XP

XP Thin Client Runs on iPhone

Chris Haaker — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 03:08:51 GMT

in brief Citrix used its thin client technology to demonstrate an Apple iPhone running Windows XP, at the recent Citrix Application Delivery Conference in Melbourne.

Windows XP, seen below running on the iPhone, was loaded using Citrix's thin client desktop software XenDesktop. Using the Citrix ICA client — a UNIX application that allows devices to access Windows sessions on a Citrix server — the presenter was able to run Windows on the iPhone via Wi-Fi.

Hit the link above to see screen shots of the client running. The iPhone’s native touch screen pinches and other controls work as well allowing you to zoom in on the thin client while running. Tres cool.

Technorati Tags: thin client,Windows XP,iPhone,Virtualization,XenDesktop

IE8 Beta 1 Available

Chris Haaker — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 04:03:38 GMT

Released shortly after today's MIX '08 Keynote, a more standards-friendly IE8 beta 1 is now available for download.

Features include:

Activities - contextual services that provide quick access to external services from any web page.
Webslices - take "slices" of a web site offline or bookmark.
Choice of layout engine
CSS 2.1 compliance
HTML improvements
Improved namespace support
Platform performance improvements
Developer tools
Improved Phishing filters
Domain highlighting

Technorati Tags: Internet Explorer,IE8,IE8 Beta1,Mix 08

SyncToy Beta 2 Released

Chris Haaker — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 04:50:35 GMT

Microsoft's most awesome power toy for keeping many a file synchronized with your USB drive or laptop has been updated. SyncToy Beta 2 has been released and is full of all kinds of updated goodness. The UI remains largely the same, but it looks like a lot of our feedback has been incorporated in to the new edition. If you are upgrading be sure to read the warning during the install. Make sure you have freshly sync'd beforehand.

Dynamic Drive Letter Assignment: Drive letter reassignment will now be detected and updated in the folder pair definition.

True Folder Sync: Folder creates, renames and deletes are now synchronized for all SyncToy actions.

Exclusion Filtering Based on Name: File exclusion based on name with exact or fuzzy matching.

Filtering Based on File Attributes: The ability to exclude files based on one or more file attributes (Read-Only, System, Hidden).

Unattended Folder Pair Execution: Addressed issues related to running scheduled folder pairs while logged off.

Folder Pairs With Shared Endpoints: Ability for folder pairs associated with the same or different instances of SyncToy to share end-points.

Command line enhancements: Added the ability to manage folder pairs via the command line interface.

The SyncToy engine has been rearchitected to provide scalability and the ability to add significant enhancements in future releases.

Sync engine is also more robust insomuch that many single, file level errors are skipped without affecting the entire sync operation.

Sync Encrypted Files: Sync of Encrypted files works when local folder and files are encrypted, which addresses the common scenario involving sync between local, encrypted laptop PC folder and remote, unencrypted desktop PC folder.

64-Bit compatibility

Folder pair rename

Sub-folder Exclusion Enhancements: Descendents creates under excluded sub-folders are automatically excluded.

Folder Pair Metadata Moved: Folder pair metadata removed from MyDocuments to resolve any issues with server-based folder pair re-direction setup.

Removed combine and subscribe actions.

Technorati Tags: SyncToy , Sync data

Download Remote Desktop Connection 6.0

Chris Haaker — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 02:26:00 GMT

Remote Desktop Connection (Terminal Services Client 6.0) for Windows XP (KB925876)

Remote Desktop Connection (Terminal Services Client 6.0) provides a way to use any new Terminal Services features introduced in Microsoft Windows Vista and Microsoft Windows Server Code Name “Longhorn” from a computer running Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or Microsoft Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1.

WTF Windows Vista and Zune ?!?

Chris Haaker — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 00:21:00 GMT

So a lot of us ran out to Circuit City, Target, CompUSA, etc. to get our hands on Microsoft’s latest portable media offering – the super-hyped Zune. Zune has been in production, publicly, for at least the past 8 months. Even longer behind the scenes I am sure. At the same time Microsoft has also been feverishly developing and testing in preparation for release the latest incarnation of its desktop operating system – Windows Vista. Common sense would tell you that somewhere in that time span someone on one of three teams: Zune, Vista or Media Player would have thought of Windows Vista compatibility for the device. Nope. At least not in any sense that seems slightly logical. The box reads “Windows XP SP2 or later.” And as embarrassing as the gaffe is, you think a company like Microsoft would be forthright in admitting the error and letting us know ASAFP when the Vista compatible update would be available. I called the Zune support hot line and was told that they have gotten “a few” calls about that and they do “plan” on releasing a Windows Vista version of the software. They have no idea when. Watch the software downloads page. How is this even possible? Luckily I got wind of this before I pulled the trigger on my purchase. This is totally inexcusable IMO for a company like Microsoft. Some people have responded that Windows Vista has not been released to the public-at-large yet so they [Microsoft] have time to get it out. Windows Vista will be released to developers on the MSDN network Friday and Select and Volume licensing customers can download it now. I would also think that if the update was going to be available in the next two weeks they would announce it and not be so mysterious as when the update might be available. This gives me the sense that it will be months. My personal prediction is 2/07. Pity. iTunes works just fine on Windows Vista.

Microsoft Windows XP SP2 Virtual PC Image

Chris Haaker — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 19:13:00 GMT

Another virtual hard disk (.vhd) image from Microsoft which contains the following:

A VPC hard disk image containing a pre-activated Windows XP SP2, IE6 and the IE7 Readiness Toolkit.

Personally I love this new approach and hope Microsoft keeps on going! I had to do some research and testing on ADAM (Active Directory Application Mode) yesterday and the canned Windows Server 2003 R2 image was the perfect pre-made environment in which to do this! Zero prep time was needed since I had already downloaded it. Granted, downloading a couple of gigabytes takes some time, but after that it is cake! Next I would love to see a Vista RTM image!

Microsoft SyncToy 1.4 Released

Chris Haaker — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 06:35:00 GMT

I love the original Microsoft free power toy called SyncToy. It had its limitations, but as a free tool for syncing and comparing data between two sources, it was quite a gem. The latest version, v1.4 has been released and it looks like they have listened to our feedback with some obvious improvements. Go out and give it a try, you wont be sorry!

The ability to type in a UNC path;

Support for longer folder pair names and ability to widen the left pane to see those longer names;

The ability to support the maximum length for folder paths, and documentation was added to the help file about how to set up a share to be able to sync deep folder pairs;

Better handling of the difference in precision between NTFS and FAT timestamps;

More discoverable link to the help file for information on how to schedule SyncToy using the Windows XP Task Scheduler;

Support for 800x600 screen resolution;

Added a warning for users if the selected action will take some time to complete;

Added brief explanations of the actions in the user interface;

Improved behavior when choosing folders to include or exclude when there are large numbers of folders involved;

Improved support for accessibility modes.

Robocopy GUI

Chris Haaker — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 04:21:00 GMT

I stumbled across this excellent utility enhancement in the latest issue of Microsoft's TechNet Magazine in an article by Joshua Hoffman. Robocopy, as I am sure many of you know, is a great utility for copying large amounts of data from one location to another. It is highly customizable and is especially adept at mirroring data from one place to another, including changes. However, the syntax is a beast. Enter a GUI interface that makes creating the proper command line arguments for Robocopy a snap. And once you have it just the way you want it you can save it to run at a later date. You can download it here from the TechNet Magazine website.

Back From Hong Kong

Chris Haaker — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 01:02:00 GMT

I have finally returned from Hong Kong after another not-so-fun fifteen hour flight. At least I had a window seat this time but as bad as I thought Delta was at times, I was being spoiled in comparison to what you get on a United flight. A couple of tiny bags of snacks a tiny little cup of a drink - not even a whole can of soda or mini-bottle of water! They open a big bottle and pour out of it. The screens for the movies during the flight (what else do you have to do - there are no power adapter plugs in coach) were horrible! All kinds of blurs, squiggles and interference. The only thing that went well is we weren't forced to pay five dollars to use our headphones to watch the movies!! Ugh. Please, Delta, open a route to Asia.

Everything went well with the migration. This is about the tenth one I have done overseas and it followed the typical formula:

No matter how well you prepare there will be a large number of things missed with regards to client machines. Some small and some large. Fortunately, few are show stoppers. I have found due to the sheer numbers involved as well as language and cultural differences you will never uncover all the nits ahead of time.
Twelve hour days are the norm - if not the minimum. Get in the office by 8am and work until you start making dumb mistakes.
Go back to the hotel room and then work another 3-4 hours answering emails and doing things from your normal job.
Start all over the next day.

We laid in the network first and got it squared away so we could then dcpromo the domain controller and allow replication to begin. The next question the PM had for me is how long will replication take? Our estimates came in at 41 hours. How will we know when it is complete? Good question. I had never thought about it but all of my previous dcpromos had been on LANs or pretty beefy WAN links. I never had to worry about if or when replication would complete. I knew how to check the various of aspects of replication with REPLMON but after combing through the event logs I found this little message that basically said "this wont be a domain controller until replication completes. To check to see when it completes, run the net share command and look for the sysvol share."

Once the domain controller was promoted we could begin with the client migrations. We used the great new desktop migration tools available in the Windows Vista AIK. ImageX especially came in handy in imaging the old workstations before laying down the new image. We could then mount the .wim file if needed to extract any data that was missed in the migration such as an obscure .pst file. The new file-based image is so much more convenient in this regard than the bit-based images that other disk imaging programs like Ghost provide.

Unread Mail View In Outlook 2007

Chris Haaker — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 22:21:00 GMT

I'm listening to Somewhere Out There by Our Lady Peace from the album Gravity

I have really started to take advantage of the unread mail view\filter available in Outlook 2007 (and Outlook 2003) to get a better handle on mail coming in. This view will show all of my mail and RSS items that have the unread flag turned on. At first it took some getting used to as some of the RSS feeds that come with Outlook 2007 by default have a lot of postings (MSNBC News for example) as well as all of the MOM alert emails I get and traffic from various mailing lists. The first thing I do is go to view -> Expand\Collapse Groups -> Collapse All Groups. This collapses all of the emails under their group headings and provides a count for how many unread emails each contains. I then expand Inbox so I can easily notice when new items drop in. Using the arrow keys on my keyboard I can easily navigate up and down the tree expanding and collapsing groups (left or right arrow) as I move along. I also collapse the Navigation Pane to give myself some extra screen real estate while reading. In the Beta 2 TR I have found some bugginess with regards to when read items "drop off" the view (sometimes not at all) but overall I find this a very useful and effective way to focus on what needs to get done. I would like to say I shoot for a clean inbox, but so far I am about 30 emails short.

tags: Outlook2007, Outlook, UnreadMail, OutlookViews