Paul Thurrott at winsupersite writes an interesting article comparing Microsoft to IBM and mentions how Microsoft is becoming the next IBM. The article is pretty lenghty and there are quite a few valid points. However, being a staunch Microsoft follower and a current IBM employee, I beg to differ in some ways, and unlike Paul, I will just write them in point form instead of a lengthy article:
1) IBM, over the years has become a software/services vendor for large/medium sized corporations only. They have no consumer offering at all. Microsoft has corporate as well as consumer offerings, which makes it a different beast.
2) Microsoft actually has a meaningful mission statement and has lived on to fulfil it. Windows runs on servers, desktops, laptops, tablets, netbooks, Pocket PCs and smartphones. Anything with a micro-processor can run Windows. IBM's spectrum is nowhere close to being this wide. IBM's mission statement of "Smarter planet" sounds pretty vague too.
3) Microsoft has a lot of innovation and is open to new ideas and newer trends in technology. They are willing to adapt and change as time changes. Last time, I checked, IBM's latest version of DB2 or Lotus Notes was not 21st century stuff.
4) This one if my favorite. Try installing any Microsoft stuff; be it SQL Server, Windows or Office. The process is like this: Next, next, next, finish. And the product works out of box. Try installing DB2, Lotus Notes, Websphere or any other IBM product. One needs training to even learn how to install this stuff.
Since I am not an active Microsoft MVP anymore, I do not have access to the MVP portal and hence cannot find which KBs I wrote as an MVP in the past. I thought I would post these few KB articles I wrote for anybody looking to finx any of these issue in Windows XP. Not that anyone would need this stuff with the release for an awesome new Microsoft OS.
How to add or modify the OEM link on the Windows XP style start menu
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555437
Modify the auto-restart time interval after a Windows update installation
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555646
The "Play all" feature in the common tasks pane of Windows Explorer does not work as expected
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555409
I have no intentions of making this blog an "Apple bashing blog", however, its ridiculous how Apple QA is so pathetic and people choose to overlook this. Come on, its not just that the product is buggy, but its outright dangerous to use and can cause serious damage to life and property by causing a fire. When was the last time that you heard a Zune, a Xbox 360 or a Windows mobile device burst up in flames?
http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/19/japan-investigates-exploding-first-generation-ipod-nanos-again
Very interesting post by Kevin Reeuwijk here. I have been dabbling with Windows Server 2008 RTM and Exchange 2007 SP1 lately and had a single server install of Exchange on a rusty old dell laptop just for POC purposes. However, I did not run into the same issues with Outlook Anywhere that Kevin did, because I had disabled IPv6 right in the very beginning since I was trying to enhance the performance of my install on an ancient dell machine.
In other news, my Dell laptop finally managed to stop working. The NIC would misbehave and give itself a 169.XXX.XXX.XXX IP address for no reason. This led me to finally pony up the cash and sign-up for a hosted exchange account with Sherweb. So far the experience has been pretty good except for the initial setup when my domain's MX records had been configured correctly and propagated within the DNS and yet Sherweb's SMTP would refuse to accept my incoming emails with a 550 error. A quick call with tech-support resolved it in seconds ! Kudos to Sherweb !
Long Zheng over at istartedsomething.com has an excellent post about Windows ME, outlining some of the innovative features that shipped with it. He reminds us that, although we never spare Windows ME from all the ridicule, we never acknowledged the new features that shipped with it. Read the whole article here.
Amongst other news, Microsoft officially shipped SP1 for Windows Vista today. Please launch the Windows Update utility from within Windows to download and install Service Pack 1.
Update
- Download the x86 version of SP1 here
- Download the x64 version of SP1 here
Its the season of giving and Microsoft is also doing its share. What with releasing not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 service packs for the 4 flagship products !
Windows Vista Service Pack 1 RC
[Download]
Windows XP Service Pack 3 RC
[Download]
Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1
[Download]
Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 1
[Download]
Apart from the service packs, also available is the Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate 1
Windows Server 2008 RC1 Enterprise
[Download]
I am sure this is one of the best times for beta testers and other geeks alike ! Merry Christmas !!!
Out of all the Microsoft products, I am the biggest fan of Exchange Server. Exchange is a messaging and collaborative technology, developed by Microsoft and its latest incarnation, Microsoft Exchange 2007, works beautifully with the entire range of Office Suite. Microsoft Exchange also features the "Direct Push" technology, wherein email and other items are synced in real time on Windows Mobile devices. In other words, Exchange is a truly unique product and there are practically no direct competitors to it in the market.
Exchange is mostly targetted at corporate environments, however, its feature set is best suited for any average user, due to the seamless integration between the client and the server portions, intuitive UI and support for various kinds of access (desktop client, web, mobile). There are various other reasons, and I will let this amazing blog post do the explanation. Since it is practically impossible for a home user to run an Exchange server environment due to hardware, bandwidth and licensing cost constraints, a whole bunch of companies offer, what is known as "Hosted Exchange" environment. I personally run an Exchange server on a virtualised environment, mainly for test and learning purposes, however, I am looking into switching to a hosted environment. There are many players out there, but I am looking at Sherweb's single-user friendly offer. If I do end up trying them out, I will put up a future blog post detailing my experiences.
A screenshot from last evening's CSI:
For a $600 device, I should be able to have my own custom ringtones on my iPhone. Apparently Steve Jobs and his minions dont think so. I remember back in the days I had a Nokia 5110i and I could have my own custom ringtones in that too. This is about 6-7 years ago. So some people figured out how to put their custom ringtone in their iPhone...turns out you have to get the phone in a bootloader like stage and then push the files in. I'd say thats really backwards. Anyhow, those interested can check out the full process here.
Thank goodness for Windows Mobile. I love my QTEK 8300.
Have you ever navigated to a folder full of video files in Windows Vista and you got the nasty error below ? Well, here is a solution to make this error go away.
It is believed that this error is caused by an incompatibility with Windows Vista from an outdated version of Nero burning software so update to the latest version of Nero (7.10.1.0), which was released on 5th July. If however, you wish to stick with your current version of Nero:
- Navigate to "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Ahead\DSFilter"
- Rename NeVideo.ax and NeVideoHD.ax to something like NeVideo.old and NeVideoHD.old . This will break Nero Showtime, but thats a minor inconvenience.
Good luck !
Came across this very touching piece through Scoble's post. Quite a gripping story about real people. Just made me realize (yet again) how lucky I am to be safe, secure and to be amidst my loved ones. God bless these guys in the video.
Windows Mobile Device Center 6.1 has finally been released. Amongst other improvements, now smartphone users can also sync files to their device. Other improvements are as follows:
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Windows Mobile 6 feature support
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Information Rights Management activation - Automatically configure the Windows Mobile 6 device to open IRM-protected documents and files
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HTML mail – Set up your Windows Mobile 6 device to sync HTML-formatted mail
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Certificate Enrollment - Acquire certificates through the PC the Windows Mobile 6 device is currently connected to
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Allow data connections on the Windows Mobile 6 device when connected to the PC
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File synchronization for smartphones – Synchronize files with your Windows Mobile 6 devices, including both touch screen and non-touch screen devices
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Automatic device authentication - Connect the Windows Mobile device to the PC without the need to enter the device-lock PIN every time upon connect
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Product Registration - Register your Windows Mobile device and get connected to information and offers available for your device
Download here
Its high time for a technical blog post, so here we go. Heard of ReadyBoost technology in Windows Vista ? Yeah, the one in which one can boost the performance of a machine which has less system RAM. Well, one needs a decent USB memory stick or a SD/MMC/CF card. How do you define 'decent' ? Well, there are certain specifications set by Microsoft and your external memory chip should meet these specifications. I recently came across this wonderful post by Trevin Chow on how to figure out the read/write speed of a USB or SD/MMC/CF card. Its pretty interesting and the tools ...actually the only tool, comes with Windows Vista. Some technical details are as follows:
Required specs for ReadyBoost:
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The USB Key must be at least USB 2.0
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The device must be able to do 3.5 MB/s for 4 KB random reads uniformly across the entire device and 2.5 MB/s for 512 KB random writes uniformly across the device.
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The USB Key has to have at least 64mb of free space
Steps to determine if your device is ReadyBoost capable:
Determine read speed:
- winsat disk –read –ran –ransize 4096 –drive <drive_letter>
Determine write speed:
- winsat disk –write –ran –ransize 524288 –drive <drive_letter>
Where <drive letter> can be substituted by the drive letter without the colon symbol; i.e. D: can be substituted by D . Also, the command prompt needs to be run as an administrator in order for this to work. Pretty nifty little tool.
For all those who find it frustrating that you can no more connect to Windows Live Hotmail through Outlook to send and receive email, well, there is news...good news. Windows Live Hotmail was just released worldwide. Omar Shahine reports that Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 would be able to connect to Windows Live Hotmail for FREE !! Head over to the official Windows Live Mail blog and Omar's entry to read more about it.
First day of work at Shell Canada along with 95 other co-op students from all over Canada was very interesting. It was interesting to note that my University had the second highest representation after, obviously, U of C. Orientation included an introduction to Shell Canada as well as some bits of information about the recent developments at Shell Canada. This was followed by some corporate security policies session and a magic show by an employee. Yes, you read that right. My supervisor met me over lunch and thereafter she introduced me to my team and my cubicle. Oh yes, that wonderful little corner where I would be spending the rest of my summer. However, it seemed to me that work safety and work ergonomics are a huge concern for Shell. So we were informed about all the safety procedures and fire drills right on the first day. Even the office furniture are top-notch and can be adjusted just about in every way to suit our needs. Desk heights can be adjusted and the chairs are very comfortable. Keyboard and mice had pads so that repetitive strain injuries do not occur. I have a cubicle right next to a huge window overlooking the street, which is very relaxing.
A few things I noticed (being a technological freak). Windows 2000 seemed to be the OS of choice on the corporate desktops along with Office 2000. Security is a HUGE issue and a two way authentication is required for logon to desktops. The desktops themselves are locked down in every way. Software installation is only possible if approved by system admins and are available in the corporate IT catalog. Door passes are required for access to washrooms and elevators.
That’s about it for the first day. I really look forward to working for Shell for the next few months.
Customizing the manufacturer info in Windows XP was pretty straightforward with a OEMINFO.INI and OEMLOGO.BMP file placed in the system32 directory. However, that is changed in Windows Vista. After my recent clean install on my Dell laptop computer, I had to restore the manufacturer and support information. A little bit of searching yielded that this information is now stored in the registry in the following location and in the following format:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OEMInformation
"Manufacturer"="YOU"
"Model"="WHATEVER"
"SupportHours"="24 hours"
"SupportPhone"="XXXXXXXXX"
"SupportURL"=http://www.manufacturer.com
"Logo"="C:\\Windows\\system32\\manufacturer.bmp"
The values are all string type. The manufacturer's logo should be a 160x160 bitmap file. The customizations appear in the system properties dialog box and in the Welcome Screen which is automatically launched during OOBE.
This comes a bit late, but i wanted to do full justice to this blog post and hence took my sweet time to write it out. Mind you, I am not complainging about anything, just putting forward my experiences with Dell customer support as an owner of a brand new >$2000 top of the line XPS laptop computer.
My brand new machine shipped with Windows Vista Home premium alongwith all the other useless crapware that comes installed with every new Dell, Toshiba, Sony etc. In my infinite wisdom, I decided to re-format and install Windows Vista Ultimate to have the best flavour of Windows on my machine for bragging rights. The installation of Windows went flawlessly and within half an hour I had my machine up and running with all drivers etc installed. The only missing component was the Dell truemobile 355 bluetooth module. It would not show up under task manager, even with a yellow icon. There are no hardware switches for it on the machine, so it was definitely not turned off. I tried to run the driver setup for the bluetooth module but it would not proceed, saying that I did not have a bluetooth module or its not turned on. Tried every way I could think of to get the bluetooth action going, but no go. Alright, so i decided it was time to use my 1 year Dell XPS completecare warranty support.
I call the support number and get connected in no time to a human. After performing a few basic troubleshooting steps, he decided to remote into my machine. Upon remoting into my machine, the support rep checked the device manager and then launched the services window. He then started to turn on or change the startup type of various random services like RPC, remote registry etc etc to 'automatic'. Curious, I asked him why he was doing that and I was told that something might be dependant on these services. 'Garbage' was what was going on in my mind. After a few minutes, he transferred me to L2 support.
The L2 support rep also tried the same basic steps and then decided to remote into my machine just like the previous rep. same steps again and he had no clue why my bluetooth module would not show up. So he put me on hold and went to ask his supervisor on his next course of action. On returning back, he asked me if my version of Windows was retail or OEM. On hearing that it was a reatil version of Windows Vista, he prompty told me that they do not support any retail version of any OS. Valid point, but what came up next was funny. He suggested to me that returning back to the OEM version of Windows Vista Home Premium which shipped with my machine might help since the drivers in that version might be compatible with the bluetooth module. I felt I was wasting my time here and so I pretended to take his suggestion and politely bid him good-bye. It was 4 am so I decided to go to bed.
Next morning, after a lot of searching, I discovered this issue was common on Dell forums and quite a few users had faced this issue. One of the users suggested extracting the driver setup files and run a forced setup by running a different file in the directory structure. This gets the driver installed and then it is able to switch the bluetooth radio on. The underlying problem was that the bluetooth module is controlled by software and once it gets switched off internally, there is no way to switch it on without the specific dell drivers. On the flip side, the software would not install if the module is switched off internally. There is no hardware switch so this effectively turns this issue into a catch-22 scenario. However, my problem is resolved for now, but Dell should probably publish a KB article about this or many other users will face similar issues. Thats it for now.
I have been a bit late in reporting about the end of the MVP summit due to the pending work which was waiting for me on my arrival to Halifax. This was by far the best MVP summit I have attended. Starting off with Bill Gates' keynote speech, through technical sessions and product group dinners, I got to meet a lot of MVPs from all around the world and I learnt a lot about different products coming up in the next couple of months.
I am really excited about the upcoming Games for Windows and integration of Live! for Windows so that PC gamers can play against XBOX gamers under supported titles. I was also fortunate to preview some live gaming footage of the upcoming PC game Crysis. The graphics effects were simply mind blowing since they took advantage of DirectX 10.
Apart from the technical session, I met so many other MVPs and really smart Microsoft employees (who impressed me to no ends) and got to socialize with them all. One of the dinners was in the Museum of Flight and boy was it cool !
Alas, now a lot of pending work await me and hence a detailed post about the MVP summit might come later on during the week. Thanks MVP Program for such an awesome time !
With a little bit of sunshine, the 2007 MVP Global Summit started today at the Washington State Convention and Trade Centre with registration of the attendees. I also got to visit the first Starbucks on Pike Street with MVP Gary Tsang. All-in-all, the starting has been good and I am looking forward to Bill Gates' keynote speech alongwith other executive sessions tomorrow.
After a 5+ hour freezing cold flight from Halifax to Seattle (without any food), which included a connecting flight from Vancouver to Seattle in a tiny DASH 8 aircraft, I finally checked-in to Grand Hyatt Seattle this evening. I spent the last two days with my friend, an ex-MVP and a current Microsoft full-time employee.
The 2007 Global MVP Summit starts tomorrow with the registration. Some unique stats for this summit (gracfully stolen from MVP Jason's blog) are as follows:
- The MVP Summit is the largest event held at the Microsoft campus
- 1889 attendees are registered to attend
- 88 countries will be represented (based on registrations)...including for the first time: Algeria, Andorra, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Cyprus, El Salvador, Gibraltar, Honduras, Latvia, Morocco, Nepal, Oman, Rwanda, Tunisia, UAE, Uruguay and Vietnam
- 533 Sessions will be delivered
- 956 Microsoft employees pre-registered as speakers/attendees
- 10 Microsoft Executives and 4 Technical Fellows
Bill Gates kicks off the summit on Tuesday with his keynote at the Washington State Convention Centre. Looking forward to the next week !
Nvidia quietly released their ForceWare drivers for Windows Vista about a week ago. Get them here:
Windows Vista (32 bit)
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_100.65.html
Windows Vista (64 bit)
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_100.65.html
Some of the release highlights as mentioned on their site:
Release Highlights:
- WHQL Certified driver for GeForce 8800, GeForce 7 series, and GeForce 6 series GPUs
- Beta driver for NVIDIA SLI™ support for GeForce 8800 GTX/GTS GPUs
- This driver supports the following features:
- Single GPU support
- DirectX 9 support for GeForce 6/7/8 series GPUs
- DirectX 10 support for GeForce 8800 GPUs
- OpenGL support for GeForce 6/7/8 series GPUs
- NVIDIA SLI support
- DirectX 9 support for GeForce 8800 GPUs
- OpenGL support for GeForce 8800 GPUs
Lets talk about something other than Vista for a change. Lets talk about something free. How about free Wi-Fi access and a free Wi-Fi router ? Sometime ago, I signed up with FON for a free wi-fi router. FON's mission is to create the biggest free wi-fi network on the planet. Now this doesnt quite make sense does it ? Well, FON will send you a free router but in exchange they ask you to share your broadband with the public. And their routers are designed such that they have 2 SSIDs, one for your private use and one for the public. So today I received the free router in mail (shipping is also free guys). Words cant do justice to this sweet little deal, so here are the pictures. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments section and I will try my best to answer them in a separate blog post. Enjoy !
We have all started to love to hate the bland Windows Vista bootscreen. So why not spice it up a bit ? Click on the Start Orb in Vista and type in 'msconfig' (without the quotes) and hit enter. Go to the 'boot' tab and select 'No GUI boot' and hit ok. Thats it ! Restart your machine to see the effects.
My respect for gadget and technology website Gizmodo, went down a couple of notches because of this post. Come on, do some research before reporting factually incorrect news about Windows Vista and joining the lowly crowd of usual Microsoft bashers. According to the post, Windows Vista renders an image unreadable in Photoshop if one adds/edits tags in it using Windows Vista's built-in Windows Photo Gallery. They couldn't be further from the truth. Its not a fault of Windows Vista, but a fault with the industry since there are multiple standards in the industry to write metadata into an image file. Microsoft has published a document regarding this, urging the industry partners to standardize their applications and plugins to use a single model.
Omar Shahine has a very detailed post about this scenario on his blog. Gizmodo, get your facts right !
Since the consumer launch of Windows Vista, everyone and thier dogs have been chattering about Windows Vista and how it needs a super powerful computer to run and so on and so forth. Don't be misled by all these myths. I came across a very interesting article on Tech Republic, debunking the myths about Windows Vista. Its definitely worth a read.
One thing that I would like to add regarding the pricing of Windows Vista is that if you are a student and your school has a MSDN Academic Alliance subscription, you are entitled to a licence of Windows Vista (and other select Microsoft products) free of cost even for your personal usage. Ofcourse, you are paying tuition fees to your school so it is not entirely free. How would you find out if your university/school has a MSDNAA subscription ? Well, the answer is easy. Navigate to the MSDNAA member search page and find out !
PS: My friends in Dalhousie Electrical Engineering, here is the login site for our MSDNAA subscription.
While one is connected to a remote machine running Windows XP or Windows Vista through Remote Desktop, the shutdown/restart dialog is unavailable. Instead, a 'Disconnect' button is available. Now, one might actually want to shutdown or restart the remote machine via remote desktop. One simple way to achieve this is by using the shutdown.exe tool available in Windows XP and Windows Vista.
- To restart your remote machine, click on Start/Run and type:
- To shutdown your remote machine, click on Start/Run and type:
(Those are zeroes, not the english alphabet 'O')
Thanks to MVP Gary Tsang for asking me this question yesterday, which prompted me to blog about it.
As mentioned on the PowerShell blog, PowerShell for Windows Vista has been released. It is available in x64 and x86 versions and can be downloaded here:
Enjoy !
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