When I committed to the Mobile Broadband service, I started with the 5GB plan which I thought I would be a lot of use from. Since signing up for the service and having such bad connectivity and throughput in the area I happen to be mobile, it turns out its just easier for me to find free Wi-Fi at a cafe or coffee shop. So the broadband card stays in my bag and probably doesn’t even have a charge right now. Today, I called customer service to get my plan reduced from the 5GB per moth to the 2GB per month plan, as the sales associate at the store told me would be an option.

Turns out that if you want to decrease your plan to save the $120/year, they want to renew your contract and extend it for two years from the date you change it. Since I am half way through the contract, it doesn’t really make sense for me to reduce my plan at this point. On top of all of this my mobile phone coverage is really bad in my neighborhood and I drop calls constantly and cant get a T-mobile mobile broadband connection 90% of the time.

I am really look forward to calling customer service in a year and cancelling all of my 3 phone services with them. I’m sure at that point they will send me to the customer retention agent and try to make me a deal to stay on their network that is bleeding subscribers. I really feel that they lost the focus on the customers during the proposed AT&T acquisition. It’s really a shame since I have been a fan of them for nearly 4 years.

The Microsoft Press blog also announces new MS Press titles and promotions.

• Basic Outlook 2010 for PC and Outlook 2011 for Mac Comparison
• Detailed Technical Comparison

Linked below is also a comparison of Outlook for PC vs. Outlook Web App. This matrix does not include the Outlook 2011 for Mac in the comparison.

• Outlook for PC and Outlook Web App Comparison

Also keep in mind that Outlook 2010 Standard and Outlook 2010 Professional do not share feature parity. Outlook standard does not include support for Exchange 2010 Personal Archive and Retention Policies.

• Clients that support the Exchange 2010 Personal Archive

Speaking of Personal Archive and Retention Policies, for those using the hosted E-mail Archiving Services from Microsoft, here are the comparisons of these services.

• Exchange Online Archive and Exchange Hosted Archive Comparison 

The vast majority of mobile devices now support ActiveSync in order to give a richer experience to mobile users of E-mail, Calendars, and Contact. Below is a comparison of mobile device Active Sync capabilities.

• Exchange ActiveSync Mobile device feature comparison

However when it comes to using Outlook Web App, the browser based Outlook client, there are some limitations with using shared contacts. The good news is, it can be done. The bad news is, that you cannot client the Email address another persons shared contact and send them an Email directly. This is because when you click the shared contact’s Email, OWA attempts to launch a new Email message Windows in the contact of the person sharing the the contacts. The work around to this of course would be to find the shared contact, and then copy the Email address from their profile, then Compose a New Message from you Inbox and paste the address in the To line. So while, workable its not very convenient.

In order to Open Shared Contacts (you obviously need to have permission to the contacts), first you login to your mailbox in OWA  as you normally do. Second, open a separate Tab or Browser windows and type in your custom URL in the following format:

https://server.domain.com/owa/user@domain.com/?cmd=contents&module=contacts

Where server.example.com is the host name used to access OWA (for example: mail.acme.com), and user@domain.com is the email address of the shared mailbox (for example: john@acme.com). So using the example it would look like this: “https://mail.acme.com/owa/john@acme.com/?cmd=contents&module=contacts”

The RDS (Terminal Services) Team Blog has a post that walks you this configuration. While not as simple as RemoteApp for RDS, it can be done for those Apps that are not ideal for a Terminal Services session. See the post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2010/03/08/remoteapp-for-hyper-v-vdi-deployment.aspx

Many people have been curious about what the Windows on ARM (WOA) devices are going to be like. Through blogs and stories on sites like CNET and TechTarget, we know that WOA devices are likely going to run Metro-style only Apps and Office for ARM. There will not be domain join for these ARM devices, and no way to load your traditional PC Apps on them. It truly sounds like an iPad focused competitor. Consider, the iPad runs iOS and not MacOS which means that you cant install your traditional Mac Apps on the iPad. WOA devices are taking a page from the same playbook with a huge difference. You can run Metro-style Apps and traditional x86 based Apps on x86 hardware. This means that you can run both of these style of Apps on PC’s laptops, ultra-books, slates and x86 tablets. If Apple where to adopt this same model it would mean that you could install iPad and iPhone Apps on your MacBook, and iMac.

In the meantime, Intel has been working on a competing chipset that allows you to run traditional x86 Applications on slates and tablets. Here is some recent information on the upcoming “Clover Trail” chip and its capabilities for Windows 8 tablets. Notice the specification reveal that the devices have to be 9mm or under (thinner than the iPad3) and the battery life has to last 9+ hours (that’s for 9+ hours of device use, not standby). There have also been other form factors revealed for Windows 8 Tablet Ultra-books. While Microsoft has let a lot of time slide by in getting a true competitive device in the Tablet market, it looks like when new Windows 8 devices there will be some great competition on the tablet market all around – iPad, Android, Windows.

For most PC users though, they gotten really attached to the idea of the Start button being I in the lower left corner of the screen and would lie it back again. The good news for this is that Stardock has created a free app that places the Start button back on the desktop in the lower left corner. You can get if from Stardock here: http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/

1. My wife has been on Sprints network for 10 years. The service for her has been decent. When T-Mobile came out with the promotion for 2-lines unlimited voice for $50/person/month I thought I would move her over to my T-Mobile account. Come to find out, if are were an existing customer then, you would have to pay your current rate on your line and you would have to pay full price on adding the second new line. Which would take my bill from $80/month to $160/month. So much for the $100/month for two lines deal for loyal customers. So she stayed with Sprint, moved the account to my name to get my corporate discount with unlimited everything is paying much less than $80/month.

2. I moved to a new city about 6 months ago. With the move to the new house my mobile phone service is terrible from within my house. I t doesn’t even ring 50% of the time and Voicemails just seem to appear. Annoying to me and the callers to say the least. Especially since it’s my primary phone I use for work as well.

3. I purchased a 4G Mobile broadband card about 10 months ago. Signed a new two year agreement understanding that I could terminate for quality of service. Last week I get a Email saying they are changing the terms of service for data roaming off the T-mobile network. So I call up and ask to terminate the agreement for 4 reasons:

• Three months after I signup for the broadband card, my phone get an update that allows it to turn into an internet hotspot. So I could have keep my 5GB data plan on my phone and used it to connect my tablet and laptop to the internet. Oh well, 21 months left on the contract.
• I travel through the midwest a lot where T-Mobile is pretty much is non-existent outside of the major cities such as Omaha, Des Moines and Chicago. I would estimate that 10% of the time my phone doesn’t work, and 95% of the time I can’t get a connection to my broadband card – Chicago being the exception.
• The terms are changing to the agreement, so when I go through the midwest again and am able to connect in the future (hopefully) I will be roaming and will be limited to 100MB of data for the entire month that I am roaming.
• When I am in T-Mobile areas and the broadband card connects to the network, I can’t access the internet. This happened Feb 19, 2012 in Albuquerque, NM.  I tried for three hours to get on the internet while waiting between meetings. The card would connect to 4G, my laptop would say internet access and the browsers and Email client would try and connect and wait.. and then time out because they actually couldn’t connect to the internet.

So this is my case that I call customer service and layout to them. Here is a summary of the conversation with customer service.

Rep: We’ll we completed an audit on your account and see that you aren’t using off network roaming between 85%-100% of the new allotment of 100MB each month.

Me: I understand this, however when I travel through Nebraska, Iowa and 1/2 of Illinois I can’t connect to ANY network with my broadband card.

Rep: If we terminate it will be $200, because it shows that your aren’t being affected by roaming.

Me: Is there a way to terminate due to service quality?

Rep: No, sir.

Me: OK, I understand. Is there a supervisor that I can appeal this too?

Rep: Sure, I ‘m not going to deny your request. But please know that they are going to tell you the same tine.

Me: That’s fine.

Supervisor: Intro… how can I help you?

Me: Explain I am calling regarding the roaming T&C changes and the other Rep told me blah blah blah. So with these changes I wanted to terminate, as well because of the service qualities I am experiencing when I travel through the midwest and have no roaming connection, and lack of being able to connect to the internet at times when I am in T-Mobile 4G areas. (Explained above)

Supervisor: Do you travel through the midwest a lot?

Me: Yes. That is where I am from and my family and close friends are there.

Supervisor: We’ll we show that you aren’t using your roaming data enough to be able to terminate the agreement.

Me: I understand. That is because as I explained I can’t connect to ANY network unless I am in a major city. I am from a smaller city that uses iWireless, not T-Mobile and can’t get a connection on them or on Sprint or on Verizon when I’m there.

Supervisor: I’m really sorry, but you will have to pay the early termination fee if you want to terminate.

Me: So I can terminate due to lack of service or service quality?

Supervisor: No sir. There is no clause in the T&C’s that permit termination due to service quality.

Me: OK. Thank   you, that’s good to know.

So up to this conversation I was OK with T-Mobile. Even after not being able to get on the good promotions and my service from within my house to awful. The customer service had always been excellent in the past when I talked to them. But after this experience I understand why they are bleeding subscribers. Once my contract is up, or if I can can justify early termination fees from moving to another carrier that has better service and maybe lower costs, I’m gone too. Which is sad because I am rooting for the underdog.

If they would work with me on terminating just the broadband agreement then I would stay. But they would rather have a customer for 12 months at $120/month ($1440), than a customer for another for probably another 5 years at $80/month ($4800). But it seems that so many businesses are short-sighted today, looking at each quarter instead of the next 3 to 5 years.

So long T-Mobile.

• Extension of primary storage
• Cloud backups (with Geo-Redundancy)
• Archival
• Disaster Recovery

Windows Azure Storage is replicated three times in the same data center for resiliency against hardware failure. Data is replicated across different fault domains to increase availability. In addition, Windows Azure Storage is also geo-replicated between two data centers 100s of miles apart, to provide additional data durability in the case of a major disaster, at no additional cost.

Microsoft has a variety of Partner solutions that can assist with these needs. These Partners solutions can be implemented very quickly and securely to address storage needs using the public cloud for flexible, scalable, pay-as-you-grow storage that reduces costs, improves data protection metrics, and enhances disaster recovery (DR) readiness. Below is a list of Partner Solutions (additional information in Attachments):

• StorSimple – Cloud Integrated Enterprise Storage
  http://www.storsimple.com/product-overview/
• CommVault – Simpana® Software
  http://www.commvault.com/solutions-cloud-integration.html
• Riverbed – Whitewater Cloud Storage Gateway
  http://www.riverbed.com/us/solutions/cloud_services/cloud_storage.php

If you have been following the Building Windows 8 Blog, you know that there is a lot more changes in Windows 8 under the covers. It’s not just a UI change. You will also know that the App Compatibility issues that we faced with moving from Windows XP to 7 should not be an issue when migrating from Window 7 to Windows 8. So all the App Compatibility work we did recently to get to Windows 7 is not wasted effort moving forward.

Microsoft’s next version of Visual Studio and .NET Framework 4.5 is built to ease development for Windows 8, Mobile  and brings hundreds of more improvement to the development experience. The focus of this new release is around increasing the speed of the Application development, make the development process more collaborative and focused.

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview (Beta), Visual Studio “11” Beta, and .NET Framework 4.5 Beta are all scheduled to be released to the Web on February 29th.