I recently read a great article on flexible working which presented some great ideas on how to maximise employee effectiveness when away from their desks whether in on out of the office. Some of the things they mentioned were: Eliminating dead...

Check out this free disk space gadget over at the Microsoft Gadget Gallery . The meter lets you know instantly how much free space you've got on your hard disk. As with any gadget you can add multiple instances of it to the Sidebar, which means you can...

In this, the latest screencast, I look at the handwriting recognition in Windows Vista which is available when you use a Tablet PC. I show how you can use it in your everyday Windows applications and also try to break it with my terrible handwriting ...

As promised: PTS Screencast: "3 Minute View on Vista - Using Guided Help" The screencast shows how a user can follow a guided help topic to find out a solution to a problem. In this particular example the help topic is on hiding and showing file extensions...

Yesterday, I was presenting at an event in the new Emirates Stadium which is the home of Arsenal FC. The stadium itself is fantastic and the executive box where I was presenting, provided a great view of the pitch. It was apt considering I was showing...

At the moment I'm on training in Paris, learning about advanced .NET & all things code-like. One of the fellow delegates who also works at Microsoft UK is Saqib Shaikh who sits in the Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) group as a developer. One of...

I saw David Overton's recent post on the quickest way to shutdown Windows using the keyboard. He recommends using the the following key strokes: Ctrl+Esc (Windows Key), Right, Right, Right, u Well that's 5 key strokes - and I can do it in three. All you...

Woah, it's been a while since I posted about BI, but it's still very dear to my heart so here's a little tidbit about the MCITP certification: "In response to feedback from our database business intelligence customers and partners, we are streamlining...

This is a rather cool gadget that system admins will find useful. It allows you to quickly type in a server name and remote in using remote desktop. Very slick indeed. Download it here: http://gallery.microsoft.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=c7f9c661...

Courtesy of Cesar Menendez : Today we're issuing a press release about Zune's launch date and price: November 14 in the U.S.; $249.99. Many people have asked about Zune Marketplace: A ZunePass (giving you access to millions of songs) will cost you $14...

It's the great Vista USB Key give-a-way!!!!! I've got one 256 MB Vista USB Key to give to one lucky reader and all I ask in return is that you do the following: In no more than 30 words, tell me about your favourite feature in Vista and why it's so...

Following on from my post the other day on Presentation Settings, I wanted to give you some technical details on how to code your applications so users have a good experience when they are making presentations. Firstly, it's worth checking out the...

Something that was demoed a while back at the Mix06 event was the BBC gadget running on Vista. It shows off the Presentation Foundation brilliantly and it's great to see a UK partner like the BBC pioneering Vista through our early adopter program. Check...

For the past 6 years I've used Macromedia/Adobe Dreamweaver to do my web designing - it's a really good piece of software and I stuck by it because I considered it to be the best on the market. Two months ago I uninstalled because I found a much better...

Ok I have waaaaay too much information coming at me in every direction. I need to cut back on my information addiction... I went to "Informatics Anonymous" last week (saw my boss and Matt there) and got the following things of my chest: I'm subscribed...

:-) Courtesy of Long Zheng .

This screencast covers what all tablet pc users will be using in Windows Vista - the Tablet Input Panel. One of the great features is the way that it is "context sensitive" which means that whichever application you are running, if you need to enter text...

Picking the right version of Office 2007 will depend on your business needs. Some of the areas that are beginning to concern and interest companies when it comes to their next Offiec 2007 purchase are: Information Rights Management (keeping your digital...

ExtremeTech have written a great article reviewing different USB flash devices and how they get on with ReadyBoost in Windows Vista. "ReadyBoost is a technology built into Windows Vista that caches disk reads onto a flash memory device. It can work with...

I'm not talking Chess Titans here, nor Quake for that matter. What can be done with a quad core processor from Intel and Windows Vista? Well an example is Alan Wake which my main man Long Zheng drew my attention to today via a video posted on YouTube...

Suggested retail prices have now been published on Microsoft.com: Business: $299.00 ($199.00 upgrade) Enterprise: only available to volume license customers Home Premium: $239.00 ($159.00 upgrade) Home Basic: $199.00 ($99.00 upgrade) ...

Ok, so here's the scenario, you're an IT Manager and one of your users has a problem. They don't know how to connect to the wireless network in your office. So what do they do? They ring the IT support desk because they want you to help them. One of your...

Repost I'm re-posting because Long sent me an email telling me about the changes he made to his Tube map of Vista releases following a conversation with Microsoft's Vista Beta program manager. Here's the new map with the following changes as outlined...

One of my esteemed colleagues in the PTS team has just begun to blog. It's been a long time coming, but now he has seen the light he explains in this post the business value of collating his thoughts, ideas and passion in one piece of internet real estate...

When I was introduced to the SideBar in Windows Vista my first thoughts were “wow, this is really cool”; good looking, small applications in a convenient location that are fun or help you be more productive. The next thing I noticed was how simple it...