To PDANUG Members:

Wednesday, October 17th, 2007

Topic: Russ Fustino’s Tool Shed Tour

Wednesday, October 17th, 2007, is our next meeting of  Pee Dee Area .NET User Group.

Event Grand Prize: One copy of Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 will be given to one lucky attendee.

It's All About The Tools – (It's AATT)  Episode One!

Did you ever feel inundated with developer tools? Did you ever feel you are missing something that could make your life easier as a developer and as a power user? There are so many tools available to choose from and it keeps getting tougher to keep up with. Tool familiarity continues to be one of the top developer challenges. This series of seminars is all about tools for developers, by developers. Join Microsoft Florida Developer Evangelist Russ Fustino he brings you demos and discussion about favorite developer tools. Attend this session and see  tools including but not limited to: Fiddler, Web Stress tool, IE Developer Toolbar, Visual Studio IDE Tools, Live Services, and Community tool web sites. There's something here for everyone, from beginners to experts. Don’t miss this event. It’s where “It’s AATT”!

See you there!

Here is the tentative schedule:

6:00 PM - 6:20 PM Socializing / Dinner
6:20 PM - 6:30 PM Introduction, Sponsor Time, and News.
6:30 PM - 7:45 PM Presentation
7:45 PM - 8:00 PM Drawing and Wrap Up

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Thanks,

http://www.pdanug.net/

I had to scour all the local AT&T stores but Saturday night, but I was finally able to pick my very own AT&T 8925.

So far this appears to be the perfect phone that has every feature you could want:

• Windows Mobile 6 Professional
• Stereo Bluetooth 2.0
• Wi-Fi (802.11b/g)
• Mini-USB connectivity
• MicroSD
• Push to Talk
• 3.0 megapixel camera with auto-focus and video
• 256 MB Flash ROM / 128 MB SDRAM
• Hands-free communication with speakerphone and headphone jack
• GPS
• Integrated trackwheel for ease of navigation
• Touch screen with stylus
• Easy text entry with sliding QWERTY keyboard
• Talk time: up to 4 hours
• Standby time: up to 8 days
• 2.8" 240x320 color QVGA screen
• TTY compatible
• QUALCOMM Dual Core 400MHz Processor
• The coolest tilting screen you ever seen

I put together a good collection of screens from the AT&T Tilt below. All thumbnails can be clicked to see larger images.

Right now you can get a free USB 2.0 2GB Flash Drive when you buy CA Internet Security Suite 2007, which includes Anti-Virus, Personal Firewall, Anti-Spyware, Anti-Spam, and more.

It comes with three licenses, and it is Vista compatible. The Flash Drive is tiny, and can be snapped into a credit card size carry case if desired. Also the flash drive is ReadyBoost capable.

It is a free after rebate deal, $59.99 before rebate at CircuitCity.com, or you can buy it off eBay for around $20-$25 after shipping.

What do you get when you combine Star Wars and the Family Guy?

Family Guy: Blue Harvest - Sunday, September 23 9/8c

Family Guy Star Wars Special Preview

Need more? How about what do you get when you combine Star Wars and the Simpsons?

Simpsons Star Wars Parody

I own quite a few of the APC UPS backup power products. And usually after two or three years, the UPS no longer work under load when the power goes out.

I tried buying replacements on eBay, but I wasn't happy with the quality of the third party products. They just didn't last as long. And I tired ordering replacements from APC, but I wasn't happy with the price. Seemed better to wait for a sale or deal to come around and just by a new UPS altogether.

Well not sure what changed but now you can find APC UPS replacement batteries on Buy.com for a fair price, IMHO.

Most desktop APC UPS solutions use the APC Replacement Battery Cartridge #2. Last I had checked, the price was $29.99 with free shipping. The price is only $19.99, if you qualify for $10 off for being a new Google checkout customer. You can search for other models too.

A nice bonus included in the price is that you get a box, and a prepaid return label so you can send your near-dead battery back to the recycling plant. So you can help protect the environment, while helping to protect your PC's.

If you are like me and have your machine set up to dual boot between multiple OS's then you are probably familiar with the following screen:

I installed Windows XP Professional, followed by Vista Ultimate 32-bit Edition. So I have the following choices:

Earlier Version of Windows

Microsoft Windows Vista

In Windows XP, if you had a dual boot set up you can rename boot items simply by modifying your boot.ini file. You'd see something like the following. And it was a simple matter to rename "Windows XP Professional" or "Windows 2000 Professional" as you saw fit.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

In Vista, the boot.ini has been deprecated and is no longer used. So how does one rename the vaguely named "Earlier Version of Windows"?

Just recently, I was exploring the PAE, or Physical Address Extension, feature in Vista and something caught my eye.

The command I used to enable my PAE was: BCDEdit /set PAE forceenable

The command I used to make sure the setting changed was: BCDEdit /enum

Windows Legacy OS Loader
------------------------
identifier              {ntldr}
device                  partition=D:
path                    \ntldr
description             Earlier Version of Windows

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {current}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Microsoft Windows Vista
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {24f09df2-46fc-11dc-bcba-e9d5c4ed2e43}
nx                      OptIn
pae                     Default

Opportunity was knocking, and I wasn't going to miss the chance to take advantage of it.

A little deductive reasoning and I had the following command: BCDEdit /set {ntldr} description "Microsoft Windows XP"

And then I received a "The operation completed successfully." message for my effort. And after a quick reboot, all is well.

A while back I bought a new desktop. One of the things I decided to do was go with 4GB's of RAM.

It was a no brainer. Newegg.com has a great deal on RAM. You can get 2 sticks of 1GB RAM, the good stuff, here for $88.99, or $53.99 after rebate. At that price I figured it made sense to go ahead and purchase 4GB's worth.

So I installed XP Professional 32-bit, and then I installed Vista 32-bit on my new machine so could dual boot as needed.

Hmm, not quite 4GB I was hoping for. Maybe I have a bad chip? We test all chips in all slots, everything looks good. BIOS and boot screen both report 4096 MB of RAM.

Windows Vista or Windows Server 2003 may report less memory than you expect
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929580/en-us

This problem occurs because the address space is limited to 4 GB in a 32-bit hardware environment. Memory may be relocated to make room for addresses that the basic input/output system (BIOS) reserves for hardware. However, because of this limitation, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista cannot access memory that is relocated above the 4 GB boundary.

Here are a few more sources of information if you'd like to learn more:

Coding Horror: Dude, Where's My 4 Gigabytes of RAM [You can really learn something here.]

AddressOf.com:  Windows Vista supports 4GB of memory. Sure it does...

Chris Pirillo: 32-Bit Windows and 4GB of RAM

RunQA.com: Windows Vista 4GB RAM shows up as 3.2GB why?

It doesn't look like I have a chance, but maybe I can squeeze out a few more megabytes than 3007 if I can change some related settings.

I little research, and I learned how to enable PAE, or Physical Address Extension, on Vista here.

Alright, now BIOS says I have 3007 MB of RAM, so I've made the situation even worse.

I try setting my BIOS, called Memory Remap Feature, to move PCI memory addresses above the 4GB space, and see if that helps.

Hmm, well I have 4 GB of RAM in my BIOS now, but Vista says I only have 2047 MB of RAM so that's not what I want.

I even disabled PAE and left the Memory Remap Feature enabled just to in case, and still only gave me 2047 MB of RAM in Vista.

Before Memory (RAM): 3007 MB

After Memory (RAM): 3007 MB

That only leaves one thing to do if you want 4GB, or more RAM in Vista, or really much more than 3GB. Install Vista 64-bit Edition.

Much better, much better. (Ha, Just so you know Windows Live Writer will not install on Vista 64-Bit Edition.)

I was reading Casey Chestnut's Blog post, "Silverlight isnt everywhere", and once again I agree with Casey.

It wasn't too long ago that Casey and I were both hoping Microsoft would take advantage of the Compact Framework and move it onto the XBox 360. In this case, Microsoft recognized the same possibilities as us, and the XNA platform was created.

Microsoft Silverlight is a web-based subset of WPF. During development it was named WPF/E, which stood for "Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere".

It reminds me of the joke, "Friendly fire isn't." And now we have, "Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere" isn't.

Casey's right: It would be a brilliant move on Microsoft's part to port Silverlight to every platform they can including Windows Mobile, XBox 360, and MCE.

• Windows Mobile has a tough fight on its hands with the iPhone. And it does look like Silverlight will be coming to Windows Mobile in some format or another.

Silverlight for Windows Mobile YouTube video

• XBox 360 has a tough fight on its hands with the Wii. The XBox 360 does not even have a Web browse r. What gives? Wii can play Flash games. Now imagine if the XBox 360 could play Silverlight games!

Now Microsoft will use Silverlight to advertise the XBox 360 on Microsoft.com, and that is great and all, but it is so short sighted. We can do better. We are so close.

Heck, I even think Silverlight is a great opportunity for Microsoft to bring back the AutoPC platform.