Windows – Page 10 – Tom on Tech

Hey students, want free Microsoft development tools?

If your answer to the question is yes, than have I got a deal for you!

Microsoft has a program called DreamSpark. The DreamSpark program is a way for you as a student to gain access to Microsoft technologies that you can then use to create amazing applications for the PC, the cloud, and the phone.

Dreamspark includes some really amazing things such as:

Visual Studio 2010 Professional
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard
Expression Studio 4 Ultimate
SQL Server 2008 Developer Edition
Robotics Developer Studio 2008 R3
Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools
Virtual Lab training for SQL Server, Visual Studio, and Visual Basic
IT Academy Student Pass
1 Year free membership to the App Hub and Windows Phone Marketplace (Yes, FREE! There is no $99 fee for students to build and sell Windows Phone 7 apps.)

All it takes to join DreamSpark is sign up, get verified as a student, and download the software.

I highly encourage any student that wants to get hands on experience with Microsoft technologies to sign up for Dreamspark and start playing and creating.

To find out more about DreamSpark, visit http://www.dreamspark.com

Microsoft software now available to ASU students for free

Hello my fellow Sun Devils! This post is specifically for you.

As an ASU student you can get access to over 300 different pieces of Microsoft software for free. Yes, FREE! You’ll have access to such pieces of Microsoft goodness like Windows 7, the entire Expression suite, and Visual Studio.

All you need to do is be an active ASU student enrolled in a science, technology, education, or math class. (STEM classes for short as they are commonly referred to within the education community.) For a complete list of qualifying courses, click here.

To access the Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance (MSDNAA, for short), you’ll need to follow these steps.

1. Go to the ASU MyApps portal (http://myapps.asu.edu) and login with your ASURITE

2. In the search box, type in “MSDNAA” (no quotes) and click Search.

3. Click the “Download from 3rd party” button to login to the MSDNAA portal

4. Once on the MSDNAA Portal, you can either use the drop-down menu to select the software you are looking for or use the search box to navigate the portal.

5. Once you have chosen a piece of software, you’ll need to add it to your cart. Click the “Add to Cart” button. If you have multiple pieces of software you want to download, add them to your cart first, and then download them all at the same time. You’ll be prompted with a usage guideline agreement. Read the agreement and click the “I accept” button if you agree to guidelines.

6. When you are ready to Checkout and download your software, click the “Check Out” button

7. Fill out your name and e-mail address on the next page, and then click “Next”

8. You’ll be shown an confirmation page. To download your software, click the “Download” button

9. You’ll be taken to a details page. Click the “Download” button. It will ask you to download a small file to your computer. Download this file to your computer. This is how the software will be downloaded. Open the file, and choose a location to download the software.

10. Click Continue. Your software will download, and you can monitor the progress at the bottom of the download window.

That’s all there is to it.

Attention Dell Venue Pro Owners

If you’re a Dell Venue Pro owner and you purchased your phone from a Microsoft retail store yesterday, then you’ll want to read this.

As you may or may not be aware, there is an issue affecting Dell Venue Pro phones where they are unable to connect to secured wireless networks. Also, if you look at the sticker on the battery it says “Engineering Sample.” (I’ve included a picture below.)

From information provided to me by the Microsoft Store, they are aware of both of these issues, and have been in contact with Dell. Apparently there was a mix-up and these phones labeled as engineering samples were shipped to the stores. Dell is sending new batches of phones to the Microsoft Store, and the stores will be contacting affected customers to arrange to swap out the defective phones for new ones.

I was told that the phones should be getting to the stores either by the end of the week or first thing next week and Microsoft will also be including a 1-year Zune Pass with the phone swap.

Please note, this is ONLY for those Dell Venue Pro users that purchased a phone at a physical Microsoft Store yesterday.

Windows Phone 7 Launches in the USA

Today Microsoft launched Windows Phone 7 in the United States. I went to my local Microsoft Store to check it out and purchase a Windows Phone 7 device for myself.

I arrived at the store shortly before 9am and it was fairly empty, although there were a couple small groups in the front and back of the store being shown demos of Windows Phone 7 and its features.

Towards the back of the store, there was a table set up with coffee, juices, water, and some breakfast items and store employees were eager to talk phones.

I was debating between the HTC HD7 and the Dell Venue Pro and after talking with one of the store employees I settled on the Dell Venue Pro. As I was checking out, it was explained to me that the Microsoft Store had only received six Venues and that the Microsoft Store and Dell.com would be the only places to purchase the Venue Pro. I’ll have more on the Venue Pro in another post.

Setup with Windows Phone 7 was very easy. Asked to double check date and time settings, and then asked if I wanted to setup with the recommended settings or customize settings. I chose to use the recommended settings and within less then three minutes I was ready to go with Windows Phone 7.

Over the next few days I’ll be posting my thoughts and experiences with Windows Phone 7. So far, however, I am absolutely pleased with the OS and am anxiously awaiting the first update.

For those of you who are interested in learning more about Windows Phone 7, you can visit the Windows Phone website, or if you are in the United States, you can also go to the T-Mobile and AT&T websites as well. I’ve included some photos below of the Microsoft Store and the Venue Pro.

Windows Phone 7 Launch

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What’s new with Windows Azure?

Last week at PDC 2010, Microsoft announced some new features in Windows Azure. Here’s a quick rundown of those new features along with my take.

New Management Portal: Azure’s management portal is getting a much needed facelift and better integration. If you’ve used Azure at all, you’ll know that there are three different management pieces and having to go back and forth can be a pain. Well, that’s all changing. Coming soon, the new portal will be Silverlight powered and the three sites will be integrated into one. I think this is great, and I wonder why this wasn’t done sooner. Expect availability sometime before the end of 2010.

Admin Mode: I’m excited about this one. Currently, if you develop an application for the Azure cloud and deploy it and issues occur there currently are not many ways to diagnose the failure. Admin Mode, essentially Remote Desktop, changes things. With Admin Mode, you are able to RDP into your Web Roles and manage them just as if they were being run on a physical server in your own datacenter. Expect availability sometime before the end of 2010.

Full IIS Support: Currently when an application is deployed into the Azure cloud, it is deployed into a highly customized version of IIS. With the new Admin Role, Microsoft is extending Full IIS support. Meaning that you’ll be able to deploy your application into the Azure cloud with the same flexibility as deploying an app in-house. Expect availability sometime before the end of 2010.

Multiple Administrators: Right now, Azure is limited to two administrators per service account. Microsoft will now allow multiple administrators per service account. Expect availability sometime before the end of 2010.

VM Role: Microsoft will now offer the ability to create a Virtual Machine and host it in the Azure cloud. Windows Server 2008 R2 VMs will be supported first with Server 2003 coming later. Key caution is that these are not stateful VMs, they revert to the uploaded image upon restart. Expect CTP availability sometime before the end of 2010 and a final release in 2011.

Extra Small Compute Instance: Microsoft is now offering an extra small instance that includes a 1GhZ processor, 768MB of RAM, and 20GB of disk space, all for $0.05/hr. I think this is a great starter option and can be used for smaller scale cloud applications. Available now.

These are in my opinion some of the top new features in Windows Azure. There are many more, such as SQL Reporting Services support in SQL Azure, finalization of the SQL Azure Database Manager, and some updates to the Azure AppFabric.

For more information, I highly suggest visiting the Microsoft PDC website and viewing sessions related to Azure. Click here to visit the Microsoft PDC website.

Building icons for Internet Explorer 9 Pinned Sites

If you are a web developer and are looking to take advantage of Internet Explorer 9’s unique feature set, you’ll want to check out this tool. It’s called X-Icon Editor and was shown off today at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference in Redmond, Washington.

With the X-Icon Editor you can make icons that will stand out, amaze, delight, and satisfy. (Ok, well, I took some creative license there, but your icons will stand out.)

The editor supports importing from .jpg, .ico, .bmp, .gif, and transparent .png, live drawing or editing, online preview on IE9, and support for high resolution icons.

You can check out the X-Icon editor at http://www.xiconeditor.com

Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 6 Announced Today

Today marked the launch of PDC 2010, a two-day Professional Developers Conference held at Microsoft’s corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

At PDC 2010, Dean Hachamovitch, general manager for the Internet Explorer team announced availability of the sixth platform preview for Internet Explorer 9.

In September, Microsoft released a beta version of Internet Explorer 9, and today’s platform preview builds on the underlying platform that powers Internet Explorer 9.

New in this release are CSS3 2D Transforms, HTML5 Semantic Elements, and improvements to the overall developer experience.

Today’s release is targeted at developers and is not an update of Internet Explorer 9 for end-users. Microsoft has said that the next public Internet Explorer 9 release will be the release candidate but have not given a release date.

To download the Platform Preview, visit http://www.ietestdrive.com.

Internet Explorer 9 – Review

On September 15^th, Microsoft released the Windows Internet Explorer 9 beta at an event in San Francisco.

I’ve been using the beta for a while now and I can say that I’m impressed. Microsoft has made numerous improvements and it really shows through in this release.

The top features in Internet Explorer 9 are Hardware-accelerated HTML5, support for modern web standards, deep integration with Windows 7, and a new UI that emphasizes browsing over browser.

Internet Explorer 9 moves rendering of text and graphics from the CPU (processor), to the GPU (graphics card). What this means is that graphics will appear richer, text will appear clearer and crisper, and video will play smoother. I’ve included a screenshot example below to illustrate the difference between the new DirectWrite rendering engine and the GDI rendering engine that is used in older versions of Internet Explorer, as well as Internet Explorer 9’s Compatibility Mode. (The top screenshot is rendering with DirectWrite and the bottom is rendering with GDI.)

Internet Explorer 9 includes support now for HTML5, the next major revision to the HTML web standard. Features in HTML5 include direct embed support of video and audio, offline storage, enabling websites to become web applications, and drag and drop. Some of these new features work best with hardware acceleration, and Microsoft is taking hardware acceleration to a whole new level with Internet Explorer 9. Because Internet Explorer 9 uses APIs like Direct2D and DirectWrite, HTML5 websites feel less like websites and more like applications.

In the Internet Explorer 9 Product Guide that Microsoft published, they use the phrase “Your websites shine.” I completely agree with this statement. Because of the new user interface introduced with IE9, websites truly shine. IE 9 is, dare I say, one sexy browser. The browser has been simplified by combining the address box and the search box into what Microsoft calls “OneBox”, easier and clearer notifications, and hiding the unnecessary menu items. By simplifying the user interface, the focus is off of the browser and on the website.

If you’re a Windows 7 user, there is now more to love about Internet Explorer 9. With Internet Explorer 9 you can pin websites to the taskbar for easy access. Pinned websites open in their own browser windows and the browser and navigational controls integrate the site’s icon and primary color, improving the browsing experience.

Internet Explorer 9 includes Jump List support for Pinned Sites and makes it very easy to access areas of different websites that the website creator wants to expose.

Other features include tearable tabs, meaning that tabs can be moved to other windows or torn off and separated on their own, a download manager (finally!), and improved overall performance.

I am thoroughly impressed with Internet Explorer 9. The new user interface, hardware accelerated HTML5, and personal favorite, the integrated download manager. In my opinion Microsoft has done it right. Sure, other browsers have had download management and simplified user interfaces for a while now, but Internet Explorer 9 takes it up to the next level. If I was giving it a rating based on stars I’d say 5 out of 5.

If you are on the adventurous side, I highly encourage that you visit the Microsoft website and evaluate the beta today. You can find the beta by clicking here.

Introducing a More Beautiful Web

Today in San Francisco, Microsoft is officially unveiling Windows Internet Explorer 9, and releasing a beta version to the public.

Microsoft is touting Internet Explorer 9 as a release that is clean, simple, and enables you to focus on the content you care most about.

With Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft is introducing a new interface that puts you and your content first. Clutter has been reduced and the browser controls are being placed into glass. This means more room for content and a simplified browsing experience.

This is the first release to feature the use of the graphics card (GPU) for rendering graphics and text, using Direct2D and DirectWrite APIs. What this means for you the end user is that websites will feel more like native applications and provide for more immersive browsing experiences.

From a security standpoint, Internet Explorer 9 is shaping up to be the safest release yet. Internet Explorer 9 includes a new feature known as Download Reputation that uses reputation data to remove unnecessary warnings for safe files, and show warnings when a file is known to have a higher risk of being malicious.

Microsoft is partnering with renowned digital artist Joshua Davis, creator of the Endless Mural, Davis’ first project created in HTML5. You can learn more and contribute to the Endless Mural by visiting Microsoft’s Beauty of the Web site.

If you are interested in downloading and trying today’s beta release, you can either click the picture above, or visit http://bit.ly/IE9BetaDownload.

Windows Server Code Name “Aurora” Public Preview now available

Today along with the release of the August Preview build of Windows Home Server “Vail”, Microsoft has released the first public preview of Windows Small Business Server “Aurora.”

Windows Small Business Server “Aurora” is what I’m going to call the younger brother of Small Business Server. Aurora is designed to be the “bridge to the cloud,” with on-premise features such as network monitoring, remote access, PC backup, and cloud features, such as e-mail and collaboration through services such as Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Services Standard Suite (BPOS).

Aurora is designed for small businesses with less than 25 users and do not have the resources or budget for an SBS or even higher setup.

Aurora and Vail share the same code base so there is some feature overlap, and in the case of Aurora, the “home” features such as media sharing have been removed. Some of the features of Windows Small Business Server “Aurora” are listed below.

Active Directory integration for enterprise grade user and resource management.
Remote Web Access to files, computers, and applications created by third parties
Integration with Microsoft’s online service offering, BPOS
Client Connector and PC Backup of Mac OS X clients (must be using 10.5 or above)
Launchpad for quick access to common tasks
Drive Extender storage technology, first introduced with Windows Home Server v1, for easy upgrades and management of server storage

While this release is a public preview, it is not recommended that you use Aurora for production use as there is no support and there are some issues around server storage. I’ve listed those issues below.

There is a QFE available along with this build that addresses an issue where saving files to an Aurora server may fail when a large amount of data is present on the server. It is advised that this QFE be installed immediately after installing Aurora.
Storage Check and Repair is broken in this release, as under certain conditions, there may be data loss.
If a hard drive goes missing from the storage pool and you attempt to remove that missing hard drive from the storage pool, the removal wizard may inadvertently remove the wrong files from your server.

For the build number curious amongst us, this is Build 7657 and is available from Microsoft Connect today. The CRC and SHA1 hashes for the ISO have been posted below along with steps to check the integrity of the downloaded ISO.

Hashes for today’s release:

Volume label: GR0SAAxFRE_EN_DVD
CRC: 0x15C92BAA
SHA1: 0x83D7341DB9916145749A02B010981494227F1166

To run MSCDCRC against an ISO file that you have downloaded follow these steps.

Download MSCDCRC to the same folder that you downloaded the Vail ISO to. (Click here to download MSCDCRC)
Open a Command Prompt window and navigate to the folder from Step 1
Type "MSCDCRC InstallDVD.iso" (without quotes)
The integrity check will take a few moments to complete. After the check is complete compare the CRC and SHA hashes to the hashes posted below
If the hashes match then you have successfully downloaded the ISO