If you’ve dabbled with Windows Vista, you have probably noticed that the drive icons in 'My Computer' accompany a visual representation of the drive’s capacity. This bar chart type gauge shows the amount free and used space on the disk, allowing you to see at a glance the amount of space that you have available on your drive. In Windows XP, you have to select the drive and hover your mouse pointer over the icon to get that information in a text based format. While this procedure really isn’t that much of a hassle, you can now have Vista like drive icons in Windows XP with Vista Drive Icon from SourceForge.

Vista Drive Icon is a free utility that will transform the drive icons in Windows XP’s 'My Computer' into drive icons that resemble those in Vista’s 'My Computer'. Once installed, Vista Drive Icon will display a blue, glass-like bar underneath the drive icon. If the drive is close to getting full, the color changes to red.

Only thing I find a little disappointing is that CD and network drive icons are not included.

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Fellow BlogEngine.NET user Paul Tumelty has - in the short time that he's been using BlogEngine.NET - been amazed by the number and quality of the extensions and plugins that have been developed by the community. When he originally downloaded the software, he saw the ones listed on the site, a web search turned up a few more and reading Mads' and Al's blogs helped him find some more.

Soon though, he realized that there wasn't a centralized location for all these extensions anywhere, so he decided to make one, resulting in a database of over 40 extensions and he'll be adding to these as he finds them.

Here is the link to Paul's original list which is also featured on the BlogEngine.NET website.

Some great finds and very useful ... thanks Paul!

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Ever wanted to find out how life really is at the campus in Redmond?

On10's Tina Wood did. And she filmed it. And it’s funny. Check it out:

Now ... where can I get one of those signed pictures of Tina???

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I've considered using Windows Server 2003 as a workstation in the past but unfortunately it wouldn't run my Flight Simulator the way I wanted it. Luckily for me, this whole circus begins again ...

Vijayshinva Karnure, a IIS, ASP and ASP.NET troubleshooter as well as a consultant for  developers and system admins of Microsoft India has published an article on how you can turn Microsoft's latest Windows Server release into a SUPER FAST workstation complete with its hardware virtualization capabilities, Hyper-V, which does not ship even with Vista Ultimate!

I'm very curious about Windows Server 2008 as this year I will build a new machine and my current PC will be converted into server and I not only get to install it on my server but maybe on the new PC too. Jay!

Vijayshinva Karnure article begins as follows:

Windows Server 2008 is the best OS to be released till date from Microsoft's stable. And the moment I got hold of the RTM build I could not resist installing it on my workstation. Due to the nature of my work I always prefer running a Server OS on my main workstation... I have been running Windows 2003 disguised as XP (with all the themes and stuff) all these days. So here is my tale of how I went about setting up Windows Server 2008 to look and fell like its desktop counterpart Windows Vista.

Continue reading here.

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Yesterday at the Office Developer Conference keynote, Bill Gates once again mentioned his imminent departure from day-to-day operations of Microsoft. However the video spoof documentary of his last day at Microsoft he showed was not the same as the one shown at CES earlier this year, but in fact another edit with some alternative scenes.

For example, it features a different workout video with Matthew McConaughey, a longer phone conversation with Steven Spielberg and George Clooney about Oceans 14.

Even if you’ve seen the first, I recommend you to check out this one too.

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Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer spoke this morning at the company's annual Minority Student Day in Redmond. As in the past, the student questions were well informed and incisive - including this one from a student watching the event remotely at a Microsoft location in Charlotte, N.C.: "In the future, does Microsoft plan to do an open-source version of Windows?"

"No," Ballmer said, without hesitation.

Then he continued ...

Well, what does that mean? An open-source version of Windows would mean not only would we publish Windows source code, we would make it free. That's what open source means. We wouldn't be hosting Minority Student Day if we open-source Windows because we wouldn't have enough profit to pay people, let alone invite in people from the community. I'm not saying open-source is a bad thing, but it doesn't pay the bills in this company, so we can't embrace that way of doing things. ... We give out free soda pop to everybody who works here. We make our stuff free, people got to give back the soda pop - it's just inconsistent with what we do around here.

Ballmer was obviously using a colorful example in an attempt to make his point, but it's true that soda is no small expense for the company. As it happens, Microsoft tracks beverage consumption on the Redmond campus, and by a random stroke of luck, I asked a Microsoft spokesman to double-check the data for me yesterday, after I saw a related post on Inside Microsoft. According to the latest stats, employees each year drink more than 7.7 million cans of soda (compared with more than 4 million cans of juice, and slightly less than 4.1 million cartons of milk.)

For the record, using the latest count of 35,510 employees in the region, that's about 217 cans of soda per year per employee. So healthwise, at least, maybe an open-source Windows isn't such a bad idea?

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Visual Studio 2008 went to manufacturing at the end of 2007. Windows Server 2008 is expected to be RTM’d in February. But SQL Server 2008 - the other of the three products Microsoft is slated to launch together on February 27, 2008, in a big corporate event in Los Angeles - is running further behind.

Microsoft officials last year said SQL Server 2008 would likely be released to manufacturing in the second quarter of 2008.

But in a blog post on January 25, SQL Server Director of Product Management Francois Ajenstat said that the new date for SQL Server 2008’s RTM is some time in the third quarter of this year.

Microsoft is excited to deliver a feature complete CTP (Community Technology Preview test release) during the Heroes Happen Here launch wave and a release candidate (RC) in Q2 calendar year 2008, with final Release to manufacturing (RTM) of SQL Server 2008 expected in Q3. Our goal is to deliver the highest quality product possible and we simply want to use the time to meet the high bar that you, our customers, expect.

Ajenstat emphasized the SQL Server 2008 delay - the reasons for which he did not detail - will still go on as planned on February 27.

In order to speed up its SQL Server development process, Microsoft has been testing SQL Server 2008, code named “Katmai,” via a series of CTPs, rather than more traditional betas. Microsoft released a first SQL Server 2008 CTP in June 2007.

Shame that they've delayed the new version as I was really looking forward to installing it on the new server. ON the other hand; the new server will likely not be online until the end of summer. Until then it will most probably be:

Microsoft SQL Server 2008: Your Data, Any Place, Any Time (... just not right now )

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Now this is what I like. Too bad they don't offer it in the Netherlands

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American Airlines and Southwest Airlines are investigating 'Onboard Internet. Southwest will start tests this summer with four of their aircraft that will have a satellite Internet connection. American Airlines connects their aircraft to the Internet via 92 transmitters on the ground in the US. If all goes well passengers can use the Internet in the same way as in an airport; first having to connect to the network and after entering their credit card details on the login page. The technology is basically the same as the use of mobile phones in aircraft.

Thus far the use of mobile phones on board aircraft has only been allowed in Europe. US based airlines decided not to offer this service on board their aircraft yet as it is not yet clear what the effects were after three years of testing.

AirFrance is already offering their passengers the possibility of mobile telephony in their aircraft. KLM decided not to offer this service as the airline believes that their passengers should be able to travel without being disturbed by mobile phones.

The Dutch government decided last year that the use of mobile phones would be allowed in Dutch airspace above 10000 feet.

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Windows Vista shipped to business customers on the last day of November 2006, so the end of November 2007 marks the one year anniversary for supported production use of the product.

Analysis shows, that the vulnerability disclosures and security updates for the first year of Windows Vista, in the context of its predecessor, Windows XP, along with other modern workstation operating systems Red Hat, Ubuntu and Apple products, that is isn't all that bad.

Windows Vista has an improved security vulnerability profile over its predecessor. Analysis of security updates also shows that Microsoft improvements to the security update process and development process have reduced the impact of security updates to Windows administrators significantly compared to its predecessor, Windows XP.

You can read another interesting article about Windows Vista's first year here.

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