Category: Vista

In his brilliant book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell describes the tremendous impact that the Pepsi Challenge had on the soft drink industry in the 1980’s (see pp. 155-159). Pepsi was trailing way behind Coke in market share, but it looked like there might be a sea change. Pepsi began running ads featuring the Pepsi Challenge. The [...]

Microsoft really, really wants small businesses to start buying Vista instead of XP. For the next three months, they’re offering “Windows Vista Small Business Assurance,” which gives free support and “one-on-one coaching” from “specially-trained support agents.”
Support is available 10 AM to 7 PM Pacific time, or 1 PM to 10 PM Eastern. (In case you’re [...]

The update is available through Windows Update (but Vista users can simply hit Start > All Programs > Windows Update instead). If you’re going to install SP1 on multiple computers in your company, you might want to download the 434 MB five-language standalone file rather than having each computer go through the Windows Update process.
Of [...]

More and more people are asking me about Vista these days. You know, it’s really not all that different from Windows XP. However, you will notice a few different things about the user interface. For example, the Ctrl-Alt-Delete screen is a lot prettier:

And they even show you your picture when you put in your [...]

 Here’s ZDNet columnist Mary Jo Foley’s view on Microsoft’s decision to delay the deadline to cut off sales of XP on new computers:
» Is Windows XP too good for Microsoft’s own good?
I take the view that XP ain’t broke and am only recommending Vista on new computers in rare circumstances. Looks like I’ll be [...]

Still waiting for WebHost4Life to set up my SharePoint hosting site, so in the meantime I set up an account at Mail2Web.com instead. Setup wasn’t instant, but at least it didn’t require me to contact support. I just had to wait 23 minutes after placing the order until an e-mail arrived with further instructions. Mail2web [...]

This is a pretty good example of what IT consultants do all day and why people are willing to pay us to do it for them.
Goal: create a Windows SharePoint Services application via the Internet based on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Simple enough, right?
Process: Start with basic procedure described here. From WSS home page, click [...]

I found out last night after Googling myself (which I recommend to everyone with a reasonably distinctive name) that I was quoted in an IT trade journal back in January, right after the Vista / Office 2007 launch.
Unfortunately, the quote doesn’t really make much sense. The article is about a panel presentation at which Microsoft [...]

I really thought I had been good about applying the Daylight Savings Time patch on all the PCs I manage for my clients. But there I was this morning, looking at reports from machines I was sure I had patched, and they were still 5 hours behind GMT rather than 4. What happened?
It turns out [...]

Warning: This is long. Really long. Like 17,000+ words / 30+ pages long. You might not be able to take it all in one sitting. But I thought it was important to consolidate a lot of information into a single post.
Microsoft has a relatively new software bundle that they’re pushing hard. It’s called the Small [...]