This week I have mostly been.......

Playing with a KACE2000.
I originally came across KACE at one of the Sydney geek shows (might have been CES I can't remember) years ago and at the time I remember thinking, thats a neat idea, but its a bit small for what I am doing at the moment.
Well, a while back they got bought by Dell and since then they have made leaps and bounds. Its still definately for the smaller side of the small/medium business market as multiple sites and replication etc is a bit more cumbersome than the big boys toys like SC or Altiris but I have to say its fast, really fast in fact and as long as you aren't doing some of the more complicated large enterprise stuff it works pretty well, and it handles Apple Macs even if it can't do bootcamp - yet
The K2000 and the K1000 (virtual appliance or physical box) are the two things I have been playing with The K2000 is the OSD side of things and the K1000 is the 'everything else' side of things, patching, software deployment, inventory etc etc.
The thing that really sets it apart in my opinion is its seemless integration into things like AppDeploy and a number of other sites and tools, so even if you dont know how to package, its not a problem, the KACE will handle a chunk of the work for a lot of the well known packages for you. Given the target audience of these boxes is likely to be a jack-of-all-trades sysadmin at a smaller shop or a consultant who will have to hand it over to IT staff who probably aren't experienced packagers or systems managment people this capability is invaluable.
The K1000 is very quick at software deployments too, you have to really know what you are doing with SCCM to get it to run as fast and update as quickly as the K1000 does out of the box.
The Kn000's are a FreeBSD based setup and can be downloaded for a 30 day trial in ovf flavour for importing into the hypervisor of your choice so why not give it a whirl. You can download it from http://www.dell.com/kace

The two faces of IE10

OK I tried, I really did, I tried to be nice about it, I tried to live with it, I tried seeing things its way, I tried to change, I tried to be friends, but noooooo with IE10 it is either its way or the high way.
Sigh
This needs work.
I was really hoping IE10 wasn't going to continue on where IE9 left off as 'The browser most commonly used to download another browser"
The whole no plugins thing on the Metro version is a pain in the ass and quite frankly my Citrix CAG based friends, you aren't well catered for.
The first thing you will want to do is install Chromium for all your "Why doesn't this work in IE10" moments, not that this is an easy task either. You will need to either allow Chromium through smartscreen or turn it off all together, yes its migrated from IE to full blown OS.
To turn it off go to Control Panel --> Action Centre --> Smartscreen Settings

Fun and Games with WIndows 8 dual boot

A word on setting up the dual boot on an existing machine by the way......
Obviously I already had a Windows 7 instance on my work laptop as that is the company SOE, and that has a lot of 'customisations' on it, so I didn't want to have to rebuild it.  No problem I'll dual boot Win8.
HA - that's all I'll say to that,
HA.
There I did it again.
So what were the problems?
I could not - no matter what I did - get Windows 8 to start on a partition that wasn't Disk0 Partition1
(give or take the system reserved partition)
So that necessitated moving the Windows 7 partition to a second Primary partition. This in turn means that the drive letter changes, and you cant change it because its on the running OS.
OK we'll come back to that.
Lets get Windows 8 on the first primary partition.  It still didn't want to know, hmm maybe this is a dud download - it extracted OK, but maybe.....
Tried it on a virtual machine (VMware Workstation 8) works fine - nothing wrong with the install, but hang on, the system reserved partition is 350Mb now.  That was always an option on 7 but I only ever used it once for a professional setup.
Tried to install it after removing the existing 100MB and hey bingo - success.
So now it works but Windows 7 is dead as all the stuff it expects on C: is now on D:
Do a quick regedit to change the dosdevice=d:\ to dosdevice=c:\ and we are good to go.
Does Win8 need that 350GB system partition?
Is this going to make in-place upgrades for the likes of SCCM and Altiris more than a little difficult?

"Life? Don't talk to me about life" (Marvin the paranoid android)

My life is conspiring against me and this blog.
I went back to the UK for my 40th and got delayed by the Qantas grounding/strike/civil disorder/WWIII/intervention call it what you will, so no time for updates there.
For various reasons I now have to go back again for the Christmas period so no updates then either.
Also means no time to research and play with stuff in the mean time.
I am however continuing on with the great Windows 8 experiment.

Living with Windows 8
I am pleased to report that I have yet to come across anything serious.
I am able to do everything I need to do for work, and as a consultant that is more than most people do.
The only additional issue I have come up against yesterday is my encrypted WD passport SE not being automatically recognised. It seems to work ok if you install the WD Smartware software but not natively, I am sure this is just a driver thing and we shouldn't forget that the Win8 release is only a preview, its not technically even a beta yet.
I was talking to my boss and the CTO about it yesterday and they were impressed, looks like they are considering giving it a whirl
I am yet to have to go back to Win7 other than to ensure the thing is kept up to date for virus and protection.

Living without Windows 7
Am I ready to live without Windows 7 yet?
No.
Partially because the developer preview will time bomb at some point and partially I am not sure I am ready for my main PC to go over to it yet. As it has 3 x LCD's on a 6850, an original i5, an SSD, 16GB of Ram, TV cards, a steering wheel, pedals and a whole host of esoteric hardware on it I am not ready to switch that over yet, but I am seriously considering dual booting it with Win8 to see how it looks and feels on a more powerful machine.

The irony of working on a task for Sydney Airport and not being able to get to work due to a airline grounding has not been lost on me by the way.

Windows 8 Developer Preview

Ok no updates for a long while....... a really long while
What with all the various SC 2012 incarnations, Windows 8, IE10, changing job and and and its all been firmly in the too hard basket.
So here's the start of some more regular posts.

Windows 8.
I am dual booting Windows 8 (64bit full developers release) and Windows 7 on my work laptop (a Dell E6400) with Windows 8 as my primary and my existing Windows 7 there for safety and in case the boss wants me to do something Windows 8 cant.  In for a penny, in for a pound!
Initial impressions (3 days) are good. I have deliberately avoided reading too much about Windows 8 and allowed it to wash over me like a user and try to just use it without too much prior knowledge and prejudice.  Its unusual to be able to do this as we techos usually need to know as much as possible as quickly as possible so we can advise our customers, but with this dev release there is some breathing room.  Some....

The Good.

• Metro, Personally I am a fan. Most of my esteemed colleagues? Not so much.
• New logon screen, control panel, and all the other pretty.  I like it a lot.  I do a lot of SOE designs and its amazing how many otherwise business savvy IT techos, completely disregard the importance of the user experience.  Getting that look and feel just right can make a big difference in how an SOE is viewed by the users.  They report to their bosses who talk to your boss you know.
• Touch screen - Windows 8 looks like it might actually be that 'touch screen enabled OS' they talked about with Windows 7.  Bring it on. That and screens that bend down to the desk. Imagine a screen that has an angled section at the bottom with a display that you can program to do different things with different programs. Personally I like keys that move (not haptic feedback) so I wont be leaving my keyboard behind just yet,
• Ribbon enabled explorer, I am a big fan of the ribbon.  I know its a love it or hate it thing but once you realise that the context sensitive tabs are your friends the desktop becomes an inviting place.
• File copying, I don't know whether its a feeling (haven't run IOMETER yet) or whether I am just distracted by the new graphs in the detailed copy dropdown or what, but copying does seem to be smoother, quicker (in terms of total time, a new OS doesn't make your hardware faster without new drivers) and more efficient.
• Everything I have tried to run is working except active-x RDP in IE10. 
• All my hardware is working except the WWAN (no data SIM so I haven't tried to fix that yet)
• Native ISO mounting - YAY - about freakin time. Thanks guys.

The Bad

• The start button takes you back to the Metro interface.  I know, I know, it has to - but it is a real mental gear jam, especially when you are trying to do something that you are concentrating on.
• I can't find any (sensible) way to customise the layout or look of the tiles.  If I want a single column of tiles followed by a 5 wide column then that's what I want, and I am not hex editing dll files just to change the background colour. I am sure they will fix this before release but right now it is sending my OCD completely round the twist.
• Adding an app like office adds tiles for all the normal crap that you never want to see (e.g. Digital Certificate for VBA) onto your Desktop/Tiles Space/Metro start screen/whatever you want to call it - again I am sure this will get fixed pre release.
• No folders or sub folders on Metro - Not sure this will get fixed a-la Android and I am in two minds whether it would be a good thing to do or not anyway.  On one hand some people use a lot of applications and shortcuts, on the other hand folders would defeat the purpose of Metro...... 
• A lot of it is clearly still Windows 7 in the emperors new clothes but it is only a dev preview, so lets be reasonable here.
  

The very very ugly

• The Metro version of IE has no plug-ins available - WTF! - Earth to Microsoft, seriously guys.  According to some things I did read, Microsoft have released the following on their building Windows 8 blog.

Microsoft invested significant time researching the decision. The IE team examined the top 97,000 sites around the world, determining that, of the 62 percent of those sites that use Flash, many of them already have an HTML5 option as well. Beyond Flash, other plug-ins were rare, with the next most common one used on just 2 percent of sites examined

1. Seriously, there are a LOT and I do mean A LOT of companies out there who are still having a massive struggle getting IE8 to work with their internal and usually business critical apps. Now you want to remove all plugins on the Metro IE10 all that's going to do is make corporations turn off Metro. Maybe that's the thinking already, 'Normal' UI for business with normal screens, etc and Touch screens and Metro for home users, if that's the case then fine, if not you are all off your trolleys ;-)
2. Is it me or is 97,000 sites a very odd number to check? I would be very interested in knowing what the next 3,000 sites on the list had on them that precluded them from being counted and checked
3. Whilst I am on the subject of Microsoft slipping back into bad habits, 62% of 97,000 is 60,140 so just how many is 'many'? How many of them had HTML alternatives?

Is it recommended? So far so good, but then I liked ME (the bastard son of '98) and hated VISTA (the operating system Microsoft had to have - for all my fellow Aussies) when they first came out so who am I to judge, try it out and make up your own mind.

Want meter well and truly in the red

I just bought myself an ASUS N53JQ laptop and as such have been introduced to the joys of multi touch, (yes yes I know, I turned up late for the party - so whats new)...... and then Microsoft go and release this puppy, a multi touch mouse.

Only you cant have it until July at the earliest - and thats a Microsoft release date. Surely they have to be called a tech-tease for this one :-)

Check it out here on the windows team blog

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/windowsexperience/archive/2011/01/05/bring-multitouch-gestures-to-your-windows-7-pc-with-the-new-touch-mouse.aspx?ocid=WI_CL_13374

ConfigMgr 2012 - What's it all about then?

Well, now that it has an official release name I guess it’s time to understand whats different.

In a word.... Everything.

In a few more (more accurate) words .... 'Just about everything'

Below is a list of the stuff I think is relevant / important.

I will post more details on the items over the next few weeks as I get a chance to play with them

The Band:

·         The whole product is now very much user focused rather than machine focused.

·         64 bit only (except some BDP’s and share based DP’s)

·         Data is transferred with SQL replication rather than in/out boxes

·         New hierarchy model

o   New Central Administration Site (CAS)

o   Primaries can no longer have child primaries

·         The console is now a separate application and is not MMC based

·         Role Based Administration (RBA)

·         More Mobile Device Management (MDM) focus and not just WinMo either!

·         Self-service portal (not in beta 1)

·        User applications can, in certain circumstances, be installed on multiple platforms

·         Remote Control is back and is new and enhanced with CTRL-ALT-DEL!

·         DCM is now called Settings Management

·         Settings management allows you to monitor and/or auto remediate your rules.

·         Forefront integration

 ·       If you are an admin you are going to have to learn SQL administration and replication technologies - Now would be a good time to start J

Warm up acts:

·         Secondaries will need an SQL instance (can be express)

·         Requires a named instance rather than a default instance (currently)

·         DP’s can now be grouped and managed together.

·         DP's are now easier to interrogate. It’s also easier to discover what packages they are holding

·         Automated updates process where applicable

·         Operating System Deployment can now update off-line images

·         Applications can be set to auto re-install if removed (or auto un-install if installed)

·         Application ‘pre-flight’ and can be set with pre-requisites

·         USMT 4.0 is more exposed in OSD and easier to configure

·         Has intelligence built in to determine a user’s main machine

·         Hierarchy wide boot media