When Software Attacks!

Tweaking my Lenovo x220 Tablet and running Windows 8

A short while ago I replaced my trusted by heavy Acer laptop with a Lenovo x220 tablet. After a couple of months running windows 8 I’m ready to put my thoughts into words.

If you’ve landed on this post looking for notes on Windows 8 drivers for the x220, skip to the end. UPDATE 12/06/2012 – added some points to the Windows 8 section.

A painful purchase

Nothing could have prepared me for the deeply unpleasant experience of actually purchasing my new tablet. The Lenovo UK site is shockingly bad at providing the information and options you need. Examples include (some of which bit me!):

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, June 12, 2012

IT Camp Leeds Roundup

Yesterday was great fun and I was really pleased to see so many Black Marble event regulars at the IT Camp. It was great to hear so many requests for more events like it in Leeds. We’re all keen to run more, but we need people to attend and give us feedback in order to be able to do that.

I hope those of you who were there took away useful knowledge from the event. Andy and Simon were very keen that it should not be a day of PowerPoint and canned demos and we certainly delivered that. Did we have technical issues that meant we had to change plans on the fly? Sure! Certainly nobody we spoke to seemed to mind. All of us from Black Marble thought the concept for the day – one of interaction, audience participation and trying to build systems on the fly – should be fun and we thought it was.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Wednesday, February 29, 2012

My Boss has brought his iPad! Consumer devices in corporate networks

There’s a new term in town – Consumerisation of IT. All of us who work in IT should care about this because it’s going to have a deep impact on the approach many of us have taken when deploying services to our organisations.

I don’t profess to be a thought leader on this topic, although I find it interesting that I have been dealing with the ‘problem’ here at Black Marble ever since we started up many moons ago. I may well post more about what we deliver in terms of services and solutions within the organisation later, but this article is intended to drive your attention to two important places.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Hands-on Microsoft IT Camps–we’ll be there and you should too!

Andy and I are really pleased to be able to help our friends at Microsoft with their latest idea for engaging with IT Professionals. Next week (Tuesday 28th February) sees the first in a series of new IT Camps taking place in Leeds. The idea is to run a full day event that is very light on PowerPoint and heavy on the hands-on, roll up your sleeves and install things as a group.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Friday, February 24, 2012

Living with the Nokia Lumia 800

If you call in at Black Marble you’ll see Nokia’s everywhere. They’re talking over the place. It takes me back… I remember when almost everybody I knew had some kind of Nokia or another. I started with the 5.1 on Orange, followed by a sequence of progressively smaller phones. Then came Series 60 and I walked away – I never liked the interface. I swapped to Sony Ericsson and the P800, P900 and P910. I moved to Windows Mobile for time, until I could stand it no more and swapped to an iPhone (much to the grumbling of folk round here!).

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, January 16, 2012