Kurt Shintaku's Blog

This year at PDC we announced the release of the Office 2010 Beta to the public as part of our Wave 14 launch.  This release was created based on your feedback, plus a year’s worth of validation and testing and the results are amazing!  Office 2010 offers an exceptional productivity experience across the PC, phone and browser.  The beta offers tons of new features such as Office Backstage View, Ribbon user interface across all applications,  photo and video editing in PowerPoint, fast new data comparison tools in Excel, improved mail/calendar management in Outlook and much more!  For your convenience I’ve put together a list of the Wave 14 line up along with a few highlights for each product, a list of extras and demos.  Please take a moment to experience what is undoubtedly our best release ever!

Wave 14 Demos

• Office 2010 Overview
• Excel 2010
• OneNote 2010
• PowerPoint 2010
• Word 2010
• Office Mobile
• SharePoint Workspace
• Office Web Apps
• Forefront

Wave 14 is a comprehensive solution that provides a rich and robust platform for the enterprise and web.  This release ensures that your organization can collaborate more effectively by optimizing resources in a way that drives business process improvements.  Now is the opportunity to see Office 2010 for yourself!  You’ll need to register for the beta first and then will be able to download Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta.

Get 10% Off Everything at the Microsoft Store!

The Official Microsoft Store is offering a 10% discount on all items including games, Xbox 360 consoles, Window 7, etc.  2 Xbox 360 Console deals are still in stock:

• Xbox 360 Elite holiday bundle w/ 2 games for $269.99 (Save $30)
• Xbox 360 Modern Warfare 2 Limited Edition Console – $359.99 (Save $40)

Offer valid 11/16/2009-11/25/2009.

Steps:

• 10% off everything in the Microsoft Store!
• Use promo code MSSTORE10%OFF (after billing screen, before final confirmation)

“Here at Live Labs we’re all about experiments, and Pivot is our most ambitious to date. Pivot makes it easier to interact with massive amounts of data in ways that are powerful, informative, and fun. We tried to step back and design an interaction model that accommodates the complexity and scale of information rather than the traditional structure of the Web.

Pivot is currently available by invitation only to a small technical audience to help us explore future scenarios. To learn more about Pivot and our vision for this project, check out this video, share it, embed it, and blog/tweet/post your thoughts about it.

Why We Think This Is Exciting

When we use the Web today we treat the most fundamental scenarios as separate activities. Search takes us from many things to one, browsing moves us from one thing to another, and recommendations expose affinities that enable us to explore related topics. Can we do better by combining these scenarios into a more unified experience?

Pivot focuses on this intersection, enabling us to learn key lessons while attempting to broadly apply this philosophy to the Web. We hope that Pivot will inspire and fuel transformative experiences across the Web.

At the heart of Pivot are "Collections." They combine large groups of similar items on the Internet, so we can begin viewing the relationships between individual pieces of information in a new way. By visualizing hidden patterns, Pivot enables users to discover new insights while interacting with thousands of things at once.

For those with access to our limited preview, this site includes a wealth of developer details to create Collections. We hope you will join our technical discussion to share your work and interact directly with the Pivot team. If you don’t have an invitation, please leave your email address and we will notify you if we expand our private preview in the future.

Also known as, you get what you pay for.

The wily statistical researchers at SquareTrade, the folks that insure/warranty products predominantly from eBay but also independently have found through their monster database of numbers that people that buy cheap laptops… usually end up with malfunctions up to 20% more often than folks that purchase higher end laptops.

In fact, Premium laptops have the lowest malfunction rate where as Netbooks get returned due to malfunction the most.  Surprised?

Additionally, SquareTrade broke down who’s laptops are most reliable versus who’s… well… have malfunctions more than the others.  The message is clear:  Smaller outfits tend to have fewer returns.

And there were some interesting discoveries along the way.

——————————————-

Manufacturers: Vast Differences in Reliability

• When excluding accidental damage and examining hardware malfunctions by manufacturer, Asus and Toshiba come out on top.
• Apple and Dell both fall in the middle with approximately an 18 percent failure rate; while industry leader HP has the highest failure rate.
• Over one in four HP laptops in the study experienced a hardware malfunction during the first three years of ownership.

Other highlights of the study include:

• Asus and Toshiba were the most reliable manufacturers, with fewer than 16 percent having a hardware malfunction over three years.
• Netbooks are projected to have a 20 percent higher failure rate from hardware malfunctions than more expensive laptop computers.
• Manufacturers proved to be a more reliable determinant of reliability than the type of laptop and should be a greater factor in making a purchase decision.

DOWNLOAD:  SquareTrade Research:  “Nearly 1 in 3 Laptops fail over 3 years”
http://www.squaretrade.com/pages/laptop-reliability-1109/?ccode=bs_war_buyerblog

[taken from the SquareTrade blog]

I hate Scott Hanselman.  Alright.  Maybe I don’t hate him.  But I secretly seeth because his blog is so much better than mine. Sob.

Like this recent post.  I write posts that go deep on certain topics based on my own personal experience on that one topic. 

Scott on the other hand writes posts that are exhaustive in nature because of his breadth of experience and knowledge.

How the heck does one ‘list’ all the apps that leverage Windows 7’s inherent Aero Taskbar features?  Man – that’s just insane.

POST:  List of Applications that use new Windows 7 Features
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/LightItUpListOfApplicationsThatUseNewWindows7Features.aspx

For all geek poets,

A Windows Server haiku

Means prizes click here

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There’s no way to really explain this other than to just have you go to it and see for yourself.

The idea is to have folks generate some creative haikus… flex that IT brain, so to speak, around what Windows Server 2008 R2 delivers.

And by the way, there’s even a nice plug for our free Microsoft Press book, “Introducing Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2”

LINK:  Windows Server 2008 R2 Haiku Contest
https://www.r2haiku.com/

Windows Management Framework, which includes Windows PowerShell 2.0, WinRM 2.0, and BITS 4.0, was officially released.

By providing a consistent management interface across the various flavors of Windows, we are making our platform that much more attractive to deploy. IT Professionals can now easily manage their Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2 machines through PowerShell remoting – that’s a huge win!

The big component for myself is obviously Windows PowerShell 2.0.  Here’s a quick description of PS2.0 as described in the Support entry:

Windows PowerShell is a command-line shell and scripting language that is designed for system administration and Automation. Built on the Microsoft .NET Framework, Windows PowerShell enables IT professionals and developers to control and automate the administration of Windows and applications.
New features that are introduced in Windows PowerShell 2.0 include the following:

• Remoting
  Windows PowerShell 2.0 lets you run commands on one or more remote computers from a single computer that is running Windows PowerShell. PowerShell remoting allows for multiple ways of connecting. These ways include interactive (1:1), fan-out (1:many), and fan-in (many:1 by using the IIS hosting model).
• Integrated Scripting Environment
  PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE) enables you to run interactive commands and edit and debug scripts in a graphical environment. The main features include color-coded syntax, selective execution, graphical debugging, Unicode support, and context-sensitive help.
• Modules
  Modules allow for script developers and administrators to partition and organize their Windows PowerShell code in self-contained, reusable units. Code from a module executes in its own self-contained context and does not affect the state outside the module.
• Advanced functions
  Advanced functions are functions that have the same capabilities and behavior as cmdlets. However, they are written completely in the Windows PowerShell language, instead of compiled C#.
• Background jobs
  Windows PowerShell 2.0 allows for running a command or expression asynchronously and "in the background" without interacting with the console.
• Eventing
  This feature adds support to the Windows PowerShell engine infrastructure for listening, forwarding, and acting on management and system events.
• Script internationalization
  This new feature enables Windows PowerShell scripts to display messages in the spoken language that is specified by the UI culture setting on the user’s computer.
• Script debugging
  New debugging features were added to Windows PowerShell that let you set breakpoints on lines, columns, variables, and commands, and that let you specify the action that occurs when the breakpoint is hit.
• New cmdlets
  Windows PowerShell 2.0 introduces over 100 built-in cmdlets. These cmdlets, excluding other tasks, enables you to do computer-related, event log, and performance counter management tasks.

You can download the packages here:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=151321

I told you guys you all should sign up for this years PDC.

And to be clear – this is NOT a ‘netbook’ as it’s been claimed in some news outlets.  This is a full blown customized Acer convertible Tablet PC with Windows 7 Ultimate on it, with a custom installation of the OS installed.  Acer – in case you didn’t know – holds the patent on the Tablet swivel in most Tablet PCs today.

In the absence of any big news during his keynote address this morning, Microsoft Windows President Steven Sinofsky took a page from Oprah’s playbook and stirred the crowd to life with the surprise announcement that all of the paying attendees at the company’s big Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles would get a free laptop.

Sinofsky said the laptop was custom-designed by the Windows team, working with PC maker Acer to create a machine that represented the best overall experience it could create with the new Windows 7 operating system. It’s meant for software developers to fully explore the possibilities of the new operating system.

"We’re going to take this laptop, and it’s going to be available to you," Sinofsky told the crowd. "For free."

As heard on the webcast, there were huge cheers in the giant keynote hall at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Sinofsky encouraged them to stick around for the rest of the talk, recalling an incident a few years ago, when Microsoft similarly gave away a free mobile device that caused people to rush for the distribution center.

Microsoft historically has focused on operating systems and applications software, not PC hardware, but the company has increasingly been working more closely with PC makers to get them to tune their systems more carefully to work more smoothly with Windows. In that way the Windows team’s work with Acer on the custom "PDC Laptop" is an interesting development even if it won’t be available outside the show.

(Taken from Todd Bishop’s Microsoft Blog & CNET’s Unboxing of the PDC Laptop)

The Windows 7 Application Compatibility List for IT Professionals is a Microsoft Office Excel-based spreadsheet containing software applications which have met Windows 7 Logo Program testing requirements for compatibility with 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 (“Compatible – Windows 7 Logo”).

Additionally, this list contains applications with a status of “Compatible,” “Free update required,” “Paid update required,” “Future compatibility,” and “Not compatible.” Any of these mean the software publisher has stated the compatibility status but note these products have not met the Windows 7 Logo Program testing requirements.

For the latest collection of compatible applications and hardware devices, please visit the Windows 7 Compatibility Center. You can also leave feedback on compatibility and suggest new products to get added in future reports.

DOWNLOAD: Windows 7 Application Compatibility List for IT Professionals
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=890e522e-e39e-4278-aebc-186f81e29173

About frickin’ time.  Windows Marketplace is now available to download for the REST of us that don’t own brand spankin’ new devices.

• Windows Marketplace for Windows Mobile 6 and 6.1
  http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/
  windowsphone/default.aspx

The good part about having the Windows Mobile Marketplace available is that it’ll make available a lot of FREE products that many people had no idea existed.

Here’s a few that you can find on the Marketplace that are real gems:

• Mobile Manager for Netflix
  If you have a Netflix account, you can arrange your shipments online through your Windows Phone.
• Bing for Windows Phone
  This is a rich mapping product that works great with phone GPSs and provides local restaurants, gas stations, and other necessities all directly.
• Tower Defense
  Arrange your towers and defend yourself from bombers, drones, and hummers.

DOWNLOAD: 
Windows Marketplace for Windows Mobile 6.0/6.1
http://windowsphone.com/getmarketplace

(Also go straight to http://mp.windowsphone.com to download straight to your phone)