OneWood's View from Here : General

Upgrading to Windows Phone 6.5

andrewdr — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:32:00 GMT

I have a T-Mobile Compact V (also known as an HTC Touch Diamond2) running Windows Mobile 6.1 and I thought I would share a few posts on the move to 6.5.

As soon as 6.5 was released – or a couple of days later at any rate – I contacted T-Mobile and was told by Customer Services that an upgrade was available and I should ring their Support Desk on another phone and they could upgrade me. This I did and was told an upgrade would invalidate the warranty.

This is a rebuild, not an upgrade

So now read on … T-Mobile have now released an upgrade for this handset, available here . The readme first bit basically says backup your phone before you do anything because this will wipe everything on it. The option I went for was to use Microsoft My Phone. Sign up with a Live ID choose the option to add a phone and either click the link below to get an SMS with the link or

browse to http://myphone.microsoft.com/install on your phone. Once you have installed the software on your phone you can send its contents to MyPhone – this means SMS messages, photos and videos. A hint of caution though;

This will not be quick although you could also try WiFi
“Photos” means every icon, button and border, not just your photos
There isn’t as yet a great deal of granularity – all or nothing
If you sync with Exchange your contacts and mails will not be included. You will also need to setup your mail again after the upgrade

Once you have backed everything up …

Now you need to download the ROM package from the link on this page. It’s about 156MB and comes down as a compressed file although you can run it from the archive.

Next, connect your phone to the PC and make sure you choose ‘Active Sync’ as the connection type or you will get an error after the process starts.

After the splash screen you get to here

and then this

NOTE – the message about not running any programs means if you try and run snip for instance while the process is running it will fail – trust me, I tried.

When you are ready to go click Update and then Next on the Verfication page that comes up next.

If you get an error like this it could mean that you have dislodged the cable/cradle or even that you need to try another cable, as happened to my first attempt. Also, when you connect your phone, you might want to let it go through the Windows Mobile Device Center wizard before cancelling.

When I started the upgrade my phone screen looked like this

	I thought at first this was a sign of a failed install. However, I left the phone in this state, restarted the whole process and then got this …

After about 10 minutes I got to the Finish screen

and was able to restart the phone. I now have a new build of 6.5 which=, honestly doesn’t seem that different from 6.1, apart from the start screen and a few other things. I haven’t properly explored yet but a few things occur:

There doesn’t appear to be an easy way to add a ‘live.co.uk’ email account. Until you realise that 6.5 still insists on calling it Hotmail
Touch-Flo works great as does the screen flip
Settings includes a link to Microsoft My Phone
When the screen goes black, pressing the power button takes you back to where you were, not the Today screen

Roll on Windows Phone 7 ….

Live Mesh

andrewdr — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:32:45 GMT

Live Mesh is a way to link data across several devices using a virtual desktop hosted on the web.

So, if you have a laptop, a PC at home and another one in the office, you can share data, through a Desktop, across all the machines. In addition, your ‘mesh’ will be able to include a Windows Mobile device and a Mac.

As well as data, you can even access a machine on your ‘mesh’ in much the same way as using Remote Desktop.

In this view I have used the internet to connect to a machine in the office. This view can be maximised to take full advantage of the resolution of the target machine.

In part, this particular scenario was made possible by DirectAccess which allowed me to seamlessly connect to the office network without having to establish a VPN. More on that another time.

Technet Virtual Conference-June 19 2009

andrewdr — Tue, 26 May 2009 13:13:52 GMT

We’re pleased to announce the launch of the very first TechNet Virtual Conference taking place on 19 June 2009.
You told us that time and budget pressures make attending in person events difficult – so to help both you and the environment we decided to take the TechNet Conference virtual. Now you and your colleagues can join us to get a flavour of some key Microsoft technologies from the comfort of your own desks.
The Technology sessions, selected by the readers of the UK TechNet Flash, feature key products including:

•	Windows 7 – Deployment and Management
•	Windows Server 2008 R2 - 10 things to make life easier for IT Pros
•	An overview of Office Communications Server R2 and voice capabilities
•	The trials and tribulations of SharePoint implementation

We are also really pleased to announce an exclusive Keynote featuring Mark Russinovich, Microsoft Technical Fellow specialising in the Windows platform.
And that’s not the only difference this year. In addition to Microsoft technology news and product overviews from the experts, the TechNet Virtual Conference will also feature a second auditorium focused on IT Management, including:

•	How IT will change over the next 10 years and why you should care - an exclusive session delivered at TechEd EMEA
•	Growing the Business and Managing Costs at Microsoft – An Insider’s View, presented by Asif Jinnah, IT Manager, Microsoft UK

Be sure to get the most out of your day by getting involved and asking our speakers questions via live chat. But if you can’t make it on the day, all the content will be available after June 19th for you to watch on demand.

The conference goes live on Friday June 19th. You can view the full agenda and register here www.microsoft.com/uk/technet/govirtual

Competition – Enter the free prize draw to win one of 500 goody bags, which is a snazzy laptop bag with some great event swag, terms and conditions apply.

I will be available on the day to answer your questions on Windows 7 so I look forward to seeing you there.

Missing mail

andrewdr — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:27:00 GMT

So there I am, trying to rationalise my Inbox. Now, as many of you will know, rationalise is often a euphemism for delete but, in this case, I was simply trying to sort things in a “woods over here, trees over here” kind of way.

Open Outlook 2007 and click on Inbox
Select all messages
Right-click and select ‘move to folder…’
In the dialog box click on New and create a new folder under the root of your mail (I called mine oldmail)
Click OK and then click OK again
Realise that somehow you changed the destination to the root
Find that Undo does not do it for you
Ponder …..

I know the name of one of the items contained ‘#99’ in the title so I searched all mail and found it – the smart label said it was in a folder called ‘IPM_SUBTREE’. This is a hidden folder so there was no way I could access it. Or was there?

This is the Search Bar as seen normally. Just to the right of the drop down box are two arrows. click on them and you get an expanded dialog box.

As long as you include the folder ‘IPM_SUBTREE’, you can find what you need.

I searched by the date and found all the mails I had moved.

Microsoft Research songsmith

andrewdr — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:05:00 GMT

You have got to download this . I was put onto it by Eileen Brown who has also written about it. Basically, sing any song you like and songsmith puts a backing track in a style to match your voice. You can also choose various styles and do some recording - download it now.

Technorati Tags: News,General