Month: October 2008

Here is a video that gives you a demonstration of what SCE 2007 can do for you.  Based on cut down versions on OpsMgr 2007 and ConfigMgr 2007, you can audit hardware/software, deploy software/updates and monitor health and performance of hardware, operating systems, services and applications. 

The intention is that you get a Windows integrated solution that gives 80% of the management you’d get in an enterprise network in one tidy package.

Interestingly, SCE includes a management pack for network device monitoring via SNMP.  That’s not officially supported in OpsMgr.  Why?  SCE is intended for SME’s where there might be a handful of network devices.  This management pack is only designed for that.  However, if you use OpsMgr 2007 then you can probably take the SCE MP from the install media and import it.  It probably won’t be supported by MS and I can’t say how well it’ll perform.

I was in MS in Reading last week and groups of us were brought in for a quick demo and hands-on play with Microsoft Surface.  Surface is a a table like device with a large flat, touch sensitive screen.  It uses an altered build of Windows where there is no start menu, etc.  It’s purely driven by the hands-on experience and is extremely intuitive.

The demo had us throwing photos and videos around the surface, bouncing them off the edge, twisting documents around so people on the other side could see them, stretching documents with our hands and navigating through applications.  It’s really easy to use because it’s target end user is a normal person off the street.  Targeted implementations include hotel concierge, airports and casinos (digital gaming), possibly medical or any scenario where a representative is selling or demonstrating to the public.  However, given a stylus I can see it being useful for photo editors who want a huge working surface or maybe schools one MS figures out how to create a vertical surface (it’s in a table mounting so it can be cooled).  It’s also multi-user.  We had 60+ contact points interfacing with the OS at once.  It can’t tell how hard your pressing but it can measure the surface are of the contact, e.g. finger tip, finger, palm of hand.

Curiously, the texture of the surface was not smooth as I expected.

It’s a hugely expensive device right now so it really will have a niche market until the technology comes down in price.  There’s lots of stuff out there apparently for developers who want to write for it.