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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...

Filed under: Consumer Tech, Vista

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...

Filed under: Consumer Tech, Vista

Dell's "anti-crapware" initiative doesn't go far enough
10 October 07 09:15 AM | Ewan | 5 Comments   

My wife's small business has recently had a requirement to upgrade a couple of PCs, after 5 or 6 years. Since I am ultimately responsible for all their IT (and I am not proud of what they have - I cut all sorts of corners to make my life easy, but they Read More...

Filed under: Consumer Tech, Vista

BBC iPlayer kicks up a stink
12 July 07 05:00 PM | Ewan | 1 Comments   

It's been interesting reading various news articles about the fact that the soon-to-be-released BBC iPlayer application will initially be available only to Internet Explorer and Windows XP users. The Register reports that a group called the Open Source Read More...

Filed under: Consumer Tech, Vista

Finally, a sidebar gadget worth having
07 May 07 06:39 PM | Ewan | 0 Comments   

Oooh, that's a bit flippant. The whole Vista sidebar thing has kind of passed me by, though it really does make sense on widescreen monitors. I set about looking for a particular gadget today, though - one of my cats managed to knock my home PC over last Read More...

Filed under: Vista, Random Stuff

Windows Live Mail Desktop - replaces Outlook Express for Hotmail use
23 March 07 06:31 PM | Ewan | 2 Comments   

I've been running the "dogfood" version of Windows Live Mail Desktop (WLMD) for a while now, and found it to be really stable and usable. It's basically a superset of the built-in Windows Mail application from Windows Vista, which supercedes Outlook Express. Read More...

Filed under: Vista

Calibri: a font like no other...
19 March 07 12:55 PM | Ewan | 0 Comments   

Someone asked me a semi-bizarre question today: the new fonts which are in Office 2007 and Windows Vista, especially Calibri (which, I must say, I think looks great)... Can they be installed on older versions of Windows or Office? I had never really appreciated Read More...

Filed under: Vista, Office

Virtual PC 2007 now available
21 February 07 10:07 AM | Ewan | 0 Comments   

The Virtual PC team released the latest version to the web the other day, and it's available for free , downloadable from here . Headline changes over previous versions are the ability to be run on Windows Vista, and to have Vista as a guest OS within Read More...

Filed under: Vista, Virtualisation

Vista Aero Glass - performance hit (or not)
31 January 07 07:40 PM | Ewan | 5 Comments   

Just read an interesting analysis at http://firingsquad.com/hardware/windows_vista_aero_glass_performance/ where they tested a couple of different systems running Windows Vista with Aero Glass switched on and off. ( Windows Aero - if you're not aware Read More...

Filed under: Consumer Tech, Vista

Sideshow Media Center remote - want one!
13 January 07 12:03 PM | Ewan | 0 Comments   

I've been a long-time user of the Philips Pronto programmable remote - it's an LCD touch screen based affair, which can be programmed to the 9th degree to create your own UI of macros which correspond to lots of different activities on different remotes Read More...

Filed under: Consumer Tech, Vista

Some more useful Windows & Outlook shortcuts
02 January 07 10:49 AM | Ewan | 3 Comments   

As I mentioned the other day , I've a penchant for using shortcuts in Windows: most (if not all) are documented in help files and the likes, but it is amazing how many people don't know about them or just don't use them. Continuing the list of shortcut Read More...

Filed under: Vista, Outlook, Random Stuff

Some Handy Windows shortcut keys...
27 December 06 05:29 PM | Ewan | 1 Comments   

I like the Windows GUI, and particularly since I'm use to it, the Vista UI. I don't think I follow a particularly usual pattern, though, because I tend to make use of lots of keyboard shortcuts which many people may not know, or may know about somewhere Read More...

Filed under: Vista, Random Stuff

Using HTC devices as a modem over USB in Vista RTM
21 December 06 03:47 PM | Ewan | 0 Comments   

One of the neat things with HTC Windows Mobile 5 devices on Windows Vista is when you activate the Wireless Modem over Bluetooth, Vista will just see the device and automatically detect it as a modem. When you plug the device in to a Vista PC using USB Read More...

Filed under: Vista, Mobile

Zooming in for demos
13 December 06 08:30 PM | Ewan | 1 Comments   

I remember seeing Mark Russinovich present at TechEd a while back, and was impressed when he used a zooming utility to show one quarter of the screen zoomed in enough that it was easy to read the screen, even from the back of the room. Presenting to even Read More...

Filed under: Vista

Windows Mobile Device Center in Vista
11 December 06 08:12 PM | Ewan | 0 Comments   

I've been a user of Windows CE/Windows Mobile devices ever since the early days of "Windows CE Services", which later morphed into ActiveSync (currently at version 4.2, but v4.5 should be with us soon). The software has certainly evolved over the years Read More...

Filed under: Vista, Mobile