A couple of years back when Windows Vista came out I blogged about the several Windows Vista Shutdown options that were available back then after reading an article on Joel Spolsky’s blog.

It’s really great to see that a suggestion I had back then on a possible solution to this problem has actually been incorporated in Windows 7! I may not have been the only person who though of this but hey I did think about it and now it exists as a feature!

Here’s a snippet from what I wrote back in January 2007

“So Microsoft here is my suggestion, I would like to be able to do something like this, right click the sleep button, click a menu item that says set default action or something like that, and then choose the one that suits me. I think this way the problem that Spolsky mentioned of too many choices would be minimized and I would be able to shutdown my computer by clicking the button...” link to the full post is above.

Now if you are using Windows 7 you can change the default action of the shutdown button – a.ka. the power button to be whatever you want from the possible options by doing the following.

From the start menu right click on the word Shutdown as shown below then select properties

when the properties dialog pops up go to the second tab as shown below

In this example I’ve chosen restart to be my default option. Now after updating if I bring up the start menu again I see Restart as the power button name/action. Cool!

This is one of my best liked features so far in Windows 7 aside from the document grouping by application.

Here goes my first post in 2007. Happy New Year to you all.

I was recently reading this post on Joel Spolsky's blog about the number of shutdown options available in Windows Vista. Even though they are quite a few and can be narrowed down like he suggests. I think  I have a better idea!

I have been using Vista for almost a year now but for some reason I never thought about this. But for me I tend to shut down my computer most of the time if I'm not using it and to do so I always have to bring up the start menu point the arrow to the shut down option, and now I think this is a bit annoying because I hardly ever use the Sleep button or the Lock button which are available directly on the start menu without having to go the second step.

Now here's my idea. It would be nice to be able to set a default action action on the sleep button that suits everyone's needs and this way you can setup the button to do the action that most fits your needs using one step.

I'm quite sure that most people use one shutdown option regularly and the others less? So doing so would make me use the function I do regularly without having to click the arrow and see all options every time.

So Microsoft here is my suggestion, I would like to be able to do something like this, right click the sleep button, click a menu item that says set default action or something like that, and then choose the one that suits me. I think this way the problem that Spolsky mentioned of too many choices would be minimized and I would be able to shutdown my computer by clicking the button...

 

Vista has finally arrived!

See here and here

I'm finally back up and running again on Vista with only a few more software to install. I've gone through a PC rebuild recently mainly because I needed a new Hard Disk.

It feels good to be back on Vista. I'm on build 5472 which makes me one build behind now. It's hard to catch up with the downloads! and I decided I'll wait for RC1 before my next upgrade.

Here are some of my thoughts.

- Installation time felt a little long still. From start to finish took a little over an hour.
- The non AERO UI in this build is much more appealing than the older greyish one, however, it feels like it doest match well with the black task bar.
- The first time load was quite slow but otherwise it loads at reasonable speed.
- The 'Hour Glass' is gone! Say hello to 'The Ring' (thats what I'll be calling it!)
- Everything seems to be running just fine so far. However, I wasnt happy I had to restart the system after a couple of software installs.

It's good to be back running AERO, after over a month away from VISTA and mainly using Win 2k3, it feels good to see some cool graphics

More thoughts later.

So have you been using Vista for a while now and are sick of all those security dialog warnings from UAC. Well you can change that and disable warnings on things you know you executed hence reducing the habbit of auto-clicking continue. Mauricio posts on  how to do this. Nice...

I've previously blogged about having some trouble getting ASP.NET and IIS working on Windows Vista. I dont know if I was doing something wrong when trying to set them up, but I had trouble with Vista Builds 5308 and 5342. On the first I couldnt even get IIS to install and on the second I managed to get IIS setup but had problems with building and running ASP.NET 2 applications.

Well now I've got Windows Vista Beta 2 installed on my machine and I installed VS, WinFX Beta2 ..etc yesterday and it all finally works...

Time for some real playing with development on Vista.

Following on from my previous post about the new changes in Microsoft Office and Windows Vista. The post by Leonie proves my point. When you are soo used to something it is hard to change to something new.

So the question is, will this major change push people away from Windows? While it provided a good incentive for Nic and Leonie to consider a MacBook. I think the answer is still 'No'. For the normal user it is no because again the problem of learning something different. Now for Leonie maybe she already uses Mac so the transition will not be painful. But for others (someone who never or rarely used a mac) I think it will be less effort to learn the new features of Vista than to move away and use a Mac or Linux. Which leaves that user with 2 options (keep what I have now or go ahead and make the effort to upgrade).

As for corporates, I think it's only a matter of time till corporates invest in Vista and here's why : Microsoft's mainstream support is for 5 years, see here and support for Windows XP will end around 2009 see here. So by then Microsoft will not support XP and therefore it might be another reason why all corporates that use Microsoft software would consider the upgrade. So whether the user likes it or not, we have to get used to new ways of doing things, and if we will have to do it anyway then probably better to be ahead and do it now!

The other thing is the opportunities arising for the software sector, go read Rod's post on this.

I dont know if this is just me. But I ran into something yesterday that got me thinkinig. Now the new Windows Vista and Office systems have changed massively since their previous versions and part of that change is for the purpose of improving usability.

Now raises a few questions. I am sure that all of you will agree that the changes in the new versions are significant (I'm only talking about UI  stuff here) such as the introduction of the Office Ribbon and the getting rid of the menus thing.

I think this pauses a major problem for the average user of both systems (Resistance to change). Put it this way, after using the office system for instance for about 10 years or so. Would you be prepared to start to 'learn' a new environment (which will make your life easier - provided you do the effort) I think giving the new system to an office secretary for say will cause some frustration for a while before the person can get around to finding their way. Coz not only did the layout change but some functionality changed place too!

In Office 2003 to enter a header/footer for a document, you go to View-Header and Footer. I went into 2007 beta 2 to try and do this and hmm... couldnt find it, so had to look around and then found that it now residers under the 'Insert' tab. This comes interesting especially when you want to edit the header! You go to the insert tab again to select header and footer and then edit... 

If you are not sure whether or not your pc hardware can utilize the full potential of Vista. The hardware requirements have been specified here. When I first installed Vista a couple of months ago I was missing the AERO graphics as my Video Card did not support WDDM ... but I couldn't resist not having it showing so I went and bought a new graphics card. Hopefully not many people will need to do that!

It's been a while since I last posted but here I am posting again. I've deliberately delayed posting till I get something done (which I still cant do) but now decided to post anyway.

I've been using Windows Vista now since build 5308 was out and as I mentioned in some of my previous posts I am generally very happy with my experiences. Recently I've tried to setup WinFX, VS 2005 ...etc on Vista and here is where I am having some very annoying issues.

I can get WinFX working just fine on Vista but ASP.NET just doesnt like me, on build 5308 I failed several times to get IIS7 installed but after I installed build 5342 this has not been the issue and I ran into another problem. Windows Vista just wouldn't allow me to run aspnet_regiis even if I am logged on as Administrator stating an access denied error - anyone know how to fix this?

Also, trying to build any ASP.NET app in VS on Vista always returns a 'Error loading config file ....'

I was hoping to get all these sorted before I post, but I looks like this wont happen.

Any pointers appreciated.

And on a side note; I've recently started another blog on Geekzone which I aim to keep focused on security related topics so drop by there if you are interested in security stuff...

 

Not long ago I installed a copy of the Windows Vista Feb CTP sadly though, my graphics card was not good enough to show the aero graphics, I've been enjoying using Vista a lot lately and just couldnt resist not having the AERO graphics, so I went and got myself a nice new card, and finally, I can now see the AERO UI, very very nice!

You can even choose your favourite color theme, adjust the intensity, enable or disable the transparent glass ...etc

Very cool. Here's a screenshot illustration...

I've been using Windows Vista for a few days and here are some first thoughtsI like the new interface a lot. The L&F is very nice (tho no aero for me).

- The way things work now makes it a lot easier to do things.
- If the changes on how you get things done are confusing, you can switch to classic view in some things such as the 'control panel'. I was looking for something in the Vista view that at first was unable to find, then I found the option to switch to 'classic view' - Nice! It's very handy to be able to do things both ways till you are used to the new 'easier' way of doing them.

- The replacement of the 'File' menu such as the case in IE with the new tab like menus is great! This change just seemed to make a lot of sense, not hard to transion - or so I found - even better if this frustrates you, you can still select the option of showing the file menu.

- The tabs in IE and the thumbnail view are amazing.

- Some sites still dont render correctly in IE though, I was however very disappointed that macromedia.com was one of those!!!

- The thing that frustrated me most was the search feature, this has been made much much much more easy that it's too frurstrating... I tried several times to use wild cards in the search box but hmm... it seeems you cant, then was wondering so how do you get to a specific file ...etc. It's all in the menus available witht he search feature.

- I would have imagined you should still be able to  use wild cards, but cant figure how yet.

More on Vista in later posts

With the latest release of the Windows Vista CTP build this week. I was doing some recap with some of the changes made in the history of windows and one of the things that I didnt pay much attention to lately is the Windows 'start' button. Most of you will probably know that the start button was a big talk within HCI for it's inconsistency with user actions - clicking a button called start to shut down - end - a computer ... etc. With a bit of search I found the following link with all the windows buttons from Windows 95 to Vista build 5259 (2 builds back I think) but the button in this build is still the same. So by the looks of it, in the last 3 builds of vista, including the one released this week 5308 the word 'start' is finally no longer going to be present. I think this will make HCI guys happy now

For a recap on the start button in the past 10 years I've included the images I found in the link above.

Windows 95/98/NT 4	Windows 2000/ME
Windows XP Build 2250	Windows XP Build 2257
Windows XP Build 2410	Windows XP Beta 1
Windows XP Beta 2	Windows XP
Windows Server 2003	Windows Media Center 2005
Windows Vista Build 3683	Windows Vista Build 3718
Windows Vista Build 4008	Windows Vista Build 4015
Windows Vista Build 4051	Windows Vista Build 4083 (64-bit)
Windows Vista Beta 1	Windows Vista Build 5219
Windows Vista Build 5259-5308

Rod blogged asking about how startup programs slow down your machine when too many of them are there leading to your machine taking ages to start here.

I found the answer to how to solve this here

 

The next version of Microsoft Windows, which was formerly known as Windows Longhorn will be arriving in the second half on 2006 under the name Windows Vista.

See details here and press pass here

Personally I like the new name more, I am yet to make sense of it though...