Today in one of the groups I am a member, there was a question on the cost benefits of Windows 7 over Windows XP. In these recessionary times, everything is about cost and RoI. No CIO is interested to spend on an upgrade just for technology sake. With that background this was an interesting question, so I set out to answer him, which I have reproduced below.

The first answer for such a question is that any new version of any software product improves “productivity” by XY%, where XY are dependent on how you feel on that day.

Jokes apart, in my opinion I think the upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 saves cost by the following:

1. Productivity, certainly. Common tasks are easier and faster. For example with the built-in Windows Search, finding documents really saves you time. And for techies tasks like IPConfig /Renew can be done from GUI itself
2. Avoid recreating lost documents. Built in version-control and transaction file-system in Windows 7 (Vista has this too)
3. Avoid bandwidth costs by some Spammers using your Windows XP as a SpamBots or Zombies with better stateful firewall (Inbound and Outbound) in Windows 7 (Vista has this too)
4. Data Theft, Security and reinstall time spend with UAC in Windows 7 (Easier to use than in Vista)
5. Less power consumption through better sleep/hibernate support
6. Save time by building web standards Web Applications with built-in Internet Explorer 8.0
7. Save time and cost with built-in CD Burning, DVD Maker (Vista has this too)
8. My personal favourite is an enhanced System Restore (life saver) and time saved with fixing a rogue software install (Vista has this too)
9. A superb Windows Backup (this alone is worth every dollar of Windows 7). Third party products purchased separately for Windows XP store in proprietary backup file formats, where as Windows 7 (as in Vista) uses open VHD file format. This VHD files can be mounted and read/write natively in Windows 7
10. Built-in hardware enhanced virtualization free – Windows Virtual PC, which helps you to continue to run older applications
11. Save time with the more powerful task scheduler (so you don’t need to keep your machine switched ON or be there to run a program)
12. If you are a games developer, Windows 7 saves time by better 3D hardware accelerated graphics support/DirectX
13. Built-in applications like Snipping tool to take screen shots and so on (Vista has this too)

Microsoft has published a "Windows client features comparison chart" between Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista and Windows 7 here.

Few weeks back I decided to repave my Laptop (Macbook Air) and go with Windows 7 Build 7000 (yes I know in few weeks we will have RC ). After fixing few issues with drivers and boot camp, I am overall happy. Occasionally Windows doesn't shut-down gracefully, when it happens you got to force switch-off (which in MBA means holding the power off button for few seconds till you hear a POP sound).

The basic installation of the OS (Windows 7) is similar to doing it for Vista using Boot Camp. You start with Apple Boot Camp CD 1 and proceed from there. My installation was dual-boot configuration - having both Mac OS and Windows 7. Once Windows is installed , you continue with the devices installation which can be a little tricky. Below are few issues I faced before I could get everything working fine.

1. In Mac OS, you can select one of the OS to boot into after a restart. Unfortunately Mac OS didn't show the Windows 7 installation. Nothing to sweat. When you switch ON your machine you need to keep holding Alt (option) key till you the see the boot options. Here you can select Windows 7.
2. In Windows 7, initially for some reasons Boot Camp icon didn't show up in System tray. I had to run it from C:\Program Files\Boot Camp\kbdmgr.exe. I found it useful to update all Apple software then it seems to have got fixed.
3. Audio (Sound card) didn't get its driver installed correctly. MBA has a Realtek HD Audio, so I went to Realtek site and downloaded the latest Vista driver (R 2.22) from here or here. The site is designed a little counter-intuitive so be patient.
4. If some devices like in-built Camera didn't get installed correctly, go to device manager, update driver and point to the BootCamp CD.
5. I have a HP Photosmart C6288 Printer (part of HP Photosmart C6100 series). The default setup from HP will fail to install as it couldn't find either Windows XP or Vista. To fix this, right-click on the setup program (AIO_CDA_Full_Network_enu.exe). Then use the "Troubleshoot Compatibility" option or select properties and the compatibility tab:
1. Set the compatibility mode to Windows Vista
2. Set the privilege level to "Run this program as an administrator"
6. I have a Tata Indicom Plug2Surf USB data card. To install this, first time when you run the setup, Run it as Administrator. Even then when you run the application it will not detect the modem. You will need to ignore the application and create yourself (manually) a dial-up network connection. Customize and follow the instructions from this blog post (which talks for Huawei card though), skip the portions specific to Huawei, but it gives the correct username/password phone number to dial, etc.
7. For PDF creation, I was using CutePDF which doesn't work with Windows 7, so I went with PrimoPDF (free).
8. For Antivirus, I went with my good friend Kesavan's - K7 Computing Antivirus which works fine in Windows 7.

You should be all set by now, as for me (as seen below) all the devices are working fine. Eagerly waiting for Windows 7 RC.

Little more than a year back I got my 64-bit desktop with Vista x64 and TV Tuner card connected to Tata Sky DTH in my office. Since the support for Pinnacle was not complete in Vista x64 I couldn't get it working with Windows Media Center and had to resort to Nero Home for watching TV programs. About a week back I downloaded the latest beta bits of Windows 7.0 and the installation went very well. Almost all the drivers installed correctly and the few that had problems could be corrected easily (details after few paragraphs below).

The Pinnacle USB PCTV 330e had an inbuilt driver in Windows 7 for x64 and Windows Media Center recognized it easily. After few trials of positioning the Infrared transmitter in front of Tata Sky set top box and few rounds of learnings of the Infrared code of Tata Sky remote control by Windows Media Center, everything was working fine. I was able to change channels from Keyboard/Mouse/Media Center remote and Tata Sky set top box responded correspondingly (there was a trick to set the remote code transmission speed to Medium, Tata Sky uses 3 digits numbers for Channels). You can see the successful recordings I made below. The Microsoft PlayReady Runtime and Electronic Program Guide (EPG) didn't work (may be because I was in India) and you need to skip them.

My machine is built on top of Asus Motherboard P5W64 WS Professional.  You get many of the latest drivers for x64 for this motherboard (P5W64 WS professional - Socket 775) from their support website itself. Few items in general I had problem:

1. HP Photosmart 6188 - The default HP driver refused to install in Windows 7. I right-clicked on the setup file and selected compatibility and set it to Windows Vista. Then it installed properly - seemed to be a simple bug in HP program for Windows OS version detection.
2. Marvell 88SE6145 SATA RAID Driver - The latest driver from Asus for Windows Vista x64 / Windows Server 2003 x64 solved this problem
3. PDF Conversion: I have been a long time user of CutePDF to convert documents to PDF effortlessly. How much ever I tried I couldn't get it installed in Windows 7.0, so I moved to Primo PDF - which was recommended by my IT Pro team, which got installed perfectly in Windows 7.
4. Antivirus – Our office uses Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition which didn’t get deployed in Windows 7, so I tried my good friend’s K7 Antivirus 7.0 from K7 Computing. This got installed and is working fine in Windows 7. 

Bill Gates is my inspiration in technology and I love Jerry Seinfeld shows, so what more better than seeing both of them together in a hilarious clip. It doesn't matter it was a commercial from Microsoft - did it?

 
[Watch the low-bandwidth version here]

Watch the above clip which is the first of a series of advertisement campaigns coming from Microsoft featuring Jerry Seinfeld. If this is the answer to hugely successful "Mac vs Windows" advertisements from Apple, I think Microsoft is on the right path. I think the beauty of this pilot is that it has no direct references to Windows Vista or any Microsoft Products (Read here what The Register has to say on this).

If you don't have Microsoft Office Outlook in your machine, then how do you search for people in your organization (assuming they are listed in your organization's Active Directory)?. With Windows XP you can use the Address Book Applet to do it. In Windows Vista there is no stand-alone program or shortcut (searching for People yields nothing useful) to do this. The answer I found out is to run the Network Applet ( Start->Network) and then click on the Search Active Directory button in the top tool bar.

(The Network Applet in Windows Vista showing Search Active Directory button)

This brings up the applet Find Users, Contacts and Groups. Using this you can search for People, Computers and Printers (Entire list shown below)

This is fine. But is there a way to get this applet as a shortcut on your desktop?. Yes, there are two ways to do that:

1. This is the easiest, launch the Find Users, Contacts and Groups Applet and select File->Save Search menu option to do this.
   
2. The second is to create a shortcut from Desktop and type in rundll32.exe dsquery, OpenQueryWindow. Then save it by giving a name like Find People.

Few weeks back I had a strange problem, my Vista installation kept saying it is going to expire in 11 days. If you see the above image of the Control Panel-Systems says Windows is Activated. So I was puzzled, how can something that is activated can expire. Strangely the same error kept coming in few other machines in our office. 

After several hours with Microsoft PSS on phone, they diagnosed the issue in my machine to be a time-bombed SP1. Since I was in the beta program of SP1, I had downloaded the RTM of SP1 from Connect which was time-bombed. The safe way is to get SP1 through Windows Update or Microsoft Downloads.

I uninstalled this SP1, installed a fresh one from download.microsoft.com; now my machine is fine. I had trouble with installing Windows Search 4.0, which also got resolved after the fresh SP1 install.

Following Microsoft's retiring of Windows XP on 30th June, there has been lot of talk on the Internet on how Windows XP is better Windows Vista. I love Windows Vista and I have been using it from Beta days. I will never even dream of going back to XP. Why?.

• The UAC prompts are certainly annoying, needs to be turned off for a "Developer" machine which is what I did in my Work PC. I have it ON in my Home PC and Laptop and it works great in both machines. It gives me confidence that no rogue application can harm my PC or data
• The Visual Aero interface certainly makes the user experience more pleasing. After all you are starring at your PC for more than 8 hours a day, so why not have some pleasing effects in it
• Last and the most important for me is the integrated Search. With the new Windows Desktop Search 4.0 which made search in Vista faster, I cannot think of going back to Windows XP. The convenience of searching from Start button or in any Explorer Windows is a sure productivity gain

If you are wondering why am I talking about Vista here which is not connected to the title of this post, answer is in the next paragraph.

Microsoft rightfully abandoned the original Windows XP code and started Vista (internally called Refreshed the code) from the more stable Windows Server 2003 code base (as reported few years back in WSJ). Now few critics of Vista are asking Microsoft to scrap Vista code-base and to start a new Windows OS from scratch - something like basing it on MinWin kernel. Within "Techies" there is always an urge to do everything from scratch - this is one of the never ending arguments in Software industry. Is it good to keep patching a code/application (or) to bite the bullet, scrap the code and rewrite from scratch. I believe there is no single correct answer for this and it depends on the parameters.  But the question keeps coming up in daily situations. To answer that read Joel Spolsky's post back from 2000 - I don't agree with many of his recent posts but this post is a master-piece and a must read for all developers.

The other day I wanted to password protect for privacy a word document before emailing it. I came across 3 different features in Word that are related to security and it was confusing at first. It took me sometime and few web searches to figure it out. Though the features can be accessed from the Ribbon they are spread over different places. It is much easier to access them from one place - which is the Office Button on the Left Hand Top corner, then selecting the "Prepare" option as shown below.

1. Digital Signature: This requires you buying a Digital (SSL) certificate from a Third Party costing around USD 90 per year before you can do anything useful. Signing with this gives it legal validity in countries that support it. Any changes made to the document after the signing, breaks the signature. This way it validates the integrity of a document (as long the signature is present, the document hasn't been tampered). It doesn't offer any significant privacy benefits.

2. Restrict Permission: This uses the Microsoft IRM (Information Rights Management) service. Using this with a Windows Live ID (Free) or a IRM Server running in your company, you can assign permissions and access level to the document.  With the Windows Live ID feature, the recipients need not be in your corporate network, it will as long as they have a Hotmail ID (Live ID).

3. Encrypt Document: This is a simple password protect feature. Assign a password and then only people with the password can open the document. 

All the above three features are present in Excel and PowerPoint 2007 as well.

One of the compelling reasons I tell customers and friends for upgrading from Windows XP to Windows Vista is the extremely easy to use yet powerful backup feature. All it takes is three clicks to backup your entire computer to a removable USB storage or DVDs. You can backup a partition or folders to another partition. And the entire backup procedure for few hundred gigabytes of files takes less than an hour the first time itself, after that the incremental backup get done in minutes. The best part is that the backup is stored in VHD (Virtual PC format) format, which is a fully documented and free to use file specification. This means even if Microsoft restore utility is unable to open the VHD file, some 3rd party utility may be able to open it. I have been using the backup feature for nearly a year and I am very pleased with it. Recently when I had trouble with Windows in my Home PC, I restored my backup that was taken few months back - the entire restore process worked flawlessly and my Windows installation was good as new. 

Today before I did a routine backup of my Home PC, I wanted to clear some space in the external USB drive. I deleted all the previous backup files in the drive. Then I ran the complete back up. Unfortunately after several minutes the backup utility failed with the following strange error.

The backup did not complete successfully. An error occurred. The following information might help you resolve the error:
The system cannot find the file specified. (0x80070002)

I tried doing Vista Disk cleanup, no use. Doing few Internet searches with the error number 0x80070002 I found a forum post that talked to clean up registry keys in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList that pointed to orphan profile paths. I checked that, in my case all the profiles had correct paths. So that was not the problem. Then one of the forum post talked about running Chkdsk on the drives, I did that. Rebooted the machine. Tried the backup again, this time it went smoothly.

Now my love is back for the Vista Backup tool. I just wish Microsoft wrote the backup utility a little bit more tolerant or instructive error messages for handling these occasions.

I have come across Developers and System Engineers who have trouble with networking time and again. The principle reason I have observed is a lack of thorough understanding of the underlying TCP/IP layer. Most engineers assume that if they know what is an IP Address, Subnet and DHCP they know networking. How wrong can they be?. This gets more complicated with the introduction of IPv6,  Security and Performance features newly introduced in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

Till now the hurdle in solving this was availability of easily accessible and digestible materials on the subject. Today thanks to one of my fellow MVPs who pointed me to this resource from Microsoft - a free book on "TCP/IP Fundamentals for Windows". It is available both for online viewing and downloadable as a PDF file. Don't let the 559 page count scare you, the book is easily readable with some effort. I highly recommend downloading the PDF file and saving - it will be a worthy reference.

I was running Vista Business in my Sony Vaio Laptop for almost a year and I wanted a change for change sake. Going back to Windows XP was unimaginable and felt old. I needed something new.

So about a month or two back, I got interested in trying Windows Server 2008 (WS2008), just few weeks after it got released. I remembered the experiences of running Windows NT and then Windows Server 2000 on my previous laptops, so I thought this will not be so good with drivers and I will lose all the gizmos & UI of Vista. How wrong I was, the installation was nearly the same as Vista and all my Vista drivers that shipped with the machine (OEM Disc) installed perfectly fine including Graphics, Wi-Fi & Bluetooth. The fingerprint driver from Sony CD installed fine, but the application from Sony for fingerprint management didn't work - so that was one device I couldn't use in WS 2008.

When the basics are done Windows Server 2008 installation displays an ultra useful "Roles & Features" Wizard to complete the rest of components based on your needs. Each Roles & Features listed has a good explanation text of what it is, what it does, dependencies, etc. It I guess this shows Microsoft is listening and they took this from the good UX they saw in various Linux Distros. Many of the Linux Distros mainly due to the sheer volume of applications that they ship do a fine job on explaining the various components and help you in selecting them. I wish they included a similar Wizard in Windows Vista that will have various user roles (Home User, Games, Information Worker and Developer) - and for "Developer " it should switch off the annoying UAC, Windows Defender, TCP/IP Optimization, Shadow Copies & Restore Points, Services like Ready Boost, Superfetch, etc. and install by default Visual Studio Express Editions.

Make Windows Server 2008 as beautiful as Vista

Since Windows Server 2008 and Vista SP1 are supposed to be from same code-base, share most of the kernel files I wondered whether I can make WS2008 appear as jazzier as Vista with UI including Aero Interface. I found this well written, step by step guide (WS2008 as a Super Desktop OS) from a Microsoft Engineer VijayShinva Karnure

Windows Live Suite in Windows Server 2008

After installing all the components & applications like MS Office 2007 and others I tried installing Windows Live Suite (mainly for Live Messenger and Live Writer). The installation refused to install in a WS2008 as it is supported only in Desktop operating systems - how silly. I then managed to find an individual download of Live Messenger from download.com that got installed fine in WS2008. For Windows Live Writer (WLW) no such luck. So I tried copying the folder (C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer ) from a Vista PC that had WLW installed on to this WS2008 PC. Then ran "WindowsLiveWriter.exe" it worked perfectly fine. The same trick didn't work with other Live Applications like Photo Gallery - and that I didn't mind as I don't miss them that much.

Blog post to dasBlog with Microsoft Word 2007

I am making this blog post from MS Word 2007 just as a trail. Configuring Word 2007 for blogging is straightforward. My blog engine dasBlog doesn't show up in the blog type listbox. So you need to select "other", for API select "MetaWeblog" and Blog Post URL enter as "http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/blogger.aspx"

Though it has been hotly debated for last several months, I have kept away from writing on the Office Open XML (OOXML) proposed by Microsoft and currently a ECMA standard. With the ISO voting due today I thought let me write my views before the results.

Basically what OOXML means is a standardized file format based in XML for Word, Excel & PowerPoint documents. You have convertors to convert from OOXML to MS Office native formats or to ODF (ISO standard supported by Open Office & Open source). Accepting OOXML as an ISO standard increases the openness of your documents, there by you can safely assume that your grandchildren can open and read the documents created by you today long after the programs that created them are dead and not available. OK agreed, this may not be important for your monthly budget spreadsheets but certainly crucial for E-Governance applications that are used for exchange between different governments and with various departments within them.

Recently India has rejected (which I feel is sad) OOXML. Yesterday I heard the most convincing reason on why OOXML should be accepted by ISO and surprisingly it was not from Microsoft camp - it was from the Editor of the competing standard ODF 1.2. The argument from Patrick Durusau in the article "Who Loses if OpenXML Loses" where he has made several points on how ODF itself will loses if OOXML is rejected. Key arguments to note are on Spreadsheet formulas support and support for legacy MS documents. 

You can track the status of voting from this site.

2/Apr/2008 Update: NewYork Times has reported that OOXML has been approved as a standard by ISO. This is a big win not only for Microsoft, but for consumers and governments as it now provides them with a choice. IBM, SUN and the other open source backers of ODF on one side, Microsoft and its partners on the other side with OOXML will ensure that the document format area is being innovated because of intense competition. Without this choice between ODF and OOXML, this critical technology area would have been left to suffer stagnation and resulted in lock-ins for e-governance applications.

This is a simple tip for MS Excel 2007. When using Outlook 2007/Word 2007 and working on a Table we get the "Design" menu which is very handy to make our tables look beautiful.

When working with MS Excel 2007 I couldn't find this feature (Design Menu for Table) till yesterday. It suddenly struck me that in Excel though everything appears to a "Table", but they are not and we need to explicitly create a "Table". That's it, feature found!

Steps to follow: Just select the cells you are interested in, choose the "Table" menu option from the "Insert" Ribbon bar. Viola. You get the Design Ribbon bar.

By default, when you insert a "Table" in Excel it comes with Data "Filter" enabled. You can disable it from "Filter" button in the "Data" Ribbon bar. 

I have been asked by many of you for the URL to watch the recordings of all the Mix '08 keynotes. Here it is:

The page has an interesting video of MIX08 Keynotes in Hyperspeed, which is a timelape video to see the whole process from bare ballroom through setup, rehearsals, keynotes, and then final teardown after the show. 

I was looking for long on how to enable Hibernation option in Vista, as the sleep doesn't work in my laptop all the time. After spending lot of time in navigating through the confusing menus of Vista and Windows Help, I turned to Google, got the answer in the second search link.

Here it is:

1. Click Start, All Programs, and then right click on "Command Prompt".
2. From the context menu click on "Run as administrator".
3. If User Account Control prompts you to allow the action, click on Continue.
4. In the command prompt window, type "powercfg –h on" (without the quotes).
5. Close the Command Prompt window.

After I moved to Windows Vista about a year back, I hardly had to worry about Firewall settings. Though initially I found the UI of Vista Firewall Settings different and a little hard to understand, I soon realized its power and flexibility. Most of the time I found the firewall in Vista to automatically configure itself for many of the applications I installed including Zune, Zune Network Sharing, XBOX Media Extender and others.

Last week I evaluated K7 Computing Total Internet Security and found it to be the most light-weight and fast in its class. Its Firewall interface was simple and effective with almost all the time it popped up a dialog (user configurable) for any new application so that I could set the access the way I wanted. Since I had no complaints with Vista Firewall, I decided to just go with K7 Antivirus (Rs.690) alone for my laptop. Compared to Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition I had before in my laptop on a Vista x84, I found K7 Antivirus to be less resource hungry and overall I found the machine to more snappier.

For my home PC, I went with Norton 360 (bought it locally in India from a dealer) after studying in their website how Symantec have slimmed the whole product in terms of resources. I installed it in Home Server (Windows XP 32bit with 500GB Mirrored HDD, 2GB RAM, AMD 64) and in my Home PC (Intel Quad Core 2.4Ghz, 8GB RAM, 160 GB, 500GB HDD, Dell 20" Monitor). I found NAV 360 to take very little resources and snappier. But I have been having trouble with its firewall to open ports for Zune Network Sharing and few other applications. I wished NAV 360 had a database of known applications and their firewall settings. I found the lack of an option to backup your firewall rules and restoring it a serious limitation. It didn't have a Zone preset as well - meaning for every rule you have to define your local subnet and range.

In the end, I will recommend Vista Out-of-box firewall plus either K7 Antivirus or Norton Antivirus 2008/NAV 360 AV Module alone.

If you are like me who moved to Windows Vista early, the two biggest pain areas you would see are Outlook 2007 performance and time taken to do file copy operations. I will never go back to Windows XP but Vista should have done better on these two day to day areas.

What used to take like few seconds to copy from your hard-drive to a USB thumb-drive (or vice versa) in Windows XP, takes several minutes (or even hours as estimated by Windows Explorer) in Vista. Now with Service Pack 1 for Vista RTMed finally, help seems to be on the way for file copy problems. Microsoft is claiming over 50% to 1000% percent improvements in file copy performance. RTM bits are not yet available for download, so stay tuned for a world-wide verdict on this. In the meanwhile if you like to understand the under the hoods technology on how file copy works in Windows XP, Windows Vista and improvements in Vista SP1 read this indepth article from Mark Russinovich

WOW, writing the above headline made me wonder how far software has come from the time you bought it from guys with coat and suit, to online, to free and now to rental. And what better product to signify this, other than MS Office.

I read in news that Microsoft India has announced MS Office 2007 in Prepaid model - which for me essentially resembles a rental/subscription model, as software always has been prepaid in the true sense. May be MS didn't want to use either subscription or rental words, they probably want to embrace, extend and change the game. Whatever said this is certainly a welcome move especially for a country with low income like India, where MS Office at say Rs.15,000 can be about 50% of a PC price.

The price of Rs.1499 for 6 month usage is affordable, but each extension there after at Rs.1299 for 3 months somehow looks exorbitant. Hopefully they are testing the waters on the pricing and will come to their senses. Ideally for bottom of the pyramid (for whom this is targeted) I will love to see a price of in the range of Rs.100 to 200 per month (in the same range as your cable TV fee per month) and it should include license for usage of Windows OS as well.

Earlier today when I was doing a WPF demo in Colombo for Microsoft DevDay 2007 I wanted to show the new Solitaire and  other games rendering smooth UI in Vista. But I didn't find any of the games in my demo laptop. The last I have used the games in Vista was when Vista was in Beta and in Vista Ultimate edition. On further investigation and looking into other Vista installations (Windows Vista Enterprise x64, Vista Business x86) I realized that games are not installed by default in these editions - obviously why do you want them in a business edition of the OS?. The good news is that you can go Programs and Features applet in Control Panel, and install the games. Immediately upon installation, I played and won a game with Solitaire. Hip hip hooray!!!

If you are like me who has multiple mail profiles configured in Outlook 2007, you will be tired of selecting the profile everytime. Instead using command-line switches (parameters) for Outlook.exe you can create a shortcut for each profile that you want to run. For example I have a Profile (configured using the Mail Applet in Control Panel) named "Vishwak" and another named "Hotmail". So to run the Vishwak Profile I create a Shortcut that points to:"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE" /profile Microsoft

Needless to say, the above path is specific to my Vista with Office 2007 machine. To learn on more switches and what they can do read this article from Office Online.

Like I have written earlier Outlook.exe switches can also be used to do tasks that are not exposed in User Interface like cleaning rules, etc.

Windows has been having a Disk Cleanup utility from Windows 95/98 days, but I haven't considered it of any use till today. I found today in my Windows Vista Laptop C:\ Drive hardly 2GB of space free out of 31GB. So I decided to delete some unwanted files to get some space; so I gave the Disk Cleanup utility a try and it did result in cleaning up few GB of space for me.

Many times you might have got stuck not being able to open a Word/Excel/PowerPoint file because MS Office is not available in that machine. Though OpenOffice/Office Suites in Linux can open MS Office documents, it is doesn't work perfect with all documents.

Microsoft has for long provided for free, viewers for these formats. These viewers can be downloaded from Microsoft.com website and allows you to open, view and print the documents without requiring you to have full blown (paid) MS Office in the machine. The viewers now support the new Office 2007 formats as well, with the additional requirement being to download and install the Office 2007 Convertor as well.

Links to download:

• Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 Viewer (Doesn't require the Convertor)
• Microsoft Word 2003 Viewer (Install after this MS Office 2007 Convertor)
• Microsoft Excel 2003 Viewer (Install after this MS Office 2007 Convertor)
• Microsoft Visio 2007 Viewer

Remember, to visit Microsoft Update and install the latest security fixes as well for the above software. The MS Office 2007 File Format Convertor can be installed in MS Office 2003/2000/XP/97 versions as well to open and save in the new formats.

One of the common things you want to do after you created all your content slides in a presentation is to put an Agenda slide or TOC (Table of Contents) slide. This was easy using the Summary Slide button in Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 as shown below. For reasons best known to Microsoft, this feature to have a summary slide automatically generated is not available in PowerPoint 2007. This MS Knowledge base article confirms this behaviour, and it suggests a tedious manual process of copyring each slide title and pasting it to create a summary slide

If anyone from Microsoft is listening here, please add this feature back. It will take hardly an hour to write a Macro that can achieve this..

Steps to do this in PowerPoint 2003:

• Click on View Menu
• Then on Slide Sorter
• Select the slides that you want in the TOC
• On the "slide sorter" toolbar, 3rd icon along is the "summary slide" clicking it will make a slide automatically

The keynote today in Mix '07 at Las Vegas was fantastic. Microsoft unravelled a ton of new technologies around their SilverLight runtime in the keynote by Ray Ozzie and Scott Guthrie. There are tons of information about these in Visitmix.com website, so I will just cover the bullet points and what impressed me personally.

1. SilverLight 1.0 Beta is released, this is around a 1MB download that renders XAML files, can be programmed with JavaScript and you have a "Go-Live" license for this. This plugin works in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Apple Safari. I missed the Linux desktop support and so did few others who participated in a Panel Discussion on Open Source Interop session - but there is no word from Microsoft on whether Linux support is happening or not.
2. This is the most awesome announcement. SilverLight 1.1 (currently in Alpha) Plugin will include an almost full .NET Framework runtime including support for dynamic languages like Ruby and Python.
3. SilverLight Streaming - An oneline video sharing service from Microsoft. And the Expression Media Encoder to go with it.
4. Simpler licensing and opening up of API of Windows Live Services

My personal take on SilverLight is this. I am super excited on the .NET Framework support. And at Vishwak we have been playing with it in its previous name "WPF/E" and I think this is a very promising technology, but the success for it against competition like Adobe Flash/Apollo depends on how large can Microsoft get its installed base quickly. It is a chicken and egg problem, but unless there is sufficient installed base, it will be difficult to get customers on board quickly.

There has been also announcements about IIS 7.0 Beta Go-Live recently.

References

Tim Sneath in his blog has listed great Silverlight webcasts that are great to quick start learning. He has also listed a great WPF Demo.

Scott Hanselman (my fellow RD) has posted this great entry on today's annoucement on Silverlight and .NET Support.

Silverlight FAQ | Quickstarts | Learning Video | Scott Guthrie talking on Silverlight | Videos running parallel in a puzzle

Update 21/June/2007: Came across thisgood posting from Scott Guthrie on various demos with SilverLightt

Microsoft today announced through Soma's blog - the official name of the technology that they have been previewing as "WPF/E". It is now going to be called Microsoft Silverlight. "Silverlight" is probably the most fanciest name that has come from the company (MS) that is known to keep its product names long and uninspiring like "Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Office System".

What I found interesting in WPF/E betas was its ability to use XAML and JavaScript for interesting solutions. Now with the official announcement that Silverlight will be cross browser, cross-platform and will work as a rich media serving platform, it sounds more convincing to succeed. I am dying to see this closer in person at Mix '07 in next few weeks at Las Vegas.

Microsoft is releasing a suite of Designer products for Web and Windows called "Expressions". These products promise to make the designer and developer collabration lot easier that it is today. Unfortunately when first announced they decided not to include Expressions in MSDN subscriptions. MSDN Subscriptions are the most common way Microsoft developers and partners get access to Microsoft Software.

Through the Microsoft Regional Director program, we "RDs" made our disappointment known to Microsoft and why it is important for Developers to get access to "Designer" tools. Fortunately Microsoft listened to us and other similar voices and through this blog post here from Somasegar (MS VP) Microsoft has decided to include Expressions with MSDN Subscriptions.

I am pleasantly surprised at these instances where Microsoft listens to you!. 

I have in my house, a desktop PC with Intel 915G motherboard (little older than 2 years). Recently I upgraded to Windows Vista Home Premium. Vista detected and installed all the devices needed for basic functioning. Only two devices didn't work as they did in Windows XP SP2.

1) My HP Photosmart 2608, scanner and printer is working using Windows Vista default applets. The HP default scanning program doesn't get installed, HP still doesn't have a Vista compatible application (though their website announces coming soon). I am missing the HP application gives you convenient functionality like multi-page scanning, PDF format, etc.

(Update 10/April/2007: HP has released a new set of drivers for platforms including Vista and Vista 64 bit. The new application installation is faster than earlier and the new UI much more cleaner. Good thing HP took a little bit more time developing the new application. I still don't understand what their installation does for over 30 minutes)

2) When I wanted to input some Audio from my cassette player (yes, I still have it around) through Audio-In I couldn't. I checked and saw in Vista only see Mic-In Device, no Audio-In. After some searching, came across the new device driver for Vista from Realtek website. I downloaded and installed Vista Driver(32/64 bits) Driver only (R 1.63), everything is working fine once again.

My earlier post with Vista Beta 2 on the same machine

I know I am using an over used "Title" for this post. But I really mean it.

It is about building Windows Applications that are connected to the cloud (Internet) for either authentication or utilizing other services. Though there are applications today that work this way - like Windows Live Writer, Google Picasa, Yahoo! Flickr - they are few and very difficult to develop and test. The development tools including Visual Studio 2005 does very little to support a model like this. Microsoft Dev Tools team is aiming to change all this with the upcoming version of Visual Studio "Orcas". Read about this and other features of "Orcas" and download the CTP from here.

Related Articles:

Read a good blog post on this here by Microsoft's Saurabh Pant

Juval Lowy (My fellow RD) writes about how to do this with VS 2005 today

Microsoft is sponsoring a project to be built by my fellow RD and good friend Tim Huckaby's InterKnowlogy and The Scripps Research Institute (A Non Profit biomedical research firm). The project is to build the release 2 version of an application built on the .NET Framework 3.0 with WPF, Vista and Microsoft Sharepoint giving scientists a powerful tool to visualize and annotate research results for cancer treatment.

If you think you are a good .NET Developer and have some time to spare - you can enroll. You will be paid for the time.

For details visit:

• My fellor Microsoft Regional Director - Stephen Forte's post here
• The post here by Microsoft's Eileen Rumwell announcing the program
• Video about this project

Wish you all a happy new year 2007.

Today I received a good new year gift - I was nominated and accepted by Microsoft as one of their MVPs (Microsoft Valuable Professional) - Visual Developer Solutions Architect. I have been a Microsoft Regional Director from 1999 but this is an additional title for me to hold.

Update 1/Feb/2007: I received my MVP Welcome Kit and the MVP Certificate

WPF/E is a subset of WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) technologies from Microsoft. Microsoft is expected to make WPF/E available on wide platforms apart from Windows, including Mac OS, Mobiles and more.

When WPF/E was announced earlier this year in Mix '06, I was little skeptical on how far Microsoft will go to make it ubiquitos and useful. With the Dec CTP release of WPF/E I guess I will have to eat my doubts .

I downloaded and played with the Dec CTP (Community Release) version of WPF/E for last few days. The Dec CTP is small (1MB download), works in Windows and MacOS. The WPF/E browser plug-in works in both IE and FireFox - WPF/E works as a browser plug-in just like Adobe Flash. For me, WPF/E looks like a very promising technology for two reasons: 1) It is based (subset) on the same XAML specification - instead of making developers learn a new model, this is a good move. 2) It works as a browser plug-in, can make it ubiquitous.  For WPF/E to complement Flash in a big way, MS has to come out fast with versions for as many platforms as possible, keep the XAML subset as close to as possible to the full-blown .NET Fx 3.0/WPF.

Resources:

• MSDN WPF/E Website
• Download Dec CTP from Microsoft.com
• Download Samples Pack from Microsoft.com
  
• Introduction to WPF/E
• View the Sample Slideshow from Channel9
• Mike Harsh (Developer in WPF/E Team) blog

Today I received a wonderful greeting card for New Year 2007. It was from Kevin Schuler (Microsoft Manager who runs the Microsoft RD Program) showing a  collage created from Photographs of Regional Directors from Around the World, each displaying their notebook computers running Microsoft Vista and Office 2007. The exhibit is nearly 20 feet wide and stretches from ceiling to floor in Microsoft Redmond Campus, Building 18.

Needless to say I am super excited as my photo is also there in Second Row, Fourth Column from top (or) the most beautiful photo in the lot

Read here my previous post about this "My Vista, My Office" Challenge

Now that .NET Framework 3.0 (WPF, WCF, WWF) has been released you may want to start programming, so here is the download list you will need to do that:

• .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime (Vista has it pre-installed) - dotnetfx3setup.exe
• Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows Workflow Foundation (EN).exe
• Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP - vsextwfx.msi
• Windows SDK

Read my earlier posts on CTP of .NET Framework 3.0

After many years, Microsoft had a ball this week - they had three main platform software going gold. First it was Office 2007 System going gold, then it was .NET Framework 3.0 (WinFX) and last was much awaited Windows Vista. I am sure everyone in Microsoft is super excited (as Microsofties would like to say) . As a partner, I am over-whelmed on the possibility this opens up for us in terms of developing Gadgets, WPF Applications, SharePoint Solutions and more.

For Microsoft India too the week was great - with Steve Ballmer visiting India and the successful run of IndiMix '06 event. In IndiMix I liked the inclusion on stage of celebrities like Anil Kumble & Yash Chopra and they sharing there experiences of how IT Solutions are helping them. Great work Microsoft India.

Some interesting numbers came up during the panel discussions:

• MSN India has 250 Advertisers this year against only 80 few years back - Market is turning to Online advertising seriously
• Online Advertising business in India is roughly Rs.110 Crores; while TV is 6000 crores & has 9000 top advertisers

For a recent question on whether there is a published Schema for XAML, Microsoft's Clemens Vasters (who was earlier one of the RDs before crossing to Mother ship, we miss you Clemens) had this good explanation to say (Reproduced verbatim with permission below):

"XAML doesn’t really have schema, since it’s a direct representation of .NET object tree that (of course) allows user extension to appear practically everywhere. So even if you’d have a base schema for all the classes that WPF brings along with it, you could not have a schema that also includes all the derived classes, new controls and other extensions you and everyone else will ever write. Strictly speaking, XAML is really mostly a serialization convention that allows building and reshaping complex object trees declaratively and using tools whose builders don’t want to deal with the intricacies of tackling a full programming language when generating object-trees into and parsing object-trees out of a file (as the Windows Forms designer effectively has to today)"

If you are adventurous and want to dive down on what  I am talking about, you might want to check out the XSD files installed by .NET FX 3.0 at this path "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Xml\Schemas\Xaml*.xsd"

The much awaited Microsoft Office 2007 System got "Released to manufacturing" today. Today, Microsoft also confirmed that corporate customers will be able to get the product before Nov 30th.

I am using Office 2007 Beta2TR for several weeks now. I love the new functionalities like the "Task Oriented UI and Ribbon" in Word/Excel/PowerPoint and the RSS reader in Outlook 2007. I am eagerly looking forward for the product to show up in MSDN Downloads to download and install.

As per this betanews article Office 2007 is supposed to have a SMS Text Messaging application - this I haven't tried out yet, will check out and post my experience soon.

I was asked by someone on what are new Native Windows APIs introduced in Vista; when I searched I came across these two useful resources.

- Video on "Tips and Tricks on Vista" presented in Tech Ed '06 covering new File Dialog API, Search API, UAC Issues and API.

- PDF file of a Slidedeck on "Tips and Tricks on Vista" - Covers the same topics as in the video above.

Finally I have made the full switch to Vista RC2 and Office 2007 Beta2TR as my primary work environment, from last weekend. I should say I am very happy with the results so far.

Read my earlier post on my experiences with Vista.

Vista - Pop Ups asking Elevated Credentials: One of the things I like in Vista, is that when I run as Normal user, then try to do something like Change settings in Control Panel that requires Administrator priveleges, the OS automatically pops-up a dialog box asking for a different credential (Username and Password). This seems to work in almost all situations - including the upgrade of MSN Messenger. This one in MSN Messenger always used to irritate me, for I had to quit Messenger, rerun it (using Run As command) as Administrator and then upgrade.

Office 2007 Beta Installation: After spending several hours installing Beta 2 Office (separately Office Pro, Groove, Project, Visio, OneNote) and then applying Technical Refresh (TR) for each of them, I realized I can’t run Office 2007. I initially didn’t give a Product Key as I didn't want to waste an activation if things didn't work in my hardware, hence activation didn't happen while installing.

For every user login I try to run Office, it gave an error “Not installed for Current User, rerun setup”. After searching in Office beta site, it turns out that you need to switch off UAC, run each of the Office 2007 applications once, activate them (or supply with the key) and then turn ON UAC.

Now that Vista is close to launch, it is important for Developers to understand the new OS and its impact.

Here are few good resources for the same:

• MSDN Vista Development Center
  Vista team's official site for Developers - DevReadiness.org
• Kenny Kerr on Windows Vista for Developers - KennyKerr
• Registry's article on introducing Vista for Developers - RegDeveloper.co.uk

Over the weekend I managed to clean install the new build of Windows Vista - RC1. According to MS this is a significant build, between Beta 2 and RTM.

I got hold of a new IBM R52 Laptop (Centrino, 1GB RAM) and installed this - this is not a bleeding-edge machine for Vista, especially on Graphics end, but this is what I could manage to get in my office . Everything went well except few devices that failed to install at first, but after reboot Windows Update found latest drivers (like Audio) auto installed them and everything is working fine. On top of Vista, I have got Office 2007 Beta 2, Visual Studio 2005, Windows SDK RC1 (for .NET Framework 3.0, Vista bundles the runtime), Expression Interactive & Graphics Designers Sep CTP.

Update: 17/Sep/2006: If you want to know what happened with my primary Laptop (HP nx7010) & Vista, here it is. For almost few weeks I have been trying to get the Video Driver (ATI Mobility Radeon 9200) work. With the default out-of-box drivers, you see multiple screens and it is not legible. I recently came across couple of entries on the web about the same problem, they suggested that you need to ensure the out-of-box driver and Intel AGP driver enabled, and then to Remote Desktop to the VISTA machine, install the XP version of the drivers. I tried it and it worked. WOW!

So you ask what is new with Windows Vista - check out this official site from Microsoft for that.

Exactly one year I wrote here about IIS 7.0 during my PDC '05 trip. Now with Vista RC1, Microsoft has finally released IIS 7.0 feature complete.

Instead of me telling what is new in RC1, hear it from the horses mouth - here are the links to blog post by ScottGu and BillS that talks about it in detail.

I will shortly write about my experiences with IIS 7.0

Coinciding with the release of Windows Vista RC1 this week, Microsoft has released (finally!) the Release Candidate for .NET Framework 3.0 also. One of the problems with .NET Framework 3.0 (a.k.a WinFX) has been the confusion associated with the plethora of different download bits and CTP versions. Here is the official page to download all pieces of .NET framework 3.0 needed to start developing WCF, WPF or WWF.

I have tried to simplify it below:

1. At the bare minimum you need .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime components from here if you are in Windows XP SP2 or Windows Server 2003. For Windows Vista RC1 these bits are automatically installed. [filename: dotnetfx3setup.msi]
2. Visual Studio "Orcas" bits - this you need if you want to use Visual Studio 2005 to develop WPF (Avalon) or WCF (Indigo) applications. [filename: vsextwfx.msi]
3. Visual Studio WWF Extensions - this you need if you want to use Visual Studio 2005 to develop WWF (Workflow) applications. [filename: Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows Workflow Foundation RC5(EN).exe]
4. Windows SDK - Don't get fooled by the small download for this, the full SDK is about 1GB in size. You get the entire SDK for .NET 3.0 plus previously released Windows SDK (Native code) components as well. The best way to download this will be to download the DVD image here. [filename: 6.0.5536.0.2.WindowsSDK_Vista_RC1.DVD.Rel.img]

Hope this helps a little bit!

Everybody knows that Apple builds cool hardware - whether it is iPods or Mac Minis, Apple's device designers are the best in the world. For reasons I couldn't figure out, no one in the PC (Wintel) world has been able to copy Apple's designs and then to exceed them. Our PCs and Laptops continue to look boring with no major design innovation happening for last 20 years - what I am talking here is not the Internals Engineering like Motherboard, Ports, OS, etc; I am talking purely the external appearance.

As this article details out Microsoft is striving to make huge improvements in Hardware in areas like DirectX/Graphics, Dual Core, 64 bit, Audio, DVD Playback, Readyboost and more. All these are commendable and I am looking forward to a new Vista PC - but still I see no "Cool" H/W design ideas here.

I guess we need to wait for Apple to start supporting Windows Vista with a new Boot Camp version and then go out and buy a Mac and run Vista

After Microsoft renaming WinFx as Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0  (new managed-code programming model for Windows), the question in everyone's mind is on deployment and availability of .NET Framework 3.0. Applications written for the .NET Framework 3.0 require the .NET Framework 3.0 to be installed on the computer where the application runs.

This recent article in MSDN briefly describes .NET Framework 3.0 and its relationship to earlier versions of the .NET Framework, provides information on installing and deploying the Framework, and describes how to detect whether the .NET Framework 3.0 is installed. A must read for anyone planning to use .NET 3.0. The article also covers on how you can determine the version of .NET Framework installed in a machine. I had written earlier about how you can use IIS log files to determine the availability of .NET Framework amongst your end-users.

After seeing me for years dumping softwares and changing configurations in my home PC my wife is resigned to the fact - that our Home PC may not work or may not be in the same state it was when she last saw it. Two years back, when the present machine came home, machine had Windows XP, few months later I changed it to Windows XP Media Center Edition and then finally to Windows XP. This week, I had installed Vista Beta 2 Home Premium. As a learning from several fights we have had in the past on the subject of our Home PC, to safeguard my marriage I have a Barebone installation of Windows 2000 with MS Office Viewers, Internet Explorer, FireFox, Antivirus, Scanner/Printer Drivers installed. I have told my wife that whatever I do in the PC, she can always boot into this Windows installation and get her work done and I promised not to mess around with it.

Anyways, coming back to Vista Beta 2 story. I had installed it and I was glowing happy with the sight of the new Vista UI that I have been taking to people in conferences for more than a year now. Before I could call my wife and show it to her; I was disappointed to find that my Network Card (now legacy 3COM 10/100 NIC) doesn't have a driver shipping with Vista Beta 2. This means no Internet and no printing (I have a HP PhotoSmart 2608 connected to my home network) - and from my wife's view the PC in its present state is totally useless . After several failed attempts of trying to get the Windows XP, Windows 2000 version of 3COM drivers to work - I have gave up. Just before I was giving up totally on Vista for this PC, I got hold of a Legacy Driver Pack from Microsoft (Microsoft may or may not ship it for general consumption, I was told it is only for testing purposes now). The Pack has a Wizard that identifies and installs the correct driver for your legacy hardware - and it took few seconds and a uncalled for reboot done by me. My Vista beta 2 PC now sprang to life - Windows Update downloaded and installed few updates and everything was great. Performance in the last few minutes of playing around seems to be much better than the Windows XP that I had on the same PC.

Watch out for more as I keep messing around with this installation.

And for my wife - she is away visiting her parents for next few days and I missed a chance to show my success in getting a "working" Vista to her. After all these are common in a marriage .

Yesterday I had a visit by one of our customers with whom we are working on a POC for migrating their legacy Lotus Notes forms to Microsoft Platform. From Vishwak, we had suggested they move to the Microsoft Office and Sharepoint technologies, especially the new Forms Server 2007 and Windows Workflow foundation. Having said this, we had to justify our recommondation as both Forms Server and WWF are in Beta 2 stage.

Why should a customer look at Beta Products, that too a Microsoft Beta Product and in what way it favours the risk associated?. What we said to him was worthwhile of repeating here :

1. Customer was looking at a go production time frame of October/November 2006 or later. Because of their business criticality there were several internal trial runs that have to be completed before going live. By that time frame, both Microsoft Forms Server 2007 and Windows Workflow Foundation will be released.
2. As an outsider to Microsoft, reasons for us to be believe that this releases will happen by the time frame - is because Forms Server is part of Vista/Office 2007 wave and WWF is going to be part of every copy of Windows Vista. For both these Vista and Office 2007, Microsoft have assured release will be in October/November 2006 time frame. Going by the stability of the products we are playing around we see no reasons to doubt the above time frame. Also Forms Server is based on WSS (SharePoint Technology) and WinFX both of which are core platform products. MS cannot afford to delay on these building blocks, as any delays will not only affect MS, but the whole ISV and SI eco-system that is using them.
3. Windows WorkFlow Foundation, though in Beta 2 has a "Go-Live" license for it. This shows Microsoft's confidence on the technology.
4. Stability and Road-map on technologies (in other words - Microsoft is known to change their product stratergy very quickly):
   1. There can be no doubt on the strategic important of Sharepoint technology. WSS (SharePoint) on which Forms Server 2007 is built is very key to Microsoft. MS sees the next growth oppurtunity in terms of sales to be on SharePoint (I always like to think of it as MS Office Server), after Windows and MS Office Suite. I read in many Media coverages and recent BillG speech in Office conference that MS is investing huge amount on SharePoint and Office System, so there will be regular updates to the technology.
   2. WWF (Workflow) is part of .NET Framework 3.0. This shows it is extremely important for Microsoft and they cannot remove anything that easily or decide not to support anything that is in the core of their platform.
   3. WWF is a base framework and not sold as a product. So if Microsoft's base offering doesn't give enough features, I am sure there will be hundreds of third-party Workflow ISV's who will come up solutions that extend WWF in many ways.
   4. WWF is the workflow backend for all the upcoming MS Products - Microsoft BizTalk Server 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft Office 2007, etc. So they cannot afford to goof-up on WWF.
5. SharePoint and InfoPath (on which Forms Server 2007 is based) is mature technologies. This is not the first version for either of them. In fact, Forms Server 2007 is not the first product to render InfoPath forms in a browser - even now there are third-party products that do this. So the technology is proven.
6. Forms Server / InfoPath allows them to not only persist data in its own back-end like Notes, in this case in SharePoint Forms Library, but gives you the choice of any backend storage like SQL Server, Oracle, etc. The only requirement being Web Service interfaces. This gives the confidence and the choice of any back-end that suits various individual needs of the customer organization.
7. The ease of availability of trained manpower in these technologies. It is much easier to get an .NET Developer than Lotus Notes in Indian Market due to the sheer volume of them. Now with SharePoint 2007 based on ASP.NET v2.0 architecture and WWF being part of .NET Framework 3.0, getting .NET developers of earlier version to this new version will not be that difficult as well.
8. Finally they having decided to move to MS Technologies, they should go with the new one's because of the huge advantage they will bring in.

For those of you who are new to Forms Server 2007 - read this MS FAQ.

About a year back I wrote about my first love with Windows XP 64. In the last 12 months, all major server softwares from Microsoft has had a 64 bit release including Windows Server 2003 R2, SQL Server 2005, upcoming MOSS (Sharepoint) 2007, MOFS (Infopath Server) 2007 and more. Betas of both Windows Vista and Windows Longhorn servers are now available in 64-bit edition. In fact, the upcoming release of Exchange Server (Exchange "12") is available only as a 64-bit edition. With the prices of memory coming down and RAM of 4GB+ is becoming affordable, 64-bit offers tremendous advantage especially coupled with Dual Core Chips.

Recently I came across this site Extended64.com that seems to have good information, drivers for using Windows 64. 

For me, I am waiting for Vista to get launched - after which I am shopping for a new laptop which is small and light-weight but Dual Core and 64-bit

Today I installed in my Desktop Windows Server 2003 R2 (WS2003) in D:\; The machine has in C:\ Windows Vista Beta 2 working. After the base installation of WS2003, machine restarted and that's it. It complained about a bad boot partition and refused to proceed further. There was no way to continue WS2003 installation (or) get back to Windows Vista. Then I resorted to booting the machine with Windows Vista CD, went into recovery mode. In recovery mode after trying auto-fix options I went to command-prompt. Windows Vista Recovery mode command prompt, shows up as X:\ and has the default recovery utilities loaded there. One of the utilities I found was BootRec.Exe in X:\Windows\System32. Used the tool to rewrite the partition boot record and the MBR (Master Boot Record) by following commands:

 X:\Windows\System32\BootRec.Exe /fixboot
 X:\Windows\System32\BootRec.Exe /fixmbr

After this I restarted the machine. Everything worked well I got Windows Vista booting, but no way to reach WS2003. I tried editing c:\boot.ini, no effect. Doing some research I realized Windows Vista has a new Boot Configuration Manager, Boot Loader - Boot.ini has no effect in Vista. BCD (Boot Configuration Data) Store in Windows Vista has replaced Boot.ini and there is no GUI to do changes to it. There is a command-line utility "BCDEDIT.EXE" that can be used to view, modify boot options. After reading about BCDEdit, I realized it was not that easy to understand at first try and I need to do serious reading before I can use it. So I searched for more information on BCD and then came across VistaBootPro. VistaBootPro is a 3rd Party utility that gives a easy GUI to add boot partitions and do pretty much everything that BCDEdit.Exe can do. After installing the tool, it took me few seconds to add my D:\ (Windows Server 2003 Partition) into boot sequence. After restart got the Vista Boot Menu showing both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003 boot options.

(Copyright 2006, PROnetworks)

If you want to avoid all this, first install the old version of Windows (Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, etc.) then install Windows Vista.

Update Nov 2007: I found this Technet article detailing on how to do common tasks in BCD.

Late last friday Microsoft announced through SomaSegar's (Vice-President) Blog that WinFX will now be called .NET Framework 3.0. The underlying CLR, C#, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, VB.NET and everything else will continue to be 2.0, but .NET 3.0 will include WCF (a.k.a Indigo), WPF (a.k.a Avalon) & WWF (Workflow). It seems to be a good marketing idea, I just hope they bundle the core framework (2.0) files into one single redistributable.

Enterprise Customers tend to believe on third version of Microsoft products - so I suppose those will get excited about this.

Last one week or so, I am using Vista Beta 2 in my Desktop (AMD 64, 2GB RAM, 160GB SATA, RADEON 9550). I found it to be stable and very usable. So far I didn't come acrosss any show-stoppers in using it as my primary OS. One tough thing was getting used to the new UI and changes in the way to do many of the common admin tasks. For example Add/Remove Programs in the way we know it is gone. The integrated search is also cool.

One of the features I liked was the new XPS Printer installed by default. XPS (XML Paper Specification) is like Adobe's PDF format for storing, viewing & printing documents. Using this, you can print from any Windows Application and save the screen as a XPS file. The saved XPS file can be viewed very easily using the built-in XPS viewer.

What about people who don't have Vista?. The good news is that you can download a free XPS Viewer that is about 1.4MB and it doesn't even need WinFX to work. It works on any Windows 2000SP4, Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 machines.

Now all this, might change because of a move by Adobe to sue Microsoft in Europe. As of now the news is that Microsoft is pulling out both Save as PDF and Save as XPS feature in Office System 2007. I am not sure whether this impacts Vista as well.  

Finally the long wait is nearing over.

From last week if you are in an MSDN Subscriber you can download Vista and 2007 Office System Beta 2. I have started downloading them, will install, play around and update my experiences.

If you have been wondering whether your PC will run Vista - Microsoft finally has the answers, they released the Minimum Hardware requirements for Vista. Read this eweek article for details. Basically you need a 1Ghz CPU, 1GB RAM, GPU, 40GB HDD for Vista to run and this should be majority of the PC / Laptops sold in the last few years except for the RAM part which can be easily upgraded.

Personally for me, though my Laptop is 2 years old and time for a replacement; I am not opening my purse yet. I will wait for Vista to get released and Vista Certified Laptops to come out. In the past I have been burned twice, by doing the mistake of buying a new Laptop just before a major Windows launch to find out the laptop doesn't provide drivers for the new OS. It happened for me with Windows 2000 and then with XP. Hopefully with growing old, I am becoming wiser.

Though the release of Vista is testing everyone's patience - the more I read and work with the product I feel when it finally arrives it will be worth the wait. Many of the pain points in Windows XP (in general Windows) that we have got used to and learned to live with, are addressed in Vista.

Take for example the "scheduled tasks" applet that ships with Explorer - though for a client it may be just enough, it falls severely short in terms of features when it comes to enterprise deployments and in a server setup.

The new task scheduler allows you to have a rich set of triggers - my favourite is the ability to right-click on a entry in event viewer and assign a task to it. Sounds simple but this is a powerful feature from a IT Pro perspective. The action that can be performed for a task include the ability to email directly, have multiple actions for one tasks and more. The best news is that all the features exposed in the UI is also made available through command-line tool schtasks.exe.

For a more detailed article on Vista Task Scheduler read this Technet article.

If you are wondering what happened to me for the last 3 weeks - I was travelling to Las Vegas for Mix '06, Redmond, WA and y'day/today at Singapore for Mobile Content World Asia '06. I am planning to be blogging the details on them shortly. Stay tuned.

Today MS EMEA sent out a newsletter on "Windows Vista and Microsoft Office Beta Experience Newsletter No.2" to thousands of subscribers. I am happy to say I was featured in the newsletter as a Community Star!

(Copyright 2006, Microsoft Corporation)

If you are hearing lot about the new UI (Ribbon) in Office 2007 and dying to see more of it, visit these two sites: First is Jensen Harris Blog and the second MS Official preview Page.

(Office 2007 Beta 1 Going Dark Theme - Copyright Microsoft Corporation)

MS Blogs

Seeing yet another useful blog from a MS staff, I am impressed by the new transparency Microsoft has embraced in the last two years. The single biggest way they seem to have done this is by using blog as an effective media to keep in touch with outside world. The other is their regular CTP (Community Technology Preview) builds of their upcoming software. The classic way of Beta 1, 2, 3, RC & Gold have lost their relevance in the super fast changing connected world.

If you are trying to get dirty with WinFX ("Avalon", "Indigo" and Workflow), then check out this post by fellow RD Michele Leroux Bustamante. It contains easy steps to get the various pieces of Jan CTP including VS 2005 integration downloaded and installed in the correct order.

I wrongly assumed Windows SDK (1GB Download) is a superset and will include everything needed to work on WinFX. Had I had this cheat sheet earlier it would have been lot easier!. MS please note this and don't have this so fragmented in future.

If you are adventurous and want to go bleeding edge, check out WinFX Feb CTP. This blog post has a list of breaking changes in Feb CTP, but remember you are on your own.

• Today there are two portal stories from Microsoft - Sharepoint is for Intranet and MCMS was for Internet. With Office 12, it will be an integrated story. You can create Internet Facing Sites and Intranet (as always) using Sharepoint technologies. Remove forced choice "CMS02" vs Sharepoint Portal Server. Roadmap towards an integrated Enterprise Content Management (ECM) story.
• To achieve the last point all WCM services found in MCMS02 have been developed into the new Sharepoint server. This meant adding Internet readiness to Office "12" Servers.
• New WCM features introduced
   ○ Consistent and Pixel Perfect Branding - which was extremely difficult today with Sharepoint 
   ○ Page Authoring - Web based or Smart Client (Word)
   ○ Dynamic Site Navigation controls/webparts
   ○ Governance - Publishing Schedules, Approval workflow, Formatting restrictions
   ○ Site Management Tools
   ○ Performance - Internet Scale & powerful Caching to handle high traffic rather going to DB for every piece of content. Also cache buckets are based on user rights.
   ○ Content Deployment methods
   ○ Security - Forms Authentication, Anonymous
   ○ Multi-Lingual Sites (Basic site in English and then other sites depend on this)
   ○ Search
• Customers will be provided powerful tools to migrate all content from existing MCMS02 sites to Office "12" server. 
  • Make creation of dynamic, produced websites dramatically faster and easier. 
  • Provide great Out Of Box (OOB) Experience
  • Lower amount of costly custom code
  • Incremental migration is like a job that can move incremental content from CMS02 every night to the new site
• In the new system:
  • Portals are a collection of webs
  • The webs are arranged in a hierarchy
  • Hierarchy controls navigation and security
  • SPSv2 Area, CMS02 Channel are now all based on the WSS webs construct for containership
  • Each web has a document library for pages. Pages are special document library items. So they inherit all WSS functions like versioning, Check-in/Check-out, workflow free
  • Each web can have its own ASP.NET v2.0 master page. Then there is page layout that actually lays out the page
  • WSS ships with standard field controls. There are additional CMS field controls like rich HTML
  • Portal Navigation 
    • Includes Webs, Pages and Authored links
    • Dynamic Navigation based on site hierarchy
    • Navigation links trimmed based on security, workflow state and publishing schedule
  • Security
    • A new WSS authentication provider implemented on top ASP.NET Role provider
      • Viewer role: Viewers can use the site, can view pages, documents, images. But they can't use the Sharepoint application - Can't call Remote APIs: SOAP, DAV & RPC. Can't view application UI
      • Policy: Can constrain maximum access per web application. Deny all write access via http://site:80
  • Topology
    • Farms: Scale up and down as needed
    • Multi-farm: Staging environments in different networks. Authoring in Intranet with AD Authentication. Production in live networks with forms authentication
    • Site collections can be deployed between environments
  • Paths and Job
    • QuickDeploy job role allows news authors to deploy content immediately
    • Normally there is path which is channel connecting authoring to the live environment
    • Jobs control what content is copied when
    • It doesn't deploy security setting

Windows Workflow Foundation (which was announced today) is an extensible programming model and runtime components for building solutions on the Windows platform. Major highlights:

1. Bundled part of WinFX runtime, should get released around Windows Vista timeframe
2. First likely to get released as part of powers Office "12" Server workflow. Windows Sharepoint Server “12” uses WWF workflow internally
3. It is important to understand WWF is not a server product, but BizTalk is a server product. WWF can do both Human Workflow and EAI/B2B. There is no server or service component for WWF. It gets kicked off from your main function. You call a start function of WWF and the WWF runtime runs inside your application. User has to develop the host application that hosts the runtime and also has to develop failure (Restart) and multiserver setup. Persistence can be stored to a File or a SQL Database through appropriate connection string to any machine.
4. Workflow models and definitions can be stored as a .CS (.VB) File or as .XOML file
5. Dynamic changes can be made to the workflow  of a running instance

For more details, refer to MSDN WWF Site or Windows Workflow Site

Eric Rudder did the the keynote on Wednesday. The highlights of the keynote were:

• Announcement of Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF), though a workflow engine from Microsoft has been rumored for several years, it finally was out of the bags today. A powerful Workflow framework as part of WinFX is a very compelling value proposition for .NET developers. Almost all business applications (Web or Windows) has some kind of Workflow custom build into them. Moving this to the underlying platform will certainly speed-up development and make it easier to debug, develop and maintain.
• Microsoft announced MS Expression, a suite of designer tool. Traditionally developers and designers used different tool sets to do their work, Expression aims to bridge the gap. Three SKUs were announced part of Expression family
  • Microsoft Acrylic Graphics Designer – aimed at pure designers who can use it do powerful bitmap and vector graphics in the same design surface. Ability to generate XAML files.
  • Microsoft Sparkle Interactive Designer – aimed at designers and developers to design Windows Forms Application using XAML.
  • Microsoft Quartz Web Designer – aimed at designer and developers to design standards based Web Application. Everything the tool does XML, XSLT, CSS, HTML all conforms to standards. By default the tool generates XHTML 1.0 transitional – can be configured to generate based on any W3C Schema. Provides pretty cool two-way (Design and Coding) CSS and XSLT Design surface.
  • The best part of both Sparkle and Quartz is that it uses the same project files as Visual Studio 2005 and preserves formatting of all source files. Thanks Microsoft for listening to us on preserving formatting and adopting standards!
  • The folks from North Face adventure wares demoed an application that allowed sharing a 3D model designed in Autocad with people who had only Avalon was very compelling.
• So far applications to be customized by end-users with a scripting language, had to use only Visual Basic for Application (VBA). This is commonly used by apps like MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. Now Microsoft is introducing Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) which provides the entire set of .NET Runtime and Languages available for developers to customize apps. An early version of Autocad was demonstrated using VSTA as Proof of Concept.
• All PDC attendees to be given free copies of SQL Server 2005 once the product gets released. The final CTP of SQL Server ’05 was given to us on that day.
• Release Candidate of Visual Studio 2005 was also given to all attendees. Finally Whidbey seems to get out of the door.

I am here in Mumbai for the 3rd leg of Tech Ed 2005 India. Earlier this month we have done it in Bangalore and Chennai. In this time Tech Ed, I am taking it easy, just doing one session and that too a light content one – on “Avalon”.

Following are useful links for my session on Avalon.

• MSDN Mini Magazine on Longhorn (including on Avalon by Charles Petzold). Though this is outdated, it is a good introduction to Avalon.
• To know about the good looking Playing Cards demo, read the blog entry by Adam Nathan. Download the binaries of this for WinFX Beta1RC here.
• Designer for XAML - MobiForm Aurora
• Version of SVG to XAML converter from this GotDotnet project

How to install Avalon:
1) Download and install Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 from MSDN Labs.
2) Download and install WinFX SDK Beta1RC from here.
3) Download and install WinFX Runtime Beta1 RC from here.

XAML Examples:

<StackPanel xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/avalon/2005" > 
   <Label FontFamily="times new roman">  Hello World  </Label>
   <TextBox FontFamily ="verdana" AcceptsReturn ="True">  Hello World </TextBox>
</StackPanel>
Code 1 - Simple hello world example with XAML (WinFX Beta1RC version)

<Grid     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/avalon/2005">
  <Button Width="200" Height="200" >
  <TextBlock><Image Width="100" Height="100" Source="C:\Samples\Venkat.Gif" /> <LineBreak /> HelloWorld</TextBlock>
  </Button>
</Grid>
Code 2 - Hello world example and an image inside a button with XAML (WinFX Beta1RC version)