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Vista update

by | Jun 15, 2006 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

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Vista

Another in a series on Vista.

I blogged in April about the hardware baseline for Vista – I pointed out that the minimum specs were pretty steep:

  • general knowledge worker – Pentium 4 class machine, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, 1Gbit ethernet, accelerated graphics capability
  • ‘power worker’ – Pentium 4 class machine; dual core and 64 bit ideal, 2GB RAM, 100GB HDD, 1Gbit ethernet, accelerated graphics capability

This garnered a comment from Wolfie2k6:

I have it running very nicely, thank you – with all bells and whistles – on a box that cost me less than $500. That’s including a set of high end Altec Lansing speakers.

Wake up folks – hardware is CHEAP.

I still contend that the minimum hardware is way more than $500 – and that was validated this week with the release of the hardware specs for Windows Vista Premium – one of the SKUs likely to be deployed by corporate customers:

The following are requirements for Windows Vista Premium logo-compliant PC and will be mandated by June 1st, 2007:

  • Must have H.264 hardware decoding
  • Must have HDCP
  • Must support multi-monitor support
  • Must have HD audio
  • Must have HD audio jack presence detection
  • Must have Serial ATA 2.5
  • Must have minimum of 50MB NV cache on hybrid HD’s with at least 8MB/sec write 16MB/sec read (for mobile only)
  • Must support booting from USB flash drives
  • Must have Windows Vista Green Button on all remotes
  • Must have Green Driver Quality Rating (DQR)

DailyTech has the full skinny.

Written at: Ottawa, Canada

Behind the scenes at Novell Open Audio

by | Jun 14, 2006 | blogging, coolblogs, evilzenscientist, Novell Open Audio, podcast, Uncategorized, ZENworks

I blogged on Novell Cool Blogs about doing an interview at Novell Open Audio.

The email invitation looked a little like this:

From: openaudio openaudio
To: openaudio openaudio;  Martin Buckley;  Michael Douglas Pearson;  Ted Haeger
Date: 14/Jun/06
Time: 14:00 - 15:00
Subject: ZENworks 7 SP1
Place: Podcast Studio, 8th floor behind the mens room

Prep and Interview

The Novell Open Audio Crew
www.novell.com/openaudio

(more…)

World Cup 2006

by | Jun 10, 2006 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized


I’m in Ottawa – watching England v Paraguay.

This is my second world cup outside the UK – during the last tournament we were in Utah doing our relocation visit. I distinctly remember sitting in a hotel room watching England play.

This morning I found the match on the TV in my hotel. I watched the first England goal with dispassionate Chinese commentary. That really didn’t help me. So I hunted around – and now I’ve found that match with real BBC commentary. Beautiful.