We are in the process of migrating our server at work from Windows Small Business Server 2008 to Small Business Server 2011. There is a good article on the microsft site for working through this process. I’d recommend reading this if you are doing a similar migration (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg615506.aspx).

I’m planning on writing a few articles about the process of doing this migration. As a starting note I’m just going to give a note on starting the process. One of the first things to do is install the new version of the server in migration mode. To achieve this you need to create a set up answer file. This set up file needs to be placed on the root of any drive connected to the server. In our case we were installing the new server on a Hyper-v virtualisation server. The quickest way of achieving this is to create a small virtual hard disk and add the file to this.

The point we stumbled on was not reading the manual (aren’t all techies guilty of this from time to time!). The answer file needs to be called sbsanswerfile.xml or unattended.xml. We had not called the file this and was not being detected on the drive.

I’ll post more progress updates when we get further down the line!

I’m still battling with getting a replacement stereo head unit for my partners car. I’ve contacted them several times but they are just piss poor at responding to communication. I’ve just called them again and been told that there is nothing they can do at the moment because the returns people are not in the office on a Saturday.

I told the gentleman on the phone that I would like a call back on Monday. Should I not have this issue resolved within the next few days I will be contacting trading standards and will be following it up with legal action if they fail to respond.

As I’ve stated before they are shit. Just avoid them completely:

• Staff are rude
• Don’t follow up communications when the state they are going to
• They have issues with returns
• The mis-describe their products (Stated that a stereo is 100% bluetooth compatible when they don’t support A2DP)
• Can not deal with a customer enquiry because of people being out of the office.

My next step after this is going to be a complaint letter to their head quarters stating the issues I’ve had and that their staff member Gary Digva is quite frankly dismissive of queries and complaints.

At work we use a hosting company called VPS.net. They use clouds of virtual private servers. This blog is running on one. They are quite good because they enable users to create their own virtual servers from templates of machines (E.g. Linux with hardened web server etc.) This setup allows users to create machines based on a certain number of nodes. These nodes allow users to upgrade or downgrade with machines depending on demand. It’s quite a good system from that respect.

The downside of this setup is the stability. In the last 2 weeks this blog has had to be relocated to a different server due to significant corruption on the old server. There was a corruption on the cloud that caused the system to crash. All the backups of the server were lost as well meaning some data loss was encountered.

Today I’ve just had our main work server go down taking down the company website and another product we sell. Considering these both happened within two weeks it is a quite a bad story really. Personally I have some concerns regarding this stability. We will have to wait and see how things go. Still got concerns but we will wait and see if the stability improves.

Let me know your experiences of vps.net.

I think that I am almost fully up and running again after a hosting issue. VPS.net had some problems and caused some file corruption on the server I host this site on. I’ve setup on a new host so should be up and running again now!

AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE! The are the cheapest around but there is a reason for that. They miss-describe their items and then refuse to do anything about it when you request a refund. The customer service guy is rude and some times condescending. He was a little shocked when I pulled out the fact that I’m a bit of a geek and know what I’m talking about. Especially when I quoted the distance selling regulations. Still being an arse though.

Watch this space for updates on the stereo front.

Apparently the Pioneer DEH-6200BT does not support the Audio Profile via Bluetooth! Looks like that will be going back. The description of the stereo does not make any mention to only supporting hands free kit. It only mentions “Fully supporting Bluetooth”. Fully supporting. What a pile of sheite!

Why can’t one company make a good charging solution and dashboard/windscreen mount? For christmas I bought my partner a bluetooth stereo for her car. I rounded it up with a car charger and winscreen mount so she can charge her phone while using it in the car.

For a stereo I got her a Pioneer DEH-6200BT. It’s a lovely stereo with the ability to link to the phone with bluetooth, play music over it, link an iPod via USB, add an aux in. Take a look at the link above and see what you think of it!

For a charging mount I decided to go down the route of a Brodit active holder. I’ve used one for my HD2. The phone fits in well and it will charge via the cigarette lighter in the car. The down side of a brodit mount is the mounting solutions. Brodit seem to have some random mind set about sticking screws into everything! Literally. The think you should mount your phone into the car by sticking a screw into your dashboard! I’m not going to do that! Why the hell would I do that!

Read on after the break for how I fixed it. Continue reading →

Last week I decided to give an android build a try on my HTC HD2. The guys at xda-developers have a series of builds for android. The install process was relatively simple. Just clear your SD card, copy the files from the distribution to the SD card, boot Windows Mobile and then run the haret.exe file on the card.

That then boots into a linux boot loader and eventually into android. I will say that the first boot takes a lot of time. It’s really is quite slow so don’t get disillusioned. This is just the first boot. It won’t take this long on subsequent boots.

As a review of the build on the HD2 I would say it’s very good but has one reasonable draw back. The battery life was terrible! The phone went from fully charged to flat in less than 8 hours. For me that is just terrible. On Windows Mobile I can get about 2 days. The OS ran very well, apps ran well, the time it takes to do things is very good. It was just the battery life that killed it for me. Once I knew it wouldn’t even last the night I cleared it off my SD card and went back to Windows Mobile.

I will say though. I think my next phone will be an Android phone.