Infosys | Microsoft

Had discussions with few of the IT directors and IT managers of our customers to get the vibes from their end users on the new Windows 7 operating system post the Pilot rollout. What has really excited the business users is the responsiveness of the OS. Few of the business units has come clearly stating that the “time for a user to be productive” once in office has really shortened post the Windows 7 implementation. This is by faster startup and efficient way to access data and applications capability of Windows 7. The time for user to be productive has improved by around 40% from the previous implementations.  The faster shut down time and efficient sleep modes has been eulogized by the IT and business and they have been truly daunted by the overall power management capabilities.  These are real good signs and can further strengthen the need for a better OS for other enterprises who are into their planning phase for Windows 7 adoption.

Posted by Saju Kutty at 06:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Recently Windows update had a security update for Microsoft XML Core Services 4.0 Service Pack 2 as KB954430. Like all updates I got prompted to install it, which I did and happily continued to work. But this update had a mind of its own and it would keep popping up again and again and again....

Every time I would shutdown my Win 7 Laptop, I would see the exclamation icon on the shutdown button showing that an update was pending installation. I also went to Windows update screen and installed it directly from there. Every time it would give a success message, but would popup again shortly. So much so, that I have it reflecting close to 30 times in my update history.

Finally searching online gave some hints. Most queries were for Vista, but I assumed that the solutions may work for Win 7 as well. What worked for me finally was to go to add remove programs wizard, uninstalled MSXML 4.0 SP2 (KB954430) and then installed this update again. Since then, I have been able to rest in peace :-).

Posted by Atul Gupta at 04:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In my earlier blogs (here and here), I have talked about Win 7 and the new touch experience it brings.

When talking about touch, there are essentially two aspects - touch and gestures and during a recent internal discussion, I felt that these aren't that well understood by people. What's really the difference between the two and what it means to be supporting either of these?

Continue reading "Win 7 - Difference between Touch and Gesture" »

Posted by Atul Gupta at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In my earlier blog I had touched upon some high level concepts on touch support for applications, that is now available with Windows 7. In this I will spend some time on multi-touch and few other points around support as part of .NET and on Surface.

So when we say multi-touch, what does it really mean? This is also where the basic touch to mouse promotion and real multi-touch differ. Multi-touch means the ability to detect multiple touch points at the same time on the touch hardware and be able to program against each of them independently. In a mouse driven world, there is single point of click and hence controls really respond one at a time. With multi-touch however we now are capable of programming against multiple controls at the same time. While most multi-touch samples/demos show usage of multiple fingers, what you should realize is that it is now capable of supporting multiple people interaction. A behavior, which MS Surface, demonstrated very well.

Continue reading "Win 7 - Multi Touch" »

Posted by Atul Gupta at 09:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Branch site/PoP site administration always had its own contentious points on its RoI and efficiency. So far there was no inherent support from MS on this, except GPO based throttling and BITS. With Win7 and server 2008, MS proves its focus on helping enterprises with cost-effective and efficient solutions for branch administration to increase the user productivity.

Branch caching is a new feature available in Windows 7 ideal for a typical branch office. It is integrated with BITS and is capable of caching http, https and SMB. From a security standpoint, it works seamlessly with SSL, IPSec and SMB signing. Also the solution is flexible for branch offices with/without local servers. Branch Caching should be looked upon as a feature which can complement the existing infrastructure. It brings in more value when used in conjunction with technologies like DFS, SCCM distribution, web servers etc. It is no surprise that many of the early adopters for Win 7 are looking at branch caching as a prospective solution for their branch user computing.

Together with windows server 2008, enterprises can provide more efficient solutions to their branch office users. The new active domain service in server 2008 supports read only domain controllers (RoDC) which can be of great use in offices with limited physical security. The addition of RoDC in a branch environment can substantially improve the user experience through faster authentication and authorization. Windows Server 2008 R2 comes with significant improvements in TCP/IP stack along with SMB 2.0 and other enhancements in file systems. These changes are focused on improving the efficiency and reducing the latencies, delays and utilization on WAN links. ------ Yogesh K G - Windows 7 / Windows server 2008 Architect

Posted by Saju Kutty at 07:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Few weeks back we got access to HP's Touch Smart laptop with Win 7 and that was our first real exposure to working with Touch. Touch isn't something of a science fiction anymore and most new mobile devices support touch capabilities, though not necessarily multi-touch. Microsoft Surface  was a very interesting innovation in this space, but was limited to some extent on its usage due to factors like restricted availability of surface table, its cost, and it being horizontal and hence not suitable for many business applications.

Windows 7 now natively supports multi-touch and if you have the right hardware like HP touch smart laptop, you can start to program some real cool applications. When I first read about WPF 4.0 will support touch at framework level, I wasn't sure what it meant and hence I decided to spend some time understanding this a bit more. Here I am not going deep into any of these aspects, but just want to highlight a few important aspects of touch and how to program for it.

Continue reading "Win 7 - Touch" »

Posted by Atul Gupta at 08:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Recently during one of the client discussions, I was asked to summarize 5 key points in 1 minute on why the client should entrust technology refresh program to us. Suddenly caught up in this situation, this is what I described:

Continue reading "Elevator Pitch for Win 7" »

Posted by Rajesh Gupta at 08:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Win 7 - Manage Default Printers" »

Posted by Atul Gupta at 06:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Saju Kutty at 03:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Windows 7 to deliver on its promises" »

Posted by Rajesh Gupta at 03:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Atul has been regularly blogging about Windows 7 many good features and few issues. Here's something that found very good. Could not test it earlier as I was having issues with broadband connection at home. Those have been fixed now.

Good news is Wireless works seamlessly between office and home. This used to be an issue with Vista, where in i had to change the IP settings for office and home. I connected my laptop to wirless broadband at home, it automatically got the IP address. I didn't event have to change the browser proxy settings. Internet just works. Got into office, thinking I had to change the settings and enable/disable the wireless adapter. Just resumed the windows and logged onto the domain. I get a window asking me to choose which group I belong to. Selected Work and the wireless connection just works. This used to such a chore everyday morning while shuttling between home and office.

Posted by Naveen Kumar at 09:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

If you are following my blabberings on Win 7, you will notice that most of things have worked fine for me so far, except for Office Communicator 2005 that I wrote about here. Another thing that I found not working correctly is the network adapter's ability to detect and connect back to network post hibernation. I found many instances of similar issues logged on the forums.

I even tried ensuring that the adapters are set to not power off, but that didn't help. The issue is specifically visible when I switch network post hibernation, i.e. say I was using LAN before getting into hibernation and post resume tried to join a wireless network. I am using a Dell XPS M1330 laptop  and have even asked my Dell vendor to check for any updated drivers, but none so far.

Are you also facing this issue? What worked for you? In my case, reboot is the only option as of now.

Posted by Atul Gupta at 08:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Having worked on MS platform all these years, I am well aware that while we get on to understanding and using any new releases, MS is usually well underway planning and development of next version. With self having just got onto Win 7, it wasn't a big surprise to see information on Windows 8 already being available. Check here and here.

Posted by Atul Gupta at 09:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Another aspect of Win 7 that I noticed while using it for this past couple of week is the shutdown time. I haven't measured it explicitly but based on causual observation it does shuts down much faster than Vista. Boot time somehow doesn't seem to have changed much.

I did find this comparison on forums though and these are pretty much in line with my experience. How about your experience?

Posted by Atul Gupta at 03:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have talked about few of my experiences with Win 7 so far here, here and here. In general the experience so far has been good and applications either work as is or by setting the compatibility mode appropriately.

However with Office Communicator 2005 there is an issue in desktop andapplication sharing. OC 2005 uses Netmeeting as the underlying mechanism for sharing and Netmeeting isn't supported Vista onwards. The OC 2005 planning and deployment guide also only lists OSs till XP as supported and Vista and Win 7 aren't. There was a hotfix released later by MS to support Netmeeting on Vista, but this isn't supported on Win 7.

So with Win 7 you can use OC 2005 for chatting, but can't do desktop and application sharing. You need to either upgrade to OCS 2007 and OC 2007 or use other tools like Live Meeting etc.

Posted by Atul Gupta at 03:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Some days back I had written about my Win 7 RTM migration and about my experiences with the issues Naveen had faced. In this blog, I will capture some of the things that I noticed and most of them are those that I liked.

You will surely find lot of details about new features on Win 7. Via this entry I am only capturing the things that I noticed and have started to like.

Continue reading "Win 7 - more reactions" »

Posted by Atul Gupta at 09:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Win 7 - Multiple default printers" »

Posted by Atul Gupta at 07:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Windows 7 RTM is available on MSDN subcriber downloads is not a new news anymore. I also had downloaded the Enterpride edition few days back and just got around to installing it. The experience so far is good.

Some months back my colleague Naveen had installed Windows 7 RC and had faced some issues that he had written about here. I will talk about some of the issues he faced and how they behave on Windows 7 RTM.

Continue reading "Am on Windows 7 RTM" »

Posted by Atul Gupta at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)