Post conference blues

Not that I missed the conference much... but I'm having a really lousy throat made worse after I walked 3km yesterday. Funny, sometimes the best way to get around town is on foot!

The Launch wasn't all that great. The location was a little too small for comfort. The halls were okay, but the common areas and partner exhibition areas were too tight. It was really hard getting around and even worse trying to get my lunch.

The sandwich I had was pretty okay. Cold turkey hams, lettuce, mayonnaise, honey mustard and buns. I couldn't ask for much since this was a no-cost event and marketing budgets seem to be tighter these days. But I had a good time eating my bun on the balcony. You couldn't do this in Singapore without feeling the discomforts of heat and humidity. The air is fresh as Westin Bayshore was located along the harbour front.

I was most disappointed by the complimentary copies of Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 and Windows Server 2008. The licenses issued were only good for a year after your first installation. That makes me worry about using it at all. But you know what, I'll probably find sometime to evaluate the new server software. After all, I really need to have a server or 64-bit OS to fully utilize the excess RAM I have in my computer now.

But more importantly, what did I learn?

• A few more tips and tricks about using Visual Studio 2008.
  
• That Windows Hyper-V is actually running on SUSE.
  
• Different methods for virtualisation.
• Identifying the User Group leaders in Vancouver and meeting them face-to-face.
• Not all MS experts can answer what Microsoft is doing for the Semantic Web (I mean, I couldn't find one. The chump just shrugged and said, "Don't know."). My English must have sucked. Too much powder. Duh.
• SQL Server 2008 is still not ready, and so is Hyper-V.
• SP1 will make Vista closer to what consumers want in an operating system.
• A lady photographer (I can't remember her name) was commissioned by Microsoft to take pictures of IT heroes from 18 different countries.

Nevertheless, I am grateful to Microsoft for organizing the event. A little more knowledge is always good. Thanks for the freebies and lunch. But I really hope you guys can think of other ways to make software more affordable. And please, give us a feature to deactivate our copy of Windows so that we can do a re-installation without needing to call your hotline and feel like a pirate.