Sin Min's Spaces

While reading on CNN.com, I came across a video on H1N1 Response Center by Microsoft. Tried the self-assessment myself and I think it is pretty useful especially when you have a flu and are not sure if you should seek urgent medical attention. So here is the link.

https://h1n1.cloudapp.net/

Here’s an overview of Visual Studio 2010 editions. Take note that this is still a draft copy.

Just in case your team has any member that will connect to a TFS2010 box with Team Explorer 2008 SP1 client, this update will be required for it to work. The update is available at MSDN for download.

For more info on compatibility, visit this blog.

Soma just announced the release of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 on his blog and not only there were some significant enhancements since Beta 1, but also changes to the product lineup as well as pricing. Essentially there are three flavors available, namely Professional, Premium, and Ultimate. For existing MSDN subscribers, you might want to check out this page. Btw, the Beta 2 bits are available now on MSDN Subscriber Downloads.

For list of features in each SKU, visit http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010/default.mspx#compare

In the TFS space (my favorite subject), TFS Basic is introduced. I believe this will be a good news to many SMEs as the cost of TFS implementation has been significantly reduced and it can be installed on both client (i.e. Windows 7) and server OS.

I’ll blog more about this exciting release after I manage to get my hands dirty on it (hey, I’m downloading now!)…

Recently I took some time and installed Windows 7 Ultimate into a VHD (yes, a virtual hard disk!) on my Windows 7 netbook. To my surprise, it runs quite smoothly on the 2GB RAM netbook until after a while, I forgot that I was booting from a VHD and not a physical disk. I think the idea of booting from VHD is perfect for me especially when I need to test out new stuff (beta, CTPs, etc.) without worrying to much on the restoration/ clean up later (imagine if I were to do this on my daily use Windows 7) since everything gets written into the VHD file now. Yeah well, I can always use a VM (virtual machine) to do the same thing, but then it will be a virtualized environment. Hey, did I mention the Windows 7 running in the VHD on my netbook is NOT a virtualized environment? Feel free to try out the steps below to get your Windows 7 boot from a VHD as well.

1. Boot up your system with a Windows 7 installation media
2. At the Install Windows screen, press "Shift-F10" to bring up the command line window
3. Enter diskpart
4. Create a new VHD with the following command, change the 20000 to the maximum size in Megabytes you wish to allocate
   create vdisk file="C:\win7vhd.vhd" type=expandable maximum=20000
5. Select and attach the new VHD with the following commands
   select vidisk file="C:\win7vhd.vhd"
   attach vdisk
6. Proceed with the usual Windows setup process and you should be able to see the newly created VHD appearing as a drive. However, ignore the warning "Windows cannot install to this disk" though.

I just got my new baby (Asus Eee PC 1000HE) up and running on Windows 7 Ultimate last night. To my surprise, Windows 7 runs extremely smooth on my upgraded (total 2GB RAM) Netbook. Almost all system devices were automatically detected and installed with out of the box device drivers, except Asus ACPI driver, which I downloaded and installed from Asus website. Hey, that driver is XP version and it works like a charm! By the way, my Windows Experience Index is only 2.0 ok!

Since Netbook doesn’t come with built in optical drive, I installed Windows 7 via a 4GB USB pen drive. There are some articles and blogs on how to do this and I’d suggest two of them:

http://blogs.technet.com/aviraj/archive/2009/02/01/installing-windows-7-using-usb-thumb-drive.aspx
http://pingdennis.com/windows/installing-windows-7-using-a-usb-stick/

A security issue has been identified that could allow an attacker to compromise Windows-based system with Visual Studio .NET 2003 Service Pack 1, Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1, Visual Studio 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1. Microsoft Security Bulletin MS09-035 published on July 28, 2009 confirmed the vulnerabilities in Visual Studio Active Template Library could allow remote code execution on affected systems.

Although this security update is rated Moderate severity, it is recommended that you apply the update immediately.