I’m not sure if this is something that I should be saying out loud, but in addition to being a big Apple fan, for the past few years I have been increasingly a fan of Microsoft. Of course they have always been a bit corporate suit to Apples jeans and t-shirt (usually black), they do have actually have some pretty cool stuff, I don’t know what I’d do without mesh, and photosynth and to an extent bing are also pretty useful too. That being said they didn’t do themselves any favour with Vista which in my opinion was simply awful .

One of the things that I like about Microsoft is that they run some great support programmes, I having been running Windows 7 ages now, under the beta programme  and the Technet programme is also really good for anyone working in IT.

As part of the technet programme they run a series of roadshow (that regularly visit Newcastle). This gives techies and system administrators, a chance to see working demos of new technologies and talk to experts as well as other IT pros in the area.

Last Wednesday, Vbug Newcastle at the university, was just such an opportunity. Unfortunately I was running a little late having been at an North East IT community meeting on the otherside of town (more about that in another post) and I missed the first talk.

In an amazing feat of timing, I arrived just as the pizza got there, so was relived to see Jonathon Noble standing holding the door open. There was a reasonable crowd, with 4-5 people up from Microsoft and a few people from the uni as well as a few familiar faces and a few new (some of whom I was delighted to see again at supemonday this week).

The second half of the event was a talk on Windows optimized desktop from Microsoft specialist Dan Oliver. Somewhat unnervingly Dan talked about “vista plus extra stuff”, personally I prefer to think of Windows 7 as something other than Vista,  as it really is a considerable improvement on Vista and I thing they need to distance themselves from the ‘Disaster that is Vista’.

But once I got over the “Vista” thing, there was some really interesting stuff, some of it was the sort of thing you’d expect, its greener, its more compliant, there is a lower cost of ownership, it’s a fundamentally secure platform. The were some bits I hadn’t heard about before like bit locker to go,  virtual desktop infrastructure,  the asset intelligence service and there are apparently more desktop repair tools and virtualized app streaming. Dan also talked about the concept of a rich client infrastructure replacing thin client.

Many Thanks to Andrew Westgarth and Jonathon Noble for organising and Microsoft for coming up to Newcastle, while this may have been my first vbug event, but I’m sure it won’t be my last.