Well it was a week ago that I went to the Microsoft Connect ‘06 event here in Christchurch.
My very first impression was it took me three weeks to register for it, as there where problems with the registration server. Darryl mentioned it on the 13th of April, and the site did not work until Nathan mentioned it on 3rd on May.
Second impression was, when you have yummy chicken at home, and you’re going to a Microsoft event, leave the chicken in the fridge. Do not make the yummiest chicken sandwiches, because Microsoft caters the event. Yes I heard complainers about the quality of the food, but put that aside, keep you beloved chicken safe at home. I plead for the reset of you not to make this same fatal mistake. Also without the need to put my sandwiches in something I would have left my bag at home, and thus looked professional like every one else, and not like some student.
Third impression is that big screen TVs are big, and that Sean‘s Xbox 360 looked sweet on the big screen. It (the Xbox 360) looked even better once it was turned onto high definition mode. I played a few games, and Peter opinioned on the mailing list I was hogging the unit, I rebut this, but noticed for the second half of lunch he was standing in the foyer talk to Brent and Andrew.
So after been impressed by all the non-core things at Connect I come to the day’s topics, Vista and Office 2007.
I mainly went to this to see the Office ribbon bar that I’d heard a bit about and see all the new gleam in Vista. The key note was key notey. Darryl’s talk on Office was interesting, but I have no problems to solve, so the open API and architecture of the docx format earns brownie points, but not really a must buy feature for me.
What I did enjoy though was Jeremy’s two part talk on Vista. I had heard a lot of complaining from developer circles about the new security system in Vista, but I think it’s great. For the average user, who does only log on as Admin (mom and dad type, oh and me), you now get asked. Yes to admin things will be more annoying, and for some forms of dev work you’ll have to turn it off, but that’s fine, you are then taking power users steps to declare responsibility for the machine. Fare enough. I also found the WCF demo impressive.
Afterwards the Christchurch .Net user group had a small (4 people plus 2 later comers) gathering at Spagalimis. Where Peter handed out some developer magazines, we chatted about the day, and any impacts this may have.
So in summary: Vista looks really cool, XBox 360 is fun (especially Geometry Wars), and leave your chicken at home.