TO-Tech Blog

The little video I created right after Vista’s launch in mid-January generated quite a number of comments (75 so far). The video was based on my surprise that the cheap PC I installed Vista Ultimate Edition on actually supported Aero Glass effects even though I did not have a dedicated video card and was using shared video memory. It generated a bunch of questions such as:

• hello, can you please tell me how you were able to get Aero on vista to work like that? my computers specs arent the greatest and i cant get aero to show up under the management stuff… if you could help me out i would really appreciate it! unlinke your video, i have a dedicated graphics card BUT its an XP card and has no vista support/drivers
• Hey, i got vista how do u perform areo glass. what do you press. hey did the vista upgrade advisor say you needed to upgrade your video card or was it cool with it?

My understanding is Vista either has support for the graphics subsystem or it doesn’t. Not all dedicated cards are supported. Nor are all integrated graphics chipsets with adequate shared RAM supported. You should check the vendor’s website for further information.

If your graphics subsystem is supported, Vista turns on Aero Glass features such as 3-D Flip (demonstrated in the video). You press the Windows-key and the Tab-key together to display this. Press it repeatedly to flip through the windows. The pop-up mini-windows on the bottom of the screen are displayed by hovering over the application tabs in the Windows taskbar (usually on the bottom of the screen).

Windows advisor did not say anything about needing to upgrade my onboard graphics chipset using shared memory (it would probably help though :-).

I installed a beta release of Windows Vista using Parallels Desktop for Mac 1.0 last year using a Microsoft provided DVD ISO file. So, I thought that installing the production version of Windows Vista using 5 CD ISO files would be a more-or-less similar experience. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Vista’s installer apparently got lost in trying to work with the WIM (Windows Image) file format (introduced along with Vista) when used from inside an ISO file (just a guess, btw). So, next up… Installing from real physical CD discs.

If you read through Microsoft’s…

How do I change the behavior of the User Account Control message?

…you’ll find that only Windows Vista Enterprise and Ultimate Edition users can change certain aspects of UAC for non-administrator accounts. This leaves out both the Home and Business Edition users out in the cold. This, IMHO, is just a bad idea and mystery to me. I also don’t understand why BitLocker wasn’t provided at least to Business Edition users (again Enterprise and Ultimate Editions have this feature). Why aren’t Business Edition users (at the very least) given these security related options?

BTW, if you want a good encryption option for Home or Business Editions, take a look at TrueCrypt 4.3a (released in May 2007). You may find it something you can use on PCs running that version of Windows.

Personally, I think Microsoft should follow Apple’s philosophy and just have a single edition and stop causing Edition Confusion.

Saw the notice in Mike Walkers blog that Microsoft is providing a SharePoint Server evaluation system in a virtual machine that can be run using Virtual PC or Virtual Server (both free). You can find the VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) download here:

Microsoft Office SharePoont Server 2007 VHD

One of the Windows Vista features I was most looking forward to last year was Sideshow: A secondary mini-screen that can be used with the primary screen. Although it can be implemented in various ways, I was specifically looking forward to its use as a small screen on the lid of a notebook PC (see image taken from Microsoft.com of an Asus notebook). So far, however, none of the tier 1 notebook manufacturers (Dell, HP, etc.) have produced a notebook with Sideshow. And, for that matter, we haven’t seen any products that attach to the PC that take advantage of Sideshow either. I found a site called SideShowDevices. But, it is pretty sparsely populated. So, what happened? Too expensive to produce? No software to use it? No one else but me wants it? Hmm.

July’s Patch Tuesday brought a nice little surprise (though that didn’t last long): Among the list of optional Windows Vista updates was an HP driver for the Photosmart 7700 printer series (I have an old 7760). The patch was dated June 10. I have no idea why it didn’t show up in the list until tonight since other Vista updates have arrived between Patch Tuesdays.

Unfortunately, two tries and a reboot in between was not enough to get the driver to install. Each attempt failed.

Note to self… Take a look at the…

Microsoft Malware Protection Center

It has four top 10 lists: Desktop threats, email threats, viruses, and adware/spyware. Other note to self, I should use my Mac more and spend less time dealing with this sort of thing

Like many other people most of my “work work” for my day-job is on a notebook PC. It is a pretty nice one with a Core 2 Duo processor, 120GB hard disk, dual display support, and enough dedicated plus shared graphics RAM to make Vista look nice (3D Flip, etc.). Off to the side I have a nearly 4 year old desktop PC for “busy work” like writing weekly reports, filling out forms, email, etc. So, I’ve been quite puzzled why the free drive space on its relatively tiny 40GB hard drive (by today’s standards) kept getting smaller and smaller until it was almost out of space the other day.

After poking around a bit, I decided to delete the Windows uninstall directories (which numbered in the many of dozens after years of Patch Tuesdays) and the \Windows\Temp directories (which also numbers in the many dozens). It took quite a while for the old PC to just delete the thousands and thousands of files (literally) from those directories. However, when it finished I found I had freed up over 10GB of space on the 40GB drive So, 25% of the drive had been literally filled up with useless junk files.

This may not be much of an issue with PCs with hundreds of gigabytes of hard drive space. But, if you have a small old PC like mine, take a careful look at the temp files on your system. And, be sure to backup your PC before embarking on an exercise like mine (lest you delete something you shouldn’t by accident).