The SoftTeq Community Site

Community Meetings For The Week Starting Monday September 1st

pierce — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:34:06 GMT

Below you will find this weeks meetings for Australia's Microsoft oriented user groups. Please refer to the groups specific website or contact person if you would like further information on speakers or to confirm times and addresses for meetings. The Sydney Deep .NET User Group meeting for September has been cancelled due to TechEd.

Western Australia
- .NET Community Practice, Date: Thursday 4th September 5:30pm, Topic: Federated Identity Management in a Service Oriented World - Bill Poole
- Perth .NET Coffee Meetup, Date: Tuesday 2nd September 1:30pm

New South Wales
- Sydney Geek Coffee, Date: Wednesday 27th August 1:00pm

Queensland
- VSTS User Group, Date: Friday 5th September 7:30am

Note: Groups with web sites that have not been updated for months are assumed to be inactive and won't be listed, if this is not the case and your group is not listed please contact us here.

Announcement: CXC Global and nsquared solutions partnership

nick — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 01:05:09 GMT

As some of you are aware Dr Neil Roodyn, James McCutcheon and myself started nsquared solutions back in April. Since then we have undergone rapid growth while maintaining our goal of always delivering the highest possible value for our clients. One of the most exciting opportunities has been the ability to partner with CxC Global. What follows is the press release that was made public earlier today:

A new partnership between two dynamic and growing Australian businesses is expected to yield combined revenues of AU$200m within the next 10 years.

nsquared solutions and CXC Global have worked together for many years on solving the challenges faced by today’s IT and software businesses.

CXC Global provides innovative solutions to logistics and human resources challenges and has helped businesses work smarter with their global contractors and employees. nsquared’s goals have been focused on the technical challenges faced by software businesses to overcome the hurdles of delivering high quality solutions to tight time frames.

CXC Global will provide its full backing to the nsquared services project teams as an internal administration, payroll and management service, whilst nsquared will be providing the leading edge technology and applications behind the CXC online products and services.

Ingrid Webber, CEO of CXC Australasia Pty Ltd, said being world leader in Contractor Management Services was an ongoing challenge that could only be maintained by deploying the world’s ‘best practice’ solutions.

“Working with nsquared ensures that CXC will have a huge technology advantage over any potential competitors,” she said.

Dr. Neil Roodyn, Director of nsquared and a Regional Director for Microsoft Australia, feels the partnership will help both companies grow through better value add for their clients.

“This new relationship allows both companies to focus more energy on bringing value to clients while supporting each other to increase the energy each company is able to focus on their core business. By joining forces, both companies expect to accelerate their growth to achieve the significant targets they have set for the next five to 10 years. .”

nsquared solutions delivers leading edge software in a way that helps identify the most value up front and deliver on it. The nsquared development team utilises a responsive approach to deliver solutions to meet the most pressing needs first and then works through the value chain to always remain focused on what adds the most value now.

CXC Global provides salary packaging, accounting, payroll and administration services to the global contract market and has built a solid reputation for honesty and integrity with a commitment to friendly, efficient and prompt service. CXC Global has offices in Australia, New Zealand, UK, Ireland, USA, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore and South Africa with affiliations around Europe.

Community Meetings For The Week Starting Monday August 25th

pierce — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:39:00 GMT

Western Australia
- Perth .NET Coffee Meetup, Date: Tuesday 26th August 1:30pm

New South Wales
- Sydney Business and Technology User Group, Date: Wednesday 27th August 6pm, Topic: Working Efficiently - Mark Hetherington & Electronic Forms Solutions in Office - Alistair Speirs
- Sydney Geek Coffee, Date: Wednesday 27th August 1:00pm

Victoria
- Melbourne SBS User Group, Date: Wednesday 27th August 6pm
- Melbourne Office System Special Interest Group, Date: Wednesday 27th 5:30pm

Queensland
- Queensland SQL Server User Group, Date: Thursday 28th August 5:30pm, Topic: Using Change Data Capture in SQL 2008 SSIS Packages - Catherine Eibner
- Brisbane BizTalk User Group, Date: Wednesday 27th August 5:30pm, Topic: Radio Frequency Identifiers - Rahul Garg

Tasmania
- Hobart .NET User Group, Date: Tuesday 26th August 6pm, Topic: Patterns & Practices Enterprise Library - Steven Lawrence

Community Meetings For The Week Starting Monday August 18th

pierce — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 01:23:19 GMT

New South Wales
- Sydney SharePoint User Group, Date: Tuesday 19th August 5:30pm
- Sydney .NET User Group, Date: Wednesday 20th August 5:45pm, Topic: Using LINQ-to-SQL with WCF - Eric Phan / Hardcore LINQ to Entities (Part 2) - Adam Cogan
- Sydney Geek Coffee, Date: Wednesday 20th August 1:00pm
- Canberra SharePoint User Group, Date: Wednesday 20th August 5:30pm, Topic: Using Site Definitions in SharePoint - Brian Farnhill

Western Australia
- Perth .NET Coffee Meetup, Date: Tuesday 19th August 1:30pm

South Australia
- Adelaide SharePoint User Group, Date: Tuesday 19th August 6:30pm, Topic: Microsoft Office & SharePoint - Keith Zerna

Queensland
- Queensland MSDN User Group, Date: Thursday 21st August 5:30pm, Topic: SymcML .NET API, Synchronising data and mobile devices - Zijian Huang

Australian Microsoft Communities Website

nick — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 03:17:48 GMT

Last year Darryl Burling pointed me to a website that he'd created for NZ Microsoft communities - www.mscommunities.net.nz. Thinking that this was a good idea I put together a similar site at www.mscommunitiesoz.net. Unfortunately I didn't have the time to put into it to get it up to date and start listing Australian community events.

Over the last couple of days Pierce, who works for us here at nsquared solutions, was able to update the user group listings and began posting on which groups are meeting each week.

Another resource that has a similar listing is available via the Microsoft website (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-au/cc185136.aspx) which lays the various community groups out on a Virtual Earth map.

Community Meetings For the Week Starting Monday 11th August

pierce — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 02:56:23 GMT

New South Wales
- SMB IT Professionals Sydney User Group, Date: Tuesday 12th August 6pm
- Sydney SQL Server User Group, Date: Tuesday 12th August 5:30pm, Topic: Data Cleansing & Data Profiling

Victoria
- Victoria .Net Dev SIG, Date: Tuesday 12th August 5:30pm, Topic: What should developers know about SQL Server 2008? - Chris Hewitt

ACT
- Canberra SQL User Group, Date: Tuesday 12th August 5:30pm, Topic: Using Change Data Capture with SQL Server 2008 Integration Services - Catherine Eibner

South Australia
- Adelaide .NET UG, Date: Wednesday 13th August 5:30pm, Topic: ANTLR: Main Features & Demonstration - David Benn
- Adelaide SQL Server UG, Date: Thursday 14th August 12pm, Topic: Lessons learnt implementing SQL 2008 Reporting Services - Grant Paisley

Got Issues, Use a Taskforce

nick — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:18:43 GMT

I was talking with Long Zheng (founder of the I Started Something blog) and he pointed me at the Aero Taskforce website (ie about Vista). Interestingly enough he has recently launched the Aqua Taskforce website (ie about Mac OS X).

Funnily enough this community taskforce initiative is based around individuals who "Find, publish and rate user experience quirks in .......". Fantastic, sites dedicated to me having a whine about how product XYZ sucks or doesn't work as it should. I think this concept is great and I hope that it does a better job that some of the corporate sites that try to collect user feedback, which they then disregard.

SP1 for SQL Server Compact 3.5 just released

nick — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 01:50:56 GMT

Steve Lasker made the announcement that SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP1 has been released to the wild. His post include links to all the relevant download.

The big things in this service pack are:

ADO.NET Entity Framework provider.
Case-sensitive collations
Native 64bit support.

ASP.NET Virtual Earth Control (Windows Live Tools for VS2008 CTP3)

nick — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 23:35:00 GMT

Last week CTP3 of the Windows Live™ Tools for Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008 was made available. This includes an ASP.NET Virtual Earth control that makes working with Virtual Earth as easy as drag-n-drop.

In this video I introduce this control and show you just how easy it is to integrate Virtual Earth functionality into both client and server side code on you site.

The Windows Live Tools also includes an ASP.NET control for Silverlight Streaming. Dr Neil goes through getting started with this control in his post from last week.

If you have any feedback on this, or any part of these tools, I would love to hear from you. Providing feedback to Microsoft on these tools is the best way to ensure they continue to deliver the best developer tools to help us do our jobs!

Professional Visual Studio 2008 now available with TechEd Offer

nick — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 22:35:06 GMT

If you follow the Professional Visual Studio blog you will have noticed that Dave has already posted that this book is now available. As a special offer to those going to TechEd Australia and/or New Zealand there will be free copies available!

What's the catch? Well, it's only available for the first 2 people (in each country) to get business cards from the nsquared solutions founders.

(Hint: there are three of us)

Iinet's lack of QOS (again), another reason for Software + Services

nick — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:37:00 GMT

(I seem to recall having issues with Iinet in the past. Looking through my blog it appears I did when I was setting up my original Naked DSL account last year)

Over the last couple of weeks I've been moving apartments. Whilst I'm only moving upstairs in the same apartment block I still have to go through the usual process of redirecting mail and of course changing my ASDL connection. Last year when I moved to Sydney I took advantage of the then new Naked DSL option from Iinet and to be honest have been exceptionally happy with it. I've even recommended it to people as it was stable and a very cost effective option for people who don't really need a landline.

Unfortunately Iinet seems to have lost their ability to service customers, specifically, existing customers who wish to change their existing service. Essentially what I was asking for wasn't rocket science - I'm moving apartments, so need the service transferred to the new apartment with minimal disruption.

I accept that

a) I would have to pay to get the service transferred

b) I would most likely have to wait for a couple of days for the transfer to happen

I was also away for the week prior to moving, so didn't get around to organising the transfer until the Monday after moving (14th July). At this time I was sent a confirmation email stating that the service would be provision (yes, that's right, there's no process for transferring it so it has to go through the full provisioning process which apparently still typically takes 10-20days) last Thursday (24th July).

This email states that they don't normally require access to the premise but if they do, and you aren't available, they will charge you $109 to reschedule. So, I did the sensible thing and stayed home for the duration of the appointment (did I mention it was to be done somewhere between 8am and 1pm!). As I had a meeting in the city at 2pm I left at 1:30pm having not heard anything from Iinet.

Later that day, I think around 6pm, I called Iinet to find out whether my account was active or not. I had more work to do that evening so wanted to know if my account was active so I could work from home instead of the office. At this stage I was told definitively that the line had been provisioned and that it was operational. As you can probably guess I got home to discover that the line wasn't available!

After a bit of a discussion with Iinet as to why I had been told that it was connected when it hadn't, I was reassured that someone would contact me the following day. Sure enough no one contacted me during the day. At this point I was still assuming that someone had come the previous day, completed the provisioning and that I was waiting on Iinet to complete the setup (the email mentioned earlier did state that it may take a day or so following provisioning for a confirmation email to be sent out). When I got home in the evening I checked my mailbox and discovered a "we tried, but you weren't home" notice from the line technician from the previous day.

The notice stated a couple of things:

Customer appointment: 8am - 12pm (and hour shorter than the time specified by Iinet)

Time that technician arrived: 1:20pm (a good hour and twenty after their appointment and twenty minutes after even the Iinet appointment. Also before I left the apartment).

The implication from this was that the technician came late, didn't try the buzzer and/or my mobile, and just left. Another call to Iinet, around 6:30pm on Friday, so of course all I got was a "everyone's gone home for the weekend, why would you want the Internet over the weekend, we'll get someone to call you first thing on Monday to organise a new appointment as soon as possible"

Having waited patiently all weekend I decided that I'd keep the ball rolling and get in early - I called Iinet at 8:45am this morning, only to be told that no one from provisioning was available as it was still before 9am. They also reassured me that someone would contact me as soon as they were in.

Around 11:15am, having heard nothing from Iinet I decided to give them a call back. At this stage they fed me some rubbish about the provisioning system having been down this morning (like I actually care) and that no there wasn't a team leader available to discuss my case with. They assured me that someone would call me back within the hour.

The next time I looked up it was 2:15pm - time for another call to Iinet. It's got to the point where I know their phone menu system well enough to get straight into the queue. Anyhow, again I get told that no-one senior could help me and that they would call me back soon...... waiting..... waiting..... eventually around 3:45 a team leader/manager calls me back.

After explaining the entire situation again (don't they have call notes for this stuff) I'm told that he would have to make some calls and would contact me again tomorrow morning. I pushed a little bit harder, explaining this wasn't good enough and that he should try to give me a call back this evening. He tried to tell me that he was in Auckland and it was past his bedtime - after explaining that there was still plenty of time in the day here in Sydney he got the picture that I was less than happy with Iinet's pitiful service level. Within about 10-15 minutes he had called me back.....can you guess what happens next.

When this guy calls me back he says the best he can do for me is to schedule a new appointment for the 6th August. So for some reason, because Telstra/Iinet are incompetent I have to go without Internet for another week and a half. I'm sorry this is not acceptable!

Ok, so just briefly, cause this has been a bit of a long winded explanation, I want to come back to the subject. I think I've covered the fact that Iinet's QOS is less than acceptable but how does this apply to Software + Services. Well one of the topics that I've been interested in for some time is around building applications that will work well when they are occasionally connected. For example Outlook in Cached mode essentially does a lot of operations locally, and then synchronises with Exchange. This is the basic premise of Occasionally Connected Systems, which are in themselves really just a special case of Software + Services.

Taking the Outlook example, with my limited connectivity at home (via my 3G phone which doesn't seem to connect to half the websites out there) I can still do email as normal. Sure the sending/receiving is slower but for most of my email/calendaring/contacts this doesn't matter. In fact, if more applications were built with this in mind perhaps my computer wouldn't grind to a halt everything there is a network outage. As I've been doing some web dev in the past couple of months I've had to use FireFox for testing - this product is one of the worst offenders for hanging when there is no Internet connection!

Update: If you read Tatham's blog you will have seen this post, where he talks about his issues with Iinet. Granted he's been messed around even more than I have but regardless this quality level is definitely not acceptable.

Update 2: Just received an email confirming the appointment on the 6th August but also indicating that I'm up for a $109 fee for rescheduling the appointment!

Update 3: (30/7/2008) After 4 phone calls with various people at different levels within Iinet I have a new appointment that is a whole 2 days earlier. whoopie....

Making up for my sins - yes, that's right, I'm doing Web Development!

nick — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:46:16 GMT

I'm very much a believer of using the right tool for the job and whilst I've never been a big fan of the ASP.NET model there are times when you just have to get the job done. Anyhow, so I find myself working in the web space and having to do things like running up test servers and the like.

After a bit of a poke around on the new server I couldn't for the life of me work out why it wasn't serving up .aspx pages. Simple html pages and images were being served out fine. Anyhow I spoke with IIS guru and fellow Australian MVP, Ken Shaefer and he pointed me to quite a useful flowchart that helped me diagnose what was going on. This is probably old-hat for most of you but I thought I'd highlight it just incase it's useful to others.

Here's just the beginning.... click through for the full thing!

Broken WPF designer on a clean VS2008 installation

nick — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:20:11 GMT

I've been running an M700 for almost a month now and it's been a fantastic development machine. It also generates a WOW when pulled out at meetings, even against those super-cool folk who are equipped with an iPhone. However, it hasn't all been easy-sailing - today I was trying to do some WPF development and came across an annoying error. It appears that somehow, most likely installing some beta bits, I managed to disable the designer for xaml files. The symptom, a rather descriptive error, with very little information on how to resolve it:

Whilst it is nice to know that "There is no editor available for .....xaml" the suggestion to "Make sure the applciation for the file type (.xaml) is installed." is completely useless. Does Microsoft even both thinking about these error dialogs. Luckily there was one useful discussion thread that helped resolve my issue.

Simply run:

devenv /ResetSkipPkgs

Mobile Happenings

nick — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 01:40:02 GMT

Fellow Windows Mobile MVP, Mauricio Freitas (who runs Geekzone) has an interesting post around the evolution of mobile devices and how there are a number of people/parties talking about how we don't need a physical qwerty keyboard or user installed applications. Having used the iPhone/iTouch on-screen keyboard I must admit it's a better experience than I thought, but I think I still prefer a keypad or keyboard for doing text entry. With regards to not having to install applications I can definitely see the advantage of web applications (such as the iphone adaptation of Facebook) but I still think that installed applications have their place - particularly to support disconnected scenarios and to leverage otherwise inaccessible device functionality.

Elsewhere in the Mobile space.....

RedFiveLabs have announced the availability of Net60 which is a port of the .NET Compact Framework runtime (v1.1 only) for the S60 platform. Check out the following webinar for how to get started:

Windows Mobile .NET on S60/Symbian
This informative webinar showed users how to leverage their .NET CF applications onto the S60/Symbian platform and help create new revenue opportunities for their company by enabling them to address the 165 million S60/Symbian device worldwide installed base. This webinar also included how .NET CF code can be re-used to quickly enable the target application on S60 devices!

nsquared solutions is growing

nick — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 01:25:09 GMT

As some of you will be aware at the end of March I left Intilecta to form nsquared solutions with Microsoft Regional Director, Dr Neil Roodyn and fellow MVP, James McCutcheon. With some significant expertise in the mobile space it would come as no surprise that we are doing some projects in this space. Whilst I can't give any more away at this stage we have some awesome projects and products in the mix that I'm really excited about and can't wait to share more about them.

In the meantime we are looking to expand our development team. Specifically we are looking for self motivated, no-messing around developers who are passionate about technology. The two technology areas we are looking to fill are around WPF and ASP.NET - if you feel like you're up for the challenge then checkout the full position descriptions across at Dr Neil's blog post, or contact me directly.

Saying Farewell to the Silicon Beach House

nick — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 04:08:12 GMT

Over a month ago I had to close the doors to the Silicon Beach House due to insufficient tenants for it to be cashflow neutral. Unfortunately I was still left holding the commercial lease for the premises until a replacement tenant could be found. I would have thought that in the current climate in Perth this wouldn't have taken this long but it's clear to me now that commercial leases can take quite a while to be finalised.

So, now that a replacement tenant has been found it's time for me to reflect on what worked and what didn't with the beach house:

What Worked

The open plan environment we had really worked well. Although having other people talking in the same room can be distracting for some people, most of the beach house residents found it good to have someone to talk with occasionally - this is particularly true of the sole traders who would have otherwise been working by themselves.
The location worked. You have to ask "how could it not?" - it's in the heart of Perth with shops, cafes and virtually anything you need almost on the doorstep.
The size of the premises. There was enough space for 10-11 people to be based comfortably in the beach house. With a fairly basic setup of flat desks and roller chairs this seemed to work well for those in the house.

What Didn't Work

The lack of commitment from those who were initially pushing the idea. This is more of a learning lesson for myself - don't volunteer to put your personal finances on the line to help out others unless they have shown equal commitment. Not only did I sign up for the lease for the place, I also invested in furniture and in removing a partitioning wall to help enhance the working environment. Sorry guys but I blame the failure of the beach house entirely on you!!!
The short term leases. The leases were only three month leases with a 1 month notice period. Unfortunately with me being in Sydney now it was difficult for me to replace tenants as they vacated. This resulted in severe under utilisation which resulted in the eventual closure of the beach house. If I was going to do this type of thing again I would put a condition in the lease that the tenant was responsible for finding a replacement in order for them to exit the lease.
Me moving to Sydney. This didn't help at all in being able to find new tenants. Again, there was no one else in the beach house with their $$$ on the line, which meant that although Dave and Myles (big thanks guys) put in quite a bit of time to promote the beach house it was never their responsibility to find new tenants.
The lack of parking. Well honestly, did people really expect that they were going to get free parking in the centre of the CBD as part of their $120 per week. I think not and I'm surprised people even asked. Part of the reason it was based in the CBD is that there is an abundance of public transport options.

Overall unfortunately the sour taste of thousands of wasted dollars means that I'm unlikely to ever undertake this style of project again. I will however continue to be involved in the various developer communities.

Imagine Cup 2008 - Final day

nick — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:06:09 GMT

As a number of other people have already posted (eg rog42) Australia took out the2008 Imagine Cup Software Design competition. Team SOAK took on a fierce competition and came out successful - well done guys!

Here are a few photos from the final day:

Imagine Cup 2008 - Paris by Bike

nick — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:19:43 GMT

A couple of us decided to try out one of the more green/environmentally friendly forms of transport to get around Paris. We eventually managed to work out how to hire a bike from one of the numerous bike racks around the city - this took a number of attempts as the instructions weren't at all obvious. This would have to be one of the most enjoyable ways to get around Paris, although it can be a little scary sometimes when the normal road rules don't seem to apply.

Imagine Cup 2008 - Australia makes the Finals

nick — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:49:33 GMT

The top six teams for the Software Design Invitational for the 2008 Imagine Cup competition were announced earlier today as:

Australia - SOAK (Smart Operational Agricultural toolKit)
David Burela, Dimaz Pramudya, Ed Hooper, Long Zheng
Brazil - Ecologix
Carlos Eduardo Rodrigues, Eduardo Sonnino, Renato Ferreria, Roberto Sonnino
China - UniqueStudio
Jing Pan, Yang Liu, Haojian Jin, Zhou Yan
Hungary - Digital Mania
Ákos Kapui, Laszló Zöld, Bálint Orosz, Gergely Orosz
Portugal - (void*)
André Sousa, Marco Barbosa, Martinha Rocha, José Faria
Slovakia - Housekeepers
Marián Hönsch, Michal Kompan, Jakub Šimko, Dušan Zeleník

Imagine Cup 2008 - Software Showcase

nick — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 06:37:45 GMT

The Showcase!

The SOAK from Australia

The Semi-Finalist Announcement

Imagine Cup 2008 Semi-finalist Announced

nick — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 15:01:22 GMT

The following countries just progressed to the second round of the 2008 Imagine Cup finals for the Software Design Invitational

Australia
Slovakia
Portugal
Brazil
China
France
Hungary
Singapore
South Africa
Korea
Croatia
Russia

Imagine Cup 2008 - Round 1A

nick — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 06:07:53 GMT

Yesterday was the first round of competition for the 2008 Imagine Cup worldwide finals. This is where the students get to showcase to the judges the software that they have spent the last year working on.

The overall format for the finals are that it's broken into three rounds:

Round 1: Split into part A (yesterday afternoon/evening) and part B (this morning), the students get to present for the first time in each part. Each presentation is 20 minutes with 5 minutes for Q & A, and each presentation is to a different set of 4 judges.
Round 2: At the end of Round 1 the top 12 teams will advance to Round 2 where they again will have to present to a panel of judges.
Round 3: From 12, the competitors will be trimmed down to just 6 teams that will again present, this time in a much more public forum. A set of 7 VIP judges will determine who is the overall winner of the Imagine Cup 2008 Software Design competition.

So, what are my thoughts so far? Well I can't go into any details until the results are known to the students but I will reiterate a comment that I've made previously about the Imagine Cup competition:

Throughout the Imagine Cup competition the students have built some software to address a problem that they have identified based on the statement "Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment". However at this point in the competition what matters the most is being able to convey what they have done to the judges in just under 20 minutes. This means getting their presentation absolutely perfect - no mistakes, no issues with demos, everything has to go smoothly. This means practice, practice, practice and when you think you have it right, practice it some more!

Good luck to all the students for Round 1B and for the rest of the competition.

Imagine Cup 2008 Opening Ceremony - City Hall

nick — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:01:49 GMT

Spot the Australians.... yes, that's Roger holding up the video camera and Karo in the front of the photo

Welcome to Paris - Imagine Cup 2008

nick — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:05:42 GMT

This is where the Taxi dropped us off at the hotel - cool view of the Eiffel tower.

More over the coming days on the Imagine Cup 2008 world wide finals as they kick off here in Paris.

Downsizing - Going Mobile Take Two

nick — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 02:43:58 GMT

Up until very recently I have been sporting an IBM Thinkpad T43. This was one of the last laptops with the IBM branding before it officially became Lenovo and was also one of the last single-core devices. That said, it did have 2Gb RAM and a 2GHz proc, so all in all it wasn't a bad machine. But, as you can imagine, two and half years on, it's getting a little slow to do serious dev on.

Last Friday, courtesy of the awesome service by Hugo at TegaTech (<2 days from order to delivery!), I'm now sporting a rather cool Toshiba M700. With 4Gb of RAM and a Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz proc. At it's a Tablet PC it of course comes with a stylus but better yet it's also Touch capable - this makes me feel right at home since I never use my stylus on my Windows Mobile device.

Now I say this is take two because my last foray into Tablet PCs was with the HP TC1100, also supplied by Hugo. Unfortunately this device wasn't up to the rigours of software development and within a month the HDD had given up. I took this as a sign and Hugo again provided service a cut above the rest, supporting my claim against HP that they should refund my purchase. This is how I ended up with the IBM which I've been extremely happy with.

The only think I'm going to get used to is that the new device has a screen that is about 2/3rds the size of the IBM which means I have to squint. This is offset by the fact the device weight a fraction of the IBM. Unfortunately on this trip I'm sporting both devices with extra battery which makes my day bag very heavy :-)