I'm a UC Blog

Something that slipped me by is that the Microsoft Office XML based document standard allows you to extract and examine the internal workings of the file. Did you know that if you rename an Office document, for example .docx to .zip, you can the open the file in your friendly zip extraction software and view XML and thumbnail files?

Give it a go, also if your interested in learning more about this standard head here. In Office 2010 Microsoft has chosen to adopt the standards based Office Open XML (ISO/IEC IS 29500 version).

Launching here tomorrow at 05.01am GMT

Our twin boys (pictured above) every now and then get to watch their TV favourites, below is a list I have compiled of their top 10 (with their assistance of course)!

1. Peppa Pig

2. Fireman Sam

3. Frances

4. Doodlebops

5. Teletubbies

6. Pitch & Potch (they liked this from newborn but still are partial to the odd viewing here and there!)

7. Night Garden

8. Tigger & Pooh

9. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse

10. Bob the Builder

Like many people one of the first things I do after installing Windows is “enable classic start menu” (in fairness I probably do this after de-selecting “hide extensions for known file types). In 7 this option has been removed *sniff sniff*, whilst I could take the hint and move on I am not going without a fight!

There are a number of “fudges” on the web, here, here and here. The nicest version I have come across is here (but this does not come cheap at £16.95). Maybe I will join the masses, the ribbon bar did pay off….eventually!

Why the big deal here? From what I can tell a special EU version will be “available” (not mandatory?) and why bother you can remove Internet Explorer easily after install?

This stuff really bugs me, even the BBC are making a deal out of this.

Source: here

Ever wondered what the differences are between “Windows Imaging” and other “sector based” formats?

During an internal workshop we were discussing plans for our shiny new Configuration Manager 2007 R2 server and ways to backup user data, in view of a vanilla system retore with an approved configurations. One of the questions was around the disk space required for backing up user data, as you can imagine not all companies have mass amounts of storage to throw at this type of problem.

What we discovered is that unlike other sector based imaging formats i.e. Symantec Ghost, Windows imaging is file based and does not contain partition data (therefore able to be deployed without disrupting data on existing partitions).

Additional functionality includes:

• Single instance storage
• Hardware independence
• Separate partitioning via “diskpart”
• File splitting and ISO conversion
• Mounting with drive letter
• Capability to be made bootable using ImageX