"The average age of our fleet is less than 3 years" - so said EasyJet when we flew with them earlier this month. In our business model too we keep our equipment right up to date - our training centre and business hotel was completely refitted less than 18 months ago, and we have just replaced our entire fleet of trainee laptops ...

... if you come on a course with us during January 2008, your machine will be less that a month old!

The new systems came with Windows Vista, and we'll be leaving that on them all and available for delegates who want to use a Microsoft operating system. We're also installing the latest Cygwin there so that all the Gnu utilities (such as C Compilers!) are available for Windows users during courses. And we're making them dual bootable to Linux too ...


What version(s) of software should we be using for our 2008 courses? We're downloading fresh versions and installing them over this slightly quieter few days, going with the latest stable or release candidate versions - nothing too old, and nothing that's Alpha or Beta release or "bleeding edge". So that means:
Perl 5.10.0, Python 2.5.1, Tcl 8.5.0, Java JDK SE6, httpd 2.2.6, Tomcat 6.0.14, MySQL 5.1.22 with connector-J 5.1.1, PHP 5.2.5, Gcc 3.4.4, Ruby 1.8.6, Cygwin 1.5.24.

Not everyone will be running such recent versions on their work systems, of course, and we'll be happy for people to experiment with Apache httpd 2.0 (for example) if they need to learn how to build jk connectors (Easy under 2.2 - provided with the distribution!) and we'll retain some other heritage versions too such as PHP 4.4 to allow people to check script compatibility. And I think I have a Python 2.2 somewhere ;-)
(written 2007-12-30, updated 2008-01-02)

 G997 - Well House Consultants - Newsletter Lead Articles
  [1000] One Thousand Posts and still going strong - (2006-12-18)
  [1065] Graham Ellis - an Introduction - (2007-02-05)
  [1136] Buffering output - why it is done and issues raised in Tcl, Perl, Python and PHP - (2007-04-06)
  [1224] Object Relation Mapping (ORM) - (2007-06-09)
  [1318] Well House Manor - feature comparison against the old place! - (2007-08-24)
  [1386] New software product for warmblooded programmers - (2007-10-10)
  [1545] Letting new visitors know we provide training courses - (2008-02-19)
  [1600] Cambidge - Tcl, Expect and Perl courses - (2008-04-04)
  [1663] Python in an afternoon - a lecture for experienced programmers - (2008-06-01)
  [1754] Upgrade from PHP 4 to PHP 5 - the TRY issue - (2008-08-15)
  [1819] Calling base class constructors - (2008-10-03)
  [1912] Book now for 2009 - (2008-11-29)
  [2052] How was my web site compromised? - (2009-02-24)
  [2119] Make your business a DESTINATION business - (2009-04-05)
  [2253] Walks in and around Melksham, Wiltshire - (2009-06-21)
  [2370] C++, Python, and other training - do we use an IDE - (2009-08-21)
  [2425] Weekend and Christmas Promotion - Well House Manor Hotel, Melksham - (2009-09-26)
  [2538] Open Source Training Centre and Courses for 2010 - (2009-12-16)
  [2743] Public Open Source Training Courses running this summer and autumn in Melksham - (2010-04-27)
  [3202] Telling you something about us in just one line - (2011-03-15)

G310 - Well House Consultants - A better class of course
  [211] Look after your staff and they'll look after you. AOL. - (2005-02-12)
  [215] Open Source becomes mainstream - (2005-02-14)
  [219] Some unusual features - (2005-02-18)
  [224] YOUR application and YOUR data - (2005-02-22)
  [230] Course sizes - beware of marketing statistics - (2005-02-27)
  [292] Elegant languages - Perl, PHP, Python - (2005-04-26)
  [350] Want to be one better - (2005-06-17)
  [371] The training team that's looking out for you - (2005-07-07)
  [394] A year on - should we offer certified PHP courses - (2005-07-28)
  [497] I have a river to cross - (2005-11-16)
  [554] What backup is adequate? - (2006-01-04)
  [559] ''I don't know'' is sometimes a good answer - (2006-01-09)
  [577] Learning to program in Perl or PHP - (2006-01-26)
  [579] Short Linux and Perl courses for small groups - (2006-01-27)
  [646] PHP - London course, Melksham Course, Evening course - (2006-03-14)
  [726] In praise of training course delegates. - (2006-05-20)
  [1035] Longer hours and better value courses - (2007-01-15)
  [1453] What makes our courses special? - (2007-12-02)
  [1576] Making PHP and MySQL training relevant to the course delegates - (2008-03-15)
  [1645] Seeing how others do it - PHP training - (2008-05-17)
  [1933] Learning to Program in C - (2008-12-10)
  [2010] How long should a training module be? - (2009-01-27)
  [2049] Why Choose Well House Consultants for your course? - (2009-02-20)
  [2074] Weekday or Weekend PHP, Python and Perl classes? - (2009-03-10)
  [2084] Books and distance learning from Well House Consultants? - (2009-03-15)
  [2109] Why most training fails ... - (2009-03-30)
  [2187] Are we IITT (Institute of IT Training) members? - (2009-05-17)
  [2633] Why do I teach niche skills rather than mainstream? - (2010-02-13)
  [2762] Well House - Mission and Policy summaries - (2010-05-13)
  [3001] How will we present courses over the coming years? - (2010-10-17)
  [3271] The importance of feedback - (2011-04-30)
  [3385] Do university courses teach the right things for life at work later on? - (2011-08-10)
  [3419] Data that we use during our training courses, and other training resources - (2011-09-04)
  [3587] C++ Courses - do I get official certification at the end of my Well House course? - (2012-01-20)
  [4280] Making use of huge data, object orientation, unit testing and frameworks - (2014-06-07)
  [4558] Well House Consultants - Python courses / what's special. - (2015-10-28)
  [4583] Back in the saddle again - excellent open source course from Well House Consultants - (2015-11-26)

G209 - Well House Consultants - Keeping up to date
  [82] Keeping up to date - (2004-10-10)
  [83] Geek Cruising - (2004-10-11)
  [86] Talk review - Idiomatic Perl, David Cross - (2004-10-12)
  [143] Network Camera - (2004-12-07)
  [160] Review of the Autumn - (2004-12-22)
  [250] We dont stand still - (2005-03-18)
  [396] The next technologies - (2005-07-29)
  [2032] Mobile Internet - an alternative to hotel WiFi - (2009-02-09)
  [2078] A lot has changed - but the memory lingers on - (2009-03-12)
  [2352] Printed Directories - the start of the updating season - (2009-08-12)
  [2564] Microblogging services - Plurk, Twitter, Jaiku and more - (2010-01-05)
  [2940] Training course locations - Melksham, UK; Buxton, UK; Lake Constance, Germany; Venice Italy, the USA and India - (2010-08-30)
  [3003] What will we be teaching in six years? - (2010-10-17)
  [3469] Teaching dilemma - old tricks and techniques, or recent enhancements? - (2011-10-08)
  [3653] What is happening in 59 days time in Melksham? - (2012-03-14)
  [3755] Cruising on the Mersey Ferry? - (2012-06-07)
  [4200] Endorsed Perl, Python and PHP training - Tcl, Lua, Ruby and C too! - (2013-10-24)
  [4314] PHP training - refreshed modern course, backed up by years of practical experience - (2014-11-16)

G204 - Well House Consultants - Equipment and facilities
  [432] New print centre for our manuals - (2005-09-01)
  [450] Wheelchair access - can do! - (2005-09-25)
  [452] Is enough enough? - (2005-09-27)
  [460] New Network - (2005-10-10)
  [1089] Playing old games - (2007-02-22)
  [1126] MacFormat - Me and My Mac - (2007-03-31)
  [1363] One computer per delegate, or pair programming? - (2007-09-23)
  [1364] Korn shell course - resources - (2007-09-24)
  [1415] Better technology makes for longer commutes? - (2007-10-29)
  [1701] Training Course and Business Conference Technology - (2008-07-07)
  [2222] A (biased?) comparison of PHP courses in the UK - (2009-06-07)
  [2795] Simon says - (2010-06-05)
  [2810] A course review - for the tutor to complete - (2010-06-14)
  [2850] Fresh Paint for course presentation - including C++ - (2010-07-03)
  [2935] 01225 707126 to 01225 344596 to 01225 899360 - Well House Fax - (2010-08-26)
  [3109] A weighty decision - (2010-12-26)
  [3130] New Computers for delegates to use - (2011-01-13)
  [3137] Training Classes - should the training company provide a system for each delegate to use? - (2011-01-18)
  [3174] Sharing a single hotel internet connection without carrying extra hardware - (2011-02-18)
  [3196] No news is good news. - (2011-03-07)
  [3310] How fast is your Internet access? Do you need something faster for your business or home? - (2011-05-29)
  [3489] Python courses and Private courses - gently updating our product to keep it ahead of the game - (2011-10-20)
  [4261] Updated delegate computers - nine of the best - (2014-04-10)

Back to Efficient PHP applications - framework and example

Previous and next or Horse's mouth home

Forward to Pictures of December

Well House Consultants Training and Hotel - 2008 news
Apple Mac Operating System OS X - code names and version numbers
Software to record day to day events and keep an action list
Pictures of December
New trainee laptop fleet for our Open Source courses
Efficient PHP applications - framework and example
Does anyone understand Lithuanian?
Copyright and theft of images, bandwidth and members.
A christmas message
What have hotels and bananas got in common?