Future of the Desktop User Group Tour Kicks off in Montreal
As part of most of the tours we do across the country, we typically will have a session the night before the main event at a user group in the local city. In Montreal we held a session called Windows Vista Chalk Talk with the Montreal IT Pro User Group (MITPRO). For those of you that may not have attended a Chalk Talk type session, it is very interactive and very free form. We really don't have much of an agenda for the Chalk Talk, though we did focus on Windows Vista.
Bruce Cowper and I spend about 90 minutes showing the standing room only crowd of about 75 people some of the really useful and cool features of Windows Vista and how to use them. We covered Family Protection Settings and how to ensure that your family members' experience on the Internet is a safe one and that the sites visited have appropriate content. We also looked at how you can configure safe game settings so that younger children don't accidentally run games that they should not.
We also spend a fair bit of time on the new user interface in Windows Vista such as Aero Glass and its requirements in Windows Vista such as a high-end video card with at least 64MB of RAM and a proper Windows Device Driver Model (WDDM) driver. The bulk of recent video cards from ATI and nVidia should fit the bill. Check out the Windows Vista Hardware Planning Guide for more info.
The real highlight from the session was the free-form Q&A and discussion that took place. Both Bruce and I really enjoyed responding to your questions on Windows Vista, which is what the point of a Chalk Talk is any way. We will do this again on Monday, May 29 in Vancouver with VANTUG.
