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Software releases – time vs. quality

I’ve just started using Topo Explorer – and to be honest it’s one of the most bug-ridden pieces of code I’ve seen in a long time.

It looks evident that a ‘date for ship’ was set; product out of the door regardless of quality, feature completeness or usability.

I’ve been logging issues in the forum; issues include high CPU and RAM utilisation; corrupted profiles; IE errors – and lots and lots of half-finished usability features.

More concerning is that the username and password for the Topo web service are stored in clear text in an xml doc in the local profile. This user name and password are tied to the users email address, contact details and most importantly credits and purchase history for the Topo Super Quad maps. Very poor.

Blogging on TechNet

More blogs on TechNet – mainly around the new Configuration Manager Service Pack 1 and the start of my introductions to the System Center Alliance.

I’m in the same position now as when blogging at Novell – which blog gets the updates…

I’m probably going to post work specific at the TechNet site and bring an extract into this blog. Any thoughts on that?

I’ve still got a lot of blogs in the hopper. Here’s the top of the list so far:

  • building a single server Configuration Manager box for demo and developer test
  • specifically the SP1 install on 2008 Server
  • developer interfaces to System Center
    • Configuration Manager SDK
    • Operations Manager Management Packs
    • OS Deployment integration
    • Powershell is king!

    That will probably keep me busy in the next six weeks!

    UPS tests

    Last weekend it was really wet and windy – urg. We had quite a few inches of rain over a few days, the garden was very wet.

    The wind was blowing the trees around the house a lot; the neighbours continue to be worried about the risk of a tree coming down and damaging the house.

    Saturday we had four or five very short power outages – ranging between power dips to about 30 seconds without power. The UPS systems coped really well with the load. Now the Vonage and DSL are all under the UPS coverage we didn’t lose a single system.

    I also added the Tivo and Media Center server in the home theatre to the UPS coverage with a smaller, non-rackable unit.

    Blogging at Microsoft

    Finally I got that difficult first post out of the way on my Microsoft blog.

    I had to choose between MSDN or TechNet for the hosting; as my focus isn’t the developer audience (Phew!) I chose TechNet, which is targeting the IT Professional.

    I’m still using Windows Live Writer to post – that does make offline creation of content a lot easier. It’s also good having the blogging environment setup, hosted and managed by someone else.

    Novell Cool Blogs

    My posts were finally removed from Novell Cool Blogs.

    Sad – they could have been kept for reference rather than being swept down the memory hole. I also noticed that several of the other ex-Novell Cool Bloggers – Reverend Ted for example – have also been purged.

    Most of my posts are still here on this blog. Look for the coolblogs tag.

    UPS

    Two APC Smart-UPS 1400XL mounted in the bottom of the rack. I lost 6U but I gained clean, clean power and over 17 minutes of on-battery power.

    Next step – install the power monitoring software, set up power outage alerts (3 AM SMS  telling me the power cycled..) and the shutdown policies for extended outages.