Contents tagged with Vista
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Vista Default User Profile
I created a user and customized tons of settings, then copied that user to the Default user from the System control panel. However, some of my settings didn't take. For example, my start menu items and colors are all there, but I hid the Sidebar - only it still shows up when I create a new account and log in! Also, all those icons in the systray that I hid appear for the new user as well. The default home page in the IE7 (google.com) and the default search provider (Google) didn't work for the new user based on my new profile either - they went back to msn.com and Live Search. I want EVERYTHING that I did to be used for EVERY new user created on the box - not just a few of my customizations. Can anyone offer any assistance? FYI, the machine is not on a domain.
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Vista RC2 and Boot Camp 1.1.1
A few days ago I decided to create a new Parallels machine and install Vista build 5744. It installed fine and the OS works well, but unfortunately (as expected, since Parallels' support for Vista is "experimental" in their current RC build) the performance and feature set were far from where they could be. I deleted the whole virual machine immediately.
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2 + 2 = 1
I have given 12 or 15 webcasts for MSDN in the past, but more importantly I have benefited from certain ones that were available when I needed help in what I was doing at a particular moment. This has happened three times in the past six months or so.
MSDN has made the webcasts available for offline viewing by the general public, which is how I was able to get the help I needed when I needed it. MSDN has also chosen to make these on-demand webcasts available in the Windows Media format. This is understandable since MSDN was the one who produced the webcasts. They should be able to make them available in whatever format they wish. I am a loyal proponent of that philosophy.
Unfortunately I was not able to play these on-demand webcasts using Windows Media Player. None of them. This seemed quite odd to me, since I had downloaded and installed the latest version of Windows Media Player and had viewed other WMV and WMA files without any problem.
In short order I discovered the problem. Instead of using Windows Media Player on my laptop, I was using it on my desktop. As I previously blogged, my desktop machine became a Mac five months ago. Apparently, Windows Media Player isn't the FULL Windows Media Player when it comes to the Mac like QuickTime is the FULL QuickTime when you install it on Windows.
I realize that there are business interests involved here, but my question is this:
If a company makes a webcast free to the public in WMV format, and they make a player (again, free to the public) whose job it is to play WMV and WMA files, and then the free player fails to play the free file, what's the point?
I'm quite proud to say that I make my living as a software architect, writer, speaker, and developer using nothing but Microsoft technologies. We have a LOT to be excited about, particularly with the recent release of .NET 2.0, VS 2005, TFS, Atlas, etc.
I'm also quite proud to say that I am a Macintosh user. OS X is simply amazing. The stability, the features, the attention to detail, the user experience, etc. are all beyond even the beta 2 of Vista I installed last month.
I enjoy the best of both worlds. It's unfortunate that the little things - things like not being able to play a Windows Media Video file in a program like Windows Media Player - really have to interfere in an otherwise happy equilibrium.