Jan Tielens' Bloggings : Vista

Virtual PC 2007 Beta: Keyboard Problems (repeating keys)

jantie — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 13:24:15 GMT

Last weekend I took the challenge of installing Windows Vista and Office 2007 on my main laptop (Toshiba Tecra M4 Tablet). The installation of Windows Vista went quite smooth, the only problem that I had was an issue with my wireless network at home. I'm using a Belkin router which has a setting called "Turbo Mode" and it seems that Vista doesn't like that one. Luckily I also had a wired connection because it took a while before I figured that one out. :-)

For all my development tasks and my presentations I rely on Virtual PC images, my host operating system only runs Vista Ulitmate, Office 2007 and some tools (but no Visual Studio). So I had to get at least VPC running in a stable state. If you want to run VPC on top of Vista, the latest beta version is the way to go, you can find it on MSDN Connect. Unfortunately there are still some issues with Virtual PC 2007 Beta: when I entered some text once in a while one keypress would be translated into 5 to 10 key presses. Very annoying when writing code of course! In the Feedback section on Connect I discovered that lots of people are having the same issue (in fact it's the number one bug). The status of that issues (ID 225211) is set to "Resolved" so in the next versions it will probably be fixed, but that didn't solve my problem of course. :-) Luckily there's also a workaround posted by a user named DanP1. "Setting the "idle_thread" option in the options.xml file pins the CPU at 100% but does avoid the repeating key problem. Likewise using something like RightMark CPU to execute HLT instructions on idle also causes the problem to go away."

Since I'm running the RightMark RMClock utility to undervolt my CPU (to save some precious battery juice and to keep my laptop cool), I activated the "Run HLT commands when OS is idle" option in the Management section and the keyboard issue went away! If you are wondering what a HLT command is: "It's a command that replaces the idle cycles (which generate heat) with a suspend mode. In advanced CPUs, this command can be executed when a certain percentage of the CPU is idle." (source). The task monitor will show 100% cpu usage but the monitor of RMClock will show the correct values.

Vista Look for Office 2007 in Windows XP

jantie — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 07:38:00 GMT

I’ve been running Beta 2 of the 2007 Microsoft Office System on my main laptop for a couple of weeks. At first I was a little bit hesitant to install the Beta of my main machine since I actually need to get some real work done as well (sometimes I feel like a real Information Worker!). But so far I only experienced some minor glitches, so I can uninstall the old, trustworthy Office 2003 bits from my machine (I went for the side-by-side installation of Office 2007). Some of my colleagues are running Vista Beta2 as their main operating system but I didn’t dare to do that yet. But those guys have the really slick looking black/gray UI in Office 2007, old-fashioned people (like me) have the blue UI.

Last week I discovered that you enable the Vista look in Office 2007 even if you are running on Windows XP! You can go to the Word options window (or Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, … doesn’t matter since it’s a global setting) and in the Personalize section select the Windows Vista (gray) color scheme.

Tadaa, the complete Office suite will now run with the Vista color scheme! The screen shot below is Word 2007 but all the other client applications will use the color scheme. You won’t get of course the nifty transparency effects, but the gray UI looks great also on the WinXP Silver color scheme.

Update: for the people that can't find the options in Word: Mike posted the solution in the comments:
For those like me who couldn't find it, Word Options is ...
- Click on the icon at the top-left of the screen (left of the diskette icon - the pop-up says "File")
- Word Options is at the bottom !

U2U Training for Windows Vista

jantie — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 07:39:00 GMT

Man, I wish I could follow this training myself! I've seen Peter playing with all the cool stuff: WCF, WF, WPF, ... so much content. Maybe he's also doing some evening sessions for his colleagues. :-)

http://www.u2u.net/vista.aspx
EMEA Windows Vista Touchdown Full 3-day Training
Read course description...

Your trainer
Your trainer will be Peter Himschoot; Peter is .NET architect and trainer at U2U and has been nominated by Microsoft as Regional Director for Belgium and Luxembourg. Peter was elected by Microsoft to deliver the Vista training in Belgium and Portugal. He has already delivered several Vista sessions on subjects such as InfoCard, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation and Workflow Foundation. Last year Peter also delivered the Visual Studio Team System Roadshow trainings all over Europe for Microsoft EMEA...

Sessions:
6-8 June 2006, Brussels
14-16 June 2006, Brussels
21-23 June 2006, Lissabon

Register now
These training events are by invitation only for Microsoft ISV partners: Seats are reserved for ISV developers only as the content is made for the purpose of generating the creation of new products (design wins).

Are you interested to participate to one of those sessions, please send an email to vista@u2u.net (do not forget to mention your name, company name, email-address, telephone nr...) and we will nominate you for participation.

Pricing
Delegates will be sponsored by Microsoft; your registration fee is limited to 150 EUR.