I'm a UC Blog
Brett Johnson just posted an interesting to link to a review on another UC Blog, it covers off the Cisco integration of Office Communicator and OCS.
Brett does mention: “More on this subject later…. It’s a fun time I can tell you ;)”
Interesting stuff…
Source: here
I know there is a lot of buzz about Windows 7 at the moment, which is great because this was not so much the case when Vista was launched. However one of things that Vista did introduce was user access management (UAC) and as with a number of Vista “enhancements” it was criticized heavily. Whilst this is still present in Windows 7 it has been toned down and instead of on or off there are several sensitivity settings.
UAC is of course not just about prompting you when heightened levels of access are required, it also works around the issue by redirecting the changes to lower risk folders or registry trees – this is referred to by Microsoft as “data redirection” or “UAC virtualisation”. I remember my first deep-dive experience of this when I ran an old Usenet client that by default located its download folder in program files, when I tried to locate downloaded files they were nowhere to be found? As it turned out the application was not developed to support UAC (yet) and Vista “redirected” the heightened access to the Vista virtual store (an area used for pre-UAC compatible applications).
The Windows Blog team are encouraging developers to take UAC plunge (so to speak) and have in lay terms explained the process of assessing your applications.
I’d encourage system administrators and developers to go see!
Virtual PC overview:
For more information about Windows Virtual PC, please visit the Windows Virtual PC website.
Windows Virtual PC supports the following Host and Guest Operating systems
Note: Virtual application feature not supported on Windows Vista Business Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows 7 Professional SKU’s
Note: Upgrade from Windows Virtual PC Beta to Windows Virtual PC RC is not supported. Uninstall Windows Virtual PC Beta and Windows XP Mode Beta, before installing this RC release. Click here for more information.
Source: here
XP Mode overview:
Windows XP Mode provides a 32-bit Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 (SP3) environment pre-loaded on a virtual hard disk. Client virtualization software, like Windows Virtual PC is a pre-requisite to use Windows XP Mode.
Note: Upgrade from Windows XP Mode Beta to Windows XP Mode RC is not supported. Uninstall Windows XP Mode Beta and Windows Virtual PC Beta (if applicable) before installing this RC release. Click here for more information.
ZDNet have published a detailed performance comparison focussing on Windows XP, Vista and 7, what is particularly interesting is that they chose three types of hardware – low/high end and mobile.
In conclusion:
“In Windows 7, Microsoft has succeeded in providing an OS that’s likely to meet the performance requirements of consumers and business users alike. The early signs are that Windows 7 will enjoy a much better take-up than Vista. Of our three test platforms, only the low-end Intel Atom-based system is not really suitable for Windows 7. But even a single-core processor such as a 1.4GHz Core 2 Solo is sufficient to deliver smooth performance under Windows 7. High-end systems with quad-core processors also benefit from Windows 7, because many of the operating system functions exploit the computing power of multi-core chips.”
Source: here
Not everyone has switched to Bing (yet), even given reported growth of 1.24% in July. But there is definitely a buzz in the air when it comes to the daily pictures posted on the Bing homepage. Now you can use the desktop slideshow functionality within Windows 7 to display them all by using Long Zheng’s Bing image archive.
For detailed instructions follow the link below.
Source: here
The Office Communicator Team has just released an updated version of the Windows Mobile CoMo that includes easy access to conferences (no pins etc) and really nice integration with the Windows Mobile 6.5 home screen.
Check it out here
Update: Windows Phone 6.5 – not Windows Mobile 6.5
