A new blog has appeared over the last month entitled e-science ramblings. This blog is edited by Hugo Hiden who is the technical director of the North Eastern Regional e-Science centre which is based at Newcastle University.

As described in his first post:

The reason for this blog is, primarily, to document my experiences with writing a prototype e-Science research platform using Microsoft tools instead of the more traditional approach of fighting with Open Source. This way is easier, supposedly. The task I have set myself is to recreate, at a basic level, the software being developed by the CARMEN project.

I think this should be an interesting read both on the technical aspects and the usability of Microsoft products compared to open source software for e-science.