Prez.Com
Milt Hull
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President's Thoughts
Upgrade Month
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Well, here it is December already and last month was a real bear for me. Not only was it Comdex month but it was the month I chose to change all my machines over to Windows Millennium Edition, Windows 2000 Professional and Windows 2000 Advanced Server. First I should tell you that I do a lot of testing for Microsoft, starting from the Snowball Project which was Windows for Workgroups, including the first version of Microsoft Windows NT 3.1. This included all the testing of Windows 95, Windows 95 OEM, Windows 98, NT version 4, Windows 2000, and now the latest, which is the Whistler Personal, Whistler Professional, and the Whistler Advanced Server. I have sixteen machines, including my two portables. Almost all of them are SCSI, with over 170 gigabytes of information in all those machines. Right now RAM is dirt cheap, so I have upgraded almost all of them to have plenty of RAM right now. I have five static IPs directly connected to the Internet and the rest are connected through a proxy server installed on a Windows 2000 Advanced Server.
Moving On Up
The first thing I did was upgrade six of my machines from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000 Advanced Server. If you read my Tech Talk article this month, it will tell you a little about the trouble I ran into. Other than that, after all the trouble I had, for the most part I am completely satisfied with the changeover and very pleased with the operating systems that Microsoft has produced.
An important note here is that the Windows NT family of operating systems includes Windows NT 3.1, 3.5, 3.51, 4.0, and 2000, while the Windows 9x family includes Windows 95, 95B, 98, 98 SE and the new Windows Millennium Edition. However, the Millennium Edition did away with the DOS Shell. They took out the real mode of the operating system and it jumps right into the protected mode.
I have to say that Windows 2000 is completely different. Every time Microsoft upgrades a product to a newer version, they do a completely different interface. The first few releases of Windows NT mimicked Windows 3.1-same look and feel. Then Windows 95 was released and soon, Windows NT 3.5 and 3.51 looked like the old interface. Not long after that, Windows NT 4.0 came around and had the look and feel of the new Windows 95. Then Windows 98 had the same look and soon Windows 2000 was on the horizon. It has a completely new look and feel and the same menus are there, but more buried for advanced commands and easier for the simple commands. The latest release was the Millennium Edition, and it has the same look and feel of Windows 2000.
Comdex Struggles
One of the strong points of the Comdex show is that some times-not always, but some times-companies bring in real experts on their products and you can ask questions without paying for a support call. Since I go every year anyway, I take advantage of this and bring a series of questions with me and ask them during the show. Sometimes I come back with real answers and sometimes it turns out to be a real waste of time. This year I had some questions about File Replication and importing into the Active Directory. I put my questions in my Palm and it was a waste of time for me. No one there knew anything about importing into the Active Directory. Maybe it was the Palm. Since Microsoft does not like the Palm Pilot, preferring Windows CE, they may have chosen not to answer the questions for me. I really don't think that this was the case, however; I just think that the people they had at the show were not as technical as I thought and that the real technical people were back home working on the next release of Windows.
I did have questions for more than just Microsoft, though. I brought a whole page of questions for other companies like Adaptec, Belkin, 3Com, Hewlett Packard, and Casio. Well, first of all Adaptec didn't even show up at Comdex and nether did 3Com. Actually, I guess 3Com did as a solution provider under the Microsoft booth, along with many other companies. So I did ask this one guy at the 3Com table my question, but he was not up to par with the technical question I had asked.
As far as Belkin was concerned, they said go back and get on our Web site and state a technical question to our team and they may have a firmware upgrade for the three devices you own. I did this and they responded with an e-mail that there are no firmware upgrades for the device I own, and that I would have to purchase the new devices to solve my problem. Here again, a total disappointment.
HP Troubles
Hewlett Packard was there, showing off a new photo printer. They gave me a card that stated if I purchased it from their Web site and I entered a code, they would give me $15 off the price. So I went on the Web and put in the code and it said that the code does not work on this printer. I took it back to them and they said that they would look into it. I got frustrated and bought it from PC Connection instead. I saved more than $15 just on the tax by purchasing it out of state.
I have the printer, because it arrived about a week after I ordered it, but to this day I cannot install it because it is Plug and Play and I have it hooked up to a JetDirect box. I do have a tech support call in on it, though, so we will see how it goes next week.
About the only good thing that happened this Comdex for me was that I upgraded my Palm Pilot to the Palm IIIc after reviewing one for a whole week. Ken purchased one as well, so we are compatible and can beam applications to one another. Since we have a series of articles next month on the Palm devices, I have to write about the experiences I have had with it already, and with my original, which Lesley has now.
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