.NET From India

What is this??

Take a look at this photos

 

What do you think this is? A manufacturing facility, a water treatment plant (what with all of those tubes??)

 

Well it is to do with computers and this belongs to Microsoft. These are pictures of the new Microsoft Data Center in Chicago. The new Azure Services run out of this data center.

Photo 2 & 3 - What you're seeing is a tiny section of the 7.5 miles of cooling pipes inside Microsoft's new 700,000-foot Chicago data center, which is one of the—if not the—largest in the world.

This is one of the largest data centers in the world and MS will use this to learn and fine tune its data center strategy as this is just the first in a series of data centers that MS will build

Even the inside of the building doesn't look like that much. The ground floor looks like a large indoor parking lot filled with a few parked trailers.

It's what's inside those trailers, though, that is the key to Microsoft's cloud-computing efforts. Each of the shipping containers in the Chicago data center houses anywhere from 1,800 to 2,500 servers, each of which can be serving up e-mail, managing instant messages, or running applications for Microsoft's soon-to-be-launched cloud-based operating system--Windows Azure.

Read complete article at Inside one of the world's largest data centers

 

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Data Centers,Photos

Why the Windows XP Mode may disappoint you??

Ok, you have read a lot about the Win XP mode in Windows 7 and think that you will able to play that old game that you have that will not run on Vista (Yes, I do have a number of those old games sitting around. Railroad Tycoon anyone??)? Well you are wrong!!

First of all, the Win XP mode is aimed at businesses that run LOB (ie. Line of Business) applications that do not run on Vista. So this feature is available only in the Win 7 Professional and up version. (I think you don't even get it in Home Premium, you will have to go for Ultimate)

Why would the games not run on Win XP Mode? Well the answer is in the graphics card. Most games that came out during the XP days (which are the culprits) use DirectX and need a graphics card that supports DirectX. Microsoft Virtual PC and Win XP mode(which is based on the VPC core) do not emulate a graphics card that supports DirectX. From what I can gather they emulate a low end graphics card with 8  MB of video RAM (an S3 Trio 64 Video card with 8mb of video ram).

So if you want to really play those older games/apps that require DirectX support you have a couple of options:

1. If the app runs with compatibility set, you have a easy way out. This option rarely works with games though.

2. You can dual boot between Vista/Win7 and XP. I hate this option as I need to switch reboot my machine just to play a game for a couple of minutes.

3. Use a virtualization program that can emulate DirectX.

• Currently VMware officially supports this option in their Workstation product. I tested it out with the trial version and the supports seems quite good. Some of my games did work on, and a few crashed the VM. ( I do expect that as games are well know to use OS hacks and unsupported APIs for speed etc.). My only problem is that the product is quite costly at $189. Do I want to spend $189 to play a couple of games, even if I love them?? This is a product aimed at the business user and not the hobbyist and that is why it is so costly. It would be great if VMWare can come out with a hobbyist product.
• The other option I found was a open source/freeware product called VirtualBox from Sun. They currently have beta support for DirectX. The professional version is available for free for personal use and they also have a Open Source version which does not have some features like USB support etc. (You can find the differences here) Since the professional version is free for personal use, I went for that. Though the UI and the website is more open sourceish, the actual implementation of DirectX support seems very Robust. Actually, I think vBox runs the games better in my view.

VirtualBox has been running on my Win 7 Desktop for a couple of weeks with no problem.

Technorati Tags: Windows 7,Virtual XP Mode,VMWare,VirtualBox,DirectX,Games

Windows 7 RTMs

Great News, Windows 7 went to RTM yesterday…

So hopefully, we should have the RTM copies available for download from MSDN and Volume License facility in the next couple of weeks.

 

Technorati Tags: Windows 7,RTM

PowerPoint 2010 – Broadcast a Presentation

PowerPoint 2010 has this new feature called Broadcast a presentation. This basically allows you to do a simple LiveMeeting like broadcast of a PPT to multiple participants, free of cost (if using live or your internal broadcast server). Do note this is not as robust nor does it have most of the features you are used with a web meeting application. But this is great to use for those quick internal meetings, family presentations and maybe for some wide broadcast community webinars.

To use this option you first use the Broadcast Slide Show button on the Slide Show Tab of the ribbon. This starts off the process of setting up the PPT to be broadcast.

 

Next you get a dialog asking you to select the broadcast service to use. PowerPoint Live is part of the Live Suite and is free. All you need is a Passport ID and you are ready to go. But then this is also a public site and anyone can access your broadcast if they know the URL (more on this later).

You can also host a broadcast server, which from what I understand is going to be part of SharePoint 2010. This will allow you have your own private Intranet/Internet broadcast server and you can put in any kind of authentication that works for you on those. I also expect third parties to setup broadcast servers and most probably MS may also have a private broadcast server as part of the BPOS offering in the online services space.

If you choose the PowerPoint Live option, which is the only one you can use as of now (as SharePoint 2010 will be available for  tech preview in late Sep/Oct timeframe), you will be asked for your passport login info and then your Slideshow will get published to PowerPoint Live. I had some problems with the publishing when behind a corporate proxy and so check to see if it works in your environment.

Once published you get a link that you share with the people who need to see the slide show. This is where this differs from LiveMeeting/Webex etc. This unique URL (the session id is the unique part) gets generated only after you publish and each time you publish, you get a different URL. So you cannot share this with a set of people before hand. You need to publish the PPT and then share the URL at that time. Also as soon as you start broadcasting, you cannot edit the presentation. This URL is also use once only.

Anyone who has the URL can look at the broadcast. You have no way of see who is actually looking at the broadcast and no way to actually protect the broadcast. But since the session id use is a GUID, it is very difficult to predict a URL and see an actual broadcast unless you have the URL.

The PPT appears in the browser without the need for any ActiveX or other Add-ins. It also works great in both IE and Firefox (Pictured above). According to what I heard it also works with Safari and a lot of the mobile browsers. So people should be able to see this on PCs, Macs and mobile devices.

So for a person to attend the broadcast all they need is an internet connection, a compliant browser and the URL. They don't need a Passport Id as there is no authentication or log in required for viewing a broadcast.

Once you click the End Broadcast button the session become invalid and the URL can no longer be used.

Also I found that some Animations and Transitions do not yet appear exactly the same on the web. For example, I had a bounce animation on a object and on the web it just did an appear. I assume they have not yet got all the animations and transitions in the web viewer yet.

 

Note: All Screenshots are from Office 2010 Technical Preview. This feature/screens may change before the final RTM

Technorati Tags: Office 2010,PowerPoint,Broadcast,Web Conference,Free

Day 1 with Office 2010

Ok one day of usage with the technical preview of Office 2010.

Result – Better than expected.

No crashes in any of the major applications (Word, OneNote are the ones I used most today)

1 crash from Publisher when opening and closing an older file.

 

More later…

Office 2010

MS announced today Office 2010 (at the WPC)has reached technical preview level. This is still an invite only release, but most probably you will be seeing more screenshots and more people actually talking about it.

Also the Office web story seems to be getting stronger. There seems to be a couple of ways you can get Office on the web. One of which is going to be via Live. So all those millions of people who use some kind of live service will get free access to Office Web.

Obviously there will be a paid version, both via the Online services and most probably also via SharePoint.

The fidelity in presentation seems amazing based on the demo that was shown. The web version view is exactly the same as the desktop version view. The change is more visible when we come to the editing part. Though the web version does have a ribbon like toolbar, it looks like there will only be limited editing functionality on the web. Don't know how bad this will be from a user perspective and I also don't know what happens to all those Macros that maybe part of docs and xls.

I also think the stuff around broadcasting a presentation in the new PowerPoint is really powerful. I don't know if this needs some kind of infrastructure setup, but it sure is great.

The shared editing feature is another that I find very interesting.

 

More once I get my hands on the actual software….

 

Technorati Tags: Office 2010,WPC

Microsoft Security Essentials Beta – Free Antivirus

Microsoft’s brush with Antivirus has been around for some time. First one that came out was OneCare, which was built on a commercial model similar to the many AV products out there. Onecare was not that successful and it was always dogged by controversy.

Now we have a new AV from MS, but this time it is free. More than create a product, I think MS is more concerned with fighting the virus prone image that Apple has been very successfully using in its Ad campaigns. In most developing countries, it is very difficult for people to buy AV software and this has led to the creation of a huge base of easily infectable machines avbl to hacker and virus writers.

There are free AV software out there for home use, but most lay users do not know of them. So I think the main thought process behind this product is to make sure that all Windows machines have atleast the minimum AV protection. So what happens to the paid AV business model? Well I am not sure. It all depends on how they are able to innovate and offer better and faster performance. Based on my experience with some of the AV products from the more well know vendors, I wouldn't touch most of those due to their bloated nature.

SE has gone into public beta yesterday and is avbl only to US, Japan, China and Brazil for now (There are reports that some people were able to download it from other countries, but basically it depends on how your ISP’s DHCP is setup etc I suppose). It is avbl at Connect, but you can get access to it from http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/default.aspx. MS says it is going to restrict download to the first 75K during this phase. I understand China and Brazil (they have the biggest number of unprotected and infected PCs), but why is India missing? I would expect a large number of unprotected machines exists in India too??

I was surprised by the very small downloadable and also the quick and easy install. The first data update was quite slow, but overall the application seems to be very light and fast. From what I see, it is built on the Windows Defender base and it actually switches off Windows Defender when it installs. Surprisingly, it reports itself as the Microsoft AntiMalware in the security center and not as AntiVirus or as Security Essentials. Is this to make sure than the AV partners do not raise too much dust??

The interface itself is very simple and has very limited options. It seems designed for lay users and that I think is a good thing for an antivirus.

Virtual XP Mode in Windows 7

Now with Windows 7 RC out, one of the most talked about features is the Virtual XP Mode. This basically gives you a Windows XP running in a virtual machine.

This is a separate download apart from Win 7 available in MSDN or Technet (For subscribers only now). You need to download two pieces of software.

First download the Windows Virtual PC Beta (a very small 5 MB download), which is a version of Virtual PC designed to run in Win 7 Professional and above only. It also has modifications to allow it to integrate with explorer and also allow the virtual machine to access USB devices (One of the big shortcoming in Virtual PC for me is its inability to access USB devices).

Once you have this you need to download the Virtual XP Mode, which is basically the XP vhd. It is a 500MB or so download. Once you install this, you get a start menu link that allows you to launch the virtual machine.

When this start, if allows you set a password for the default user, named “User”. The virtual machine is configured to run with 256 MB RAM out of the box.

I am interested to see how this works in real life. I have just got it installed, but not sure if it would be too much of a pain to use. Will post my experience after a couple of days.

Also to note, is that the new Windows Virtual PC requires your processor to support hardware virtualization. ZDNet has a blog post on this, How many Intel CPUs will fail the XP Mode test in Windows 7?

One of the surprising things for me, is that even though this has got a lot of press coverage, the Virtual XP mode download is not in the Top Downloads list of MSDN as of now. So not everyone downloading Win 7 or Win 2010 server (Both of which practically fill up the top downloads), seems to be that interested in this.

 

Technorati Tags: Windows 7. Virtual XP Mode,Windows XP,Windows Virtual PC

Vista System Calendar – Cool Feature

 

Most us have used the small calendar that pops-up when when you click the clock running on the system tray.  I don't know what this is officially called, so I am calling it the System Calendar (Not to be confused with Windows Calendar)

When you click on the clock a calendar comes up and I almost always use this when talking someone on a possible meeting date or appointment.

Last week when working with this calendar I came across a feature that I did not know existed and it was a surprisingly useful and cool feature (I am not sure if this a Vista feature or it existed in XP too and I don't have a XP machine now to check).

If you want to check the calendar of a different month, you can click those small arrows to move next or previous. Obviously this can become cumbersome if you need to move  more than a couple of months.

So once I clicked on the month,year displayed in the top and I got this animation that collapses the calendar and shows all the months. This is a feature that I have used multiple times now (especially when looking for Microsoft event dates etc, which are usually 4-6 months away).

Continuing to click on the top display collapses the calendar away till you reach the decades level.

This is indeed a very useful feature hidden away and most probably 90% of the Vista users do not even know about this feature.

 

Developer Notes

I was curious to see if this feature is available thru out the system or only in the system tray. The first area I tried was the Control Panel, Date and Time Setting. This was available there.

So I kind of curious to see if this was actually built into the control itself. The calendar is a common control available to the Windows developer. So if this feature is built into the common control, then everyone using the common control will actually get this feature.

So I tried writing a small .NET windows app.

This feature seems to be built into the Common Control set. So when I used the  DateTimePicker in my WinForm application, I had the same feature available in my application too.

Technorati Tags: Windows Vista,Date and Time,Common Control,Calendar Control

IE 8 is here

Microsoft announced that IE 8 is going Gold.

Tgdaily has an article on some of the new features in IE 8 and goes on to say IE 8 is the most secure browser available now.