Stupid Hyper-V mistake #1:

Never copy your hyper-V drive, change the drive mapping in the hyper-v administrator, ignore the warning about snapshots, then try to restart your virtual machine. The hyper-v drive contains only the base configuration of the virtual machine (prior to the administration of any snapshots). When you copy the drive, you lose the snapshots and any updates or changes to your virtual machine since the time you took the first snapshot.

If what you're looking for is simply to move/copy your virtual machine, instead of copying the hard drive image, look at "export".

The nice thing about hyper-v versus vmware is that you don't have to worry about driver support (as much). ESXi is supported only on certain hardware platforms. It will work on a lot of unsupported platforms, but isn't it easier to know for sure? If all you're looking for is a development test area, then hyper-v is easy and quick.

I've just returned from a week in Las Vegas, where I attended the yearly Inforum conference. I'm glad to be home.

The conference was, in my opinion, well structured and informative. I learned quite a lot while there and felt like the time away from home and the office was not wasted. I was there to learn more about Infor's ERP product, Syteline, and this I did. It looks like the newest version, V8, is far and above preferrable to previous versions, if for no other reason than because it's easier to deploy, support and modify. It is much easier to customize and has a rich event/workflow model and enhanced support for web services.

I was not as impressed by the city of Las Vegas, which seemed rusty under a thin veneer of gold. I feel for the people who work there. I watched drunken casino-goers harass and proposition a couple of young female shop-keepers in one casino, and while in the elevator in another I was approached by a pan-handler. Outside, shills for escort agencies lined up sometimes 15 abreast to thrust pornographic business cards at all passers-by (even families with small children).

The casinos themselves are a wonder, especially the Venitian and the Mandalay Bay casinos. The Bellagio has a nice indoor shopping boulevard and the conservatory/botanical garden is a treat.

One of the most popular topics of conversation at Inforum seemed to be virtualization. Everyone wanted to know more about it and the hottest question was does Infor support Syteline on virtual machines. The answer, even though Infor support personnel currently use virtual machines for their own testing, is not now--but soon. I guess this is reasonable considering the wide diversity of hardware and software that syteline runs on.

So far Hyper-V is working out well for me. I am disappointed that I am not able to use USB devices such as scanners or printers with my Hyper-V virtual machines. It would be nice if I were able to use VM-ware workstation in combination with Hyper-V, or if VM-ware server would work with 2008 64-bit (as of a couple of weeks ago it didn't).

The nice thing about having Hyper-V on my development machine is that I have virtual servers set up to perform various functions (web server, database server, etc.) and that if these servers are running when I reboot my PC, they're running when the PC starts up again. This is much more convenient than my previous VM-ware workstation configuration, where I would have to manually start up each server each time I rebooted my PC.

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It's easy to be despondent about the economy. My 401k has lost something like 25% of its value in the last six months. However, I do believe there are upsides, at least for software development folks:
1) Foreign competition will be more expensive as the value of the dollar falls.
2) Software is a great way to cut costs, and companies will be looking to do as much cost-cutting as possible, which means they'll be investing in software.

I may be naive, but I also believe that the economy will pick up after the election. I think there's a lot of "wait and see" happening right now. It does seem as though the administration is handling the nation's finances in a pretty careless fashion. Sort of a "let's see if we can spend everything before we leave" attitude.

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I've decided to re-read Larry Niven's Ringworld series. The series would make for an excellent movie, but I'd forgotten how ribald the books are. It would be neat to see what the ringworld looks like in pixar 3D.

I'm starting to have the same problem with audiobooks that I have with regular books...that is, it's easier to buy them than it is to read them, so my reading list is growing. Most recently, I found that Anne Proulx has a new audio book, Fine Just The Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3, and I can't decide if I want to read it, Leviathan (a history of whaling) or The Tipping Point next...