I signed up for the discounted Technet Plus Subscription last Friday. I paid A$307 for the lot and have access to a huge numbers of M$ softwares and product keys. For $307 I turned all my workstations and servers OS from partially legal to all licensed. I also get to download the Office 2007 and Server 2008 for trial legally.

I have installed Office 2007 to my lappy but I haven't had much chance to play with it yet. Apart from using Excel a couple of times, I think I seriuosly need to get used to the new user interface.

Tonight, I tried to install Server 2008 to my workstation. I was running Server 2003 as my workstation OS since my first job. The license was purchased as part of my work place agreement (academic license), and it has been serving me well. It is the most stable platform for workstation use. And of course, I don't really play games.

One of the problem with my workstation (Intel D101GGC board with Pentium D 3.0 Ghz, SB Live value, PCI-E ATI X1600, 1Gb RAM) when I tried to install Vista on it a couple of months ago was, I can't find any drivers for my SB Live. There are no official support from Creative for Windows Vista. I gave up Vista and reinstall Server 2003 since then.

Today, even worse, I have replaced my network connection with a DLink AWD 510 wireless connection. While it works fine with Server 2003, both the sound card and wireless card are having hard time detected correctly under Server 2008. The driver installation process just failed. Luckily there is a buildin sound come with the Intel board, despite the low quality, it actually making sounds. Time to upgrade my sound card. I also have to pull my RJ45 cable out and use the wired connection. I seriously need to do more research on how to enable the wireless connection with the DLink card on Vista or Server 2008.

The system is now all up and running. So what next. Windows Server 2008 is build with Vista technology, so I would expect Aero to be available. Nope, can't see it anywhere. After a few search on Google I realized it actually not installed by default. In fact, most of the multimedia stuffs including Media Plyer are left out on purpose. So I install the "Desktop Expreince" feature manually, turn on the theme service. Hooray, I can now see the Windows Vista listing as one of the selectable theme.

So what next again? Virtual machine, yes Server 2008 comes with "Hyper V" buildin, I read it somewhere. Have a look at the server roles available. Nope, not there. Turn out that "Hyper V" only available to install on a x64 based processor. What the!!!

Well, that is good enough for now. Until I upgrade my processor to 64bit, guess I will have to stick with VMware Server.

The site was down and suspended since Wednesday night. I can still check my email in lowtechplace.com but suddently I can't anymore. After a few moment I realized the whole site is not working.

Turn out that Jumba has decided not to offer anymore free hosting service. I was quite disappointed at first. Then I emailed the Sales team trying to find out it there is anyway to access the contents so that I can move it somewhere. The sales team replied my email yesterday with an invoice of $29.95. That means if you want your data, pay us.

I called to find out more. Its an annual fee for the basic hosting plan from Jumba. Its 500Mb space with 5Gb traffics and full normal cpanel, LAMP functions. With a little bit hesitation I paid the bill. Thinking that is only 29.95 and I can move elsewhere if I am not happy but with full access to my account configuratoin and contents.

Surprisingly, it turned out to be quite smooth. Well, despite that they have improve the security setting for the web folder and corrupted my blog's database, I am impressed with their response. The site had been relocated to their new paying plan server in less then 2 hours and pending DNS propagation at the time. Then there was another 2 hours for me to figure out the enhanced security setting and restore my blog back to the working stage.

$29.95 for a year. Thats not expensive at all. With what I get, including the quick email support from them, lets say I will try them for another year before I relocate my site.

Finally got my laptop connected to Mobile Broadband using my N95 via bluetooth connection. And yes, my land line is still noisy. Without any luck getting help from iinet I am planning to get a new line in. However, since I am managed to make this works that means I can at least survive for the next few weeks working form home.

N95 rocks...

I have noticed that the SIM came with the Three USB modem can actually making phone calls once place it to my N95. At a closer look at my Three plan, it is actually a $99 plan capped at $500 with extra $15 charges for my mobile broadband.

Interesting. Just curious why I can't include the additional mobile broadband service to my existing 3 sim card for the same price (it charges at $29 for 1Gb instead of $15 if includes to my existing sim).

Must be another doggy strategy from 3 to increase their sales number.