I just found this really cool free Excel add-in that looks at your Outlook calendar to analyze how you are spending your time.  If you have Windows 7 and Office 2010, it allows you to slice and dice the data in ad-hoc analysis and displays the information...

I have been working on this build guide for several months.  Between myself and a vendor, we finally got it finished to a releasable point.  It contains the directions required to install and configure several products including: Active Directory...

Check out this huge new touch screen!  very cool! http://www.winrumors.com/microsoft-creates-giant-234-interactive-touch-screen/

A new option in Windows Server 2008 is Server Core. It provides a minimal environment for running a subset of the server roles, AD, DNS, DHCP, File & Print. It can reduce the servicing requirements and the attack surface for those server roles. http...

If you go down to Start and type CMD in the search box (not from the RUN line) and hit CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER, it will open the command prompt in Admin mode. Thanks Randy Rands for that one…

When you have multiple tabs open in Internet Explorer, type CTRL+1, CTRL+2, etc. This will move that tab to the front.

With sizes reaching 160GB, SATA II “no spinnie” hard drives will start showing up this fall in new computers and devices. http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/solid_state-drives/

Get more performance out of Vista. The default power plan in Vista is set to Balanced. Changing it to High Performance will increase the CPU utilization up to 50%. That’s in Control Panel, Power Options.

Do you remember way back when you could hit CTRL+C to cancel an operation? Well, it’s back with Vista – sort of. Try to open a document on a network resource that it can’t find. In Windows XP, you were stuck until the OS decided it couldn’t connect. Vista...

If I’m looking for something Microsoft related, I use www.google.com/microsoft . This will filter my results to Microsoft type answers. If I search for SMS, I’ll get Systems Management Server instead of Short Messaging Services. They also have a filtered...

This locks down the computer and discards changes at logoff. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sharedaccess/default.mspx

Ever tried to troubleshoot application communications? This free utility will tell you if a computer is listening on a specified port. http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310099

Delete lots of e-mails from your pst lately? You should compact it as well. In Outlook, go to File, Data File Management, double-click on your pst, then choose Compact Now.

Wish you could find all the domain controllers that are involved in user lockouts? Visit http:// go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=35607 for details.

Do you often misspell the same words the same way? Some words are automatically corrected while others are not. Next time you get the red squiggly, instead of right-clicking and choosing the right word, right-click and go to AutoCorrect then choose the...

Do you get e-mails that you can’t read and you have to right-click to download the pictures? I finally decided that even though I didn’t really want to receive e-mails from Delta promotions, I also knew they wouldn’t send me smut or viruses. So, the next...

I just went to a truck stop and bought an antenna for my SMT 5600. It increases my reception from 1 to 5 bars!!! It works great. The antenna is about 4” long with an 8’ cord. Since they don’t sell one for the SMT 5600, I had to try all of them until one...

To see server status in Outlook 2003, hold the CTRL, then right-click on the Outlook Icon in the system tray. Go up to Connection Status.

We just released the beta for Monad, our new interactive command-line and task-based scripting technology. To get a copy, go to http://download.microsoft.com and search for monad.

Want better reception from your wireless adapter? Try these tips: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/moredone/wirelesstips.mspx

When setting up a conference call meeting request, make it “Smartphone Friendly”. Use the “tel:” prefix and embed the participant passcode (pp) so that can be dialed by one click from a Smartphone. Tel:425-707-2000pp123456 By the way, p is an acceptable...

We released a utility that helps Manage flash drives. You can copy files to and from flash drives; create backups, configure autorun capabilities, and store wireless configuration settings. See http://list.windowsitpro.com/t?ctl=9F0C:598DE for details...

If you use remote desktop, you sometimes need to connect to the console session. Here’s a way through the RDP settings file to do just that. Use ConnectToConsole;i;1 See http://dev.remotenetworktechnology.com/ts/rdpfile.htm for details.

I use notepad too much. To get to it faster, right-click on the Start Menu, go to Explore. Open SendTo at the bottom and create a new shortcut to Notepad. Then, just right-click on any file and send it to Notepad!

I had to rename a server but it would take two weeks to get all the clients to point to the new name. If you go to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters and create a Reg_Multi_SZ called OptionalNames then put the server names...