This is pretty interesting...an ad campaign by Microsoft to combat the uninformed opinion that Vista is crap.
It basically echoes what I run into constantly: the people that have the strongest opinions against Vista have never used it.
Click this link to watch the "Mojave Experiment."
The fact page is worth checking out, too.
Don't be an iSheep...use your brain.
The Resource Monitor is a new tool for Vista that helps track down performance issues.
To start the Resource Monitor...
Resource Monitor tracks your CPU and memory like Task Manger does. But, it also tracks disk and network activity.
If any of the charts are pegged, click on it to get more detailed information.
I sort by the following columns to see who is responsible for the resource use:
I found this tool *very* helpful...I will be using it more in the future.
After I saw the new TR2N trailer this weekend, I thought it might be a fun project to see if I could clean up the video (and learn how to use Adobe After Effects CS3).
The first step was getting the bootleg video. I wasn't able to get the source from the link above. I followed the advice from this Yahoo! Answers and used the trial version of Moyea SWF Kits to extract a youtube.com version of the video (which is no longer up). The extracted source video is here (24 MB).
I used After Effects to do the rest.
Look at the source video and you will see lots of problems. The video...
I didn't worry about fixing the last one...too much work.
The first issue I fixed was the erratic motion, which made the other issues *much* easier to fix. I used this page for directions on how to do video stabilization.
In the source video, you will notice a couple of lights above the movie screen. I told After Effects to track the lights. It did a really good job. I only had to help with the tracking at around 0:43 because of the zooming. The rest of the tracking was done automagically.
After the motion tracking was finished, the video was very steady. I had to rotate the image several times to keep it aligned correctly. I also scaled the video to make it fit the full frame width. I translated the video to put it in the center of the frame.
Then I added masks to give the video a 2.39:1 aspect ratio, which is what I'm guessing the teaser was filmed in. I also added a mask to cover the youtube time-slider and the youtube logo.
The final video is here (5 MB).
I'm *very* impressed with how easy it is to do motion tracking and how steady the final version is compared to the original.
Resizing a partition used to require PartitionMagic...but no more! Vista has shrinking/growing partitions built into "Disk Management."
I bought a new laptop this past week and it came with the hard drive broken up into a C: drive and a D: drive. I *hate* multiple drive letters, so I deleted D: and extended C: to take up the extra space using Disk Management. Works great!
To bring up Disk Management:
Start->Control Panel->Search->partition->Create and format hard disk partitions
Right click on a drive letter and you should see two new menu options in Vista:
This is the dialog box you get with Shrink Volume...
Vista has a *much* improved search engine over XP. As soon as you create a new file, it is instantly indexed and ready for fast searching.
I found an interesting setting for search called "use natural language search", which is off by default.
You can find it via Start->Control Panel->Appearance and Personalization->Folder Options->Search->Use natural language search.
Sadly, there is no documentation on this page for what exactly natural language search (NLS) is.
This page explains it (about mid-way down).
Basically, NLS applies all your search terms to any possible property without explicitly indicating the property. NLS also does not require capitalization of boolean filters like "AND", "NOT", and "OR."
Here are a couple of example searches without and with natural language search:
| Without natural language | With natural language |
| kind: music artist: (Beethoven OR Mozart) | music Beethoven or Mozart |
| kind: document author: (Charlie AND Herb) | document Charlie and Herb |
The documentation says this about NLS...
Even with natural language search turned on, you can continue to use the Search box in exactly the same way. If you want to use Boolean filters or introduce filters with colons and parentheses, you can. In addition, you can use all the same properties to fine-tune your searches. The difference is that you can enter searches in a more casual way. Here are some examples:
- email today
- documents 2006
- author Susan
- pictures vacation
Note Some searches might give more results than you expect. For example, if you search for "email today" you will see all messages sent today as well as any messages with the word "today" in the contents.
Let me give some background before I tell you why the above lines are highlighted red.
I've spent the last couple of weeks trying to figure out why Vista's search could not find a file I have in my documents folder called "music to get.txt." Other files in the same directory could be found, but this one was problematic. I tried rebuilding the search database several times and narrowing the searchable directories down to just one folder with "music to get.txt".
It didn't matter...Vista's search could not find the file.
Then, I happened to turn *off* NLS today and guess what? Vista easily can find "music to get.txt"!
The issue appears related to the spaces in the filename. If NLS is turned on, then I have to search for:
"music to get"
...instead of...
music to get
NLS would not even match...
music
...I had to start with a quote to get a matching file...
"music
Those lines in red above are *LIES*!!!
you can continue to use the Search box in exactly the same way.
With NLS on, you must remember to put a filename in quotes if it contains a space. I didn't have to do that with NLS off.
The difference is that you can enter searches in a more casual way
I don't considering having to add quotes to my search more casual than not using them at all.
Some searches might give more results than you expect
And in the case of filenames with spaces, some searches won't give you *any* results when they should.
My advice:
TURN OFF NATURAL LANGUAGE SEARCH!
The newest version of PowerShell came out a couple of weeks ago. You can get it here.
The command name tab completion now works (it didn't in CTP1) in the Graphical Windows PowerShell...which is the main reason I stayed away from CTP1.
There is a really cool new feature in CTP2's... Out-GridView.
Out-GridView takes console table data and displays it in a GUI that has these features:
Here's what it looks like when I asked for a list of running services by typing "get-service | out-gridview"...
I like that *way* better than the traditional/non-interactive console output that looks like this...
Filtering is very helpful for getting to the data you want. Here it is in action:
I'm *really* excited about Graphical Windows PowerShell.
With this release, I'm going to start using it as my standard shell on my home PC and once the final version comes out, I'll probably start using it at work. This is software that will make you more efficient the better you know how to use it. Start learning it now!
Highly recommended!
I tried to update to SP1 last week via Windows Update, but I kept getting an error:
Some Updates were not installed
Failed: 1 update
Error(s) found:
Code 80070246
I tried using Dell support, but none of their suggestions worked and they told me I should work with Microsoft and gave me an 800 number.
My brother pointed me to this article that says Microsoft is giving free support to anybody having problems with installing SP1. I could have used the 800 number Dell gave me, but I prefer email, so I used this support page suggested by the article.
Microsoft had me run the System File Checker tool (SFC.exe). It is supposed to repair system files.
To run SFC.exe...
When I ran it, the scan quit before it reached 100% with an error...
Microsoft then suggested I do the following:
Given this situation, I suggest we continue the following steps to troubleshooting:
1. Click "Start", click "All Programs", click "Accessories", right-click "Command Prompt", and then click "Run as administrator".
2. In the User Account Control dialog box, click "Continue".3. Input the following commands in the DOS Prompt window and press ENTER at the end of each line:
REG ADD HKLM\COMPONENTS /V STORECORRUPTTIMESTAMP /T REG_SZ /D "0" /F
REG DELETE HKLM\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\CHECKSUR\
Note: You can copy the above commands, right click in the opened command window, and then choose Paste. Press ENTER and you will receive a message "The operation completed successfully". You may receive an error message indicating that the related registry key does not exist. Please continue to perform the remaining steps.
4. Please download and run CheckSUR tool from the link below according to your System Type:
CheckSUR tool for Windows Vista 32-bit
http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/0/4/504c8468-9e77-4331-9327-1dba0b43ccd1/Windows6.0-KB947821-x86.msu
CheckSUR tool for Windows Vista 64-bit
http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/e/b/4eb4efa7-a893-4fb7-aac7-2db2003972d5/Windows6.0-KB947821-x64.msu
5. Double click on the downloaded file to run the CheckSUR tool and restart the computer to check the results.Can we install SP1 now?
After I did these steps...I was able to install SP1!
I tried running sfc.exe again, and it now completes successfully...
I was pleasantly surprised at how helpful Microsoft was. When I initially submitted my request for help, I got a response the next morning. I went on vacation and could not try their suggestions for a few days. I got an email everyday asking how things were going and what my status was.
I'm not sure what caused my system to be non-SP1 friendly, but all is well now.
*UPDATE 1/3/08*
Here is more information about CheckSUR (the tool that fixed my problem). From the link...
What is CheckSUR?
System resources, such as file data, registry data, and even in-memory data, can develop inconsistencies during the lifetime of the operating system. These inconsistencies may be caused by various hardware failures or by software issues. In some cases, these inconsistencies can affect the Windows Servicing Store, and they can cause a Windows Vista update to fail. When the update fails, it blocks the user from installing updates and service packs. CheckSUR addresses this issue.
When Windows Update detects inconsistencies that are related to system servicing in system files or in the registry, Windows Update offers CheckSUR as an available update package. The package titles are as follows:
- Update for Windows Vista (KB947821)
- Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB947821)
Note This Windows Update or Automatic Update package will only be offered if such inconsistencies have been detected on the system. CheckSUR should run automatically after it has been installed from Windows Update.
What does CheckSUR do?
Currently, CheckSUR verifies the integrity of the following resources that can affect Windows Update in Windows Vista:
- Files that are located under the following directories:
- %systemroot%\Servicing\Packages
- %systemroot%\WinSxS\Manifests
- Registry data under the following registry subkeys:
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\COMPONENTS
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Schema
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Component Based Servicing
Note This list may be updated at any time.
When CheckSUR detects incorrect manifests, files, or registry data, CheckSUR may replace the incorrect data with a corrected version.
I registered for SIGGRAPH 2008 this morning. This year it will be in Los Angeles August 11-15.
Registration opened yesterday. Register before July 4th for the best rates. Become a SIGGRAPH member and save $50.
One notable difference this year: no Electronic Theater viewing day selection in the registration. I actually can't find any mention of the ET. The closest was this quote about Computer Animation Festival changes:
Computer Animation Festival
For SIGGRAPH 2008, the festival has adopted a new format. Each day of the conference, it presents competition screenings, showcase screenings, and panel discussions with filmmakers, instructors, and artists involved in the creative process. The traditional Animation Theaters will not be available for SIGGRAPH 2008.
I hope this doesn't signal an end to the ET...it is one of my favorite parts of SIGGRAPH.
Sounds like several things have changed (or at least changed names).
Here's a list of future SIGGRAPH's...
| Year | Location |
| 2008 | Los Angeles |
| 2009 | New Orleans |
| 2010 | Los Angeles |
| 2011 | Vancouver (first time held outside of the US) |
This will be my 12th SIGGRAPH in a row! It never gets old!
I noticed a co-worker had some cool Mac-effects on his Windows box. He was using ObjectDock, a free utility.
I've tried it on my work XP box and my home Vista box, and it works equally well in both OS's.
Above is a screen shot of my current Vista desktop. I turned off the Windows taskbar and I'm using ObjectDock exclusively now.
It's definitely fun to play with.
The one thing I wish it could do is show the taskbar notifications AND open windows. The property page only lets you do windows OR system tray (notification area)...not both:
As a work around, I added a system tray dock at the top of my screen. You can see it "hidden" in the top photo and expanded below. It will suffice, but I'd like to have all this in the same dock at the bottom of the screen. The ability to add extra docks is part of ObjectDock Plus, which cost $20.
XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a standard way of storing data. It became a W3C recommendation in 1998.
If you aren't on the XML bandwagon yet, you should be. XML is a good thing and it makes software better.
XML is confusing at first, but it is worth the time spent understanding it.
I found a great resource that explains XML concisely, quickly and with many examples.
Here is the section I read to understand the XML format (.xml files).
After that, I read this section about how to "design" an XML file format using XML schema (.xsd files).
In less than a day, I have learned a lot about XML. I highly recommend the above two links to anybody doing software development.
The next issue is how to author XML.
Visual Studio 2005 comes with really good XML tools. Here's more info on what Visual Studio can do with XML.
I use Visual Studio 2005, but some of the people using the software I'm writing may not. I needed a free XML editor for these people.
I looked around and tried out several free XML editors. Many of them did not support .xsd files (which ensure the XML data is in the format you expect).
I found out that Microsoft's *free* version of Visual Studio *does* include the XML tools! These tools are great for creating XML schema, authoring XML, among other things. I'm going to recommend anybody that needs to edit/author XML use Visual Studio C# Express Edition or Visual Studio C++ Express Edition if they don't already have Visual Studio.
Randy Pausch is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He is losing his battle with pancreatic cancer and is expected to live for a few more months.
CMU has a lecture series entitled, "The Last Lecture." It is supposed to be your chance to talk about things that matter deeply to you. For Randy, it really may be his last lecture.
I first watched his 10 minute reprise of his lecture as a email forward...
After watching it, I wanted to see more. Here is the full video (76 min) from his original talk, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams..."
The second video is more sincere and drawn out and I recommend viewing it.
Also, I was surprised to see a co-worker in the second video, Tommy Burnette. Tommy got a nice shout out from Randy for following his dreams to work on Star Wars.
I've seen Randy's work at SIGGRAPH's Emerging Technologies. He's worked on a VR project called "Alice."
Randy was involved in the Aladdin Magic Carpet Ride ride at DisneyQuest, which I tried out during SIGGRAPH '98 Orlando.
In his "last lecture," Randy announced one of his childhood dreams of "being Captain Kirk"...since then, J.J. Abrams gave him a role with a line in the upcoming Star Trek movie.
Here is some cool new UI research from Microsoft Research for tablet computing called "InkSeine" (rhymes with "insane"). Very cool stuff! Makes me want a tablet PC!
Merlin Mann stopped by today to give us his "Inbox Zero" talk about controlling high volumes of email.
I picked up some useful tips:
I am doing this both for my work and home email. I moved all my email out of my inbox into a "To Do Email" folder (a "defer" folder). I have empty inboxes now!
Merlin is a great, entertaining speaker. I highly recommend this program. It should be required viewing...you will spend less time in email and more time doing what you want after you watch this.
This 1 hour video is the same talk we got today, but this was recorded from Merlin's visit to Google:
If you have multiple computers on your desk and want to control them all with a single keyboard/mouse...you got to try Synergy.
I have a Windows box and a Linux box at work. I had both systems setup next to each other. I was constantly using the wrong keyboard/mouse when I would switch systems.
Now I use Synergy and just a single keyboard/mouse. When I want to switch to my Linux box from Windows, I simply drag the mouse cursor on Windows in the direction of the Linux monitor and the mouse pointer magically appears on Linux and all keyboard input now goes to the Linux box. When I want to go back to Windows, I just drag the mouse cursor back towards the Windows monitor. It looks like a dual-monitor setup because the mouse just slides back and forth between the two computers as if it were the same mouse.
How does it work? One system is a server (in my case, my Windows box) and one is a client (my Linux box). The server has the keyboard/mouse attached to it. When you move the mouse to an edge, Synergy redirects keyboard/mouse output to the client over the network connection. It works like a software-based KVM switch (but doesn't do the video).
It even supports copy/paste between systems! And when my screen-saver kicks in on Windows, my Linux box does the same...and they both wake up when I touch the mouse.
It is definitely better than a desktop filled with keyboards and mice for multiple systems.
And best of all, Synergy is free!
Highly recommended! Give it a try!
Linux/Unix (and Mac since OS X) have always had much better shells than Windows. But that is about to change.
Windows PowerShell 2.0 looks very impressive. It should make the Linux/Mac/Unix world scramble to come up with something that matches the features of PowerShell 2.0.
The feature I'm most excited about is called the "Graphical PowerShell." It is pictured above and replaces the pathetic "Command Prompt"...
You can see from the top picture that the Graphical PowerShell is broken into three parts.
One of the things that drove me *nuts* about Windows' Command Prompt was that you could not select a multi-line command. Selection worked in screen space, which is terrible!
For example, below I wrote a command that I want to copy. Because selection is in screen space, the best I can select is 'more *.cpp | find' instead of the whole command 'more *.cpp | find "include"'.
Graphical PowerShell doesn't have this problem. You can select by line now (finally!)...
You can also resize the window which doesn't work very well with Command Prompt.
The PowerShell command language itself is well thought out and very consistent. All commands are made up of verb-noun pairs like Set-Location, Copy-Item, Write-Output, etc. (with aliases that work as shortcuts). It looks to be very competitive with all the other shells out there in terms of shell features.
Passing data between commands in Unix/Mac/Linux involves sending text from one to command to another (like "more junk.txt | grep lenihan"). PowerShell passes *objects* between commands.
This article shows a quick example of the power of passing objects instead of just text. A list of directories is passed to a move command. If this were done with text, the text would need to be formatted in such a way that the move command would recognized the text as file names (like removing the date information). PowerShell already knows what type an object is so you can skip any of this formatting! Very nice!
PowerShell 1.0 is out now. It still uses the old Command Prompt for input/output. The Graphical PowerShell (replacement for Command Prompt) is part of PowerShell 2.0, which is available in alpha right now.
I can't wait for PowerShell to replace the Command Prompt in Windows!
This blog apparently got access to some internal documents detailing the next version of Windows Mobile. In short, it is a pretty dramatic UI makeover designed to compete with the iPhone. WM7 is scheduled for 2009.
I've been using Windows Live Writer for publishing blog posts for over a year now. It has been beta software...until now. You can get the 1.0 release version here.
Highly recommended!
I love natural user interfaces like this...very cool.
I love studying well done/efficient UI's. Here are some great articles on UI I recently read:
A new version of Windows Live Writer is out. It is Beta 3, the last beta before the final release.
If you are blogging...get this software! It makes everything *much* easier.
New in this version...
Insert videos using new 'Insert Video' dialog
Upload images to Picasaweb when publishing to your Blogger blog
Publish XHTML-style markup
Use Writer in 28 additional languages
Print your posts
Justify-align post text
Better image handling (fewer blurry images)
Resolved installation issues from last release
Many other bug fixes and enhancements
Download it here.
Just learned about this one today.
Windows Vista supports both hard links and symbolic links. The command line option to do this is called "mklink." It doesn't appear that the GUI (explorer) supports creating symbolic/hard links. Once they are created, the GUI can modify and delete the symbolic/hard links.
A symbolic/hard link is similar to a Windows shortcut, but more powerful. A symbolic/hard link acts just like the file/directory it points to. If you are writing an application that will open a file, you don't a have to do anything special to read a symbolic/hard link...just read the file normally. A shortcut is just a text file with information about the file/directory it points to. In Windows, shortcuts work effectively as symbolic links. From the command line, they don't.
For example, you have a text file named "happy.txt" with a shortcut called "happy.txt - Shortcut.lnk" If you double-click on the shortcut, Windows will open happy.txt as you would expect. From the command line, type "more happy.txt - Shortcut.lnk" and you will see the contents of the shortcut and not the contents of original file happy.txt. If you tried the same thing with a hard/symbolic link, you would get the contents of happy.txt in each case.
Probably not that interesting to Windows users, but *very* interesting to people bringing software over from the UNIX world where symbolic/hard links are commonly used. Now that it is a standard part of the console on Windows, I would expect more people (especially software developers) to start using it.
This article has a couple of nice pictures that describes the difference between hard links and symbolic links. Basically, a hard link points directly at the data and a symbolic link points at the filename that points at the data. It's a subtle difference. This website does a nice job of comparing the two types of links. A symbolic link can exist when the data has been removed, a hard link can't. You can use a symbolic link on your hard drive to point to a file on your USB flash drive. If you remove the USB flash drive, the symbolic link will point to nothing until you return the USB flash drive. You can't make a hard link from your hard drive to a USB flash drive.
Windows has actually had hard link support since Windows 2000, but it was only available through an API call (CreateHardLink), had no command line option, and it only worked on NTFS. Back in 2000, most systems used FAT, so hard links were of little value.
I spend much of my time editing text in Visual Studio. I love their text editor...but Visual Studio is too big to load just to edit an occasional text file. For that, I use Notepad or Wordpad.
I ran into an issue where I needed to look at a specific line number in a text file. Visual Studio lets you jump to a line number, but Notepad/Wordpad don't.
I could load Visual Studio and then jump to the line number...but I decided to look for a Notepad replacement...and I found a great one!
It's called Notepad++. It is *exactly* what I was looking for...a free editor that gives you all the functionality of Visual Studio in a text editor that loads very quickly.
Things that I like about Notepad++:
You can download Notepad++ (npp) here. I used npp.4.2.2.Installer.exe.
Highly recommended!
Brought to you by Windows Media Player 11 (WMP).
I started trying to rip some CD's I recently purchased. When I put the CD in, it was labeled as "Unknown Album". If I right-clicked on the blank CD album art, I had the option of "Find Album Info". I tried this option out and it worked as expected...it found the correct album. Clicking "Finish" adds all the album information to the CD....except my CD information stayed blank.
I tried doing this using my guest account and it worked right: I inserted the CD and it immediately had the right song names, album name, artist, album art, etc.
I couldn't find any help online. I did find a solution when I was trying to find where WMP was attempting to store the CD information. I found (on Vista) that WMP stores information in C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player. I moved this folder to "Media Player.old" and tried again and everything worked as expected.
WMP does a great job of getting CD information. It also has the same feature for files in your music library. In WMP, if you right-click on an album in your music library, you have the option to "Find Album Info." Even though the album had all the information correct that I care about, I thought it would be interesting to see if it filled in all the missing pieces.
It asked me how I wanted to search, so I gave it the artist name ".38 Special."
Next it gave me a list of albums by .38 Special and I picked the correct one. The final screen shows you all the details of the album it found. Just click "Finish" and your information will be up to date...right?
WRONG! DON'T PRESS "FINISH"!!!
If you do, WMP will start searching your music library for music files that are about the right size to match the music file sizes for the songs on the album (Special Forces). I actually only had one song from that album (which it found correctly), but after I was done I had 6 other songs. It took a few Bee Gees songs, a Banannarama song, a .38 Special song from another album, and a Father MC song and relabeled them as songs from "Special Forces." It changed...
I can understand software getting this wrong, it is not a perfect science. But *if* there is a chance it is going to do the wrong thing, shouldn't it show me it's proposed changes and allow me to decide if I want my beloved music collection mutilated?!?!?!?!?!
Also, I figured it would limit its search to just the album folder that I did "Find Album Info" for, but it looks like my entire music collection was fair game. That is scary! Getting those songs labeled correctly took a lot of time...but just a fraction of a second for WMP to turn it to garbage.
Luckily, I have my system backed up and I just deleted the bad files and restored them from the backup. I use Vista's excellent "Backup and Restore Center" and an external hard drive to back up changes to my system daily.
So everything is back to normal...or so I thought.
I had my Bee Gees folder open to verify the files were replaced correctly by the restore. I went on to doing something else when I noticed one by one the Bee Gees songs disappeared! Where did they go?
They went right back in the "38 Special/Special Forces" folder...and all their information was again changed back to a 38 Special information.
WTF? How did that happen?
It turns out that WMP stores the album information it used to update files...in case a file needs to be "fixed" again.
To get WMP to stop changing file names, locations, and song information, I had to disable a few options. These are the options to *avoid*:
I figured I was safe, since I used "Only add missing information" with #2 and #3 (I never had #1 on). But I definitely had my information overwritten even though #1 was off!
I'm not sure if it is necessary, but I'd recommend deleting the WMP data folder (C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player) if you ever use "Find Album Info" or "Update Album Info" so it won't even think about renaming your files ever again.
After disabling those options, erasing WMP's memory, and restoring my old music files again...all is well.
Lesson learned:
We can't have our computers wasting power 24/7...so we should let them sleep when not in use. But sometimes we'd like them to backup our data when we are not using them. What is a green-consumer to do?
Follow these instructions and your computer can sleep whenever you aren't using it *and* will wake-up to do a backup. This is for Windows Vista only.
This is cool. Shift lets you use your finger on a touch screen with pinpoint accuracy. Using Shift, selecting an individual pixel is easy.
Thanks to my main man E-Dog for keeping me edumacated. This is a very inspiring video...it gives you some ideas about the new directions computers are headed. I love this kind of stuff!
I had some issues with the video playing from its source site, so I switched to the youtube version.
I was having some problems with Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 locking up under Windows Vista. I tried reinstalling, but it didn't help. I tried various compatibility modes and that didn't help. After running out of options, I decided to just start over and do a clean install of Vista and then install Premiere Pro.
Unfortunately, that didn't help either. Further investigation revealed that Adobe knows that Premiere Pro 2.0 does not work with Vista and has no plans to fix it. The follow on to 2.0, CS3, will work on Vista. I guess I have to upgrade to CS3. :(
BUT...along the way I noticed something different about installing Windows on top of Windows. Previous to Vista, if you did a clean install on a system that already has Windows installed, you had to pick a different folder name for the OS because "C:\Windows" is already used by your previous install.
Then when you pick your user name, Windows can't create a folder (user profile) with the same name as the user because the old one already exists. So instead of using "C:\Documents and Settings\Dave", behind the scenes, Windows would create "C:\Documents and Settings\Dave.COMPUTERNAME." I *hated* my stuff stored in "Dave.COMPUTERNAME" as opposed to just "Dave."
Vista works differently. When I did my clean install, my Windows directory was moved to Windows.old, so the new install went in "C:\Windows." The user profiles were also moved under Windows.old, so my new user profile is the same as the old one..."Dave." Nice! I like this much better!
Another change related to user profiles is the path. Instead of "C:\Documents and Settings\Dave", Vista uses "C:\Users\Dave". That is much better because...
I have been using the beta version of Windows Live Writer to write my blog posts for a while now. I love it. A new beta recently arrived with a few new features:
Get it here.
Vista
Mojave Experiment
Vista
Resource Monitor
After Effects
Motion Tracking
Video Stabilization
Windows
Disk Management
Search
Natural Language Search
PowerShell
SP1
SFC
SIGGRAPH
registration
Taskbar
Stardock
ObjectDock
XML
XSD
XML Schema
Randy Pausch
Last Lecture
Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
InkSeine
Microsoft Research
Tablet PC
Merlin Mann
email
Inbox Zero
Synergy
kvm
keyboard
mouse
Command Prompt
Windows Mobile 7
Windows Live Writer
User Interface
Crayon Physics
Fitts's Law
Bruce Tognazzini
Tog
UI
Hard Link
Symbolic Link
Shortcut
mklink
Notepad++
Wordpad
Notepad
Visual Studio
Review
Windows Media Player
Find Album Info
Update Album Info
Sleep
Backup
Shift
Blaise Aguera y Arcas
Seadragon
Photosynth
TED
