Technology

If you're running the Beta 2 build of Office you probably want to patch it with the Technical Refresh Microsoft just released a few hours ago, especially if you're running Windows Vista. Some improvements include: Improved support for the minimized Ribbon Visual redesign of the "Northwest" corner of the programs Double-click the Office Button to close the window Silver color scheme Redesign of the PowerPoint Home tab Improvements to default styles for all objects...

I just came across a website with this "writer" doing a couple of articles about Windows Vista's new feature called User Account Control (UAC). I won't bother to link to the site itself as the guy is clearly just trying to get people to visit by making incoherent arguments against UAC. I say, I say, I say…when is an administrator not an administrator? When they’re a Vista administrator! ROLFMAO. WTF!? Sorry mate on Windows Vista with UAC enabled, administrators have administrator rights (limited users need to provide an admin user and password), they just need to press "...

Microsoft have now released the final major pre-release of Windows Vista to people in the Customer Preview Program. It will be available to non CPP (those who didn't get Beta 2) in the coming weeks, those that used Beta 2 can use their existing key on RC1. Or it can be installed for 14 days with no key, after which you'll be prompted to enter the key and activate. My few words of advice from using it for the last week:...

A lot of talk is going on about the current lack of support for syncing Pocket PCs and Smartphones with Outlook on Windows Vista, this post is to clear up some of the confusion. Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) in the final version of Windows Vista will be automatically downloaded from Windows Update when you plug your device in. This application will replace Active Sync. The story so far... Beta 2 (5384) was the only public version of Windows Vista so far to contain this functionality, and it was limited – only supporting Windows Mobile 5 devices....

Get it right here. XNA Game Studio Express is a new offering, targeted at students and hobbyists for game development. XNA Game Studio is based on Visual C# Express 2005 and lets developers target both Windows and Xbox 360. XNA Game Studio Express contains the following: The XNA Framework Content Pipeline, which is a set of tools that allow developers to more easily incorporate 3D content into their games. The XNA Framework, a set of managed code development libraries that make it possible for game developers to be more productive when creating games for Windows and Xbox 360....

Word is spreading on the blogosphere about some new Windows Vista screens, the claim being these are of the new user interface Microsoft will be rolling out with RC1, here are some of the screens in question: We see the old style Sidebar, which was dropped in favour of the new one, we see the old Media Player gadget which Microsoft said they wouldn't be shipping, and we see some really fat chunky title bars....

I installed the 5536 build of Windows Vista on my Toshiba Portégé M200 Tablet PC just the other day. One thing I noticed almost straight away was that in the Appearance Settings dialog Windows Aero was not only available but actually worked. The M200 has a way below-spec graphics card to run Aero Glass only 32MB of on-board memory and a DX8 part. In previous builds it would simply revert back to the basic theme....

Man I've just watched some more of Apple's WWDC and I want to touch some more on Time Machine. The Apple fan boys commenting on my other entries made it seem like Time Machine was some kind of "advanced" and "modern" feature. Well its not, I was joking when I said it was like Backup from Windows 95, but after watching it, IT IS like Backup from Windows 95. All it does is make a copy every 24 hours of your files onto another hard drive (yes you need another hard drive, in Windows 95 you could backup to anything)....

Well I've just managed to sit through a bit of Steve Job's address at WWDC. As always he likes to start off by bashing Microsoft. He was pointing out how little progress Microsoft have made in the last five years, stating that Apple has shipped five major releases for Mac OS X. Five commercial upgrades at $129, the first Jobs admitted was just to make the broken original release. That comes to about $650 + tax, ouch....

Ed Bott made a recent entry on Internet Explorer 7 vs Firefox 2. I’ve only begun using the Firefox beta in the past few days, so I have only a small sample size to work with. But so far it has missed every one of four phishing sites I’ve pointed it to, each of which has been detected by IE7. I’ve tried monkeying with the settings for the anti-phishing option in FF2, with no luck, and I’ve repeated the installation on a separate computer with identical results....