More Vista Ultimate Extras on the way

This was really a "no update" update, The Ultimate Extras team posted an announcement that they are in fact still working on the extras that they talked about in January, specifically Dreamscene (animated wallpapers) and 20 language packs for the multi language user interface. Basically, they will be ready when they are ready.

Of course they should wait until the extras are stable and work properly, and I don't want you to think that I am giving them any grief. If the extras are delayed because they aren't stable, then I think that is a good decision.

Although I like eye candy, I usually turn it off after a little while. You see, I use my machine to do work, and I don't particularly care about windows animations, etc. So Dreamscene isn't something that I'm holding my breath for. I do have some hope though , because the article says:

We also intend to deliver additional Extras in the future. In addition to Windows DreamScene and the remaining Language Packs, we plan to ship a collection of additional Windows Ultimate Extras over the next couple years that we are confident will delight our passionate Windows Vista Ultimate customers.

So maybe they will include something cool, like a backup utility that lets you specify what you want backed up. Kind of like every version of Windows since NT has had. (I know that you can copy the backup utility from XP over to Vista, look in the more reading section).

More Reading:

Windows Ultimate team provides an update on Extras - Nick White on the Windows Vista Team Blog.

Installing Windows XP Ntbackup on Windows Vista - Petri IT Knowledgebase

Restoring NTBACKUP files to Windows Vista - SearchWinComputing.com

Vista Ultimate's promised add-ons just broken promises? - NeoWin.net

Windows Live Writer Beta 2

I'm not a big fan of composing blogger posts in the HTML editor. The editor works fine , but I just don't particularly care for it.

Previously, Blogger had a plug-in for Word that worked pretty well, although the HTML looked horrible. When the current version of Blogger went into Beta the plug-in stopped working, and there were no plans to update it.

I heard that Microsoft was going to include Blog support in the new word, which I was really happy about, but at the time, it didn't work either. I can't blame MS on that one, because Docs and Spreadsheets stopped working too. There was a workaround that worked for about 3 days. I wrote about it in "When Getting New Features Means that Old Features don't work anymore".

Enter Windows Live Writer Beta, a pretty handy blog post editor. To be perfectly honest, I don't remember why I stopped using it, as I remember the HTML that it creates is pretty clean. My dirty little secret is that I have been using OneNote 2007's "Blog This" feature. Which although handy, doesn't play perfectly well with Blogger.

A couple of features that have been added to the new version is the ability to save drafts to your blog, as well as blogger tag support. There are also a number of plug-ins available.

When I published this post, the HTML was really clean, and the formatting was correct. With OneNote 2007 or Word 2007 there would always be strange line spacing, as well as extra lines breaks in the post.

Links and References:

- Writer Zone (Windows Liver Writer Blog) - Microsoft

- Windows Live Writer (Official Site) - Microsoft

- whateverblog - Joe Cheng, part of the Microsoft Live Writer Team.

- Live Writer Plug-ins - Microsoft

Microsoft Surface

I had heard about Surface, but hadn't went looking for anything about it, until I saw a YouTube parody on HellYeahBitch. I had to go and find some of the real videos. The Microsoft Surface Website has the official videos, although I'm not sure what is going on with the text they use.

Not to be a Microsoft fan boy, but surface sure looks cool. From what I have read, the price tag is all sorts of expensive, like $10,000 a unit. That is way out of my $19.99 budget. Maybe someone I know will get one, and I can stay at their place for awhile. Right now Microsoft is targeting places like hotels and casinos, hoping that in 3 to 5 years the prices will have come down enough for consumers.

According to this CNet News article, Microsoft is developing the hardware and the software for the device.

I'm kind of curious to see what technologies are being using for synchronization and data transfer, not to mention how long before those technologies are supported by a lot of manufacturers. Looks cool though. Below is one of the Microsoft Videos, with a parody of it below.

Microsoft's Teaser:


Finally, that parody:

Sources and Links:
- Microsoft Surface Website - Microsoft
- "Microsoft hopes 'Milan' table PC has magic touch" - CNet News.com
- "Microsoft Surface Confirmed" - GizModo
- "Its not an iPhone...its a big ass table" - HellYeahBitch
- "Surface computing - Microsoft Surface" - My-Knowledge-Share
- "Microsoft Surface - The Magic, The Power, The Possibilities" - Andrea Vascellari Weblog

Microsoft Offers Visual Studio for Free ?!?!

Sorry, but I have a new and improved version of this post over at my new blog. You should check it out.

Rinbot.BC Worm Exploits Un-Patched Microsoft DNS Vulnerability

I heard about this vulnerability recently, and according to search security, there is now a worm, Rinbot.BC, using the exploit. I haven't heard any reports yet on how widespread the worm is, but it is probably a good idea to use the workaround mentioned in Microsoft Security Bulletin 935964.

The vulnerability was announced last week, and there is talk that Microsoft is going to issue a out of cycle patch to fix the issue. Windows Server 2000 SP4, and Windows Server 2003 SP1 and SP2 are effected. Of course clients don't run a DNS server, so Vista, XP and 2000 are not affected.

The security bulletin lists several ways to work around the vulnerability, I thought the easiest way was to use the method that uses the registry to disable remote management of the DNS server through RPC. Terminal services (including remote desktop), and the local machine will still be able to manage DNS settings.

Google offers all of its free apps now as a service

On the Google Blog they announced the availability of their applications in a convenient subscription model. Now you can pay $50 per user, per year, and get all their wonderful free apps. They are calling the bundle Google Apps Enterprise.

They are also offering editions for families and groups, small businesses, and schools.

Wait a minute, I can pay for something that they have been offering for free? Let me jump on that train.

I'm not sure how successful this is going to be, of course Google has eleventy hundred gillion users, but really, are the apps that good?

I haven't used Calendar or spreadsheets, and only briefly used Talk. I use Documents sometimes, but if they discontinued the free service and started charging $1 a month, I would quit using it so fast that my Google cookie would be left hanging in the air, spinning around.

I had joked that one day in the future I would reminisce about the good old days when Microsoft almost had a Monopoly on operating systems and software, because now Google controls everything. Maybe this is the beginning. Maybe next it will be Google Democracy.

Thanks to Paul Thurrott for pointing it out.

Update: Wired News has a article titled "Google Apps: Should you switch?" and there were a few things that I thought were wrong about it.

1. The Article States that:

"Pricing is set at $50 per user per year, less expensive than Microsoft Office but with much the same functionality. Microsoft has its own web-based suite of tools in Office Live, but the company's offering doesn't match Google's. And Google isn't going after Office Live, it's going after Office."

Um, no Offense Michal Calore, but have you actually used the two sets of applications?

Google Docs isn't even close to Word. I haven't used spreadsheets at all, but I'm sure that it is limited as well. Sure, if you need a word processor, then go ahead and use Docs and Spreadsheets, but I just could not imaging using Google Docs and Spreadsheets exclusively.

2. He does mention that there isn't a PowerPoint equivalent, although I thought I had read that there was a Google Presentation app coming out, I haven't seen it. Yes, PowerPoint is a hugely popular program, but let's not forget Access. I know Google Base can't compete with that.

I also think that there isn't an Outlook killer either, at least not for a corporate environment. Outlook has a whole slew of nice features that GMail and Calendar just can't match.

ITunes doesn't work on Vista yet?

I found this CNET article kind of strange, evidently Apple is telling iTunes users not to install Windows Vista. Evidently, there is a patch to fix some problems specific to music which was purchased from the iTunes store, but it doesn't fix any of the compatibility issues, one of which is corrupting your iPod.

Although not a conclusive number by any means, and it may be affected by the gaining popularity of the iPod, in October 2004, CNet reported that since iTunes was ported to Windows, Apple's iPod sales have more than doubled. I don't think Apple has released these numbers, or at least I haven't been able to find them. If you know what they are, feel free to post a link.

What I found strange about this whole thing, is that Microsoft made 2 release candidates available, and there is still an issue with iTunes? Didn't apple bother to get one of them and test iTunes out?

I am sure that if I can get my hands on one, so can Apple. Heck, the release version of Windows Vista has been out for over a month, just not to retail. I know Apple has to have at least 5 Windows Licenses, they have to have a Software Assurance package, or at least a MSDN subscription.

Maybe I am way off base here. Maybe at the last possible minute, Microsoft changed the way everything works in Vista, and told Apple that everything was hunky dory. Maybe Steve Jobs was way too busy with the iPhone, maybe John Gruber over at Daring Fireball can fill me in on what is going on here, or at least call me a jackass for saying something negative about Apple.

UPDATE 3/6/2007 : Apple has released an updated version of iTunes, version 7.1 (you can get it here) which is supposed to address the issues mentioned above with Vista. Thanks to Paul Thurrott for pointing it out. His thoughts on it are available here. More information from Apple.

Related Links:
- Mike has finally bought an IPod!?!?

References:
- Apple Whistles a happy iTunes - CNET News
- Apple Releases Vista Compatibility Patch For iTunes, But Problems Remain - CRN Australia
- Speaking of Clowns - DaringFireball.net
- iTunes and Windows Vista - Paul Thurrott's blog
- iTunes and Windows Vista - Apple
- iTunes Download - Apple

Microsoft Robotics Studio - Free Robot Development

Sorry for the inconvenience, but there is a new and improved version of this post on my new blog. You should check it out.

Ms. Dewey Search Engine

I saw this on Chris Pirillo's Blog.

I guess if you have a whole lot of bandwidth to spare, or are very lonely, you may want to do your web searches on Ms. Dewey (hmmm... maybe I should have said at Ms. Dewey's site?).

What is the world coming to. I guess it was going to happen sooner or later. I bet I can guess what comes next...

Microsoft Says Recovery from Malware Becoming Impossible

A friend sent me a link to an article where Microsoft Says Recovery from Malware Becoming Impossible, and it is a really good read. It looks like the meat of the article comes from Mike Danseglio, program manager in the Security Solutions group at Microsoft. He was giving a presentation at an Infosec conference.

Page 2 has a terrific quote on it, "Phishing is a major problem because there really is no patch for human stupidity." They also say that Microsoft is getting 2000 attacks an hour. That was pretty amazing too.

Microsoft Has Stopped Competing with Linux?

I read a interesting article on LXer stating that Microsoft Has Stopped Competing with Linux. I wasn't really sure about it to start with, but it made a whole lot of sense.

It does seem that on the Desktop front, Linux is really just trying to catch up with windows, rather than innovate. Linux still has a number of strengths, but it isn't on the desktop.

One other thing that the article points out is that Microsoft is changing their push, and moving more into markets like Enterprise Solutions for collaboration and resource management. This is something that I have noticed with a release of a whole slew of new products, like BizTalk Server, Commerce Server, and Small Business Accounting, just to name a few.

Windows Desktop Search - Enabled for Enterprise

Windows Desktop Search - Enabled for Enterprise ?? Hmm.... I just heard about it, so I figure I better check it out.


More Later...

WSUS Update

I have had WSUS installed and running since Monday. On Tuesday, I had finished playing around with my test group, and I decided to go ahead and use it on the whole company. Let me tell you, I really like it.

Reporting Capabilities:

WSUS has some really nice reporting capabilities. You can pull reports on all of the computers that need updates, and then drill down to see what updates. One useful option is to pull the reports on all computers that have updates with a failed installation. This report even lists the error code for each of the failed updates.

The error I have run into is 0x80070643, and KB Article 836937 lists some methods to fix it.

FIX: Search results may be unusable when you search a network location in Windows 2000

I was just reading my latest Technet Flash, like the good Microsoft Flunky that I am, and I ran across this hotfix "FIX: Search results may be unusable when you search a network location in Windows 2000".

I know that I have run across this behavior a few times. Glad to know that there is finally a fix for it.

WSUS is here!!

WSUS is here!!

I for one, have long been waiting the release of the new update services from Microsoft. I had played around with SUS, and never had much luck with it. So now that it is out, I have downloaded it, and will try to start using it in my network.

For a little back story, SUS is Software Update Services, Microsoft was planning on giving it the ability to update not only windows, but also office and other MS apps. For some reason they didn't want to continue using the name SUS, so they were going to rename it Windows Update Services, I guess they didn't check out what the acronym sounded like. I heard many complaints along the line of "I don't want to be called the WUS administrator". Anyway, it looks like they went with Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), which is better, but I think it is a little misleading. Oh well, as long as it works.

The install went pretty smoothly, with the dialogs screens explaining what is going on. WSUS uses MSSQL for its database, it offers to install the SQL desktop engine, but I already had it running on that machine, so it created a database for itself, all on its own.

It looks like the default is to download all languages for the selected updates. I changed this to only download the English updates, to conserve on disk space. By default, Critical updates and security updates are approved automatically. This was ok for me, so I will leave it as is for now. There were several types of downloads which are not synchronized, and I included pretty much all of them, such as feature packs and security rollup packages. I did not however, include drivers. I bet that would eat up some serious disk space.

After the install, I set up the group policy for a few machines. You can test it out by running wuauclt.exe /detectnow from a command prompt, and then the computers should show up on the WSUS machine. It allows you to create groups of computers for administration.So far it all looks pretty neat. It looks pretty easy to work with, I will be playing around with it over the next few days, and I'll make sure to post anything interesting that I find.

Photoshop Competition

Have you heard about Microsoft's Acrylic? Evidently it is going to be some competition for Adobe. It would sure be nice if they included it free, either with Windows or with Office. They both are lacking a good graphics editing package.

Download the beta here.

What a great site: Microsoft TechNet

Well, I figured that I would just mention how impressed I am with the changes that Microsoft has been making to Microsoft TechNet. They seem to be putting more and more information into Technet that is Valuable.

I know that all of the Linux folks and the anti-Microsoft crowd would give me a ear full, if any of them happened upon this post, but I think that MS is really making an effort to get some good information to the people who need it.

Also, if you have any idea on how to script, or would like to learn how to, then you have to check out the Script Center on Microsoft's Technet site. I am not a big programmer, but after a little bit of reading, I was able to paste together scripts to do all sorts of neat things.