i came across this blog called workshifting and have found a number of the posts thought provoking. the first time i found it i wasn’t certain what workshifting was (they list “anywhere is my office” and “what we used to call telecommuting” as explanations) but liked the...

first – even though you can use these procedures on a running, active windows vista or windows 7 operating system, if you care about your data, back it up – somewhere else – please!  critical personal data i synchronize it using windows live mesh .  now onto the tutorial and screen shots. my...

i’ve become a big fan of netbooks lately.  they are light and inexpensive and some come with reasonable hard drives (160 gb in many models) but up until recently i’ve had three complaints – 1) windows xp home 2) limited ram and 3) resolution.  both of these were recently fixed with the gateway...

almost a year ago we had a portable media session at cwug (chicago windows user group) which was a lot of fun.  we had people bring their archos media players, ipods, psps and zunes.  when we talked about the zune, one of the questions was do you need the hardware device to use the software...

it’s a great friday – today you can reserve your production copy of the windows 7 upgrade for as little as $49.99!  the professional version upgrade is only $99.99.  not certain which version you’re interested in?  check out the pricing and capabilities here .  i have been using windows...

i’ve been running windows vista for over 3 1/2 years now (before it was even released publicly) and windows 7 for almost a year.  most of the it professionals, consultants and trainers i speak to feel pretty comfortable and knowledgeable with microsoft operating systems and many have also begun...

in my previous post i was troubleshooting internet explorer and why i had two processes everytime i open the browser.  what i had forgotten is that i upgraded to internet explorer 8 and that we now use two iexplore.exe processes that runs at different integrity levels and then open pages and/or...

i recently noticed that anytime i open internet explorer, i have two iexplore.exe processes on windows vista. in trying to troubleshoot this, i reinstalled a test system and was reminded in internet explorer 7 and protected mode we introduced a secondary process called ieuser.exe that "sandboxes" internet...

microsoft has made a program available from verdiem called edison.  this free tool is available for windows xp and windows vista - check it out at http://www.microsoft.com/environment/edison.aspx

my first day at microsoft (october 31st, 2005) i started with a couple other people. that's the day i met edward - we started as windows client technical specialists. we went through a lot together starting at microsoft - we both hold the record of the shortest time with a manager - 1 day (our hiring...

today we've posted addtional information in preparation for the release candidate for windows 7 on the engineering 7 blog. it confirms what a lot of people have been asking me – you will be able to upgrade from the beta or interim builds to the release candidate, but that this is not by design, a supported...

in windows 7 beta there is a boot to vhd feature which allows you to start a vhd and may avoid the old school option of dual boot. however with windows vista there are a couple great things with dual boot. 1) if you dual boot windows vista with an earlier operating system, when you are in windows...

the springboard series has released a number of videos that explain a number of features in windows 7. the first one i watched was on application compatibility . showing the same work that went into fixing an application running on windows vista and then on windows 7 really emphasizes the capability...

still my favorite installation trick from windows vista is the use of shift+f10 during the installation to be able to access a command prompt. this wasn't windows vista specific - it existed in windows xp as well, but i discovered it during the beta of windows vista. it's still there and allows you to...

...is from hp! i've got the tz1000 tablet which also allows touch, but the hp tx2z series supports multitouch. in a growing trend, it also can be purchased with the 64 bit edition of windows vista home premium or ultimate. it appears to be the same size as the tz1000 which i like - check it out here...

i'm an impatient person with computers. i wasn't always this way. i remember when you could watch the output of the dir command (i don't know in the first version of dos whether the /p was even available because i certainly didn't need it). i now expect to be able to see a thumbnail of the thousands...

over the weekend i rated a couple more laptop systems - one with an intel core 2 duo t9300 @ 2.50 ghz, 4 gb ram, 120 gb 7200 rpm hard drive and one with an intel core 2 duo t8300 @ 2.40 ghz, 2 gb ram, 250 gb 5400 rpm hard drive. the hard disk score was 5.2 and 5.1 respectively. still my solid state drive...

5.9 for primary hard disk - will have to compare this to a couple of my other systems, but this is on a solid state hard drive. wmic even lets you display this from the command line: wmic path win32_winsat get diskscore - next i'll have to write a script!

i do most of my reconfiguration of systems today using virtual pc, virtual server or hyper-v. even most beta software is virtualized avoiding the need to worry about removal, upgrades to more recent versions or production when available. windows steadystate can be used on systems that i want to maintain...

readyboost is your friend! i've been making some adjustments on my 2 gb and 4 gb work laptop lately and have newly discovered readyboost. the 4 gb laptop is using one of the new 64 gb solid state hard drive and is the smallest hard drive i've had in a notebook in over 4 years. turning off the pagefile...

lately i've been playing around with various tweaks on my two main windows vista computers. one has 4 gb of ram and the other has 2 gb of ram. on both computers i ran without a pagefile for a while and the 2 gb system occasionally popped up the system running low on memory message - i disabled the aero...

sunday i'm going to be assisting someone with computer problems (which have been diagnosed as hardware - we'll see) and at a minimum computer data backup. this is a natural part of my life whether with family or friends, work related or otherwise - i'll help. and it's got me thinking that sharing some...

the "next microsoft operating system" was shown to a number of people in san francisco - now the website includes the demo they were shown and some of the technical details (like the specs of the laptops used).

this week microsoft released videos and results of an experiment where 140 average people were asked about windows vista and then shown a demo of "windows mojave" - the newest version of windows. check it out and see what you think...