I'm a happy user of Windows 7. I have been doing heavy multitasking with the 64-bit version of Windows 7 every day for the past 2 months without problems. Unlike my experience with Vista, Windows 7's sleep and resume functions actually work, so I hardly ever needed to shut down Windows 7.
Here are my favourite Windows 7 features that I used frequently over the last 2 months:
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Tags: email window, legacy application, e-mail window, Windows 7 Calculator, 64-bit, Window, Microsoft Windows 7, projector, built-In, Microsoft Windows Vista
As a registered Microsoft developer, I had early access to the final release version of Windows 7, which I installed on my 17-inch MacBook Pro. I chose the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate. I'm happy to report that it installed smoothly and worked great for the past three weeks.
Here are some tips and observations:
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Tags: Apple MacBook Pro, 64-bit, Apple Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate, Microsoft Windows 7, Apple Macintosh, Apple Mac OS, Cisco VPN Client, backup, Apple MacBook
I suffered one year of sleep, hibernate and boot problems with my Sony Vaio VGN-AR69GU laptop. The last time I applied a Windows Update, it caused my laptop to hang for 30 minutes while booting up, which is unacceptable for my work. I hoped these problems would go away once I migrated from Windows Vista to Windows 7, so I bought a new notebook to make the transition easier.
I chose to replace my 17-inch Sony Vaio laptop with a 17-inch MacBook Pro. Why did I choose the MacBook Pro over other PC notebooks like Sony or..... Read more »
Tags: Apple MacBook Pro, Sony Corp., Microsoft Windows 7, Sony Vaio, Apple Macintosh, Apple Mac OS, Apple MacBook, Microsoft Windows, notebook, battery
Twitter is a popular micro-blogging service that lets you post short messages (up to 140 characters, similar to SMS) so that your friends and coworkers (technically called "your followers") can receive real-time updates. You can post Twitter messages (or "tweets") via the Twitter website, SMS or through third-party applications.
Twitter is mostly used for sending social messages, but the promise of real-time message delivery to a large group seems useful for business use. Here are some ideas:
Simple knowledge sharing: It's tedious to write up an entire article to share your knowledge with your coworkers. For simple facts,..... Read more »
Tags: Twitter Inc., GPS, H1N1 Flu, Web Site, Internet, API, SMS, Twitter, mobile, knowledge
In many enterprise environments we work with a mix of Windows and Linux servers. If you had to build a large, complex enterprise application that runs on Linux, you would typically use Java. Now there's an alternative that's maturing and gaining popularity--you can run .NET applications on Linux, using the open source Mono runtime.
Running .NET applications with Mono on Linux is surprisingly easy. You use Visual Studio 2008 on your Windows PC to build your .NET console application and compile it into an .exe file. Copy the .exe file (say ConsoleApplication1.exe) to the Linux server and..... Read more »
Tags: Mono, Linux Server, console, Microsoft ASP.NET, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft .NET, Java, Microsoft Visual Studio, Linux, server
If you're building a small-scale, low-cost enterprise portal for sharing information and documents, take a look at Liferay Portal. Liferay Portal is a free open source enterprise portal with many collaborative features, such as:
-- Web Content Management, which enables you to edit portal Web pages in a WYSIWYG manner
-- Document Library for sharing files and documents
-- Calendar for scheduling meetings and events
-- Message Board for threaded discussions
-- Blogs, Wikis and Polls
-- And many more features: click here to read
Liferay Portal is developed in Java and works with Windows and Linux. I was able to..... Read more »
Tags: Portal, Open Source, enterprise portal, database, Apache Tomcat, Web content management, Wiki, message board, open source enterprise portal, Liferay Portal
Digital video has become common in the workplace. At work, I often create promotional videos, training videos and videos of company events and distribute them to my colleagues.
Have you ever received a video file from a colleague that you can't play? Try downloading VLC (http://www.videolan.org), the free open-source video player for Windows, Mac and Linux. It plays almost any video file, including AVI, MOV (QuickTime), FLV (Flash Video), MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4.
VLC even plays video files encoded with the new MPEG-4 H.264 AVC codec, which is most suitable for compressing large high-definition video..... Read more »
Tags: Open Source, video, tool, training
Nokia's Mail For Exchange lets you sync your e-mail, calendar, contacts and tasks between your Nokia phone and your company's Microsoft Exchange server over the mobile Internet. This is a free application from Nokia that works on many Nokia N-series phones. Click here to see the list of supported phones.
To download and install Nokia's Mail For Exchange, press the Menu button then select Download. Wait for the phone to download the applications catalog, then select Applications and choose "Mail for Exchange" (it may take a few seconds to appear).
You can edit your sync profile..... Read more »
Tags: messaging, Nokia Corp., phone, Microsoft Exchange Server, mobile, blog, Mobile E-mail, mobile Internet, e-mail, enterprise application
People who see me working on my notebook are often amazed with the speed at which I perform tasks by using the keyboard instead of the mouse. Here are the keyboard shortcuts that I use frequently:
Shortcuts for Microsoft Office and Notepad:
Ctrl-O: Open a document
Ctrl-S: Save the current document
Alt-S: In Outlook, sends the current email
Ctrl-A: Select all contents of the document
Ctrl-C: Copy the selected content into the clipboard
Ctrl-V: Paste the clipboard content
Alt-H, V, S: Paste Special in Microsoft Office, useful for pasting text without formatting and for pasting values/formulas/formats in Excel
Alt-W, L: In Word, changes the document view to Web Layout..... Read more »
Tags: Keyboard Shortcut, Window, Microsoft Windows Explorer, Microsoft Windows Vista, HTTP, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Corp., keyboard, Web
Google Docs offers free, feature-rich Web-based tools for editing and sharing spreadsheets and text documents. Using a Web browser on your notebook or netbook, you may sign in to Google Docs to create a spreadsheet or text document.
You may share the spreadsheet or document to multiple users for concurrent online editing via their Web browsers. I find this concurrent editing very effective for some tasks, like letting my team members key in their lunch orders into a shared spreadsheet.
Google Docs lets you view the spreadsheets and documents on a mobile phone (I tested Windows Mobile and Nokia..... Read more »
Tags: Google Docs, Spreadsheet, phone, mobile, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Web browser, cell phone, notebook, team, Google Inc.