OSNews

Miscellany

Tablet PC: As this was the justification for my attending, I tried to get as much information on Tablet PC development; using XP Tablet Edition has made me a convert to the platform, and I hoped to get as much information on the technology as possible. However, although some of the informal get-togethers were invaluable in making connections and friendships, there was little 'meat' about Tablet PC development in and of itself. The good news, I suppose, is that Tablet technologies are now included in the Vista main line, which effectively increases the number of potential Tablet PC users by however many copies of Vista have sold so far. Additionally, tablet interfaces will be supported in the release version of Silverlight v1.1 -- any Vista user can enjoy the capabilities of Vista's new gesture- and ink-enabled OS, and the suite of programs that usually accompany it, by just buying a monitor with digitizer. However, the day of tablets as a separate field of programmming will soon be coming to an end. Ah well; at least it turns out that Tablet PC programming has prepared me for the Surface API...

Kernel changes: I wanted so much to attend all the seminars regarding the kernel changes in Windows Vista (and not just because I fancy myself an OSdev hobbyist), but they were scheduled at odds with the sessions I had to attend for my job. That's a shame, because the one session I did get to attend (regarding the revisions to the memory manager and the scheduler in Windows Client) were fascinating... at least to an OS nerd like me.

UAC: UAC was a minor aspect of the week's events. As the security expert put it, "UAC is not put in there for the average user or you or me. UAC is there to prevent system administrators from porking themselves -- that's a technical term." Later on, another speaker made this comparison: "With UAC, you are Superman, but you run around as Clark Kent."

Orcas: Much ado was made about Orcas, Microsoft's newest version of Visual Studio. However... I just didn't see the big deal. It's free for now, which makes it a decent starter drug for developers, but once the beta closes, it'll just be another piece of software I won't be changing to from Visual Studio 2005.

Did the "Wow" start now?

Microsoft's slogan for Windows Vista is "The wow starts now." Just for fun, I began to keep tabs of every time someone actually said the word 'wow' in response to a piece of Microsoft technology (things like the $15,000 giveaway or the motorcycle giveaway didn't count). All told, there were several hits:

• In the keynote: A 'wow' in response to an application demonstrating RFID tags and SQL server. Several 'wows' in response to a demo where a .NET chess program competed against a Javascript chess program; given equal processing time, the .NET program won handily, due to its being able to search move trees deeper than its competitor.
• In Understanding the Microsoft Support Lifestyle: A 'wow' in response to learning that Microsoft will now end support phases only once a quarter, no longer staggered at multiple times throughout a month (to save IT some headaches), and never in December.
• In Microsoft Visual C# Under The Covers: An In-Depth Look At C# 3.0: A 'wow' in response to some of the new extensiblility functions.
• In Microsoft Windows Vista Kernel Changes: A 'wow' in response to symbolic file links, a new kind of hyperlink. Also in response of the ability to cancel out of synchronous I/O, such as opens. Also in response to I/O now being able to be 'prioritized' just like threads.

I heard a few more, but I didn't always have the time to jot them all down.

In conclusion

In conclusion, however, you have to ask: Was it worth it?

For the IT people, you don't have to ask them twice. In the ride back from the attendee party, one nice gent I spoke with told me that the information he had called back to the office had already saved them $85,000; others reported similar savings from this or previous TechEds. When you can rate the value in money like that, then yes, the event is worth it.

For me, however, it wasn't such a good deal. The event was heavily biased towards IT professionals, and I'm just a software developer -- a developer of educational software, no less. However, I did learn about new technologies, and I learned that some branches that my group had been studying were going to end in failure. In between the time saved, the friendships made, and the community I joined, I have made the diference between the project's on-time delivery and a very costly failure.

I hope I can get approval to go next year, too. I already miss the unlimited Pepsi and free string cheese.

1. "Keynote; .Net"
2. "Silverlight; Linux and Open Source"
3. "Miscellany"