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Giving Away 10 Apple iPads and Red Gate SQL Monitor!

Written on December 13, 2010 by Brent Ozar in Apple, SQL Server

You need to relax and get out more.

We SQL Server DBAs are constantly checking that cell phone, worried about that email from a user saying, “The server is borked.” When it comes in, we drop everything, run to the nearest laptop, and try to figure out just how bad things are and if they’ve gone back to normal.

You’ll be more relaxed on the weekends if you can do these two things:

Find out before the users find out
Be able to check health from anywhere

There’s a web app for that – Red Gate SQL Monitor. It sends you emails when things start to go pear-shaped, and then you can whip out your trusty iPad to check your server’s health and stats from anywhere. You can see it live now by going to http://monitor.red-gate.com, which shows SQLServerCentral’s database servers. (You don’t have to log in, but of course you’d use the built-in username/password security for your own SQL Monitor web site.) A few screenshots:

Red Gate SQL Monitor Dashboard

Host Machine Stats

SQL Server Instance Statistics

SQL Server Error Log

All from your iPad, anytime you’re within range of WiFi or a 3G cellular signal. You can stop worrying about what your server’s doing, and start being present with your family, your friends, and your hobbies.

What’s that? You don’t have an iPad?

Red Gate wants to fix that. They’re giving away 30 prize packages, each with a 16GB 3G iPad and a license to Red Gate SQL Monitor! I got 10 to give away, Steve Jones is giving away 10, and Grant Fritchey is giving away 10, but you can only enter in one of our contests. To enter for mine, all you have to do is post a blog comment below and tell me where you’d go if you didn’t have to worry about what your servers are doing. The deadline for entry is Friday, December 17th, 2010, and then we’ll pick 10 random lucky winners to be announced on Monday, December 20th, 2010. (And if you win, you owe me a picture of yourself monitoring your SQL Servers with your new iPad!)

Here’s the fine print:

The contest is open to professionals with SQL Server monitoring responsibility. Entrants must be 18 years old or over.
Entries must be received by Friday, December 17, 2010. The contest organizers accept no responsibility for corrupted or delayed entries.
Employees of Red Gate, the contest organizers and their family members are not eligible to participate in the contest.
Entries are limited to one per person across the three simultaneous contests hosted on www.SQLServerCentral.com, www.BrentOzar.com, and www.ScaryDBA.com.
The organizers reserve the right, within their sole discretion, to disqualify nominations.
The organizers’ decisions are final.
Red Gate Software and those involved in the organization, promotion, and operation of the contest and in the awarding of prizes explicitly make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the quality, suitability, merchantability, or fitness for a particular purpose of the prizes awarded and they hereby disclaim all liability for any loss or damage of any kind, including personal injury, suffered while participating in the contest or utilizing any prizes awarded.

So whatcha waiting for? Leave a comment for your chance to win or check out the contests on Steve Jones’ blog and Grant Fritchey’s blog!

Brent Ozar

Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.

My Favorite iPad Apps and Cases

Written on November 30, 2010 by Brent Ozar in Apple

These days, I find myself using my iPad more and more as my main computing device on the road. Some recent OS & app updates brought some killer improvements that have let me leave my laptop at home more often. Here’s my favorites these days:

Be social with the Twitter app – The official Twitter app runs in the background, and whenever you’re mentioned in a tweet or you get a direct message, a notification pops up. Just like a full-blown laptop, you can switch over to Twitter, reply, and then switch back over to your app, right where you left off. This was the biggest thing I was missing at conferences – I wanted to take notes or work on my blog, but get alerted when someone asked me a question on Twitter.

Give better presentations with Apple Keynote – This is the Apple equivalent of PowerPoint. It opens PowerPoint files, and when combined with the VGA dongle, it can display PowerPoint slides on a projector. Just like PowerPoint’s presenter view, you get a presenter view on your iPad too! There’s two serious drawbacks. First, writing slide decks from scratch in Keynote on an iPad is hell, and second, while the VGA dongle is plugged in, you can’t plug in the charger. This isn’t a dealbreaker given the iPad’s excellent battery life (usually 8-10 hours), but it’s a bummer. At conferences, I spend most of my time running around like a SQLChicken with my head cut off, but I present for at least an hour a day. That would be the perfect time for me to plug in and recharge the iPad, but no dice.

Booq Push iPad Case

Read everything with GoodReader – this file viewer on steroids lets you read PDFs, Office documents, and much more, plus syncs with a file server, cloud server, FTP server, and even Google Docs! I keep all my reference material with me on the road so I can answer questions faster.

Sync thoughts with Elements – I’m old school, and I keep all my notes in text files. I use Elements as a text editor on my iPad, and it automatically syncs all my text files across my phone, laptops, and iPads via Dropbox, a free cloud file share service. Elements does one thing, and it does it extremely well.

Manage my blog with WordPress – the best blogging platform has an app for writing posts, doing quick fixes on the road, and moderating & responding to comments. It works on both iPads and iPhones, by the way.

My favorite other apps for traveling – I use Night Stand HD as a beautiful alarm clock while my iPad or iPhone is plugged in (and it never locks the screen), the free TripIt to track all my travel plans in one place, and Ambiance as a white noise generator.

My favorite games – I’m playing a lot of Angry Birds HD, Cut the Rope HD, Loops of Zen, Grand Theft Auto, Train Conductor 2, and The Incident. Most of those have free versions to try out, too.

My favorite iPad cases – Ladies in the audience, I probably have more bags than you have purses. I looove bags, and I’m not ashamed to say it – although I’m a little ashamed to admit that I’ve got more than a dozen laptop or iPad bags in rotation right now. Here’s my favorites:

Small – iPad-only messenger bag – Booq Push – when I want to take only the iPad and nothing but the iPad. It’s extremely minimal, but the construction is just awesome. Top-notch quality. Leave your power charger behind, though, because the only thing you can bring with this is a USB cable, headphones, a VGA dongle, and airplane tickets. Available at Amazon. (But not Prime as of this writing.)
Medium – iPad shoulder bag – Booq Taipan XS – slightly larger with pockets to bring chargers, a small digital camera, and more little goodies. Available at Amazon. (But not Prime as of this writing.)
Large – iPad, DSLR, and more – Tamrac Rally 5 – I recently picked up a more serious digital camera and a couple of lenses, so this bag has become my leisure-trip carryon. It houses my iPad, Lumix GF1, lenses, chargers, and whatnot in a smaller case than a typical laptop bag. Tamrac makes a whole series of laptop + camera bags, including the Rally 7 for 15″ laptops plus DSLRs and lenses.

I know what you’re thinking, though. “Brent, I don’t have an iPad, and I don’t want to hear any more about your cool toys.” Well, I’ve got good news – make that great news. I happen to know somebody who’s giving away ten iPads plus software to monitor your SQL Servers just in time for the holidays. Watch this space!

Brent Ozar

My Apple iPad Review

Written on April 13, 2010 by Brent Ozar in Apple

I need a backup presentation device when I travel. During my epic European trip failure, my laptop failed in Copenhagen, and all kinds of hell broke loose. I decided I’d always travel with a second device that could do PowerPoint presentations. For a while, I used a netbook, but I hated carrying fifteen pounds of gear on my shoulder through the airport.

I bought an iPad because:

It has VGA output (albeit through a crappy dongle)
It can do PowerPoint presentations
It’s really light (1.5 pounds)
It has a tiny charger (and can be charged via USB)

There’s plenty of places on the web where you can read volumes of well-written stuff about the iPad (Anandtech – Engadget), so I’ll just focus on the drawbacks that trouble me the most.

The Virtual Keyboard Sucks

I love my iPhone’s onscreen keyboard. I can type on that thing like nobody’s business, and sometimes I even do it without looking. I can’t call it touch-typing, since there’s no feel of keys, heh.

In theory, the iPad onscreen keyboard should be even better. It’s bigger, and in landscape mode, I should be able to set my hands down and sorta-touch-type. My hands fit great – here’s my right hand with my index finger on the J key, just like a real full-sized keyboard:

iPad Touch Typing

Looks great, right? Well, not so much. To figure out the problem, you have to compare the iPad keyboard with a real keyboard and see what my fingers are actually hovering over:

iPad Keyboard Differences

On a real keyboard, your four right fingers hover over J, K, L, and ;. On the iPad keyboard, they hover over J, K, L, and the return key. That one little difference, coupled with the keyboard size and lack of tactile feedback, means this is a really bad replacement for a real keyboard. Apple makes an iPad keyboard dock, but if I have to carry that around, I’m right back up to netbook territory.

On an iPhone, I just changed my method of typing altogether – I either use one thumb or two thumbs, depending on how fast I want to type. When the iPad is in landscape mode, two-thumb typing is impossible – the keyboard is just too darned wide. In portrait mode, it’s somewhat more doable for me, but I have pretty big hands. I’ve seen Erika try to type with it, and it just doesn’t work.

The Lack of Multitasking Sucks

The iPad is almost the perfect thing to carry around at conferences. The ten-hour battery life would let me take notes all day while responding to tweets and emails, and I wouldn’t have to drag a power adapter around or look for power outlets to recharge. The form factor on this thing is great for a meeting/conference device.

Except that there’s no multitasking. I could either take notes OR do Twitter OR do email.

The upcoming OS v4 upgrade will add multitasking (and support for Bluetooth keyboards, yay!), but it’s not coming out for the iPad until the fall. I’m crossing my fingers in the hope that the iPad will be the only thing I have to carry at the PASS Summit. I’d love to stop hassling with power outlets and shoulder bags.

The App Scene Sucks Right Now

Some of your favorite iPhone apps have been upgraded to add iPad support at no extra charge. Simply go into the App Store, hit Upgrade, and you’ll get all of the latest and greatest apps.

Some developers have decided to sell “HD” or “XL” versions of their apps for the iPad. Pay one price for the iPhone version, another price – usually much higher – for the iPad version. Forget the extra price – this is just painful to manage. Every couple of days, I go into the App Store looking to see if my favorite apps have been reintroduced for the iPad. I don’t want to do this manually – just alert me when there’s a new version of TripIt or RememberTheMilk available for the iPad. And no, I don’t want to run the regular iPhone versions on the iPad, because they look like hell. Even a lot of the new iPad app versions leave something to be desired – check out this WordPress app’s blog editing screen, which only shows a tiny sliver of my post content and wastes huge areas of the screen on greyed-out and non-scrolling title/tags/status fields:

WordPress on the iPad

Not good enough.

The Best Experiences?

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPad, he called it the best email experience, the best photos experience, the best web surfing experience, and the best video experience. I’d agree about two of them, but I didn’t really need a photo or video device, and I don’t think you do either.

The best web experience requires Flash.

I hate Flash. It’s slow, and the web sites that rely on it frustrate me. But I can’t argue that it’s the dominant tool out there for building interactive web sites (no offense, Silverlight guys.) Excluding Flash support means I can’t view a lot of web site videos, and that means it’s not the best web experience.

The best email experience requires a better keyboard.

I seriously prefer using the iPad to handle my mail over the laptop. It’s a quick, fun experience. It’s so fun, in fact, that I’ve started leaving the iPad propped up on my desk to act as a separate email monitor. But when it comes time to composing a reply of more than a paragraph, I prefer my iPhone keyboard over the iPad, and my laptop keyboard over that, and an ergonomic keyboard over all of those. The iPad’s keyboard is a very distant last place. If you insist on using the iPad keyboard, the Apple iPad case helps somewhat by tilting the iPad up as it lays on a flat surface.

The best video experience requires stereo speakers.

Listening to music or watching movies on the iPad infuriates the audiophile in me. It absolutely requires headphones. Mono sound comes out of just one speaker at the bottom of the iPad, or one side when your using it in landscape mode. I’m distracted by the audio, it’s so bad. Headphones makes this problem disappear, but he said this was the BEST video experience, and without headphones, that’s just not the case. And it doesn’t ship with headphones. Or the USB adapter. Or the VGA adapter. And $300 netbooks come with stereo speakers, USB, and VGA out.

My Bottom Line: Apple Users Only for Now

Today, the iPad is an expensive, limited alternative to a Windows 7-equipped netbook. If you’re happy with a Windows laptop, you’ll prefer a Windows-equipped netbook over the iPad for day to day use. The iPad, sexy as it is, can’t compete with the practicality of a machine that offers multitasking and a physical keyboard. Months from now, when the iPad OS v4 brings multitasking to the party and when HTML5 video replaces Flash, things might be different.

If you’re an Apple iPhone user, though, full speed ahead. You’re already used to a lot of the compromises in the iPhone OS, and the iPad will seem like the next logical step. If I didn’t have to do so many SQL Server demos on the road, I’d switch from my laptop to the iPad. I’m even kicking around the thought of building Amazon EC2 SQL Servers in the cloud to demo the things I need, and then booting them up to remote control them from my iPad for demos. Stay tuned.