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Wow, everyone is getting worked up about Robert May's Vista posting. I didn't realize that we had so many zealots. I don't really have an opinion about Vista because I have not extensively personally used it. From a business standpoint, I think that it will take quite a while to be adopted. Let's face it, most business types are quite satisfied with Windows XP. Unless they are forced to switch (because of leveraged security concerns) or by new PC purchases, it will not be widely adopted soon. The ...

It is interesting in the blog-o-sphere, when somebody speaks their mind and shares their true feelings about something how it can generate such buz. I think that is when you know something is really important. Robert May hit one of those topics this week with his post Response to Vista? That's it? I haven't seen blog banter like this since the good old VB vs. C#, Oracle vs. SQL Server, IE vs. Firefox wars... Robert got himself stuck between 2 zealots... Mr. Windows.... how dare you insult the greatest ...

I've just got my new laptop. Dell INSPIRON 6400 with 2GHz Intel Core 2 Due CPU, 2GB RAM, 256MB ATI VGA, 120GB HD, and had my Vista installed on it. Man, the REAL Aero is more than terrific. :):):) Much better than the weird eye classic one I had on my old laptop and caaaused pain to my eyes at least! I was considering installing only Orcas on this new machine as I knew it can open VS 2005 solutions without messing with them, but Dody just found out a bug that the project dialog does not open there ...

Hey, c'mon guys, Rob May was just putting his opinion out there...let's all have a big GWB hug and lovin-in...Kumbya...Kumbya... But anyway, I wanted to voice my own opinion on part of Rob's comment...and not as a slag to Rob, but as a slag to the many who think the same thing as what Rob posted, and what I've even though before I started running with Vista. Here it is...ready? Vista kicks the f#%$^'n s%#%t out of OS X. There. I said it. Let all the Steve Job fanboys begin their flames. I can make ...

I pinched this excellent articule from Patrick Rouse : http://www.msterminalservic... There are many advantages and some disadvantages to any VDI Solution, but some common usage scenarios are: Enterprise Desktop Consolidation – many organizations struggle with management of their client computers. Tasks like procurement of desktop computer hardware, deploying or patching desktop operating systems, updating antivirus signature, securing data, ...

Microsoft is making its way across the country to announce the new VISTA operating system, Office 2007 and other products for businesses to use. Twenty Lake Highland programmers went to the event at the Rosen Plaza Hotel in Orlando, FL and made Microsoft history. There were over three thousand in attendance at this event which was a larger crowd than in New York city. Way to go Floridians. We're ready for a change!

Some have wondered why Vista took so long to get to us. What's the big deal about it anyway? Well, it's much more than a pretty face and the fancy new communication features of WCF. Okay, so that was all it was going to be originally. A marginal upgrade. A hop between Whistler and Blackcomb, and its code-name told it all: Longhorn is just a small bar nestled between those two giant mountains. But when Blaster and other embarassing attacks surfaced in the 2003 timeframe, the original plans to make ...

Here's and interesting thought for this week...does Microsoft lead or lag the world of BPM? At the beginning of this week BPM suite company Metastorm announced their plans for 2007. What was most striking about their announcement was the way in which they are going to leverage the latest Microsoft technology including Office 2007, Vista and MOSS 2007. In particular they make reference to the Office 2007 ribbon and Vista gadget's. What is the message from Microsoft? Well putting aside the BPM picture ...

Why Windows Vista is the question that previals in many of our minds. Many of the users running Windows XP SP2 must be much happier with the features, security and other related things and would wonder on why Windows Vista is required. One of the top reasons I felt was the world of improvements that have been made with regard to Network Sharing and Connectivity. If you are person who keeps travelling frequently, there are a variety of places where you would require to change the network connection ...

O.K.--so I got a shiny core duo 2 from dell the other day, and have vista loaded onto it. The performance thingy rates me as a 3.5 (because of the video card), and says I should be able to enjoy all of the snazzy new features of Vista.I start to tinker, and soon find that the Aero stuff is really only skin deep--as soon as you go into any of the dialog boxes for more advanced stuff (like the system dialog boxes, the "advanced properties" of the display, etc), you quickly find that this is just XP ...

ATLAS / ASP.NET AJAX Extensions has finally graduated to RTM. Exams are done and it's time for fun :):):):) ;-) That's true. ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 is coming with source. The Microsoft AJAX library is code complete of course, while the core server side controls will have their source code posted within a week or so. Download the Core Extensions Download the Futures January CTP (this is the only one still CTP of course) Download Microsoft AJAX Library (that has its own source of course) Download the Sample ...

Hey NVIDIA, I for one have put a TON of money into my machine here at home, you know staying current has its price. I have a super nice Asus SLi motherboard, dual eVGA video cards that were rediculously expensive (they still are come to think of it), loads of memory and freakin' fast hard drives and all of this for what? So I can run Vista. When are you going to deliver on your promise and release drivers for SLi on Vista (x86 of 64-bit, doesn't matter)? I'm a developer and understand that it takes ...

This code will load the MapInfo.Application object into a listbox and display the sample US County data. It assumes your form has a listbox called listBox1 and a "using System.Reflection;". It also works in Vista! string mapName = "C:\\Program Files\\MapInfo\\Professiona... System.Type oType = System.Type.GetTypeFromProg... object o = System.Activator.CreateInst... oType.InvokeMember("do... ...

Craig Tanner (whom I have tremendous respect for) did a podcast on process of creating the RadiantVista Podcasts. In the podcasts Craig mentions that he/they use an open source tool called Audacity for their audio editing. I tried Audacity today and it's pretty good. I am not an audio guru so have no in depth knowledge of what to expect of an audio editor, but as far as I am concerned, audacity lets me do all the basics, select, play, cut, copy, paste, loop. Tags: Radiant Vista, Podcasts, Craig Tanner, ...

For those of you with the Cojones to go Vista full-time, of which I am one, make sure you try the ReadyBoost feature. It actually works !!! ReadyBoost is suppossed to give you extra cache by plugging in a thumbdrive into your machine - great for laptops. I can't tell you how noticable the difference is. I bought a Sandisk Cruzer 4gig thumbdrive with the intention to fully allocate it to this so right now my experience is from an extra 4gig boost. My laptop has a built-in card reader and I happen ...

Many of you would have read my earlier post on the What is what on Visual Studio 2005 SP1, ASP.NET AJAX RC1 and .NET Framework 3.0. While the other two are more or less a future preview releases or a little new, let us talk about Visual Studio 2005 SP1 since Visual Studio 2005 is already in the market for quite some time. Visual Studio 2005 SP1 covers a number of bugs such as slowness in the editor, default HTML Validator turning on and quite a few related to performance reported by folks like you. ...

Now I have Vista installed I want to protect my installation with some decent security software. NTL NetGuard the free Internet Security software for NTL subscribers which is made by Radial Point is actually very good and meets my needs very well but during installation under Vista an Error 1321!? appears. After speaking to NTL technical support it seems they will support Vista eventually but the operative couldn’t supply me with any dates. Jan 30th I suggested! Another reminder that I would have ...

I have been using Onfolio blog reader since I installed MSN Live toolbar sometime ago; its nothing special but does the job. The biggest problem for me is that onfolio stores state offline so when I read a blog at work (during lunch of course!) it gets marked as read but then when I go home I have to mark it as read again....bit of a pain but at the time I had a look at Google reader and didn't like it so stuck it out with Onfolio. Recently I installed Vista and Office 2007 and to my surprise lots ...

Biztalk is a fantastic piece of software but many I.T. professionals haven't had an opportunity to see it and understand what it can do. Our next session at NxtGenUG is going to one of our best yet as it will be topical with a nugget by Tim Leung about Microsoft latest operating system, Vista, and the main presentation will be Ben Goeltz, 'The Business of Biztalk' which went down extremely well at the Birmingham chapter in November. I can also report that we are now completely and utter SWWWWAAAGGGEDDDD ...

I was asked to be one of the folks answering questions at the big Phoenix "Ready for a New Day" launch event. Definitely a fun experience, and pretty well attended. A common question that came up is what level of hardware runs well with Vista? The answer I had given to everyone is to have 1.5 gigs of RAM, and a nice DirectX 9 video card if you want the cool Aero effects. Over the past couple days I got to experience what it's like when you don't have enough RAM. I originally had two sticks of DDR ...

Interested in knowing up coming features in BizTalk Sever 2006 R2, you may find following information useful Ø BizTalk Server 2006 R2 builds on BizTalk Server 2006’s business process management capabilities by extending a company’s core process management technologies outside of the corporate boundaries, and into supply-chain and trading partner scenarios. Ø BizTalk Server 2006 R2 will include new capabilities that address core challenges found in key vertical industries such as manufacturing and ...

Clarification - The specific program I am working with here has the word "updater" in the name. This flags the UAC that it needs admin rights. Full Trust ClickOnce plays nicely with UAC otherwise. I've been battling all day with how one of our ClickOnce applications works with the UAC in Vista. I've found two ways to get past the "Cannot Start Application" message: Run IE as an administrator The first way is very painful and not useful for a repeatable process, but it works. Assume your ClickOnce ...

Our book is printed, and out. Source code is now online on the Apress site. Already seeing a few ratings on Amazon and a question regarding what version of WCF (.NET 3.0) was used. The book and supporting code works with the RTM version of .NET 3.0 released in December on XP SP2, along with Vista RTM (which has .NET 3.0 already part of the distribution). It's a great feeling to see this thing actually in print after a long road from concept to print (1.5 years easily). I had one advantage over my ...

I received today the confirmation to my registration for MIX07 in Las Vegas. I am very excited to go and attend this event again. Last year's MIX06 has been a defining event for me, followed by intensive work to introduce WPF into my firm. So far this activity was a success, and I am very excited to see the "real" development activities starting (as oppposed to prototyping, which we did most of last year). This year's MIX07's major technology is probably going to be WPF/E. While we don't plan to ...

So it's been an eventful few weeks. But finally things have calmed down enough that I can enjoy pawning my thoughts off on you, oh gentle reader. I've gotten some excellent feedback concerning my tech in 5 min. articles. Especially the one on Yield Return, so I'll definitely be writing more as inspiration hits me. What do you guys want to see articles on? I'm planning another patterns and practices one for my next post, but I could be persuaded. My good buddy Josh Holmes (who has an excellent philosophical ...

Please sign up - there are still a spots left for the Tampa,FL Vista & Office 2007 Launch. Register here - Click here -> http://msevents.microsoft.c... See me at the 12:30-3:30 in the ATE area. Also don't forget to visit INETA booths. Ask for Nikita, they know who I am. If I am not around, someone will call for me and I will come meet you. We look forward to seeing you on launch day (details below) and celebrating the next generation ...

If you try to execute 32-bit version of mstsc.exe in Vista 64-bit by passing a .rdp file as an argument, it will act as if you do not pass any argument. I experience this a lot since I use IE 32-bit to open .rdp files on the web which will redirect to 32-bit version of mstsc.exe. Nelly kindly answered me that it will be fixed in Vista SP1. I don't know how long I have to wait given that RTM version hasn't been available to retail yet.

I picked up a SanDisk 4gb usb key this weekend hoping to take advantage of the Vista ReadyBoost feature. I plugged it in, selected ReadyBoost and waited for greatness. I'm still waiting, it doesn't seem to be speeding up my system, but I haven't really been pushing it too hard either. Tom Archer has a great post about ReadyBoost, but I didn't see an answer to "at what performance level does ReadyBoost make a noticeable difference?" Technorati tags: SanDisk, ReadyBoost, Vista, Tom Archer ...

Still loving Vista...but I'd love it more if the mobile device center would actually recognize my device. I mean, it says Treo, but its like talking to two people that have totally different takes on their relationship. Treo: Oh yeah, we're definately in a partnership! Whenever I plug in, my status is full on connected! I just don't understand why he doesn't synch his emails or gives me new applications... Vista: OMG, can you say "stalker"? Treo keeps connecting to my USB port, but we are NOT in ...

As Vista gains momentum, and many of us get our hands on it - we're quickly faced with a question that not many seem able to answer. More disconcerting - there is nothing solid out there to provide direction. If I am a ASP.Net developer - I want IIS available for my development pleasure. More important, I will probably be using Visual Studio to crank out my applications. There is a lot of effort in the launch of Vista and the new Office products - but what about the development community? Especially ...

Virtual PC 2007 runs so well on Vista. VPC 2004 always worked, but it was buggy and slow. VPC 2007 is clean and crisp. You can still sign up for the beta here. Technorati tags: Virtual PC, Vista ...

Today we dug into the new Group Policy features found in Vista. There's 800 new policies altogether, so wow is there lots to see! Plus there's a new XML-based format used to store the information, the ADMX files by which you create the "Central Store" on the domain controller. So lots of neat new things there. After having fun implementing policy around the classroom, we dug into PowerShell in the afternoon. That's truly a significant feature, one that will change the landscape of network administration. ...

Bryant and Chris reported this issue a while ago. Now Microsoft just acknowledged the problem and put in a knowledge base article about this problem as KB911895. Hopefully Microsoft will release a resolution to this problem for Microsoft Vista Home Premium ...

With just 20 days to go for the Consumer launch of Windows Vista, 2007 Office System, be the "First in Billion" and get rewarded fabulously. Be the first in a Billion and get a super-cool HP Pavilion Desktop PC with a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate signed by Bill Gates! What’s more, you get to receive this award at the glittering launch event in Mumbai that will be telecast on TV to millions of households across India! Watch out for the hunt across TV, Internet and over 370 Cafe Coffee Day outlets ...

I was invited to teach a class I wrote about Vista to the good folks at Dell, and so far it's been a very fun experience. A great group here, very passionate about the technology. The first day talks lots about installation and software deployment, and in one of the labs we set up some WinPE discs and created some WIM files from the students' machines. Then for deployment we set up Windows Deployment Services (WDS), which installs a copy of Vista over the network using a simple PXE boot. We had the ...

notepad.exe, *cough*sucks*cough*. But what do you expect? Its obviously supposed to be very limited, but its a little too limited for the year 2007 IMO. Fortunately Matt Berther showed me how to replace notepad on Vista with Notepad2, which rocks. Now when I view source in IE I actually get something I can read. Technorati : Vista, notepad, notepad2 ...

Pheeeeeew - 2007 sure has got an exciting, futuristic start! You've gotto see this to believe it - Ok Steve Jobs announced the iPhone a few hours back - Apple products apart from their looks fail to impress me - but this one with its capability to Sync with Exchange - innovative Interface and sweeet looks has my attention - I'll wait for June to conclude though. But the Real exciting part is this... Ever wanted to win a trip to (almost) Outer Space? Well thats where the Ultimate Vista is - you've ...

I installed Vista on my main development computer today and am proud to report my score: .score, { font-weight:bold; font-decoration:none; font-size: x-large; cursor: hand; background-image: url(http://www.shareyoursco... color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana, arial; width: 80px; height: 80px; background-position: center center; vertical-align: middle; background-repeat: no-repeat; text-align: center; } 2.6 Honestly, I'm just happy to have glass, unlike my laptop. P.S. ...

Talking with Microsoft, I learned of some of the additions they are making for .NET Orcas (due at the end of this year). I am investing quite heavily into Windows Forms projects here at my company; therefore this environment is quite important to what I am doing here. Some of the highly touted items that are being added to Windows Forms are a lot of WPF interoperability items. This was announced at last year's TechEd, but the idea is that you will be able to host WPF controls directly inside of a ...

*Moved to: Screenshots of Vista from 2002 to TodayAn interesting look at Vista (Long Horn) as an Alpha release in 2002, the first Aero features in 2004, to what we have todayread more | digg storyTechnorati Tags: Misc *Moved to: Screenshots of Vista from 2002 to Today ...

A friend gave me this link, which shows off the Vista Yahoo Messenger.

Doesn't that UI look sweet?

Cross-posted from tariqayad.com

So, for Christmas I got this great desktop set from Logitech. The most expensive desktop set on the market. Yet that seems to count for nothing as I have now sent this back; the keyboard was fine and I really miss the "laptop type" keys but the mouse had such a huge lag it was almost un-usable just playing with Windows, playing games was a complete waste of time. Now, I am running Vista and the software doesn't support Vista; I did force the install but continued to get error from the bluetooth connection ...

So, I don't want to gripe or sound really ungrateful for all the wonderful things that us Canadians do get, but seriously...SERIOUSLY...what's up with all those contests or promotions that are "US Only"?! Like, for example, the one here. Yes, I'm talking about how, if you go to the Office/Vista launch event in the states, you get a FREE license for Office Pro 2007 and Groove 2007! Y'know what us Canucks got at our launch event? A t-shirt. And some marketing materials. And a pad of paper. I don't ...

Receive your FREE copy of Microsoft Office Professional 2007 and Microsoft Office Groove 2007* when you attend a Windows Vista, 2007 Microsoft Office system, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 launch event near you! At a launch event you’ll be able to: · Attend breakout sessions for developers and IT professionals · Test drive the products and evaluate their functionality · Network with peers, Microsoft, and local technology partners · Ask the experts · Receive valuable resources to help you take ...

I found this cool application called Visual Task Tips today.

It shows you a preview of the running app when you hover your mouse over the its task bar entry like on Vista

Link: http://www.visualtasktips.com/

I was reading the IT news today, as I usually do at some point during the day, and of course there were several things about the opening of the 2007 International CES in Las Vegas. The big news is that Bill Gates (Chairman at Microsoft - but if you didn't know this, I must ask: in what planet do you live?) started to talk about a "home server", a server that the average home user would have at home, to store their files and stuff like that. Personally, I think it's a great idea to have a server at ...