Surface and SQL

For my first post i can think of nothing better than mentioning the new Surface. I recall when we demoed the original Surface about 4-6 years ago, depending on where you were at the time. As time goes by it will be more difficult to find a reference to it, but it will live on the internet forever and ever... Microsoft Surface CES 2008. I did get to play with one for a few days many years ago, my most compelling memory was, it was freakin heavy!

I do have a tablet now running the Windows 8 RC, and i can say, i am very happy with the OS and even the HW platform, though it is a bit heavy, and already dated. I have an Acer Iconia W500 that i bought in November of last year for around 500 bucks, a whopping 32gb SSD Drive in it. It came with Windows 7, which lasted all of about 24 hours before i had Windows 8 running on it. Since this is supposed to be a SQL blog, i can tell you that i installed SQL 2012 CTP in December of 2011 to prepare for a customer visit. I actually wrote all of my 2012 demos on the plane using the tablet with a full version of SQL running on it. Though i would not recommend running your production load on a Win 8 tablet, for a single instance, or even playing around with demos and learning stuff, the experience was seamless, it just worked!

On that note, if you like to have SQL Books Online / Help to be installed locally to your server or desktop, we have made that a bit more difficult. What you get when you install the Documentation Components in the 2012 Setup is basically help on installing help. How helpful! So, just go here to get it and drop it on your network, or maybe as part of your server build out for 2012!

SQL 2012 BOL;

Product Documentation for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 for firewall and proxy restricted environments

Until next time,

Shep