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.

I will be attending keynotes, hands on sessions as well as trolling the floor and talking to the many HP Partners that will be presenting at the expo.  I will be tweeting about anything I hear and see that I find interesting and snapping shots and uploading them to Flickr as the day goes by.

If you have anything you would like to see or if you want to get answers about specific technology from HP Execs let me know!

Disclaimer:  HP has provided my flight and accomidations for this event.  However they have no control over the content I produce.  My opinions, tweets and blog posts are my own.

Microsoft has also announced that it will be providing full support for HTML5 video in Internet Explorer 9, and will be doing so using the H.264 protocol. Recently Apple has also been throwing support behind H.264 as the HTML5 video codec of choice for Safari. Apple has somewhat famously taken on Adobe in recent weeks saying Flash video is no longer the preferred option for Internet users going forward. Awkwardly, Microsoft agreed.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS was released on April 29. The latest version is a long term support release, meaning updates will be published for 3 years on the desktop and 5 years on the server versions, compared to only 18 months with standard Ubuntu releases. This makes LTS a great platform for business deployments where doing full release upgrades every 6 to 12 months can be a major hassle. The latest version is lighter on features than normal Ubuntu releases are, but still sports the latest stable and public versions of GNOME, X.org and the Linux kernel. It also features a refreshed theme, ditching the brown and orange for a purple and black theme. There is also a new optional “lighter” theme that has a hint of brown instead of the standard Ubuntu color scheme. Boot times, especially on SSD drives have also been dramatically improved.

Palm is dead. Well, actually, HP purchased Palm for $1.2 billion.  The only hope for the WebOS platform now rests with HP and their commitment to “double down” and release new and improved hardware. Pending regulatory approvals, the deal is expected to close rather quickly in July of this year. Hopefully we’ll start seeing some HP branded WebOS devices starting this fall or winter.

I will be blogging and tweeting about anything that catches my eye.  Here is a list of the other Expert Bloggers who will be attending the event.

Kevin Houston - @kevin_houston – http://bladesmadesimple.com
Greg Knieriemen - @Knieriemen – http://www.storagemonkeys.com
Chris M Evans – @chrismevans – http://www.thestoragearchitect.com
King John Obeto – @JohnObeto – http://absolutelywindows.com
Rich Brambley - @rbrambley – http://vmetc.com
Simon Seagrave - @kiwi_Si – http://www.techhead.co.uk
Martin McLeod - @martinmacleod – http://www.bladewatch.com
Devang Panchigar – @StorageNerve – http://www.storagenerve.com
Stephen Foskett – @sfoskett – http://blog.fosketts.net

Calvin Zito from HP will also be attending with us.  His blog link is below.

http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/datastorage/default.aspx

You can follow all the action by searching for the Twitter hastag #hpbladesday.  Greg Knieriemen has also put together a Twitter list of all attendees.

Updated: Added more info and someone I missed to the list!

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

After starting late due to power issues (which fried one of the Microsoft demo units on stage) the keynote got off to a rather boring start with Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, giving various statistics about how well recently released products like Windows 7 and Bing are doing. For the first half hour, the audio stream for the webcast was so bad, it kept cutting out and then required constant volume adjustment. Note to Microsoft, hire a decent sound engineer next time.

If you’d like to watch the keynote for yourself, you can see the saved version on the Microsoft website.

It was all pretty much downhill from there. The much discussed “Courier” tablet that many in the tech press was excited they would announce never came, and there were no details about Windows Mobile 7… at all. Only “we’ll have more about mobile at Mobile World Congress.” So overall, the keynote failed to deliver much of anything that we didn’t know or have not seen already. But, here is a breakdown of what was covered, after the break.

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• Microsoft has three goals in 2010: screens everywhere (meaning more PC and other devices), cloud services and natural UI.
• Since it’s launch, Microsoft has sold over 39 million Xbox 360s. No data was provided on how many of those are replacement units after the first one suffered from a RRoD (red ring of death) — in addition, there are currently 500 million games for the console, generating retail spending of over $20 billion.
• Xbox Live membership is now at over 20 million people.
• Project Natal, the natural motion capture interface for the Xbox 360, will be available for the holiday season of 2010.
• One interesting bit of news, is that HP and Microsoft will be teaming up to make Bing the default search engine and MSN the default homepage on their newly sold systems. Although it would seem that the agreement is something like “don’t change the Internet Explorer defaults to Google.”
• In the world of car multimedia: Ford will be rolling out updates for the next version of their Sync platform that include HD radio tuners that feature iTunes tagging. Blue&Me has now been sold in 1 million FIAT cars and KIA announced their UVO system rolling out in late 2010. Both Blue&Me and UVO are based on the same Windows Automotive embedded technologies as Ford Sync.
• While Windows Mobile 6.5 came out last year, it has generally been received with tepid enthusiasm. Ballmer refused to talk about Windows Mobile 7 last night, which is seen as the last ditch effort to save the platform. We shouldn’t have very long to wait for more information though, as MWC is February 15-18 and Ballmer promised to have more during that time.
• What Ballmer did focus a lot on was Windows 7, which he said (and I would agree) is “faster, leaner, less busy… simpler to complete common tasks” – while we learned most of this during the launch back in October, it’s still interesting that there were 3,000 engineers, 50,000 partners, 8 million beta testers for Windows 7.
• According to Ballmer, NPD says PC sales jumped 50% at the Windows 7 launch, and Black Friday was up 64% over last year. Gardner also says that in 2010 there will be a 12% PC growth over 2008. While Microsoft believes that has a lot to do with Windows 7, and they may be partially right, it should probably also be considered that the economy in late 2009 wasn’t quite as bad as the “OMG! PANIC!” economy of late 2008, and that consumer spending was stronger last year overall.

“The range of PCs with Windows 7 is virtually limitless … it has broadest ecosystem of developers in the world … over 4 million Windows applications, 800,000 of them unique to Windows 7 just since the beta was released”

After Ballmer came Ryan Asdourian, Senior Product Manager for Windows, who came out to highlight all the different devices that run Windows 7. Sort of a “hey Apple, look we have cool and sexy hardware too!” A couple of the ones I liked were the Dell Adamo XPS notebook, which isn’t new, but it always great to look at. Asdourian highlighted the fact that the notebook is thinner then a poker chip and also wakes up from sleep mode faster then you can open the lid. Another system I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on was the HP Envy 15, which features a DirectX 11 video card with 1GB of memory. Not bad for a notebook.

Watching Ballmer on stage with Asdourian was almost painful though. Seeing poor Ryan get teased and attacked by his boss in a failed attempt at humor. It was uncomfortable to watch, and makes me wonder what it’s would be like to have to deal with him on a regular basis.

One of the things that I did see some significant benefit to was the new collaboration feature of Windows Live Skydrive and Office 2010. In it, files that are stored and shared out of Skydrive can be opened by multiple users, and changes merged back into one document. The example that Asdourian used was students working on a PowerPoint presentation, in that each student could be simotaniously working on the same file, without having to share one computer. I can see this being useful at work, where all of our students already have Skydrive accounts though Live@edu.

Next Microsoft turned it’s keynote focus to uniting software with the cloud, which is an approach I tend to be a fan of. My view, and also that of Microsoft, seems to be that the best approach for software going forward is having locally installed applications that communicate back into the cloud to instantly receive data. This is in contrast to Google’s approach to the cloud which tends to be “put everything there and use a web browser to get it” … which works for some applications and users, but not all, especially when access to an Internet connection is slow or non-existent.

Microsoft also announced last night that their Mediaroom 2.0 software will be available for IPTV operators to start testing next month. Mediaroom is the world’s most deployed IPTV platform, powering such operators as AT&T U-Verse. The new version will allow providers to offer on-demand TV service to Windows 7 based PCs using Windows Media Center as well as on the Xbox 360. They can also offer on-demand programming to any web-browser on the PC or Mac, as well as compatible smartphones in the near future.

Mediaroom 2.0 will also add support for Silverlight and IIS Smooth Streaming.

Again, if you’d like to watch the entire keynote, you can do so over on the Microsoft site, but I wouldn’t suggest it. As more information comes out of CES that is Microsoft related (or if I see something interesting that comes from someone else) you can be sure to read about it here later this week.

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.

For example, we discussed some of the intellectual property (IP) that HP has had a hand in developing, and has licensed to manufacturers to be included in their products. As an example we discussed a series of network adapters made by a variety of hardware vendors that include some HP IP in their design. These adapters are sold in systems from just about every vendor, and are fully functional network adapters that have the same basic performance specs across the board. However, because HP participated in the development of the technology, there are some functions that are only available if that technology is in an HP product. So you take two different servers, one from HP and the other from another vendor, and both have the exact same NIC in them. The core functionality of the network interface is exactly the same on both systems, but the HP system could have capabilities that don’t show up at all on the other vendor’s system. Abilities such as being able to eliminate extraneous cabling by controlling data flow at the core level of the NIC itself. I asked Gregg about  other examples of these core hardware differences, and while some of the details are out there in individual white papers, there isn’t a list that points out the differences across the hardware spectrum.

As a follow-up to this discussion, HP has presented us with an opportunity to participate in a Q&A session with their ProLiant G6 folks, and we would like to get some participation from you, our readers. So if there’s anything that you’ve ever wanted to know about the HP ProLiant G6 line, or any suggestions or concerns that you feel should be addressed, please feel free to submit them here. HP will collect your submissions and they could make it into an upcoming interview and blog series that HP plans to kick off soon.

Over the last decade, HP has developed the Superdome platform to provide mainframe performance and stability. According to a 2008 Dataquest Insight survey, the cost of downtime within large organizations (2,500+ users) has jumped from $40,000 in 2005 as the average cost per hour of downtime of mission critical business systems to $128,000 in 2008, an increase of 120%. These same companies reported that the amount of downtime they had experienced during the 2005-2008 time frame had also increased 69%. With statistics like that, it becomes painfully obvious that IT downtime downtime directly affects the bottom line. Throughout the growth of the HP Superdome platform, features like redundant cell board components, double chip spare memory, and hot swap I/O have been developed to provide resiliency and to prevent downtime, all with the goal of providing near perfect availability.

With the goal of providing near perfect availability always in mind, HP also knows that the total cost of ownership is a major consideration for its customers. With the tremendous costs of traditional mainframe systems, both initial and operational, the Superdome platform has been developed from its inception with the goal of providing mainframe comparable reliability and performance at a fraction of the cost, both in the initial purchase and installation as well as the management and maintenance, providing a considerably lower TCO for its customers.

One of the ways the HP Superdome platform provides these cost savings is by reducing power consumption and producing less heat than a comparable mainframe solution. The IBM z10 mainframe uses 42% more power than a comparably equipped HP Integrity Superdome system. That same HP Integrity Superdome also produces 42% less heat and requires one-third less physical space than its IBM mainframe counterpart. Mainframe owners who have migrated to HP Superdome systems typically report savings of more than $30 million over four years. With the previous examples of rising downtime costs, that’s an impressive savings.

“By investing in new IT solutions now, SMBs will be in a stronger position to seize growth opportunities and thrive as the economy rebounds,” said Kathy Chou, vice president, Worldwide Small and Midsize Business Strategy, HP. “With today’s announcement, HP continues to enrich its Total Care offerings to meet the evolving needs of our SMB customers.”

“AMI has surveyed thousands of SMBs in over a dozen countries over the last four quarters, and noted that the current economy has greatly changed the way they purchase technology products and services,” said Anil Miglani, senior vice president, AMI-Partners. “As we exit the global recession, SMBs will try to protect their existing technology investments while making new investments to grow their business and strengthen customer relationships. HP is well-prepared to help SMB customers achieve this balanced growth through its comprehensive Total Care portfolio.”

Improve security and risk management

For SMBs needing increased levels of security to protect their data and keep mission-critical systems running smoothly, HP introduced these new solutions:

• To significantly improve system availability while reducing the risk associated with security breaches and data, the HP Total Care Business Risk Mitigation solution offers customizable configurations of servers, storage, networking and security products. By leveraging this solution and best practices for data management, SMBs can reduce outages by as much as 85 percent.
• For affordable data management, the HP StorageWorks X500 Data Vault Series (starting at $699) allows small businesses to remain competitive by improving the protection of critical business data and automating backups. It enables small businesses with up to 10 PC and Mac clients to store information in a central place and easily share files regardless of employee location. Also, business owners can save money through a low purchase price, which is up to 22 percent less than comparable solutions.
• For maximum uptime, the HP StorageWorks X3000 Network Storage Systems High Availability Bundles combine hardware and software into an efficient shared storage solution for file and application data. Based on the HP StorageWorks X3000 Network Storage Gateways and HP StorageWorks MSA2000 G2 storage arrays, the bundles increase efficiency by automatically eliminating duplicate files, protecting against drive failures and reducing setup time by up to 50 percent. Helping to keep costs in check, the solution does not require extra license fees for networking protocols, file replication or snapshot capabilities.

Enhance productivity, reduce costs

To help customers save money, be more productive and manage security threats, HP announced:

• Improved administrative productivity with the HP ProCurve 1810G Switch Series. This series provides affordable gigabit connectivity that can be configured and maintained without a large or specialized staff. It offer customers flexible deployment options such as a fan-less design for silent operation, mounting options for easy deployment in any location and network security capabilities for protection against denial-of-service attacks. The eight-port model also features a Power-over-Ethernet option for connectivity in locations without readily available power sources. The series also is supported by the ProCurve Lifetime Warranty to help customers better manage their overall networking expenses by providing value and choice for their business applications.
• For an affordable, lightweight notebook that does not compromise performance, the HP ProBook 5310m Notebook PC, starting at $699, is the world’s thinnest full-performance notebook at 0.9-inches thin and 3.7 pounds. Ideal for mobile SMBs, it delivers seven hours of battery life, sports a 13.3-inch diagonal LED high-definition display and a standard voltage processor. HP QuickWeb allows users to access the web in seconds when the notebook is shut down.

Maximize impact, decrease energy use

For SMBs that want to affordably grow while minimizing their environmental impact, HP introduced new printing and online marketing solutions:

• The HP Color LaserJet Professional CP5220 printer series, which is available for purchase in Asia and Europe, offers exceptional print quality and network performance, making it easy for small businesses to affordably market themselves. It is the first printer to offer HP Auto-Off Technology, an industry-leading technology that intelligently senses when there is no print activity and automatically adjusts the power settings. This latest addition to the HP LaserJet family builds on 25 years of leadership in innovation, quality, performance and dependability, and sets the gold standard in business printing.
• To help SMBs easily select the best HP LaserJet printing system for their business, HP announced new sub-branding. Customers can choose from a comprehensive line of HP LaserJet “Professional” printers that provide professional and cost-effective results, while larger organizations can select from the HP LaserJet “Enterprise” portfolio.
• To help small businesses better connect with their customers, HP released a new version of its MarketSplash by HP web service. HP printer and PC customers in the United States can now download and edit hundreds of professional-quality brochure, flyer and business card templates at no charge and print them in-house. Beginning next month, MarketSplash will offer a print fulfillment option that enables customers to select a local print service provider.
• HP and Yahoo! have teamed to help small businesses in the United States easily and affordably create a cohesive brand identity across different online and offline marketing functions. Through the HP Creative Studio, the HP Total Care site and the Yahoo! Small Business portal, customers can receive special offers including web hosting prices for as low as $7.46 a month and access custom design services from Logoworks by HP to create a professional-looking website.

New services and financing offers

To complement its new solutions, HP introduced services and financing offers to help SMBs in the United States purchase, use and manage their IT resources:

• To help SMBs manage costs and make purchasing easy, HP offers flexible financing solutions to deploy next-generation HP technology and services through HP Financial Services, the company’s leasing and lifecycle asset management services subsidiary. From now through Oct. 31, 2009, SMBs can take advantage of the Economic Recovery Lease program, which offers a 36-month plan with fixed price purchase options.
• From now until Dec. 31, 2009, SMBs can receive up to $1,000 cash back when purchasing a new HP LaserJet, Officejet Pro or Scanjet and recycling an old printer through the HP Trade-in and Save Program. Within the last six months, HP has generated nearly $16 million in revenue and sold more than 17,000 units through the program.

New channel offerings

Lastly, HP announced enhanced SMB offerings available through its channel partners, including channel-only products, channel-led Managed Print Services programs and HP certified solutions, that enable SMBs to better compete in today’s marketplace. The offerings include:

• Products available through the channel will initially focus on the workflow, imaging and printing security and job accounting, and device management arenas;
• Greater investment in tools and programs that enable reseller partners to offer Managed Print Services to their customers. In the United States, HP has established new relationships with industry leaders that offer managed print infrastructure and services for resale by value-added reseller partners. In Europe, HP is creating an integrated platform and brokering a network of service partners that will enable resellers to sell contractual print offerings as well as higher valued services not previously available to SMB customers; and
• Certified solutions for the channel that include partner training, product sourcing and technical support for select independent software vendor solutions from HP’s Solutions Business Partner Program.