Dell is finally getting into the Tablet PC market after years of ignoring it. The Latitude XT will be a Convertible Tablet much like the Gateway CX line or Lenovo X61. The Intel based unit will have a 12.1 inch screen closer to the Lenovo line than Gateway and appears will shipped with either a single core or optional dual core CPU.

I had the opportunity to speak at length with a Dell VP while on a flight from NC to TX and I asked him about Dell's lack of a Tablet back in the spring. His comment back then was that Dell had looked at the market multiple times but had not been able to find a price point at which they could bring a product to market that the customer would go for and would meet Dell's needed profit margin. As more and more Tablets are showing up in both businesses and schools it's obvious Dell has got the hint or found a source for building the unit at the price point they wanted.

Although Dell has been hush, hush about this product some news has leaked out along with some pictures:

12.1 inch screen, 1280x800 resolution

ATI Radeon Xpress 1250

3 USB, Fingerprint Reader, 1394

Optional Bluetooth, 3G, Smart Card reader

Vista Business (No XP option, we shall see)

First glance at this unit it appears they took the best of Gateway and merged it with the size and specs of the Lenovo units. No news on who they are sourcing these from or a real ship date but rumor is they will start taking orders as early as October 30th but more likely mid November with a shipping date of December 10th.

Back in January John C. Dvorak reviewed Joost, an online TV viewing application, in a few words, "It Stinks".

"So I got an invite to Joost (hard to come by) and I checked it out. Two words: It stinks. That simple fact seems to be ignored by all the reviewers."

Joost Sucks, A Review by John C. Dvorak, 1/29/2007

For those that don't know John C. Dvorak is a well known tech author, columnist, and TV commentator. He has authored a good dozen books, part of both TechTV and CNet TV as well as currently writing for such magazines as Forbes and Barron's.

Dvorak currently produces his own "Podcast" called Cranky Geeks produced by Ziff-Davis as well as guest appears on other various Podcast such as Twit. Cranky Geeks interestingly enough recently started airing it's shows on Joost. Joost is a so called IPTV or TV Over The Internet and for what my opinion is worth it is a pretty neat little app where you can watch such things as CSI when and where you want. I'm not going to review either Joost or Dvorak here, just giving some background.

The question is now that Dvorak has his own Cranky Geeks Joost Channel does that mean it no longer sucks? Does it mean he no longer has issues with Joost tracking users and pushing targeted ads?

Why do I bring this up in a Blog that's suppose to be about Small Business Tech? Mainly because I want to bring to light how you have to take what many of these so called experts and "in the know" folks say with an understanding that they are not always being fully up front in their views or reviews. Many times these guys have grudges against a product or people associated with the product or maybe they got ticked because they didn't get an invite to the products launch. The world of "respected" tech Bloggers and Podcasters is relatively small where most if not all of them have known each other for years, know the people behind the tech and spend much of their time being invited to attend this launching or that "by special invite only" dinner.  With such obvious potential conflicts of interest or personal tainted opinions anything said must be weighed against what others say or your own use of the product or service.

I'm not saying this is the case with Dvorak and Joost however it will be interesting to see how he explains away his comments from the spring now that he is part of he product he then said, "stinks."

I'm certainly not the first to hint at this but maybe I might be the last as it appears Facebook is about to make an announcement this week.

It appears whatever is going to happen may be announced come Tuesday as it's been leaked that internally Facebook is having a big meeting involving multiple teams if not the entire business.

For those wondering what this has to do with SBS or Small Business then your probably not part of the Web 2.0 crowd, have never been on MySpace and have no clue what the term social networking means in the online world.

Facebook is a social networking website much like MySpace which allows users to connect, interconnect, reconnect with friends, associates, old classmates or similar minded people. Facebook has become much more than that is they released developer information so third party people and companies could write applications to run within the Facebook website. One of these, iLike, a music purveyor has bet their entire business model on Facebook's potential. There are numbers of other and more coming online daily and Facebook boast a ten fold growth over the past year making it stand out among them all and a clear target of a Microsoft or Google.

I've been a member since the spring and I joined in an effort to see how these "social networking" sites could be used in business and so far I've found limited business use in Facebook where as LinkedIn ranks a bit higher. I can see where Facebook could be very useful for the likes of iLike but in the SMB space it's a toss up. I'm not saying it can't be used by the SMB space but depending on your business needs and geographical area you may find there are more "kids" telling you where the next house party is at than business owners looking for your services.

We shall see what's up on Tuesday and if a Google or Microsoft is willing to spend the estimated $2 Billion to pickup FaceBook. Ballmer recently said he wants to pick up some 20 companies per year but I really doubt he is willing to spend $2 Billion just to keep Google from picking them up.

Something very interesting is going on with Microsoft and their domain registrations as they appear to be going "hyper":

buyhyper-v.com     
buymicrosofthyper-v.com    
buywindowshyper-v.com
buywindowsserverhyper-v.com
downloadhyper-v.com             
downloadmicrosofthyper-v.com             
downloadwindowshyper-v.com             
downloadwindowsserverhyper-v.com             
hyper-vclub.com             
hyper-vcom.com             
hyper-vdownload.com             
hyper-vlive.com             
hyper-vonline.com             
hyper-vs.com             
hyper-vshop.com             
hyper-vsoftware.com      

http://www.resourceshelf.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/ndmsft.html

Might be time to guess at something and do a little squatting ;)

I had a couple of sites this week go down right after Patch Tuesday which caught me a bit off guard especially since I do not allow for ANY updates without Approval which I usually wait a week or more before doing. In each case it was obvious the root of the problem was a Microsoft Update which required a reboot.

So how could this be if I don't allow Updates did an Microsoft Update get applied to various networks I manage?

Microsoft says Automatic Update not misbehaving

Posted by Ina Fried

Blogs were buzzing this week with reports that Windows users who thought they had automatic updates set to either not install or get permission before installing nonetheless had their machines patched and rebooted.

Friday afternoon, the company posted a response to its Web site saying no changes were made to the automatic update mechanism nor did any recent updates change AU settings. The company is looking into whether customers might have actually had their settings changed by Microsoft Office or Windows OneCare, two programs that do have mechanisms that will change a computer's automatic update preference settings.

"We have received some logs from customers, and have so far been able to determine that their AU settings were not changed by any changes to the AU client itself and also not changed by any updates installed by AU," program manager Nate Clinton said on Microsoft's Web site. "We are still looking into this to see if another application is making this change during setup with user consent, or if this issue is related to something else. We are continuing the investigation, and as I have more information I will update this post."

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9796657-7.html

So not only is Microsoft updating Microsoft Update behind our backs but now they are changing the way users have their systems setup when it comes to running Microsoft Updates?

So as I asked a few weeks back when it's obvious you had a working system and something Microsoft apparantly did breaks your systems who should pick up the bill?

This quote from a recent RCPMag (Redmond Channel Partner) article just floored me:

"This may stem the tide a little in what I often see as an abuse of the Action Pack program. On a fairly regular basis, we hear of Registered partners telling clients [end users] to simply sign up as a Registered [Member] and buy the Action Pack to get the best value in Microsoft products. The number of four- to 10-person offices out there that are [not really partners and] using Small Business Server and all of the Office products for practically free needs to be curtailed," Stephen Hand, president and CTO of Know Technology LLC, a Gold Certified Partner based in Camden, Maine

Well Mr. Hand I take real offense to such a elitist statement as that. I am not overly surprised as no insult to you but I've had my fill of the Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine crowd and you also just happen to be a Certified Partner which as a rule have always looked upon Registered Partners as "hobbyist", so two strikes on you.

Fact is Microsoft is the source of MAPS piracy and always has been. They tout the cheap software at every meeting, TS2, WWPC, trade show and apparently to anyone with a credit card. Time and time again I can go to the local Partner Portal, now Solution Provider Finder, and pull up a dozen of more businesses in my area all listed as "Registered Partners" which have nothing at all to do with It services so why become "Registered Partners"? MAPS! Do you truly think it was another Registered Partner that went to all those businesses and said, "hey don't buy retail MS software from me so I can make a living but rather just order MAPS?" PLEASE!!!

Let's face facts. If Microsoft wanted to stop MAPS misuse they could and would. MAPS is the road to leased software and Microsoft knows it. Losing a dollar here and dollar there is nothing if Microsoft can move business after business to a subscription service. the average MAPS user loads SBS, a couple of XP's and Office. So what Microsoft may have put $10,000 worth of software in MAPS but the end user is using $1,500 worth. At $300 a year that's a 5 year break even point for Microsoft using retail prices, probably less than a one year break even if we looked at real cost. The upside is in five years they have that end user sold on subscription software, next comes services such as Office Live and before you know it the end user "owns" nothing yet Microsoft is making more money off of them than every before.

So please Mr. Hand before you blame Registered Partners for Microsoft selling MAPS to anyone with a credit card let's put the blame if you want to blame somebody where it belongs, the person on the other end of the phone line accepting the credit card number!