microsoft

There is a brand spanking new version of Windows Live Writer which came out a little over a week ago. In addition to a number of bugs being fixed, there is tagging support, blogger beta support, improvements to categories, etc. ( read more details here ). There is also an updated Plug-In gallery . Some of the things I was ranting about earlier still remain. To the immediate eye, there does not seem to be any major differences - I did not go through the process of adding a new blog....

Vista RC2 (essentially an updated build of RC1), is now available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers in addition to the TAP and Beta Testers. I just checked and I don’t see it on MSDN, possibly it is being slowly rolled out. Update: If you are not part of the beta program, you and download RC2 from here (link via fellow Avanut Chris Smith).

(Update: Changed the Code plug-in to get the formatting correct) For the last few days I have not been able to run Windows Update on Vista RC1 (I am running Build 5728) even though I am online. I always get the Code 8024400A error (see screen shot below). <p> <img src="images/WinUpdateError.jpg" alt=""/> </p> Nothing stands out in the event log. Speaking of the Event Log, if you think you can find these failures in “Windows Logs => Systems”, well then think again....

When I read the post by Somasegar about the availability (I should say lack of it) VS.NET 2005 SP1 and their support for Vista, I was quite pissed (you can read my comments here ). Come on guys, why are you acting like a 5-person development shop who just started does not know how to make software? It seems Dilbert can get a lot of “fodder” from this.

IE7 is still new and while there are many sites it will just work without any issues there are many that it will just not work and you will get a “I don’t know what the heck that browser is” error. (There are a few who handle this quite gracefully - e.g. I am on the Yahoo Mail Beta and they say they don’t support it, but if you want to give it a shot - go ahead)....

Vista Build 5728 (which is of course after RC1) can be downloaded from here for a limited time. As per Microsoft, this build has improvements from RC1 but has not gone through the same regression testing as a RC or Beta, and it might not work in some situations. Furthermore, Microsoft also highlights: This build may not have the same level of support or servicing via Windows Update, and you may not be able to upgrade to the final version of Windows Vista....

After my initial feedback and having using Windows Live Writer more I have found a critical bug. I have not kept an eye on the groups to see if someone else has reported this (or if there is a work around), but I wanted to capture it here. If you are modifying a post that was originally created with Live Writer and contains images which are uploaded to a FTP server, when you add another image and try and publish it then Live Writer will crash....

MS has released the Second Edition Beta of VSTO 2007 which works with VS.NET 2005. This is updated to be in sync with Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh. This can be installed on VS.NET 2005 Professional, Team System or Tools for Office System edition only. Here are the highlights quoted from MS: Application-level add-in projects for six applications in the 2007 Microsoft Office system: Microsoft Office Excel 2007, Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft Office Visio 2007, and Microsoft Office Word 2007....

My colleague Stuart Stocking pointed out this wiki which has a list of RC1 compatible software – quite helpful if you are in doubt, or if you need to find something that will work.

Office 2007 Beta 2 TR is available here . Irrespective of the sizes of the download, this is an update and you still need to have the Beta 2 bits already installed.

I am sure you must have come across Microsoft Max and it is a shame that Max cannot run on a Vista at this point of time - I mean come on guys, you certainly can do better? However, there is a work around (till Microsoft fixes this), if you want to get Max to run on Vista. The only downside is that you need to have a Win XP machine handy - which might be an issue for some people out there....

There are some new TFS Power Toys available - check them out.

If you are a keyboard man (or woman) like me, then check out the list of keyb shortcuts for Vista . Most of these will work in Windows XP as well - some of the new start ones are interesting.

You can now download the Vista RC1 build including both the 32 and 64 editions.If you registered for Beta 2, then the same key will work for this as well.

Just a few days after releasing Vista Pre-RC1 (hey don’t ask me about he naming conventions that MS is following - I gave up caring after the .NET 3.0 debacle), Vista RC1 is available on the connect website . I don’t have access to that so I cannot download it - but some of my colleagues who do are getting it as we speak. I plan to shift to this as the primary OS (am I brave or stupid - I’ll let you decide) - so I am excited about it....

If you have not already heard, then there is a new CTP of ADO called ADO.NET vNext which adds support for both consuming and creating EDM (or Enterprise Data Modeling which some people know as Data Modeling or more commonly known as Entity-Relationship Models ). If you want to get a quick overview of what this provides, then check out the 13 min demo (via flash) on what it does. There is also support for LINQ (or Language INtegrated Query)....

<p> <img src="images/ie7_cert_err_thumb18.png" alt="IE 7 Certificate Error"/> </p> When looking at the Dell battery replacement site, using IE 7 (beta 3), the certificate was expired and even though I said “please ignore that and continue”, I saw this interesting feature as you can see in the screen shot. The address box has a red background - warning me and also a new Certificate error. This is certainly interesting and my kudos to the IE team as it would help the average non-technical user and raise the awareness....

I finally got my new phone on Friday. Although I only have had it for the weekend, the little I have used and played it thus far, I love it. And it only hung twice since – which is a *huge* improvement compared to my earlier experience with a phone running the Windows Mobile. I was wanting to install OneNote Mobile (after hearing a lot of good reviews for it) and it is a little different from the usual process....

I came across ieaddons.com via the IE team’s official blog and till then had not heard of it. I have been using IE 7 Beta 3, and despite my original issues with it, I do seem to like it – Firefox is still my primary browser though. Speaking of IE, there are a few things that I do like which I wish is going to be in Firefox. One of them, when opening a new tab it open right next to the active one, instead of opening all the way in the end – which helps a lot when doing the research....

Being the good citizen that you are, you have Automatic Updates switched on and you find that Windows downloaded the updates and installed them. BTW, if you have not run Windows update recently I would recommend to do it now as there were a bunch of critical updates that were released yesterday. Also you should run Microsoft Updates instead of Windows update as that will pull down all the updates to all MS products installed and not just Windows....

MSNBC might not like it , but as Long Zheng shows, Vista’s speech recognition actually works .

Well, if you have ever wondered, Tess has a great post listing out the various reasons why. Well worth a read.

I recently came across Microsoft Codename Max (cross-posted via Shawn ), which seems very promising however I have not had a chance to install it as it requires Jan CTP of WinFX and I currently have June CTP running on one of my primary machines. I could install a VM with that but honestly cannot be bothered. If you have had a chance to play with it I would love to hear your feedback?...

As you might have already heard that Microsoft will be pushing out IE 7 to every Windows desktop out there later this year using Windows Update. This will be pushed as a high priority update, which means for most users who automatically download and install this, they will get IE 7 - irrespective if they want to upgrade to IE 7 or not. If you are using IE then it is recommended to upgrade to IE 7 - or even better (IHMO), you should switch to Firefox....

When the new IE 7 bits were originally released - I forget if it was late last year or early this year - I had installed them to have a play, but that was such a shoddy release that I quickly uninstalled and happily continued to use Firefox. A while after that Beta 1 was released which I did not touch and although some of my brave colleagues installed it and used it - I kept at a arms length....