Now I don't usually go to a lot of conferences, or view them to the magic of live streaming but EnergizeIT was an exception. Although I couldn't visit the seminar, because of my schedule being 'booked' right after 12:30 (so I'm going to miss the afternoon session) with my family and then my friends (hey... it's a weekend!) the live stream was just as good, plus it was being streamed at 320 K bits/second... which is awesome!First, the Vista presentation by Barry Goffe I must say was really good.. lots of interesting stuff that informed me more about how Microsoft is catching up to Apple... and in some cases surpassing them (obviously this is bound to happen because Vista is newer... and OS X had a similar advantage over XP because it was released a little later). I'm not a Microsoft fanboy, and neither am I an apple fanboy but I'm quite sure that Vista is really nice, I'm not being biased.
After the Vista talk there was an awesome geek presentation (I'm saying that because he used really geek terms, such as TPM and what not that might be over the head of some people) by Mark Russinovich of Winternals (yeah you've probably used one of their products in your life time....). His presentation did have a little bit of glitches when Vista which was running in VMware refused to cooperate (may be because of Vista's great memory needs). Although his slides too did have a bit too much of information and no graphics (having graphics in your presentation is one of the key ingredients in order to create a really great presentation) but it was kinda nice... so I won't complain about it. Another good that was that since he wasn't a Microsoft employee... he also pointed out some key minus points in Vista. 
For example you won't get to edit the BOOT.INI file any more... because there isn't going to be a boot.ini file in Vista. Instead they have the BCD (boot configuration Data) that you need to change using command prompt... and it takes about 4 steps to accomplish one thing as opposed to 1 in XP. But then there were other benefits such as optimizing the I/O so that the computer can function better... you can check out the recorded presentation (please use IE though)... I'm not sure if I'm allowed to give out links (because technically you need to be registered to view any of this, but I don't mind bending a few rules to spread geekdom). And make sure that you are not sleepy because if you are then I warn you that you might fall asleep near the end where there are technical problems.... other than that just enjoy the show.
After this there was a little presentation on Office 12 with Mike Bulmer (beta of course), but although the guys didn't really explain a lot about the ribbon (which they should have to make the IT admins that had gathered there go, "cool... that's interesting) nor did they even give a demo of the interface, but overall it was kinda cool. The presentation was I'm guessing made using Office 12 to show off all the capabilities of the software... and of course they also used all kinds of colourful graphics and so on to enhance it. I really was expecting a demo but I guess not. Actually, all the people who went to conference (in downtown Toronto) probably installed it on their computers when they went there... so its really pointless to show what the people can see right in front of them.
Then there were some tips of how your can use Office Outlook web access to track lost data and what not on your own so that you don't have to call the 'IT guy' at 2 o'clock in the morning... after you've lost your laptop on the taxi while coming back from a party.
The presentation was a bit business/big organizations centric but was informative never the less. There were parts about Virtual Server by Allen Stewart and so on, which explained the benefits and so on... which are solely useful for business only. Other than that it was pretty cool. Lots of info squeezed into about a 3 hour presentation for people interested in knowing more about software and so on provided by Microsoft and what they are doing to help businesses and security and the like.Got a question, tip or comment? Send them to beyondteck+question@gmail.com and we'll try to answer it in a blog post!
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