Hank was out at VMworld and brought this video back for me.  Took a bit to post.

I've worked with Justin for the last 1.5 years and he has been a stellar community member and fellow enthusiast.   Meet Justin Van Buren and of course his video is one of the best from the Feet on the Street series.   ENJOY.     

Terry Joslin, CEO of Western Blue talked with Scott Smith & I about their business. 

Serial over LAN, or SOL for short, is a great tool for diagnostics. Combined with IDE redirection, or IDER, there’s a tremendous amount of things you can do remotely to manage clients. One of the areas where SOL can be helpful is for delivering status updates for IDER boot images that use a graphical interface. Instead of asking someone to read what’s on the screen to you, you can have a clear picture of what’s going on.

The key to this is to include the SOL driver in your live CD boot image. The actual process of including this driver will vary depending on the live CD tools you are using. I won’t go into specific details on the steps needed to include the driver in this post. The popular live CD tools, such as the Windows AIK, have a lot of information available on how to include drivers.

Once you have the SOL driver included in your live CD you can begin to take advantage of the SOL interface by sending text output to the SOL serial port. In most cases the port is COM3, but it may be on another COM port. You will need to do some testing to see which COM port your hardware platforms use for SOL.

Here’s one common scenario where this can be very handy. Let’s say you have a live CD that includes an in-band remote access tool, like PC Anywhere or a VNC server. You can include a startup script that echo’s out the computer’s hostname and IP address information to COM3. That way, you will know when the live CD has booted and the information it may have registered with DNS/DHCP. If you are using a Windows based live CD all you need to do is include commands like this:

echo %computername% >com3

ipconfig >com3

You can even incorporate some ANSI control codes to control formatting. For instance, if you want to have the remote SOL terminal clear it’s screen, you can send the Esc+[2J. The trick is generating the “Esc+” part. In order to do this in Windows, you need to hold down the Alt key, press 0027 on the ten key pad (make sure you include the two zeros) and then let the Alt key go. Unfortunately, Notepad does not seem to support this functionality. As an alternative, I recommend using Notepad++. Once you are done, you should have something like this:

echo ^[[2J >com3

Note: The escape character may appear as "^[" or something else altogether, like a little arrow or block character.  It depends on your OS and application.

Here’s an example of the output I get from a Live CD I built using Bart’s PE Builder.

Intel recently commissioned a study, conducted by Wipro Product Strategy and Services, that analyzed the costs of refreshing business PC fleets.  Wipro interviewed CIOs and IT professionals from 106 companies in the U.S., United Kingdom and Germany on many different aspects of the refresh equation, but three stood out as the most important to businesses – security, cost reduction and payback period.

Security is a big concern for businesses these days and their angst appears to be well founded.  According to the study, by the time a PC is four years old, security incidents have increased 52 percent from when it was new.  You don’t want to even peek at the data about what happens after that.

Software-based attacks, viruses and other threats continue to grow, of course, and that's the reason Intel has focused so much attention on incorporating new ways to defend against these attacks into its platforms. The 3X performance increase in the latest Intel Core2 processors help to keep antivirus software, patches and encryption from bogging down the system.  A host of features incorporated into Intel vPro technology have been aimed across the board at the points of vulnerability to protect applications, the platform and the network.

The big question keeping CFOs and CIOs awake at night revolves around how often to buy new PCs.  If we could only get by for one more year…. The study found that operational costs of four-year-old PCs can be reduced up to 52 percent for laptops and 46 percent for desktops by purchasing new systems.  In addition to rising maintenance costs, year four also is typically when warranties have expired and companies begin picking up the repair tab.

To make the data more meaningful, Wipro used the data from the companies polled to create a “model company.” The model company has 11,500 mobile PCs and 19,300 desktop computers at various ages.  For the first three years, acquisition and maintenance costs decline, but going into year four they begin to rise at a steepening rate.  The data shows that if the model company replaces its PCs at three years it saves $3 million versus holding off for just one more year.  The study also found that costs could be reduced another $3 million with vPro technology.  Wipro also determined that the model company would recoup its investment in 17 months by just purchasing new computers, but would it get its investment back in 10 months with vPro technology-based systems even with a $150 premium for the systems.

OK, I can feel the doubters – the study is by a reputable research company and appears objective, but it was commissioned by Intel…and it’s a PR guy interpreting it.  So, let’s get away from empirical evaluation and hear from someone whose business strategy reflects the results of the study to see how he’s faring.  Terry Jocelyn is president of Western Blue, a Northern California-based service and solution provider for more than 20 years.  Western Blue is implementing laptops and desktop systems based on Intel Core2 processors and vPro technology.  I had a chance to talk with him recently about how PC refresh and vPro technology worked into his business strategy and benefited his customers.

While at Symantec ManageFusion 2009 from March 10th to 12th, we had a chance to talk to IT executives and managers, Intel partners and industry analysts who were all familiar with the capabilities of Intel vPro technology. In this video, they discuss what Rock Star or what type of music Intel vPro Technology could be ...

To learn more about Intel's presence at Symantec ManageFusion 2009, go to: http://www.intel.com/go/managefusion/

While at Symantec ManageFusion 2009, we had a chance to talk with Antwune Gray, a Director at NetX. In the video below, he talks about how the NetX Appliance discovers which PCs in your business environment have Intel vPro technology, as well as the version and setup status of Intel vPro technology.

To learn more about Intel's presence at Symantec ManageFusion 2009, go to: http://www.intel.com/go/managefusion/