Venu Anuganti Blog

If you are thinking too much about the hardware requirements to deploy Vista (especially RAM and GPU), the Microsoft Vista Hardware Guidance posted very recently should help.

If you want Glassy look of Vista, must go for the vendors listed from the same article, which supports Windows Vista Display Driver Model (formerly known as LDDM), else Windows XP-comparable desktop graphics experience will be provided. Currently Intel, ATI and NVidea has LDDM supported GPUs.

Did we know that the Vista OS has the new mail client called “Windows Mail” ? I too did not notice it until today till I watched the video on channel 9.

If you are excited to know how does this look and what features it offer … hmmm … do not worry…channel9 has the answer … becuase Windows Mail is nothing but the renamed version of Outlook Express … hmmmm …. and thats not all.

Watch the video on Channel 9 to know more about Windows Mail.

IE Blog Team, annouced the availability of Developer Toolbar today and it is available for download from Microsoft downloads section. For more information about its functionality, refer to IE Blog.

I just installed this toolbar on XP and it asked for a reboot after the install. First time, after rebooting, IE could not able to connect to any web sites. But started working back after reopening the IE. And at first, its a great tool for any web developer to have a look at any page to decide what the things were. Here is a screenshot of this blog with links, class and id information enabled (the loading of tags, paths are very slow, may be in RC we can expect the speed boost).

The Feed validator already listed few bugs in the website, may be this could be the reason why my RSS is not displaying the data correctly. I should spend sometime during the weekend to fix this by taking the help of the error listed using this tool. Good to go, and the tool is already helping me in fixing my coding

You can find a detailed review about the toolbar from Nicholas Rougeux blog.

Windows Vista Broke

So, thought of experimenting how the install works on my Vista, and the install process went quite well (even though it took ~1 minute to install it) and asked for reboot. After rebooting, and entering the LOGIN information, I get an error as shown in the screen shot below:

After pressing OK, returns back to LOGIN screen. I captured the above image using Remote desktop. IE Dev tool broke my vista. I dont know what to do now to get my VISTA working back.

Digital Locker is an online experience that allows you to search, purchase & download hundreds of software titles from multiple retailers. The Digital Locker then stores your product keys and purchase information allowing you to backup & reinstall your software from one safe & secure location

Windows Market Labs now features Digital Locker preview and needs your feedback on the experience and on any improvements.

One of my dream tool to try and use is this LINQ, Language Integrated Query introduced by Microsoft’s platform group at PDC. As am basically a Database Developer and till date from day 1 of my career worked only for database companies (Oracle, SOLID, MySQL, Certive and now ANTs) and supposed to be part of SQL Server team as well but denied the offer due to relocation to Redmond last year.

As LINQ extension to Visual Studio will allow me to write queries to databases and XML data from within Visual Studio, so its time for me to see how ANTs Database works on this platform. Will try once I get the new RC of Visual studio 2005.

Here is the interesting pointers that I collected so far for LINQ as a starting point:

• The LINQ Project at MSDN
• Announced at PDC: The LINQ Project
• LINQ feedback
• Linq underneath the covers
• LINQ: a post-modern revolution in software development
• 101 LINQ Samples
• More LINQ news items

Microsoft has unveiled several major new security features of the Longhorn Server, which is due in 2007. Here are the few:

• New security features planned will include an automatic patch check and a file system that can fix itself on the fly (”self healing“).

  And this server promises a lot to the customers who are in the edge of moving to Linux (or using it ) just for the sake of security holes from the Windows Operating system series. I am sure, if this clicks, most of the Linux users might migrate back to Windows due to its UI, application compatibility, ease of use and lot many to list that every one knows.

• The “secure-at-install” feature is designed to help secure new installations of specific server roles. When a new server is installed as a terminal server or file server, for example, the system will automatically find and apply security updates that apply to a particular role.
• New transactional capabilities in the Windows file system and registry will let administrators more easily roll back any changes in case of an error
• Another security feature planned for the Longhorn server release is Network Access Protection (NAP). This feature, originally planned for Windows Server 2003 R2, lets users perform a “health check” on PCs connecting to their network and block clients that don’t meet rules — for example, for patches and virus signatures. Windows Server 2003 R2 is an interim Windows Server release that is due by year’s end
  

Also, Longhorn server OS is broken down to smaller components or modules; at its core, the server will contain no graphical user interface and boot directly to a command prompt.

News source: Yahoo! News
[submitted by Kris]

Microsoft redesigned the Vista home page with lots of new information. It also provided the PDC05 screenshot gallery where in you can find cool screen shots of Vista, office 12, IE7, Digital Locker, Workflow and Expression (MAX is missing though).

Also, just happen to check Windows Vista UX Guidelines available for download from Vista Download center from Microsoft. This is a preliminary draft of the Microsoft Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines. These guidelines contain information on What’s New in Windows Vista, design principles, guidelines for controls, text, windows, and aesthetics. They will help designers and developers create high quality, consistent Windows Vista applications.

You can also find a white paper on How to build a great Windows Vista app from here.