My trust in Dell laptops just received a significant boost after reading the following story.

Medium rare laptop
http://www.luckywhitegirl.com/2005/11/medium_rare_ele.html

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It is believed that this error is caused by an incompatibility with Windows Vista from an outdated version of Nero burning software so update to the latest version of Nero (7.10.1.0), which was released on 5th July.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:

1. Navigate to "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Ahead\DSFilter"
2. 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.

Ok, this is the mother of all dog fooding ever. Microsoft.com is running 100% on Windows Server 2008 Beta 3. Thats a very bold statement from Microsoft, proving the reliability and robustness of Windows Server 2008. For more statistics and numbers, check out Anna Liu's blog posting.

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:

• Windows Mobile 6 feature support
  • Information Rights Management activation - Automatically configure the Windows Mobile 6 device to open IRM-protected documents and files
  • HTML mail – Set up your Windows Mobile 6 device to sync HTML-formatted mail
  • Certificate Enrollment - Acquire certificates through the PC the Windows Mobile 6 device is currently connected to
  • Allow data connections on the Windows Mobile 6 device when connected to the PC
  • File synchronization for smartphones – Synchronize files with your Windows Mobile 6 devices, including both touch screen and non-touch screen devices
• Automatic device authentication - Connect the Windows Mobile device to the PC without the need to enter the device-lock PIN every time upon connect
• 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:

• The USB Key must be at least USB 2.0
• 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.
• 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:
  • shutdown.exe -r -t 00
• To shutdown your remote machine, click on Start/Run and type:
  • shutdown.exe -s -t 00

(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:

• x86 Version
• x64 Version

Enjoy !

With the consumer launch of Windows Vista just hours away, the Windows Vista Ultimate extras just went live. Those of you who have Windows Vista Ultimate already installed, navigate to Windows Update and check for updates. The extras downloads should show up as follows:

Go get them !!

A new, very useful feature in Windows Vista lies beneath the surface of all the eye-candy that comes with it. I am talking about the new Disk Management features that have been included in the Disk Management mmc snap-in. One useful and often needed feature is the ability to resize partitions non-destructively. This was previously achieved through the means of third-party software in Windows XP, but not anymore. Just right click on a partition and click on 'Shrink' or 'extend'. The rest is pretty straightforward for those who know what they are doing :o) .

Happy Republic Day, India. Jai Hind !!!

At the GTEC event in Ottawa a few months ago, a visitor to the Microsoft Ask The Expert booth complained to me that the navigation pane in windows explorer in Windows Vista annoys him to no end and he cannot find any way to turn it off. The question actually caught me off-gaurd and after fooling around for a few minutes, I finally found the solution. Here it is for those of you who are facing similar issues.

1. Click on 'Organize'
2. Point to 'Layout'
3. Click on 'Navigation pane'

Here is a before/after shot of Windows Explorer for those of you who are wondering what exactly the navigation pane looks like:

It is a commonly known fact that Windows Vista will require atleast 512 MB of RAM to install and run. However, for optimum performance, higher quantities of physical memory is a definite need. Steve Rowe, a Development Lead in test at Microsoft posts his expert opinion on this subject matter on his blog. Thanks Steve !

One would imagine that the Windows Vista setup is smart enough to determine the type of machine that it is being run upon (Tablet PC, Laptop, Desktop etc) and install the appropriate components only. However, that is not the case. On a default desktop install, Windows Vista installs the Tablet PC components, which creates unnecessary services and results in a performance hit.

The Tablet PC bits can be removed through the following steps:

1. Click on start and select control panel.
2. Click on 'Uninstall a program' under Programs.
3. Click on 'Turn Windows features on or off' and scroll down the list of features.
4. Locate 'Tablet PC optional components' and if it is checked, uncheck it. Click on OK.
5. You will probably be prompted for a system restart following this.

This should get rid of a few processes and boost system performace marginally.

As posted by Jason last night and originally by Sean Alexander, about Vista Media Center online content, it seems to have been enabled now for the Canadian market. As soon as I launched Media Center today on my Vista machine, I was greeted by the following screen:

Go enjoy !

PS: It was about -27C today in Halifax so my productivity levels have gone down and I have been watching TV on my Media Center all day.

Do you see the Windows Vista consumer launch countdown timer on the right hand column of my blog ? Its called a gadget and this particular gadget has been written by MVP Donavon West. Gadgets are a new concept in Windows Vista and the whole Live platform. Gadgets are small plugins (in laymans terms) which display glancable information. Instead of you visiting a website, they get the information to your desktop and they can be displayed in the Windows Vista sidebar or on your personal live.com homepage. I guess justice wouldn't be done to gadgets unless you read the official source.

Oh yes, you should also grab the Windows Vista gadget from Donavon's website. Enjoy !

Amongst a lot of hype, the iPhone was launched yesterday at Macworld. Since this product has probably been the most followed, analysed and discussed in the history of consumer devices, the hype was very understandable. At first the iPhone definitely looked to be a revolutionary device, however, on a deeper analysis, the iPhone definitely seemed lacklustre to me. How ? Read on...

1) Lack of 3G. If the iPhone is launched in June 2007, the lack of 3G definitely makes it outdated right at its launch, and not "5 years ahead of its time" as mentioned by His Steveness. Afterall, even the cheapest Windows based smartphone has GPRS and EDGE.

2) No user replaceable bateries. What do you do after listening to a few hours of music and watching a few videos on a plane ? Your iPhone batteries would be dead and you would be bound to the nearest wall charger as soon as the plane reaches the terminal. What happens if the battery dies prematurely ? You cannot go to the nearest Apple Store and buy a replacement battery. I do not understand how a smartphone cannot have a user-replaceable batteries.

3) No third party software. A smartphone is more of a platform for developers so that its processing power can be utilised to the fullest with the add-on software. If Apple sticks to this specification even after the launch, the iPhone would definitely be very limited in its capabilities.

4) The exorbitant price ! The device costs $599 USD PLUS a 2 year contract from Cingular. How much does that cost you ? Math 101 anyone ? Also, how are the rest of the users on different networks supposed to get hold of the iPhone ? How about Canadian users ?

Mind you, the iPhone definitely sets a very high standard of Industrial design and superb engineering, but it does not justify its pricepoint as compared to its featureset. There are more industry analysts like Scoble and Paul Kedrosky talking about the iPhone on similar lines and it would be interesting to hear something from the Mac fanboys.