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XP Mode in Windows 7 saved me money
12 October 09 05:12 AM | Ewan | 0 Comments   
I've been running Windows 7 at home for a while now, and have been very pleased with it - on a decent spec machine (Quad core, 4Gb RAM, lots of SATA-II disk etc), it absolutely flies. As did Vista before it, if truth be told. When I got this machine, Read More...
Mapping with Bing
08 August 09 08:37 AM | Ewan | 0 Comments   
As a follow on to the Bing post from the other day, I was talking with a guy who’d spent some years working in the Microsoft mapping team in Redmond – he’d talked about the progress the company had made in online mapping technology and the challenges Read More...
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I Bing; do u Bing 2?
06 August 09 08:11 AM | Ewan | 1 Comments   
It might take a while before you “bing” someone before going out on a date with them, or you “bing” a question out onto the internet… stranger things have happened though. I hear stories of people visiting bing.com every day, just to see what the picture Read More...
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Playing with Microsoft Tag
31 July 09 09:45 AM | Ewan | 0 Comments   
I know it’s been around in some form for a little while now, but I’ve only started looking at Tag – a way of essentially representing URLs in a camera-phone friendly way, such that merely pointing the phone at the “tag” takes you there. Head over to http://tag.microsoft.com Read More...
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The Emperor’s New Clothes
28 July 09 11:35 AM | Ewan | 0 Comments   
Firstly, apologies for the silence in recent weeks – it’s been a busy time and, well, y’know. Once you’re a week or two behind blog posting, you might as well be a month or two behind… Anyway. Lots has happened IT-wise in the last few months. Windows Read More...
HTC s740 – great phone, just one thing…
20 February 09 07:41 AM | Ewan | 1 Comments   
I got one of these things a couple of weeks ago… in essence, a great phone (I prefer the “smartphone” type device as opposed to the touch screen variety) – I’ve spent the last couple of years with the HTC s620 and it was time for a change. Key differences Read More...
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Look what I found in my loft: a 9-year old netbook
30 January 09 06:56 PM | Ewan | 0 Comments   
I splashed out a week or two ago, and bought a Samsung NC10 netbook – a bargain at under £300, and it runs Windows 7 really well. Impressed with the size and utility of the thing, I recalled a forerunner of the netbook, so went rooting around in my “box Read More...
Windows 7 tips & tricks, and Media Center tuner drivers
14 January 09 12:16 AM | Ewan | 1 Comments   
I put Windows 7 Beta 1 on my home PC the other day (as a dual boot config with Vista x64) to see what it was like; I was very pleasantly surprised, with the exception of the fact that Media Center - much as it looks nicer - didn't work out of the box Read More...
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Top ten things for <insert company name> to do in 2009
13 January 09 11:38 AM | Ewan | 0 Comments   
It seems this time of year brings out the soothsayer in lots of IT journalists and analysts, if the volume of “ten things to do” articles is anything to go by. Mary-Jo Foley posted a couple of weeks ago on what she thought Microsoft might/should do this Read More...
Is Blu-ray really "all that"?
05 January 09 08:51 AM | Ewan | 1 Comments   
I made the decision to wait until the HD-DVD/Blu-ray format war had been resolved before deciding to give the winner a try. In the interim, about 18 months ago I picked up a new DVD player for about £120, which had HDMI support, did a decent job of upscaling Read More...
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Zune 30Gb 'worldwide meltdown'
31 December 08 06:52 PM | Ewan | 10 Comments   
I went to grab my trusty 30Gb Zune today and it froze on startup - the "Zune" logo stayed stuck on the screen indefinitely. Hitting the web to look for techniques on how to reset the device yielded a few tips but nothing that solved my issue. I did spot Read More...
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Tips for optimizing Vista on new hardware
23 April 08 07:42 PM | Ewan | 2 Comments   
Ed Bott over at ZDNet posted a really interesting article yesterday, detailing the journey he had of making his friend's brand new Sony Viao laptop work properly with Windows Vista Business. In short, his friend upgraded a trusty old XP Vaio to a new Read More...
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Imperialism, Metric-centricity and Live Search
17 April 08 12:51 PM | Ewan | 2 Comments   
I'm a child of a mixed up time when it comes to measures and the likes. I am feet and inches tall, stones and pounds heavy, when it's cold outside, it's below zero degrees, but when it's hot, it's in the 80s. I learned small measurement in mms and cms, Read More...
Seadragon begets Silverlight "Deep Zoom"
12 March 08 09:37 PM | Ewan | 0 Comments   
There's a headline that might baffle... Seadragon Inc was a Seattle-based software company who had done a load of work on handling vast quantities of imagery and being able to manipulate the data in real-time, on-screen. Microsoft acquired Seadragon and Read More...
Windows Media Center query-based recording
23 February 08 06:32 PM | Ewan | 3 Comments   
Here's a tip for anyone running Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate editions (the ones with Media Center functionality), if you have a suitable tuner set up and configured. I mentioned this in passing to someone who uses Media Center as their primary Read More...
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Ewan Dalton:: Some hopefully sensible commentary around various technologies, starting with Exchange Server and other communications technologies but anything to do with software and electronics, basically... I've been at Microsoft for over 10 years so have a rich history of playing with stuff that's in development.

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