Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0

And here we go again. Microsoft just announced some information about its next generation development tools dubbed Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0.

These tools should arrive late 2009 to mid-2010 with the same schedule as Windows 7.

More information can be found here

'SuperSpeed' USB 3.0 is soon with us!

Are you tired of slow USB speeds? Well with the new USB version 3.0, dubbed 'SuperSpeed', you won't be disappointed. The new specification boosts speeds up to ten times that of USB 2.0!!!

The new USB standard is backward and forward compatible with USB 1.0 and USB 2.0 but while the older USB standards run on 4 wires, the new standard adds 5 new wires to that for a total of 9 wires. The USB plug is still the standard rectangular plug we all know and love but the difference is that it seems deeper so that to allow the extra 5 pins.  

The additional 5 pins increase the thickness of the USB cable which makes it more like a UTP cable. The reason for the new wires are to implement high speed, full-duplex, high-speed communications over separate data links for concurrent bi-directional communication.

The new port standard also gives you more power; The current limit has been increased from 500mA to a whopping 900mA which gives you more power to charge your devices or makes it possible to eliminate some external power supplies for high power devices.

The USB standard will be available for hardware manufacturers by mid 2009 and for consumers by early 2010. We will be eagerly waiting...

Click here for more information

Lack of 64-bit support

I don't know what is happenning to the computing industry but 64-bit is here and is to stay. The first 64-bit capable processor from AMD came in April 2003 as the Opteron, so all machines from the last 5-6 years are 64-bit capable, so, I ask, why are you not supporting it? In processor age, this is 'a lot'. 

64-bit is a good platform that does not just offer more memory access but it also offers faster execution of code than 32-bit. Microsoft provides WOW64 for 32-bit compatibility which is good to keep making 32-bit applications but the implications and the constant switching from 32 to 64-bit makes any process suffer including the actual operating system.

The open-source community does have 64-bit support BUT mostly for Linux. Why not also Windows? In my experience working with 64-bit, it is not very difficult to support the 64-bit operating systems, so what is holding back?

I sure hope that next year we will have more 64-bit applications including the most popular ones which people use the most.

Windows 2008 Desktop Edition?

I have just installed Windows 2008 64-bit and it feels like I'm flying. Believe me this new OS from Microsoft really rocks your PC. Even though Microsoft says that it is derived from Vista SP1, it does not feel like it. And by the way, this is a server OS so it should be more powerful than a desktop OS and slower as a desktop in theory. There are no fancy user interfaces, just plain vanilla Windows but you can still install the Aero theme (which I did) and it still remains much faster than Vista. All the standard features are there including the annoying but helpful User Access Control.

The setup is a custom-built Intel Dual-core 2.4Ghz PC with 2GB RAM with NVidia nForce 610i chipset with on-board NVidia GeForce 7050 GPU and one SATA hard drive which is quite a standard setup nowadays.

I assure you if Microsoft removes all the server stuff and renames it Windows 2008 Desktop Edition, it will be a much better hit than Vista! Don't get me wrong, I do like Vista, but alas it leaves much to be desired in terms of speed and compatibility.

I'm quite fond of this setup and I am really hoping that Microsoft considers a release of Windows 2008 Desktop Edition as an interim OS before the so called Windows 7.

Energy saving anyone?

With the advent of the oil crisis, what is being done for the individual house to reduce power consumption? Everyone knows about the craze of energy saving light bulbs but what about other devices?

I personally have a lot of devices in my television unit and all of them connect to a power outlet. All of them have a power converter to reduce the power to the circuitry on board. One thing I question myself is why there isn't another outlet for standard 12Volts or 5Volts DC instead. This would make it feasible for solar panels and much less power is lost in heat while doing power conversion.

This also includes computers. A UPS has to generate the power of an electrical outlet while 12V DC would be enough to power a machine and even a TFT monitor. A single DC power source in a house of 12V could power a lot of devices and also be able to use other sources of power generation. This would also mean less power company bills.

To install a solar powered system for a house you would need power converters to generate AC power for devices that would then still need to convert down to their own needs before usage. One can only imagine the amount of power lost in heat with all this conversion and we do not need more heat than there is already with the climate change.

So I am pleading the device manufacturers to think about a standard low power DC plug in their devices for alternate power.

To 64-bit or not to 64-bit?

That is the problem! With all the 64-bit computing power existing today, the amount of 32-bit Windows operating systems installed far exceed the amount of 64-bit Windows.

First there is the problem of hardware device driver compatibility. All code that has to run in kernel mode has to be digitally signed because of the Mandatory Driver Signing or else the driver won't install. Then there is the lack of 64-bit applications which I can understand since the 32-bit install base is still huge.

Being a software developer, you always have to think about how to support all operating systems. The 64-bit versions of windows have the so called Windows-32-on-Windows-64 (WOW64) subsystem which can run 32-bit applications on 64-bit windows but there could be serious compatibility issues while supporting and developing for it. At least with WOW64 you can use your 32-bit applications while waiting for your favorite applications to be developed in 64-bit, but at the end of the day you can never know if or when these applications will be done in 64-bit in the first place.

Full 64-bit applications have another problem. Microsoft itself has not converted all of the operating system dynamic link libraries (DLLs) to 64-bit. Could it be that these modules will become obsolete over time? Could this be a decision of Microsoft not to do so? To tell you the truth I don't know and thus I try to work around these technical problems as much as possible. At the end of the day you have to do what the market asks for.

Lack of Fax over IP support (FoIP)

The lack of good Fax over IP (hereinafter referred to as FoIP) with full T.38 support in most countries is very concerning. This is making fax server solutions supporting FoIP mostly useless for low cost faxing.

The most useful need for FoIP is when a company has a number of landlines, especially fixed-rate landlines, that have to remain. In this case a FoIP gateway device (or box) would be used to serve as a gateway and connect the company's network infrastructure directly with the landlines accessible via the FoIP interface. The fax server would then just need to connect to the box's in-built FoIP gateway to send and receive faxes.

The fully featured FaxSkape Fax Server from GoldBolt Software has full support for FoIP making it a viable solution for these types of FoIP gateways.

If the network providers would support the full FoIP T.38 protocol with a good infrastructure, we could have very cheap faxing rates to and from all countries like we already do for Voice over IP.