Snow Leopard - 30 day Review

Well, it's been a few weeks since Snow Leopard was released publicly. I purchased my copy in advance, and had it ready to install on the 28th. There is only one problem. Not many vendors were ready to support their software on it. Normally, i would just take the plunge, and give it a try, but not this time. I utilize PGP's WDE product. It isn't supported under Snow Leopard. Sure, I could just decrypt, and run without it, but in my mind the risks are too great. Without a bootup password on Apple products, WDE is my only defense when it comes to protecting my data in the event it is stolen.

I can't wait much longer :) I am an Entourage user, and totally hate it. It's the worst app by far. I am really looking forward to Apple Mail / Calendar integration with Exchange!

SAPGUI on MacOSX 10.5

One of my ongoing challenges with making the switch to a Mac has been getting my Business Applications to run.  Until recently I wasn't able to find an SAP GUI client for Mac OSX.  A few days searching the internet, and the SAP Support forums, etc, I came across the Java Client.

It works great.  It is a little tricky to setup, but once done it is rock solid.

First you need to obtain the SAP GUI Client for Java Environments.  I am using version 7.10 Rev4.  You can get this from Service Marketplace on the SAP site.  You must have an SAP account in order to download.  See www.sap.com for full details.

Once you have the .JAR file, you can run it via Finder, and it installs.  Answer the default questions, and the installation should complete rather quickly.

Now that it is installed, you can run it.  If you are in an environment with quite a few of these clients installed, lucky you, ask your administrator for the config files.

If you are the first one, you can setup your connections to SAP systems manually rather quickly, and then save those profiles in the client.  Once the client is open, click new.  Give the connection a description.  From there, click on the advanced tab.  There you can manually specify a particular server to connect to.  The string should look like this.

conn=/H/server.domain.tld/S/3202&fast=true

I use port 3202.  Substitute the port that you use in place of 3202 in the above string.  Your system number determines the port for most folks.

Click Save, and you should be done.

Entourage 2008 - 30 Day Review

I am a switcher.  I have been running a Windows business desktop for the better part of 12 years.  Over the last year, I have been trying out an Apple Macbook Pro.  I purchased it along with VMware's Fusion product, so that I could still run my Windows Only business applications while I tried out Mac OSX.  Slowly over the past few months I have migrated to Apple versions of the business products I used daily.  Everything from MS Office to SAP's Gui client runs well on OSX.  The one thing that I had been hesitant about moving to was Entourage.  I have used outlook so long that all of the key combo's macros, etc, are second nature.  But, in the interest of giving this experiment its just due, I made the change over to Entourage.

At first, the change was pretty rough.  I have a little over 60k items in my mailbox.  Over a Gig connection it took roughly 3 days in the office to get Entourage caught up to my Outlook.  I think this may be due to how Entourage talks to Exchange, however it seemed very inefficient.  Rather than updating new items, and then backfilling the older data, it did the opposite.  This pushed the test back three days while I waited for it to be at a usable point.

Once I was able to begin using Entourage, I was pretty surprised.  The interface is decently different from that of Outlook, but its a good blend of Outlook and Apple Mail.  Everything works in and out of the client as it should.  Attachments I think actually work a little better because all of your options are displayed without having to click on any single item.  

Calendar is pretty close to Outlook.  Very easy to use with a straight forward interface.  It can also be setup to use SyncServer to push your Entourage appointments, and contacts for that matter, to your iCal and Apple Addressbooks.  This is useful if you plan on getting this data to your iPhone or iPod device. 

It will be very interesting to see if this ends up working with MobileMe, etc.  

Mac OSX Update Today

10.5.4 was released today.  Its about 60 mb or so.  Looks like about 13 security updates, and some other patches.  CNET has a great breakdown of the patches, as well as the Apple Support site.  Still no iPhone 2.0 software, maybe tomorrow!

VMWorld Session Proposal

Its official, my VMware Fusion sessions didn't get selected as an official session at VMWorld 2008.  Oh well, maybe next year.  VMWorld is a great conference.  I have been a few times, and am always blown away with what VMware has up their sleeves.  The keynotes are great, and the sessions cover everything you could possibly imagine.  This year its in Vegas in mid September.  If you have thought about going, I would highly recommend it.  Who knows what they will come up with for this year's technical presentations.  Seeing Continuous Availability last year was pretty awesome.  I am sure they will probably cover some of there new applications that have come out in the last year like Site Recovery Manager, or ThinApp.  Anyways, its a great show, and I would highly recommend it.