Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Yeah, I’m late on this.  But I’ve been busy and major service packs demand a careful examination.

The major fixes can be read about here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2460049

Some things that caught my eye;

• EXCEL: Improves the overall stability, performance and backward compatibility with earlier versions by addressing bugs that affect lots of users.
• OUTLOOK: Outlook 2010 SP1 includes Office 365 support.
• WORD: When you copy some Excel data that includes cells and a chart, and then paste them as a linked Excel Worksheet Object (OLE) object in a Word document, the size of the chart may not be correct. Or, the chart may be corrupt
• POWERPOINT: Fixes an issue in which an incorrect animation state occurs after you browse through all the slides.

DOWNLOAD:
Download the Service Pack for your edition of Office.

• Download the Microsoft Office 2010 Service Pack 1 64-bit package now.
• Download the Microsoft Office 2010 Service Pack 1 32-bit package now.

CHANGE WORKBOOK:
A workbook is available that lists the issues that are fixed by this service pack.

• Download the Microsoft Office 2010 Service Pack 1 Changes.xlsx package now.

Service Pack 1 is now available for the 2010 family of products, including Office, SharePoint, Project Server, FAST, Search Server, and Groove Server.

For more on deployment, see these articles:

• Apply Office 2010 Service Pack 1
• Deploy Service Pack 1 for Project Server 2010
• Download the Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 White Paper

SQL Server Code Name “Denali” Community Technology Preview (CTP3) provides the foundation to the cloud-ready information platform and will help customers unlock breakthrough insights across the organization and quickly build solutions that extend data across on-premises and public cloud backed by capabilities for mission critical confidence.

• Deliver required uptime and data protection with AlwaysOn
• Gain breakthrough & predictable performance with Project Apollo
• Help enable security and compliance with new User-defined Roles and Default Schema for Groups
• Rapid data discovery with Project Crescent
• Deliver credible, consistent data with SSIS improvements, a Master Data Services add-in for Excel, and new Data Quality Services
• Optimize IT and developer productivity across server and cloud with Data-tier Application Component (DAC) parity with SQL Azure and SQL Server Developer Tools code name “Juneau” for a unified dev experience across database, BI, and cloud functions

Download SQL Server Code Name "Denali" CTP3
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/hh225126.aspx?wt.mc_id=nlc-f-us-Mba-TEC_93_1_7

This guy Jeff Loucks wrote a blog post that I really think deserves some recognition… because, cripes, if I couldn’t figure out how to do this.  And I work for the damned company.  [insert cranial smoke here]

[taken from Jeff’s post]
Have you ever wondered how to change the default address book in Outlook when you are using Exchange. If you have ever sent an email and tried to find your contacts using the To: button you know that by default the Exchange Global Address Book is the first source of contacts. What a pain.

I always find it difficult to locate where to change the default so I thought I would post it in case you are looking. I know I will come back to this post because even after having found it, I still can’t remember how to do it. It is just one of those things that has never been intuitive.

Additionally:

• Have you ever found that Outlook 2010’s “Suggested Contacts” got referenced before your actual Contacts list?  “Suggested Contacts” as you likely know, often has basically empty contact entries in it.
• Have you ever discovered that your “Contacts” list was for some reason not being referenced when resolving names?

SOLUTION:
The secret lies in this dialog box:

The question is:  How the heck do you get there?

Check out Jeff’s post for the answer to that question:

• Outlook 2010: How to change your default Contacts Address Book
  http://msmvps.com/blogs/jeffloucks/archive/2009/12/21/outlook-2010-how-to-change-your-default-contacts-address-book.aspx 

I wanted to use WiDi on my Samsung Series 9.  WiDi is an Intel specific technology that enables one to wirelessly transmit both the video & audio of their display to a HD television at 1080p.  The TV needs to be either equipped with a WiDi receiver built in or it needs to have a WiDi receiver attached to it.

Here’s the instructions for using the Intel WiDi functionality.
http://www.intel.com/support/wireless/wtech/iwd/sb/CS-031109.htm

NEEDS A NEW WIFI+BT+WIDI ADAPTER
This is the weird part about the Samsung Series 9:  They list WiDi as a feature however the wireless network adapter I got in my unit was a Broadcom BCM943225HMB Wifi N Bluetooth mini PCI-e Card.  This does not work with WiDi even though the rest of the hardware does.

To use WiDi, it’s not enough to just have an Intel processor/chipset with WiDi support on it.  You have to also have an Intel Wireless Adapter with WiDi support. WiDi in our case, requires an Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6230 (~$30) or similar Intel Wireless Networking adapter with WiDi support.  I believe that most people would specifically need to get the 6230 model because it’s the PCI-E mini card from Intel that supports WiDi and both Wireless 802.11b/g/n AND Bluetooth.  The 6200 and prior models lack Bluetooth, which I assume is a requirement for people that want to use Bluetooth UC headsets, mice, tethering, etc.

Like I said, my Samsung Series 9 shipped with a Broadcom 802.11b/g/n WLAN+BT PCI-E Mini Card so to get this to work, I would need to open the case and swap out the socketed Broadcom PCI-E mini card with the newly acquired Intel 6230. 

And while I was in there, I might also add 4GB more of RAM into the extra DIMM slot.

The Samsung Series 9 has a large, revolutionary new multitouch ClickPad that supports gestures, multi-touch actions, etc.  However it’s configuration for many people needs to be adjusted.

These are the changes I made to improve the ClickPad experience for myself.

————-

Q: Have you ever had to drag-and-drop a file, email or a folder using the ClickPad & found the cursor to be incredibly imprecise?

The following instructions will stabilize your control over the mouse using the ClickPad.

1. Click Start-Control Panel-Mouse
2. Click “Device Settings” tab
3. Click the “Settings” button
4. Click “SmartSense” & click the ‘gears’ icon
5. Slide “SmartSense” all the way to the right
6. Slide “Filter Activation Time” all the way to the left
7. [OPTIONAL] Check “Restrict Tapping to zone”
   [OPTIONAL] Shrink the zone in the Advanced Filters window to something smaller
   (Note these optional settings don’t matter if you disable tapping/follow the instructions below for PROBLEM #2)

EXPLANATION:
Because there’s no discrete left-click button, the pad will often recognize a “left click” (a click of the bottom left part of the ClickPad) as mouse movement on the screen.  It’s difficult to get any kind of precision when both your thumb clicks and the fingers are detected as “moving the mouse”.   I was once dragging and dropping a large folder within Outlook to another location and accidentally dropped it in the wrong location because the mouse had moved when I “clicked”.  Took me a while to figure out where it had gone.

WHY?
The issue is that Samsung Series 9’s ClickPad is configured by default to be a bit too sensitive for me.  Any light brush movement on my part would cause the cursor to wiggle, making it inaccurate for many purposes and it doesn’t detect accidental touches very well through it’s default configuration.  Turning up this functionality to max solves a lot of problems.

———————-

Q: Have you ever been typing and seen the cursor just suddenly jump somewhere else?

The following instructions will disable the ‘tap to click’ functionality eliminating any possibility that an accidental touch will move the cursor elsewhere.  Very useful when you find that the cursor seems to randomly move to other locations in your emails or written documents based on accidentally touching the ClickPad.

1. Click Start-Control Panel-Mouse
2. Click “Device Settings” tab
3. Click the “Settings” button
4. Uncheck “Tapping” completely.
5. Click OK

‘Ever heard of “GPU Compute”?

Microsoft is doing a ton of work in this space.  GPU Compute where we leverage High Performance Computing (HPC) models to schedule jobs to a GPU and gains some pretty significant efficiencies.  

“In this co-processing model, the compute intensive portions of an application use the parallel computing capabilities of the GPU, while the sequential part of an application’s code runs on the CPU.”

This has huge ramifications for particular industries:

For more information:

• DOWNLOAD:  GPGPU Computing Horizons:  Developing and Deploying for Microsoft
  http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/6/C/A6C0223B-9460-4346-8DC0-B6BCFD9269B4/MSFT_GPGPU_whitepaper_FINAL.PDF
• MORE INFO:
  http://www.microsoft.com/hpc/en/us/solutions/gpgpu-acceleration.aspx

You read that right.

At the Microsoft Store launch at Century City here in Los Angeles, I discovered something.  The thinnest Windows laptop on the market – thinner than a MacBook Air – has been SERIOUSLY discounted at the Microsoft Store:

Samsung Series 9 -  900X31-A03

• 128GB SSD
• 4GB DDR3 RAM
• 13.3” TFT LCD
• …$1299  (The A03 specifically lacks a TPM chip)
  (Also $999 for the 64GB SSD/2GB RAM model) 

Additionally, the purchase in the store also nets you:

• FREE Xbox 360 4GB Console
• FREE Samsung 500GB External Hard Drive
• FREE AMC movie tickets (2) to see Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Only at Century City store)

This appears to be an in-store-only price drop that they quietly applied and haven’t advertised.  Don’t know if it’s at other stores but for anyone looking to get another laptop for spouses or relatives, this is a spectacular price.  Compare this with the webstore price of $1449 or the $1600 price tag on Amazon.

• http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-NP900X3A-A02US-13-3-Inch-Laptop-Black/dp/B004NF3Z82

I’m going on vacation.  The final fiscal year quarter was brutal and almost hammered me. (April, May, June) and I’m going to go to Vegas.  Hopefully I’ll be able to get caught up with my posts then but right now, I gotta go win some cash and eat some disgustingly decadent food and recharge.

It’s a beautiful day…

After months and months of training, preparation, & hard work, the Microsoft Store in Century City is now open!  Congratulations to Stephen, Patricia, Vanessa, Elizabeth, Stephanie, Jamie Grace, Andy, Amanda, John, Daniel, Julio, Dave, Dorian, Lamar, and anyone else from the team that I know and left out cuz I can’t keep all 47+ of you straight but you’re all awesome and I wish I could bottle up some of that energy y’all have because it’s 10x more potent than “5 hour”.