ObjectSharp

SQL Server – Dropped my default database

dan — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:14:38 GMT

Today I learned an important lesson about Sql Server 2005, don’t change your default database unless you absolutely have to. I set mine to DatabaseX and then I promptly dropped DatabaseX. When I tried to log in I got a nice error message

Cannot Open User Default Database, Login Failed

I didn’t setup the VM that I was using, so I didn’t know the SA password. I basically had no way to get back into the server. So if you ever find yourself in this predicament, execute the following from the command line:

C:\> sqlcmd -E -d master 
1> ALTER LOGIN [YOUR USER NAME HERE] WITH DEFAULT_DATABASE=master 
2> GO

That will reset your default database back to master and you can login again.

VSLab - F# Visualization

jlee — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 06:08:13 GMT

Visual Studio Lab (VSLab) exploits the power of F# and its interactive top level to provide an interactive environment similar to MatLab and Mathematica, in which you can easily create Add-ins and interact dynamically with them inside Visual Studio. Moreover, since F# is a compiled language, the final code can be compiled as a standalone application.
Goal of the project is to provide the basic infrastructure to turn Visual Studio in VSLab, and a number of addins (called viewlets) used to show data and support development of scientific based applications.

Take a look. :) I assure you that you'll be impressed.

How to get Exchange 2007 running on a virtual server

max — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:47:08 GMT

It's been a while since I blogged about something. Maybe it's because I've been busy lately, maybe it's because of I've spent a week at the TechEd conference (the best conference ever, by the way) and a week working on my tan at Daytona Beach, or maybe it's because I'm just getting old and lazy. But I digress...

I have recently had the "pleasure" of installing Microsoft Exchange 2007 SP1 on a virtual server running Windows Server 2008. I was eager to try Microsoft's latest and greatest product. Originally I wanted to install it on Microsoft Virtual Server, but unfortunately MS Virtual Server doesn't support 64-bit virtual servers on a 32-bit host server! So, to get virtual server running, I had to rebuild the physical server, which makes no sense to me whatsoever. Since I was willing to do that, I had no choice but to go with VMWare Virtual Server which fully supports 64-bit virtual servers on a 32-bit host server. VMWare's product turned out to be an excellent product with tons of easy to use features. Hopefully, Microsoft's product will soon catch up.

Usually, I would never recommend running Exchange 2007 virtually in the production environment, unless you have a kick-a$$ host server to run it or if you have fewer than 50 mailboxes. But if you have to - or want to - run Exchange 2007 on VMWare Virtual Server, you need to know that Microsoft does not support this scenario. Even though for the most part it runs fine, there is a problem with the way VMWare virtual adapters work with IP6, which causes the problem with Outlook Anywhere connectivity.

Fortunately, there is a great article on Microsoft Exchange Team blog that helps you to deal with that problem: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2008/06/20/449053.aspx . Essentially, you need to turn off IP6 on your Exchange server NIC configuration and in the hosts.conf file. You also need to make sure that your Exchange server can talk to Global Catalogue servers by configuring RPCProxy port in the registry.

There is also a great online tool from Microsoft that helps you troubleshoot any connectivity issues with Exchange 2007/2003: https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/

In conclusion, kudos to VMWare for the great product, and kudos to Microsoft for their detailed documentation to get things working, as well as providing great online tools for troubleshooting.

Another Reason to use Flash Instead of Silverlight

jlee — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 03:40:44 GMT

Flash content is finally searchable by two of the biggest online search engines on the internet, Google and Yahoo.

One of the biggest disadvantage of using Flash content for your dynamic content is simply because it is not searchable, and now with Adobe's new optimized Adobe Flash Player helping both Google and Yahoo to search and index Flash content, this means that there is no excuse left NOT TO USE FLASH on your web sites.

Note that Microsoft Live Search was not included in this partnership.

Now, for those enthusiastic about writing Silverlight content on the web, might I ask, what is Microsoft going to do about this? Both in its Live Search, making it competitive with Google and Yahoo to search Flash content, and also making Silverlight content searchable too. This is the biggest advantage Adobe Flash has over Silverlight now, and if Microsoft doesn't do anything about it, the web will not be convinced about Silverlight, regardless of the amount of ~~bribing~~ promoting they can and will do.

Adobe, we love you and thank you.

To those Silverlight enthusiasts, please get your facts right about Adobe Flash before even bashing Adobe Flash technology. You know who you are.

Whither AI?

robburke.NET — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:56:46 GMT

I was asked a few weeks ago why Artificial Intelligence over the past few decades has been such a “failure”, meaning mostly that it isn’t seen to be living up to its great cognitive expectations. James Gaskin at NetworkWorld gives a well-referenced response very similar to the one I gave then, which went like: Essentially, whenever some [...]...(read more)

Guaranteed Laugh

dave — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:43:00 GMT

Want a good chuckle?

Goto Google Maps
Get Directions from Sydney Australia to Los Angeles CA (For those with little or no time)
Read number 6 on the directions.

Blaming the User

jlee — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:14:16 GMT

Is it better to have a user implicitly learning how an application work easily by discovery, rather than explicitly learning how an application works through training and books?

If something goes wrong with an application, is it really a "problem between the keyboard and the chair"? Or is it because the "User Experience" isn't sufficient or consistent to assist with implicit learning?

Sometimes people in the "Computer Industry" need to think more about the user and how to ease their pain, instead of blaming them and create more pain for them.

I'm always amazed when a user tells me "It just works! Amazing!" instead of "How do you do this?". That's "User Experience" for you.

Think about it.

This is my rant today.

XAML and Obfuscation

robburke.NET — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:00:06 GMT

I normally don’t cross-link WPF articles unless sooper-excited because I figure all of us in the WPF-o-sphere are reading each other’s blogs. But I was particularly interested on Rudi Grobler’s recent look into XAML obfuscation because I’ve encountered obfuscation issues from a couple of sides in a recent project. To sum up, XAML obfuscation is a [...]...(read more)

Links on F# Quotation

jlee — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:01:52 GMT

These are a few links I want to read later on F# Quotations. Quotations are similar to expression trees in C#, but more powerful.

F# - Simple quotations transformation

Practical F# Parsing: The Abstract Syntax Tree

F# Quotations Samples on CodePlex

F# quotations visualizer - reloaded!

Some Q&A on F# Quotations and LINQ

MVP Insider - Q & A with Justin Lee

jlee — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:39:21 GMT

Well, it seems this month I'm up for being interviewed. Here's the link to my interview.

Aspiring Architect - Web cast series

Barry Gervin — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:47:55 GMT

With all this heat, I almost wrote "perspiring". Why not beat the heat, and stay cool inside while watching these web casts from MS Canada targeting aspiring architects. With the predicted shortage in IT in the upcoming years, we're sure to see an influx of junior resources into our industry. This is a good opportunity for developers to transition into architecture roles to leverage their existing skill set.

The Aspiring Architect Series 2008 builds on last year’s content and covers a number of topics that are important for architects to understand. So it would be a great idea to watch last year's recordings if you haven't already. Links are available here: http://blogs.msdn.com/mohammadakif/archive/tags/Aspiring+Architects/default.aspx .

Upcoming sessions are as follows:

June 16^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Introduction to the aspiring architect Web Cast series

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380836&Culture=en-CA

June 17^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Services Oriented Architecture and Enterprise Service Bus – Beyond the hype

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380838&Culture=en-CA

June 18^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – TOGAF and Zachman, a real-world perspective

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380840&Culture=en-CA

June 19^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Services Oriented Architecture (Web Cast in French)

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380842&Culture=en-CA

June 20^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Interoperability (Web Cast in French)

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380844&Culture=fr-CA

June 23^rd , 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Realizing dynamic systems

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380846&Culture=en-CA

June 24^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Web 2.0, beyond the hype

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380848&Culture=en-CA

June 25^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Architecting for the user experience

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380850&Culture=en-CA

June 26^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Conclusion and next steps

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380852&Culture=en-CA

Follow up on Entity Framework talk at Tech Ed 2008

Barry Gervin — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 03:26:00 GMT

Last week at TechEd I gave a talk about building data access layers with the Entity Framework. I covered various approaches from not having a data access layer at all, to fully encapsulation of the entity framework - and some hybrid approaches along the way.

I gave the first instance of this on Tuesday and then a repeat on Thursday.

To those who saw the first instance of this on Tuesday....

you unfortunately got an abbreviated and disjointed version for which I apologize. After I queued up my deck about 15 minutes prior to the talk I left the room for a minute while people filed in and while I was out, one of the event staff shutdown my deck and restarted it running from a different folder on the recording machine and didn't tell me. I was about 1/3rd into my presentation when I realized that I had the wrong version of the deck. At the time, I had no idea why this version of the deck was running so I wasn't going to fumble around looking for the correct one. Given a change in the order of things - I'm not sure if changing decks at that point would have made things better or worst. I still had no idea why this had happened when I gave the talk again on Thursday but when the same thing almost happened again - this time I caught the event staff shutting down my deck and restarting it again (from an older copy). Bottom line, sorry to those folks who saw the earlier version.

The complete deck and demo project is attached. It is a branch of the sample that is part of the Entity Framework Hands on Lab that was available at the conference and which is included in the .NET 3.5 Enhancements (aka SP1) training kit. You can will need the database for that project which is not included in my down.

Download the training kit here.

Live vs. Google: My Personal Verdict

Barry Gervin — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 02:21:15 GMT

About a month ago, Live.com released an update to their search engine and I took it upon myself to write down my observations of Live as compared to Google. Although the features seemed to be a pretty good leap in many areas, I concluded that the only way to see which one was better was to change my default engine to Live.com for a week or two and give it a try.

Well, it's been a month now and Live.com is still my search engine. It's not like I didn't stop using Google however. I would say that perhaps 10% or less of the time, I felt frustrated by not finding what I was looking for on Live.com and cross-searched Google.com. Of those cases, I would say only half of the time, I found something useful on Google.com that wasn't found on Live.com. These aren't hard numbers, just an anecdotal feel of my experience. When Google.com was my default search engine, my failed searches were likely in the same order as was Live.com's ability to result in something useful where Google.com did not.

So the verdict for me is that in the area of core test searches, the differences were negligible. At no time did I feel that live.com's performance was slower and I always found the image, video & map search to be superior in Live.com. These features alone for me are reason enough to leave Live.com as my default for the time being.

ObjectSharp is going to experiment with some Live.com ads. I'm not expecting any kind of serious traffic to come through ads on Live.com so this is mostly a research project to get familiar with their ad engine.

Going virtual with your domain controllers

max — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:26:36 GMT

If you plan to convert your physical domain controllers into virtual servers, you probably know there is a lot to consider prior to the move. But what you might not know is that Active Directory doesn't like being restored from the image, which what all physical-to-virtual conversion tools (Acronis, Ghost, etc.) are doing. It doesn't matter if you are trying to convert your physical server to a virtual or if you're converting your server from one virtual format to another (for example, Vmware-to-VPC, or vice versa).

After the conversion, replication process breaks and the error starts appearing in the log files "The source server is currently rejecting replication requests"; the same error pops up when you try to run dcpromo command. Obviously if the problem is not resolved within 60 days, that domain controller will get tombstoned by Active Directory, which is not very good. Most of the websites suggest to forcibly remove that domain controller from the Active Directory by running dcpromo / forceremoval and then cleaning up your schema using metadatacleanup of ntdsutil. To me this solution is not only too drastic, but often is not an option because it might cause more problems than it will resolve.

After an extensive research I have finally found a solution that has worked for me. The solution is actually pretty simple: you simply need to enable inbound and outbound replication on the "faulty" domain controller.

To enable inbound replication, run:

repadmin /options SERVERNAME -disable_inbound_repl

To enable outbound replication, run:

repadmin /options SERVERNAME -disable_outbound_repl

And the error disappears J

Essential MS Subscription for Mac-aphile Designers

Barry Gervin — Thu, 29 May 2008 06:08:11 GMT

Are you a design & mac user in a Windows Development Shop? Are they eyeing your Mac and measuring your desk to outfit you with a new PC? Over your cold dead corpse I bet. No worries. You owe it to yourself to check out the Microsoft Expression Professional Subscription. Yeah, you could run Bootcamp but then you'd loose the OS X & Quicksilver goodness while you paid the bills.

This annual subscription's most important piece of software isn't made by MS: Parallels Desktop for Mac. Parallels will let you run Windows Vista or Windows XP (also included with the subscription) without leaving OS X - better yet with Expose, your desktop will be unified. And with the SmartSelect feature, you'll be opening Mac or Windows files in the OS of your choice automatically. Edit XAML files in Expression Blend (also include) in Windows, but open JPEG's in Photoshop in OS X - regardless from which OS you launched the file from. Very cool.

Here's the complete list of included software

Expression® Studio
Which includes Expression Web for aspx/css/html stuff, Blend for WPF/Silverlight/XAML stuff, Expression Design for illustrations & graphics, Expression Encoder for media encoding, and Expression Media for asset management.
Visual Studio® Standard
Just in case the .NET guys make you check stuff into source control.
Office Standard
Office Visio® Professional
For those workflow diagrams and ugly mock ups that the dev guys send you.
Windows® XP
Windows Vista® Business Edition
Virtual PC
Parallels Desktop for Mac

And just to make things even easier, they've already included some pre-configured virtualized servers in the box as well - that will save you some time. Current pricing is about $1000 USD for the first year. This won't be available for a few weeks, but visit here to learn more.

And if you're trying to learn more about WPF and Silverlight, check out our new Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) for Developers & Designers course. Rob Burke, our User Experience (UX) practice lead talks more about this course here. And finally, check out Rob Windsor's post on our Summer Seat Sale to learn how to save up to $500 on our training this summer.

WPF for Developers and Lead Designers Course

jlee — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:51:26 GMT

Rob Burke is teaching a WPF training course through Toronto-based consultancy ObjectSharp. The course is called “Windows Presentation Foundation for Developers and Lead Designers,” and, as the title suggests, it offers a hands-on experience designed to give developers and lead designers the knowledge, background, tips and references they’ll need to build smart client applications using the Windows Presentation Foundation.

After enjoying the process of training a team of developers and designers to use WPF, this course is the result of turning that material into a course that we could offer here.

The inaugural course offering is currently scheduled for August 13th-15th. If you’re interested in taking part, please find more information about the course on ObjectSharp’s site. Also, if August 13th is too long for you to wait, or you’re interested in an on-site course, please contact Julie James, ObjectSharp’s Training Manager.

WPF for Developers and Lead Designers Course Launch

robburke.NET — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:54:42 GMT

I’m excited to be launching a WPF training course through Toronto-based consultancy ObjectSharp. The course is called “Windows Presentation Foundation for Developers and Lead Designers,” and, as the title suggests, it offers a hands-on experience designed to give developers and lead designers the knowledge, background, tips and references they’ll need to build smart client [...]...(read more)

Pex 0.5 Released

jlee — Mon, 26 May 2008 00:16:25 GMT

What is Pex?

Pex generates test inputs that cover all, or at least many of the corner cases in your .NET code. These test inputs are plugged into parameterized unit test that you write. The result is a small unit test suite, where each unit test calls the parameterized unit test with particular test inputs. There is a great picture on the main Pex page that illustrates this process.

Pex supports other unit test frameworks since the unit tests that Pex generates can be executed by other unit test frameworks without Pex. Pex comes with support for MSTest, the unit test framework of Visual Studio, out of the box. For support for other unit test frameworks, please look at the Pex Extensions project.

Parameterized unit tests have been around for quite some time already, under several names -- row tests, data-driven tests, theories, etc.

What is really unique about Pex is that it analyzes your .NET code, instruction by instruction, to understand what your code is doing. Then, in a fully automatic way, Pex computes relevant test inputs that trigger the corner cases of the code. When you write assertions, Pex will try to come up with test inputs that cause an assertion to fail.

Feedback

To ask questions, get help, or just give feedback, please take a look at our mailing lists.

Links

Homepage: http://research.microsoft.com/pex

Download: http://research.microsoft.com/pex/downloads.aspx

Nikolai Tillmann's Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/nikolait

Peli de Halleux's Blog: http://blog.dotnetwiki.org/

Release of Microsoft Source Analysis for C#

jlee — Mon, 26 May 2008 00:05:55 GMT

Source Analysis, also known as StyleCop, analyzes C# source code to enforce a set of best practice style and consistency rules.

Source Analysis for C# can be downloaded here: https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=sourceanalysis.

Source Analysis Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/sourceanalysis

DevTeach Toronto - in the bag - see you next year...

Barry Gervin — Fri, 23 May 2008 21:01:51 GMT

Well it's just 1 week since DevTeach came to Toronto for the first time. What a great conference and it was my pleasure to be involved as a speaker, track-chair and attendee. The conference organizer Jean-Rene Roy just sent me a note with some of the comments from the overall evaluations. If you didn't attend this year, here's some reasons why you may want to next year:

Great conference! I especially enjoyed the up and personal nature of the conference. I was able to talk with the presenters. I spent most of my time at the agile track. Having topics that are rarely dealt with at user groups was a bonus. I enjoyed all the sessions I attended. The venue was great and the attention to little details, e.g., afternoon ice cream was appreciated.

Jean-René, thank you SO MUCH for bringing DevTeach to Toronto. It was fantastic and I will go again. Your tech chairs did a great job choosing sessions for each track. While I especially enjoyed the Agile sessions, I attended something from each track and the variety was good.

An outstanding conference! All the speakers I saw were terrific — affable, down-to-earth, talented, incredibly knowledgeable. The sessions were entertaining as well as in-depth and honest — no BS, no company line. I also met many people and had many interesting and thought provoking discussions outside the classrooms, and came away with new knowledge, ideas and inspiration. “Training you can’t get anywhere else” is an understatement.

Most of the speakers tell us 'why' and 'so what' instead of 'how'. This is what I expected and is good for developer in the long run. Please let speakers know this is good.

This is an excellent conference. I feel I updated my skills intensively effectively during these 3 days. I believe it will become a key event in .net area.

DevTeach was an amazing experience, especially for first timers. It was a good way to network with people in the industry, learn new techniques, make friends and bring home stories.

This was my first DevTeach and if I have any say in the matter, won't be my last. I had a great time, the sessions that I attended were top notch for the most part. Jean-Rene and his team deserve a hugh pat on the back for their efforts. What-ever they're getting paid - isn't half enough

What can I say. You'll definitely see me next year. I hope its still in Toronto. This was one of the BEST training conferences I've been on in quite some time. The "take-away's" from all the sessions were astounding. My mind is still spinning. Anyway, great job, nice prizes, great orgranization, absolutely no negative thoughts or comments.

This was a fantastic experience, MUCH better information than what I got from TechEd last year. TechEd's information was very visionary, things I can talk about now but not use for a few years out. DevTeach taught me things and gave me ideas I can use NOW! I LOVE THAT! The presentators were awesome, professional and very gifted at presenting their material. The only suggestions I would make are to have hot food every day (cold cut sandwiches are fine, even suggested for people at the Pre/Post Con but not for the actual event). More evening sessions (like at TechEd). I would have liked to have seen a presentation on MSBuild. PS You should have a value for the drop down of NA for hotel and accomodations if you didn't stay at the hotel.

QuickSort in Functional C#

jlee — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:44:30 GMT

Here's a very simple QuickSort algorithm from Wikipedia written in a very Functional way of C#. Notice that it looks very close to the pseudo-code algorithm shown in Wikipedia. The pivot used is just sequence.First(). You can replace the pivot by some random position if you wish.

   1:          public static IEnumerable<T> QuickSort<T>(this IEnumerable<T> sequence) where T : IComparable<T>

   2:          {

   3:              return !sequence.Any()

   4:                         ? sequence

   5:                         : ((from x in sequence.Skip(1)

   6:                             where x.CompareTo(sequence.First()) < 0

   7:                             select x)

   8:                               .QuickSort()

   9:                           ).Concat(new[] { sequence.First() }).Concat((from x in sequence.Skip(1)

  10:                                                                        where x.CompareTo(sequence.First()) >= 0

  11:                                                                        select x).QuickSort());

  12:          }

I tried making this more fun by using the Fix Point Generator which I mentioned previously, and converted that code into a Func<IEnumerable<T>> instead. Here's the code.

   1:          public static Func<T, T> Fix<T>(Func<Func<T, T>, Func<T, T>> F)

   2:          {

   3:              return x => F(Fix(F))(x);

   4:          }

5:

   6:          static void Main()

   7:          {

   8:              var quicksort = Fix<IEnumerable<int>>(

   9:                  qsort =>

  10:                  sequence =>

  11:                  !sequence.Any()

  12:                      ? sequence

  13:                      : qsort(from x in sequence.Skip(1)

  14:                              where x.CompareTo(sequence.First()) < 0

  15:                              select x)

  16:                            .Concat(new[] { sequence.First() })

  17:                            .Concat(qsort(from x in sequence.Skip(1)

  18:                                          where x.CompareTo(sequence.First()) >= 0

  19:                                          select x)));

  20:          }

This is a perfect example of how you can use the Fix Point Generator to create your recursive functions on the fly. If you want to make it reusable with an extension method, you can easily convert it to the extension method, or a normal method. Personally I feel that using the Fix Point Generator is more intuitive and slightly more readable as oppose to the extension method way of doing things.

One point to note is that the "Concat" extension only accepts an IEnumerable<T> and not a single item. You can solve this by the above, "new[] { sequence.First() }" which is a cleaner way if you don't want to write your own extension method (which you could too).

Crazy stuff eh?

Status Update on Toshiba Portege M400 Tablet + Vista

Barry Gervin — Fri, 23 May 2008 13:41:21 GMT

It's been awhile since I've posted any updates on my Toshiba M400. Over the past year, my experience running Vista has improved greatly and I've been surprised with my efforts on extending the useful life of this machine. For the record, it's > 2 years old for me now which is starting to breaking records for me now - I normally can't go much more than a year without an upgrade. The bottom line is with things the way they are now - I'm quite happy with the machine and haven't really envied anything on the market.

I'm running the latest 3.60 bios which is pretty stable now, having not been updated since it's release in July 2007. Although I can't get to page 3 in the bios settings (it locks up when I do that) things are working quite well.
I upgraded to 4Gb of Ram. A little over a year ago I looked into this and it was going to set me back $1500+. This past march, it only cost $100. This probably had the single biggest improvement on usability in Vista. I was surprised that going into vista's Computer properties screen - it actually showed 4gb - and yes, running under 32-bit. I could tell in Task Manager that I was only getting 3.25 - but I was still surprised. At some point a windows update came through and now it only shows, correctly, 3.24gb. The bottom line here though is that for $99 - nobody should hesitate - the pay back was huge in terms of responsiveness.
I also upgraded the internal wifi from 802.11g to 802.11n. This installation is not much more difficult than replacing the Ram and involves removing the keyboard which is quite simple. The only tricky part is getting those bloody antennae wire's snapped onto the circuit board. This upgrade cost $40 for the intel 802.11n card and installed in less than 30 minutes. I also upgraded my home router in conjunction with this upgrade. The throughput improvement was huge. My signal strength also improved greatly. My home office is in the basement (where my router is) and when I'm not in there, our family room is 1 floor up and somewhat diagonal from the home office. There are 2 or 3 walls through a stairway and a floor between where I normally sit and the router so signal strength was always marginal. No problems now and speed is at least doubled.
I had purchased 2 100gb sata drives (7200rpm) to replace the internal drive and to put in the HDD Adapter tray. This is great for running VPCs. I've just ordered a new 7200rpm 320gb drive since I was finding 100gb a bit tight. I was hoping that performance of SSD would have come along faster (and the price too) but I'll have to wait for that. New drive is still a week or two away.
I had my two laptop batteries refurbished at Ink Jet Sales. They take your batteries - put in new cells, for $85 and a 1 week wait. I wouldn't say they are as good as when I first bought them, but they are pretty darn close. Compared to the $200 Toshiba wants for new ones, this was a good deal. I also purchased an external toshiba charger that can charge 2 batteries externally from the laptop.
As you may have recalled, my CMOS battery had mysteriously died and my clock was never right. This happened around the upgrade to Vista so I was a bit suspicious. It's amazing how many bad things happen when your clock is a day or two old. Many servers won't let you connect to them, VPCs get all wonky, etc. It was really hard to find a replacement battery - and this being a US laptop, living in Canada - the warranty fix was going to take close to a week. I could never do without my laptop for that long. Yesterday however, a battery showed up and our trusty IT magician, Max, took apart the laptop and got it back together. The RTC battery is nestled under the motherboard so he literally had to take apart everything. The step-by-step instructions here were invaluable. It took him about an hour and all things went smooth. I wasn't 100% convinced it was the battery that was causing the clock issues - but 24 hours later and it seems to have been the fix that was required. A nice side effect is that this repair requires the LCD and the hinge to be disconnected. After reassembly - the hinge is now as tight and firm as it was the day I bought it. It had become a bit loose over the past couple of years.
I picked up a new 28" monitor a few weeks ago for the home office and had not stopped to think if the M400 could drive the 1920 x 1200 resolution until I started unpacking it. I hadn't used an external monitor for over a year and the last time - I couldn't get it to drive the 1600x1200 resolution of the monitor I had at that time. A bios update fixed that - but I still couldn't run Vista with Aero Glass when both displays were active. Much to my surprise however is that it has no problems with the full 1920x1200 resolution with Aero Glass. I suspect that new graphics drivers from Intel + the left over ram between the 3.25gb used by Vista and the 4Gb available has something to do with that.

All in, I'm very content with this laptop these days. Performance is great and you can't beat the package size. I still have troubles finding a 12.1" laptop with 1400x1050 resolution these days. Heck, I have troubles finding this in 13 and 14 inch models as well.

I use just about all of the features of this machine on a day to day basis including the tablet functionality and I've fallen in back in love with this machine.

My only complaint - and it's my fault, is that the screen is quite scratched up and pitted these days. If somebody has a M400 with the 1400x1050 laptop that isn't working (but the screen is in good shape) I'd love to buy it off you. I know a lot of MS employees have (or had) this machine - so if any of you have one lying around and they want to get rid of it - drop me a note at bgervin@objectsharp.com.

Enable Detailed Error Messages in MOSS 2007 and WSS3.0

max — Tue, 20 May 2008 15:53:54 GMT

To get more detailed messages in MOSS 2007 and WSS3.0 during development process, user can enable debugging in the web.config file for the SharePoint web application:

And:

This should make development process so much pleasant and more efficient, by getting rid of "An unexpected error has occurred" error, which is useless to the developers.

Note: It's not recommended to have debugging enabled on the production server, if possible, please do all your debugging on the development server(s)

Webcast Series for ASP.NET Developers Who Want to Learn SharePoint

rwindsor — Sun, 18 May 2008 05:21:00 GMT

[via Paul Andrew]

[Microsoft is] doing lots of things around introductory SharePoint development for .NET developers over the next few months. Here is the schedule for a series of MSDN web casts on 10 introductory SharePoint development topics for .NET developers. If you are a .NET developer then chances are these are the most interesting ten introductory things you can do on SharePoint Products and Technologies.

http://blogs.msdn.com/pandrew/archive/2008/05/12/sharepoint-developer-msdn-web-cast-series.aspx

Technorati Tags: [SharePoint]

TechEd Developer 2008

rwindsor — Sat, 17 May 2008 17:52:00 GMT

The spring conference season keeps on chugging along. The MVP Summit and DevTeach just finished and TechEd is just around the corner.

It will be interesting to see what effect splitting the conference into a developer week and an IT Pro week will have. I've been spending a lot of time with SharePoint lately and that's a topic that has firm roots on both sides. I'm sure there are many other disciplines (SQL Server and VSTS come to mind) that are in the same boat.

This year I'll be taking it easier on the "networking" than I have in the past. I'm moderating a Birds-of-a-Feather (BoF) session and co-presenting an early-morning TLC talk and want to do so with a clear head. I'll also still be in the process of upgrading our ASP.NET course from 2.0 to 3.5 which will be delivered for the first time the week following the conference.

I went through the session builder earlier and there are a ton of things I want to see. I had two or three (sometimes even more) sessions per time slot that I wanted to see. This morning I deleted all those and later this weekend I'm going to go through and pick the sessions that I absolutely don't want to miss (my sessions for example) and put those in Outlook. Everything else will be done spur of the moment at the conference.

For those of you who are attending the conference for the first time, you might want to check out my Guide to Attending TechEd or PDC.

I'll be Twittering (http://twitter.com/rob_windsor) and hopefully blogging from the conference. If you're there feel free to look me up or better yet drop by one of my sessions.

WIN07-TLC Strategies for Moving Microsoft Visual Basic 6 Applications to Microsoft .NET
Wednesday, June 4 8:30 AM - 9:45 AM
Blue Theatre 1

BOF806 Strategies for Moving Your Microsoft Visual Basic 6 Investments to .NET
Thursday, June 5 1:00 PM - 2:15 PM
S330 E

Technorati Tags: [TechEd, Visual Basic, VB]