.NET From India

Vista SP1 - Experience

I have SP1 RTM running at my home machine for around 2 weeks now. There are any number of articles on the web on the changes, both on how many things are faster and some on app incompatibilities etc.

Looking at it purely from a end user perspective, SP1 is quite transperant from an experience perspective. Maybe things are a little faster, but not enough to actually be felt. I know a lot of file operations have become faster, but I don't copy/move files that often that I have actually noticed anything.

It does look to improve reliability, apart from nVidia driver crashes (which were present even before SP1), but then this maybe because of other factors too.

Is this good or bad?? Good in that it does not break any of my work and all those bug fixes are not affecting what I want to get done. I know it has not drastically changed stuff to make them better, but I prefer a SP that does not break and has minor improvements, to one that has major changes that may break stuff.

Vista SP1 Application Issues

If you are installing Vista SP1, then you maybe intersted in this KB Article that talks about some programs that do not work on SP1 and which may need a update.

Most of these are Firewall and AV software, so it is important that you take a look before you install SP1. Obviously, SP1 is not yet available to the end consumer and so this maynot be a major problem. But if you plan to play around with it and have access to it, then this is something you need to take care of.

Security Centre and WMI Repository

One of my machines runs Vista with AVG for antivirus. It has been running fine for around 6 months and then suddenly a couple of weeks back I started getting security centre warnings. When I go into Security center I find that AVG (my antivirus) is not recognized and so Vista says I don’t have any Anti-virus and it also says defender is off.

So I try turning on defender from SC and it shows up a windows saying checking for updates and kind of hangs there. When I look at Defender and AVG separately, I find both of them are running fine. After a bit of searching I found a couple of posts that talk about how the WMI repository being corrupt can popup such problems.

So I went ahead and run

winmgmt /verifyrepository

and sure enough it tells me that the repository is inconsistent. The way to repair the repository is to run

winmgmt /salvagerepository

There are quite a few posts in the internet on how this can fail multiple times and that you need to keep running this till it succeeds. It did fail the first time for me, but it did give the message that it had requested for a service to be stopped. So I kind of gave it 5 minutes and ran again. This time, it went through fine.

A reboot later, security centre was back to recognizing defender and AVG.

More information on winmgmt (From MSDN).

Vista Restore

Happy New Year 2008 to all the readers of my blog (or at least the few of you who have continued to visit/subscribe to my blog, given that I have not been a regular blogger the past couple of months)

Apart from my being kind of overwhelmed at office, one of the reasons for the silence is that my home machine conked out due to defective memory. After the memory was replaced, I found that during that time my Vista install has been corrupted and quite a few services were refusing to start up (including the Network Location service, which means I could not connect to any network). After a day spent searching the internet, I decided, it would be easier to just reinstall the OS. Since I did not want to reinstall all the other software, I decided I would do some kind of a repair install, thus just updating the OS file only.

The problem is, I could not find a way to do a repair install. The Vista Installation DVD just allows me to do a completely new install and the recovery console, just has options to check memory, repair a damaged boot record, do a system/backup restore or go to the command prompt. No OS repair option. I was stumped for quite some time. Then after some research, I found that there was an option on the Vista Installer to Upgrade to Vista and this can be used even if you are launching it from Vista. This option, when you use it from Vista, actually works like an OS Repair. Once that was done, my machine was back to normal like before.

Though it is not easy to find and I could not find too many documentation of this particular use of this feature, it sure worked fine for me. If you get into a similar situation, this post maybe of help. Do note, that after this reinstall, your Vista becomes deactivated and you will have to activate it as soon as you boot up first time. You do not get any grace time to activate. All other software (including Office) already installed seem to retain their activated state.

Vista DVD Security Features

One of my fellow MVPs forwarded this link, with the same question as in the post, "Who are the three men in the photo??"

Well, looks like Vista Blog has the answer Taking a detailed look at Windows Vista DVD hologram. You can also find the official MS site about the security features on the disc (though the photo is not mentioned).

Well, how many people get duped with copies of the original?? Well, I dont suppose many, atleast not when you go and buy a copy of Vista from a big retail electronics shop [If you are buying from a roadside vendor, I am sure you were not looking for the original version anyway..:)]. But I have seen things like this happen in the OEM channel though. You buy a PC from a local vendor and you pay for the full OS and the vendor tries to make a quick buck by giving you a pirated copy.

UI Concept - Moving files

One of my fellow MVPs Saurabh has come up with a Concept UI for moving file in explorer. If you are moving a lot of files with explorer and using the mouse, then this does make a lot to sense. I think this is a very logical way to sort the problem and am suprised it is not already in the product. But then, this may not be a very common scenario that MS has come across when doing their UI testing.

Well for me, personally I always use the keyboard, as I find it easier and faster than doing it with the mouse. For the more complex file based operations I use the good old Command Shell..:) (One of the most common things for which I have to use cmd is for renaming multiple files as explorer does not have a provision for that)

Tweaking Windows Vista

One of my fellow MVPs, Vishal Gupta, posted a list of Vista Tweak utilities that are available. I decided to take a preliminary look at these share the list here:

Tweak VI http://www.totalidea.com/content/tweakvi/tweakvi-index.html - Free basic version with additional plug-ins being charged

Vista Manager - http://www.yamicsoft.com/vistamanager/index.html - Commercial Version only - 15 day trial available

TweakVista - http://www.tweakvista.com/tweakvistautility/ - Free utility, seems simple but does have a forum with a lot of tweak information

DTweak - http://www.daoisoft.com/index.html - Free and commercial version available

TuneUp Utilities - http://www.tune-up.com/ - Commercial Version Only - Free trial available

Vista Drivers

One of my fellow MVP pointed to this Vista Drivers Page that has links to Vista compatible drivers for most of the common devices.

If you are installing Vista on your older machine, then this is a very useful resource and saves a lot of time you will spend searching for drivers. especially you built your machine over time, adding components over time.

"Fiji" - Vista SP1

One of my fellow MVPs forwarded a link to a post on the planned Vista SP1. This is supposedly already under the works and MS is looking at early TAP participants. I am not suprised, since I would have expected that as soon as Vista was RTMed (or near RTMed), the team would have started working on the SP and maybe a few on the next version of Windows too.

SP1 for Vista should be a easy go as quite a few technologies that were not fully completed, just did not RTM with Vista. So they would need a SP1 to get all of those out as soon as they are complete.

VS 2005 on Vista

If you want to run Visual Studio 2005 on Vista, you will need SP1 and an extra patch that is currently called Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Update for Windows Vista.

SP1 is now availabe for download at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/support/vs2005sp1/default.aspx. The beta of the Vista Update is also availabe now and the release version will be available after consumer launch on Jan 30th.

If you run SQL 2005, then do read a related article Microsoft SQL Server 2005 on "Microsoft Windows Server Longhorn" or Microsoft Windows Vista

IRiver Clix

Just got back to Chennai after a week in Seattle(I will write more about this trip on my personal Blog). I now have a new IRiver Clix 2GB and thought I will play around a little bit with it.

As my Vista Install already has WMP 11, which is the recommeded install for the Clix, I went ahead and connected via USB. Suprisingly, my Vista was unable to recognize the device and asked for a driver and I was unable to find one anywhere. According to all documentation, this is supposed to work without any drivers..:(

Has anyone got the Clix working ok on Vista RTM?

Vista and Piracy

Got a link to an Information Week article on how Pirates are using the new Key Management Server feature of Vista to activate spoof copies of Vista. KMS is a technology where Enterprises run a local server that can be used to activate a copy of Vista instead of going to a MS server. This was slated to cut the piracy using volume licenses that was rampant with XP, which was the first version where activation was introduced.

I am not suprised that this has happened. I would have expected any software coming out of MS to be hacked and pirated copies being available. But using KMS was suprising, but does look logical, since it makes away with the issue of coming up with a specific key, which MS can add to a black list etc. But I expect, MS will soon enough find a way to blacklist copies activated with this KMS.

Snipping Tool

One of the new tools that ships with Vista is the Snipping tool.

This allows you to take a  snapshot of a particular part of the screen and then save it as a picture. This is available in the programs menu and is installed by default during Vista install.

One of the good things about this tool, is that it is extremely simple to use and once you choose the action you want, it just disappears and you are free to snip the part of the screen you are interested in.

It even has options to have irregular areas of the screen to be captured. Very useful for a blogger, if you want to put up pictures of some application.

The two problems I have found using this tool as of now

• Since it disappers on selecting an option, It is next to impossible to use the tool to get a screen shot of itself
• I was unable to get a shot of a menu with this tool as the menu disappers as soon as I switch to the tool and if I use the keyboard then the tool cancels the snapshot mode.

Windows Mobile Device Center - Gotcha

I wrote a previous post on the Windows Mobile Device Center Beta that is available for Vista. If you are installing it for the first time, there is a small gotcha that can leave you confused. It happed the first time and then since I have just installed Vista RTM and so had to go through installing all of the other software I came across that again. So thought I would write a post on that.

When you install WMDC, the install runs and ends. There is no start menu icon added, nor is there any indication that it has been installed successfully. The only two places I could find some install trail, is the Uninstall Program control panel screen and in the Event viewer where the MSI installer puts in the message of having successfully install WMDC.

Once you connect the first device then WMDC starts the actual full install and configuration and then adds the start menu/desktop icon etc.

So the first time you install, it can be really confusing to find a install suddenly end with no message on whether it is successful or not.

Vista RTM

Got time to Install Vista RTM over the weekend. So now I have moved to Vista fulltime. Initially the only changes from RC2 seem to be mostly look and feel only.

Vista and Broadcom NetXtreme II

Recently we got two Dell PowerEdge 2950 Servers at work and I wanted to run them on the Longhorn server Beta 2. So I went ahead and installed LH Server, but then it could not recongnize the highend NetXtreme II Gigabit network card. None of the drivers shipped by Dell worked. The problem seems to be that these drivers use NDIS client 5 while LH server requires NDIS6. I tried to see if Vista will work, but Vista RC1 still had the same problem. So I was stuck with a server that could not connect to the network.

Then I found a link to a RIS driver at broadcom for Win2K3 (I am unable to find this link now and it looks like the Broadcom site structure has changed). The help said that this was based on a monolithic older architecture and limits access to some of the newer features in the NetXtreme card. So I just gave it a try, setting compatibility and it worked fine. The server is now online and I have full network access!!!

Changes to Vista License

Just read at the Vista Team Blog, that they are removing the only 1 device install rule from the license and allow you to reinstall many times, as long as you have uninstalled the previous copy.

Run in Start Menu in Vista

Being a developer, one of the menu options I use the most is the Run menu under Start Menu. But in Vista (Both RC1 and RC2), there is no Run command under Start. The new search box does make it a lot easier to programs, but for things like env variable replacement, this is not enough (like using %windir% for the windows directory etc.).

So a little searching helped find the elusive Run menu. It is there, but is hidden by default when you install Vista. I suppose usage tests revealed that this was mostly never touched by lay users and so they choose to hide it by default.

 To get it back just right click the Taskbar, open Properties (will open up "Taskbar and Start Menu Properties" dialog), go to "Start Menu" Tab, Click the "Customize" button. If you go down the list displayed you will find an option to enable the Run Menu. Turn this on and you have the run menu back in your start menu like usual.

I am so used to using the Run command, that without it, I feel it impossible to work.This is one of the first things I do after I install Vista.

Mobile Device Center

I just installed Vista RC2 over the weekend. I read about the new Mobile Device Center that is going to be part of Vista and download the Beta from MS. Though the beta was aimed at RC1, it installed fine over RC2.

Then I connected my new 8125 to my machine. I did not install ActiveSync or any other software. As soon as I connected, it recognized that a mobile device was connected and the WMDC opened and I was ready to go. The new UI is also very nice and more user friendly than the older ActiveSync interface.

Vista - You can install it only once!!

So the latest anti-piracy move from Microsoft is to put a new licensing policy out for Vista. You buy Vista, install in your machine. Buy a new machine/upgrade hardware, twice and go back and buy a new copy. MS just announced that a retail copy of Vista can only be installed in another machine once and after that you will have to buy a new copy.

This does not affect people who change their computers once in 5 year or so anyway. Nor does it affect the corporate users, that use special volume licenses. It is really the tech enthusiast who gets hit the most.

I don't understand, are new anti-piracy decisions made by just the legal people and marketing folks sitting out there in their rooms or do they even try to get some feedback from other normal users (apart from the corporations)?? Who came up with the idea that people will be happy with buying something that will may not work when I upgrade my machine. Even if I do not plan to change my machine, it is still going to be at the back of my mind that if I change something big enough I will be out of an operation system.

You can read more at:

New Microsoft License Ties Vista To Hardware

Microsoft limits Vista transfers

Indian Stock Quote - Vista Gadget

Over the weekend I wrote a Vista gadget that will display the last traded price and the change in price of three Indian stocks based on Yahoo India.

Currently, this does screen scraping of Yahoo site based on the symbols you provide. I have used some pictures from the default Stock Gadget from Microsoft to make this gadget. But it is nowhere near as good as the Microsoft one, but then you have the source code of this one and you can change it or improve it for your needs. Also currently the Symbols.xml need to be on the current user desktop for this to work, which is a temporary workaround.

Structure:
1. Normal Gadget stuff in the .gadget directory zip
2. Source code of COM object that does the actual screen scraping in the other zip. You either need to build this of register the object for the gadget to work.
3. You will need Vista RC1 for this to work.

TODO:
1. Make the UI look better. Since my skills with HTML and CSS are very limited, any help in this area is highly appreciated.
2. Make some way of handling the Stocks via Gadget Settings, instead of Symbols.xml
3. Handle more than 3 stocks. This is currently a UI restriction than a code restriction. So again would need HTML/CSS/Jscript help.
4. Look at hosting code out of Codeplex or SF.net. But for first version, this is hosted out of my blog.

Download Source Code Zip

Vista Gadgets

I was playing around trying to write gadgets for Vista. Got the basic gadget written and then I started setting it up to run as a Gadget. Could not get it to work??

After a few hours, I found out that the problem, is that the gadget.xml manifest file format has changed from Beta 2 to RC1. So if you are using the older format then it will not appear in the available gadgets window. And most of the articles out there have the old format.

As of now the best resource for this is Gadget Development Overview. Once the change has been made, everything loaded ok.

Vista - Flip3D and Aero

Flip3D is the new program switching application that shows live preview of the applications, instead of the usual tab switch icons.

This interface is very cool and can be quite useful if you are waiting for some action on an application and just want to check if it is completed before you switch to the application.

When I installed RC1, I could not find this. Start-Tab (the default shortcut for Flip3D) did not do anything, while it was working with the older Beta2 install. A little searching around and I found that this feature is enable only when you have Aero enabled. I guess, since I was short on RAM, the install had by default disabled Aero, instead giving me the Vista-Basic appearance.

Going into Appearance and switching to Aero, bought back Flip3D, but also increased memory consumption quite a bit (by almost 3-5%).

AVG Free does run on Vista RC1

AVG is a free anti-virus that I use at home. In Vista Beta 2 there were some problems with AVG and even though there were some workarounds listed I could not get it to run.

On RC1, the latest version of AVG, 7.1 available for download from the Grisoft site installed without any problems and for the firstime I have AV protection on Vista.

Vista on 512MB

Just installed RC1 of Vista.. Well with my constrained 512MB of RAM, performance seems to be very decent compared to the previous builds.

This is almost as fast as Win XP and I am seriously considering using this as my base OS now..

The drivers (Silan PCI Fast Ethernet Card) that I was having problems with seem to install this time with WinXP compatibility enabled.

If things improve even further for release, then I should expect, Vista should run quite decently in most of the current PCs and the "Vista require new hardware" myth will be easily broken.

Symantec, Adobe Complain Over Vista

Looks like both Adobe and Symantec has complained to EU about the new features in Vista that will be competing with their existing products. I am really quite amused.

I at least understand Symantec's case; they are offering a security service (I would consider AV also as a service as you need updates and you buy a subscription), while MS is providing an competing service in OneCare. And with Defender, they also may lose out on the anti-spyware/security software business.

But Adobe?? They have a monopoly in the document creation and printing market and their standard is the defacto standard and they go to the monopolies commission!! And MS has not integrated PDF into their OS (Yes it is available in Office, but then I would assume, you cannot create a secure PDF doc similar to what Adobe Acrobat can with Office). Also PDF is no way threatened as of now, and most probably more people will use PDF since they can create basic PDFs from Office. Yes, the number of people buying Acrobat may go down a little bit, but then if you are a serious user of PDFs, then Office is not going to be enough, you will still need Acrobat.

Microsoft has created a new standard and it is not even widely used as of now (And as of now, XPS is only supported on Vista and in other Windows platforms. I don’t see any implementations for UNIX/Mac/Linux as yet). Before XPS does become a more widely used standard, Adobe has more than enough time to be create a better format/product that will still be way ahead.

Vista Beta 2 - Atlast!!

I just installed Vista Beta 2 now. Since I got back from the US, which had been on my list of TODOs, but the download always was having some problems. I just got the whole thing downloaded correctly the day before yesterday. So I spent yesterday installing it. As usual, one of the drivers did not work, that of my network card. Looks like any unsgined driver is going to be a problem. Anyway searching the Internet from my XP got me an alternate XP driver that did work.

The big difference this time was that once I was online, Vista went onto the net and found the drivers for my sound card (SoundMax, drivers for which did not work last time) etc, which was a big problem last time I installed Vista. So now I kind of have everything working ok and can really use Vista as my main home OS.

First impressions - It seems to be very slow compared to XP (as well as a memory hog, though I kind of expected that). I don’t know if it is just my imagination, but Internet access also seems to slow down. Also some of my normal programs do not work:

AVG - My home Anti-virus, does not install since it has a compatibility issue. According to Grisoft, Microsoft has fixed this issue, but I am still without an AV on my Vista

Azureus - The Bittorrent client I use. The older version seems to run OK, but the latest build just hangs.

These two and the performance are the two major factors that are stopping me from jumping whole-heartedly into using my Vista install as the default OS at home.

Unsigned Drivers and Vista

I just installed a newer build of Vista to try out. The first roadblock I hit was to get my modem working. I use a AirTel DSL connection, that uses a Globespan Virata ADSL modem. But they have a very bad driver. It is unsigned and you need to know exactly what settings you have to use to get it to work.

In Beta 1 I had got it to work on Vista, but doing exactly what I would do to set it up in Win XP. So I did the same in the new build. The installation went fine, but the device was not working. Playing around a little bit in the device manager and trying to update the driver, I came up with the error message saying that the driver was unsigned.

A bit of googling, showed that x64 version of Vista will not allow unsigned Kernal mode drivers and that the x32 version would need Admin privilages for installation of unsigned drivers. OK, I was admin and still it does not work. Now sure what the problem is, if someone has sucessfully installed a unsigned modem driver, do leave some comments. I will post more if I do solve this.

Update (11th) - I tried with the Diable driver signing check boot option, still no go..

Vista - Three weeks Later

I have been using Vista as my main home OS for a little more than 3 weeks now. The experience has been quite good compared to the PDC build of last year. The OS is more responsive and a lot more stable. I have had around 4 BSODs in the 3 weeks of usage, but that seems to be only when the machine goes into standy and when woken, sometimes BSODed. Apart from this I have not yet seen any major crashes etc.

There is quite a bit of problem if you plan on playing some graphics intensive games. Since I got the new Dungeon Seige 2, two weeks back, I decided to install it on Vista. It works and the performance itself is OK, but the graphics is pathetic, with places where there seems to be multiple layers appearing black etc. So if you don't plan on running any highly graphics oriented apps, then I suppose it should be OK.

IE7s Phishing Filter

I have been using the IE7 beta on both XP and Vista for sometime now. One of the new features in IE 7 is the all new phishing filter (What is Phishing??).

When you visit any site IE7 will automatically do a phishing check. This will be a combination of checking a list of sites in the Microsoft Database and also look at suspicous stuff with the site. One of the things that it seems to flag is when you use a pure IP based URL. It also does not go to the MS website for all websites, only for sites that are not on a local OK list. But this can kind of slowdown your browsing experience a little bit. I have found it to affect my browsing experience only when visiting more than 4-5 sites simultaneously (which is very easy to do now with tabbed browsing in IE7 making it easier). Hopefully it becomes better as it nears the release version.

Once it finds a suspicious site it flags the site with a message near the address bar. Also if it is a confirmed phising site, then you will not see the site at all.

IE Blog has a post on the phising filter with more details.

SoundMax Audio Driver Problems

If you are using the onboard Audio card of a Intel Motherboard, then you need to install the SoundMax Audio drivers. The problem is that the setup kit of the driver checks the windows version and exits with a message that the OS is not supported. There are also some reports of problems with the driver if you go and install via the inf file.

The problem is to get your hands on the lastest drivers. The easiest way was to download it off the Dell support site. Search for "Audio: Analog Devices ADI 198x Integrated Audio, Driver, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Multi Language, Multi System" and download the latest update you can find.

The setup will still not run, but choose the custom install option (In the Add new hardware wizard) and choose the inf file directly. This will install the driver and your should be up and running.

WinFS Beta Debuts

WinFS Beta is now avbl for download for MSDN subscribers. Tom Rizzo also points to a new WinFS blog.

This version of the Beta will also run on XP SP2, so even if you dont have the Vista bits, you can still give it a go.

Panther in Longhorn

I thought Panther was to do only with Apple. But the new Vista Beta 1 too seems to want its own Panther!!!

If you look inside the Windows directory, you will find a directory named Panther, with around 12 files. I suppose Panther was the code name for some part of the Vista system, just not sure which. When I googled around, I could find only the innumorous posts on Longhorn vs Panther..

Gave up after 3-4 pages. So if you know what this is about, leave a comment. :-)

Teredo in Longhorn

I was just checking out the Exceptions list in the Windows Firewall installed on my new Vista Setup. I was suprised to find a whole list of Exceptions titled Teredo.

I am always afraid of spyware/tojans/viruses getting on to the machine. So I first diabled those exceptions and googled Teredo. Turns out Teredo is the codename for the new IPv6 transition technology that ships with Vista (Also avbl in Win XP SP2).

Teredo is an address assignment and automatic tunneling technology that provides unicast IPv6 connectivity across the IPv4 Internet. 6to4 is another automatic tunneling technology that provides unicast IPv6 connectivity across the IPv4 Internet

You can read more about it at Teredo Overview

System Idle Process goes missing

Another one of those things that goes missing in the Beta 1 of Vista is the "System Idle Process" in Task Manager.

Where is Restart?

One of the things that kind of confused me when playing around with the new Vista bits was that there was only a log off and Shutdown Options in the start menu. Clicking on Shutdown did not bring up the usual shutdown window, but rather just went ahead and shutdown the machine.

So where has the Restart and other options dissapeared??

Then I saw a small arrow at the end of the Shutdown button. Clicking that bought up a menu with all the normal options.

Good Thing - A single click to shutdown
Bad Thing - Extra click(that too of a small arrow head) to do anything else. Being a developer, I usually find myself restarting more than shutting down

RSS in IE7

It created quite a bit of excitement online when it was announced that IE 7 would have support for RSS. So the question was, would IE 7 replace your Aggregator??

The support for RSS is represented by a toolbar button. If the current page has an auto-discoverable RSS feed, this button gets enabled and you can choose which feed you want to view. Once you choose the feed, then IE will serve out a formatted display of the feed.

So once it finds a feed, you just get an neatly formatted XSLTed page. It does allow you to add it to the Favourites, but will not ping the site for changes etc. It still will have to be a manual pull if you want to check for new posts.

Yes, it is a good feature to have, since you can read up RSS like any other web page, but it is not gonna replace the aggregator just yet.

Windows XP is a legacy OS!!

Vista adds a new boot manager that loads before the XP's boot manager. So now if I need to go to XP, I need to pass thru two boot menus.

The Vista Boot manager shows two Options. One is to load Longhorn and the other is to load a "Legacy Windows Operating System"!!!!

So if Windows XP is legacy, what is Win98 then????

Vista Up and Running

I got the Vista Beta 1 DVDs today and have it setup now. Blogging this post from Vista.

Setup was straight forward and very fast. Except for the first screen where you select the drive where to install, there is no other input required.

On my machine Vista loads faster than my older XP install and it also seems to be more responsive. The place where it seems to be slower is in searching and finding PnP devices. This seems to take a lot of time.

Also, it seems to take quite a long time when trying to delete a lot of files. I had this directory that is around 3 GB and it took a lot of time to delete that. But the new delete dialog is quite interesting though its estimation skills leave a lot to be desired.

The other thing that interests me is that good old MS paint now can save/edit jpgs, pngs, tiffs and gifs apart from the usual bmps.

Reason to Upgrade to Longhorn - Speed

OK, now we have something that could maybe convince some to think about going out and getting a new version of Windows when it does come out.

Most of the cool developer stuff that was to be Longhorn only, will be available in XP too. So that did take out some of the sheen from the Longhorn bubble created by the last PDC. Now with Beta 1 near (Beta Tester Invites have been going out over the past two/three weeks), MS starts talking about other significant improvements that could convince people to move to LH.

OPM in Longhorn

An interesting article that talks about certain protection systems in Longhorn, that may force you to change your monitor to watch HD content.

Well, since HD is not very prevelant in India yet and I don't see wide spread use for the next 5-7 year, I suppose this does not affect us.

Learning Indigo

Well as I have been spending time looking into the new Indigo CTP, the most confusing thing is that most of the online information available(outside the winfx help), really refer to older versions of Indigo there have been a lot of basic level changes in attributes and the way things work.

So if you want learn, you have only two choices. The help and the sample code. The longhorn developer center does have a few newer articles on indigo now, but most of these deal with hello world type of services.

What will be the Longhorn Story now?

Well now that the news is out that WinFS will not be part of LH and also that Indigo and Avalon are going to also run on XP and Win 2K3, the question that comes to mind is, what will become of LH now.

Of the three pillars of LH, two will work with downlevel OS and one is not gonna ship, so why buy LH at all? And that is the exact question that Sriram asked me in the IM too.

Well my guess would be that some of the advanced Avalon features may not work on XP or maybe too slow to be really usable. This I would expect will be due to the way GDI works in XP and the new GDI planned for LH, which can take full advantage of the graphics adapter.

There was always talk of Indigo working on downlevel OSes and so that is not a suprise at all.

Robert, any views?? ;-)

Avalon and Indigo will run on XP

Somasegar has posted a blog entry which says that Avalon and Indigo will be avbl on the XP platform.

And looks like WinFS has been delayed...

Thanks to Sriram for the info.

WinHec Longhorn version

If you are interested to know what is new in the WinHEC bits check out Chris Sell's post.

This version is also going to be shipped to MSDN subscribers (gonna be any MSDN subscriber, not Universal only). It is avbl for download from the subscribers download.

WinHEC Longhorn out??

Looks like peices of the LongHorn build to be distributed during WinHec has escaped into the wild..:-)

NeoWin has some details.

XAML and Mono

Miguel posts on some of his thoughts about XAML. How far away is a XAML enabled Mono implementation??

More Tiles for your Long Horn

Rory has created a Virtual Pet LH tile...:-)

Longhorn Tiles

Dino has a wonderful article in MSDN on writing sidebar tiles.

Getting Serious with Longhorn: Create Your First Realistic Sidebar Tile

Why does a day have only 24 hours?? I need to try out these exsiting things...:-(

Longhorn Meetup

There is a Longhorn Meetup scheduled to happen for the first time in Chennai.

Infact, Chennai has the highest registration for this meetup compared to more than 600+ cities as of now. Let us try and make sure that we retain that position...:-)

My first bug with LH

I came up with my first bug with Longhorn. Me and my friend Arun were kind of getting the feel of LH just fooling around.

Just by chance we dragged the clock from the side panel. And that resulted in this

I had to log off and back to get it to work again. And I was able to simulate it.

Another XAML product...

After Xamlon another XAML product for the exisiting framework version from MobiForm

(via Chris Sells)

Longhorn Atlast

I have atlast got my MSDN shipment of the PDC bits, after a major shipping goof-up and have got it running in my machine.

With 512MB machine, it is still usable after I got the SLSVC disabled. Let me see what happens once I start writing some code...

One thing I like a lot is the new clock in the taskbar...:-)

Pirated Longhorn

Reuter reports on Pirated copies of Longhorn that are avbl in Malaysia.

Asian Pirates Sell Microsoft's Next Windows System

The MSDN version of Longhorn has not yet been shipped to me, but it is on sale in Malaysia. hmmm...