In The Know - Charles Van Heusen's Weblog

I hung out with the Queen of SBS last week at the SBS MVP Summit Post Party!

I had the distinct pleasure to hang out and entertain the SBS MVP’s on Wednesday night with the DFW SBS Partner Group at Dave & Buster’s last week.  I was a bit disappointed because of schedule conflicts, I wasn’t able to attend the Summit with everyone, but it was great to meet a lot of the Elite SBSer’s from around the globe and to finally get a chance to sit down with Susan Bradley.  I’ve been on several conference calls, email threads and even sat in one of her sessions at SMB Nation last year, but I never had the chance to meet her in person until last week.  She’s even more impressive in person than she is on her Blog believe it or not.   She has a unique talent of making everyone feel comfortable talking to her no matter what their knowledge level is around the technology and always seems to have a smile on her face.   Before she left, she made me a SBS *** roacher.  (see the photo below).   I can proudly say that I know the guy that was killed by Microsoft BOB now and I have the shirt to prove that too.  (See Susan’s shirt below with the MS BOB shirt).

Hanging out with everyone, sharing stories from around the globe, just reinforced one thing, I LOVE my JOB, because of the great people I get to meet everywhere I go…  OK That’s enough of the softie side of Charles…  Back to reading about Windows Vista (aka.  Microsoft Longwait, I mean Longhorn).

BTW, Grizzly Adam’s below is our esteemed SBSer and Head Honcho of the DFW SBS Partner Group.

HTC Update Review - The Good, The Bad, and well, there was nothing Ugly about it...

I managed to squeeze in the ROM update (download here) between webcasts and conference calls today, and I must say it was surprisingly simple.  The download was 50 megs so those of you out there still fighting the bandwidth woes, this may take a few minutes.    The installation process was smooth as silk once I found a good USB synch cable.  I am one of those lucky people that make “Murphy’s Law” a reality.  If it can go wrong, it will.  I had two, count them two BAD USB synch cables, which took a 10 minute process into a 45 minute project. 

Once I found a good cable the installation went smoothly.  Hind sight, remember to back up ALL your files from your device prior to performing the upgrade.  I backed up all the Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, but I forgot the most important files, my camera photos, why are now lost in the 1’s and 0’s black hole, we often refer to as an I D 10 T error.

If you don’t already have ActiveSync 4.1 installed, go ahead and download it from www.microsoft.com/downloads to save you a step afterwards, because it will be a requirement for synchronisation after the upgrade.

Last but not least, make sure the battery is charged up.  One of my coworkers attempted the installation and it failed because he only had 48% battery life available.

Here are several screen shots of the upgrade process so you know what to expect.

Almost there….

And we’re finished…..

Now reload your applications and reconfigure your ActiveSync connection to the Exchange Server and your good to go.

Let's get Flashing! Cingular 8125 Update from HTC

HTC has the update on their website for Cingular 8125 customers.  Several people on my team have already reported upgrading successfully and I’m planning on doing it at some point today should I actually get 30 minutes to spare.  Try it out and send me feedback on your first impressions. – mailto:charlesv@microsoft.com