We initially asked about migrating the database over to a full SQL Server 2005 solution, but ran into some resistance for a variety of concerns, one of which was cost of setting up and installing SQL Server 2005.

We then started to take another look at potentially using SQL Server 2005 Express edition as the solution for this application. By comparison to other full-blown SQL Server 2005 this database requirement is fairly small. However, it’s pushing the boundaries of what can reliably be delivered with the Access Jet database performance.

I’m curious as to what other people’s real-world experience has been with developing application to be hosted with SQL Server 2005 Express as the backend database solution?

What hurdles have you had to jump, or have they stopped you completely in your tracks? Do you feel you’ll outgrow the Express version anytime soon. If so, are you prepared to migrate to the full SQL Server 2005 version.

Compare Features of SQL Server 2005 Versions

Post from: EveryJoe

SQL Server 2005 Express

We’ve been looking for some files lately that seemingly just can’t be found on Microsoft websites that state they should be there.

You can click on the image above to have a perfect example. When you click on the image it will enlarge to full-size and you can see what I’m seeing. On the page is the statement:

Please download the attached file that contains the previous service pack release notes.

Do you see a link somewhere that I’m not seeing? If you do, please let me know. You’d think this should be obvious, and it appears to be, except for the actual link to download something.

We just can’t find it anywhere.

Image: Snagit of Microsoft Support website

Post from: EveryJoe

Missing Microsoft FRx 6.7 Service Pack Files

One of the great tools you can get with the PowerToys I talked of earlier is the PowerToy Calculator. A feature you may not be expecting with the application is tools for converting a variety of measurements from English to Metric equivalents and more.

As you can see from the screen shot above, all the basics you probably wonder about frequently are available.

In addition to the conversions, you get all your basic calculator option, including graphing and trig functions too. You know all that cool stuff you used to use with your Texas Instruments T51 calculator in high school.

Post from: EveryJoe

Easy Conversions with PowerToy Calculator

Honestly I don’t use the standard Live Messenger software, but it’s not because it’s not loaded with some great features. For me, it’s mainly because I don’t want to have a separate application open for each IM client I do use.

I like the different emoticon tiles that are available in the "me" section header.

Some of the other great tools available in Live Messenger in the past that they didn’t talk about is the application sharing and control. That can come in very handy at times.

Post from: EveryJoe

A Look at the New Windows Live Messenger in Windows 7

After doing some research on my AutoPlay and autorun.inf questions earlier I was reminded about some of the features that are available for tweaking your Windows XP install with the PowerToys applications like TweakUI.

Here’s a quick reminder about some of the other tools that are available:

• Color Control Panel Applet: Professional-level photographers and designers know that getting consistent, accurate color from file to screen to print and beyond is a requirement for great results. This new tool helps you manage Windows color settings in one place.
• SyncToy: With new sources of files coming from every direction (such as digital cameras, e-mail, cell phones, portable media players, camcorders, PDAs, and laptops), SyncToy can help you copy, move, and synchronize different directories.
• RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer: Are you a serious photographer? Now you can organize and work with digital RAW files in Windows Explorer (much as you can with JPEG images). This tool provides thumbnails, previews, printing, and metadata display for RAW images.
• ClearType Tuner: This PowerToy lets you use ClearType technology to make it easier to read text on your screen, and installs in the Control Panel for easy access.
• HTML Slide Show Wizard: This wizard helps you create an HTML slide show of your digital pictures, ready to place on your Web site.
• Open Command Window Here: This PowerToy adds an "Open Command Window Here" context menu option on file system folders, giving you a quick way to open a command window (cmd.exe) pointing at the selected folder.
• Alt-Tab Replacement: With this PowerToy, in addition to seeing the icon of the application window you are switching to, you will also see a preview of the page. This helps particularly when multiple sessions of an application are open.
• Tweak UI: This PowerToy gives you access to system settings that are not exposed in the Windows XP default user interface, including mouse settings, Explorer settings, taskbar settings, and more.
• Power Calculator: With this PowerToy you can graph and evaluate functions as well as perform many different types of conversions.
• Image Resizer: This PowerToy enables you to resize one or many image files with a right-click.
• CD Slide Show Generator: With this PowerToy you can view images burned to a CD as a slide show. The Generator works downlevel on Windows 9x machines as well.
• Virtual Desktop Manager: Manage up to four desktops from the Windows taskbar with this PowerToy.
• Taskbar Magnifier: Use this PowerToy to magnify part of the screen from the taskbar.
• Webcam Timershot: This PowerToy lets you take pictures at specified time intervals from a Webcam connected to your computer and save them to a location that you designate.

Some of the ones that I’ve already enjoyed and played with before are the TweakUI and ALT-TAB Replacement, SyncToy, Power Calculator. The Virtual Desktop Manager seems cool and looks like it might be part of what we were looking for when managing virtual workspaces while working on different client locations or projects.

What are you favorite Windows tweaks and toys. Have you used PowerToys before?

Image: Windows PowerToys icon from the PowerToys website

Post from: EveryJoe

Revisiting Some Windows PowerToys

One of the great resources I’ve been able to take advantage of with my "real" job is being a member of the Microsoft Partner Program. It’s actually up for renewal so I’m looking forward to what some of the new stuff is that’s available now.

I just received an email letting me know that the Windows 7 beta is now available as part of the program. That’s pretty exciting.

My only challenge is I don’t have the resources or spare machines sitting around where I can install and test some of these programs without worrying about killing my main business or personal machines.

Trying out Windows 7 may be one of the pieces of software that I just risk it for to give it a try.

Image: Microsoft Partner Program Windows 7 beta site

Post from: EveryJoe

Windows 7 Now Available to Microsoft Partner Program

Did you know that 2008 was a dual leap year? Probably not since I made up the whole "dual leap year" tag, but what I do mean is that we had a February 29th this year and we’ll also have an extra leap second added to our clocks tomorrow night.

The problem is that Microsoft won’t really catch up with that second until later.

It turns out the deal is that Microsoft doesn’t recognize (or ignores) the alert in the atomic time codes that says a leap second is being added to the time adjustment. When the leap second is added at 12:59:59 tomorrow night, Microsoft won’t catch it and will just adjust the clock on your computer the next time it syncs after tomorrow night.

As you can see in the image above though, I can’t connect to the time.windows.com website URL to update my time anyway. Makes me wonder if their working on a fix right now maybe even though their Knowledge Base Article 909614 states otherwise.

Does anyone really care though? Are you going to stress out over it? If you’re Microsoft maybe you can smirk and know that at least for a little while you can really claim you’re a step ahead of Apple on something.

Hat Tip: Douglas Karr at Marketing Tech Blog

Image: Snagit of Windows Time and Date Properties Dialog box

Post from: EveryJoe

Hey Microsoft! Got a Sec?

Image: Screen capture of Microsoft Update website

I’m working through my weekly updates and scans on my system today and I came across a list of optional software updates that were available for a few of my Microsoft Office 2007 applications.

This is normally good news, but here’s my question. The Help information available in just about every Microsoft product is fairly close to useless. I think they’d be better served to just put an automatic Internet search for the keyword you clicked on in their Help system in the first place. I’m not sure if I’ve ever really gotten the answer I needed for a more than average computer use or software application question. I almost always now just do a Google search for the problem or error message I’m receiving.

That brings me back to the question at hand. Are all these Help file updates, which are just shy of 100MB in total file size, a drastic improvement on anything? Would it make it worth it to download and install the updates? Or, is it just a waste of space for something I’ll not use. I can almost guarantee that I could never really delete them off again if I decided they were still useless.

If someone at Microsoft is working in the Help department, I’d love to get your thoughts about why Microsoft Help files are so bad.

Post from: EveryJoe

New Help Files for Microsoft Products… Still Suck?

I wasn’t able to attend the conference, although I’ve been hearing plenty about it through the various people I follow on twitter. Thanks to @DanRigsby, @DaveLeininger, @BetsyWeber, @larryclarkin, @timheuer, @davebost, @BradleyLJones and many more.

Windows 7 seems to be the topic du jour but I just received an email from Steve Ballmer and he’s sharing a lot about Windows Azure and the Windows Azure Platform. The basic gist of the service is that it’s a new platform and architecture that will begin to enable us to finally combine and access the computing power that we’ve already become comfortable (also interpreted as addicted) to everything else into one large, personal network of information.

At PDC, we announced the availability of an early preview release of a new technology called Windows Azure. Windows Azure will enable developers to build applications that extend from the cloud to the enterprise datacenter and span the PC, the Web, and the mobile phone. For the first time, we shared pre-beta code for Windows 7 and for Windows Server 2008 R2. Windows 7, which is the next version of the Windows desktop operating system, will take advantage of software and hardware advances to help eliminate the boundaries between information, people, and devices.

We also previewed Office Web applications, which are light-weight versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote that are designed to be accessed through a browser. Office Web applications will be part of the next version of Office and will enable people to view, edit, and share information and collaborate on documents on the desktop, the phone, and in a Web browser in a way that is consistent and familiar.

Windows Azure is part of the Azure Services Platform, a comprehensive set of storage, computing, and networking infrastructure services that reside in Microsoft’s network of datacenters. Using the Azure Services Platform, developers will be able to build applications that run in the cloud and extend existing applications to take advantage of cloud-based capabilities. The Azure Services Platform provides the foundation for business and consumer applications that deliver a consistent way for people to store and share information easily and securely in the cloud, and access it on any device from any location.

As you can see, Windows Azure seems to be working its way into and throughout lots of what we’re already working on and using and we’ll begin seeing more of the integration as new versions and releases of products and software applications continue to be released by Microsoft.

Exciting stuff in my opinion. I know connecting to and synching folders and information to and from each other just seems to be too convoluted than it should be at the moment.

If I’ve taken the time to burn my entire CD collection into my computer, why can’t I easily access and listen to that music from anywhere and on any device. Those devices could be my laptop from work on my favorite coffee shop, or my phone while I’m waiting for an appointment, or what if I could even stream all of my music to my car stereo through some type of satellite network technology like XM Radio?

Post from: EveryJoe

Steve Ballmer Shares Windows Azure With Me

Image: Screen Grab of Desktop by Jason Bean

I was reminded today of a feature I’d long forgotten about in Windows. The ability to place "active" content that was regularly updated via the Internet. When the feature first came out I guess you could call it the grandfather of what we now called widgets and sidebars, except before you could just put stuff wherever you wanted on your desktop, not just docked to a side of the screen.

Anyway, I was reminded of it today when I was checking some of my desktop settings to see if I could enlarge the icons on my desktop. Mainly to test a new icon file I had created, because I really abhor large icons most of the time.

I checked on the option to set my existing homepage as my desktop active item and BAM!, there’s my iGoogle homepage sitting on my Desktop. Everything is active on it like a webpage, but I can drag my icons on top of it wherever I want as well. I’m still intrigued by how that can happen and not interfere with each other, but they figured it out.

Does anyone use Active Desktop now?

My question is, does anyone still use this? How do you use it? Do you just have one web page being displayed? What page do you use?

Would love to hear your thoughts and comments on this topic.

Post from: EveryJoe

Remember Active Desktop?