Random Rants & Raves

I’m updating my blog after a long time since I’ve been tied up in doing a large number of Windows 7 Application Compatibility workshops all across India with a number of Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) for their products. We’re basically testing out their products on the Windows 7 RC to see any issues that might surface and what they need to do to resolve them.

Most application run just fine on Windows 7. However, in the cases where there is an issue, it almost invariably turns out that the product has not been tested on Windows Vista and therefore it also fails on Windows XP. Vista and 7 have a tighter security mechanism called UAC that needs to be addressed in applications – and is something that many developers face problems with.

So here are two of the biggest issues that I’ve seen and their solutions: More...

Ok, I admit it – I was a skeptic about the choice of theme for the new Star Trek movie considering that it was to be based in the Original Series time frame and with new actors playing the iconic characters we know. How could someone else play Kirk, Spock, McCoy and all the others – each with their own distinctive personalities and styles of playing the character. I watched all the trailers and read all the reviews of how well the new Star Trek movie is doing – becoming the top grossing movie of 2009 so far, beating Wolverine, Angels & Demons and Terminator Salvation. I was still not convinced.

It was after I watched the movie that I realized I had been wrong – completely so. The movie was not just a great summer sci-fi action flick – it was Star Trek. As a full fledged Trekkie (see what I wore to the show – thanks Binesh), I loved the new movie. Here are some thoughts around it.

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True to the name of my blog, here’s a list of rants and raves about the new Windows Virtual PC 7 that I’ve been using the past few days for some Windows 7 App Compat labs for ISVs.

What I Like:

• Love that the install size of WVPC is only a little more than 5MB.
• The new “Virtual Machines” magic folder is a cool way to organize all your VMs.
• The USB support is a great feature – all devices that I threw at it (other than 1 set of devices being tested by a particular ISP manufactured by a Chinese company) worked!
• The Desktop Integration mode is absolutely great – it even lets you see full Aero effects within the VPC. (However, also see next section.)
• Networking just works!

What I Dislike:

• Closing the VM doesn’t give me an option anymore to save or discard undo disk changes. I need to SHUTDOWN the VPC and then Apply or Discard it from the settings page. Ugh!
• No drag-and-drop into or out of the VM.
• Desktop Integration mode seems extremely flaky – at least with a Win7RC guest VM. It works sometimes, it doesn’t at other times. Not sure what are the steps to ensure this mode.

I can live with the first two issues – there are workarounds or a different way of doing the same stuff after all. But the last one is a pain – I just don’t know what is it that I’m doing or not doing to get it working.

Well, the new search engine from Microsoft is now “live” – ummm, no I mean “bing” - “bing” is now “live”, ugh. “bing” is the new “live” and is “live”.

Ok, ok, what I mean is that www.bing.com is the successor to the www.live.com and is now active. Browsing to Live redirects to Bing and so do the Internet searches from Internet Explorer and Windows. Bing has a ton of new features that you can find out more about.

The only problem is that this is currently available only if your settings are for United States – English. If not, you see a bunch of different things. For instance, take a look at the screens below.

 
This is the Bing home page with “India” settings. As you can see, the auto suggest works quite well.

 
This is the Bing home page with US settings. Not just do you get an additional menu on the left, you also get hot spots on the image background with interesting information and ability to browse backgrounds!

 
A search result with India settings shows the information as well as a “News” link on the left.

 
The same search with US settings – notice the whole new set of filters on the left – Map, Hotel, Airport, etc. Clicking on any filters results to what you need as below:

 
The filtered search – quickly get where you want to go!

So if you want all the features of Bing, you need to set it to the US – English setting by clicking the language on the top of the screen and selecting it. Hopefully, the other settings will also get these features soon.