Our Windows 7 party was yesterday, October 22nd, and we had a great time. I was up at 5:00 a.m., getting everything ready.  That entailed setting up the Windows 7 Media Center (taking it back to basics so I could demonstrate how to change and personalize things) and getting the food and goodies ready – including creating a “Happy Birth Day to Windows 7” cake.

We had snacks and drinks ready as people started to trickle in, and we nibbled and hung out by the pool for a while until all the guests arrived.

Once everybody got there and we got things rolling, I didn’t have time to take any more pictures, since I was doing the demos. We had a good mix of people who are already using 7 and friends and family members who had never seen it before. First I showed them the cool touch features on the kitchen computer, then I showed them how to organize music, photos and videos and how to watch and record TV on the main Media Center PC, including a short tutorial on how to get free HD (Clear QAM) channels even if you only have basic cable and how you can watch Internet TV even if your Windows 7 computer doesn’t have a TV tuner.

The real hit of the party, though, was the Microsoft Trivia Quiz that I made in PowerPoint. Everybody really got into figuring out the answers to Microsoft and Windows related questions, and with fifty questions, we went through four rounds and handed out prizes (both the prizes that Microsoft sent in the party pack – Windows 7 deck of cards and puzzle – and extra prizes that I got, including 4 GB USB sticks).

To those who didn’t show up: You missed out on all the fun!  And to those who were there, thanks for coming and for making our Windows 7 Launch party a big success!

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

We liked our HP IQ 775 TouchSmart kitchen computer but it was an older model and supported only single touch. Now Windows 7 is here and with it, multi-touch. Add to that the fact that we’ve been having intermittent but increasingly frequent video-related crashes recently, and it was time to replace it. When HP made us an offer we couldn’t refuse (several hundred dollars off the regular price) on a new IQ800 series model, we took the plunge.

Here’s a visual comparison of the two:

 
The old TouchSmart                                

 
And here’s what it’s been doing lately

 
This is what it looks like from the side/back

Here’s the new Touchsmart (note the sleek, thin keyboard and the thinness of the whole package:

 
The new TouchSmart

Big, beautiful and oh-so-sleek 

 
Here’s the HP MediaSmart interface

For a full review of the new TouchSmart, see the October 15 edition of Win7News, at www.win7news.net

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

I get a lot of good information from ZDNet and they have many IT journalists I respect and trust. That’s why it concerns me when they seem to be perpetuating “scaremongering” stories that are inaccurate or at least incomplete. Today I received the email shown below, one of ZDNet’s regular newsletters:

If you click on the graphic to enlarge it, you’ll see that it’s dated today (October 8) and you’ll also see a followed link titled “Windows 7 zero-day reported.” Naturally I clicked that one first, to see what this new Windows 7 vulnerability was. Well, happily, there wasn’t one. The link took me to an article that was posted a month ago, about the (by now infamous) SMB2 vulnerability. That article claimed that this was a “flaw in Windows 7” that could allow an attack which would cause a critical system error (BSOD).

Well, sort of. Later reports on this vulnerability – and there were many – revealed that although the Windows 7 Release Candidate is affected, the RTM (final code) is not. But that little detail is not in the linked article. So I can’t help but wonder how many people read this and thought that the version of Windows 7 that’s going to hit the shelves October 22 is going to come with this security flaw?

I don’t have an issue with ZDNet printing that story on September 8. No one had the full information at that time. But I do think it’s a little irresponsible to send out an Announcement on October 8 that links to that story when there are dozens, maybe hundreds of updates that tell the real story.

One more nit to pick here: The linked article notes that the vulnerability also affects Vista, but the ZDNet Announcements newsletter calls it only a “Windows 7 zero-day.” Technically correct, maybe, but completely misleading in that it makes it sound as if this problem was introduced in Windows 7 and is unique to that OS. Whomever let this one get through needs to be a little more careful. I knew when I clicked on it that this was a non-issue for users of the final Windows 7 code, but that doesn’t mean the average reader will.

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

I thought I’d recycle this old piece that I wrote for Swynk around ten years ago – with a few updates and additions to bring it into the 21st century.

This month brings another traditional holiday celebration, and with it another opportunity for IT pros to ask in puzzlement: "what's a holiday?" Sure, we're vaguely aware that most of our friends and family members who chose different careers have days on which they actually don't work – a concept we find intriguing, if a little frightening.

Some of us (this does not include Norm the Neonatal Nerd in the next cubicle, who has "Born to Network" tattooed across his left hand) even have childhood memories of engaging in celebratory activities involving egg-laying rabbits, turkey and dressing dinners, and fat men with white beards wearing red suits. These activities were performed manually, without a shred of electronic data passing across a cable or circuit board.

Most of us, though, have repressed those memories and can't imagine doing something that has nothing to do with bits and bytes -- and calling it fun. However, since all those around us are going to be dressing up in strange clothing and gorging on candy all evening a few weeks from now (something we do every day), it seems only fair that we come up with a way for high-tech workers to have a happy Halloween, without giving up our gadgets and gizmos. Thus, we offer here a few suggestions for celebrating:

1. Get a copy of Ghost. No, no, not the movie – the venerable Symantec software package. Create clones of all your Windows machines. Imagine these clones taking over the computer world, replacing the DNA of perfectly good UNIX computers and evil Macs with their own. Even destroying their own ancestors, wiping out all remaining NT workstations and Windows 2000 computers. Slaughtering millions of XP machines and devouring the Vista operating system that spawned them.

2. Pre-order a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate. You know you want to. Seven might be determined to make you part of the Collective, but who can deny that it’s mightily attractive? Just look at that beautiful interface and those Borg implants. Just don’t look at the price tag – that might be scary.

3. Having hardware hassles lately? Soundcard suddenly stopped working? Getting memory errors? Intermittent problems with your USB devices? It might be evil spirits at work. But if you're really, really brave, on October 31, at the stroke of midnight, open up the case and venture into the frightening tangle of wires and jutting circuit boards inside, in search of the dreaded Socket Creep. Sometimes add-on cards will slowly rise out of their slots just like the undead rising from the grave. Don't be afraid to take action. Slam them back into the holes where they belong. You'll be glad you did.

4. Find some thick coax cable and make a vampire tap into it. Enjoy the thrill of that first byte. And if you have any idea what I’m talking about, cringe when you realize that means you’re about as old as one of the undead.

5. Go phishing. Who knows what you might catch: celebrities’ passwords, Congressmen’s credit card numbers, the mothers’ maiden names of thousands of ordinary people. You might even get arrested and thrown in jail – another fashionable Halloween tradition.

6. Just stay home and watch the SQL. Bad Halloween movies are always worse the second time around and this is no exception. See an innocent child table get run over by a database engine, because of a corrupt driver who failed to merge (because he was distracted from fantasizing about an OLAP dance and hoping to have a one-to-many relationship).

7. Lock your doors and Windows, and if you must go out, be on the lookout for the Bare Metal Hypervisor. It’s big and bad and it’s planning to take over your network and turn all your operating systems into virtual machines that do its bidding. If you find yourself unable to function from the fear, practicing Xen probably won’t help.

8. Visit an Apple store. Watch all the Pod people wandering about, eyes glazed over, wires dangling from their ears, unable to communicate and oblivious to their surroundings. Hear them chant their mantra: “There’s an app for that.” Watch them mindlessly shell out big bucks for under-powered anorexic laptop computers that look so fragile a strong wind might break them in half. Warning: Don’t feed or try to pet the Leopards and Tigers (and watch out for the Cougars if you happen to look like the “I’m a Mac” guy).

9. Dig up an old copy of SATAN. Sure, it’s ancient technology but hey, the life of a network administrator is already hell anyway, so what do you have to lose? The System Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks (http://www.porcupine.org/satan/) may have been superseded by newer, cooler and even scarier security tools, but none of them give you quite that same thrill of living dangerously (although I know people who might argue that using security products from certain vendors does involve selling your soul to the devil).

And the number one way for IT professionals to celebrate Halloween:

10. Turn green. Everyone will applaud you for being in step with the latest environmental mandates, and no one will know the real reason for your sickly pallor is that you overindulged in too many (software) suites.

 
deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com