SuperFetch is a service in Vista that caches applications to increase their startup performance. Great idea but for me seemed to be problematic. In previous posts I stated that I had purchased a new 8 GB computer. On this computer I do a lot of development, using VS, and VM products like VMWare and Microsoft Virtual PC. For the first time while compiling a SalesLogix Web client instance I had an out of memory error. Looking at my memory usage I had less then 10MB available. When I looked at my total/cache values the Cache was 5GB+. Given that I run some pretty memory heavy applications the cache seems to me at least that it does not play completely nice. Turning of the SuperFetch service seems to have put the computer in a better place.

Mark

For some time I have been having some difficulty setting up my Vista environment to get it working quite right. I had to do some testing this morning on some functionality and wanted to get into the client and create an adhoc group. previously I would get lockups and be able to do a short amount of work until my app pool would recycle. We I decided to associate my local logged in user to the app pool, and lo and behold all of my lockups were gone and the working on the site on the new machine screams ..

Mark

I have a daily routine where I check blogs, and several web sites to  update my current understanding of .Net development. One of the sites that I frequent is TheServerSide.Net. The problem for me now is that it seems that it has become stale. For example today looking at the site the last post was on August 8th, 5 days ago. What is strange is that SP1 for VS 2008  released and not even a single post up about it. Going to the sister site TheServerSite.COM the content is updated so much more frequently.

As a development company I had been looking for commodity hardware that could meet the daily write/build/deploy needs that I have. I finally found a machine that could readily be purchased from a local electronics retailer and what seemed a amazing price. 8 GB of Ram, Quad 4 64 Bit machine for 1500 bucks. Well I was out last night and stopped in to the same retailer where another computer was on the shelf with comparable specs except for the fact that it had an AMD CPU instead of Intel. This machine was listed for $1299.

I have also been reading that the growth rate for 64 bit Vista is outpacing all others at this time. For me it finally looks as if 64 bit is a legitimate  platform to target windows applications and now is the time to make sure that any existing applications play well.

– Mark

I have always had problems sleeping. Mostly cause my brain does not seem to know how to shutdown but of late sleep seems to be somewhat a distant memory. I suspect Age is getting into the mix though I still have not hit 40. Are there any suggestions out there besides the no caffeine past a certain time, do not eat before bed or give yourself appropriate down time before sleeping. I am thinking of making it a early night tonight to get some rest at least 🙂

 

– Mark

Your a customer that uses a business application provided by a outside vendor. You want to provide details about that feature to your vendor in hopes that they will see the value and hey if you have the need, more then likely another customer would also. You look for an email, web site or forum that allows for this kind of feedback. You notice that the only location that you can submit this information seems to have little or no activity from the vendor. You know that this feature would be a great thing and you just want to explain it in a way that your vendor can understand it and create a valid use case. You submit to the forum, but get no reply or acknowledgement that it was received, or reviewed. Then you try to email it to an internal resource, only to get a reply to post it to the forum, or worse get no response at all.

From a development companies point of view this is extremely incorrect as a business practice. No other source can provide a better feature set for the next iteration of a product then the people using it. Of course there will be some features that are not high on the priority list, or just do not make sense in the current or future architecture, but it should be acknowledged as so.

As a development company you should open up as many channels of communication for your customers to take the feedback, as generally the cost of collecting feature requests, or defect items is lower then having your internal team come up with all of the features without external input. Provide a forum, an email address and even a phone # for your customers to provide input to your product. There are different customer types and they way they effectively describe the needs vary as well.

I have not decided if the support line in a organization can be used for this feedback. I am actually believing that this needs to be more of a Sales Engineer role that can understand both the technical side of things as well as the business. Always reply back, even provide a feature ID and some kind of status such as ‘Under Review’ , ‘Targeted for Release’, or even Deferred’ with a reason. This way your customer is going to feel attached to the process of making this product more relevant in their business scenarios.

In These things I believe and when my company starts to provide products you will be guaranteed that I will take your feedback with all of the value it provides with my thanks.

– Mark

So in setting up the new computer to handle SalesLogix web I need to run in a 32bit App Domain. I need to run the following command line function

cscript %SystemDrive%\inetpub\AdminScripts\adsutil.vbs set w3svc/AppPools/Enable32bitAppOnWin64 1

When it was run I received an windows error of type 0x800401e4. After a quick inspection of my Administration Tools I noticed that the IIS 6.0 compatibility components were not installed. I added them through control panel and 5 minutes later all worked. So if you receive  this error when trying to update the IIS App Pool check your compatibility components for proper installation.

 

– Mark

So it seems that Vista Home Premium just does not cut it. I have to use VMware Workstation daily as well as work with IIS and both of these components were not working on this OS release.

I have since installed Vista Ultimate and I have to say I am very happy with the performance and functionality of this machine. As I write this I am copying 145GB of VM’s, Downloading a source tree from TFS, and installing acrobat have not exceeded 25 % CPU capacity

– Mark

I spend a large portion of my day to day developing products or working on SalesLogix customizations of one form or another. I find that I have to jump from one virtual machine to another to handle difference client requirements. I think this is pretty normal for a consultancy firm that does work for many customers. For the past 2 years I have been working on a Dual core x64 AMD machine custom machine with 4GBs of ram. For the most part it has been pretty snappy and been able to keep up with my general needs. However now that I am finding that I need to run the main OS and then one or two VM’s at a time the memory limitations were getting pretty difficult to manage.

We are also looking to add a new Jr. Developer here at BITtelligent and I wanted to ensure that our hardware choices would not be a limiter to any productivity. We use various 3rd party libraries in our solutions from Developer Express, or Infragistics, work with SQL instances, IIS Server and VS 2008. Given all of these different working parts I really wanted something with 8gb of ram or better. I have been investigating, looking for the right hardware at the right price given that I do not want a hardware purchase to impact our day to day cash flow. For example if I went to Apple hardware with decent specs I would be looking at around 5K per machine. I really wanted to go commodity hardware. Enter Future Shop. This is one of our big box electronics superstores here in Canada. The special flyer came as it always did and lo and behold, what I perceive as the first 8bg, 1TB, Quad Core machine that has entered the retail market at this level was on sale ….

I called and reserved 2 since they had none in stock. They are supposed to come on Tuesday (Monday is a holiday here). I went on a trek today to see my Grandfather, and before I got there I decided to duck into a Best Buy and one was available there for purchase. Like a kid in a candy store, I passed over my Credit Card, paid for it and headed out with anticipation for starting up the Bad Boy (Real Geek Moment).

Got it home and after about 1 1/2 hours I pretty much got my core development environment setup. Its definitely fast and copying seems somewhat surreal to me. I had a copy of SQL2005 SP2 on a WD MyBook USB drive. Its somewhat around 245 Mb. From the time I selected to copy the file to go over and create a folder and select paste, the operation was almost instantaneous.

It comes preloaded with Vista Home Premium and I was going to upgrade to ultimate but found that all of the core functionality I needed was available including IIS 7.0 support. I have decided to leave the OS alone and see how things go. So far the only downfall I have found with the machine is the maximum resolution supported which is 1920×1200 which seems somewhat strange to me as I have always used 1920×1600 but given the memory/processor and HD space I think I can overlook that.

– Mark

So based on a conversation with Ryan Farley I have decided to sign-up and start Twittering. If you want to follow you can do so here . I am following the following individuals whom I find invaluable in my day to day life.

• Ryan Farley
• Scott Hanselman
• Miguel DeIcaza

I am also on Linkedin and can be found at http://www.linkedin.com/in/markdykun