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Boxed Windows 7 Beta & RC!
Since I’m a private beta tester for Microsoft Windows 7, I have the capability to contribute in private chats with Windows 7 product teams to discuss new features, provide feedback and suggestions to the new OS. During these chats, a SWAG “Stuff We All Get” is offered for best questions (mostly best 3 questions in order of question and not by quality of question) during the chat session. I won a SWAG before for some cool stuff with Windows 7 Logo on (see image below) with a signed letter from all product team who contributed in the chat session.
Before 2 weeks, I had some free time to login to another chat session about a certain technology in Windows 7 “I’m sorry, I can’t tell due to NDA of chat”, the surprise was that the coolest SWAG in beta chats for Windows 7 is in this chat session. Here’s the page of the SWAG: Hot off the presses and in limited supply! Get yours by being selected as a Best Question Winner in Today's chat Now available in a boxed set! Both Beta and RC DVDs I was very lucky to become a best question winner in this chat! Have a look :-) I’m still waiting for the package to arrive to home to see the new box set!
That was after 1 week of obtaining non-boxed DVDs for Windows 7 Beta (x86 and x64) during finalists of Imagine Cup 2009 Software Design local competition as being an official Microsoft Student Partner “MSP”! Thank you Microsoft :-) Smart Devices in Visual Studio 2010 – Good News Coming?
In a previous article, I’ve make a preview about the new Visual Studio 2010 features and drawbacks. One of the key drawbacks is that Smart Devices is no more supported in Visual Studio 2010. Some people think that Microsoft is going to build a standalone IDE for Smart Devices including Windows CE and Windows Mobile applications like major competitors in this field “Apple and Google” who released free IDEs for development of both iPhone and Android applications respectively. Those thoughts were confirmed after the release of a public beta of Microsoft’s main development IDE, Visual Studio 2010 in the last week. Microsoft did not include Smart Devices programmability features in all supported languages in Visual Studio 2010, which was a bad news for smart devices developers when they found that out, especially for Windows Embedded developers which became very certain that Visual Studio will no more work with BSPs after much complaints of forcing most of Embedded developers who upgraded to Visual Studio 2008 to stick back to Visual Studio 2005 since VS 2008 and WinCE 6.0 were not compatible. The good news that Microsoft Windows Embedded team is not intending to build its standalone IDE for Windows Embedded and Windows Mobile development. They’re working with Visual Studio team in order to find a solution for Smart Device programmability options in Visual Studio 2010. Hoping to see Smart Devices back in next builds of Visual Studio 2010! Review: Windows Embedded Compact
Microsoft announced Windows codename Chelan at TechEd North America 2009. Windows Chelan is the codename of the upcoming Windows Embedded Compact, Window Embedded Compact is expected to include new key features including:
(*)UX include C++ XAML API using technologies like WPF and Silverlight for attractive and functional user interfaces. Windows Embedded Compact OS has the same architecture and core of Windows Embedded CE 6.0, so the porting of WinCE 6.0 based BSPs “Board Support Packages” should be straight forward for compatibility issues. Windows Embedded Compact will finally become a plug-in for Visual Studio 2008, however there is no news whether it will become a plug-in for the upcoming Visual Studio 2010 or not since the last one removed Smart Device programmability features from it. Microsoft didn’t want to declare more news about the new Windows codename Chelan. I think they’re true in this step especially in the mean time. A public beta of Windows Embedded Compact will be available in the next months. Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1: A Stack of Bugs!
In a previous article, I displayed brand technologies in Visual Studio 2010. Since Visual Studio 2010 still in beta phase, some bugs and errors are found in this version of Visual Studio in just a glimpse about the product in less than 3 hours from first installation on a Windows 7 RC x64 machine. Installation Installation went smooth and fast without mentioned errors. I’ve tried several tests of installation on optical media "DVD”, local source and network source. During network installation, I’ve powered off the network machine that include shared installation folder while installer was trying to extract a cabinet file. Installation considered file as corrupted and installation rolled back. During rollback, an error occurred stating that one of restoring computer to its previous state could not be found. Setup crashed because of absence of a Retry option during installation! Smart Devices Developers If you’re a smart device developer, Microsoft is telling you if you still in need of programming Windows Mobile and Windows CE application, do not rely on Visual Studio 2010 since it’s no more supported in this release of Visual Studio. As most of Windows CE developers expected a solution for the Platform Builder on Windows CE 6.0 that was only was available for installation on Visual Studio 2005, Microsoft didn’t include the whole smart devices programmability set! That maybe since Google and Apple released a free IDE for mobile developers to develop their own application, I guess Microsoft is going to release a special IDE for mobile developers free of charge unlike Visual Studio 2010. Hoping Microsoft would make a declaration about this criticism as soon as possible. Cursor Blink A very strange issue in the Visual Studio 2010 IDE is that the Cursor blinks in a strange technique causing a shadow after every blink which might cause some eye problems especially developers can’t work except by tracking the cursor (The shown image illustrates the cursor “3rd line” in a snapshot and it appears scattered").
Non Functional Buttons Let’s start a project from an existing code for all C++, Visual Basic and C#. For C++
I’ve tried to open an existing code folder written on C++ to complete it. I tried to click the Browse button, it’s not functional! I tried to do the same for Add button to check validity of it, the same! Not working! For Visual Basic and C#
I’ve tried to validate all buttons and actions on this wizard for both VB and C#, I clicked the Browse button (represented as …) and then a window appeared to Select Folder then clicked Cancel without adding an option. The bug appeared, the drive letter (c:\) was called back again but in a non-unicode character (Asian character) that was translated into a strange box or undefined character set. Also the whole path was converted into lowercase ignoring true naming of path folders and drive letters as well. Visio 2007 UML Reverse Engineering Microsoft Visio 2007 Professional is installed on my machine, since it’s installed, a plug-in used to reverse Engineer code into UML diagrams, the tool was not found in this release of Visual Studio 2010.
That was after 2-3 hours of installation. I’m going to get in depth with Visual Studio 2010 Team System to find more bugs and I’m going list them in following articles beside another series of articles as tutorials of the new product. Visual Studio 2010: An Incredible UX Experience
Microsoft Corporation just released its most famous IDE tool for developers, Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 on May 20, 2009 for MSDN Subscribers and soon released another version to public. A CTP version of VS 2010 was released on 2008 in VHD format. Visual Studio 2010 was introduced by codename Hawaii. Actually, I didn’t try to test VS 2010 on VHD since a runtime installation would work fine for me to debug errors during installation and working environments. I’ve just installed Visual Studio 2010 (2 hours ago from posting this article) and here is the first impression. First Look
As shown in figure, the Visual Studio 2010 IDE was redesigned for clear UI organization with support of multiple document windows and floating tools windows. The new that the IDE shell was rewritten on WPF “Windows Presentation Foundation”, Microsoft’s revolutions in graphics experiences was firstly introduced in .NET Framework 3.0, whereas the internals were redesigned using MEF “Managed Extensibility Framework” to allow rich add of add-ins. New Technologies .NET Framework 4.0 Microsoft announced the .NET Framework 4.0 on 29 September 2008. Public beta was released with Visual Studio 2010 on May 26. The new .NET Framework empowers the Azure cloud computing platform programmability by support of: Parallel Extensions, PLINQ, Task Parallel Library. It also provides full support for F#, IronRuby and IronPython languages. It also provides supporting the subset of .NET Framework and ASP.NET with Server Core as in Windows Server 2008 R2. Beside lots of enhancements on existing .NET technologies. F# Full support of the multi-paradigm programming language F# which was included into the new version of .NET Framework 4.0. F# would be a replacement of J# that was no more included since Visual Studio 2008 as a sign that Microsoft will no more provide support for JAVA programming language. F# was developed in Microsoft Research Labs and firstly appeared in 2002 and it’s a language that provide rich support for both functional, imperative and object oriented programming aspects. Oracle Database Programmability Support Since Visual Studio 2010 provides extensibility and providing rich support for adding add-ins for third parties, Quest announced that they will provide an add-in that provide Oracle Database programmability support within Visual Studio 2010. The new tool enables Oracle developers to perform offline design, development and change management in VSTS, and integrate their changes into the application's automated build schedule. This capability ensures that all database changes are managed and tracked in the system, unifying Oracle professionals with the rest of their organization's VSTS team. "We are pleased to have Quest Software supporting Visual Studio Team System 2010," Jason Zander, general manager of Microsoft's Visual Studio Developer Division, said in the statement. "With this forthcoming solution, Oracle developers will be able to take full advantage of the benefits of Visual Studio Team System." Code Editor The Visual Studio 2010 code editor now highlights references; whenever a symbol is selected, all other usages of the symbol are highlighted. It also offers a Quick Search feature to incrementally search across all symbols in C++, C# and VB.NET projects. Quick Search supports substring matches and camelCase searches. The Call Hierarchy feature allows the developer to see all the methods that are called from a current method as well as the methods that call the current one. IntelliSense in Visual Studio supports a consume-first mode, which can be opted-into by the developer. In this mode, IntelliSense will not auto-complete identifiers; this allows the developer to use undefined identifiers (like variable or method names) and define those later. Visual Studio 2010 can help in this also by automatically defining them, if it can infer their types from usage. Visual Studio 2010 Team System Visual Studio Team System 2010, codenamed Rosario is being positioned for application lifecycle management. It will include new modeling tools, including the Architecture Explorer that graphically displays the projects and classes and the relationships between them. It supports UML activity diagram, component diagram, (logical) class diagram, sequence diagram, and use case diagram. Visual Studio Team System 2010 also includes Test Impact Analysis which provides hints on which test cases are impacted by modifications to the source code, without actually running the test cases. This speeds up testing by avoiding running unneeded test cases. Visual Studio Team System 2010 also includes a Historical Debugger. Unlike the current debugger, that records only the currently-active stack, the historical debugger records all events like prior function calls, method parameters, events, exceptions etc. This allows the code execution to be rewound in case a breakpoint wasn't set where the error occurred. The historical debugger will cause the application to run slower than the current debugger, and will use more memory as additional data needs to be recorded. Microsoft allows configuration of how much data should be recorded, in effect allowing developers to balance speed of execution and resource usage. The Lab Management component of Visual Studio Team System 2010 uses virtualization to create a similar execution environment for testers and developers. The virtual machines are tagged with checkpoints which can later be investigated for issues, as well as to reproduce the issue. Visual Studio Team System 2010 also includes the capability to record test runs, that capture the specific state of the operating environment as well as the precise steps used to run the test. These steps can then be played back to reproduce issues. I’m going to display a list of backdraws and bugs found in this release of Visual Studio in a later article. Building a Robot, Is That Really Simple?I've got many readings in Robotics from toys passing with mobile and industrial robots to space rovers. I really found it's so interesting that anyone can build their own robots so simply. I decided to build a Robot for my graduation project! Well, the idea is crazy -at least for my colleagues at faculty- due to lack of academic and financial materials.
Alright, I've searched tens of sponsors and could only gain a technical sponsor in specific parts of the robot, but no financial support. I've did some Internet searching and could reduce costs up to 50%. That was really cool part to do to boost implementation process of the robot.
What's the problem then? Actually, programming a robot is not that very simple. Okay, you may consider it: Plug, Program and Play (PPP). You can purchase all required hardware with tens of cautions of power failures and risks of incompatibility issues with hardware, then the most critical part is programming. You're not making simple software to control over a robot. It's all related to creating a special software for a customized platform with many considerations (power management is really tough!), networking and controls, even if you used the simplest programming languages like C#.
Roverbot Roverbot is the codename of my graduation project. It would be the first of its type implemented ever in my university. It’s not simple at all to build a robot, but very fun to challenge! Roverbot is expected to be released officially by June 2009. I’ll let you all meet Roverbot J. Just wish me best of luck! Laws of Robots One: A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allows a human being to come to harm. Two: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. Three: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.” Welcome to the Windows 7 Beta Customer Preview ProgramWindows 7 is… See Windows 7 for yourself We are inviting IT professionals around the world to work with the Windows 7 Beta in their lab environments and secondary PCs to help ensure smooth adoption when the final product is available and to gather feedback from real-world settings. How can you get involved? 1. Take a look at some of the new features and functionality in Windows 7 as part of our Springboard Series guidance on the Windows Client TechCenter on TechNet. As a partner you can also see additional resources on the Microsoft Partner Program portal. 2. Download the Beta for a hands-on trial. For a limited time, Microsoft is making this pre-release version of Windows 7 available to the first 2.5 million people who download. Ready to take a test drive? You can get one by trying the Windows 7 Beta. We think you’ll have the best experience if:
Microsoft isn’t providing technical support for the Beta and isn’t responsible for business-related downtime. Don’t install the Beta on your primary home or work computer. When the Beta expires on August 1, 2009, you’ll need to reinstall a released version of Windows to keep using your computer. (See Installation Instructions.) These are the Microsoft minimum hardware recommendations for systems that will be running the Windows 7 Beta. These recommendations are specific to the beta release and are subject to change:
Note: Some product features of Windows 7, such as the ability to watch and record live TV or navigation through the use of “touch”, may require advanced or additional hardware. To learn more, see Windows 7 Beta: Frequently Asked Questions. Source: Microsoft TechNet In less than 45 minutes, Windows 7 Beta links were removed!
“Due to very heavy traffic we’re seeing as a result of interest in the Windows 7 Beta, we are adding some additional infrastructure support to the Microsoft.com properties before we post the public beta. We want to ensure customers have the best possible experience when downloading the beta, and I’ll be posting here again soon once the beta goes live. Stay tuned! We are excited that you are excited!”. Microsoft reposted this message at 4 PM Pacific Time: “Thanks for your interest in the Windows 7 Beta. The volume has been phenomenal -- we’re in the process of adding more servers to handle the demand. We’re sorry for the delay and we’ll re-post the Beta as soon as we can ensure a quality download experience.” So, we’re still awaiting! Windows 7 Beta is Now Public!
Brandon LeBlanc, one of The Windows Team Blogs team stated that: “On January 9th, the Windows 7 Beta will be available for Windows enthusiasts to download via the Windows 7 page on Windows.com. The Windows 7 Beta is going to be available download-only (we’re not sending out physical media) and available for a limited time to the first 2.5 million people who download the beta. The Windows 7 Beta will be available in English, German, Japanese, Arabic, and Hindi, and each language will be available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions (except Hindi which will only be available in 32-bit). “ Other sources from Microsoft Partners website declared the exact time when the link will get published to public as: “Partners with a MSDN or TechNet subscription can download Windows 7 Beta now. All other partners can download Windows 7 Beta starting January 9, 2009 at 12:00 P.M. Pacific Time. “ Once it became 12 PM, people could be able to access the following link to sign up for the product and receive product keys, when you choose your preferred version (86 or 64) and language and hit the continue (>) button, you will get “Server is too busy” page and won’t be able to proceed with sign-up process. Few minutes later (12:40), links were soon removed and visitors only get: Windows® 7 Beta coming soon! If you’re interested in downloading Windows 7 and were lucky to get in, here’s the link: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd353205.aspx I hope that Microsoft would get links up again to let users enjoy the “Vista that users were looking forward to”. The Top 10 Strategic Technologies For 2008Bye bye 2008! On the technological field, I’m going list the top 10 strategic technologies for 2008 as per Gartner Inc. analysis. Green IT. The focus of Green IT that came to the forefront in 2007 will accelerate and expand in 2008. Consider potential regulations and have alternative plans for data center and capacity growth. Regulations are multiplying and have the potential to seriously constrain companies in building data centers, as the impact on power grids, carbon emissions from increased use and other environmental impacts are under scrutiny. Some companies are emphasizing their social responsibility behavior, which might result in vendor preferences and policies that affect IT decisions. Scheduling decisions for workloads on servers will begin to consider power efficiency as a key placement attribute. Unified Communications. Today, 20 percent of the installed base with PBX has migrated to IP telephony, but more than 80 percent are already doing trials of some form. Gartner analysts expect the next three years to be the point at which the majority of companies implement this, the first major change in voice communications since the digital PBX and cellular phone changes in the 1970s and 1980s. Business Process Modeling. Top-level process services must be defined jointly by a set of roles (which include enterprise architects, senior developers, process architects and/or process analysts). Some of those roles sit in a service oriented architecture center of excellence, some in a process center of excellence and some in both. The strategic imperative for 2008 is to bring these groups together. Gartner expects BPM suites to fill a critical role as a compliment to SOA development. Metadata Management. Through 2010, organizations implementing both customer data integration and product integration and product information management will link these master data management initiatives as part of an overall enterprise information management (EIM) strategy. Metadata management is a critical part of a company’s information infrastructure. It enables optimization, abstraction and semantic reconciliation of metadata to support reuse, consistency, integrity and shareability. Metadata management also extends into SOA projects with service registries and application development repositories. Metadata also plays a role in operations management with CMDB initiatives. Virtualization 2.0. Virtualization technologies can improve IT resource utilization and increase the flexibility needed to adapt to changing requirements and workloads. However, by themselves, virtualization technologies are simply enablers that help broader improvements in infrastructure cost reduction, flexibility and resiliency. With the addition of automation technologies – with service-level, policy-based active management – resource efficiency can improve dramatically, flexibility can become automatic based on requirements, and services can be managed holistically, ensuring high levels of resiliency. Virtualization plus service-level, policy-based automation constitutes an RTI. Mashup & Composite Apps. By 2010, Web mashups will be the dominant model (80 percent) for the creation of composite enterprise applications. Mashup technologies will evolve significantly over the next five years, and application leaders must take this evolution into account when evaluating the impact of mashups and in formulating an enterprise mashup strategy. Web Platform & WOA. Software as a service (SaaS) is becoming a viable option in more markets and companies must evaluate where service based delivery may provide value in 2008-2010. Meanwhile Web platforms are emerging which provide service-based access to infrastructure services, information, applications, and business processes through Web based “cloud computing” environments. Companies must also look beyond SaaS to examine how Web platforms will impact their business in 3-5 years. Computing Fabric. A computing fabric is the evolution of server design beyond the interim stage, blade servers, that exists today. The next step in this progression is the introduction of technology to allow several blades to be merged operationally over the fabric, operating as a larger single system image that is the sum of the components from those blades. The fabric-based server of the future will treat memory, processors, and I/O cards as components in a pool, combining and recombining them into particular arrangements to suits the owner’s needs. For example a large server can be created by combining 32 processors and a number of memory modules from the pool, operating together over the fabric to appear to an operating system as a single fixed server. Real World Web. The term “real world Web” is informal, referring to places where information from the Web is applied to the particular location, activity or context in the real world. It is intended to augment the reality that a user faces, not to replace it as in virtual worlds. It is used in real-time based on the real world situation, not prepared in advance for consumption at specific times or researched after the events have occurred. For example in navigation, a printed list of directions from the Web do not react to changes, but a GPS navigation unit provides real-time directions that react to events and movements; the latter case is akin to the real-world Web of augmented reality. Now is the time to seek out new applications, new revenue streams and improvements to business process that can come from augmenting the world at the right time, place or situation. Social Software. Through 2010, the enterprise Web 2.0 product environment will experience considerable flux with continued product innovation and new entrants, including start-ups, large vendors and traditional collaboration vendors. Expect significant consolidation as competitors strive to deliver robust Web 2.0 offerings to the enterprise. Nevertheless social software technologies will increasingly be brought into the enterprise to augment traditional collaboration. “These 10 opportunities should be considered in conjunction with many proven, fully-matured technologies, as we as others that did not make this list, but can provide value for many companies,” said Carl Claunch, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “For example, real-time enterprises providing advanced devices for a mobile workforce will consider next-generation smartphones to be a key technology, in addition to the value that this list might offer.” TBot, Your Most Loyal Online Friend!
My mind immediately went to the auto disturbing bots that IMs us in some other public messengers, but soon, I decided to add it and figure it out. I was surprised, it’s an automated translation system released by Microsoft, Windows Live division! TBot is a new technology Microsoft released as an add-on to the Windows Live Translator service. It’s to allow a complete interaction between automated bot system connected to the Windows Live Translator servers and billions of Windows Live Messenger users and Yahoo! Messenger users due to the interoperability between the most famous IMs to offer a real-time translations for up to 6 languages. TBot is easy to use. Once you add it, it will welcome you and asks you to set a default language to translate to. It’s more similar like the automated phone systems by sending certain numbers for certain set of options. If you forgot these numbers of need any help anytime, just tell him: “TBot ?” and it will offer you rich options of help. I recommend everyone with Windows Live Messenger or Yahoo! Messenger to add TBot to their IM. TBot is the most loyal friend you’ll have, always online, always available for you to reply your posts instantly.
For The Second Time in Less than 1 Year, Internet is Down in ME
Authorities didn’t declare yet the reason of the broke down. That reminds us of the famous Internet broke down in Middle East and Asia in February 2008 where 4 naval cables were broke down in Mid Sea near Alexandria, Egypt and Dubai, UAE in the same way. Airport planes booking systems were broken down and had to turn to manual systems to be able to book tickets for passengers, Outsourcing companies redirected most support calls to some third parties and partners in Europe to fulfill the needs of worldwide customers and most Internet services were broken down. In Egypt, Dr. Tarek Kamel, Minister of Information & Communications declared in a report that some routes are being redirected to the Indian fiber cable that links South East of Asia with Europe in addition to routing to some satellite communications and promised that users will get a partial enhancement in Internet service within few hours as a temporary solution until the fiber cables are being fixed. Official reports declared that Internet services were broke down by percentages between 80% – 100% in the affected countries. Since most Middle East countries are on Weekend on Fridays, external operations from foreigner investors in ME stock markets won’t be affected except if the problem still persisted by “Saturday” or “Sunday” when opening these markets in those countries. The previous broke down in February 2008 reported that a new type of electronic terrorism might be the reason of a massive dis-connectivity with the world leaving affected countries in a digital havoc and complete digital darkness. I think because this problem occurred again by same method “3 cables were broke down”, it might be the new e-terrorism or due to a natural phenomena occurs in the Mid Sea that some water airflows may cause this problem. Some would ask, and how could I post this topic, I can simply say, in absence of DSL and digital connections, thanks to Dial-up! ;) Some funny reports declared that the reason was due to some sharks munched the giant high voltage charged cables! Who knows?! Maybe sharks got more wilder underwater like our world is! :D Vista SP2 – UX ApproachI’ve mentioned in a previous post that I’m going to give my personal user experience “UX” using Windows Vista SP2, and here I’m going to give an approach to it. Installation Installing Windows Vista SP2 requires Windows Vista SP1 to be installed, that’s unleashes any wonders why the size of SP2 is about 600 MB for x64 Bit while SP1 was about 700 MB, that means SP2 not yet including features and fixes found in SP1. For optimum performance, I’ve installed a clean copy of Windows Vista Ultimate x64 then installed Vista SP1 and disabled automatic updates to prevent any Hotfix to be installed before SP2. Setup process is very fast (less than an hour unlike SP1) and clean without any errors mentioned. SP2 doesn’t consume much space as SP1 does. Performance Computer's performance was amazingly increased by about 30-40% with fast access to applications, slightly faster startup due to some improvements in ReadyBoot feature. GUI Updates I’m very pleased with the new Bluetooth File Transfer new GUI. It has the common Vista’s look and feel with new icons, images and comfortable clean windows. Bugs Since the Windows Vista SP2 is still in the beta process of SDLC, it should contain some bugs until they’re all fixed by RTM. These bugs found with my UX till now include: Sidebar Windows Sidebar doesn’t keep its past state, it keeps loading gadgets randomly by priority of loading. For example, if you listed the Clock, Notes and Calendar gadgets, you may expect to get an arrangement like (Notes, Calendar & Clock) after restarting or maximizing, minimizing some windows..etc. Screen Saver To quit Screen Saver mode, I’ve use the mouse cursor to quit it, the desktop freezes and I am unable to navigate between windows and it takes some time to quit the non responding screen saver application or wait for it to respond. System Configuration Utility I was surprised once when I started up the computer and got a tray notification that some of startup programs are disabled by the System Configuration Utility, I’ve opened the window to try to figure which of startup programs Windows disabled, however, I found all startup program are unchecked, that means that nothing was disabled by Windows. Recommendations My recommendation is to wait until the pre-release beta of Vista SP2 is released if you are interested to beta test SP2 or wait till Vista is RTM. I’ll follow up with several articles while I finish evaluating the Windows Vista SP2 :).
Windows Vista SP2 – Amazing Features & ImprovementsI’m glad to become one of the Microsoft Windows Vista SP2 private beta testers. As per h-NDA “hard-Non Disclosure Agreement” signed with Microsoft, I wasn’t able to leak any information about the Vista SP2, since it’s now released for public testers to tryout, I’m going list major list of features, improvements and will show my personal experience evaluating the Windows Vista SP2 in another post. Windows Vista SP2 builds on the solid foundation laid by Windows Vista SP1. The incremental improvements provided in SP2 come primarily from the feedback we have received from customers and partners. In addition to all previously released updates, SP2 will contain changes focused on addressing reliability and performance issues, supporting new types of hardware, and adding support for several emerging standards. FEATURES Performance • Resume performance when Wi-Fi connection is no longer available after resume from sleep. • Inclusion of Windows Search 4 for improved indexing performance, improved relevancy in search, broader indexing scenario inclusion, as well as new Group Policy integration for Windows Search. • Improvements to the RSS feeds sidebar gadget to improve update performance and responsiveness. Application Compatibility • Applications that run on the Windows Vista Operating System today and are written using public APIs will continue to work as designed on Windows Vista SP2. • Previously released Application Compatibility updates are included in Windows Vista SP2. • Spysweeper and ZoneAlarm now working with POP3 email accounts. Administration and Support Improvements • Customers installing .NET framework 3.5 service pack 1 will notice shorter download and installation times with Vista service pack 2 or Windows 2008 service pack 2 already installed. • Service Pack Clean up tool (compcln.exe): This tool helps restore the hard disk space by permanently deleting the previous versions of the files (RTM & SP1) that are being serviced by Service Pack 2. • Single installer for both Vista & Server 2008. • Ability to detect an incompatible driver and block service pack installation or warn users of any loss of functionality. • Better error handling and providing more descriptive error messages where possible. • Better manageability through logging in system event log. • Componentization for Serviceability of the installer.
Security • SP2 includes all previously released security updates, and builds on the proven security benefits of Windows Vista. • Secure Development Lifecycle process updates, where we identify the root cause of each security bulletin and improve our internal tools to eliminate code patterns that could lead to future vulnerabilities. Reliability • SP2 addresses previously released reliability updates, as well as addressing crashes, caused by Microsoft code, discovered since the launch of SP1. Emerging Hardware Support • SP2 contains the new stack of Bluetooth 2.1 feature pack supporting the most recent specification for Bluetooth technology. • Ability to record data on Blu-Ray media. • Adds Windows Connect Now (WCN) Wi-Fi Configuration to Windows Vista SP2. • exFAT file system now supports UTC timestamps, which enables correct file synchronization across time zones. • SP2 provides support for new form factors, such as ICCD/CCID. new form factor support --example USB form factor as opposed to PCMCIA). • Support for the new VIA 64-bit CPU. Some Specific Fixes/Additions Include: · Inclusion of Hyper-V · Event logging support in SPC · DNS Server now listens over ISATAP address · Fixes DRM issues from WMP upgrades · Windows Vista Feature Pack for Wireless · Reduction of resources required for sidebar gadgets · Improved power settings for WS08 Announcing the Microsoft Student Partner – MSPs Technology Club – Tanta University
MSP is encouraged to share your passion and knowledge and to undertake a number of fun activities on campus. And in return MSP will get access to numerous benefits including Microsoft software, reference materials, and training, as well as privileged information about future career opportunities. For further information visit www.student-partners.com Microsoft Student Partners – Tanta University Microsoft Student Partners “MSPs” is currently activated at Tanta University, Egypt starting from the academic year 2008-2009. MSPs Club is the official channel for students to contact MSPs and Microsoft, as well. MSPs Club at Tanta University consists of several top minded students who are passionate towards technology with leadership of the official MSPs chosen by Microsoft. MSPs Technology Club – Tanta University is an academic nonprofit program and it’s a Microsoft Egypt DPE Division Subsidiary. Major Initiatives within Club (Activities)
I’m very glad to manage this work. I really like it since I’m part of the Microsoft DPE “Developer & Platform Evangelism” Division and it’s my most favorite division at Microsoft after Windows Sustained Engineering team in Redmond.
Microsoft Expression around the ClockInterContinental City Stars Hotel, Cairo, Egypt - On Oct. 4, Microsoft held a global designer conference titled: Expression around the Clock. This event was focused on the Microsoft Expression Suite products in a dare step to announce one of the biggest graphics suites in the market that fits needs for both designers and developers as well. I attended the egyptian flavored event that held in Cairo.
Event started with opening word from Ahmed Adel, Chief DE, Microsoft Egypt as welcome kit, hence Samer Chidiac, DE, Microsoft Lebanon started his keynote and overview about the event and introduced: Mike Soucie, Electric Rain Inc. CEO, Blaise Arcas, Microsoft USA, Carrie Longson, Microsoft UK and Sherif El Touny, Microsoft Egypt. Samer showed a really cool presentation to show the timeline of development evloution of graphics on web applications, mobile applications, games, the Windows OS and standard applications. I enjoyed the show so much. Samer is an old friend I know before the event, I was so glad to meet him for the first time in Egypt! After's Samer's keynote, we had 30 minutes break where again I met Mohamed Wahby, Academic DE, Micosoft Egypt, I met Samer and greeted Carrie and gave both Samer and Carrie my business card. I was over the moon. Carrie also is a friend I know before the event and I was so glad to meet her in Egypt.
Then next session started, it was for Mike Soucie to present his amazing presentation named Presnetations with StandOut where it's a very cool software that makes it rich and easy for persons to create professional presentations.
After that Carrie soon started her session I was waiting accross the whole event, actually I was sleepy because I was up for more than 24 hours and once Carrie came, I was almost sleepy. If it wasn't for her, I'd be sunk in dreams! I resisted and really enjoyed her session about Microsoft Expression Blend. Carrie really should be titled: "The Blender".
We had a break soon and suddenly we got change in agenda when Steve Ballmer decided to make his keynote earlier 2 hours! Live show started a bit slow due to bandwidth issues, Steve looked funny as usual and I remember when he forgot the last name of the german man who was going to present next show, Ahmed Adel had to accelerate the show when the connection started to act much worser and Steve no more speaking.
Blaise Arcas is the next, he's a nice american Microsoft employee that was interested about Microsoft Research for desingers part with the Microsoft Live Labs: Photosynth software, In my opinion I think this software is an old idea shown in Microsoft Codename MAX. I liked the idea so much and I had chance to introudce myself to Blaise, I'm keeping his nice business card (I gave him extra card of mine and he torn it into 2 pieces and wrote down his e-mail giving it back to me as his business card
 ).Later Sherif El Touny (Microsoft Egypt) and Mostafa Kamel (LINKdotNET) started to show an application based on Silverlight on a music site completely based on Sliverlight cross browser and WPF technologies. It was real fun egyptian flavor.
Finally, the whole team set together and Ahmed Adel started to ask them questions and we were all ready to have Iftar meal (breakfast) and I said goodbye for Samer and Carrie before I go.
I won't forget such great event in my life where I met far away friends (Samer, Carrie and Mo Wahby and Sherif) and introduced to new friends (Sara, Shierf El Touny, Tina, Beky and G.G).
It's time now to check photo album of the event: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=24464&l=bedd1&id=588687036
Microsoft to kick off 2007 with 8 security patches Microsoft said Thursday that it will begin 2007’s security update season with a bang by releasing eight bulletins next week to patch problems in Windows, Office, and Visual Studio. In the advance notification posted Thursday, Microsoft announced it would issue three updates for Windows, three for its Office productivity suite, one that affects both Windows and Office, and another that impacts both Windows and the Visual Studio development platform.At least two of the updates will be labeled “critical,” Microsoft’s highest warning. As is its practice, Microsoft did not disclose details of the updates, but only offered clues about what it plans to fix. Some hints, however, can be gleaned from third-party security vendors that track zero-day, or unpatched, vulnerabilities. According to eEye Digital Security’s Zero-Day Tracker, three bugs in Microsoft Word and one in PowerPoint remain unpatched, while two more in Windows and another in Internet Explorer need fixing. One of the Windows zero-days was acknowledged by Microsoft only on Dec. 22, and affects all supported editions of Windows, including the not-yet-released-to-retail Windows Vista. It’s possible that a fix for this MessageBox bug may be among the updates released Jan. 9. A rival list of missing patches kept by the SANS Institute’s Internet Storm Center organization shows 10 Microsoft bugs outstanding. The updates will be available for manual download from the Microsoft Web site Tuesday at about 10 a.m. PDT. As usual, automatic updates to users’ computers will begin shortly after that. Vista and Office: The WOW Starts Now! It’s official! The consumer release of Windows Vista and Office 2007 will be celebrated in New York on January 29 at a launch event the software giant has dubbed “The WOW starts now.” The invitation to “The “WOW starts now” event includes a note signed by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, in which he says that, “on January 29th, Microsoft will celebrate the launch of two amazing products that represent the culmination of a tremendous team effort.” Attendees will be treated to a celebratory lunch at Manhattan’s famous Cipriani restaurant, followed by the actual launch event at the Nokia Theatre in Times Square later in the day. Gates goes on to say that millions of people–Microsoft employees, developers, customers, bloggers, families, media, the entire industry–”have come together like never before and added their own individual imprints to help make Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office system the most tested products in Microsoft history.” Microsoft’s goal with Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office system is to make people’s digital lives easier, more entertaining, better connected, as well as safer and more reliable, he said. “Our celebration is dedicated to the millions of people who helped transform the operating system into a rich experience that’s more exciting and more powerful than ever before. Because of the immense personal contributions of so many, we hope you will help us celebrate a new digital lifestyle and a new era in personal computing,” he concludes. The consumer launch of the products follows their business release last November, an event company CEO Steve Ballmer said was the “biggest launch we’ve ever done.” But analysts have cautioned that getting the company’s large installed base to upgrade to the latest wave of products is one of the biggest challenges facing Microsoft in 2007. Vista: What will you say when you see it? It’s not surprising Microsoft will be touting Windows Vista at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. But the slogan the company has chosen to tout its new version of Windows may catch some off-guard. There will be an entire Vista pavillion (a fancy tent) outside the main convention center, dedicated to showing off Vista and new Vista machines. Additionally. according to a couple of sources, Microsoft is using as a key component of its Vista marketing material the phrase: “WOW!” “When you see it, you’ll say it.” Supposedly, we’ll all see a lot of that message over the next week on banners all over Vegas. (I asked a Microsoft Vista spokesperson for confirmation. No word yet.) I’ve never been a huge fan of Microsoft’s advertising. It always seemed either too techie and complicated to reach the masses, or too plain-vanilla and uninspired to me. But the whole Wow thing leaves me … wow-less. While it’s true Vista does have that shiny Aero interface, to me, the real value-add is the under-the-covers stuff, like new diagnostic tools, improved encryption, clearer error messages, more than gadgets and transparent windowing effects. What would have made a better Vista slogan? Maybe something emphasizing the improved security might have made more sense. Or whatever happened to Vista’s three C’s (clear, confident and connected)? Windows Defender Beta 2 Expiration Irks Users The beta version of Microsoft’s free anti-spyware software expired Sunday, leaving Windows 2000 users out in the cold and some Windows XP owners confused by cryptic error messages. Windows Defender, the Redmond, Wash., developer’s free-of-charge anti-spyware program for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, went final in late October. However, the last beta — dubbed Beta 2 — continued to work on systems, including PCs running Windows 2000, until Dec. 31, 2006. Although Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 users can upgrade to the final program by downloading it from the Microsoft Web site, Windows 2000 users are out of luck, Microsoft said. “Windows Defender no longer supports Windows 2000 as [Windows 2000] went out of mainstream support in June 2005,” the download site stated. The company had announced the end of support for Windows 2000 when it released the final two months ago. Even so, many Windows 2000 users were either caught unaware or expressed dismay at the software’s expiration. “For them to take away windows defender just like that is bad business i got a bad taste in my mouth from microsoft,” wrote someone identified as “vincentvinyyc” on a Microsoft-hosted newsgroup. Numerous Windows XP users, meanwhile, also reported problems with Defender Beta 2 expiration. Several users posted comments describing enigmatic error messages they started seeing as of Jan. 1, while others were unable to install the final even after uninstalling the beta. The solution for the former is to upgrade to the final edition; the latter problem can be solved by running a program called Windows Installer Cleanup Utility, which can be downloaded from the Microsoft support site. Windows Defender — which launched as Windows AntiSpyware two years ago after Microsoft acquired New York-based Giant Company Software in 2004 — has also been integrated with Windows Vista, the new OS that hits retail later this month. |
the successor of Windows Embedded CE 6.0. 
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