Goings On...

Quick catchups:

While in Seattle, I talked with some folk about IAG and ISA 2006 - all I can say is *wow*. I'm downloading the demo VMs now to have a play.

The other *wow* was SoftGrid. Architecturally, wow! I'm eager to learn more about that.

While on the *wow* subject, I upgraded my parents' PC to Windows Vista. This is a parts-up-to-5-years-old Athlon 2100+, with 512MB memory and a 200GB hard disk (relatively recent). At first, it was slow. I mean, super-good-grief-will-it-ever-open-Outlook slow. It didn't seem to be memory, as there was still a bunch cached, but I thought I'd try some more anyway and jammed in a gig - no help (see, this is what you get for troubleshooting based on opinion rather than evicence...). Then, we realized that a) the antivirus software was being a PITA, and b) the networks were reversed - the internal network card was considered public, and the external one private. I'd already disabled the antivirus by the time I noticed that, but it was then that the box calmed down and started performing really well. So I left the extra memory in anyway, and I'll surprise them with Office 2007 when I'm next over there.

Is there a moral? Nope, just a data point.

Actually, while I was over there for something else, I heard a really good description from someone explaining to a non-computer-person the difference between Windows Vista and Windows XP: "You know your 2001 BMW? This is like a 2006 BMW. Same thing, 5 years better."