Windows

Evolution of Windows Media Center

With the public availability of Windows 7 beta announced at CES 2009, Media Center aficionados are eagerly waiting for the updated Windows Media Center experience in the new OS. For me, Media Center has been the big reason to upgrade home PCs to Windows Vista, and looks like that will continue with Windows 7. I […]

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Switcher’s Lament: CNET Editor’s Case Against The Mac

It’s been a fun year watching those cute Apple commercials urging you to switch to a Mac. Yes, many of us love Apple’s beautifully engineered hardware, and may have fallen for the charms of an iPhone (although strictly as a case study in usability… :), but switching to the Mac OS as your primary computing […]

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Introducing Windows 7

Yes, the product so far known by its codename – “Windows 7”, will officially be called Windows 7. It’s the first time the official/final/release version of Windows will have the same name as its codename. More from Mike Nash on the Windows Vista team blog.

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IIS 7 Authentication: What happened to the IUSR_MachineName account?

In previous versions of IIS, the IUSR_MachineName account is created for anonymous authentication. This is an actual user account created on the server (a domain account can be used in domain environments), and like all user accounts— it has a SID, and an account password with the accompanying management costs and risks. One of the […]

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Save XP, Rick Mercer Style

It’s June 30th! I had the date marked because of two reasons. The first one has to do with Windows XP, and if you haven’t heard enough already, CBC’s Rick Mercer has his own view of how to save Windows XP. Caution: May not be entirely work-safe for some. The second reason’s coming up in […]

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Released: Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V

While I was away yesterday, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V made its public debut (RTMed in Microsoftese). I know what you’re thinking: Let the Microsoft PR storm begin, VMWare has a better virtualization product, and other unbloggable thoughts… :). I’ve been using Hyper-V for a few months now, and all I can say is— it’s been […]

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Starting Task Manager in RDP or VM sessions

You have a RDP (Terminal Services) session or a Virtual Machine session open, where the CTRL-ALT-DEL key combination fires up the Windows Logn/Security dialog on the host computer rather than the RDP or VM session you have open. Getting to the Task Manager involves some mouse-clicks in such situations— Start -> Windows Security -> Task […]

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Perfmon counters show up as numbers?

You’re troubleshooting an important issue and fire up Performance Monitor, only to be greeted by this bizarre visual— all your Perfmon counters show up as numbers! You restart Perfmon a few times, try to choose a different performance object – but it’s still numbers. Figure 1: Performance Monitor counters and objects are displayed as numbers […]

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“Save XP” Campaign: InfoWorld responds, and the facts about downgrade rights

Note to readers: I haven’t had to keep a post on hold for as long as I”ve kept this one, contemplating whether I should post it or not. After much thought, I’ve decided to post this, because it is important to know the facts about downgrade rights, and to clarify my position on this debate. […]

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‘Crapware’-free: Longhorn Server does not include useless desktop apps

We’ve been hearing a lot about ‘crapware‘ apps installed by hardware vendors on desktops and laptops – apps like AOL (or other ISP) software, myriad browser add-ins and toolbars, trial versions of anti-virus, firewall, and security software that you may never use – perhaps because your organization has standardized on some more manageable enterprise versions […]

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