Hopefully for lots of you reading this you’ll be looking for some resources off the back of the turn I’ve just done about DirectAccess and BranchCache.  Bellow are some places with some really useful information.

Here’s a video by Kevin Remde that shows setting up BranchCache in hosted cache mode…

…and here’s a second video by Kevin that shows BranchCache running in distributed mode.

And a few months ago I did another demo showing the effect of BranchCache which you’ll find if you view the recording here. In this demo I use performance counters to highlight what’s going on.  Here’s a video finally of the config of DirectAccess.

You might have just seen my UK TechDays 2011 presentation which will be available online after the show, however if you didn’t get time to make a note of the resources, here you go:

•Springboard: http://bit.ly/W7SB

•Download Windows 7 Eval: http://bit.ly/smw7trial

•Office 365: http://office365.com

•Windows Collection PCs: http://bit.ly/wincoll

Windows XP is cutting edge empowering a new wave of personal computing. The year is 2001 and Donnie Darko, The Fast and the Furious, A beautiful mind and Black hawk down are topping the movie charts…a short time later these will all be some of the first movies released on DVD. Since that medium wasn’t available to everyone we released the training materials for Windows XP on VHS cassette (this is of course 4 years before YouTube). It is time to move on because we all know this technology is no longer good enough for your business.

Why isn’t XP good enough? There are many reasons but we are going to concentrate on the ones that actually matter to you . No not your mum, dad, kids, pets and other animals but your users. In 2001 the term “Wi-Fi” did not exist as an accepted term, the Wi-Fi alliance hadn’t created the term and was still the WECA (Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance) so there were no real standard standards for wireless Ethernet and so support in XP is limited. Now you might be thinking that Windows XP got a couple of service packs, the last of which was SP3 released in 2008 and you might well be asking why that uplift doesn’t make Windows XP good enough for today’s world?

Without a doubt Windows XP requires Service Pack 3 to be considered anything like a modern OS but even then it’s a bit like a new coat of paint rather than a new roof or foundations. The big features of XPSP3? Network Access protection, Black hole router detection, CredSSP, additional descriptive text (it’s in the release notes), enhanced security protection, cryptography and activation changes. All essential, none of which matter to your mother, your CEO or Jane in marketing. What does matter to these folks?

Well being able to connect seamlessly from home makes Jane in marketing far happier, that’s where DirectAccess using Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008R2 comes in. She just connects to her home wireless (buy pressing a button on her router for one click WiFi Protected Setup) and DirectAccess connects her to her corporate resources. She didn’t need to mess around with complex WiFi passwords and encryption settings, no checking she has connectivity and initiating a VPN connection.

Dan in IT has life easy with this setup too. Jane’s PC gets anti-malware and patch updates whenever he releases them to the WSUS server because, although Jane’s rarely in the office DirectAccess keeps her connected to the office whenever her computer detects and Internet connection. Dan gets other fringe benefits from having Windows 7 deployed in his organization too, if a user gets stuck with something or encounters a problem all they have to do is type record steps into the Start menu search. Within a few minutes Dan has a recording of the steps required to reproduce the problem so he can trouble shoot it with the built in Problem Steps Recorder.

For me one the biggest additions that we did get with Windows XP SP3 was the addition of Network Access Protection (NAP). If you aren’t familiar with it NAP allows you to protect your network by isolating computers that aren’t up to an acceptable level of updates or malware protection until such time as they can be brought up to scratch automatically or remediated. It’s a technology that it’s easy to see can help reduce firefighting for malware outbreaks.

Obviously those are just a couple of the useful technologies built into Windows 7 but technology like BranchCache helps to streamline operations for branch networks by securely caching frequently accessed data in branches. Windows 7 is however far more about working in a much more modern way; the workflows that your users experience throughout are far easier and built for a modern world. Need to find a document: hit search; need to find a program: hit search; can’t remember the name of a setting you need to change: hit search. I normally explain this by encouraging people to work out how to change mouse buttons over (type mouse or button into search and you’ll have the job done in seconds).

From the point of view of the modern IT Professional it’s useful in two ways, firstly you don’t need to know the name of every setting and secondly your users won’t need to call you for every little thing, they just do what they expect to do today, search for it. With the emerging and accelerating trend of the consumerization of IT where people expect to be able to access everything they need and more on their own terms, including brining their own PCs in you start to see that you need a modern environment. In a consumerized environment you’ll want NAP protecting your network by the way, and you’ll want simple ways to recreate problems on nonstandard kit and you’ll want other things too.

However you might not be in a consumerised environment yet and you might be looking at other smart ways of doing things. So how about Application Virtualisation a feature available with MDOP that allows you to take an application and sequence it so that it can be delivered to any machine, without installation. Sounds good but pop central control onto the top and you’ve got a way of rapidly delivering applications to your computers – heck they don’t even have to have fully downloaded to the computer before the user can start using them. Say what? App-V sequences applications around the way that people use the application, so if it’s not needed immediately it becomes an on demand component that downloads only when needed.

MDOP’s a great addition to Windows 7 because it adds so much functionality for IT Professionals not only can you virtualize applications with App-V but Med-V allows you to virtualize applications that have compatibility issues with Windows 7 (IE6 is a prime example) so that you can provide support to help you over deployment hurdles. Your favorite feature though may well be the Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) which extends the troubleshooting functionality available natively in Windows 7 to enable even cooler stuff. Need to reset local machine passwords: DaRT is your friend! Need to pull a hotfix off the machine that’s made things go a bit hinky: DaRT it is. The raft of things it can help with is immense.

So we’ve discussed some new features, some awesome troubleshooting tools and things to make your life as an IT Pro easier how about we do the same with deployment. Microsoft Deployment Toolkit makes your life hear easy and I’m sure you all know how much Stephen loves MDT so I won’t go there but that functionality can be embedded into System Center for a big company.

Windows Intune, which is new to the party adds some excellent options (although not application and operating system deployment) for those running smaller enterprises. The remote assistance on Windows 7 is superlative as is the management of the Windows Firewall, Windows Update and the inclusion of brilliant anti-malware in the subscription price. The big ticket item for me though is that you get a Windows 7 Enterprise license included for each computer with an Intune subscription (and MDOP for pennies more).

I digress though; this is about why you should move away from XP and onto Windows 7. Let’s sum up and get back on track. Windows XP wasn’t built for today’s world, it was built when WiFi wasn’t around, before hardware was cheap and 64-bit wasn’t the norm, before people expected to be able to do at work what they can at home with their PC, before search engines were how you found something out.

No one wants to have to take a document home to make it look cool using spark lines; they want to make it look cool at work. They want to be able to use applications that don’t take hours to install, they want to be able to find things on their PC with search, they want to be able to work where and when they want.

For you though it means more. It means being able to add more value and enable business processes that enable cost saving or revenue generation, you can’t do that scrabbling to support things that are out dated. You don’t want the nasty surprise of someone brining their malware infected home PC in and it infecting the rest of the office, if they bring that machine in you wants it to be secure still. If they’re mobile you don’t want them on the road picking up a virus here, some spyware there and other stuff. Also you owe it to yourself and your career to stay up to date. The business benefits of Windows 7 are abound in countless case studies, but hopefully this made things more real for you of course you’ll find more on Springboard.

This article was originally written for Springboard.  Simon May is an IT Professional Evangelist in the UK for Microsoft; he writes, blogs, tweets and presents about Windows and Microsoft cloud technologies but most of all loves a good chat about tech especially if you can work in Windows Media Center. Follow him on Twitter or the UK TechNet blog.

Just a quick one to provide people access to the slides from todays OD unplugged session in London.  I can’t share my demo just now but I will record it…here are the slides for OD unplugged.  But also embedded in the post here courtesy of Windows Live and don’t forget to checkout Springboard and the Windows 7 Evaluation I mentioned.

And also here’s the productivity video from my session.

If you find Windows 7 deployment options to be confusing you might find this handy new – stick it to your wall and refer to it daily – tech sheet to be rather helpful.  The Windows 7 Deployment Options for Small and Midsized Businesses printable overview is one of those things you can print and stick to your desk to make your colleagues think you know what you’re doing…of course you could also try the deployment learning portal for a similar effect .

A few days ago as part of our Tech Days online series I did a webcast on how to deploy Windows 7 using free tools like WDS, MDT and WAIK and that practical deployment webcast has now been made available online.  We’re running these three weeks out of every four (we need a week to prep) and you can findout about the rest at the Tech Days site where you can also find out about the Tech Days event in May which is going to be pure brilliance itself!

Now that SP1 is pretty much out there for Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 it’s far off time to start thinking about upgrading things in your Hyper-V environment.  I’ve been running the RC version of SP1 on my Hyper-V laptop for a while to get the benefits of Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX, but what about when I need to move over to the final bits?  Well this is the process taken from KB2489240 :

1. Start all of the virtual machines and upgrade them from the Beta or RC build to the released build of SP1 using the following steps:
  a.  Uninstall the Beta or RC build of SP1 on the virtual machine
  b.  Reboot the virtual machine
  c.  Install the released build on the virtual machine
  d.  Reboot the virtual machine
  e.  Shutdown the virtual machine
2. Remove the RemoteFX video adapter from each virtual machine using Hyper-V Manager or System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1

3. Upgrade the Hyper-v host from the Beta or RC build to the released build using the following steps:
  a. Uninstall the Beta or RC build of SP1 on the Hyper-V host
  b. Install the released build of SP1 on the Hyper-V host
  c. Reboot the Hyper-V host
4. Re-install the RemoteFX role service on the host(it will be removed in Step 3-a above)
5. Add the RemoteFX video adapter back to each virtual machine using Hyper-V Manager or System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1
7.  At this point the virtual machines should be able to boot up and RemoteFX sessions can be established to them

So why all this complexity?  Well you need to update the Hyper-V integration services and the operating systems on each virtual machine to get everything working just so.

On January 1st 2011 Estonia joined the single EU currency and is now getting to grips with using the Euro on a daily basis.  Funny thing is with money that it affects all sorts of things, not least the layout of all those keyboards!  Imagine everyone in Estonia now needs a new keyboard with the correct symbol.  Also they need the correct mappings for the keyboards.  Luckily we’ve released updates to make that happen but it’s a good time to explain the manual way of changing currency.

1. Click Start, type Change the date, time, or number format in the Start Search box, and then click Change the date, time, or number format in the Programs list.
   Note If you are prompted for an administrator password or for confirmation, type the password, or click Continue.
2. In the Region and Language dialog box, click Additional settings under the Formats tab.
3. Click the Currency tab and then change Currency symbol from kr to €.
   Note If you have applied the update that is described in the "Resolution" section, and you want to change the currency symbol to the earlier version, click the Currency tab, click to select € in the Currency symbol list, and then type kr.
4. Click OK two times to apply the change.

After you make this change, the new currency symbol is displayed as your system currency in all Windows and Microsoft Office products.

Over the holidays I got into a sticky situation where I needed to use my Laptop as an access point to share a network connection. But it doesn’t give you much of a chance to change IP settings so if you have some other device that uses an overlapping IP range you might need to change some settings, thankfully there’s a KB on How to Change the IP Range for the Internet Connection Sharing DHCP. service.  It involves editing the registry so don’t forget to backup the registry first.

To change the IP address that is assigned to the host and the IP address range that is used by the DHCP service on the Connection Sharing host, use Registry Editor to change the following values. These values are located in the following folder:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\services\SharedAccess\Parameters

• (REG_SZ) ScopeAddress
• (REG_SZ) StandaloneDhcpAddress

The ScopeAddress value is set to the address range that you want to use with Connection Sharing. The StandaloneDhcpAddress value is the address range that is used when Virtual Wi-Fi/SoftAP is enabled. For both values, a network mask of 255.255.255.0 is used and is not configurable.

A very nice chap just wrote to Rachel asking for help with a problem* I think a few other people must have experienced so often so I thought I’d share how to fix it.  I just hope I’ve got it right from the problem description.  When clicking a link in an application, like your email program, you get an error that says “Application not found” and Internet Explorer doesn’t kick in to handle the link.  Basically Internet Explorer isn’t known to the PC as the default browser and nor is anything else so you get the error.  It’s simple to fix:

In Windows 7

Click Start and type default programs into the search, then select Set your default programs.

Then from the list select your broswer and click Set this program as default

Next select Set program access and computer defaults, select your browser under Choose a default web browser and click OK

That should sort things out.

If you’re on XP, it’s just a little different:

• Go to Start and select Set Program Access and Defaults
• Then select Custom and select the down arrows to the right, select the browser you would like to use (I recommend Internet Explorer and click OK

Then you should be fixed.

*people often writer to Rachel with problems, some of them are unprintable but she appreciated them all

The first step in any Windows 7 deployment is to start by understanding what your current environment looks like and what you’ll need to do to get your machines to meet the minimum system requirements or even better the recommended requirements.  The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP Toolkit) is a toolkit that lets you do that and the newly released MAP Toolkit 5.5 can be downloaded here along with full documentation.  In this post though I’m going to talk you through the steps you need to take and I’ve created a video that takes you through it too.

The MAP Toolkit is an agent less discovery tool which means that it’s easy to deploy and use since you only really need to install it onto one machine on your network and it can do the rest.  There are some pre-reqs for using the tool though.  You’ll need Microsoft Office 2007 or (obviously 2010 is best) and you’ll need SQL Server Express Edition installed on the PC on which you’ll run MAP.  You might be wondering what Office is used for:  The MAP toolkit creates pre-baked reports for you that you can use to help justify any required upgrades.

Once you have Office on the PC you need to install the MAP toolkit and as part of that installation SQL Server Express will be downloaded or you can provide a previously downloaded install.  You then setup a database to store the information that the tool collects.  That’s really all there is to setup, it’s quite simple and it’s covered from 00:00 to 2:56 in the video.

Next you’ll scan your network in order to gain an understanding of it.  To do this click Inventory and Assessment Wizard and then determine how you want to scan from various options including looking in AD and scanning using an SCCM database, a file containing a list of computer names or a range of IP addresses.  In the video I choose AD and an IP Address range as I know that I have some PCs that I’ll want to consider upgrading that aren’t members of my Active Directory Domain.  If you selected AD as a scanning option you’ll need to provide creds that give the tool access to AD DS to find computer accounts, for an IP range you’ll select the start point (for example 10.1.1.1) and end point (10.1.1.255).  IP Ranges don’t have to be contiguous or any such.  You then provide creds for the machines and an order in which to try multiple creds, so you can provide a Domain Admin account (eek) and a Local Administrator account.  Finally the scan runs and WMI is used to query each machine and populate your database. (2:56 to 6:28)

The next step is to dig through the data.  For the purposes of understanding Windows 7 compatibility use Windows 7 Readiness and for Office 2010 compatibility use Office 2010 Readiness, Internet Explorer also has a readiness check too.  These panels only provide you, the IT Pro doing the work, a view of what’s out there.  To produce something you can show the person with the purse you need to produce some reports by selecting Generate report from the task pane on the right. (6:28 to 9:21)

Once that’s done you’ll get reports that list more detail and tell you what you need to do to upgrade specific PCs.  In my video I have an XP PC with just 64mb of RAM so that will need an upgrade to the Windows 7 Professional minimum of 512MB. (9:21 to end)

The MAP Toolkit is a great tool to have in your box and as it’s free using it is a no-brainer really.  You can download MAP 5.5 here and for more info on Windows 7 deployment check out springboard.

I spent much of last week at the crazy busy BETT education fair at Olympia showing people Office 365 and meeting some very interesting techies working in schools, collages and universities all over the country.  I had a lot of misconceptions about the type of IT Professionals working in education before I got there, most were blown out of the water and my thoughts reset.  I’ll get a video of the Office 365 stuff out later this week…

Scale was the first thing I wrongly assumed.  I thought that schools would be small, but it’s the opposite.  Mail administrators in schools face a battle of provisioning hundreds of mailboxes each year, archiving old ones and constantly managing their users and storage requirements.  AD DS administrators face the same but with the added complication of load as every student logs on 4 , 5, 6 times a day as they move between classrooms.  Those AD DS servers are taking a battering folks and they need to be up to the job.

I was expecting lots of people to be stuck in the dark ages – and some are – but many are not.  Schools are readily adopting cloud technologies to cope with the scale and flexibility they need to provide.  Many have rolled out Windows 7 or are planning to do so in September.  Many are using Hyper-V to virtualise (the ones who aren’t are very actively looking to ditch Vmware because of cost), application virtualisation and VDI and RDS are hot technologies too as schools look to make it easier to rollout application updates.

Saving money is high on the agenda as you’d expect so using virtualisation, cloud and making their infrastructure easier to manage are top of the agenda.

Security is paramount.  Firstly they have lots of kids doing the Bring Your Own Computer thing and it’s causing infections and virus outbreaks a plenty – except those schools that have deployed NAP (Network Access Protection).  Secondly I was showing off a bunch of slate devices and the critical thing there is that they can be encrypted preventing anything that the kids do with them such as taking pictures with the web cams from falling into the wrong hands.

There are lots of people doing clever things with Windows 7 and much of what’s used in the class room, like digital white boards and interactive projectors are useful in the board room or the meeting room.

The best thing though was that there was a palpable enthusiasm for using technology to help reduce cost and more importantly help our kids to learn in better ways.  It seems education is a space full of early adopters and a good segment to watch for ideas.

Licensing is a complex subject and to be honest it’s not one that I talk about much because it’s a complex discipline in and of it’s own and there’s too much fun stuff to talk about in the client and cloud world.  This document, Licensing Windows 7 for Use with Virtual Machine Technologies tells you all you need to know about licensing with Software Assurance and Windows 7 on Virtual Machines.  Such nuggets as if you have Volume Licensing, an SA and the Windows 7 Professional Upgrade License (Volume Licensing Upgrade License) or Windows 7 Enterprise then you can run 4 virtual copies of Windows 7 on a server or desktop, just like this:

What’s more there’s a great FAQ in the document, some of which is worth calling out:

If I install and run four additional copies of the operating system, do I have to use Windows 7 Enterprise as the host operating system?

No. You may use prior versions of Windows, including Windows Vista Business and Windows XP Pro. In addition to third-party product to host the four virtual machine environments, Volume Licensing customers have some flexibility in how they can deploy Windows 7 in their organizations.  As a benefit of Software Assurance coverage for Windows desktops, customers may leverage virtualization use rights.  This use right allows running the software in up to four local virtual machines.  While a customer’s right to use Windows 7 Enterprise may survive the expiration of their Software Assurance coverage, the Virtualization Use Right does not.

Can I store my virtual machine in a .vhd file on removable storage media and open the .vhd file on another PC?

Yes, as long as both PCs are licensed for Windows VECD and are not already running more than three copies of the software.

Can other users remotely access virtual machines that I’m not using on my PC while I’m using my PC?

No. The use of the software is limited to one user at any given time.

How do I license my employee and contractor owned PCs so that they have access to my centralized desktop PC environment?

Employee- and contractor-owned devices can be licensed with Windows VECD, which enables them to remotely access your centralized desktop PC environment. Additionally, for devices with a pre-assigned Windows 7 Professional license, they may run the permitted instances locally in a virtual machine on the Windows VECD licensed device.

Go grab the document here (email it to your Licensing dude if you aren’t a licensing dude) and learn about Desktop Virtualisation

Being a bit of a fan of exams (!) on Friday went to a lovely little training centre in Wokingham and sat a couple of hours worth of exams, 070-680 and 070-685.  Thankfully I passed both and I can now report back on them, just like I did with the MTA exams.  The first thing to say is that these were, just as you’d expect, much harder than the MTA exams requiring both depth and breadth of knowledge of Windows 7 and how to deploy, manage and troubleshoot it.  Why are they worth it?  How did I study?  What’s next?

When I started my IT career just over 10 years ago I met a bunch of guys who had their NT4 MCSE and I also had a boss who knew his onions, the guys he hired with MCSEs knew their onions too, they didn’t just have the bit of paper.  They formed my view of why it’s important to be well trained and why it’s worth getting the cert.  What I learnt was that studying Microsoft’s products according to the official curriculum helps you flesh out all the facets and features of a product that you might not necessarily see in your day to day life.  Overall the biggest thing that certifications do is make sure you cover all the bases and widen your knowledge.

Some people expect that when they get a certification they should suddenly earn more money.  Wrong.  Some people expect that when you get a certification you should suddenly get a promotion.  Wrong.  It’s about how you apply the skills you’ve learnt to your business and add value, not about a bit of paper.  There’s one place that certs matter and that’s when you’re getting hired as a contract employee.  In my experience certifications get you past the junior recruitment consultants who vet CVs.  When you’re passed there you are back to how you’ve applied your skills again.

So why are they worth it?  Studying for a cert improves your knowledge and that improves the skills that you apply to your day to day life as an IT Professional.  I think of extra skills as extra tools in the kit bag, making me more capable in more situations.

Over the years I’ve developed a pretty good understanding of how I learn, every IT Pro probably has.  The way I do it is to grab a nice thick study guide, in this case I used MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-680): Configuring Microsoft Windows 7 by Ian McLean and Orin Thomas (review here tomorrow) and I grabbed it in eBook format from Safari Books Online downloaded it to my Kindle and took it away with me to Tenerife over Christmas.  There I proceeded to read it all, including all the bits I thought I knew.  As always in those sections I picked up new nuggets of knowledge that I’d never picked up before.  When I got back to the UK I sat down a couple of days before the exam and did all the exercises that I don’t do all the time…I use MDT quite a lot so I skipped those.  Finally I read all the chapter summaries over again in one sitting.  Essentially I was packing my brain with focused information about what I needed at a particular time.

I could not have done the exam with just that information.

If I hadn’t had experience to apply to the scenario questions in the exams there is no way I’d have made it.  In fact I didn’t think I had made it on either exam until I got the results.  The current crop of exams are really taxing.  They aren’t as taxing as the Windows NT to Windows 2000 upgrade exam but they really aren’t easy.

For me certifications are also a matter of professional pride and I don’t under estimate what that professional pride will drive me to.  I used to work in a team (of contractors) where certification was a competitive sport and that’s still with me.

So what’s next?  I’ll be doing Exam 70-686 next but I’m currently proofing some books and reading previews of others so it’ll probably be a few months.

You’re trapped by snow, you tried to escape in the car but hit some ice and and skidded into the curb at less than 10 mph and bent your wheel axle.  There’s limited mobile reception.  There’s internet but only directly connected by cable to one PC.  You’re a geek who needs to work and that involves 2 laptops.  Your wife also needs to work on her laptop and connect to work remotely.  Your hosts , providing the house to keep you warm, also need to be able to work…this was the situation I found myself in (and still do) this weekend.  The answer, turning one of the laptops into a WiFi hotspot and sharing that single Internet Connection (aka SoftAP)  And also calling the car insurance!

So what’s involved?

Well first off I turned a laptop into an WiFi hotspot, which is simple with the right drivers from Intel and Windows 7.  What happens here is a virtual network adapter is created to handle to the hotspot traffic.

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=SiWiFi key=password

Once the connection is setup you need to share whatever network connection is providing internet access with the new hotspot.  To do that simple open the adapter settings, select the sharing tab, tick the box and select your new virtual network adapter. Obviously change SiWiFi and Key= to a ssid and key that you like.  This can be used to share any internet connect, be it coming from WiFi or from Mobile or a wired connection.

The next step is to start the new adapter and hotspot whenever you need it done with a simple command at the command line:

netsh wlan start hostednetwork

Finally connect to the hotspot as you would from any laptop to a wireless hotspot.

I remembered hearing about this ages ago from Long at iStartedSomething.com but I got the detail from MSDN this time around and if you don’t like the sound of this in your corporate environment then this video on Edge will help you prevent it being used in your organisation.

Hi I’m Andrew Fryer and I have hacked into Simon May’s blog, to show you how more power uses less power.  I was checking out the latest technical goodness on the Dell stand at TechEd and I noticed they had a couple of their laptops hooked up to power meters one of which was a trusty old Dell 630 the other one of their state of the art machines sporting an Intel i7 processor. The rig shows how power management on the newer processors is surface through the Dell firmware to Windows 7  to carefully control the power used compared to what was possible 4 years ago. 

I grabbed a member of the Dell team briefed him on how to make movies on my Canon 60D and made this…

I was just thumbing around the Sysinternals site (for some handy tools for a deployment I’m doing) and happened across Mark’s PDC presentation which he re-ran at TechEd Europe last week and which I happened to be at.  It’s a fantastic way for the IT Professional to understand some of the (very) interesting back end of Windows Azure.  How it works, what it does, what fabric is, how it heals how it deploys how it all bolts together.  When you’re done watching the vid, go get an Azure trial.

If you’re looking to make sure that your enterprise desktops are secure and all to the same level then you’ll want to check out the recently updated Security Compliance Manager tool and with Windows 7 in your environment you’ll be wanting the Windows 7 settings pack.  Full details of the pack are available in the TechNet library.  Why is this tool useful?  Well the solution accelerator team have the best answer:

Since the release of the Security Compliance Manager tool, one of the most frequent requests has been to add all of the available Group Policy settings to the Microsoft-recommended baselines so that they can be accessed through the tool. While our baselines include hundreds of settings, there are hundreds of additional settings available in Group Policy. In response to this request, the team has created setting packs. The setting packs include the basic information required by the Security Compliance Manager tool to define custom baselines that you can use to create GPO backups, DCM configuration packs, and SCAP content. This is a temporary solution to address this request. A future version of the tool will provide the capability to add the settings customers need to their baseline without using a setting pack.

To learn more about Windows Deployment check out Springboard

What was the last operating system you deployed?…I’ll bet it was Windows XP and I bet you needed a bunch of 3rd party tools and experienced tons of pain to get to the end point.   With the right (free) tools it’s really easy to deploy Windows 7 though and you can self select just how much control and complexity you need depending upon the size of your deployment and how dynamic your infrastructure is.  When you first look at deployment though you might see the alphabet soup as a real turn off and feel it’s all too complex.  Here I’ll try to demystify it somewhat, covering deployment, data migration and application migration.

The Windows 7 deployment technologies build on each other and actually fit together like a jigsaw to present the whole picture.  Most guides to Windows 7 deployment start out explaining the underlying tools and components of a deployment but I think we sometimes need to picture the end goal first.  So what are the factors you need to consider?

Understanding the picture

To start out you need to determine what type of environment you have, who’s doing the deployment and even what the behavioural norms are of your users.  For example you might be in a position where you need to do everything for your users; either they don’t want to make backups and install Windows or they don’t have the capabilities (time / technical inclination).  Alternatively all your users might be highly skilled technical experts who need plenty of flexibility.  Either way the solutions are quite simple to build and maintain with the latest tools.  One option is to use the MAP toolkit to understand your environment.

The next thing you need to determine is the size of your environment and what tools you already have deployed.  If you’re on the medium to big size you’ll probably already have some System Center components deployed to manage your datacentre, servers and possibly your applications and operating system deployments.  If you’re on the medium to small end of the scale you probably have a bunch of those 3rd party tools cobbled together to provide a solution or you’ll be looking for something simple to deploy.  I’ve been intentionally vague with “small”, “medium” and “big” because they all depend on your self view.  Normally we consider “small” to be <100 and “big” to be >500 but I think you can self select better than that.

Do you have System Center?

With these few pieces of information we start identifying what type of deployment you need.  The next key consideration is if you’ve got System Center deployed.  If you do your Windows 7 deployment will be best with System Center at the helm leveraging MDT.  This will give you the ability to do a zero-touch or full automated deployment of Windows 7.  If you don’t have System Center deployed and you’re large enough that management has become a significant overhead then you’ll probably want to use your Windows 7 deployment to spearhead a System Center deployment to help take control of your environment.  System Center isn’t a fixed requirement though.

No, no problem!

What if you don’t have System Center in place?  Well then you’ll be looking at a tool called MDT (aka Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Update 1) which takes away lots of deployment pain for you and helps you deliver a dynamic and maintainable Windows 7 deployment environment.  It’s also free!  What MDT alone cannot do for you is provide a zero-touch Windows 7 deployment instead it provides a lite-touch (or semi automated) approach that does most of the work for your users.

Friends of MDT

Under MDT there’s another level of tools packaged up in something called the Windows Automated Installation Kit (better known as WAIK) which provides lots of the tools used by MDT to get the job done.  You’ll occasionally need to dip into this level to do more advanced things with your Windows 7 deployment (like service your images from the command line) and the WAIK actually includes a program for taking system images called ImageX.  If all you wanted was a very basic, repeatable installation of Windows 7 you could get away with just using WAIK but if you’ve got more than about 100 PCs you won’t want to go there.

Again to support an MDT based distribution you’ll need a couple more elements, a SQL Server and a Windows Deployment Services server (WDS).  For a SQL server it’s perfectly OK to use SQL Server Express or to use an existing managed SQL Server installation.  The SQL Server will house the configuration data used to dynamically provision computers.  WDS is a role of Windows Server 2008 and is used to provide PXE boot services (you can use a boot DVD if you need to install your customised Windows 7 install too).  WDS can also deploy XP and Vista, so you can move to a unified deployment infrastructure and it supports multi-stream multicasting, so if you use multi-cast deployment slower clients don’t slow faster clients.

So far we have key decisions made: Lite-touch or Zero-touch, dynamic deployments or static deployments but there are a couple more key considerations when thinking about your deployment, data and applications.

The data…

The data consideration drives whether you’ll need to migrate data from your users laptops or not and this in turn drives how you’ll migrate data if needs to be migrated.  If your users are storing data on their local machine you probably need to migrate it somewhere and you might well need to migrate their user settings too.  To achieve this you will want to use USMT 4.0  (User State Migration Tool) which is a component of WAIK.  USMT allows you to migrate users settings and files by either copying the files off the PC to a network share (which you might want to do it you want to take the opportunity to create a point in time backup of the users stuff) or to use hard link migration.  Hard link migration is cool!  It basically allows you to mark files to persist on the hard disk during migration to Windows 7 which saves you time and space by not having to move the files to a network share and back to the target PC again.  If you have technically savvy, or independent users you might want to use the Windows Easy Transfer too built into Windows 7 to transfer the files and settings as USMT isn’t user configurable so it’s conceivable you could miss stuff.  It is however the best approach to use en masse.

The apps…

Application compatibility is your only other real consideration.  You need to be sure that all the applications you need to deploy on your Windows 7 PCs will work on those PCs.  Again for that there’s a tool, ACT (Application Compatibility Toolkit) which can analyse your environment and tell you what applications are compatible and where they aren’t you can then workout a remediation strategy.  For example you could virtualise the application with XP mode and Virtual PC or App-V or if required with Med-V create an entirely virtualised desktop.

Why Dynamic deployment matters

Dynamic deployment really matters when you take application and data migration into consideration because the chances are that you can’t deploy purely to green field (new laptops and new users).  In fact you’ll probably have three deployment types as a minimum:

• New – a new user and a new laptop = nothing to migrate
• Replacement – an existing user and a new laptop = data and possibly apps to migrate
• Refresh – an existing user and an existing laptop = data and apps to migrate

In addition to those different scenarios your users probably have their own individual application requirements and if you went for a purely imaged based route you wouldn’t be able to install applications as needed and you’d have multiple images and quite a management problem.  Finally you will want the advantages of dynamic deployment to help manage driver and patch updates without having to rebuild your image constantly.

Summary in a picture

Finally I thought I’d try to simplify with the use of a picture, let me know if it works for you or not…it doesn’t cover everything but it tells part of the story.

Key resources to help you develop skills

MDT – Microsoft Deployment Toolkit – the easiest way to do a dynamic Windows 7 deployment

WAIK – Windows Automated Install Kit – mainly provides a tool set for the likes of MDT but you can use the tooling directly

MAP – Microsoft Assessment Planning Toolkit – can be used to understand your environment before deploying

WDS – Windows Deployment Services – you’ll use this for basic over the network installs and to provide PXE boot functionality.

USMT – User State Migration tool- for migrating users files and settings automagically

Springboard – THE place to learn about Windows 7 deployment.

Free eBook: Deploying Windows 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and TechNet Magazine – if you need all the in depth details, this is brilliant

How we did it, deploying Windows 7 at Microsoft

Thought I’d post my slides following on from the demo fail at Ezeit and provide a link to the awesome video about Windows 7 and Office deployment with MDT.

Hot off the TechNet press, so to speak, you can now download the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 Release Candidate. Here’s the blurb:

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 RC helps keep your PCs and servers on the latest support level, provides ongoing improvements to the Windows Operating System (OS), includes previous updates delivered over Windows Update as well as continuing incremental updates to the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 platforms based on customer and partner feedback, and is easy for organizations to deploy a single set of updates.

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 RC will help you:

• Keep your PCs supported and up-to-date
• Get ongoing updates to the Windows 7 platform
• Easily deploy cumulative updates at a single time
• Meet your users’ demands for greater business mobility
• Provide a comprehensive set of virtualization innovations
• Provide an easier Service Pack deployment model for better IT efficiency

There are some nice new themes available for Windows 7 online from Microsoft right now.  I’m currently sporting the Halo:Reach theme but there’s new hotness for Gears of War 3 and some other themes that passed me by like Lightening.  They’re building up nicely these themes…

Things have been quiet here for a couple of days whilst we were at IPExpo and interesting conference with a tangential subject line up but one that creates great conversations.  I know the talk was great ‘cos I’m drinking lemon tea to help ease my throat…where are my herbal sweets?  We had some great conversations around Windows Phone 7, Azure and around BPOS and Office 365, around System Center, Virtualisation, Desktop Deployment, Percy pigs, Windows Intune, Lync, Web Standards, IE9 and all sorts.  Basically it was ace.

I got asked some superb questions over the course of the two days and now that I’m back in the office I’ll be buying lots of people coffee to find out the answers to publish here, things like:

• How do I connect BPOS / Office 365 to my AD?
• What kinds of hardware does Lync need to connect to phone systems?
• What is Windows Azure and SQL Azure and how does Windows Azure and SQL Azure work?
• Hyper-V, is it enterprise ready?
• Hyper-V, can I live migrate Virtual Machines?
• What does Microsoft use?  What does our IT look like?
• Application streaming, what’s that, when and why would I use it?
• How secure is my data in the cloud?
• Cloud, is it really the future?

And so many more that I can’t currently remember them.  I also had Windows Phone 7 with me (as did @deepfat) and gave people some little demos.  Things like being able to link your contacts, so if you know someone on Facebook, Windows Live and have them in your Exchange inbox then that can become one contact.  Folks wanted a good look at the Market place so I showed them some of the apps from Tesco and Seesmic the Channel 9 app, oh and the Ebay app and the Bing Maps app.  They also loved the metro interface and smooth transitions and navigation.  I used it as a phone, apparently it does that too!  

Matt McSpirit (aka Virtual boy aka @mattmcspirit) and I presented on Windows Intune, BPOS and SQL Azure and you’ll find the slides embedded below – courtesy of Office Web Apps.  We’re going to re-run the session and record it and get the video out there.  Other highlights were meeting and talking to Zane Adam, who knows lots about SQL Azure and doing a round table with him before the show and some folks we invited along got to ask questions so we’ll have those vids online soon.

Next on the horizon is the Springboard tour, I can’t wait for that where we’ll be talking about the awesomeness of Windows 7 deployment and following that I’ll be at TechEd Europe where you’ll find me on the TechNet stand and squatting in presentations around the joint…can’t wait.

I was just helping someone internally with some deployment stuff and I came across these excellent videos by Richard Smith on MDT and doing Lite touch deployments.  We obviously have an update of the tools but the basics still apply MDT Update 1 is available here and if you want to know more about Windows 7 deployment, check out Springboard.

There are basically three basic aspects to securing your Windows 7 desktop, all are possible for free to home users and small businesses and with market leading technologies.  In this post I’ll discuss how to work with these basic component and how some of those same technologies can be scaled for big business too.  The technologies we’ll take a look at are: Anti-Malware (Antivirus, spyware, adware and phishing) courtesy of Microsoft Security Essentials and Forefront, Windows Firewall and Windows Update.

Anti-malware

Lets start with Microsoft Security Essentials which as of 7th October is free for small businesses (small is less than 10 PCs).  Lets just hold on that for a moment.  Just over a year ago Microsoft had no free anti-malware option for home users, now we have a product that gained huge respect in that space and has been expanded to small businesses.  What people like most about the software is that it follows an almost “Install and forget” model, only really letting you know it exists when you need to take some action.  The quality of the protection is really high too in fact it uses the same signatures as our Forefront protection engine that big businesses use.

So what is the experience like?  Lets take a look at the user experience first.  After MSE is installed the latest definitions (the details about how to match viruses) are downloaded and a scan of the computer is undertaken to establish that everything is ok.

When a virus is found, in this case it’s just a test virus, the user gets a message pop up letting them know that’s something’s been found.

Clicking Show details gives them all the info they need to make an informed decision and it’s a simple case of clicking Clean computer to remove the infection

All the red and green colouring on the messages and dialogues mean that there’s no confusion as to there being a problem that needs some type of action.

As MSE isn’t intended for larger install bases it doesn’t have the capabilities, such as centralised alerting and policy, that commercial products do.  Instead the focus is on making the users journey easier to understand.  That said we have some great alternatives to that do scale really well.  When it is released Windows Intune will be one of those products and it focuses very neatly on providing that control whilst still maintaining the ease of use that consumers are used to.

Right now though businesses over 10 users will want to go for something like Forefront Client Security that allows a more granular level of customisation and alerting.  Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 is the next version of our enterprise level client offering however that’s currently in Beta but available for download. 

Taking a quick look through Forefront is a tough thing to do because essentially there are lots of components that you need to pick up for your enterprise.  There is however a great learning resource for it on TechNet.

Andrew has summed it all up expertly with a video:

Firewall

Windows Firewall in Windows 7  can alter the level of restriction around what can be accessed network wise depending up on the network you’re currently connected to.  For example at home you can have the ability to share and stream music to other computers in the home enabled, at work you can have that same access disabled and in public places you can ensure that all the sharing features of Windows 7 are disabled.

Most consumers come across this when they connect to WiFi in a new location and they receive a pop up asking them to classify the type of the location they just connected to.  It’s very good to get you users into the habit of classifying correctly to help them protect themselves.

Windows Firewall can be configured for enterprise use using group policy and with that you can control specific applications to be allowed through the firewall, specific applications and ports to be blocked to prevent them accessing the network and what happens in each of the profiles.

Patching

Patching is one of those things that you just have to take care of if you don’t it’s like allowing a whole to form in the wall of your house without taking care of it, one day someone is going to try to get in through the hole or at least they might try to take a peak.  Most IT Professionals who manage Windows are used to the regular and predictable patch Tuesday model that Microsoft have employed for years.  One of the great bits of feedback that we get about this is that it’s got the high level of predictability that allows you to plan around the rhythm of releasing patches at the same point in time, wouldn’t it make life easier if everyone followed the same rhythm?

There are again lots of ways for you to manage patching in your environment.  If you have a small business of 10 or so machines you’ll probably find it easiest to just have Windows automatically pull updates from Windows Update (which by the way is a massive Microsoft cloud that regularly handles millions of update requests totally seamlessly).  If you’re larger or you have very limited bandwidth available you’ll want to think about deploying Windows Software Update Services. 

WSUS looks at Microsoft’s Windows Update servers and watches for new updates to be released, when they are they’re downloaded to the WSUS server. WSUS essentially replaces the public Windows Update servers as far as the clients are concerned.  Because WSUS comes within the control of your network you can control which updates are made available to your clients, so if you should have a particular update that you know breaks your line of business (LOB) apps you can hold off on installing it until you’ve had time to fix the LOB app.  WSUS also allows you to test updates to avoid any problem with your LOB apps by grouping your clients, that way you can test new patches on a group of typical machines before rolling a patch to your entire estate and potentially hitting any repercussions from incompatibilities.

You need to do quite a bit of planning to implement WSUS optimally but the guide makes lots of sense.  WSUS can be seen as a core part of a Windows infrastructure and it not only controls updates for Windows but it’s leveraged by other services.  For example Forefront Client Security uses the WSUS service to manage updates.

To step up the management a level then System Center Essentials 2010 or the full System Center are needed to provider more granular and device specific management.

Of course all of this is just a part of deploying your Windows 7 Optimized Desktop and Springboard has some stunning resources for you there.

XP mode is one of the tools in your armoury for deploying Windows 7 if you want to learn more about it check out this: Installing, Configuring, and Managing Windows XP Mode.  It’s official courseware for Implementing and Managing Microsoft Desktop Virtualization and it’s a great introduction to the technology.

For more of this stuff you might want to check out Springboard.

I think Ed Bott’s a superb Windows advocate, be it his excellent books or his ZDnet articles or his blog.  Yesterday he had a superb object lesson on why it’s time to ditch XP and move to Windows 7.  The answer, it’s more secure.  See for yourself at Ed’s blog.

DNS security and the way to spoof and poison DNS is a pretty complicated area.  Luckily we have DNSSEC which can help to resolve the issues quite simply.  It’s an area that I needed to understand a bit more about and as I happened to be doing so I found this video with Mark Minasi.  Oh and yes, it’s another reason to move to Windows 7, as XP and Vista don’t support all the DNSSEC flags.  He’s got some other great background on why you should choose to go 64bit over 32 in your Windows 7 deployment.

Mark Minasi at TechEd North America | Media | TechNet Edge

What do you deploy to your people as part of your corporate standard desktop?  Windows 7 – yep gota have that! Office 2010?  Yep you know you need to moving to it if you want your people to work as efficiently as possible.  MDOP – well obviously you’re going to be using parts of MDOP to get the job done, be it App-V to deploy your line of business app or Med-V to deploy the actual desktop.  Over and above that what more are you packing in?  Is Silverlight in there?  In this post that’s exactly what I propose.  You should be rolling Silverlight as part of your standard practice.

I can already hear the question screaming in over the ether…Why? Why? Why?!

And I can hear the reasons for not doing it too… “it’s another thing to maintain”, “it’ll encourage people to watch x-y-z instead of working”, “we don’t code for Silverlight, none of our own apps use Silverlight”, Actually that’s a good way to answer the why.

“it’s another thing to maintain”

That is a stance that you could take, given how hard other plugins are to manage.  But we’ve thought about it well in advance and there are two very easy ways to do it.  Firstly Windows Update is aware of Silverlight, so your WSUS, SCCM or SMS infrastructure that you’ve already deployed to manage your business is ready to keep your Silverlight clients on the latest version.  Then there’s Windows Intune, when it’s released there’s yet another option for management. 

Secondly Silverlight itself can check for updates and install them, something that’s controllable via group policy.  What’s required for this “self update” option is for the user to have Administrator access to their PC and an Internet connection.

If you have a more tightly controlled environment then option one is probably for you but if you’ve chosen not to do too much in the way of management you’ve got yourself covered with option 2.

“it’ll encourage people to watch x-y-z instead of working”

Really?  I’m not sure there’s a huge amount of merit in the argument for blocking peoples access to specific sites these days.  It might be me, I might not be seeing it, but we don’t block access to iPlayer (or SkyPlayer which uses Silverlight) at Microsoft and I don’t see people watching TV shows all day.  Surely as an IT Pro it’s better to provide the flexibility in case they do come across a business critical site that uses Silverlight – perhaps something using Pivot for really rich BI?

“we don’t code for Silverlight, none of our own apps use Silverlight”

Ahh the famous case of the chicken and the egg.  I’m a firm believer that if you give people the ability to build something they’ll push the envelope and really build SOMETHING.  How much of a difference would it make to your people if your line of business application actually looked the part and was so easy to maintain that the dev guys were able to keep it beating with the pulse of your business and users?  IT Pros should be leading here, providing the tools and capabilities to make things better.  It’s the same reason that I always think it’s best to deploy 64bit over 32bit where possible.  Not because you need it right now, but you might. 

I always remember being forced to deploy another browser plugin because a CBT (Computer Based Training) course was developed that would only run with version 9.55 or later and we were on version 7, in a regulated industry where you need everyone (that was about 10k people) to complete the training in 30 days time it was a painful lesson.

Do you deploy Office?  Well if you do and if you intend to allow people to use Office 2010 Web Apps then you’ll get a much better experience with Silverlight installed as helps with even little things like synchronising files to the web.  The Office deployment guide goes into far more detail:

Silverlight enables a better online experience with Office.com, powers the Office 2010 interactive guides (available with Office 2010), improves the user experience of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, improves the performance of Office Web Companion applications, and helps with the process of uploading Office documents to cloud services.

So all up, if you want the best Office 2010 experience you want to be installing Silverlight and if you don’t you’re going to miss out on some great features – the interactive guides significantly diminish the learning curve for your users!

From the why we move into the how:

How do I deploy Silverlight at work?

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times above, Silverlight is pretty easy to deploy and we’ve done all the heavy lifting for you with the trusty deployment guide.  But to summarise it you can:

• Deploy manually
• Deploy with just WSUS
• Deploy with SCCM and WSUS together
• Use group policy
• Deploy as part of your standard image

The last option isn’t mentioned in the deployment guide, however it’s as simple as installing before you sysprep your image and you can then mange Silverlight using WSUS and Group policy to keep it up to date.  It’s probably best to use this option as a more tactical move if you’re a large organisation.

Resources:

For more information on Windows 7 deployment see Springboard, for more on Silverlight see Silverlight.net for more information on Optimized Desktop see

I was just browsing around our internal sites and found this excellent white paper on Solutions for Virtualising Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), what amazed me was that it was externally available.

If you’ve got some applications that rely on IE6 (like the British government) and you need to go Windows 7 (EVERYONE NEEDS to go Windows 7! ) and IE6 compatibility is slowing you down or bloating your deployment project costs, or if it’s a show stopper, then this papers got great advice.  It covers solutions like:

• MED-V which is part of MDOP
• XP mode (which no longer needs a processor capable of virtualisation)
• Terminal Servcies

And it weighs up the pros and cons of each, the licensing considerations, system requirements and just about anything you can think of.  I’m currently building a list of essential reading and learning for desktop deployment and this just made the list.

If you can think of any other creative ways of doing it, let me know.

Get the whitepaper: Solutions for Virtualising Internet Explorer

Today I went to grab a copy of the Windows 7 resource kit that I reserved from the learning center to read on holiday.  It has since been used as a dumbell, a door stop and has as a booster to help a colleague feel taller.  It might be heavier than my baggage allowance.  Still it’s a good resource…who out there considers it invaluable…I do!

I’ll actually be reading and reviewing the new Step By Step book for Outlook 2010 on hols.

I’ve been using Windows 7 for almost 18 months now and the little things still make me very happy.  That’s an important thing to remember because people love this OS for it’s simplicity, deploying it will make them feel better.  I love the way the folder icons tell you what’s going on.

In the example above the first tolder has nothing in it, the second files, the third sub folders.  I can see it at a glance and it makes me happy.

I was just browsing around on TechNet for info and came across Paul Addams blog and a post about UAC.  It’s one of the best write ups of what UAC is and why you should be using it not turning it off that I’ve seen.  It goes into superb technical detail too.

USER Account Control… but I’m an ADMIN! by Paul Adams

Lots of people are looking at how they should go about deploying Windows 7 in their organisation, a few I’ve seen first hand are struggling to understand how to migrate.  One of the major steps in planning your deployment is probably to build a proof of concept to see just how easy it is and just what the pitfalls are in your organisation.  Have you thought about your application compatibility, are you making the most of things by deploying Office at the same time?

Our Springboard Series resources around Building a Proof of Concept came up in meeting the other day and there really is some great stuff in there.

I’ll be back looking at some of the fun around various aspects of a deployment soon, but if you want a specific question answered then post a comment and I’ll try – or if you want to keep your identity secret because you work for a criminal mastermind in his secret-but-very-expensive volcanic layer filled with retro furniture then drop me an email using the form.

Very handy little guide form Lifehacker here on how to get the best out of an SSD.  I’ve just ordered one for my “demo beast” laptop and it should help my VMs fly…interesting ideas around hibernation in this guide…not something I’d thought of but very useful.  Should be quite nippy on an SSD.

How to Take Full Advantage of Your Solid-State Drive

[image from flickr.com and kawanet]

I thought the black version was good, but now I’m all about the white version.  I’ll be getting me one these, it;s stunning and will look super in our all white office!

The Arc Keyboard: White | The Office Stylist.

The Live Side guys have noticed a new Bing Screensaver that looks very cool if you like the Bing daily images.  Bing Screensaver – LiveSide.net.  I’m currently using my Honeymoon photo’s as my wallpaper and screensaver and I’ll post a how to on setting that all up in a super nice way soon.

All I need now is a nice WiFi photo frame with HD res…

Windows 7 is amazing at getting most things working on any laptop, however I constantly have a problem with my very old Gateway laptop and the card reader driver.  This is how to fix it: Getting Your Laptop Card Reader to Read 4GB SD Cards – A step by step tutorial – Softpedia.

Uncrate have short piece on the very nice looking HP EliteBook 2740p notebook and tablet.  I’ve love my TX2 for quite some time, and this looks like it’s from the same stable.

Frankly I want to try one now….

Firstly let me say, I’m usually a giant fan Logitech’s products they have superb build quality and excellent performance, I love my Harmony Remote and Squeezebox and the webcams are really well designed.  Second I never really post negative opinions but if I’m not writing about it there’s probably a reason.

This post is about something that goes against both of the above.

On the left is a survey screen that appeared on my PC today, I’ve just installed some Logitech software for video conferencing – which I won’t be talking about.  On the left is a very deceptive survey screen; I’ve highlighted why.

You see that red outline, it’s around a button that’s “active” i.e. you can click it but Logitech have taken the step of making the text gray to convince you to click “Take Survey”.  This is underhand it’s bad UI design and, Mr Glenn Rodgers, Director Customer Experience, I feel ashamed FOR YOU that you’re name is on this.

This is a bad customer experience.  It’s poor, unprincipled UI design designed to deceive the user, no designed to deceive your customer into giving you information.

I started getting these, as expected, a couple of days ago.  It’s a guess but lots of others are receiving them now too so I thought I’d take the opportunity to remind people about what’s going to happen:

http://simon-may.com/windows-7/windows-7-rc-has-15-days-left/

I’ve already got my RTM key ready to go, but don’t have time for a rebuild before the end of the month so you can follow here to see what happens….

– Simon May

Download squad have found a great tool for those times when you want to get into your PC fast but you want all the freshhhness of a newly booted PC. Boot Snooze combines the goodness of hibernation and rebooting.

Essentially the tool allows you to reboot and then set the PC to go into hibernate immediately or go to sleep immediately after the reboot.  The result, a fast start up when you next come to your PC.  The best of both worlds.

Today is the 1st of Feb and that means you have 15 more days to use the Windows 7 RC (release candidate) before you need to upgrade to the final RTM version.  A timely reminder from Technet: Windows 7 RC expiration coming soon | Media | TechNet Edge.

What does this mean for you, if you are running the RC.  Basically you need to backup and rebuild your PC running the RTM version.  There is no direct upgrade route, essentially this is the same process as if you are on XP moving to Windows 7.

[EDIT: a few people have contact me now about what's specifically going to happen, this article explains all...

But the skinny is:

Effective February 15, 2010, the expiration notification process begins:

• Windows 7 RC users receive an expiration notification in the task bar one time per day.
• Windows 7 RC users are presented with the Notification Wizard one time every four hours and then one time every hour.

Effective March 1, 2010, Windows 7 RC enters the next phase of expiration:

• Expiration notifications in the task bar continue.
• Computers that are running Windows 7 RC restart every two hours.

  Important When the computer restarts, your work will not be saved.

Effective June 1, 2010, Windows 7 RC expires:

• Windows starts to a black desktop.
• Windows 7 RC users are presented with a Windows Activation screen. The screen states that the Windows that you are running is not genuine.

]

So basically, it’s really annoying!

TIP: Use the Windows Easy Transfer to transfer all your stuff and make the process as pain free as you possibly can.  Just hit start and type “transfer” into the search box.  Back everything up to a USB key or hard disk and then on your shiny Windows 7 RTM install do the same, but select restore.

15 days and counting, almost 14 and a half now…

Computers that are running Windows 7 RC restart every two hours.

Long’s spotted a great series of advertising by Microsoft in the US that’s got a digital home bent to it so I thought I’d throw it out there.  In Australia Microsoft are sponsoring part of the Open tennis coverage and (very cleverly) using the snap feature to do picture in picture switches between matches.  What a cool idea, never really thought about using it like that to say, watch the news and the Rugby at the same time, but it’s clever…

Anyone else doing that?

Head over to istartedsomething to watch the vid

Long’s spotted a great series of advertising by Microsoft in the US that’s got a digital home bent to it so I thought I’d throw it out there.  In Australia Microsoft are sponsoring part of the Open tennis coverage and (very cleverly) using the snap feature to do picture in picture switches between matches.  What a cool idea, never really thought about using it like that to say, watch the news and the Rugby at the same time, but it’s clever…

Anyone else doing that?

Head over to istartedsomething to watch the vid

Microsoft have released the security patch for the big news issue with Internet Explorer that just about everyone has been talking about.

If you have Windows Update turned on the you’ll get it automatically.  If you don’t download it below and read all about it.

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS10-002 – Critical: Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 978207.

TIP: Take my advice, turn on Windows Update.  Get Anti-Virus, Anti-Malware and Anti-Phising protections and LEARN enough about security and identity theft to be able to explain why it’s needed.  Just like you can explain why you need a lock on your house.  Also if you have an alternative browser installed then make sure that too is set to get automatic updates.

Wow, talk about a cool way of looking at tweets.  This, my friends, is Seesmic Look, the second output from Seesmic since they’ve started developing closely with Microsoft.  I’ve just downloaded it and started to play, and it’s very sexy looking.  @Loic (runs Seesmic) has just launched the product and you might be thinking “what the hell, this isn’t Media Center related”.  Well it is.

Just like Media Center it’s works brilliantly with the Media Center remote and it’s fully touch enabled.  Super cool.  Developer folks, this is what you can do.

Seesmic Look is designed to be far more consumer friendly than any other Twitter client.  I looks stunning and it focuses on getting Twitter content in front of your eyes.  You can get it here

–Simon May

IE is really good at it’s job.  There I said it.  It’s a really easy browser to use, it’s laid out well, it’s familiar and you know how to use it.  It’s fine to do so.  You should try other browsers out though and see if you like them, personally I’m currently loving Chrome and I’m playing with it and Chrome OS quite a bit.  Don’t however think that because you use a different browser you’ll be more secure.  You won’t.

Just like IE there are security flaws in other browsers, spending less than 2 minutes Googleing (actually I Binged it) I found the graph from a 2006 article by Ars Technica, proving this is no new thing, to the left that shows a comparison of vulnerabilities, interesting hey?

What matters here is that you have a security infrastructure on your PC that works for you to protect you.  You want it to:

• Speak only when spoken to, unless it’s life threatening
• Adapt or at least keep itself up to date
• Protect your identity, i.e. stop you falling foul of phishing scams and the like
• Be light weight on your PC, you don’t want it getting in your way
• Tell you if you’re about to do something unsafe, just before you do it, but not stop you.  It’s your decision

Great software exists, some of it free from the likes of AVG, Microsoft, Norton and tons of others.  So go find some right now.

Here’s the big one though, the thing you need to do, especially if you’re a parent (actually even if your the child you can do this) get educated.  Let me say it again if you missed it.

TIP: GET EDUCATED ABOUT ONLINE THREATS

It’s the most adaptive technology out their, your brain.  By learning about online threats you’ll develop a “spider sense” for scams and won’t fall foul of them.  The software will help you too, so much so that it’s the one thing you need to have on every PC.

But get Educated.

Parents, you need to be talking with your kids about what they should and shouldn’t share online, where they should go and who with.

Kid’s, you can do the same with your parents.  You’ll love doing it.  Sit them down and tell them why they shouldn’t store their online banking password in their favourites.

So you’ve got your fantastic new Windows 7 PC and it is – fantastic – but you’ve not got all the PCs in your house running on Windows 7 yet, in fact chances are you’ve still got some XP PCs.  Just how do you share with those PCs?  Well the How to geek has a handy guide, it’s in my book too (along with everything else you need to know to get the most out of Windows 7) in chapter 22.

This theme’s available in some parts of the world but if you’re addicted to Fido Dido’s (80’s much?) favorite drink then you might be up for this one. It’s actually a really nice theme presented in lime green.  I have to say the desktop to the left is my fave with the icy 7.

Get it here: Nothing but 7up Theme for Windows 7 | Windows 7 hacker

I’ve just made a simple change to the site to make finding some of  my content much easier.  Starting now if you’re only interested in Windows 7 content go to win7.simon-may.com for cool geeky stuff use geek.simon-may.com and for tech go to tech.simon-may.com.

I’m also moving my random mumblings to items.simon-may.com to keep the main blog focused on exploring technology, as always it’s the single source for all my syndicated content but no longer diluted with randomness.

At the CES keynote yesterday Ballmer unveiled the “beautiful” HP slate and gave it a brief demo using the Amazon kindle application.  Cool stuff.  One thing worth noting is that it’s running Windows 7 and that naturally (depending on the version) means that Media Center is there, and it’s touch enabled and obviously so is Media Center…

So could this be the best PMP (personal media player) ever.  I think it could.

I can imagine being able to sync a whole bunch of media content to it (Mesh anyone?) and then be able to access everything on the go, or even using Internet Streaming from within Windows Media Player.  What’s more the screen size looks good enough to watch a movie on if you were in the back of the car (ala cheapo DVD player attached to the back of the drivers headrest) or on a plane.

I’m going to be keeping an eye on slate PCs for exactly that reason, rather than being great eBook readers, which the undoubtedly will be, they’ll be great portable media devices.  The key thing is going to be battery life here so we’ll have to see what other vendors put out in this space.

What do you think, do you see a slate becoming a great PMP?  Did anyone love the original Media Center PMPs? 

Here’s the teaser video:

Well this has been posted on just about every blog I’ve read over the last 24 hours, but it’s a useful little shortcut to have around if you want to fish through your Windows 7 settings.  God Mode is normally the title in games given to a cheat to enable you to be unkillable and to get access to every weapon in the game.  In Windows 7 it gives you acces too a folder with shortcuts to most of the settings in Windows.

To enable your God Mode do this:

Well there we have it, the end of a year and the end of a decade.  There’s just a few hours left so time to surface some of the best Window 7 utilities that I’ve been trying out over the past few weeks…

Windows 7 Suspend/Resume control

This project on Codeplex provides a really handy and flexible way to control what happens when your PC suspends and resumes.  Really handy if you run a HTPC.  Perhaps you have a device driver that needs a kick when you resume or maybe you need to have  a drive that needs a remap.  This is the tool.

New Windows 7 Themes

Microsoft have added some new themes to the personalization site that you can access by right clicking the desktop and selecting Personalize then selecting the Get more themes online link.  Once there you’ll find new themes for dog and cat lovers, mountain climbers and twinkle wishers.  Oh and a nice Avatar theme.

Jumplist-Launcher

If you’ve got every app on your PC pinned to your Windows 7 task bar then you might like this little pearl.  Jumplist-Launcher lets you create a stack of icons on one and create a handy jump list launcher from it.  Very useful if you’re running short on space, or want to group some like icons.  I’ve done it with my browsers (Chrome is my browser de-jour).

Wallpaper Juggler

I’m a massive fan of Interfacelift.com for wallpapers and this app will run very quietly and change your wallpaper a regular as clockwork.

That’s it for this year, hope you have a great New Year!

One of the items on my Christmas list was the beautiful Microsoft Arc Mouse.  I’ve been huge fan of Microsoft pointing devices for years and I’ve actually had a couple of IntelliMouse Explorers all of which are still working perfectly.

The arc mouse is a dream for mobile people since it collapses to less than half it’s size and it even has a very clever little magnet to hold the USB dongle-wireless-transmitter-thing.  The surface of both the mouse and the dongle-wireless-transmitter-thing are slightly rubberised and franky they feel wonderful as a result.

I’ve only got one criticism, the little back button is a bit too little…sure I’ll get used to it.

TIP: Installation is super easy, no drivers are required.  To get even more from it though grab the software for it from Microsoft which gives you access to extra features, like putting Flip3D on a middle mouse click.  Works perfectly with Window 7.

Last week suffered a close family bereavement hence very little activity here (and elsewhere) of late, but things should get back on track quite soon.  I’m working on an interesting little software project and have some creative things bubbling in the back of my mind.  Normal service will resume soon.

Until then I thought I’d take a moment to update my press quotations page with most of my comments from 2009 and also to highlight this excellent tool for managing Windows 7 libraries, http://zornsoftware.talsit.info/?p=3.  TIP: It even lets you change the icons with a couple of clicks and to add network locations.  Great stuff.

The last couple of weeks since the launch of Windows 7 has seen the release of some great tools, based on some great ideas, for Windows 7.  Lots of these will no doubt make the tips boxes of future editions of my book but why wait?  Here’s a quick roundup:

Paint.net has been around for a while, but it’s just entered version 3.5 final and it now looks lickably good!  This application is my image editing and drawing tool of choice, most of the graphics here have been created or tidied with it and frankly folks it’s the best image editor you can get for this price.  Free!  Seriously this is competition for Photoshop and that’s saying quite a lot!  Read the blog and get the latest version.

GMail backup a serious recommendation here folks, if you are 100% reliant on your web based email, make a backup!  My book explains a load of ways to do it, but this is new and worth a mention if you’re a Gmail user.  This tool will take a local copy to your PC of everthing in your Gmail account, great if something odd should happen to your account!  Get Gmail Backup here.

Windows Live SkyDrive gives you 25gb of free storage in the cloud but SkyDrive Explorer adds extra functionality by making it seem like the drive is local to your PC.  That makes it possible to do a whole load more with it, the fantastic application is also free and available here.

Close All Windows is a simple appication that does what it says on the tin.  One click and all your open apps close down, which can be really handy if you’ve got loads running but need to get out of them all in a hurry.  In Winodws 7 pin the shortcut to the start menu for fastest results.  Download from here.

[I’ve found and tried these tools over the past week from a variety of sources including various people on Twitter, AddictiveTips and Ghacks]

Last week I blogged about a new project I found on codeplex called WTVWatcher that delivers a fantastically simple process for decommercialising TV shows recorded in Windows Media Center with Windows 7.  Well a weeks rolled on and thanks in tiny part to encouragement from readers of this blog Paul has updated the tool, actually twice.  The new version includes a GUI rather than a console, runs in the notification area (which is sweet) and the GUI pops things up like toast.

I’m referring to this as the Toast with (gooey) honey version.  It’s nice, I think you’ll like it too.

At the top of this post is said GUI with toasts, it’s really clear to see what’s happening and Paul’s lost none of the simplicity.  The tools easier to work with now too.  There’s a wrench icon that lets you set the location of your recorded TV, that WTV Watcher will watch, and that’s about all there is to it.

The extra new feature is also handy, there’s now an installer with auto update.

So here are the new steps to getting it working, all 5 steps

1. Install the tool from here
2. Set your Recorded TV folder by clicking the wrench
3. Move the desktop shortcut to your Start > All Programs > Startup folder
4. Install Lifextender
5. Configure Lifextender as per the next image.

TIP: It’s possible to do the conversion your network and if you’ve got a fast network it can be quicker if your main Media Center isn’t a massive multi core system

A couple of days ago I posted Microsoft’s video on listening to their customers and it got me thinking…so I created this.

In this short (and very simple) video I take you through how to fire some music about your home using the Play To features of Windows 7.  I’m expecting to make this a short series so I hope you enjoy this one and look forward to the next.

There’s a whole lot of antivirus products out there, but the one I’m recommending right now is Microsoft Security Essentials.  I’m really, really pleased that it’s just won the award on the left too.

Along with my other current favourite, Symantec, it was one of three products to do exceptionally well however the other products that got the top award aren’t free.

I’m using Microsoft Security Essentials across my kit right now and I love it, for all these reasons here and this is how to check files super quickly.  It’s time for the other free antivirus vendors to step up!

One of the biggest themes with both the development and with the marketing of Windows 7 is the emphasis on talking to us.  Microsoft’s customers.  It seems to be going down a storm, and lets face it Windows 7 rocks!  This video, found coutesy of @stevecla, shows that Microsoft’s extended this stance to it’s customer support.

Check out the video, a super cool paper-moved-about-with-fingers affair that looks as simple as they intend Windows to be.

If you need help try Microsoft Answers, or my book.

I think I’ve found something too good to be true.  I was just looking about on codeplex and came across this project WTVWatcher by Paul Bruce.  It almost has me shaking in my seat for it’s simplicity and ease of use.

What Paul’s done is created a little tool that requires no installation (but we will do a little bit to make it even easier!) that watches your recorded TV folder for new WTV files, when it spots one it uses Windows 7’s built in WTV to DVRMS conversion (which is rapid) to convert the program to DVR-MS.  Very cool, nothing sexy, but brilliantly useful.

Okay, Okay, I know there are people screaming, but DVRMSToolbox does that and ShowAnalyzer can remove commercials without the need to convert them.  Personally I don’t get on with the former, I know it’s really well loved and super tool and if you want all singing all dancing its the best choice.  I however struggle with it, I’m simple like that.  Second ShowAnalyzer costs money, which again is well deserved because it’s an excellent application and lots of work’s gone into it, but not everyone can convince the Mrs that it’s required.

So here we go, get rid of commercials in Windows 7 recorded TV…

1. Get the tool from the project on Codeplex
2. Unzip it to your Recorded TV folder
3. Run WTVWatcherConsole.exe then copy it to the Startup group on the Start Menu
4. Download and install Lifextender (it’s a dead project, but still my favourite for this stuff)
5. Once Lifextender has started up (it’ll be a blue orb in the notification area) right click the orb and select Options… the tick Automated Library Scanning and Automatically scan when new files are detected, click save and your done.  Kick things off right away though by starting WTVWatcherConsole.exe

That really is it, files converted and commercials removed with no hassle.  Oh and it’s all free!  Oh yeah, and thanks to superbar goodness and using the built in converter you get a progress bar for conversions!

I think I’ve found something too good to be true.  I was just looking about on codeplex and came across this project WTVWatcher by Paul Bruce.  It almost has me shaking in my seat for it’s simplicity and ease of use.

What Paul’s done is created a little tool that requires no installation (but we will do a little bit to make it even easier!) that watches your recorded TV folder for new WTV files, when it spots one it uses Windows 7’s built in WTV to DVRMS conversion (which is rapid) to convert the program to DVR-MS.  Very cool, nothing sexy, but brilliantly useful.

Okay, Okay, I know there are people screaming, but DVRMSToolbox does that and ShowAnalyzer can remove commercials without the need to convert them.  Personally I don’t get on with the former, I know it’s really well loved and super tool and if you want all singing all dancing its the best choice.  I however struggle with it, I’m simple like that.  Second ShowAnalyzer costs money, which again is well deserved because it’s an excellent application and lots of work’s gone into it, but not everyone can convince the Mrs that it’s required.

So here we go, get rid of commercials in Windows 7 recorded TV…

1. Get the tool from the project on Codeplex
2. Unzip it to your Recorded TV folder
3. Run WTVWatcherConsole.exe then copy it to the Startup group on the Start Menu
4. Download and install Lifextender (it’s a dead project, but still my favourite for this stuff)
5. Once Lifextender has started up (it’ll be a blue orb in the notification area) right click the orb and select Options… the tick Automated Library Scanning and Automatically scan when new files are detected, click save and your done.  Kick things off right away though by starting WTVWatcherConsole.exe

That really is it, files converted and commercials removed with no hassle.  Oh and it’s all free!  Oh yeah, and thanks to superbar goodness and using the built in converter you get a progress bar for conversions!

I love this little application already and I’ve only been using it for a couple of minutes!  There are tons of desktop gadgets for viewing resource use but if you’re like the majority of people you’ll keep at least one window maximized all the time then it’s hard to see your desktop.  Yeah sure you can Aero peak with the button in the bottom right of the screen or win + space but being able see it on the task bar would be cool wouldn’t it?

Well now you can thanks to codeplex project Taskbar Meters.  Download and extract the Zip and run TaskbarCpuMeter.exe or TaskbarMemoryMeter.exe depending on which you want to watch and this is what you’ll get  a nice clean, always available view of usage.  Very handy.

Even better it’s possible to customize the thresholds for it going yellow and red for high and scary-high CPU and memory usage!  This app also has jump list access to Resource Monitor (for serious resource watching) and to Task Manager.

TIP: Task manager can also be used for something like this.  Once it’s running it’ll show a CPU chart in the notification area, the fastest way to start Task manager is with SHIFT + CTRL + ESC

[via Download Squad]

Through the course of my day job and having conversations with people about Windows 7 I was asked a question:

What’s the best thing in Windows 7 for an IT Pro

That was actually a really simple question to answer.  I’m all about customer focus in my day job.  Making their life easier is the thing that gets me going and when we can’t do that we have to workout what the problem is for them as quickly as possible.  That’s why I love the Problem Steps Recorder.

The Problem steps recorder is a great tool that lets anyone capture what they’re doing and package it as a file that can be replayed by any else, they don’t even have to be using Windows 7.  That means that an IT Pro can then take that, see exactly what’s causing the problem and provide a solution. 

The other alternative is often to take a remote control session.  That’s an interactive process though and it’s just not that convenient for the person with the problem.

Start the tool by typing problem steps into the Start menu search, and record the steps to recreate the problem.  It’s genius that this tools there, and it’ll make IT Pros everywhere very happy when they start to support Windows 7.

If of course you’re reading this thinking “I’m not an IT Pro, why do I care, well you’ll probably get use out of it helping your friends and family.  My book covers using the tool and helping people in more depth.

One of the big issues when you get a new PC from one of the big hardware vendors is that they have a tendency to install lots of “interesting” and “useful” “value add” software like trial versions of Anti-Virus, crippled versions of applications or their own software that does something that Windows 7 can do perfectly on it’s own.

It’s emerged that Microsoft has actually removed this stuff from the PCs their selling in their Stores, if you can’t get to the store lets look at what you need to do.

There are times however when it’s really useful though, like on my HP TX2, the added software makes the finger print reader work for example.  You’re probably wondering how you can tell the good, from the bad and the ugly.  The simplest thing I’ve found is to run something like the excellent PCDecrapifier that will, er, “decrapify” your new PC automatically, saving you making many tough choices.

TIP: be sure to keep the original install for the software you remove, if it does power something special like a finger print reader you can always add it back if you loose functionality.  The most common places to find this are in folder on the c: drive called “SWApps” or something similar (the name will depend on the manufacturer) or on the companies web site.

Lets take a look then at how decrapifier cleans up your PC.  Their site lists the tons of stuff that it can uninstall for you.

First off go get it from http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/download and run the install.  The install is not the usual Next, Next, Next affair

That said, it’s Next, Next, Next through three screens

.

Now you need to specify if you’re using a new PC or if you’ve had it a while, PCDecrapifier is good for both

One of the coolest features is that you can back out of everything you’re about to do with a system restore point, create one now at the push of a button

Now you need to check this list and if you’ve installed any full versions of your applications and they appear here be sure to untick them in the PCDecrapifier, or it might just cost you a bit of time.   Click next and it’s bye bye bloat!

This is the last chance to get stuff off the PC, this screen shows everything installed, even if it’s not on the capacious list of bloatware.  If you don’t want it, ditch it here.

And you’re done, you can send some feedback to the developers!

Now what, have a look at what you should install on that new Windows 7 PC!

This is the stuff that you need to install immediately you’ve installed Windows 7.

1. Microsoft Security Essentials – Fantastic, free, antivirus and malware protection from Microsoft, make it your first install.  Instructions here.
2. Windows Live Essentials – Live Mail, Live Messenger, Live Photo Gallery, Live Movie Maker and Live Writer help you round out your PC and get stuff done.
3. Spotify – Free streaming music, with just a few adds
4. Live Mesh – it lets you sync stuff between multiple PCs, if you don’t like live Mesh then go for Dropbox.
5. An alternative browser – Internet Explorer 8 is actually really good for most people, but the first time you try to access the Internet you’ll be asked to choose a browser.  Firefox is very popular.
6. iTunes – you’ve probably got an iPod, so you’ll need the software, however if you don’t want the bloat of iTunes then go for CopyTrans
7. Themes to customize your PC, just the way you like it.

I think it’s clear my life revolves around Microsoft’s products but I also have an iPhone and music, apps and loads of other stuff on it.  I’ve noticed on Twitter that people are scared about getting this stuff moved, but you needn’t be.  It’s very, very easy, here’s how to do it.

*Note you’ll need a DVD-R/RW for this

Step 1 – Select File > Library > Back Up to Disk…

Step 2 – Tell iTunes what to backup and click Back UP!

This will backup all your settings, iPhone apps and other iTunesy stuff!

I’ve just discovered something really cool in Windows 7 that anyone who has to work with people around the world will love!  The clock in the system tray can display more than one time zone…not quite time travel, but it’s as close as you’ll get.

Right click the clock next to the notification area and select Adjust date/time

Next you’ll want to select the Additional Clocks tab (1 in the screen shot) then select which other time zones you want to display, there’s a maximum of two.  Finally click OK.

You’ll notice that the clock doesn’t change, so you might think it’s not worked but you’d be wrong…

Now just hover over the clock next to the notification area and voila! Now you always know what time it is!

For hundreds more great tips, check out my book.

Are you a student with a .edu or .ac.uk address?  Well from today you can get Windows 7 for just £30, which is fantastic value (it’s normally closer to £100 or more!).  For that you are getting the very best operating system on the market today, and you’ll be able to do cool stuff like watch TV with it and it boots up in less time so it’s perfect for lectures.

If you aren’t a student but know one, then get recommending it, this is only available for a couple of weeks…

Details of the offer are here, or should be: http://www.microsoft.com/uk/windows/studentoffer/default.aspx

Once you’ve installed Microsoft Security Essentials you can scan any file, storage device or drive in 2 clicks just like this:

1. Right click the file
2. Select Scan with Microsoft Security Essentials… the file will be scanned faster than a fast thing.

Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) has just been released so I thought I’d throw up a quite guide on how to get it and do the install (this is very basic folks, as the product is really simply put together, but some people like this stuff).

• Go to http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/ and click the big Download Now icon
• Select your location and which version of Windows you have
• Download and run or just Run the setup file, you’ll be prompted to allow the install by User Account Control in most cases
• Read and accept the Ts&Cs by clicking Next and I accept

• MSE can ONLY be installed on a legal version of Windows (yet another reason to stay legal kids) so you next have to accept validation by clicking Validate you will be told if your version passes.  Click the Install button to begin, it’s very quick under 2 minutes for me.

• Finally you’ll have option of scanning your machine, I recommend you do!

• Now that MSE is installed it will download updates, this for me took around 3 minutes on a 10mbit connection and once complete a scan will start, the time the scan takes will vary according to what you have on your PC, the more stuff the longer it’ll take.

The end.  That’s all their is to installing it, and whilst that scan is running you’ll notice that you can use your PC and you can play with settings in MSE if you’d like.

Free, Simple, Easy and Reliable aren’t normally words you hear in the same sentence as Anti-Virus, but there are some exceptions.  Today however that all changes with the release of the freshly-out-of-beta Microsoft Security Essentials, or MSE, which really does combine those words which have become my core requirements for an Anti-Virus product.  I’ve been using MSE for months, and it’s got my enthusiastic seal of approval!

We’ll forget the Free for a moment, although it is, but look at why MSE is a great consumer Anti-Virus product based on the other three key words, we’ll come back to Free.

Simple for me means that every interaction with MSE is understandable and it’s obvious how to do everything.  There are just 4 tabs to MSE:

• Home – shows at a glance what the current status is, Red = Bad, Amber = it’s a while since you scanned, and Green = good.  From this tab you can perform scans of the PC to check it’s ok.
• Update – Obviously lets you manually get updates to combat the latest viri and spy ware
• History – Tells you what’s been detected and when
• Settings – Allows you to change when scans are run, what happens when a virus is found, any particular file types or processes to exclude – if they keep giving false positives – and the like.

Easy should really be “easy going” I hate it when Anti-Virus gets in the way, with pop-ups telling me that updates are 2 seconds out of date or consuming all my computers resources whilst I’m trying to do that.  In my experience MSE doesn’t do that, instead in the Settings > Default Actions tab it’s possible to control what it does when malware is found.

Reliable means that it gets updates automatically with no fuss, which MSE does of course and that those updates are useful, well that’s a given as Microsoft’s Forefront product for businesses is built on the same technology.

Back to Free, MSE is free, and that’s important because I don’t want to spend money on something that I don’t (and shouldn’t need to) care about.  Anti-Virus adds no value to my computer use, it’s protection, perhaps if I did lots of dodgy stuff and went to lots of dodgy sites I’d feel different, but I like free a lot!

Foot notes:

Right now the website isn’t showing the final product, microsoft.com/security_essentials/ , but it will do later today.

Also worth mentioning is the free tool to help you get out of trouble if , Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool can help you get rid of spyware and you can findout how to use it on Page 276 of The Rough Guide to Windows 7.

There are times when it’s super convenient to have Windows automatically do something when you insert some media or a device into your PC, such as when you insert a DVD and it starts playing.  There are times when it’s not, here’s the easy way to stop it for specific devices (or media) in just 2 steps…

1. Insert the device or media and the AutoPlay popup will appear, at the bottom is the magic option View more AutoPlay options in Control Panel.  Select this.
2. Next you’ll be given the same option for every type of media you can play on your machine and for all the devices that you currently have attached.  Change this to Take no action from Ask me every time (1 in the screenshot below) to make Windows 7 ignore the device from the point of view of doing something automatic with it.  (iTunes will still start with your iPod because it’s not actually Windows that makes that decision, there’s a program running in the background that watches for your iPod).  Click the Save button to save and activate the setting, and you can test it by disconnecting your device and adding it again. If you do the same thing with the memory card for your camera every time you insert it you can also change the option to Import pictures and video using Windows to automatically bring everything into your Pictures library.

clubhouse,
how-to,
Windows 7

Not quite Media Center related, but it could help if you’re mobile.  This is one of the more interesting takes on browser selection criteria that I’ve seen, it’s something I’d not really thought about before…does the browser you use affect your battery life?

The answer from AnandTech is that yes, it does, and quite dramatically as the image below shows.  Also look what’s right at the top of the performance list for a change, IE8!  This I’m thinking is yet another reason that Windows 7 performs so well in battery tests, and I wonder if they did any benchmarking against mobile performance whilst IE8 was in dev, like the engineering team did with Windows 7.

For the full analysis read AnandTech’s post, but what’s interesting is Flash usage plays a major part in battery usage.

Looks like the ad machine is starting up with this very cute ad that also shows off some of the great things that have been said about the new OS.

I’ve just spotted a couple of nice new features in iTunes 9 (a.k.a. the application I hate but must install) which Apple released at some big event yesterday that’s not CEDIA.  This new version of iTunes seems to be faster on my test box, but that remains to be seen.  One big improvement though is the Windows 7 integration, first up in the left image we have jump lists, it’s OK, but they could have done something more useful in my opinion.  Second, to the right they’ve added some play control buttons to the thumbnail.

Overall, it’s good to see Apple doing this – incidentally the new Chrome builds have too – but I do think they could have done better.  I wish the Zune software worked with my iPhone.

Well this is some excellent news for anyone in the UK.  Thanks to the ballot screen approach to browser choice in Europe, Microsoft is now able to offer both the Upgrade version of Windows 7 and the Family Pack (which is 3 Windows 7 licenses for a great price).

For those who don’t know there was a good chance we wouldn’t see this in Europe as Microsoft was due to pull IE8 out lock stock and barrel from Windows 7, which would have killed the upgrade routes.  This whole thing boils down to Opera (and a bunch of other browser makers) complaints about Microsoft’s unfair advantages to the EU.

If you’ve preordered the Windows 7 E version (E for Europe) then you’ll be getting the full Windows 7 package along with IE8.  In fact it’s not just the UK that gets the full version Ireland, Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands and Sweden do too.

[via: The Windows Blog]

It was bound to happen and Nokia have jumped feet first into the netbook market today with this prime specimen, which appears to be the first to market netbook with Windows 7 starter on it.  They’ve released a nice video on YouTube, embedded in this post and it clearly shows Windows 7, although Nokia haven’t officially announced it.  The image to the left subtly points it out, and given the nasty grey color it’s probably fair to say it’s running Windows 7 Starter.

From the release:

The mini-laptop also comes with an HDMI port for HD video out, a front facing camera for video calling, integrated Bluetooth and an easily accessible SD card reader. Other premium features include the 10-inch glass HD ready display and integrated A-GPS which, working with the Ovi Maps gadget, can pinpoint your position in seconds and open up access for a truly personal maps experience. The Nokia Booklet 3G also brings a number of other rich Ovi experiences to life, whether its access and playback of millions of tracks through the Nokia Music Store, or using Ovi Suite to sync seamlessly from your Nokia smartphone, to your mini-laptop, to the cloud.

That’s a pretty sweet set of specs for a netbook and that HDMI out makes it good as a portable Media Center (although not with Windows 7 Starter).

In addition to announcing the availability of upgrades in the UK and the Family pack, Microsoft also announced that Windows 7 pricing will kick over to upgrade or full from September 1….so…

If you want the full version of Windows 7 for the price of an upgrade, then get it now.  It’s just £63.99 for Windows 7 Home Premium right now at Amazon.

One of the gems of Windows Live Essentials (which are explored quite thoroughly in my book) is Movie Maker which provides dead simple movie editing.  The best analogy is one I heard today “Movie Maker is the notepad of video editing tools” (not sure where I heard that though).  It’s true enough too, they are about as feature rich as each other, stripped down, bare bones (OK notepad is the most useful tool in Windows).  Move Maker’s just received an update and lost it’s “Beta” moniker.

Brilliant 1080p (full HD) output quality, live previews of effects and Windows 7 jump lists are some of the new features since it’s exited Beta.

This has been everywhere today but Redmond Pie has a great roundup.  Get the software here and some videos to play with if you don’t have any of your own.

[via the inimitable Steve Clayton]

Another fantastic way to personalize your Windows 7 desktop is to use the wallpapers from Bing, Microsoft’s search engine that’s gaining market share from Google.  Every day the image at Bing changes and frankly they’re stunning.

So what do you need to do to have your desktop update itself every day.  It’s quite simple.

1. Start notepad, to do that click the Start button and type notepad  
2. Copy the following text after these instructions into the window and click File > Save As.. and call the file bing.theme , save it to your Documents library.
3. Open your Documents library and double click bing.theme then from the popup select Download attachments.  Now every day your theme will change.

This tip has been everywhere, but it originally came from Long Zheng from www.istartedsomething.com & makeuseof.com .

[Theme]
DisplayName=Bing
[Slideshow]
Interval=1800000
Shuffle=1
RssFeed=http://feeds.feedburner.com/bingimages
[Control Panel\Desktop]
TileWallpaper=0
WallpaperStyle=0
Pattern=
[Control Panel\Cursors]
AppStarting=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_working.ani
Arrow=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_arrow.cur
Crosshair=
Hand=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_link.cur
Help=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_helpsel.cur
IBeam=
No=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_unavail.cur
NWPen=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_pen.cur
SizeAll=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_move.cur
SizeNESW=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_nesw.cur
SizeNS=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_ns.cur
SizeNWSE=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_nwse.cur
SizeWE=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_ew.cur
UpArrow=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_up.cur
Wait=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_busy.ani
DefaultValue=Windows Aero
Link=
[VisualStyles]
Path=%SystemRoot%\resources\themes\Aero\Aero.msstyles
ColorStyle=NormalColor
Size=NormalSize
ColorizationColor=0X6B74B8FC
Transparency=1
[MasterThemeSelector]
MTSM=DABJDKT