Real World Computing
Recovery for HP
Finally, in a fit of extreme annoyance, I ran the system recovery utility and dragged the whole OS back in from the hidden hard disk partition where it's stored. I'm still annoyed, because the number of times an OS has defeated me so completely can be counted on the fingers of one hand. I'm happy to give up if a machine refuses to run, but this one was running fine, at least at a superficial level. I'll confess I have no idea what's wrong with this machine. I find this outcome very unsatisfactory and quite worrying, because it feels like an omen that there's much more hidden underneath the hood of Vista than we've been told about.
MAPS test
For those in the know, Microsoft UK has an excellent partner package called MAPS (Microsoft Action Pack Subscription). I wrote about this service a few years ago when it first became available, and have been an avid subscriber to it ever since, and I know many of you, too, have availed yourself of MAPS. Basically, it's a package of server and client OSes and tools, bundled up with some licences. You get one server worth and ten clients worth, and it includes Vista, Office and plenty more. The idea is that you can build a complete infrastructure for your organisation using MAPS licences, and then build your business on that. This is quite different from MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network), where licences are strictly for developers and debuggers, and come with no "use in anger" components.
All this sounds very good, but the real kicker is the price - just £200 gets you a MAPS licence for your whole organisation to run for a year. At the end of that year, you're supposed to buy another MAPS licence, install full retail versions or walk away from the software to something else. This pricing has been a stunning feat of marketing by Microsoft, and anyone who fits the requirements has snapped up a subscription. Naturally, you can only subscribe to MAPS if you're genuinely a Microsoft Partner organisation, so you need to be developing, delivering support, installing and consulting on the Microsoft platform to qualify.
There's no doubt MAPS has been a huge success - such a success, in fact, that Microsoft has decided to raise the bar for qualification. After all, the MAPS subscription price is in effect being subsidised by the partner programme division inside Microsoft, and the company wants to get the best possible partner solution in place for its money. So this year, it's introduced an exam: you have to pass one of a range of exams covering a broad list of topics. You need to score 70%, and there are even online tutorials to help you prepare for it. It isn't such a big deal, and it isn't designed to keep out those who deserve to be successful. It is, however, designed to offer a slight deterrent against free riders who might be dipping into the MAPS licence pool while not performing any meaningful work, consultancy or partner effort on the platform. I've already heard howls of protest from some subscribers, but I'm with Microsoft on this one: when you're getting software at such a huge discount, you shouldn't be too surprised if there are some strings attached.
Blu-ray
Last week, I bought a Blu-ray desktop drive by LaCie. It wouldn't have been my first choice, as I have a long and troubled history with the power supplies on LaCie devices, especially its external USB hard drives - the PSU seems to overheat and then not provide enough power to get the drive up and spinning. I'll confess I once located a place online that sells LaCie spare parts and bought a bunch of its PSU units, just so I could get some desktop drives back up and running. Nevertheless, I took the plunge and bought this LaCie Blu-ray device.
