer. This presenter has the ability to page up, page down, escape slide show, darken screen and resume screen. It also has a laser pointer button and an on/off switch. It also includes an alt tab application switch. The long-range 2.4GHz wireless technology has up to a 30 ft. range, which is ideal for a large conference room. The preset RF connection enables true plug-and-play capability

Sweet.

2008-12-12 Friday - Link Harvest

Challenges in Adopting Scrum

TeamCity 4.0: Distributed Builds and Continuous Integration

Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 Released

Presentation: Ian Flint Explains Yahoo! Communities Architectures

Scaling memcached at Facebook

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