Most of my machines are now touch.  I have 2 Acers, 1 Samsung, 1 Lenovo a Sony all in one all featuring touch screens.  In Windows 8 there is a great new Mail app specifically designed for touch.  It integrates with the Microsoft Account...

Windows 8 brings some obvious and not so obvious changes.  One that I can’t wait for is the Microsoft Account Integration.  Imagine all of your personal devices now connected easily with one another using a single account.  Imagine being...

In PowerPoint 2010 there is a Hyperlink and Action feature that allow you to navigate to a certain slide when a word (hyperlink) or area/section (action) is touched by the presenter (on a touch screen) or clicked with a mouse.  I have found this...

Next Thursday (June 21st) at the Chicago Windows User Group June meeting, we will be hosting our Windows 8 Release Preview loadfest. This is the last milestone before the RTM (Release To Manufacturing) of the product. The event will be at both the Aon...

In 1988 I met my future wife, Eva.  That summer I left for DeKalb and made her a mix tape (that apparently was really meaningful beyond the hours I put into hand writing the track lists and getting the right tracks to fill up a 90 minute cassette...

Yesterday I read about Bing desktop and wanted to try it.  It brings the Bing home page picture to your computer every day and gives you a search box on your taskbar/desktop Windows Key + H by default brings up search Very cool and we’ll see what...

I’ve been using SkyDrive for a long time.  Microsoft will begin to charge for more than 7 gb (I am currently using about 300 mb), but if you log into your account, you can request the 25 gb for free!  This might not be important today, but the...

How cool is a custom boot screen and startup sound for your laptop?  Leave it to Asus – now I have a picture and sound file of my choice when I turn on my laptop.  I had noticed in the UEFI settings (that you could have a startup picture and...

April fools is one of my favorite days – it was my full time day at the Information Management Group, which is where some of the best office April Fools Jokes were played.  This year 4/1 is today – a Sunday.  So I decided to separate my prank...

Sometimes it takes a while for me to try something at home.  I finally was able to troubleshoot an issue with Windows 7 on a desktop.  The video once I installed Windows 7 64 bit was blank.  I had a suspicion that the all in one thought...

I’ve been a big fan of Windows Speech Recognition and it definitely adds a new dimension to Windows 8 with or without touch. The Consumer Preview is out and I decided to give speech recognition a spin. You can say “Start” to display...

I’ve just finished my second upgrade to Windows 8 and I’m very impressed with how well the Consumer Preview checks for compatibility, has you uninstall anything that will cause problems and then either migrates your apps, data and settings...

4 installations later and windows 8 is running on many of the touch devices i have at my disposal. so far i have loaded the windows 8 consumer preview on a lenovo x220t, samsung series 7 slate, acer 1420p (the 2009 pdc tablet) and a dell duo convertible...

there are certain dates that stick with you. birthdays, anniversaries and other significant dates. the first geek date i have committed to memory is august 24th, 1995. the second geek date i have memorized is easy to remember because it's also my birthday...

i have begun to broadcast my powerpoint presentations using the powerpoint 2010 feature and will give a quick tutorial in this blog post.  from the office 2010 backstage view (which you access from the file menu) under save and send you can setup...

i have only been waiting 20 years for this - brian regan, my favorite comedian, is performing in dekalb, il on april 29th! we have seen brian regan so many times in so many comedy clubs and theaters i have lost count. we used to go to see brian multiple...

i got a question today that i'm hoping is answered by using a built in windows 7 program that isn't the default for a particular file type. windows 7 includes both a photo viewer and a fax and scan program. i'm going to be doing some investigation into...

i spent a couple days at ces this week and it was a bittersweet visit with microsoft not planning a booth or keynote next year.  i visited the microsoft booth in the main hall and although it was very cool i could compare almost everything there...

i was running windows xp (and had been since before it was released) and when i read ed bott’s post about browser usage , i couldn’t help but think about what i was running 10 years earlier in early 1992… i started at the company...

this morning i presented at the largest computer club i am involved with (over 900 members and probably 200 at the meeting). we spoke about windows live essentials and windows live writer. i posted the beginning of this post, and thought before the end...

i began my journey at microsoft. i was really excited and couldn't think of a better fit than the job and the company i was about to start at for me and my career. there were a few things that happened that i found amusing. that first day i received my...

i’m coming up on 6 years at microsoft and still wake up every day jazzed about what i do, the people i work with, and probably most importantly for me – some visionaries at the top.  i just read j allard’s internal memo “decide. change. reinvent...

this is likely my tribute to steve jobs post.  it originally was going to be a post about acting and thinking differently, but based upon the events of this week and some reflection, it seems more appropriate to also serve as a what i learned from...

wow! last week i purchased an asus n73s notebook with sound from bang & olufsen and liked it so much i got my son an asus n53. at the top of the feature list was the blu ray player, but having usb 3.0 bootable port in a laptop for windows 8 performance...

i’m working from home today and the kids have started school just yet. this afternoon it occurred to me that every single member of our family was working on a computer. most of us are using a laptop, but occasionally someone is using a tablet or...