Month: January 2009

AREO Trick in Windows 7

Aero Snap is a new feature which was added to Windows 7, where in you can drag any window to the top of your screen to maximize it or take it to the left or right to snap it to the side and re-size by 50 per cent and when you drag it back to the last position, the window size will be restored. This feature is now available for XP and Vista. AeroSnap is a simple but powerful application that allows you to resize, arrange or maximize your desktop windows with just drag and drop. Aero Snap supports both Windows XP as well as Vista.

Aero Shake allows user to quickly and instantly minimize all other non-active windows that sit in the background by just shaking the application window, and at the same time experiencing a seizure in your hand. To bring back the desktop to previous state with windows open back, shake the sole window again. To use Aero Shake to minimize all inactive windows to Taskbar (or Superbar), user can click and hold on to a window’s title bar that he or she wants to continue work on, and then move the window to left and to right (shake) a few times (two times or move). The feature is probably one of the feature to support mouse gesture by Microsoft.

Aero Peek improves on Windows 7 Superbar thumbnail previews, and allows user to quickly preview the desktop by making all other opened active and inactive windows transparent by just using mouse to hover over the far right end of Taskbar. Aero Peek also support full screen view preview of any open windows on desktop while temporarily hiding all other open windows by mouse over the taskbar button for an open application or window. A new graphical thumbnail appears, previewing the window in a small glass frame. It also allows users to pin program to Taskbar permanently, with a mini-Start Menus for all pinned items or most common destination and most common tasks, dubbed as Jump Lists

New DHCPHint feature in Windows 7

With the increase in popularity of laptops, it is very common for users to frequently reconnect to a previously visited network. In order to improve user experience in roaming scenarios, where the user connects back to a previously visited network where the user had a valid DHCP lease, DHCP network hint has been implemented in Windows 7 OS. DHCP network hint helps in identifying the correct DHCP configuration for a previously visited network and then using the configuration opportunistically. Network hint used in order to uniquely identify different network is SSID (Service Set Identifier) of a network

I spend a lot of time traveling between my office and hotels and i hat that my computer takes time to find a DHCP address, with Windows 7 connecting to the network is fast and quick, to learn more go to this location

Microsoft Windows DHCP Team Blog

Windows Mobile and SharePoint Trick

 

Do you use SharePoint and need to look at site from your phone. Well you can use the browser and wait and download all the graphics or you can do the following go to you went SharePoint and at end or url add /m

 

example SharePoint/mycompanyxxx.com/default.aspx change to

SharePoint/mycompanyxxx.com/default.aspx/m (the /M is the secret)

(This is not a real site)

Stopping Applications that Auto-start

There are 2 ways to stop applications that auto-start when you login to Windows Vista. You can either use the System Configuration Utility or the new Software Explorer in Windows Defender:

Method 1: System Configuration Utility
1. Click on the Start Button, enter msconfig and hit Enter.
2. Click on the Startup tab.
3. Uncheck items that you do want to auto-start and click OK.

 

Method 2: Windows Defender
1. Click on the Start Button, enter Windows Defender and hit Enter.
2. Click on the Tools from the top menu bar.
3. Click on Software Explorer and select Show for All Users.
4. Select an application to either Remove or Disable.

Win a Cray CX1 Desk-Side Supercomputer

If you are interested in High performance Computing (HPC) and have the need for massive power Microsoft is have a Super Duo Super sweepstakes.

Windows HPC Server 2008 provides a productive, cost-effective, and high-performance computing (HPC) solution that runs on x64-bit
hardware. Windows HPC Server 2008 can be deployed, managed, and extended using familiar tools and technologies.

Windows HPC Server 2008 enables broader adoption of HPC by providing a rich and integrated end-user experience scaling from the desktop application to the clusters. A wide range of software vendors, in various verticals, have designed their applications to work seamlessly with Windows HPC Server 2008 so that users can submit and monitor jobs from within familiar applications without having to learn new or complex user interfaces.

Developing parallel programs requires integrated development environments along with support for distributed computing standards. Visual Studio 2008 provides a comprehensive parallel programming environment for Windows HPC Server 2008. In addition to supporting OpenMP, MPI, and Web Services, Windows HPC Server 2008 also supports third-party numerical library providers, performance optimizers, compilers, and a native parallel debugger for developing and troubleshooting parallel programs.

Enter our Super Duo Super Sweeps by January 31, 2009 and you could win:

  • A Cray CX1 desk-side supercomputer
  • One of 10 Premium MSDN Visual Studio Professional subscriptions
  • One of 10 Xbox 360 consoles

This dynamic duo is bringing high productivity supercomputing into the mainstream. Cray CX1 supercomputers with Microsoft Windows® HPC Server 2008 and Intel Xeon Processors provide “Ease-of-Everything” for new users of HPC for as little as $25,000. 3 easy steps to enter:

  • Register now!
  • Download the Cray CX1 and Windows HPC Server 2008 datasheet.
  • Download the free 180-day Windows HPC Server 2008 evaluation copy.

*NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Open only to authorized representatives of US companies who do not manufacture, sell, or resell server hardware for use at high performance computing workloads. Game ends January 31, 2009. Winners will be announced on February 12, 2009.

For Official Rules, please click here

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) BETA

 

The beta of Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization V 1.0 an enterprise virtualization solution that helps your users run legacy applications on their Windows Vista desktops. The final version of MED-V 1.0 is slated for release in the second quarter of this year as a part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack

There is a good podcast that you can download to learn about this product.

MED-V 1.0 provides deployment, management and user experience capabilities for Virtual PC images in a corporate environment,

To get the beta the beta A short survey will need to be answered before downloading the software to take the survey click here.

Dual Boot Issues

Do you have 2 or more operating systems on your computer ?

Do you want to easy change your boot priorities. Well you can use

BCDEdit Command-Line Options

Boot Configuration Data (BCD) files provide a store that is used to describe boot applications and boot application settings. The objects and elements in the store effectively replace Boot.ini.

BCDEdit is a command-line tool for managing BCD stores. It can be used for a variety of purposes, including creating new stores, modifying existing stores, adding boot menu options, and so on. BCDEdit serves essentially the same purpose as Bootcfg.exe on earlier versions of Windows, but with two major improvements:

  • BCDEdit exposes a wider range of boot options than Bootcfg.exe.
  • BCDEdit has improved scripting support.

However I am lazy and when I can use a graphical tool I will  do that all the time.

EasyBCD is NeoSmart Technologies’ multiple award-winning answer to tweaking the new Windows Vista bootloader. With EasyBCD, almost anything is possible. Setting up and configuring Windows boot entries is simple, and there is no easier way to quickly boot right into Linux, Mac OS X, or BSD straight from the Windows Vista bootloader – on the fly, no expert knowledge needed!

EasyBCD is geared for users of all kinds. Whether you just want to add an entry to your old XP partition or want to create a duplicate for testing purposes.

 

They also have

iReboot  a simple yet effective reboot helper tool. This app sits in your taskbar at startup (only taking up 400KB of memory!) and lets you choose which operating system you want to reboot into. Instead of pressing restart, waiting for Windows to shut down, waiting for your BIOS to post, then selecting the operating system you want to boot into (within the bootloader time-limit!); you just select that entry and you done !

Internet Explorer 8 RC1

You can now download internet explorer version 8 RC1  !

Some new features include i think are great include

Improved Zoom

With enhanced resolution and readability, Zoom allows for automatic scaling of a page’s content while maintaining the site’s intended layout. You can read very large or very small pages more clearly without having to scroll back and forth.

Web Slices

Web Slices put you in control of the information you care about most. Now you can subscribe to specific content within a page and monitor things like auction items, sports scores, entertainment columns, weather reports, and more. Add a Web Slice to your Favorites bar and the information you care about will automatically be delivered to you.