Bluetrait.org should now be online, a long with Bluetrait  BETA 2.

Thanks to Stuart Macintosh. The admin panel has had a major design upgrade. It is unfinished, but you can see the current version active if you login to the admin panel.



Let us know what you think. This new design will be part of Bluetrait BETA 2, along with some other cool features.

ActiveSync 4.2 is out. Download here.

I received an email this morning through my contact form from dell in reply to my post a few days ago.

Hello,

My name is Mike, I'm a Dell customer advocate located at the corporate headquarters in Round Rock, TX. I've read your post,
https://michaeldale.com.au/archive/2006/06/23/dell-xp/

, and wanted to touch base with you. Under licensing agreements with Microsoft, Dell is authorized to press and print its own copy's, OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer), of currently shipping Microsoft operating systems for sale with our new machines. Under this agreement it states that Dell can support the OS under our own warranty support without having to contact the fee based Microsoft technical support line. These CD's are specially pressed and coded to install on systems that carry a Dell BIOS only. When the CD recognizes the BIOS it automatically completes the Key registration without the need to actually enter the key. These OS's are sold at a much lower cost than the retail versions because they are sold and supported by Dell. It's for this reason that the COA (Certificate of Authentication) for an OEM operating system will not work on a retail version of Windows that Microsoft supports. I'm glad that you were able to locate the CD and successfully rein!
stall the OS. Please keep in mind that if you do need an OS that didn't ship with your system, or if yours becomes lost, you can always call in to support and request that one be sent to you at no cost as long as it's still a shipping operating system. If you have any other questions or concerns please don't hesitate to contact me back. Thank you for your feedback and I hope that this answers your question successfully.

Mike B.
Dell Customer Advocate

I had a chat to my house mates and we came to the following conclusion.

Although it is probably a legitimate deal with Microsoft, it definitely isn't in the consumers best interest for the following reasons:
1) There is no clear indication that the key will not work with a standard windows install. The OEM sicker looks like every other one.
2) Windows XP successfully installed with that key, yet would not activate. Making it look like the key is invalid.
3) Neither Dell or Microsoft wanted to provide any support. Microsoft told us to call Dell and Dell told us to call Microsoft (stating that it was a software issue and it had nothing to do with them).

From the email I received we clearly should have been supported by Dell. Unfortunately the call centre people did not know of this policy of selling less that full copies of Windows.

We still fail to see why a cd key is provided on every computer when it is NEVER used.

On another note. We unfortunately got new dell laptops at work. Each with so much software (borderline spyware) installed that it was insane. The dell taskbar software is horrible, declaring a new wireless network has been detected every few seconds, and the Mcafee anti virus software that refused to uninstall unless I manually turned off all 5 or 6 services (plus the constant nagging about signing up to their trial service).

I'm so over dell computers that is isn't funny.

P.S They need to fix their website too.

I've just been given an oldish PDA (o2 Xda II) from work. Unfortunately the phone doesn't have wireless. Although it has been upgraded to Mobile 5, so that is good news.

I'm looking at implementing CRM 3 mobile; which isn't a small program, 150mb install! Luckily SD cards are now only about $70 for 1gb. The other good news is that I've been given unlimited GPRS data. Our company has done a deal with macquarie telecom meaning that it is only costing us $5 per month per user. Awesome.

As of next week I am "moving" position to pre-sales, meaning that I can play with all sorts of new software and hardware.