Well, we’ve now been with o2 for around 4 months, and I’m generally still very happy. There are, however, two provisos:

1. Forget about using o2’s DNS servers, they’re crap. Use OpenDNS instead
2. Dump the O2 wireless box, which has a tendency to drop connections and doesn’t sync at the maximum speed. Whatever you replace it with, however, MUST be broadcom based or you’ll limit your sync speed. I’m now using a cheapie Netgear DG834GT, which is probably the best alternative - it has improved uptime no end and has also increased average download speed to a little over 14k - almost 4k faster than the o2/Thompson box. Not too shabby =]

Think I’ll be sticking with these guys for a while - since changing the router, it’s been completely hassle free.

Well, I needn't have worried. Our new ADSL 2 internet connection works just fine. Fast as all hell, aaaaand the one phone call to support I needed to make (they hadn't sent me details of my static IP, which I needed to get things going), was dealt with in an exemplary manner.

I have no clue how o2 manage to provide the service they do at the price they're charging, but there don't appear to be ANY gotchas - it's a damned good service. I'll report back in a few months when everything has had chance to shake down a little....

I'm a little nervous. For the last year we've had a broadband package from one of the best-regarded ISPs in the country - Zen Internet. However, o2 (better known as a cellphone operator) have recently purchased another fairly well-regarded ISP, Be, and are offering a full-featured broadband package to their cellphone customers at a ridiculously good price. Given that I'm not 100% happy with Zen (the connection is very stable and their support staff are great, but the price is high, there's a monthly cap and their email servers suck - which doesn't really matter as we use alternatives, but it's occasionally inconvenient), I've decided to switch.

Here's the deal: I currently have 8mbit down, 476k up, static IP and 50gb cap for around £35 per month. o2 are offering me, 16mbit down, 1.3mbit up, static IP, no cap and a 'free' wireless router for £15 per month. No contest, huh? Weeeelllllllllll maybe, but I'm kinda waiting for the other shoe to drop. Yes, I'm locked into a 12 month contract, but most ISPs do that (although Zen didn't), but I do wonder how reliable it's going to be at that price. Yes, I plan to use other DNS servers, yes, I'm not reliant on their mail servers, but even so, I'm rather used to the old 'you get what you pay for' axiom. Here's hoping that it's not too good to be true.....

I guess we'll see - switchover is supposed to be next week, BT allowing. Wish us luck =]

I just spent quite a bit of my employer's money on new desktop computers. Our old machines were around 7 years old and are failing (not to mention slow), hence we needed new hardware and fast. So why do I feel dirty?

*Deep breath*

I spent that money with Dell.

*Deep breath*

The thing is, where else are you gonna get 15 well-specced computers for less than £200 a pop? I'd love to have bought Macs, but even base model minis would have cost around twice the price, and we'd still have had to purchase XP (our Goldmine database is Windows only).

Of course, the obvious cure for the above feeling is to go spend some money at a local Apple store, but I'm broke, so that's not an option :-(

Well, poo.....

Seriously, though - these Dell boxes are ridiculously good value. 2.2Ghz C2D, 1gb RAM, 160GbHD, keyboards, mice and XP Pro (I passed on Vista). £184 + shipping. Yes, you read that right. Should do us well for at least the next 4 years =]

Well, we finally did it. The server swap that I've been pushing to do for the last 18 months finally happened yesterday.

The old server, unfortunately, was running Windows 2000 SBS, which meant that we couldn't just drop in another domain controller, migrate Active Directory, promote it to primary and then switch off the old one - SBS doesn't support that. There was also the issue that the old server configuration was eccentric ( which is putting it mildly) and was going to be a real pain to simplify.

So yesterday, I got to work at about 7.30 am to do some preparatory work. The new Dell server arrived in the capable hands of Sam (from our I.T. Support partners, Scantech) at around 11am. We kicked everyone off the network at 12 and set to work....

A few points:

1. The Dell PowerEdge 2900 is a seriously impressive piece of kit for the money.
2. Going for Exchange 2007 was the right move, even though there was a point around 10pm when I wished I'd stuck out for an XServe and OS X Server ;)
3. Sam is an absolute star....

Given the complexity of the transition, we'd expected it to take two days. We were planning to work until late Friday, then come back Saturday to finish. Despite a few really annoying glitches (not unexpected, although we were panicking for a few minutes when we had a problem with the avaya phone system, which also authenticates through the server), we managed to finish the whole migration in one mammoth session. We finally got out of the server room at 2.30am (!), which was later than we planned, but worth it as at least it meant that I got to take my missus out to lunch today =]

I know that Monday is going to be big time glitch city, but other than two or three nasty little problems that I'm expecting, I'm quietly confident that things will settle down fairly quickly after that. *touch wood*

BTW. Yes, I'm knackered.... :-P

Well, OS X Leopard has well and truly landed. First for the upgrade was a G5 machine at work (that is just about to be replaced, so was a good candidate for testing). I did an archive & install, then wiped and re-installed Adobe CS2 and Dreamweaver (neither of which ever quite survive an archive & install). Other than having to fiddle with the printer driver before it would behave, I was delighted to find that everything (and I do mean EVERYTHING) worked perfectly. I fully expected to wipe that machine and re-install Tiger before re-purposing it out to another department, but under the circumstances, it can stay exactly the way it is.

Next up was my own MacBook Pro. I did a full wipe on this one as a: I wanted to clear some crud off the system and b: I felt like it ;-)

Again, everything works - even Adobe CS2 under Rosetta (I also have CS3, but need CS2 for compatibility with work - I just don't install VersionCue, which is the one bit that breaks). I was especially impressed by the upgraded partition management tools in Disk Utility as I made a mistake when setting up Boot Camp the first time, and needed to wipe the Windows partition - was done easily without even needing to reboot the machine. Windows could learn a lot from this OS. Anyhow, I've now got XP running well both via BootCamp and VMWare (temporarily - wanted to test XP under Boot Camp as I'm going to be installing an iMac at work set up that way - It'll be replaced with Vista in due course), all my other major applications are installed and working and I'm struggling to remember when I last did an OS upgrade that went so smoothly (that'll be never, then ;-) ).

The only slight hiccup on the horizon is the new iMac we're installing at work - it has to drive a Konica/Minolta 5440 colour laser and the b*strds don't have a driver compatible with OS X Intel (only PPC). D'oh! Looks like I'm going to have to hack the open-source Linux-compatible driver to work with Leopard's version of Ghostscript. Oh well - in the meantime I can always print via the XP partition....