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!

Tim posted about Live.com saying why he 'doesn't' like it here.

Here's my take on the topic.

While Tim sees 'no compelling reason' to use it. I think I've found a few...

I do agree with Sean that it live.com makes a great homepage; while this depends on how you customise it
here is why it works great for me.

Live.com allowed me to group a lot of my online usage in one place; which saves space and memory!

Here's how:

Every morning here are some of the things I tend to do online

- Check my email accounts
- Read blogs
- Read news from several news sites
- Check the weather
- View stock information
- Search for stuff online

Using live.com  I managed to group most of the above in one place.

And here's why.I dont have to open Sauce Reader to read blogs;open news sites in several tabs/browser windows to check latest news for each ..etc
I also dont have to open hotmail...

The advantage in the bit above that you get from live that I can see 'parts' of each section before I decide to read news so that if there's nothing new; then I just wont read...

So overall it does reduce work by having things grouped.

The things I dont like about Live.com
-------------------------------------
- It's slow; on broadband it takes more than a 5 or so seconds to load!
- The above become more of a problem with more usage! The more I like live.com the more I'll add stuff to it the slower it becomes :-(
- I also dont like the current UI - The previous one (where you could customise border colours was much better IMO
- I REALLY would like to be able to access ANY email account I have through live and not just Hotmail.

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...

 

Following this

Apple have just released a piece of software that allows people to run XP on their intel based machines.

All future versions of the Mac OS will include this software.

More details here

While working in Visual Studio yesterday I accidentally hid the tabs that show the open files, and couldnt figure out how I did that or how to reverse it. With a bit of looking around in the Visual Studio menus (after failing to find an answer in google) it turns out that I changed the environment settings from Tabbed to MDI.

To get this back to what it was the solution is, go to Tools->Options, click on Environment then General and select the tabbed option.

I read in The Press yesterday that ICANN will be meeting in Wellington from 25-31 March and that one of the things that will be in discussion is the registration of the .xxx domain extension. Apparently the Bush Administartion is trying to stop the realization of this domain extension. For the following reason.

"Over 6000 people made their objects by either E-mail or a letter. They are afraid the new .XXX domain extention will legitimize the porno industry."

I'm not sure what legal consequences the realization might cause but IMO having the extension available will really make things better. The porno industry will exist regardless of it being legal or not and content will remain available on the internet. So by having the extension made available, perhaps this could improve things in the following.

- A new law could be created to make it illegal to have adult content in any non .xxx domain
- Given the above occurs, all adult content will have to exist under the above extension
- Given that becomes the case, it will be very easy to block adult websites hence resulting in a safer internet for kids ...etc