Spb Provides New PPC Backup!

Today Spb Software House released Spb Backup, a new Pocket PC backup utility. A utility category for the Pocket PC that, until recently, has been a little light on products.

Spb Software House Releases Spb Backup - the Ultimate Tool for Saving Your Data
February 14, 2006 - Spb Software House, a leading Pocket PC software developer, releases Spb Backup - a new Pocket PC utility for backing up all of your Pocket PC content to a storage card.

Spb Backup is based on the proven technology used in Spb Clone. Thousands of enterprise users rely upon Spb Clone to create exact copies of their "master" PDA devices. This tested technology was used to create a backup program that would benefit Pocket PC consumers at all levels.

Spb Backup creates a self-restoring image file that can be restored with or without installing the main Spb Backup application. The backup file can be compressed and password protected with strong 128-bit AES algorithm. The scheduled backup features will help users to have regular, mistake-free backups.

Spb Backup features include:

• Scheduled backups


• Self restoring backup files


• Options to separately backup PIM data, emails, "My Documents" folder, and system data


• Backup file compression and encryption


• Today plug-in with previous and next backup date notification


• Desktop PC utility for extracting information from backup files

Pricing and Availability
Spb Backup is currently available in Czech, English, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, and Traditional Chinese. A free 5-backups limited trial can be downloaded, or Spb Backup can be purchased for $19.95 USD, from www.spbsoftwarehouse.com.

Spb Software House has produced many other great software products including Pocket Plus, GPRS Monitor, Full Screen Keyboard, Diary, Weather, and Finance.

Microsoft's Mobile Email - Moving Ahead

CNET News.com is reporting that Microsoft is "pushing ahead" with its mobile email technology offereing. While brought to market later than RIM's powerful BlackBerry platform, it still see's a large viable market for their product offering.

Via: CNET News.com

Microsoft OneCare on track for June Release

It looks like Microsoft Windows OneCare will be available in June for an annual subscription price of $49.95. Currently in both a private and an open beta test, OneCare is an all-in-one internet security product that includes Antivirus, Firewall, and Antispyware. In addition, automated backup and other system tuning tools are included to help keep Microsoft Windows PCs running at their best.

via: CNET News.com

Problems with Shockwave Automated Install...

I've been trying to build an automated install of Macromedia Shockwave Player 10 for the past week or so without the success I need. The ability to script the Windows Installer (MSI) version works, but when pushed through Microsoft's Systems Management Server 2003 (SMS), it fails. The failure is because the Shockwave MSI package requires a user profile to write some files to, and SMS uses the SYSTEM account to install distributed software - the SYSTEM account does not have a user profile, so the folders the Shockwave MSI package is looking for do not exist, and the install fails.

Perversly, Macromedia Flash Player 8 MSI package works fine through SMS, so its not like Macromedia doesn't know how to build the package correctly. There's even a thread on the Macromeda support forum which explicitly details the issue, but Macromedia has not responded to anyone (other than a forum moderator) to correc the problem.

Macromedia has great products, but need to support corporate customers better for mass automated deployments.

VMware GSX to be free?

There's a story circulating (CNET, BetaNews, eWeek, Bink.nu) that VMware GSX Server will be re-released this coming week as a free product to combat Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 product which was reduced in price late last year.

Windows Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2

Now is your chance to see what all the fuss is and will be about. Microsoft released Beta 2 of Internet Explorer 7 on the world last night. While its not a final release product, I can tell you it is FAST, feature rich and has good support for RSS.

I'm not too delighted at the feed support as I could be - MS is only supporting RSS at this time, and if you notice on Blogger we have ATOM feeds. Doesn't work right now. Eventually, I may be able to uninstall Pluck which I have used for over a year as my main RSS/ATOM reader. That won't happen yet, but it could when the IE7 ships later this year - we'll see how much better the RSS support gets. That its built in and works rather well already is very promising.

Another irritating thing I've noticed since installing on XP (I've used IE7 on antoher OS...), when trying to create this post here at Blogger using IE7, the "Compose" mode when creating a post does not display text correctly - its white on white! Using the "Edit HTML" mode DOES show the text so you can see it.

Well, its a beta release and it is impressive in the changes and features MS has brought along so far. Also impressive is MS's interest in listening to the user community for feature and usability improvements in IE7. The laundry list from IE6 is long, and MS has worked very hard to build a modern browser.

Is it better than FireFox - probably not, especially in beta, but its a BIG step in the right direction and will continue to improve. Also, I have to admit here that I'm a dedicated IE user, so while I use FireFox (and Opera too!), IE is my main browser and will probably continue to be.

Well, more to come on this as the days roll on!