*UPDATE : You might experience difficulty connecting to Maxis 3G. This is because Maxis has made some changes to the Maxis Data connection settings. You might also get new settings messages from Maxis asking you to update the GRPS/MMS/3G settings on your phone. If you are not experienced with the settings, you might want to save and activate them. If however, you are technically inclined, you can just make the following changes to your existing settings : Remove the username ‘maxis’ and the password ‘wap’ from the settings. Leave both of these blank and you will be able to connect to the Internet immediately.

Summary : You no longer need to include a username and password (traditionally ‘maxis’ and ‘wap’ respectively) for your Maxis 3G/GPRS/MMS settings.
I just got this SMS from Maxis, saying:

NEW monthly Mobile Internet plans available. RM 58 for 500MB, RM 78 for 1.5GB & RM 88 for 3GB worth of usage. Details on maxis.com.my. You may stay on your current RM 99 monthly Unlimited Access Mobile Internet plan (Fair Usage Policy applies).

Very interesting. A quick check on the Maxis website shows the new plans. But the million dollar question I had was can I switch back to the Unlimited Plan if I choose to switch to any of the limited plans. A phonecall to the Maxis Call Center revealed that NO, you cannot switch back to RM 99 unlimited plan.

Basically, Maxis has stopped offering the RM 99 Unlimited plan, if you are on it, you can continue being on it. If however, you choose a limited plan, there’s no turning back to the Unlimited plan. You can however, switch between the limited plans.

Interesting. I initially thought of switching to the RM 78 for 1.5GB plan, but considering its only 21 Ringgit less a month, PLUS not being able to switch back to RM 99 for the unlimited plan, I will probably stick to the unlimited plan for now.

So if you are considering switching to the limited plan, you may want to give the above points a thought.
FYI : I rely on the Mobile Internet not just for surfing on my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, but also for surfing on my laptop via Bluetooth (I shall cover how to do this soon).

If you have been a Windows application developer for the past 10 years, you would remember that when building a small, desktop sized application database driven application, perhaps the only viable option for a database would have been the Microsoft Jet Engine, which is what Microsoft Access is based upon. It used to get the job done, but with multiple users, the typical problem was that since it was file-based, the database would get corrupted as multiple simultaneous record updates took place.

Then at the turn of the century, along came a well-kept secret, the free Microsoft Desktop Engine, also known as MSDE 2000. This was essentially a scaled down version of the SQL Server 2000, with a size limit of 2GB. Microsoft did not over-advertize this database, and it did not even come with its own Management Tool. So you either had to use Microsoft Access as a front end (yes its possible, we will cover this in another post), or you had to purchase a third party tool such as MSDE Manager by Vale Software. This allowed many people to develop desktop and web applications on the Windows platform, with a more reliable database.

Subsequently, Microsoft a similarly scaled down version of the SQL Server 2005 database and branded it as Express. So it was called Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express edition. This worked just as well as the MSDE 2000, and was also Vista compatible, in addition to having a larger data limit of 4 GBs. These two factors moved a large number of developers to switch from MSDE 2000 to MS SQL 2005 Express edition.

Currently, SQL Server 2008 Express edition is the latest free database offering from Microsoft. It comes with many more features compared with the humble MSDE 2000, including its own Management Tool, reporting, and full-text search. To obtain a copy of this database, head over to : The SQL Server 2008 Express homepage.

The database is powerful enough to handle most desktop and workgroup applications. The good thing is that if you start off with the Express edition and find that you need a more robust database, you can easily switch to the one of the many versions of the full-fledged SQL Server 2008. Click here for a full comparison of all the versions of SQL Server 2008, including the free Express edition.

Just a word of advise, SQL Server 2008 Express edition starts in a “lockdown” mode. To prevent security risks, you will need to enable any features which you need on the server. Even simple network access within a local area network is disabled. Its designed to work only in Shared Memory mode when first installed. To get access to the server over TCP/IP, you will need to fire up the SQL Server Configuration Manager. Under SQL Server Services, first make sure that the SQL Server Browser service is running. Next, expand the SQL Server Network Configuration, and under Protocols for SQLEXPRESS, right click on TCP/IP and click on Enable. Now, double click on TCP/IP and under the IP addresses tab, you will see all the IP address which are associated with your server. Make sure you change those which you need to Enable and Active. Phew talk about lockdown security. If you still cannot access your SQL Server, you may also want to enable the NetBIOS protocol on your network connection, and also Enable the Named Pipes protocol in your Protocols for SQL Express.

Hopefully these steps you help you save some frustration in connecting to your SQL Server 2008 Express edition. Would love to hear from your on your experiences.