I am now running the new Beta of VMWare Workstation 6 , and it seems to be working fine in Vista x64 (RTM incase you are curious). The installation of Ubuntu which I am also running natively at home is supported as one of the OS’s in this new version of VMWare and installs without a hitch. However to install VMWare tools after VMWare automatically mounted that was a little more of an issue (especially for a newbie). ...

It might seem like a surprise to some of you, but then many others who are reading this probably won’t be surprised to read that I am now running a native instance of Linux on one of my machines are home. I had an old machine (dual-proc PIII 1 GHz procs with 512 mb RAM) which was running Windows 2003 Server - and it had not been switched on for a while. I had many issues trying to get a working set of Linux. I started with Suse 10.2 and it seems like my blank CD’s were getting corrupt (was at the bottom of the 100 disc set and as you may have read, the bottom few discs are a hit or a miss - seems like the weight on top is not good). Anyway’s, eventually I was able to burn all the ISO’s successfully. ...

The new version of VMWare 6.0 is out in Beta and it has some exciting new things. In addition to the new features listed below (from their email), it also supports x64 and up to 8 gb of RAM! Support for Windows Vista - Use Windows Vista as host operating system Multiple monitor display - You can configure a VM to span multiple monitors, or multiple VMs to each display on separate monitors. Integrated Virtual Debugger - Workstation integrates with Visual Studio and Eclipse so you can deploy, run, and debug programs in a VM directly from your preferred IDE Automation APIs (VIX API 2.0) - You can write scripts and programs to automate VM testing. Headless mode - You can run VMs in the background without the Workstation UI. Easy Upgrade or Downgrade of VMWare Virtual Machines — A new Convert Hardware Version wizard steps you through the process of upgrading or downgrading virtual machines between Workstation versions 4, 5, and 6. You can get the Beta from here and get more details in the release notes here . And of course check out the known issues before you do anything. I have not tried this myself - yet. Maybe if I can take some time out over the holidays. I personally prefer VMWare to Virtual PC anyday and am quite excited about this new release. ...

There are a couple of new Vista based remotes coming out in the next few months, which incorporate SideShow - sure looks sweet.

The release of Visual Studio Service Pack 1, seems to have created a lot of interest - rightfully so - about time all those annoying bugs with VS05 are fixed. If you have not seen it then go and get the Service Pack 1 - it is a hefty install coming in at approx. 431 mb. Running on XP/2003: ...

I think the WCF Book that I recently finished is out earlier than a week and should be available on Jan 15th instead of the 22nd, however Amazon still shows the availability of Jan 22nd.

I don’t know if this is a Vista x64 issue, but when I am watching a DVD on the laptop the movie playback is quite jerky and as a result very irritating. I have tried both Media Player and Media Center and unfortunately get the same result. Interestingly though, a few weeks ago, between the two (Media Player and Media Center), one of them was jerky but the other was smooth (I forget which was which), but now both are the same. The movie itself plays fine, it just seems to buffer up every 2 seconds (sort of in a loop) and then quickly catch up. I tried all combination but no luck. The only thing I could think of that has changed since the last time and this was that I added the mp4 codecs. All this means is, in the end it gives you a headache. 🤕

I recently came across this advertisement in one of the magazines. There is a company called Passive Technologies who have released a pretty cool looking MCE machine called lifeStation . It looks like an appliance and still runs MCE 2005; I would recommend to wait when they upgrade to Vista. I don’t own one, so I don’t have any first hand experience. I also don’t know how much it costs, but it is bound to be pricey. ...

If you are running Vista x32 or x64 and want to play the usual set of audio and video files (such as mp4) you might need additional codecs . The one which has worked with me on Vista x64 is called the K-Lite Mega Code Pack v1.61; however as I said in my previous post , it might have caused an issue in DVD playback though I am not 100% sure of that. ...

This is quite cool; I got this via one of the Avanade communities. The .NET CF team is working to port WCF to the compact framework and as you can see below it will support a subset of the WCF. You can get more details on this post by Roman, though there are more WCF details on that and not as much as the WCF “Compact Edition”, it is still quite exciting. Who knows, maybe the next edition of the book can include this. ...

A number of you have pinged me asking the Table of Contents (TOC) for the Book that I recently finished . I don’t know why it does not show up on Amazon or even on the publishers site , but here are a high level TOC. If you want the detailed TOC’s then let me know and I can dig those out as well. ...

A conversation with Pardesi who is on dialup, (can I say “Loser”) reminded me of this. Torture 2.0

Microsoft has released the Visual Studio Tools for Office 2007 bits . These are also know as VSTO 2005 SE (Visual Studio Tools for Office Second Edition). In addition to all the new Office 2007 applications (Word, Excel, InfoPath, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Visio), these also support Office 2003 applications (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Visio). You can get more information on MSDN. ...

I guess it is moments like these which give us a break from the realities of the world and allow us to see the lighter moments of life. BBC has a story , of a mother in the US, who got her son arrested because he opened his Christmas gifts early. I guess, he can counter-sue her for “distress”, and she can counter-counter-sue (is there such a word?) for pain and anguish! Ah, America, the land of litigation … ! 😕

Roach Motel

As you can see the links on this blog now show a preview, this is using Snap Preview and it can give you a preview of the link before you click on it and is quite cool. You can signup for free with nothing to sign up or anything, just add the script tag and away you go. ...

I finally upgraded the blog to Community Server 2.1 SP1 today - its been out for a little while but did not get the time to upgrade till now. Everything seems to be running fine, but if you find something broken then let me know. The next version of CS , does have lots of code-names, but I don’t know what to make of it. It is supposed to be out sometime in Q1 07. ...

Update: Meenakshi has been bossing me around (as usual) to update this post. It might help if she actually started blogging herself instead. (If you don’t see another post here, that might be because I have had a few broken bones) Meenakshi got this video attached to one of the spam emails. William is very cute, and though the sounds his dad makes aren’t quite that funny, William of course disagrees. ...

As some of you are aware the book I was writing titled Pro WCF: Practical Microsoft SOA Implementation is finally finished - w00t! It is right now being set and indexed and it will be off to the press in about three weeks or so. This is published by APress and it should be available by January 22nd - a little longer than usual because of the holiday season. ...

Mounting ISO’s in Vista x32 is not an issue, most of the XP tools would work. In some cases you might have to run them as Admin, but there are not major issues. I have been using the old XP Virtual CD Control Panel from Microsoft which you can find more details on MSDN download section. However if you are running Vista x64 like I am then that is a little different matter. One option that has worked and I would recommend is getting the Daemon Tools version 4.08 x64 which work absolutely fine. You can download that from here (make sure you select the x64 bits and not the x32).

Did you know that all the cool Aero GUI that everyone is talking about in Vista is actually an acronym? It stands for “Authentic, Energetic, Reflective and Open” - whatever that means. 😉

I recently bought a new Multi-function printer at home - a Dell 1815dn and it works great. I am quite impressed with the speed and quality - both of which are fine for home use. This can also scan documents and send it to a machine on the network and that was one of the features that was very useful at home, but the Windows Firewall did not like it and would block the incoming request. To allow the Network Scan to work you need to open up the UDP Port 1054 on your firewall to allow this. ...

If you are like me and are running Vista x64 and are having some driver issues and would like to use the XP x64 drivers in Vista, but cannot because Vista expects the drivers to be signed, well then you can disable that. Disclaimer: please use common sense and back up your data and don’t blame me if this breaks stuff. Note 2: Using signed drivers is the recommended practice! I would resort to this only as a desperate measure (till all the drivers are released) or if you want to use it in a development scenario. ...

I am finding all kinds of interesting bits and bobs now that the primary OS I am running is x64 bit. For example did you know that Flash Player does not have a x64 bit implementation? Believe me, less Ads for me to see on pages and you don’t see me shedding any tears! Here is what I get when I tried to install Flash on IE 7 x64: Flash Player is not supported for playback in a 64-bit browser. ...

Vista x32 is available on MSDN - go get it! 😄 Update: Here is a screen shot: