Paul Glavich and Chris Farrell have written a book on performance testing and optimization for .Net and it's available as a free eBook download from the Red Gate website. The price cannot be beat - FREE! You should go check it out.

Below is sample code showing how to send email from ASP.Net 4 (currently in beta as of this posting) using C#. With this code I am assuming that the server already has a local SMTP service installed, so I use "localhost" to relay the email.

Here is the SendMail.aspx page:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="SendMail.aspx.cs" Inherits="SendMail" %>

Here is the source code of the SendMail.aspx.cs page:

using System;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Net.Mail;

I went to support.dell.com yesterday to see if there were any driver or other updates for my Dell XT tablet. I wish there was a way to automatically check so people could get updates as soon as they come out. Perhaps Dell and Microsoft need to work closer together and get the driver and firmware upgrades to register from within Microsoft Update along with system patches.

Anyway, I noticed I was behind on a few things - the bios (was on A08 and upgraded to A09), the touchpad driver (upgraded to A13_R250328), and the N-Trig software (upgraded to A00_R254926) which controls the touch screen functionality. These were all new items released in the past month and were catch-up items needed to bring the hardware fully compliant and functional with Windows 7 64-bit.

It has only been one day of using the XT after the updates but I've already noticed great improvement in the touch screen operation (which I mentioned in this post). The writing is recognized better; the far-right side of the screen and the corners recognize the pen more consistently; the screen seems to switch between pen and finger much better; and overall it is snappier in performance and operation.

If you own a Dell XT and are running Microsoft Windows 7, you should really get these latest updates because it makes the device much easier and more enjoyable to use.

If you have interest in system configuration, monitoring, and management solutions, you might want to follow the Microsoft System Center team's blog.

The SMTP services are not installed by default on Windows Server 2008. To install that service, follow these steps...

First go to the Features Summary section of the Server Manager and click Add Features.

Then scroll down and select the SMTP Server option from the list.

Once you click the SMTP Server option, you'll get a dialog box showing the other roles and features required for the SMTP service to work.

Click Add Required Role Services then Next on the three subsequent dialog boxes. You're then presented with a summary and an Install button. Click Install and all the required services will be installed to support SMTP on the server.

First things first, you can download the Visual Web Developer 2010 Express Edition Beta 2 (wow, that sure is a mouth-full!) for free from Microsoft's site here.

On the initial welcome screen there is nothing to do but click next. No option to opt-out from sending your information to Microsoft. Hey, it is a beta, and a major goal with beta programs is to get feedback, so I certainly don't blame them for locking that in.

Next, agree to the license (read it first of course).

After that you get an optional install screen. There is only one option presented to me, and it's SQL Server 2008 Express SP1. I'm going to select it and highly suggest you do to. After all, what fun is a web application without a SQL source?

The next screen lets you select a specific install folder - or accept the default.

I'm going to leave the defaults alone. Space requirement shows as 3.2GB, which isn't horribly large. Well, yeah, it's big for sure, but just wait until you see everything included - then you'll likely agree that 3.2GB of space is not a bad trade-off.

Click install from there and a download and install process starts. I show 18 items for a total of 292MB being downloaded, which matches what the install screen earlier showed. What takes up the additional 3GB?? I guess I'll have to wait and see.

Well, the install is done now. That was painless. I have no idea why the space requirements were 3.2GB though. I've clicked around the folders and did a quick estimate around 400MB of new files. Either the install needs a ton of temporary installation space (3GB) or maybe that's a small bug on the install screen.

"To really stand for something, you must make difficult decisions, mostly about what you don't do. We don't ship products like that, we don't stand for employees like that ("you're fired"), we don't fix problems like that."

That quote is from a classic post from Seth Godin that I recommend everyone read. It's not very long or deep but has a key message that is very important to understand.

I had the opportunity to use the Verizon MiFi for a few days and it was great. I expected it to work but it goes beyond just working.

Where? It was tested out in the middle of nowhere - well, at a location in South Carolina about two hours from Charlotte. At this spot I had a no AT&T bars, but did just barely have service. I could send a text message but not confident that I would have had much success with a non-dropping call. My iPhone reported the big "E" - that painfully slow Edge network connection. Between the Edge and almost no service signal, even opening an email via AT&T was horribly slow to the point of "why bother". I don't have a Verizon phone (the service that the MiFi uses) so can't comment on coverage bars, but it must have been decent coverage and 3G service (see below).

Usability - setup. When I showed up someone had already configured the MiFi. The configuration involves a one-time process of connecting the device to a computer via USB and going through an easy setup wizard. The person who set it up is a non-techie and had no problems with it.

Usability -  get online. I got situated and powered up my tablet. The network was detected right away and, after entering the security password, I was online. It was no different from using a standard wireless router to connect to the Internet. If I didn't already know the connection was via MiFi, I wouldn't have thought twice about it. Later in the day we had three different laptops connected to the single MiFi and none had problems.

Performance. Once online I did a little bit of web surfing and the experience was fine. Honestly, even though the connection was slower that what I'm used to on a daily basis, the experience of web browsing was totally fine. There was no point I had to sit and wait for a page to load. I ran a speed test to see what actual throughput we were getting and it tested at 1.3 Mbps download and 500 Kbps upload. No too shabby. Especially for a location that doesn't have cable or DSL as an option - and one where AT&T service barely registers.

Physical. The device is small and light - surprisingly so. It also has a rechargeable battery so after charged, you can pick it up and move around while online. I could easily stick it in my shirt pocket and walk around with my tablet while surfing the web if I wanted to.

Battery performance. I'm not sure exactly how long the battery lasts but we did use it for a few hours with no problems. The performance was identical whether plugged in to power or not. I did notice at one point that the connection started getting spotty. This was after hours of use unplugged and shortly later it started flashing red (battery dying) so I believe that performance degradation was just related to us running on battery too long.

All in all, it is a great little device and I highly recommend it for people who are mobile a lot and need decent-speed Internet - especially if you need an Internet connection for more than one device.

I recently became aware of the Google Trends tool. This is a really neat way to review traffic volumes over time for certain specific search words and phrases.

You can check the trends of anything, but as an example, let's look at search volume of "windows hosting" and "linux hosting" overlapped for the past twelve months...

What's the value? Well, certainly from a marketing and SEO standpoint there are some fairly obvious values. It's also just satisfies a curiosity. I found it interesting to see that search volume for both terms has dropped slightly over the past year; and interesting that almost twice as many people search for "windows hosting" than "linux hosting".

Apple's tablet device - the iPad - was officially unveiled yesterday and it looks nice. I'm not sure if it is game-changing nice, but it looks to have addressed at least some of the concerns I've had with tablet options in the past.

In my post about my origami experience I mentioned the issues with:

• Screen resolution - the iPad have gone with 1024 x 768 which could be a nice sweet-spot.
• Screen size - almost 10" is right where I'd mentioned the possible tablet sweet-spot might be
• Battery life - a month of standby and 10 hours of use time on the iPad - nice
• Speed - the iPad has a 1Ghz processor but looks to perform well in the demo, so it's not just about clock-speed
• OS - my origami device ran XP, which wasn't great. Windows 7 would be better, and I'm sure the iPhone OS will also be an improvement

In my post about my Dell XT tablet running Windows 7, I mentioned these areas for improvement:

• Desire for built-in Internet access - I could have gotten my XT with mobile-carrier access but didn't. If I bought an iPad, I'd opt for that feature
• Make it lighter - I'd suggested around 1.5 pounds, which is right where the iPad landed. I think that would be comfortable to use
• Have an e-ink option - One of the iPad features touted is book reading on it. I don't see mention of e-ink, so I think it's a normal backlit display. I'm not sure if that would irritate the eyes if used as a long-term reading device or not.
• Make it thin, but sturdy - How's one-half inch sound? That's the iPad depth, and it sounds ideal to me.
• Make the touch screen reliable - I've never seen nor heard about issues with the iPhone or iTouch touch-screen so I don't think this is going to be an issue on the new iPad device.

I'm not going to run out and buy one, but it does look nice. A remaining question - not specific to the iPad but all tablet devices - is how will it be transported. My Dell XT is carried around in a notebook bag - it's too big for anything else. Even my Samsung Q1, which was much smaller, was an odd size - too big for anything but a large purse. How comfortable are people going to be carrying this thing around with them? Or is the expectation that this is merely a home-based device that people won't carry around?