Of course if you are a serious IT Pro or Developer, you’ll have one of these subscriptions, right?… Right?? If not, I’d advise you do so quick-smart…

Now that the RTM versions of Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode are here, it is time to uninstall the RC versions and install the RTM versions.

To uninstall the XP Mode, it is simple.

• Click Start | Control Panel | Programs | uninstall a program
• choose Windows XP mode and it will uninstall

To uninstall Windows Virtual PC, it is slightly different.

• If you still have Control Panel open, click on View Installed Updates (otherwise repeat step 1 from the previous uninstall)
• Select Windows Virtual PC and it will uninstall…
• Reboot

and you are ready to install the RTM version that you have already downloaded… Virtual PC first, then XP mode after that…

  No more excuses for Death by PowerPoint... Admittedly I haven't tried out PowerPoint too much except to read a few existing powerpoint files. This video sure shows that I need to be looking a little more closely at it. Combining the demo'd effects with the improved file export functionality, I should be able to show this kind of thing anywhere.

Quote

YouTube - PowerPoint 2010 Slide Show Teaser
  

 

This serious disease could be on the rise….

I have now joined the program and installed it here on my home machine. The first few times I attempted an install, I was getting a failure code of  80070643 when attempting to install... The install then bombs out

Looking through the install log, located at “C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Microsoft Security Essentials\Support”,  I see this error

SI (s) (E0:1C) [19:17:10:808]: Note: 1: 1401 2: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\MSSE 3: 5
MSI (s) (E0:1C) [19:17:10:808]: Product: Microsoft Security Essentials -- Error 1406. Could not write value  to key \Software\Classes\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\MSSE.  System error .  Verify that you have sufficient access to that key, or contact your support personnel.

It turns out that, obviously, the permissions on that key were incorrect. I couldn’t just set to inherit so I had to manually do some permissions updates and then rebooted. I then ran the install again and it ran all fine.

After the update, I ran my scans and it all came up good, nice to know… It is only taking up 3K of memory during activity, I'll see how it goes for scans, which honestly, I don’t do a lot of anyway. So It is off to a good start so far, it’ll be interesting to see how it goes once I really start ripping into some activities that may or may not be regarded as questionable.

So far my it has grabbed my interest. I will add it to a couple of older laptops I have that are running Windows 7 RC as well

How’s this for a job ad for Windows 8 Development… Whether or not he is already the there, it’s a great take on future Windows Development. I particularly like his take on the Libraries features. Could this be the WinFS functionality that has been such a pipe dream for so long?

I also like the grouping,m Like having the Favourite Stuff, like links, Music and others in the same spot.

Anyway, It sure has kicked of a bit of debate on speculation… well, perhaps a bit of a murmur if anything.

Thanks to Long for picking this up..

As you know, Windows 7 features a whole new bunch of lovely wallpapers. Also there are a bunch of wallpapers that are available for the various regional themes that can be applied to your PC. Currently, there is Australia, Canada, Great Britain, South Africa and the US. These are fantastic and really do wonders for a theme. Of course, in Windows 7 you can implement the desktop to run as a sllideshow and adjust the time that it changes. the intervals are from 10 seconds up to 1 day..

I have uploaded these wallpapers for download here if you want to grab a copy. It is great to see some Aussie colour in there. It isn’t often that we get localised content so it is good to see some at last…

Spend a small fortune advertising how cool you are and spin a web of bullshit about how bad the other guy is…

As you can see below, not exactly the most effective result from that campaign…

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Operating System Market Share

So I have made the leap from Using Vista and testing Windows 7 to using Windows 7 all the time. The delay wasn’t because Windows 7 wasn’t ready, more that I just hadn’t added the extra software required for me to  work day-to-day.

I am currently running Build 7057 and have alos installed Office 2007 as well as Vision and all the associated stuff like Adobe reader, Flash, Silverlight and all that.

I am yet to have any software issues and everything seems to be working wonderfully. Unfortunately, As it is a Virtual PC 2007 VM, I do not have the Aero capabilities enabled on this machine. It is a bit of a pit because that means no Aero Peek and all that but hey, this is a work tool after all…

Build 7057 looks pretty good. While there are all the change that have been well documented, I do like the subtle interface changes that have been added. Control Panel has a newer icon and some of the others seem to have been tidied up nad smoothed out a bit. I will no more as I start to use it more. I had been using Build 7000 for some time and that was very stable, prompting my first use of Windows 7 full-time.

Stay tuned for more…

How is this for amazing… A Bat has been spotted attached to the Space Shuttle Discovery in it’s last launch… It was attached to the  External fuel tank (shown as the little red circle on the main pic) and spent the last moments of his life in a glorious ascent to the stars…

A poem made in the comments on the Giz story seemed so very appropriate

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds...and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of...wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up, the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor even eagle flew.
And while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space...
...put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

Coulldn’t have summed up a better eulogy for the first bat in space…

EDIT: perhaps this would be more appropriate…

Like a bat out of hell
Ill be gone when the morning comes
When the night is over
Like a bat out of hell Ill be gone gone gone
Like a bat out of hell Ill be gone when the morning comes
When the day is done
And the sun goes down
And the moonlights shining through
Then like a sinner before the gates of heaven
Ill come crawling on back to you

(NASA via Gizmodo)

How nice is the new Dell Adamo laptop?! I love it.. Of course, I can never afford to buy it. After adding the Australia Tax, it is $3299 for a 2Gb version or $4299 for a 4Gb version (+ Mobile Broadband). No Vista Ultimate version either. The only upgrade is going from 1 year premier service to 2 or 3 years… eek.

Aside from the massive price, I’m not really in a position that would need an ultraportable, let alone a stunningly-designed ultraportable. My laptop gets hauled from the car to the lift and then to my desk and back to the car again…

So I’m still sticking with my current weapon of choice, the Dell XPS 1530, which is sadly no longer available. It has been replaced by the XPS Studio series now. I’m not sure that it is a big improvement, just a screen size and design change… After all, Mine is still handling my requirements just perfectly, including my running my VM’s as I need them.

It will be interesting when the release version of Windows 7 ius out as I will change the Host OS to that and be able to boot into my existing VHD images as required… That should make it a little easier to handle..

Long Zheng, from the istartedsomething blog  and regular breaker of Windows news, has taken up the challenge to explain why the new Windows Mobile start menu is made of hexagonal cells.

The hexagonal design has been met by derision by many, but Long explains that this design is in fact the best way to maximize the surface area available to touch each icon while at the same time maximizing the number of icons on the screen.  While 9 icons could have been in screen instead of 8 if a grid was used, our fingers are not square-shaped, and accidental finger-presses would be more common.

I can see the concept, unlike so many in the comments, and totally agree with Long’s closing line:

So the next time you see something new and shiny from Microsoft, before you dismiss it for a poor clone of an existing product or idea, just remember there might be a possibility, the slightest possibility, that some thought and reasoning is behind the decision.

Read the full blog post at istartedsomething.com, which includes a more detailed explanation and more graphics.

One could think that Romance is a dying art, especially on the Internet where all sorts of questionable content can be found… Yet, amongst the noise, there often plays a sweet song. Amongst the Rubbish, a flower grows…

The Boys from Gizmodo dug up this video from Bruce Banit, who, unsurprisingly, runs a VFX shop. The filming took a day, the Post-production took 2 years! A whole new meaning to “fixing it in Post”.

This video is a more official one. The interface is definitely showing some Zune influence there so maybe Zune integration is not far off… well, for you yanks anyway…

I particularly like the swiping side to side part of it, This in such especially with that favourites list or whatever it was… I’m not sure about the Honeycomb interface… perhaps it will look a bit better in the flesh

Given that it is still a few months away and that Australia will be at least another six months behind that, it could be some time before the HTC Touch Pro 2 gets here…

While this is no Windows Mobile 7 and probably isn’t that much new innovation, I’m still excited by it. Not excited enough to get a leaked one and upload to my phone but at least enough to await the arrival with somewhat bated breath..

Having (just) held off on upgrading my HTC TyTN II to the newer Touch Pro, I am very much glad that I did. At the Mobile World Congress, HTC have revealed the new Touch Pro 2 model that will be available with Windows Mobile 6.5. This phone looks to combine the best bits of each of it’s predecessors and will be my new target phone. Fortunately, it will be eons before it is released in Australia. I just bet that the Conference calling (shown in the picture) won’t be supported on our networks. we barely have PTT here, let alone anything like that…

Windows Mobile sure looks to be an improvement, not that it was too difficult to improve on previous version. The screenshots show a number of things that I like already. As long as the speed shown in the official videos here translates to the devices, I think that this will be a great leap forward. Check out the screen shots below.

Here is a user video showing install and usage with both stylus and finger

last night i attend the Brisbane Infrastructure Group (BIG) presentation on Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2. It was a great session to see. While I’ve read plenty about both OS’s, it is always so much better to see it in action. This presentation was given by Jeff Alexander and like so many of his presentations was engaging and informative. However, unlike so many of his presentations, more of his demos worked than not. We saw Hyper-V Live migration, Branch Office caching work smoothly, AD Recycle Bin worked (after sorting some PowerShell oddities) so there was much rejoicing.

I was fascinated by the Branch caching, i had wondered about why you would use it but to see the PerfMon stats and the difference in downloading from the central hub file Server and the cached version were astounding. I was very impressed. Also, the Hyper-V was very good as well. As a company that is in the midst of a Hardware review and currently on 2 x (out-of-warranty )VMware ESX 2.5.4 hosts , I was definitely interested in seeing the alternative instead of blindly shelling out for the ESX 3.5 upgrade costs.

For me a great presentation. I was only disappointed that I had to quickly leave in the middle of the session to drive out of the Eagle St Pier parking and in again to get the Evening parking rates. $30 for 1.75 hours and the after 6pm, $10 for the night…Ugh. talk about highway robbery!!

For those who missed it... check out Jeff’s Blog post to get times. he mentions that there will be continuing webcasts on the topic. I highly recommend checking them out…

Tags: User group Windows R2 Events

You know, I’ve never been one much for Toolbars. Too many websites trying to download them on the sly and they only really replicated functions that were already available. However, as part of testing (and subsequent release) of the Windows Live Essentials, i decided to check out the Windows Live Toolbar.

In particular, I was looking at the custom buttons functionality. I had added the Facebook, Skydrive and Office Live buttons from the Windows Live Gallery  and they were somewhat useful, but not a must-have. Then I started reading into creating the custom ones. Of ocurse, you can go into the Custom build from the Windows Live Gallery here but that uploads it and I wanted to be able to create my own.

So I found out where they are located (C:\users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows Live\Toolbar\Custom Buttons – for Vista machines) and decided to write a bit of XML for my own button. I have added a couple of screen shots to show you what I put together.

I added both this blog and the blog that my Xbox writes (Yes, he

has his own blog…) As you can see, it includes the RSS feeds as well as having some of my own links. Clicking on the button itself takes IE to the Remote Access page of my Windows Home Server. This has made my toolbar a bit more useful.

I’m now thinking how I can use this for our retailers now….

Of course I have been in on the action. I upgraded the Dell Inspiron 1100 from Windows 7 (Build 6801) to Windows Beta 1 (Build 7000). This poor old laptop was my Test Machine initially as well throughout the Vista Beta lifecycle run and subsequent release…

Being a Celeron 2.4Ghz CPU and 1GB of RAM didn’t make it the best Vista machine but it managed for Internet and simple usage. Well, with Windows 7, it feels much more alive. Of course the Intel 845 chipset and on-board graphics mean no Aero but it still looks great.

I am liking the new SuperBar. It took some getting used to it and once I worked out the concepts, I have to say it has improved the useability. It seems I’m not the only one that like it with all of these review being published

Preston Gralla from Computerworld

This first beta of Windows 7 is a polished piece of work, with few apparent kinks to be worked out. Windows 7 is much further along at this beta stage than Windows Vista was at a similar point.

Peter Bright from ArsTechnica

All in all, Windows 7 is shaping up well. It's a far more modest release than Vista was, but it's no worse for that. The new OS introduces a compelling combination of welcome innovations and much-needed polish, and that's exactly what Microsoft needs right now. Vista's foundation was solid, and Windows 7 just makes it better.

Dwight Silverman from the Houston Chronicle

I’ve been working with the Windows 7 beta for several weeks, and I like it a lot. It feels snappier and more responsive than Windows Vista.

Andrew Garcia from eWEEK

Without a doubt, the first beta edition of the Windows 7 operation system indicates that Microsoft is on the right track to shore up many of the perceived flaws of Windows Vista… And at its heart, Windows 7’s greatly improved emphasis on workflow and organization makes the operating system much more palatable for heavy-duty users used to operating with a large number of open windows and applications.

Paul Thurrott from the Supersite for Windows

As for performance, I think Microsoft is going to surprise people. And if you're working for an enterprise that hasn't upgraded to Vista because it won't run acceptably on your existing PCs, you'll want to look again at Windows 7.

Jason Chen from Gizmodo

We mentioned the Problem Steps Recorder blackbox error reporting app back in our Win 7 Giz Explains, but it wasn't until I tried it for myself that I saw just how amazing it is.

Joe Wilcox from Microsoft Watch

I'm actually having fun using Seven, something I haven't said about a Microsoft operating system since Windows 95.

Chandran Chakkaradeep from Neowin

Windows 7 seems to be much improved than Windows Vista in lots of areas and the beta clearly shows that Microsoft has indeed taken users feedback on Vista seriously.

Mary Branscomb from the Financial Times

Microsoft has taken a disciplined approach to planning, building and delivering Windows 7 (and planning is already underway for Windows 8); this may lack the flamboyance of previous versions but if Microsoft can maintain the quality of the beta, Windows 7 could indeed be the best version of Windows yet.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I just hope that the release will make us of the early goodwill.

Also, Microsoft has released updated Windows 7 Beta hardware drivers for: Keyboards, Mice, Cameras, & Headsets.

Hardware Drivers:

• Keyboard IntelliType Pro 7.0 Beta software for Windows 7 32-bit & 64-bit (Release Notes)
• Headset LifeChat 1.3 Beta (Release Notes)
• Mouse & Trackball IntelliPoint 6.3 for Windows 7 32-bit & 64-bit (Release Notes)
• Webcams LifeCam 2.9 Beta (Release Notes)
• XBox 360 Controller & Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows 7 32-bit & 64-bit (Release Notes)

It looks like it is full steam ahead…

Now that I have downloaded the Windows 7 beta and updated the Dell Inspiron 1100 that I have lying around at home, I am wondering how it will go with replacing the other Vista Machines in my house.

One of the important ones that I want to check out is the Media Center. My VMC is working really well despite only having a set of rabbit ears for the Tuner and being on a clunky old Dell Precision 380 (functional, not decorative).

As always in Australia, we are getting bent over by the local TV stations who still can’t embrace the free over –the-air EPG (and Pay TV won’t do it at all) for Media Centers so we have (very good) hacked versions that are provided via the community. Of Course, the Power Pack does affect it and therefore I can expect a while before Windows 7 is supported.

However, Niall has posted an article displaying his work in customising the EPG for Australian TV. It looks fantastic. Channel Logos, Subtitling, Rating s etc etc. Things that other countries take for granted. Check out his work here

I am glad to see that not only is the capability there but also that people are getting into it already. Should anyone doubt the reason for beta releases, here is just one example of how it can be good.

I have received this email today…

We are glad to inform you that a new build is now available for download.
http://download.live.com

The new Windows Live Essentials package includes some of your favourite applications like Messenger, Mail, Writer, Photo Gallery and more. If you don't use Toolbar very much, we strongly encourage you to give the new Windows Live Toolbar a try, you might be pleasantly surprised.

This means that the Live Wave 3 programs are finally ready, with their new Icons and everything… I’ve been using the beta for some time and have really loved the updated programs, particularly Photo Gallery, Live Writer (as always) and messenger. All ican say is get it now!

PS> If only I could edit my weather gadget on this blog to show Brisbane weather instead of bloody Melbourne all the time…