I’m contemplating upgrading to Windows 7 as a number of people here in the office have already done. In fact, at least one person had to make several attempts before it worked which has me feeling like I should be planning this through before diving in. To that end, I figured I’d make a list of the software I need installed to help gauge exactly how long I can expect the move to take. I’m currently running Vista on a MacBook Pro using BootCamp v1.3 beta which has me thinking that to ensure things go smoothly that I’ll probably need to consider upgrading OSX as well. My current thinking is that I’ll pave (and gladly I might add) my Vista partition and install “fresh”.

So here is my list of “required” software which I’ll update as I think of things I missed:

Visual Studio 2008 TortoiseSVN SnagIt Trillian Virtual PC FireFox Windows Live Writer SQL Manager Lite 4NT, yes really Notepad++ Google Chrome Camtasia Studio Skype Araxis Merge v6.5 TestComplete 7 Microsoft Office Mozilla Prism Silverlight Help & Manual

Microsoft Fiddler Paint.NET WindowClippings NDepend Google Desktop Terminals Privoxy SandCastle SandCastle Help File Builder NUnit Mozilla Thunderbird JungleDisk MacDrive CruiseControl.NET ArtOfTests WebAii and Automation Design Canvas Foxit SysInternals .NET v3.5 GotoMeeting

Ouch. Ok, so this is a good start and has me thinking I need to see if there are ways to run portable versions of at least some of this stuff to avoid having to install though the USB key isn’t always fun/easy to have attached. I wish there was an option to embed a USB key into the machine so it didn’t have to hang off the side.

This has me wondering if there are any alternatives? I can already see this is going to take some serious prioritization and time.

If you’ve taken a peek at Microsoft Live Mesh would you leave a comment here and tell me what the big deal is? And what the hell is Steve Gilmor talking about? Seriously, read that article if you can get through it. I get the feeling that top bloggers like Gilmore and Scoble use all this social networking buzz like a proverbial hacky sack devised to simply keep a conversation afloat. Scoble even goes so far as say

Microsoft’s fans are delivered to the promised land.
  - Robert Scoble (link)

Where exactly is this promised land? Seriously, that’s out of touch given Mesh’s beta status, numerous missing features and a nebulous definition. Heck, I’m an MS fan and I just don’t get it. I’ve yet to come across a clear description of what Mesh really is or will be? My initial experience completely sucked. The other night I sat down for dinner with Barry Kelly and Adam Markowitz (Adam, you’ve been linked to so get that blog up!) and neither had a good understanding of Mesh and these are bright guys!

I’m actually glad or perhaps even relieved it confounds Joel as well. For now, I’ll take that as a good sign.

Anyway, .NET started out pretty nebulous and poorly defined but the end result has proven extremely satisfying so there is hope. I wonder if Microsoft felt compelled to release something in these days of exploding social networks simply to remain relevant and in the conversation which, in this case, somehow seems to have worked. IMO it seems Mesh was released so customers could try to help Microsoft to figure out exactly what to do with this technology as a number of pieces seems like a rehash of existing services.

Now, had Microsoft announced a Windows based, Amazon-like, elastic compute cloud that would have been really interesting.

So this is a new twist...

I decided to take a peek at Microsoft’s new Windows Live Mesh and upon attempting to install the client for Devices got this error message:

 
Now, I don’t know about you but I’d be hard pressed to think of someone I know running Vista who hasn’t disabled UAC. Anyway, I switch my account to Power User and install the client which gives me this message hovering over my tray:

Pressing forward I click on the Mesh icon in my tray and see this:

Now, I recognize the little colorful shield next to Configure Live Mesh Report Desktop means it requires elevated privileges. I click the link and get the above error window again. So, I exit live Mesh, click on the Start menu, type "mesh" then right click to "Run as Administrator":

I return to the above Live Mesh window and click the "Configure Live Mesh Remote Desktop" link and:

So much for living on the edge now, back to work!

Anyone else have better luck?

Microsoft just announced the release of Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack which, albeit a bit late arriving, includes an impressive feature list:

• Look & feel support for...
  • MS Office
  • Visual Studio
  • Internet Explorer
• Visual Studio Docking
• Auto hide windows
• Vista theme support
• Menu/toolbar customization
• Shell management and more

If all this stuff is as good as it sounds it would appear Microsoft finally delivered on what Steve Teixeira said they were going to do. To top it all off the whole thing is a free download. I wonder if/when they’ll do the same for WinForms. Btw, I’d imagine this will make a few third party component vendors squirm a bit.

[UPDATE: April 10, 2008] Changed the wording of the last sentence to clarify that I meant "component" vendors based on Oliver's comment where I think he implies that I meant CodeGear which was not the case.

I’ve been working for a client where I’m connected to their VPN much of the day working remotely on machines located at the clients site. Occasionally, I’ll run into a Remote Desktop connection limit where I can’t login and infrequently, one of the logged on sessions will be my own. At that point, I’ll occasionally try using mstsc.exe with a /console switch to try and disconnect an inactive or unused session but in this instance I was getting this error:

The next thing is to try and logoff the session remotely using two Windows utilities, quser.exe and logoff.exe. With quser you can find out the session names of the logged on users and use that information in a subsequent call to logoff.exe to close the session.

At this point, I can successfully log back in using Remote Desktop or my current favorite remote client Terminals.

The other day I spent some time tweaking the performance of my MacBook Pro (my new work machine) and while I've been using Vista for over six months I'm just now coming to realize the cost its new Window manager (dwm.exe) particularly when using the Aero UI in terms of system resources. Basically, I've reached the conclusion that on this machine it's not worth the memory nor battery power for the pretty UI. Not only does it consume 15 times (you read that right) more RAM than the Aero Basic setting it really helps chew through the battery which up until now is something I wasn't concerned about as I wasn't a laptop kind of guy.

How does your mileage with Aero compare, is it taking the same toll on system resources?

The other day, like Dan Miser, I got a MacBook Pro (MBP) laptop for use at work. I'd shopped around looking for a similarly outfitted machine from Circuit City, Best Buy and Costco and didn't have much luck as they either came with a very slow 4200 RPM drive, too little RAM, 15" monitor or some other issue. Ordering a high-end XPS from Dell was going to four weeks to arrive and I started work on Monday. I'd been researching MBP's for awhile as a replacement for my aging home machine and hadn't really been thinking about it as a work machine but while out shopping at Valley Fair and I walked into the Apple store to check out the iPhone and I wandered over to look at the MacBook's. One of the really nice things about an MBP is there aren't a lot of options to choose from.

If you look online, the Apple website has one page of options for the 17" MacBook Pro compared to the 12 step (seriously, there are 12 steps) wizard on Dell's site for a 17" XPS laptop. The defaults for the MBP are really in my sweet spot where the Dell machine requires considerable tweaking along with choosing all their "recommended" options.

Why doesn't Dell default to their own recommendations? I just don't get that!

For example, the MBP defaults to 2GB of RAM while Dell recommends 2GB but defaults to 1GB?? Anyway, I asked an Apple store employee if they had variations of these machines in stock and they did so suddenly this was looking like a viable option. I went home, found a bunch of links where people posted very positive results running Windows on the MBP and now I'm running Vista on a Mac.

Setting up Vista was a total piece of cake. I downloaded Boot Camp, installed it and ran it. It prompted me to create a Mac Windows Drivers disk, asked me the drive partition size and prompted me to start the Windows install. It really couldn't have been much easier. After Vista installed I put in the drivers disk and a few reboots later and Vista with it's Areo UI boot up just fine. Anyway, Vista appears to be working great on this machine. I'll post an update regarding performance once I get some development behind me.

Oh yeah, there's also OSX which I'm now free to play with and leverage it's strengths.

On a different note I'm still watching this series of post's regarding the "Ultimate Developer Rig" from Scott Hanselman and Jeff Atwater.