TechVirtuoso, Lenovo, 21 other technology blogs, and Ivy Worldwide have teamed up to offer our visitors a free Lenovo A70z All-in-one PC. Each site is giving away their own computer, and this is the same machine that Frank Owen reviewed yesterday, except brand new and without his grubby fingerprints all over it! This is $1200 value that can be yours by doing two simple things!

1. Make sure you’re following the @techvirtuoso Twitter account. (We’ll contact you via DM to let you know you’ve won)
2. Tweet this message, exactly as it says below:
   Win a Lenovo A70z PC by following @techvirtuoso and RT this! See http://bit.ly/bRPNRI for more details. #freestufffromTV

But wait! There’s more!

As a special treat for our regular visitors, we’re giving you a second chance to enter your name into the running. All you have to do (after you do the steps above) is comment on this post and tell us what you’d do with a A70z. Would you replace your current desktop? Put it in your kitchen? Use it as a kiosk at the office? The possibilities are endless.

The contest starts NOW (July 2) and ends on Tuesday, July 6. We’ll announce a winner here on the site and on our Twitter account. We’ll contact the winner directly via Twitter DM, with information on where to send us your name, shipping address, phone number, email, etc.

There is one small catch for our visitors, we can only give this unit away to those of you who live in the US & Canada. Sorry to everyone who falls outside that area, it’s not our computer and those are the rules. We’ll get something cooked up next time that has world wide appeal.

Hardware Specs

You can check out more specs and images or configure your own A70z, by visiting the Lenovo website.

More Contests

As we mentioned, we’re not the only site giving away this system. Each site will have different rules for their contents, and you’re welcome to enter as many or few of them as you like. But you can only win one system. We encourage you to enter as many times and visit these other sites.

• June 28 – July 2: The Gadgeteer
• June 29 – July 3: Slash Gear
• July 1 – July 5: Chip Chick
• July 2 – July 6: TechVirtuoso
• July 3 – July 7: Mobile PC World
• July 5 – July 9: Moosh In Indy
• July 6 – July 10: Tech Mamas
• July 7 – July 11: Morningside Mom
• July 8 – July 12: Digital Home Thoughts
• July 9 – July 13: Geeks Room
• July 10 – July 14: Twenties Life
• July 11 – July 15: Gear Live
• July 12 – July 16: The Art of Accessories
• July 13 – July 17: Hack College
• July 14 – July 18: Neowin
• July 15 – July 19: Absolutely Windows
• July 16 – July 20: SDR News
• July 17 – July 21: Gear Diary
• July 18 – July 22: Clinton Fitch
• July 19 – July 23: OSNN
• July 20 – July 24: ActiveWin

I have noticed over the years the same customers I gave my recommendation to were complaining about increased problems but I just shrugged it off. I then was given 30 machines from around 1999 – 2001 to build a temporary training class with, half HP, Half Dell. I had problems with almost each one of the Dell’s. Everything from not posting to the heat sink clip being broken. The HP’s also had a couple of issues but not near as many as the Dell’s.

I thought at the time it might have been a coincidence, until my company decided to buy 500 off lease Dell GX260’s for a fresh build out. I was horrified, not because they were Dell’s but because they were old and ratty. We made due with what we were given and put them out to production and have seen nothing but issues. Everything from BIOS batteries going out to smoke coming out of the power supply. We have between 4 – 6 of these off lease Dell’s go bad every month and at least 2 of them have “caught fire” from the power supply.

Now I hear that Dell knowingly covered up that they sold faulty motherboards? Not just one or two, but 11.8 million!  How can I recommend for anyone to get a Dell product when they try to sweep this under the rug? How am I to know that they didn’t cover up a faulty power supply design in the GX260’s that we have so many issues with and they just haven’t been caught yet?

If you are looking for a new build out of any type I would steer clear of Dell, I know I will be for quite some time.

To put it bluntly, the iPad is a glorified e-reader. Nothing more. The list of things that you can’t do with it far outweighs the list of things that you can. Why would anyone opt for a device that costs a whopping $699, and doesn’t include mobile broadband connectivity (the same unit with a 3G radio costs $829), has no webcam, will likely never never have full flash support (thanks Steve /rolleyes), can’t connect to any USB device (no USB ports), and has a maximum capacity of 64GB? BUY A NETBOOK!

Did you get that last sentence? Buy a netbook already, seriously. If you need ultra-portability, and want to actually be able to use your device in a productive environment, then a netbook is most certainly more in line with what you need. And guess what? You can get an awesome netbook for much less than the cheapest 16GB iPad. But please, don’t take my word for it. A simple Google search will reveal that I’m not alone in my opinion of the iPad.

Research, inform yourself, take a look at reviews, such as CNET’s recent compilation, and then make the right decision based on what you actually want to achieve with the device. But please, if you’re a business user, stop asking your IT people what they think of the iPad, because we think it’s a toy, and that you should grow up, oh, and chill on the Axe, it reeks.

I received my previous Windows Mobile device, the Touch Pro 2, last October. Overall it has been a good device and it lasted me over 6 months without a major problem.  An impressive feat considering most devices only last 3  months without my need to seek out a replacement.  I was getting bored with the Touch Pro 2 and Windows Mobile and so I got the choice of a HTC Snap (oh heck no), a HTC Hero or a Samsung Moment. I didn’t particularly like the design of the Moment so I went with the Hero.

I love some of the new features of the new Android device, like Visual Voicemail, push email on multiple types of email accounts and merging contacts/calendars from multiple sources.  All of these items are things I wish Windows Mobile offered but never could find a way to do it.

After using the Hero for a week I am beginning to think the Moment might have been a better choice.  Sense UI seems to cause some problems on the underpowered Hero processor and the on screen keyboard has been hard to get used to.  Some of the features I am surprised that are missing are features enterprises would look for, like enforced security options as well as remote wipe and remote lock.  I know these are available as third party apps but without these features built into a centralized console security conscious businesses will continue to shy away from the Android platform.

If Google wants to continue to pull business away from the Google Apps platform I think they need to figure out how to include these advance security features into Android as well as Google Apps.

While at Interop I will be posting about everything I see as well as tweeting about everything I see from the keynotes to the expo floor and the conference tracks.  I have scheduled some time with companies like Avocent and DisplayLink to discuss their upcoming products.  If you would like us to check anything out while we are there just send me a message or post a comment.  For those of you heading to Interop you shoud checkout the Spiceworks contest.  I am sure you will get some attention if you are one of the winners!

Most of the enhancements center around archiving/discovery, Outlook Web App (OWA) and mobile management. There will be a beta of SP1 for download in parallel with TechEd North America this June, giving administrators a chance to test it in their development environments prior to full production.

In Exchange Server 2010 last November, Microsoft introduced integrated archiving capabilities aimed at helping preserve old e-mail data. In SP1, administrators can now provision a user’s Personal Archive to a different mailbox database from their primary mailbox. This allows admins to separate storage strategies (or tiered storage) for less frequently accessed e-mail. There will also be an update that will enable support to access Personal Archives with Outlook 2007. Also coming are new tools to allow admins to import historical e-mail data from .PST files, directly into Exchange. There are also new console tools to automate common archiving tasks, as well as policy tags to give more flexibility in designing retention strategy, as well as improvements to mailbox search to conduct discovery of e-mail.

Outlook Web App will get major updates, including new interface enhancements. OWA will do a better job of prefetching message content, allowing the OWA reading experience to flow faster. Functions like delete, mark as read, and other interface options will now run asynchronously so that they feel instantaneous to the user. The interface has also been de-cluttered and updated to help find common tasks faster, and easier to read on small screens like netbooks. Microsoft has also improved support for Safari on the Mac. There will also be new themes for OWA allowing the user to customize their experience.

Improvements to Exchange Active Sync include tether-free IRM support, support for send-as, full support for conversation view including the ability to sync only unique parts of the message. They’ve also added a support page inside of OWA that will help guide the user in setting up their device by providing information such as server names for EAS, IMAP, SMTP, etc.

Microsoft will also be revamping the Exchange management user interface. Users who are not as proficient with PowerShell will be able to do a lot of tasks that were previously only available there, in the Exchange Control Panel. A few of these options include:

• Create/configure Retention Tags + Retention Policies in EMC
• Configure Transport Rules in ECP
• Configure Journal Rules in ECP
• Configure MailTips in ECP
• Provision and configure the Personal Archive in ECP
• Configure Litigation Hold in ECP & EMC
• Configure Allow/Block/Quarantine mobile device policies in ECP
• RBAC role management in ECP
• Configure Database Availability Group (DAG) IP Addresses and Alternate Witness Server in EMC
• Recursive public folder settings management (including permissions) in EMC

Exchange 2010 is already a great product, and it looks like Microsoft has a lot of big improvements coming with this service pack.

No matter the reason I cannot wait to get my hands on this device.  The rumored Snapdragon processor, slim form factor and large display should make this phone a winner among many Sprint fans.  Look below for some leaked photos of the new device, these photos have been taken from EngadgetMobile.com, androidmobileos.com and youhtc.ru.

The pizza and drinks were very good and during dinner I had some great discussions with @kevin_houston, @Knieriemen, @rbrambley, @kiwi_Si, @StorageNerve and @sfoskett.  We talked about everything on how to create a good podcast (Contact Greg Knieriemen if you need to know how to create one, he loves it) to the origins of ProCurve (which we still do not have a full answer).

Dinner at Pizza Fusion – Picture taken by Stephen Foskett

After dinner we headed back to the hotel where John Obeto surprised us with some Nigerian Palm Wine.  I was a little hesitant after the smell but after a couple of drinks I decided it wasn’t to bad.  After a couple of glasses I decided It was probably best to call it a night before I wasn’t able to get up in the morning.

The Palm Wine – Picture taken by Rich Brambley

Stay tuned for more posts on the HP Blades Tech Day!

This trip was sponsored by HP.  HP paid for the travel arrangements and most meals for 10 bloggers to visit the HP Houston campus.

Most of you know, when the five principles of this site left Neowin back in July, we did so with the intent of starting a new site. But without getting into all the details… life got in the way. We really want to make the project successful, but we now see that we’ve been going about it in the wrong way.

The core idea behind founding TechVirtuoso was a sound one. Business IT people talking about business IT. Or as we say on the website “Enterprise technology for and by those who live it” … the elements we’ve laid out in the original charter for this site were good, but placed us in an area that is a bit too strict for what we could be doing.

Let’s face it, none of us are reporters. We’re IT people. Us trying to “report” on events in such a neutral and unbiased way as we’ve planned out, is not only difficult for us, but isn’t that interesting to you, the reader.

So this is what TechVirtuoso will be from this point forward. A place to talk about the projects we’re working on, ideas we have, concepts we’ve developed. When we find something we find interesting, we’ll talk about it, not feeling like we have to go out and “report” about news. When we started out on this project originally I was wrong in thinking that we needed to be structured in a way that produced unopinionated content… hearing the opinion of other IT people is exactly what we’re going to be about from this point forward.

Obviously, we need to talk about news, but why not do so in a way that allows us to show others about ourselves, and the things that interest us… instead of just being drones? When I think about what I’d want to see in a business IT site, it’s not just press releases and the latest buzzwords. I want to see how it’s going to help me do my job better. How it’s going to make my users happy — or really anger them. It would be much more interesting to others, to see how real IT people in other areas are actually using that technology.

From this point forward, we seek to turn this site into an “business IT lifestyle blog” … which also means talking about other non-enterprise things that we’re interested in.  None of us can go home from work and turn the IT world around us off. So we’re going to talk about all the IT around us, from the perspective of an IT professional. We live in a world where business IT features quickly make their way down to the consumer world, and vice versa.

So in addition to content, we’re going to be making a few other changes around here. The layout is going to get a facelift. We’ve also turned off our forums, because we’re not in the business of building those right now.

We hope that you enjoy the new TechVirtuoso. I know we’re going to enjoy creating it.

Thanks,
Michael Stanclift
Shane Pitman
Frank Owen
Don Smith
Eric Iles

The HP Converged Infastructure consists of four major platforms.  HP Infrastructure Operating Environment, HP FlexFabric, HP Virtual Resource Pools and HP Datacenter Smart Grid.

TechVirtuoso was able to speak to Lee Johns on a conference call earlier today about the Storage Works products that would fall under the HP Virtual Resource Pools category.  The three products that the call focused on were the HP StorageWorks X9000 Network Storage System Family, HP StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services Platform v3.0 andHP StorageWorks Cluster Extension EVA software with Microsoft Hyper-V Live Migration.

The HP StorageWorks X9000 family leverages technology from the aquisition of IBRIX and can scale up to 16 PetaBytes.  HP is planning on an inital release of three revisions from the X9000 family available for shipment November 16th for as low as $1.50 a GB.  The X9000 family includes the X9300 Network Storage Gateway; a 2 unit rack mount solution that brings scale out services to HP or 3rd Party arrays or sans, the X9320 Network Storage System; a highly available scale-out storage solution and the X9720 Network Storage System which will serve and store hundreds of terabytes or petabytes of file based data.  The X9720 will ship on January 4th.

The HP StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services Platform v3.0 (or just SVSP v3) allows IT to simplify management of HP and 3rd party SAN devices.  V3 brings some major improvements to the platform including simplifing the creation of LUNS.  SVSP V3 is currently available starting at $31,032 for an entry 1 terabyte configuration which includes the hardware and the SVSP VM license.

The HP StorageWorks Cluster Extension EVA software with Microsoft Hyper-V Live Migration is a new product which will give a high availability solution to Hyper-V users currently utilizing multiple EVA units.  It will allow for auto-failover of  application services as well as read and write enabling of remotely mirrored mir-range storage over your MAN.  The HP StorageWorks Cluster Extension EVA software with Microsoft Hyper-V Live Migration will be available on November 25th for a U.S. list price of $5280.

Note:  Some links may not work until HP officially announces these products.  They are scheduled to release the announcement at 9:00AM 11/4/2009.