Windows 7 Here I Come...

...well not quote haha!

I am today installing the Windows 7 RC onto Virtual PC 2007 hosted by my trusty Windows XP machine. Although I am a self confessed geek I have never been one for playing around with pre-release versions of operating systems but on this occasion I have made an exception.

The reason for this departure from my own self imposed rules is simple, I am believing the hype. I have read and heard so much that I am intrigued. I am intrigued to see for myself whether this really is any better that Vista, particularly as this is likely to be the leap we make on all 70+ business machines from XP in our organisation. But wait, there is more. As I build my photography business I am looking at faster and faster PCs (I am holding out against a switch to the Mac!) and I really want to try out Windows 7 as a platform for photographers.

So how will I fell when I use Windows 7? God only knows but one thing is for sure, it better be better than Vista. You can't hold off change forever so I am already convinced this will be our OS of choice int he not too distant future.

I'll keep the blog posted on how I feel about the RC.

Pick of the Week

So the pick of the week can be anything right. Therefore todays pick is the big picture blog by the Boston Globe. Every post is a collection of high resolution photos on a particular subject. This is a personal favourite of mine so please go check it out.

 Here the link http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/

  

  
Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from David's posterous

It's lovely being out for a lazy summers evening walk

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from David's posterous

Posterous makes is sooooooooooo easy

So you have Facebook and Twitter and a blog and FriendFeed and Tumblr and Flikr and....oh you get the picture! Well when you have all these socialistic blogawotsit site how to heck do you keep up with them all? Or rather how to you get them all the keep up with you? Well the answer is Posterous.com .

 The concept is one of those truly simplistic ones. You know the sort that you think you should have come up with. It so simple that it's almost too good to believe. You email it what you want to post and Posterous updates all you sites at once. Crazy simple isn't it.

 It is so easy to set up and the help is fantastic. I even emailed them a question on the *founder of Posterous* emailed me back with the answer!!

 You don't even have to sign up to get started! Just email post@posterous.com with your first post and they will email you back with what to do next. Come on give it a go.

Posted via email from David's posterous

Picke of the Week

So here is the first pick of the week on UK Geeksville....drum roll please!

It's been a touch descision to pick THE FIRST Pick of the Week but here it is...............

Mozilla Thunderbird

OK you might be thinking this is a bit of an anti-climax to have an email client as the first Pick of the Week but really, read on.

I've picked this for many reasons and to list them all would bore you to death but here are the highlights as to why I think this worthy of being a Pick of the Week:

• It's free and it's open-source. This means it costs me nothing, nada, diddly squat! I like free and the open source means the add-ons for it are excellent.
• It's better than Outlook - bit of a sweeping generalisation but in my honest opinion it is.
• It can do it all. Add the Lightning calendar and it becomes a real alternative to Outlook. Add the Provider for Google Calendar and you can then synchronise your calendar with your Google calendar. Let's face it the Google calendar is well backed up in terms of infrastructure so I trust it.
• Use IMAP for you mail with you web mail provider and you don't need to worry about losing emails or backing up too religously.

All in all I love it. You might love it too and if you do please let me know about it.

Microsoft and Nokia team up for smartphone

Since forcing myself to start using Google News as apposed to limiting myself to the BBC News website a whole new world of news articles has opened up to me. Why have I not done this before? Honest answer is that I don't have a good reason for not doing it.

This article [click here] really caught my attention given it's potential significance in the global mobile email market.

Although this partnership seems more focussed on offereing Miscrosoft Office on the Nokia smartphones it has a far wider reaching implication. RIM's BlackBerry is a well known and much loved device with a loyal user following, they were first and they got it right. Then Micorosft entered the fray with the Windows Mobile operating system on smartphones that offered the same push email connectivity and in fact that is what we use here at Sidhil. Of course phones such as the iPhone and the Nokia 5800 have the MS Exchange connection ability and this is where offering Ofifce on the Nokia handset will set them asside from the BlackBerry.

Offer me a good Nokia handset with a decemt camer, Exchange connection, MS Office and of course touch screen and I would take that any day over a BlackBerry or indeed a Windows Mobile smartphone type device. Why, because I like Nokia and I always have.

Personally I love my iPhone and would not be without it for my personal life and photography business. But in the corporate world it will be hard to convince senior directors that a switch to O2 just so we can use the iPhone is the way to go especially especially as it has yet to be taken seriously as a business phone.

So here in the office we are preapring a case for the board on where to go with our mobile email. Currently we are using cheap T-Mobile Windows smartphones but we plan to move back to Orange and the MD has convinced himself that BlackBerry is the way forward. We are going to have a hard time convincing him that Exchange as our back end means we can natively opt for Windows smartphones, Nokia phones or even iPhones if we move to O2. I aren't against BlackBerry just for the sake of it; I am apposed to paying for extra software and licencing for something that Exchange does out of the box.

So where will be by the end of the year? Back on Orange is highly likely, but on which handset is anyones guess.

Hello and welcome to UK Geeksville

Hi and thanks for visiting. I hope you enjoy reading what I have to say.

I am a wedding & portrait photographer and an IT Manager from Dewsbury in the UK. Loving all things tech and geeky I decided the best place to air my thoughts and opinions was in blog format.

So here is it in all it's glory - UK Geeksville.

In general I am planning to post around 4 articles each week with regular features like Pick of the Week amongst others. It's also my ambition that over time I will attract guest bloggers from around the world to introduce their themselves and what they have to say on any given subject.

Enjoy the blog and thanks for reading.

Dave