Server Based Computing reviews. Funeral or Wedding?

Personally, I find many reviews boring. They read more like an obituary than a wedding announcement. There is a listing of the product features (accomplishments), surviving relatives (vendors, channel partners), time and date for the funeral (visit us in Booth XX, East Upper Mezzanine, Bldg. 5 , convention of the month), and where to send flowers (buy NOW on-line).

Reviews should be about new products, new services, new gadgets. A new beginning, just like a wedding. The evaluation format will start with the SBC vendors target market (invited guest list). The product features (dowry) and contact information (wedding registry). I will then ad my commentary regarding the evaluation package (The Invitation). You then decide if you are a member of the guest list and request your own invitation, or if not, just choose to crash the wedding and read the rest of the evaluation review (account of the wedding hosted on the society page).

Perhaps a better analogy would be peer review of a scientific paper. Start with a hypothesis (target market solution), the laboratory environment and experiment design (evaluation product), and brief summary of salient facts (hits target market?) with the entire research findings appended as an attachment (you decide for yourself). Do scientific papers have an open bar after they are published? I will go with the wedding theme.

Remember KISS. Keep It Simple Steve.

Until the next post,

Steve

Let's go Live with Server Based Computing evaluations

Two out of the nine vendors have almost "Live" evaluation copies. They are Konect from DTS and Edubuntu, the education cousin of Ubuntu. Each has the ability to be loaded without the standard install routine.

Konect by DTS (desktopsites) uses the VMware Player for Windows and has a "Konect Virtual Image DVD" for the player. The installation is straight forward and went on my vanilla AMD64 without a problem.

Edubuntu has a "Live" 64 version and it also came up on boot as it should. There is however a small problem with the "Live" version and I will cover that in more detail later.

First up, Konect from DTS, followed by Edubuntu. The remaining seven will then fall into line.

Until the next post,

Steve

And now there are nine SBC vendors

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Nine SBC vendors responded to my request for information. Also, was granted an evaluation copy or it was available to the public to download from their website.

The vendors are:

1: Edubuntu
2: ERICOM
3: GraphOn
4: HOBLink
5: Jetro Platforms
6: Konect
7: Microsoft 2003 TS
8: NoMachine
9: Propalms TSE

Next step in the process is to decide what order to start evaluating the SBC products. Alphabetically has always been accepted with little or no objections. How about we start with vendors that offer a “Live” CD/DVD version for evaluating their product? One more list and then to the start line!

Until the next post,

Steve