I am sorry that last week I didn't  find time to post for you.. actually my dad came here so I had to give him time. Did I ever tell you about my dad? No ? oops ..maybe I missed that part.

He is an artist. He is currently working in Indian School Of Bahrain as a HOD (Arts) . Do you want to see his work ? See below.

In my belief he is one of the greatest painters !

Just came to know that Commonwealth of Massachusetts included Open XML as an acceptable document format for office applications along with the Open Document Format (ODF).

Statement on ETRM v4.0 Public Review Comments - August 1, 2007 says that:

The Commonwealth continues on its path toward open, XML-based document formats without reflecting a vendor or commercial bias in ETRM v4.0. Many of the comments we received identify concerns regarding the Open XML specification.  We believe that these concerns, as with those regarding ODF, are appropriately handled through the standards setting process, and we expect both standards to evolve and improve. Moreover, we believe that the impact of any legitimate concerns raised about either standard is outweighed substantially by the benefits of moving toward open, XML-based document format standards. Therefore, we will be moving forward to include both ODF and Open XML as acceptable document formats. All comments received are posted on this web site.

More information on this is on doug's blog post titled "Massachusetts ETRM V4.0 recommends Open XML and ODF 1.1". I also found its reference on ACTOnline.

One more interesting blog post on this from Jason titled "Policy Makers Being Balanced & Reasonable". He also noticed one very important point of the whole story (that I somehow missed :( ).

Information that traditionally has been presented in text form is increasingly being enriched through the use of multimedia data types such as graphics, audio and video. The variety of data formats used however raises concerns regarding interoperability and accessibility. Given that XML is the cornerstone of the Commonwealth’s Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) vision of a unified enterprise information environment, it is crucial that the schema used to create XML files meet the open format definition as well. The target state is the ubiquitous use of open formats to capture and store data within applications and in individual data files. - MA ETRM Domain: Information - v 4.0 linked 8/1/2007

If you ask me ..this whole thing makes a lot of sense, multiple standards have been existed historically and this is surely a positive step in enabling greater customer choice.  

I am a strong believer of "freedom of choice", for me "free" as in choice  is always more important than "free" as in beer (except on weekends ;)). So this news gave me a the goody-good feeling of the week.

At the highest level, the ETRM specifies XML as the core technology to enable data interoperability. After noting that "XML has become the lingua franca of application integration, facilitating application interoperability," the ETRM makes the following recommendation:

"Agencies should consider the use of XML for all projects, and should implement XML, unless there are compelling business reasons not to do so. XML should always be considered when undertaking new work or when beginning a major overhaul of an existing system."

What it has in store for you ? Well, you can easily see the future (IMHO) just by replacing  Agencies to organizations .. private, public.. consumer etc.

So, don't wait - and move on to the world of choice, world of coexistence .

My old blog followers will remember about this when I got the first news that its gonna be released.  Here is the link for the 2007 Access Runtime:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D9AE78D9-9DC6-4B38-9FA6-2C745A175AED&displaylang=en

Don't forget to go through the blog of our own access team who blogged about it before I could Access Runtime Re-released . Hey Clint You got it first !

Surely I wouldn't want my readers to be confused by the same things. So, here it goes:

Issue - 1:

When "Open With" dialog box is opened (for a known or unknown file extension),  "Always use the selected program .." is checked by default

Issue - 2:

When this dialog box is opened for a known file extension the "Other Programs" list *looks* empty by default. There are two ways to see the "Other Programs". Both are kindda confusing (see the callouts in the image below)

One more interesting issue! Here is the story :

We had a VSTO customized document and we were trying to update the "cached data" in the doc but we found that it does not work after the first save (that is to say that for the first Save() everything is fine, but after that it does not get updated).

Below is the code that we tried:

[Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.Runtime.Cached]
public String StrTest = "string";
public object oMissing = System.Reflection.Missing.Value;
private Word.Shape oRTS = null;
private void ThisDocument_Startup(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
    System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show(StrTest);

    StrTest = "string 1"; 
    Save(); '<<= Works fine

    StrTest = "string 2"; ' 
    Save(); '<<= Does not update the storage control with "string 2"

    StrTest = "string 3"; 
    Save(); '<<= Does not update the storage control with "string 3"

}

Given that this issue is bug, what can we do about it ? well.. the 'save' works only when the ActiveX control is 'dirty', but somehow our modifications are not dirtying it.

So, what can we do ? We need to do something with the storage control, but before even *doing* anything with storage control we need to get a reference for the control. Here is how we did it:

private Word.Shape getRunTimeStorageControlShape()
{
Word.Shape oShape = null;
Word.Shapes oShapes = this.Shapes;
int iCntShapes = oShapes.Count;

for (int i = 1; i <= iCntShapes; i++)
{
object oIndex = i;
oShape = oShapes.get_Item(ref oIndex);
if (oShape.Type == 
Microsoft.Office.Core.MsoShapeType.msoOLEControlObject)
{
if 
(oShape.OLEFormat.ProgID.StartsWith("VSTO.RuntimeStorage"))
break;
}
}
return oShape;
}

Now, the Question is how to make the control dirty .. almost a no-brainer..change a property and revert it back to the original. Something like the following:

private void markRuntimeStorageAsDirty()
{
if (null == oRTS) return;

oRTS.Width = oRTS.Width + 1;
oRTS.Width = oRTS.Width - 1;
}

And here is you modify the original code to plug in the changes:

[Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.Runtime.Cached]
public String StrTest = "string";
public object oMissing = System.Reflection.Missing.Value;
private Word.Shape oRTS = null;
private void ThisDocument_Startup(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
oRTS = getRunTimeStorageControlShape();
System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show(StrTest);
StrTest = "string 1";
markRuntimeStorageAsDirty();
Save();
StrTest = "string 2";
markRuntimeStorageAsDirty();
Save();
StrTest = "string 3";
markRuntimeStorageAsDirty();
Save();
}

Howzzzat !? Did you like it ? Let me know ..

Okay ... bye ... take care !

We all know that Erika is responsive when you leave comments on her blog. This is one of the case where she responded to a comment on her post. When I was going through her blog I saw the comment below and said..OMG..this *deserves* to be a post! So, doing the needful (yea.."Indian English" :)).

(edited one paragraph because ..you know it ! come on!)

Printing server-side is an interesting problem so I will have split my answer since there's two things to consider.

Software - hardware?

Proposing a server-side printing software solution goes hand-in-hand with the hardware infrastructure that the company has. Printing is probably the slowest thing to do in computer land. Say you have a top end printer, you will be able to print at most 50 pages/minute. If you were to print 1,000 documents of 10 pages each, the operation would take you 200 minutes. The least thing that should worry you (considering the times and resources involved to print) is using COM automation. By the time the printer prints the documents, Word automation will be done. Some banks have printers connected in a network to do load balancing, problem is print spoolers have a limited memory, so you would also need some program to enqueue (some kind of hard disk spooler program) documents. I know some banks use special hardware and software to handle massive printing. Some of this programs either print text files (use a driver to print in certifiers) or translate documents and generate a graphic (in memory) and send to the printer (most solutions involving pdf files use this approach). This programs also take care of the document queueing process.

Printing Word documents...

To print Word documents you need to run Word. Only Word understands it's formatting tags. Every single format (bold, underline, colors, spaces, fonts) that you see on the screen are rendered by Word and the same happens with a printer. So the only program that will print you a WYSIWYG Word document is Word. I know it's not recommended to use server-side automation, but at this point, it's your best shot.

Now, there's an option. It IS possible to go the XPS way with the only problem that you would need to write some kind of parser that reads the WordML formatting elements and transform documents to XPS format (it's also XML). I don't know of any code sample to do this, but if you were to build this solution, probably the Windows SDK documentation can help:

http://windowssdk.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms771525.aspx

I know there are some code samples (including printing XPS documents) that you can download here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ea97a39d-6812-4904-8226-85f3da99996b&displaylang=en

You will find information of every single element for WordML here:

http://www.ecma-international.org/news/TC45_current_work/TC45-2006-50_final_draft.htm

There are some translator applications that convert WordML to something else, for example:

http://openxmldeveloper.org/articles/OpenXMLtoXHTMLinJava.aspx

Finally, there are more great samples for manipulating WordML here:

http://openxmldeveloper.org/archive/category/1003.aspx

Erika I am sorry for striking out the content, but I am in support and I really really know..what happens when you try to do a server side automation.

Trust me..whenever its a "best shot"..its towards yourself !

Even when its a test post and I am not sure if it will be published or not, I don't want to miss the opportunity to "pat on my back". Why? because in one of my previous post when I told you that WLW team is doing a phenomenal job, I was 1000% right. I am getting one more  experience of the same thing.

Within an hr of reporting the issue Spike Washburn jumped on the issue and gathering all the information required to troubleshoot the issue.

btw did you visit his site ? surely have a look. it's a great resource.

So ..one of my customers was attaching a VSTO customization on an excel workbook, it was a pretty large workbook and their standard usage involved adding new sheets in the workbook.

After an certain point somehow VSTO customization just stopped loading in a mysterious manner. Initial  troubleshooting reveled that custom properties of the workbook are vanished so the assembly is not getting loaded.

Then I tried adding some custom properties myself, still I could see that they are not being retained. At this point of time we thought that its an issue with excel. But, if it was a issue with excel,  I should have been able to reproduce the issue manually (creating a workbook from scratch and adding sheets in a loop to increase the size). I tried it but no luck.

After further investigation, the problem had to do with the size of the DocumentSummaryInformation stream. The update in <http://support.microsoft.com/?id=917151> limits the stream size to 512KB. This is certainly large enough to hold the customization. However, every defined name is also persisted in this stream. The particular sheet being copied had many names defined and each copy of the Sheet added added the same number of names until we ultimately hit the 512KB limit. After which, the  names are custom props are no longer persisted.

I know I do it too much, but somehow I always see things where I can improve (good way of patting my back ;)). Hold on .. I am not saying that my current skin is an improvement over the old one!! I mean I am *working* on improving the skin and add a few more goodies in a more *visible* way.

Yeah, I know you didn't notice goodies on my blog, but I had 'em there :( its just you  had to scroll down and the lucky ones who did found http://www.meebo.com goodie where they can chat with me directly or the http://del.icio.us goodie where you can see my current favs.

So, when many readers told me that its had to notice the above stuff then I knew it immediately, its again a time of revamp! After the complete overhaul you will also see my http://www.twitter.com goodie on my blog and this time I'll make sure that its visible.

Hey folks! thanks for all the feedbacks! I love you all !!

In one of my previous posts, I told you guys about the issue in Word 2007 AddBlogDocument because of which its not possible to edit the blog posts programmatically using Word 2007 OM.

In that post there was a comment from alik levin where he was curious about doing it from Windows Live Writer. Hey, I am sorry alik i couldn't respond that time.

But I checked it a few days ago and to be frank, I couldn't find any way of doing it. (NO, I am not contradicting my previous post. maybe I just didn't spend enough time with SDK).

However I trust live writer team when they say:

The SDK documentation contained in this beta version of the SDK is preliminary. The documentation will be extended and improved in a subsequent release of the SDK.

Why do I trust ? because I am a member of many internal dls and I can see that Windows Live Writer team is doing a *phenomenal* job. 

Heil WLW team. 

OK, jokes apart this  ..

I just wanted to inform you all that I am still catching up on my blog emails and I have already responded 10-15 emails this week, so if you're still waiting for me to reply, I think you should be getting my email in this week.

Hey I am sure I told you that I  blog using windows live writer. Did you try that ? you have try it out at http://writer.live.com . I really really thing that this is one of the super super cool apps that i've seen till date.

It has all the qualities of a great blogging app:

• Generates thin HTML (don't nitpick, you know what I mean by that)
• Small footprint
• Great API support
• Plugin support

and I can go on and on .. but  its really good ! take my word for it. Oh, before I forget also have a look at Windows Live Writer Blog

In one of my previous posts somebody asked me something about Live Writer, I will explain about it in the next post .. :) (yeah I know this is an old strategy but it still works )

Surely, Office 2007 file formats are a boon for the people who wanted to use office file formats(generate docs) from their own tools/software and for those who wanted to modify documents on the server side. 

Yes, Doing so does require a lot a understanding of XML, XSLT, Packaging Apis etc. to reduce the curve we came up with Microsoft SDK for Open XML Formats which is a fantastic library.

Here is Brian's write up on the library: Open XML SDK – tech preview

When I saw list of people who posted about the Open XML formats SDK on Brian's blog:

• Kevin Boske – Kevin gives a great example of how the new SDK can already significantly reduce the amount of code you need to write, simply by giving you strongly typed parts. I can't wait until we start adding some more scenario specific functionality.
• Art Leonard – Art and Kevin were the two who first started prototyping the SDK towards the end of the Office 2007 cycle. As Art says:"If you remember the code snippets we've shipped, there were a lot of strings for relationship types, content types, and the like. This drop begins to abstract away things like that - allows us (as developers) to focus more on the task of writing our solutions - not on the file format's intricacies."
• Erika Ehrli - Erika and Frank Rice worked on the help content and examples for the SDK.
• Channel 9 Video – Chris, who's in the Office developer marketing group did a channel 9 interview discussing some of the motivations behind the SDK. Doug Mahugh and I will talk to the channel 9 folks either next week or the following to provide a few more details and go into some samples of what you can do.
• Stephen McGibbon – Stephen shows a few screenshots from hits initial tests of the SDK.
• Adam Wiener – Adam, who recently moved over to the interoperability team here at Microsoft talks about the general growth in tools we're seeing for the OpenXML formats. One super cool piece here that I was planning on covering in a separate blog is the news from Altova!
• Crag Kitterman – Craig actually talks a bit more about Julien Chable's Java API which started up last week. It will be great to see how this project grows in parallel with the .Net one.
• Doug Mahugh – Well, between his round the world trek to teach Open XML to developers (Nairobi; Mexico; San Francisco; Bogota; Santiago; San Paulo; Beijing; Kiev; Munich; and many others I didn't keep track of), and his current schedule at tech-ed, Doug hasn't had a chance to post much on the SDKs. I was talking with him yesterday though and he said he had a few things he wanted to talk about when he gets some free time.

It's good..yeah..it surely is..but this makes me nervous! What am I doing? Why I am not contributing in it? Then came the answer ...  (not from my manager ;)). Why are you thinking about it ? Go! Contribute!

This is how came WordPackage ..what? why? where? when? I'll answer all the 'W' questions in my next post.

Like I said in my previous article fusion logs are surely an indispensable tool when you are working with .NET (especially when you are troubleshooting).

Whenever you are running any assembly binding issue use fusion logs. What is 'fusion' anyways ? ..find out! that's a test for you :) 

There are two ways to take a fusion log:

1) Using tool fuslogvw.exe (try pronouncing it ;))

2) Using registry  ..let me know if you want to know about it !

Suzanne documented  more about debugging assembly load failures in great detail  ..

Here is the moral of the story:

Fusion logs will describe the binding failure (if this is due to an assembly binding failure, instead of a loading failure after the file is found). The exception may already include the log. If not, to get it, run fuslogvw.exe. If you don't have fuslogvw.exe already, install the Framework SDK.

• For pre-v2.0: click on "Log Failures." If this is an ASP.NET or .NET Windows service app, select the Custom option and using regedit, set [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion\LogPath] to point to an existing directory (like c:\mylogs, not c:\). If you need to log all binds, not just failing ones, set [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion\ForceLog] as a DWORD value to 1.
• For v2: click on "Settings," then choose "Log bind failures to disk" if you only care about the failures or "Log all binds to disk" if you want to see all binding requests.
• To turn on failure logging during a test run instead of by hand, have your script set [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion\LogFailures] as a DWORD value to 1 using regedit.

If you are into smart documents and you tried to port your smart documents to Vista you'll get this issue. A few days back I came to know about this issue from one of our customers. Where he says "We've developed a few smart documents and they were working with XP, but they stopped working in Vista"

When I asked him "Can you give me some sample code ? He said ..yes, but you can download Office 2003 Smart Document SDK for yourself and try". I paused for a moment.. (gulp) does he mean *all* smart documents are broken on Vista.?

On researching further, I found http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923920 which surely means at least managed documents created using VB 6.0 are broken on Vista.

I tried to run unmanaged smart documents on Vista..broken as documented.

Tried C# .NET 1.1 - broken

Tried VB 7 .NET 1.1 - broken

Tried VB 8 .NET 2.0 - broken

Tried VC+ - broken

:(

Found a few  bugs around it, but nothing exactly explained what is happening, this surely looked like a bug somehow linked with UAC. Tried fusion log (I'll explain about it in my next article ). Still didn't get any clue.

Then when I was trying it on my colleague's Vista box it worked without complain! That was strange! 

Checked the difference between his machine and my machine..realized that he has a .NET policy that grants trust to everything in "C:\" hmm .. interesting.. looks like I need to do some filemon-ing.

Which reveled the problem.. in Vista the ‘cache’ location is not the same the default setPolicy.bat from the SDK gives full trust to:

%UserProfile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Schemas\SimpleSample\*

but, on Vista the 'cache' location is different, so if we give full trust to :

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Schemas\SimpleSample\* 

It works like a charm! So, do you think this issue needs a doc? yeah..I think too, I am requesting for a KB

This was a very busy week, because of the obvious reasons. End of the financial year! So the performance of this year is being discussed.

I worked in many companies before, but everything @ Microsoft is so transparent that I love to work here.

Ok, I know.. I discussed it before.

I just wanted to let you know that this week I got many emails from the people seeking for help, but unfortunately I couldn't reply anybody. So, if you are still waiting for my reply.. I am sorry for not replying and sorry again I don't think I would be able to reply this week.

One more important thing is; I wanted to reiterate please don't send me production code! Setting the ground rules (again): I've got many emails with the code that looks like production code and I had to reply them back telling them not to send me production code, unless you open a support ticket with us [then all the NDA stuff comes into picture].

 As I told you before, everything you send me might be blogged because I want my complete reader community to get the benefit.

Ok .. I know the title doesn't make any sense! but this post does. My old blog-followers will remember that I had an old post titled "End of treasure hunt for office developer" . I have an "interactive update" on it .. (sorry ! its not intentional. The beautiful thing I just saw is forcing me to add "interactive" everywhere) 

Have a look at this cool thing ! and tell me how do I put it ! Newly released Microsoft Office Interactive Developer Map makes it easier for software developers to visualize the different programs, servers, services, and tools that will help them extend Microsoft Office and build custom Office Business Applications (OBAs).

Hey Erika ! you are our superstar ..

I hate people viewsourcing [hey ! I coined a new word :)] my code, what do I do ?

People who did not understand my newly invented word even after spending 5 or more seconds, please do not bother.. read on

Lets suppose I designed a great web page which contains some cleverly designed scripts and I want to protect its source code what do I do ? There are multiple ways, one of the common way is encoding using Microsoft Script Encoder ( It's a simple command line tool)

It's all good for a simple web page, but things are not so easy when we add a few variables like: what if your page dynamic ? ( e.g. being generated using some server side code), or what if you want to protect some XML data or HTML data ? (something important like connection string)

I recently handled one case like this, instinctively I suggested using "Microsoft Script Encoder" but on further discussion with the customer, I realized they finally need to protect HTML/XML not a script and their page is dynamically generated using ASP.

Now, running a command line tool on a web server is surely not a great idea [ok..sorry ..all generalizations are false!]. But still its not even not a great way of coding where you would need to persist your dynamically generated page to the disk then programmatically launch a commandline tool which will convert the page to the encoded page and sending this page to the user agent.

On researching further I realized that "Microsoft Script Encoder" uses "Microsoft Scripting Runtime" Scripting.Encoder object under the hoods.. so I thought of playing with it a bit..just to give you a backgrounder [oh..new word again! Are you reading this oxford !], I never used encoder object before this case came to me. When I looked for the documentation for this object, it was limited [I just want to avoid saying that there was no documentation.. but don't worry, I already looped in MSDN support].

So, the only option was playing with it, after some trial, error and testing I was able to device the following method for achieving the desired results:

1)    Create an object of “Scripting.Encoder” (e.g oScrEnc)
2)    Rather than directly writing the HTML that’s generated on server side wrap it in “document.write” [because script encoder or Microsoft Scripting Runtime can only encode script] and store it in a string (e.g strHTML )
3)    Pass this string in EncodeScriptFile (e.g oScrEnc.EncodeScriptFile(“.js”,strHTML, 0, “js”)). This will return the encoded script.
4)    Now, write the encoded script wherever you want in your page in between <script language = Jscript.Encode> </script> [note the language attribute, that’s required for the browser to understand the encoded script]

Have a look at the following code snippet for the completed code:  

[We are not talking about protecting the source code from seasoned hackers, its about protecting it from the people who will do a quick view source and put the script in their web page]

I know, its bad.. :( but [I] can't do anything about it. Well..other than letting you know[doing], submitting a bug [done] and requesting a KB [done] .

 Bugs are everywhere software, Hardware (and human beings ?) ..even the best of  developers do the smallest of mistakes.

Just wanted you to be aware about it so that you don't base your solutions on this assumption.

For the people who are new to it, here is a quick backgrounder (is it a word?):Office 2007 has a blog template, when you load the blog template, you can do everything that you can do form a great blog editor.

And the best part is ..its easily programmable! using IBlogExtensibility, IBlogPictureExtensiblity and AddBlogDocument.

Everything here works beautifully.. but there is just one small problem :( AddBlogDocument seems to ignore the postid parameter so "the new document is NOT populated with the contents of the post specified by the value of the PostID parameter" as opposed to what is given in the article.

If you really really need this functionality, I think the only go would be to create a addin and directly communicate with metablog APIs.

Finally I thought about adding a few new things on my blog [other then so many useless tags that take away my useful screen asset].

1)  I am not a del.icio.us member, so you can add me in your list. At the right hand side, if you scroll down you will see a favs list. That will always be updated with my new favs. So you always know what I am up to.

2) I am adding one more medium for you to connect with  me.. Meebo. So, whenever you are on my page, you can see if I am online or not. If I am, you can chat with me directly. To be frank.. I don't (read: I can't) promise you that i'll respond. But for sure i'll try my best

Yeah, right ! Okkk no wordplay here! but the point is.. when I saw this thing, I thought about introducing this category. So, it should get the honor of being "First QuickPick"

Description of the Microsoft Office Isolated Conversion Environment update for the Compatibility

Oversimplifying MOICE: Its a tool that converts office binary files to the new formats securely.I sincerely hope nobody will ask "why it needs office convertor pack to  be installed?".

Come on .. you don't expect us to ship one functionality in different tools.. It was already there,  so we reused it ! Finally that all OOPS is about.

The RC. Available broadly to anyone who signs up http://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer

Check cool Add-Ins that are already available: http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/whs-add-ins 

And if you feel that you need some extra money you can also participate in the great..

Challenge: Create cool software and/or hardware add-ins for Windows Home Server to simplify the digital lifestyles of families everywhere; or just to geek out. Over $50,000 in prizes! www.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver/challenge

Don't forget to check the homeserver blog  http://blogs.technet.com/homeserver/

But believe me I was stuck in some really important priorities .. no ..I am not talking about the pubs, discs and parties that I had during this "blog break".

Today, I have something to tell you

1) I am trying to clear up the TagClouds from my blog, I want to keep only the most important Tags (to be honest I am trying to do that since a couple of months, but I guess I am too lazy !)

2) I will be adding a new category/tag "QuickPick". Every post with this type will not have too much of content, just something quick that I want to post before anyone else does ;)

3) I also got added (selected ?) as a author on Microsoft Office Support Blog. So you will also see my posts on that blog ! :)

I frequently get user questions on my blog, and I always get confused about how to handle the user requests. Yesterday I discussed this with a few fellow blogger and came up with the following DOs for you..in the given sequence.

1. If you are a  blogger and you have any question that you want me to answer, post it in your blog and give me a trackback.
2. If you don't blog and you have any question related to my existing post, please post a comment.
3. If the comments are disabled please use the "contact form".

And here are DOs for me

1. Naturally, I have an inherent tilt towards bloggers. So, if you are doing (1) then you may get a priority. Hey ..others..I'll try to be as fair as possible.
2. All the questions that I get using my "contact form" or "post comments" or from trackbacks, will be blogged with the names (no, don't worry I won't blog your email address.)
3. well.. I have a job to do .. yeah, I don't get paid for blogging :) so I won't be able to answer all the questions, but I will choose a few randomly
4. If there is a question that will need some more research, I will let you know so that you can open a case with Microsoft Support or post your query online communities.

In a couple of days this page is replacing my "Ask Me" page. As I think this post pretty much explains how to "Ask Me" any questions !

This is something that surely should be categorized under "Cool". I am using Vista from its internal rollout, far before it was released outside, still somehow I ignored [I hate that person who said ignorance is a bliss] this superb feature.

Yesterday when I was visiting a nice blog whose author [Gary Russo] happens to be my customer, I saw this post. Hey Gary ! great post !

Obviously as anybody else on this planet, I got curious to know more about it, and again immediate help was offered by Gary as a link to Tom's blog  titled ReadyBoost Q&A

Wow..! cool.. but unfortunately I was not able to use this feature as vista says that my 4 GB USB drive is not good enough :(

So..its the time to buy a new drive !