Windows 7

Roll on the Release Candidates

Richard Green on

Well Microsoft have certainly been busy little bee’s with Windows 7 as a lot of my recent blogs show, but today is the next milestone and not just for Windows 7.

Microsoft today released Windows 7 RC, Windows Server 2008 R2 RC and also the Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista.

Vista users using RTM with the blocker tool will be disappointed to note that this tool has now been removed and will have to upgrade to SP1, however I personally think you should just go all the way to SP2.

Going along with the whole RC & SP release, last week also saw the release of Office 2007 Service Pack 2 which has a lot of stability and performance improvements, which for some will be welcome although I never really see any problems except perhaps in Outlook opening a huge attachment.

Windows 7 RC is available in x86 and x64 builds and is available currently to all TechNet and MSDN subscribers, as is Server 2008 R2 RC, however Windows 7 RC will be making it’s way to the public in the next few days.

Office 2007 Service Pack 2 and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 are both available from the the Microsoft Download Center at www.microsoft.com/downloads.

Have a great weekend.

SideShow Missing in Windows 7 Build 7068

Richard Green on

SideShow is probably one of the most underrated and under used features in Windows Vista, and I was really glad Microsoft kept going with in in Windows 7 especially as the Windows Mobile client still works well especially for PowerPoint Remote Control.

As I got my new phone yesterday I thought I’d install the SideShow client on it and see how PowerPoint Remote looks on the beautiful WVGA display.

To my horror, Microsoft have removed SideShow from Build 7068 of Windows 7. It was defiantly there in 7000 so where has it gone?

According to Seven Forums, it’s also missing from Build 7048 x86 but still present in the x64 build. As I’m running x86 I can’t look to see if it still exists in the 7068 Build for x64, but I’m guessing it might be gone also.

I really hope this is just temporary and it comes back for the next build.

Cisco VPN Client and Windows 7

Richard Green on

So I was searching today for something specific to the Cisco IP Communicator software phone version of the Cisco IP 7941 to see if there is a way to make it work nice with Windows 7, but in the process I found a lot of threads and blog entries about problems with the Cisco VPN client causing BSOD’s with ndis.sys.

I’d just like to say that I’ve got the Cisco VPN client installed on my Windows 7 Build 7000 machine without any issues. I can connect and disconnect as many times as I like without issue.

This is actually better than the experience in Windows Vista where the Cisco Virtual Network Adapter for the tunnel kept failing meaning after every connect/disconnect cycle I would have to reboot to get the adapter going again before being able to connect again.

This hit me worst at home if I roamed between my two Wireless AP’s where the WPA2-PSK authentication takes a little bit of time and the tunnel would drop during the roam.

In a nutshell…..Cisco VPN client just works in Windows 7, just like it should do.

Zune Software on Windows 7

Richard Green on

So I’ve been using Windows 7 for a little bit now, and I went to sync my Zune with it for the first time and came across a problem:The software wouldn’t detect the Zune even though Windows Devices and Printers could see the Zune and installed the drivers?

I’m using UAC in 7 to try out some of the new levels Microsoft have added to see if it’s worth sticking with, so I tried running the software as Administrator and it picked up the device just fine.

Seems that you need to do this for the first run of the software you need this to initialize the drivers as I can run the software now under limited mode without issues.

I’m sure this will be something that the Zune team will pick-up in Zune 3.2 or whatever the next release will be.

Long Time No Post, but PDC Rocks

Richard Green on

So it’s been a while since I wrote anything on here since my latest outbursts against Virgin Media due to their inability to provide us with broadband, and low and behold we still don’t have our super fast 20MB internet.

Virgin rescheduled us for late October and the day before the appointment called to cancel because there is no T-Piece outside our property and they need to get council planning permission to install the piece so we are now going to be waiting until November 14th.

Why on earth they couldn’t have just seen in advance that they needed this piece and that they could have done the work in the three weeks between our first and most recent appointments I don’t know! Bless their little cotton socks.

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Windows 7 at D6 Conference

Richard Green on

So I’ve just been checking out the much hyped news that Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer will be showing off Windows 7 and annoucing it officially at the D6 conference and like most of the other people who have looked this up since its publish online during the night are dismayed by the lack of information they actually gave.

Looking at the videos online of the event, Ballmer shows off a multi-touch application which appears to be a modified version of Microsoft Virtual Earth, but using some variant of the Microsoft Surface technology, while they also showed a Paint applicaton and a Photo Viewer both using multi-touch.

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