Explore Posterous

Windows 7 - Features I Cannot Live Without: Part 1

I’ve been running Windows 7 as my main OS for quite some time now.  Ever since I installed it, there was no going back to any previous version of Windows because of its new features.  I must admit that I had been a Windows Vista user since it’s Beta days too but the reason I used Vista over XP was more about the way it looked rather than having any killer new features.  Windows 7 on the other hand does have killer features and it runs better than Vista on machines of the same spec!

I am going to write some short articles about some of these features in Windows 7 and how they help me in my everyday computing life.  Number 1 in my “Features I Cannot Live Without” is going to be Aero Snap.

Here is a brief description of Aero Snap tacking from the Wikipedia article which can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aero_Snap

Clicking and dragging a window to the right or left side of the desktop causes the window to fill the respective half of the screen. Snapping a window to the top of the desktop maximizes it. Resizing a window to touch the top or bottom edge of the screen maximizes the window to full height, whilst retaining its width; these windows will then slide horizontally if moved by the title bar, or can be pulled off, which returns the window to its original height.

Here is the sort of thing you can easily do using Aero Snap.

There’s no fiddling around trying to align windows side by side.  It’s simples!

To do this I could have either dragged one window to the left and one to the right or to achieve the same result, I could select a window and hit [WINDOWS KEY] + [LEFT ARROW] for the left window and [WINDOWS KEY] + [RIGHT ARROW] on the for the right window to be placed as shown.

Using the Windows key and directional (cursor) arrow is the best method if using more than one screen.  If you have a setup as I do with another monitor to your left, you cannot drag a window to the left hand side to “snap”.  It will just continue onto the monitor to the left until it reaches the far left of the screen.

I have noticed that a third party developer has released (in Beta) some software that mimics the Windows 7 Aero Snap feature.  I have not tested this as I do not have a test machine running Windows XP or Vista at this time but if you’d like to give it a go, you can download it for free from here: http://www.aerosnap.de/eng/download.htm I’d love to hear your comments about this download in XP or Vista, especially if you have used Aero Snap on Windows 7.

If you have any comments or questions, please go ahead – I’ll be listening.

Next up on my “Features I Cannot Live Without” will be Jump Lists – they’re very cool indeed!

http://www.lukeaddison.com/windows-7-features-i-cannot-live-without-part-1/

Loading mentions Retweet

Comment (0) »

Razorfone Interactive Retail Experience

Quick post on the new Razorfone Interactive Retail Experience. Fantastic use of the Microsoft Surface to enable better retail buying experiences. While the jury is still out on the revolutionary qualities of the Surface, there’s no denying the cool factor of the demo/concept that Razorfish has put together.

From Emerging Experiences:

The Razorfone solution is focused around providing an experience where customers can learn about wireless products. Phone and netbook features and associated wireless plans are presented in a rich interactive environment. Accessories are presented to the customer as a cross-sell opportunity. The use of 3D allows for customers to view their device in any color and from any angle, regardless of availability of the physical device within the retail store. The customer can validate the wireless coverage where they live, work and play through the use of the interactive coverage map using simple pan and zoom gestures. Customers can personalize their device after purchase with ringtones, games and applications through the use of QR technology, increasing sales and helping to eliminate buyer’s remorse.

View the video and read more at Emerging Experiences

Loading mentions Retweet

Comment (0) »

a full circle feeling at my microsoft interview yesterday

   

Click here to download:

a_full_circle_feeling_at_my_mi.zip (54 KB)

not a great night sleep but regardless this is an exciting day. running on hope and pure passion. 

After a fairly straight forward drive to reading i arrived at microsoft campus around 9:15am - my interview is at 11am. I'm really excited just to get the opportunity to be invited for an interview. really, i just feel that way about it right now. i'm a heavy karma influenced person just lately. in fact that last 8 weeks alone have almost been like the biggest wakeup call i can recall in a very long time. As my audioboo i posted the day before ( here ) will attest too i felt a wave of change come over me recently but building up to yesterday.

I've been on a bit of a mental free fall regarding career, homelife and future - it has been so random that it was hard to see which areas i should have been concentrating on. Working on the conker tweetup for the last four weeks has given me some clarity about how i should be making adjustments to my life and i feel that a lot of these decisions have all dovetailed into the new focused version of me, back to the older me. one that was a bit more relaxed maybe.

I thought the interview went well. I had to present a 'tell a story' - i recorded it ahead of time just in case as well, you can hear that here

I know with the right team behind me and the same level of passion we can use these tools not just for business but for social change. i really do hope i get a callback for microsoft but at the same time it was the interview that also set me straight again. Wonderful place thou building five. amazing airy space.

Loading mentions Retweet

Comment (0) »

A shadow copy could not be created | Insufficient storage available to create | 0x81000019

These are part of a message received when trying to run a Windows 7 backup with a system image. I myself have encountered the problem but luckily after some searching have found a solution that worked for me.

Unfortunately I don't have a screenshot of the message you may have received but I do have a text version of it:

[Window Title]
Windows Backup: Troubleshooting Options

[Main Instruction]
Check your backup

[Content]
A shadow copy could not be created. Please check "VSS" and "SPP" application event logs for more information.
Details: Insufficient storage available to create either the shadow copy storage file or other shadow copy data.

[^] Hide Details  [Try to run backup again] [Change backup settings] [Cancel]

[Expanded Information]
Backup time: 10/25/2009 3:23 PM
Backup location: Terra-Stor (M:)
Error code: 0x81000019

So the insufficient space this error is referring to isn't the space on your hard drives that you're trying to copy the backup too, it's the space on that small 100MB boot partition that was created during Windows 7 installation. You can look at the partition yourself by:

1. Start
2. Right click My Computer
3. Manage
4. Storage > Disk Management
5. Right click the 100MB
6. Properties

If you have less than 40% of Free Space then that's the insufficient storage available error. See that drive is actually used to create your system image and therefore cannot drop below 40%. According to a Microsoft employee there is a problem with Windows 7 which causes it to use up more than 60% of that 100MB boot drive.

The trick around this problem is:

If the System reserved partition cannot be extended using Disk Management because of lack of contigous space adjacent to it, creating a new system volume is the workaround. Here are the steps to move the system volume to any other volume:

1. Choose where you want to have your system volume. Few things you need to keep in mind:
   1. System volume can only be created on a primary partition of MBR disk.
   2. If system volume & boot volume are together, then BitLocker feature cannot be used to encrypt volumes on your machine.
2. Suggest creating a new volume (say F:) on the same disk that contains the boot partition of size of about 490 MB (be careful to keep it less than 500 MB)
   1. My Edit: To do this you must be in the manage properties as per the steps above.
   2. Right click your C:\
   3. Shrink Volume
   4. Enter 490MB
   5. Right click the new drive
   6. New Simple Volume
3. Assuming Windows 7 is installed on C: on your machine. From an elevated command-prompt run: bcdboot.exe C:\Windows /s F:.
4. From elevated command-prompt run: DISKPART
5. From the disk part command-prompt:
   1. DISKPART> select volume F
   2. DISKPART> active

Now you can reboot your machine and F: will become the system volume. You can undo this by repeating the same steps using the original system volume (you have to assign drive-letter to it) to revert to your previous configuration.

via social.technet.microsoft.com

Once this is done you can head back into Manage:

1. Right click the new 490MB drive
2. Change Drive Letter and Paths
3. Remove

Removing the letter will also remove the drive from appearing in My Computer. Now you should be done. The drive should now be 490MB which is plenty for Windows 7 backup to create a system image. Go to Backup & Restore and run through the wizard again and this time hopefully it should work.

Thanks

Loading mentions Retweet

Comment (0) »

Untitled

http://bit.ly/7UI43L Here is How Microsoft Could Kill Google Chrome WOW :-O

Loading mentions Retweet

Comment (0) »

Happy Sad - Made With Microsoft Songsmith

Click here to download:

HappySad.wma (3082 KB)

Terrible song, terrible singing, terrible lyrics but it works...

Loading mentions Retweet

Comment (8) »

Pages, Microsoft Word, and OpenOffice.org: do you really need all of those features?

I'm lucky enough to be able to play with those three applications on my Mac. Pages and OpenOffice are both native application for Mac while Microsoft Word is a Windows application that I have to run under Parallels Desktop. It's been two years since the first time I used them and I think it's the time to say that cross platform compatibility is my biggest issue. It doesn't matter what application you use to create the document, if you want your receivers to get the same feels, looks, and even effects you have to make sure that they use the same application. Or, the other way around.

The hardest part of all is to make sure that numbering format, indentation, and graph and data format is all same within those three applications. Somehow, there will always be formatting loss if you export them i.e. Pages and OpenOffice) to doc format (I'm afraid that most of my clients and customers are using Word, so let's assume that doc is a standard format on this matter).

Personally I prefer Pages for its user friendly interface and easy usage that let you focus on the work to complete. But there is no use of a complete work when at the end you realize that your client can't get the report as you want it to be. Again, that's the main problem. And you absolutely can't tell your clients that they use a "different" application. That won't work.

In an effort to overcome this problem, I always (at least for the last one year) use minimum formatting option. A plain text with standard format is always welcome in every application in every platform. That means standard fonts, standard numbering (though it still has big issue on Word and OpenOffice), justified alignment, and manual heading. For graph and data insertion, I always use picture instead of graph or data itself. In this case, those abundant features are useless. And it's not just in Pages. The abundant features lie within OpenOffice is also useless.

Having this applied for almost a year, I'm beginning to think what use of those other highly-sophisticated-features lies within each application. How many of you really use other than simple standard feature to complete your work? Why can't they focus on compatibility and inter-operability to mitigate this effect?

I believe that this is going to be a major issue for the following years, especially when online collaboration replaces the way we work. Compatibility is my highest consideration point. Google, which I consider as competitor in office productivity application with their Google Docs, has an advantages on this matter. However, Indonesia won't be ready for full online collaboration. Offline is still an option for Indonesia user. So I think Google should also consider this compatibility point, especially during conversion to another format.

Loading mentions Retweet

Comment (0) »

Xbox Live Adds One Million Extra Users to Last.FM

via flickr.com

Last week Microsoft launched their Xbox Live platform - integrating the Xbox consoles to social networks like Facebook, Twitter and the streaming music community Last.FM.

Now Last.fm is indicating that they added an extra million users via Xbox Live.

Wow!

I'm not sure how the revenue streams are going in this partnership, but an extra million users will end up generating both extra revenues and extra costs.

The growth numbers, calculated by Mashable are amazing, if true:

In a week - 1 million added users boils down to 300 new users per minute last week. 120 million minutes of music streamed from Last.FM over the consoles. All in adding 5% of the total of 20 million users Xbox Live users that is out there. Now that is potential!

Now all we have to do is integrating all the other social networks to all the other devices. Starting today!

Photo - Flickr nick: Roadsidepictures / Allen

Loading mentions Retweet

Comment (0) »

Microsoft: Just Like IBM

Loading mentions Retweet

Comment (1) »

One Row Windows 7 Taskbar

One of the new 'no solution to a problem that never existed' issue in Windows 7 is the strange new notification area of the taskbar. The often unused notifications move into a new box that will pop up after pressing the small arrow. However, this leads to (at least for me) inresponsive clicks and an unececary extra step. There is however a way for this to return to the old type with all notifications on one row.

Loading mentions Retweet

Comment (0) »