Do I have time for this?

Got a call from an occasional SME client whose anti-virus had past it's renew-by date, and this being a recession they had decided to renew it themselves. The reseller advised them the original product didn't suit their requirements, and pointed them at the vendors web managed "lite" solution instead. Their system administrator (who's also their accounts bod, phone technician, air conditioning expert, and general all round have-a-go hero) managed the removal of the old and the installation of the new. So far, so normal.

Some days later the new product caved in and refused to update. "Company key not valid!" it cried. Our have-a-go hero rang the vendors technical support line, only to be told they didn't have a license for the installed product which they'd purchased and downloaded only just the week before. They carefully provided all the relevant details to the vendor support people, but "computer says no" seemed to be the general approach of the vendor.

They were unable to progress the issue, and so it was that last week I found myself repeating all of the same information to an equally dis-interested technical support rep. I however, was able to discover that while they didn't have a license for the product they purchased, they did have a license for the current version of the original AV product. This was a good thing because the original product was a far superior (and more expensive) animal to the one they'd purchased in lieu at the reseller's advice. This was also a bad thing, as they didn't have the necessary access to download the installation files since they didn't have a technical support agreement for that product, but apparently did for the inferior one they'd purchased.

It took a frustrating afternoon of long distance calls to access the inner circles of the vendor in question, and thus to elevate the issue to someone with sufficient authority to untangle the wires and make the electrons flow again. It appears that the purchase which was intended to replace a previous product had instead been processed as a renewal of the previous product, something the technical support people were not empowered to correct.

Ultimately, the client ended up with a top drawer product at a bottom drawer price, (consultancy fees notwithstanding), thanks to the vendor making a gesture of goodwill and upgrading the client to the superior product free of charge.

There's a moral here for anyone who sells software. Make sure your back office operations match your front office aspirations. There's nothing in your product quite as valuable as the trust a customer places in your reputation.

With Windows XP now officially into it's end-of-life phase, and Vista waiting in the OEM wings, BitSmith has been road testing some alternatives...

The vast majority of road users are drivers (for which read Windows users). They sit in endless traffic jams, sometimes of their own making. They often use their cars where it might be quicker to walk, or cycle, or take public transport (did someone say Mac?) because they're conditioned to using their cars for every task involving travel. It's the only way they know.

Linux users are the motorcyclists of the tech world. They make progress while the drivers sit in the same old traffic jams. Like motorcyclists, Linux users are frequently misunderstood, sometimes even purposely misinterpreted, by the car lobby simply because they somehow exploit freedoms most drivers cannot understand or imagine.

Like motorcyclists, Linux users have seized an alternative. The huge majority of Windows folk are content to sit in their metaphorical cars comfortable in the knowledge that they are "safe" while linux is somehow "dangerous" even if it takes twice as long, and costs twice as much as necessary, for the car driver to get there.

Linux evangelists meanwhile (Dispatch riders) are seen as a breed apart. We all know they're mad, and therefore to be treated with the utmost caution. Humour them, but try not to make eye contact, and for the love of God don't get in their way. They're on a mission, and nothing, but nothing, will stop them.

Every so often our metaphorical car driver will look at a motorcycle filtering past and fleetingly wonder if they too could be making better progress, if they too could be more efficient, less expensive, less damaging to the environment, and still get there sooner with less stress. But so very few will make that jump.

They're comfortable, these Windows users, and we all like being comfortable, don't we? Think about it the next time you're sitting in traffic and a motorcycle glides past... What would it take for you to make the switch?

It appears that Dublin city council have caved in to pressures from the telecommunications industry, and backed down from their plan to have free WiFi throughout the city.

The quoted reason is essentially that the plan would be contrary to EU law on state aid, which on the face of it seems plausible. Just in case you fail to believe them, the fall back position is the usual "it wouldn't be financially viable".

The council, according to various news sources, is to press ahead with plans to provide free broadband to disadvantaged areas presumably on the grounds that the telcos don't have a fleet of armoured personnel carriers available and/or pre-pay broadband is not a product they intend to offer in parts of the city which are home to a population with a propensity for random violence and wearing pyjamas to the shops at three thirty in the afternoon.

So a plan which apparently wasn't economically feasible over the whole city will now be restricted to a few economically disadvantaged areas. Riiiiight.

For a country with an appallingly poor record on broadband take-up, and some of the highest prices in Europe for some of the lowest speeds, this is warning Ireland cannot afford to ignore. The Telco's have demonstrated time and again their ability to protect their own selfish interests at the expense of the greater good. We've known this in the IT Community for well over a decade, but we've collectively failed to convince the powers that be - both at national Government & at EU level - to do enough to redress the balance. Pity that.

A crisis call comes in from on high to inform me that we'll have four people in a porta-cabin on a client site and they'll need access to their e-mail, Internet & need the ability to share files - Oh and sorry about the short notice but could you sort it out before close of business tomorrow?

A rummage in the basement junkyard of Bitsmith towers turns up a retired Dell Poweredge 2650 which appears to be in perfect working order. Lacking a spare licensed copy of any flavour of Windows Server, and needing to get the box live in short order, I used SME Server 7.2 from Contribs.org which I'd downloaded but never really got around to playing with. Current build is 7.3 from: http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:Download

With the absolute minimum of fuss & bother I had an NT4 style PDC up and running in less than an hour. Granted, I'd have needed more time if I'd had to do a more complex config, but given that all I need is essentially a glorified NAS box in the least possible time, this Linux distro is perfect.

Intrigued, I took an old Dell Optiplex GX240 from the same hideout as the Poweredge and ferreted out a pair of identical Maxtor 40Gb IDE disks of similar vintage.

Booting from the SME Server CD and had a test-rig live in less time than it takes to read the FAQ. Even the paltry 256 Mb of RAM in the Optiplex didn't seem to impede it. Shutdown, swap the CD-ROM drive for the spare disk and when you reboot it'll mirror the disks.

Use a pair of 500Gb drives, and you'll have a disk-mirrored NAS box for next to nothing.

To me this is what a proper Linux box should be... Simple, fast, does what it says on the tin. Better still, contribs.org seems almost completely devoid of the holier-than-thou attitude that appears to infect a significant (but shrinking) proportion of the Linux community.

It has been said that Linux is only free if your time is of no value, and that's largely been my experience of it in the past. SME Server has changed that perception and given a new lease of life to a junkyard dog, and for that - above all - I highly recommend it.

As a small child, I would sometimes have nightmares about a monster which lurked in the shadows beneath my bed, all teeth & claws, sensed, but not seen. 35 years later I still have vague recollections of the anxiety this imaginary monster induced, and lately I've begun to experience something startlingly similar...

Last week I was on a client site, a commercial vehicle rental outfit which largely looks after it's own IT. Their accounts bod/IT Manager had recently ordered a trio of Dell Vostro PC's and these had, by default, shipped with Vista pre-installed.

Undeterred, he gamely set about deploying them in lieu of some ageing Fujitsu-Siemens boxes and quite successfully too, even managing to re-install & configure some tricky financial software in the process. So far so good.

The real trouble began the following day when three hard pressed administrative staff found themselves looking at a colourful new OS whose apparently alien layout soon had their "How do I" tangled up with their "Where is my..." and generally feeling completely at sea.

Days later I'm in the office trying to disable some of the "Are you sure?" warnings, and providing a crash course in Windows Vista file management. The search features in particular seemed to be an issue for them, and despite the best part of a day's instruction, Betty on the booking desk was still struggling with it.

Now all of this boils down to a lack of training. My client freely admits that he hadn't realised the machines would ship with Vista, and that he should have been better prepared. He also said that Vista was "different for no real benefit". He's right on both counts.

The trouble is that very few SME's will provide training on the OS to their staff in advance of a roll out, and almost all SME's will be force fed an OEM diet of Vista from early next year, or sooner depending on hardware and vendor choices.

This is the proverbial monster lurking in the shadows, a hulking great beast with colourful fur and hidden claws. These days it's diet is your typical small company, and we'd all better be ready for it, because one thing's for sure... Betty on the booking desk won't be.