Emmanuel Mesas's Weblog

ADO.NET Data Services - $filter functions

Maybe I am too lazy or not efficient enough searching the Internet but It is hard to find a list of all the keywords available when interrogating an ADO.NET Data Service (service).

Therefore, I thought it could be faster to do a bit of Reflection (thanks to Reflector) against the System.Data.Services.dll in the System.Data.Services.Parsing namespace from the .NET Framework 3.5 Service pack1.

There are two types of operators – arithmetic and logical

1. Logical Operators

And = and
Or = or
Ascending = asc
Descending = desc
Equal = eq
Not Equal = ne
True = true
False = false
Greater Than = gt
Greater Than Or Equal = ge
Less Than = lt
Less Than Or Equal = le
Not = not
Null = null

2. Arithmetic Operators

Addition = add
Subtraction = sub
Divide = div
Multiply = mul
Modulo = mod

Aside from the list of operators, the filter parameter also has 4 categories of functions: String, Date, Math and Type.

1. String functions

Ends With = endswith(string)
Index Of = indexof(string)
Replace = replace(string, string)
Starts With = startswith(string)
To Lower = tolower(string)
To Upper = toupper(string)
Trim = trim(string)
Sub String = substring(int), substring(int, int)
Sub String Of = substringof(string, string)
Concatenation = concat(string, string)
Length = length(string)

2. Date functions

Year = year(datetime)
Month = month(datetime)
Day = day(datetime)
Hour = hour(datetime)
Minute = minute(datetime)
Second = second(datetime)

3. Math function

Round = round(double), round(decimal)
Floor = floor(double), floor(decimal)
Ceiling = ceiling(double), ceiling(decimal)

4. Type functions

Is Of = isof(type)
Cast = cast(type)

(Update – you can also have a list from Marcelo’s Weblog http://blogs.msdn.com/marcelolr/archive/2008/01/15/arithmetic-and-built-in-functions-for-filter.aspx – but this one seems to be outdated. Some functions are not available anymore)

Silverlight 2 Beta2 throws “Value does not fall within the expected range” when Transitioning States

Recently, as seen in my previous blog, I have been using intensively VisualStates and the VisualStateManager combined with new “Templating” contract introduced with TemplatePart and TemplateVisualState attributes.

Usually, the exception mentioned in my title occurs when you have multiple Xaml elements with the same x:Name. It is easy to find out in a UserControl on the Design Surface Visual Studio or Blend but more complex to detect when you are using Templates and store your stuff in the generic.xaml and App.xaml.

The problem I ran into was simple but difficult to troubleshoot. In fact, I was having a FormBase control (all in .cs code – no UI defined) and two derived controls (SignInForm and SignUpForm) which where using Parts from the base class (FormBase). I was using FormBase Parts (some ContentControls in my Template) to host UI that will participate to VisualStates – so no way that I could change the x:Name of those Parts when defining the Style.Template in my generic.xaml file otherwise they wouldn’t be found by the GetTemplateChild method. So, you end-up in the generic.xaml like this.

and had the same with a SignInForm.  With the yellow marker, I have highlighted what should not change because used by the GetTemplateChild method but surrounded controls like the one circled in red should have a different name for each template.

It might not be the perfect explanation for this behavior but this worked for me. When creating my Templates now, I make sure that all elements surrounding my TemplateParts have unique x:Name across all Styles declaration.

Blend 2.5 June Preview – Blend Templates editing issues

I have been using Expression Blend quite a lot these days and found out two odd things when designing Templates.

1. When using generic.xaml file to store your component Control Template and related styles and VisualStates, it does not allow you to Edit the TemplateVisualStates from the States Panel. It is simply disable and you can’t modify the States durations and Storyboard.
2. When fully editing Templates in Blend, the latter systematically prefixes XAML elements with “vsm” namespace. Although this has no incidence in the way you preview your templates and the VisualStates in Blend, it systematically make your application crashing at runtime when trying to use the VisualStateManager and when loading DataTemplate objects.

In order to solve the first issue, open your generic.xaml file from Expression Blend 2.5 June Preview and do not go in the xaml view but switch to the resources Panel and select the Control style to edit from there.

Note that every ControlTemplate in the generic.xaml is associated with a Control Class so the icon next to the name of the control style is reflecting the visual of that control.

The Template control is then displayed in the Design surface and this is what you end-up with, a States panel where you cannot edit your states and duration.

To solve this issue, switch back and forth between Design view and XAML view

and the States Panel will be editable again.

The Second issue is a bit more complex to discover and to solve. I actually don’t know today if it is related to Blend (even though it should not be prefixing all elements it is modifying) or the Silverlight Xaml Parser. Anyway, when you edit Templates with Blend, you can end-up with the following Xaml code.

Note the red circles on the screen shot in the upper picture. It shows where Blend actually inserts “vsm” namespace prefix to element properties. I even got the Style element being modified like this. The result is odd because you think it works because of Blend not complaining. This issue will simply make your States not transitioning and your storyboard not running. So, before you spend hours trying to look at your Control code to see where you made a mistake, make sure that those prefix are not present. On the other hand, it is normal to have vsm namespace prefix for VsualState, VisualStateGroup, VisualTransition, VisualStateManager elements.

Related to this prefix issue, when editing and creating Part Templates (DataTemplate) from a Style stored in the generic.xaml, Blend tends to store the DataTemplate declaration in the App.xaml resources dictionary. Again, what you end-up with is something similar to the screen shot below.

Even if this complies, you will get Runtime Error messages like “DataTemplate does not support Grid as Content” and again, you wonder why you have that because it compiles and DataTemplate do support Grid as Content !!

The solution is to remove all “vsm” namespace prefix from every element that is not a Visual* (VisualState, VisualTransition, VisualGroup, VisualStateManager …).

Activate an MSDN Windows Server 2008

Last week, I have been upgrading my Windows Server 2008 RC1 with a fresh Windows Server 2008 RTM downloaded from MSDN. Installation on my Toshiba M4 went smoothly and I was able to use the Windows Vista Drivers provided by the Toshiba web site.

Then comes the moment to activate my MSDN copy - I went through the following problem:

Error Code: 0x8007232B
Description: DNS name does not exist

As usual, when you have such error, you start searching the net to find the right answer. I started with this KB entry http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/938107 but wasn't very successful.

After spending some more time, I finally found what had solved my problem and will probably solve yours if you came to my blog for this. All explanations are detailed in Jim Blizzard's Blog at the following address:

http://snowstormlife.com/blogs/bliz/archive/2008/02/11/activate-windows-server-2008-rtm-msdn-subscriber-downloads-version.aspx

Thanks Jim.

MIX'08 - What else?

It's been fun to be at MIX'08 and I would definitely recommend to anyone never being in Las Vegas to at least get there once to see that! It is simply amazing - I would not spend my life there but for a week, that is an unbelievable place and the scene is set at the airport already. Well, enough about Vegas - I will probably write more about it and its night life on my private blog later on  - http://emesas.home.services.spaces.live.com/

One of the major thing to retain from MIX'08 is about the convergence of the client development platform. Indeed, Silverlight 2.0 being revealed and being presented on Mobile Devices (WM & Symbian through Nokia), it now gives a very good insight of what the "near" future will look like - no more platform discussion, no more developer tools switching, no more Smart Client vs. Thin Client debate ... One fits them all? probably not, but with .NET 3.5 Next and Silverlight 2.0, developers will be able to leverage their XAML development and deploy on (m)any form factor devices - whenever it is on a Windows Vista OS for a WPF high resource demanding application or inside a Mac/Windows (/Linux) browser with Silverlight 2.0 (/Moonlight) for lightweight Web application (RIA) or on Windows Mobile/Symbian devices with Silverlight for Mobile. Still, developing Web application requires some knowledge about HTML & JavaScript but I see that convergence also happening there. XAML and HTML are so close that it is a matter of time when developer will only have 2 languages to know - one for UI (XAML) and one for Code (C#, VB, C++, Python ...)

{

By the way, for HTML & JavaScript, half of the path is done already, Nikhil Kothari - one of Microsoft's .NET Framework architects - has developed a very useful and powerful compiler called ScriptSharp (S#) which "[...] generates JavaScript (instead of MSIL) for use in Web applications and other script-based application types such as Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets". The project can be found there http://www.codeplex.com/scriptsharp and I can tell you that in addition to me, a lot of developers inside as well as outside Microsoft are using it on a daily bases.

}

and besides the vision, here are the products and innovations being released that week !

• Internet Explorer 8 beta - this is the most standard-compliant browser actually delivered. It is the only one, along with Opera 9, passing the ACID2 test and it comes with new innovations like WebSlices and Activities
• Deep Zoom technology & Deep Zoom Composer - directly from Microsoft Live Labs - this technology is simply amazing. It allows users to look at mega-pixels images from a Silverlight application without to have to download the entire file. A zooming interface that provide extreme close-up with performance and smooth transitions.
• Silverlight 2.0 Beta1 - the most (wanted) waited release of Silverlight in its managed version. Silverlight 1.0 was all about Media and Graphics, with the version 2.0, Silverlight opens door to business applications. Of course, you get the tools SL2.0 Beta1 for Visual Studio .NET 2008
• Silverlight reach Mobile devices - Nokia announcement for Silverlight on S60 and Microsoft announcement for Silverlight 1.0 on Windows Mobile 6 devices.
• Windows Live™ Messenger API - if the Contact control doesn't suits your UI needs and if the Presence API isn't just sufficient, try the Messenger Library and build your own Messenger Experience with the look  and design of your web site. My recommendation will of course go for using the Messenger Library with Script#, especially if you are a .NET developer and not very comfortable writing programs that have more than 10 lines of JavaScript.
• Windows Live™ Delegated Authentication API - More granular than the Domain Authentication model, this new model is a Unified Model aimed at being the only one used by all Windows Live Data Services when it comes to delegate rights to resources. Don't be confused, Delegated Authentication API is more about Resources Access rather than Authentication. Think more about an API that helps Resources Provider (today Windows Live essentially) giving or delegating access to others - something I would rather call an Authorization API. I would not be surprised to see more Resource Providers other than Windows Live™ Data Services.
• Windows Live™ ATOM API for Photos and Storage - REST, RSS, WebDav .... so many ways and technologies for accessing information. As Windows Live™ Data Services get more mature, Windows Live™Data Services also get a new and probably a "unified" protocol to request data from the clouds. My recommendation here - Pay attention to ATOM - it might be the next big thing for data exchange in the clouds.
• Expression Studio 2.0 February 2008 Beta & Expression Blend 2.5 March 2008 Preview - with Silverlight 2.0 wave comes Expression family products wave as well. I haven't really touched Expression Designer 2.0 but I encourage Silverlight 2.0 developer to have a look at the new Expression Encoder 2.0 Beta. This version is not a solely product and is an optional component of the Expression Studio February 2008 Beta. You can add more Metadata to your videos and this metadata is directly exploitable by Silverlight' media elements, along with the possibility to directly edit and visualize your Silverlight player from Encoder.
  Note that when installing Expression Studio 2.0 Beta, uncheck Expression Blend and install the 2.5 March 2008 Preview that works with Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1
• Internet Information Server 7.0 Media Pack - get a tight integration with Silverlight and IIS 7.0 for your media & video scenarios. With Web Playlists and Bit Rate Throttling, turning IIS7.0 into a media server for small scenario (Media Services 2008 for Windows Server 2008 is the Enterprise solution for large scale) is now becoming a reality. With Web Playlists, you can enforce users to watch videos in a given order and you can give the freedom or enforce not to skip one video for another. With Bit Rate Throttling, Silverlight players will never consume more bandwidth as it is needed to watch a video, IIS 7.0 will serve the necessary data to ensure that the player has enough buffer to smoothly play but will stop serving data if the user disconnects or pushes the pause button (unlike today).
• Plus other miscellaneous things about WPF enhancement and performance improvements Q3CY08 and probably new Microsoft Surface applications coming soon.

Definitely, working at the Microsoft Innovation Center in Copenhagen - visit our Live Spaces -has never been so excited with so much innovation and so many new product releases. I am really looking forward to the rest of 2008 and to MIX'09 - so save the dates March 18-20, 2009, I'll be there !

Windows Live™ ID - Available Options - Part II

MIX'08 is coming (next week) and new stuff will probably be revealed by the Windows Live™ product team. I'll be there, knows what's behind - but can't tell you right now what's going to be announced. Indeed, I previously wrote that I will talk about some APIs not even mentioned on MSDN but it would definitely not be fair as we reserve this kind of announcements to customer's events.

All I can tell you is that we will be enhancing the actual Web Authentication SDK to provide more granularity and more customization capabilities. This should help adoption by customers who are a bit reluctant of being redirected to login.live.com servers and thus, creating a disruptive experience in the navigation and the UI.

For customer who are not really satisfied about what they have with the Web Authentication SDK, I suggest that you stay tuned and listen to Angus Logan's Session at MIX'08 when it will be posted at http://sessions.visitmix.com. He's going to announce some of the changes that will hit the next release of this SDK.

For those who are still impatient and want to use Windows Live™ ID and all the benefits around Windows Live™ Services, other APIs exist and are reserved to Microsoft Partners. Those API are being used by Microsoft sites (I.e. http://msdn2.microsoft.com, http://www.live.com, http://www.zune.net) and some other partners. Without telling too much about it, I suggest that you visit the www.zune.net web site and try to sign-in or sign-up for a new Windows Live™ account. Rather than writing a long story about it, just try and you'll have a flavor of what can be possible.

So my bottom line will be - don't limit yourself with what you see today, new stuff are coming and if you think that this is not enough, either talk to your local Microsoft representative or directly email me and we will show you that more is available ...

Windows Live™ ID - Available Options - Part I

In a recent post, I promised to demystify Windows Live™ ID and help you understanding what the options are when it comes to integrate Windows Live ID to your (new) application. I said "application" because WLID is not only something you can plug into your web application but also to your Smart Client application as well. Note that even if WLID is available to Smart Clients, some Windows Live™ Services cannot be access from a Smart Client application and can only be "touched" from a web application only - so, make sure you carefully read the Terms Of Use (TOU) for each service.

Windows Live™ ID is providing you with an authentication infrastructure so you don't need to build it in-house. Let's clearly set the scene - I am talking about Authentication information and not Authorization and/or Profile information. While you will be relying on Windows Live servers for authenticating (sign in, sign out, sign up) users, all information about their profile and the rights they have within your application is fully under your control and won't be stored on Windows Live™ infrastructure. Unless some very special cases, you won't have access to WLID profile information and even to the WLID Identifier (a fortiori WLID password) used for signing-in when it comes to Web Authentication for example. Basically and for privacy reasons, when users will use WLID to sign-in to your application, you'll be receiving from the Live infrastructure a Private Personal Identifier (PPID) that is unique for a given WLID and a given application - this might vary depending on the option (SDK) you choose to go for.

You basically have five SDK to help you benefit from Windows Live™ ID infrastructure. Two SDK are essentially targeting Smart Client applications and three SDK are targeting Web Based solutions. In this part, I will concentrate on Client based authentication.

Microsoft Windows Live ID Client SDK 1.0 - This SDK is dedicated to Smart Client solutions providing WLID as an authentication mechanism. It comes two main classes - Identity and IdentityManager. How this is working?

Basically, the developer uses the IdentityManager class to create an Identity object using the IdentityManager.CreateIdentity method. Use the Identity.Authenticate method for prompting the user to enter his WLID credentials - the form UI comes with the assembly and is completely opaque to the developer. if the user's credentials are correctly entered, the Identity.Authenticate returns true and the Identity.IsAuthenticated is also set to true. The process also populates two main properties; Identity.cId and Identity.UserName.
Identity.cId is the PPID for that given user for this given application and Identity.UserName is the Windows Live identifier used for signing-in.

As you can see, no need to create a special form, grab sensitive data from the username and password text boxes and call any web services behind the scene, developers only have to deal with the Identity class for retrieving user's identity.
That is for dealing with Identity - one benefit of the Windows Live™ ID infrastructure - but as I mentioned earlier, Windows Live is not only about Identity, it is also about additional services (Photos, Contacts, Messenger, SkyDrive and so on and so forth). Developer will then use the Identity.GetTicket method to acquire the authentication ticket that will enable them to embed calls to Windows Live™ services API or open a browser to navigate Windows Live™ Services using the Identity.OpenAuthenticatedBrowser method.

RPS Soap requests - This approach isn't for handling the authentication process to the Live infrastructure but for acquiring a Windows Live™ ID token in order to access other Live services. It is recommended to use it for Smart Client only and for application not written in managed code. One will have to build a SOAP request to the WS-TRUST point - https://dev.login.live.com/wstlogin.srf as shown in the MSDN article http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb447721.aspx which is talking about the various way for acquiring a token in order to access Windows Live Data.

If the WLID credentials supplied are correct, the endpoint returns a SOAP response with a token in the body element <wsse:BinarySecurityToken>. This token can be used in the security header for querying Windows Live™ services like Spaces Photos or Contacts for example.

In a next post, I will discuss what the options are for Web authentication - you'll be discovering options not even mentioned on MSDN.

Windows Live™ ID - You can (use it)!

I've recently been involved in several projects where Windows Live™ ID (WLID) was a very compelling authentication mechanism as opposed to classical & home made authentication. Of course with ASP.NET Membership feature, it is much easier to handle user authentication but still, you have to manage the login process, privacy, have to keep password safe, provide a service for forgotten password and have to consistently evolve as authentication vehicles evolve as well - here I am talking about SAML support, Windows CardSpace™ (CardSpace) support and potential federation with other Identity Provider.

In addition to this, Windows Live™ ID isn't only there for offloading authentication process out of your site. There are many other services you and your customers can benefit from adopting WLID.
I already talked about the most obvious one but think about how you could ease your customer's life by allowing them to use any existing WLID to sign-in to your site. I think your customer will love reusing the WLID they're already using to sign-in to Hotmail® or Live Messenger™ ... Ok, I can start hearing the crowd telling me about "what happen if my account gets Hijacked? all my accounts then will be vulnerable". Don't you think this is already the case right now? Let me open a small parenthesis and talk about password and Identity theft.

Last year, I was animating two sessions at Swiss TechDays, it was around Identity and how Microsoft is managing the change around Identity Management. I was surveying people during my talk about how many of them were actually reusing the same identifier and password each time they were about the register for a new account. The majority does, most of us are reusing, not only the same password (password fatigue) but also, if they have the ability to do so, the same identifier!
So tell me, why arguing that using WLID is a threat when people already do that in a bad manner? what is the alternative today? - Take a sheet of paper, write down your account and a VERY strong password. About the security question? if you can specify your own security question, then that's fine. If you can't, I guess today, most security questions are too obvious to guess. Indeed, with  a quick research on the Internet, one can guess what is your mom's original name (using genealogic sites), or where you did spend your childhood (using your facebook or favorite social site) and can probably guess your favorite color (using a dictionary attack) ...

So, I close my parenthesis about Identity theft and come back to WLID. In my opinion, WLID isn't weaker than any other Identity Provider and using it for multiple site isn't that bad as well. In addition, you can even use different (2 to 3) Live ID for different purpose (as oppose to 100 different accounts) and last but not least, even provide VERY strong password you can't even remember (but write them down and put them in a safe place :-)) and use CardSpace for managing and presenting those accounts to sites that you use frequently. I.e have one WLID & CardSpace for your social networking, another one for buying stuff online and another one for Private Banking and high sensitive operations.

After reviewing how Windows Live™ ID can be a substitute to your home made Authentication mechanism, ease life of your consumer's account management and help the Identity Management becoming even safer using CardSpace, one additional benefit is the access to Windows Live™ Services and API given for every WLID account. Indeed, why using your own storage and building your own application programming interface (API) for offering community and social networking functionality when Windows Live™ is already providing it to you and your developers?

If you think Windows Live™ ID and Windows Live™ Services are interesting to have a look at and can help you (re) architecture your (new) web site, stay tuned for my next post where I will be describing all the different options available to you when it comes to use Windows Live™ ID.

BizTalk Service & "Oslo" - Something you should know

I was sitting in Steven Martin's session this afternoon at Tech∙Ed EMEA Developer in Barcelona and was glad to see that Microsoft is continuing to invest in Modeling and Services. From a personal perspective, I was especially excited by one particular thing - BizTalk Services in the clouds.

I have been experiencing BizTalk Services for a couple of months now and thought that it is actually a very good idea to bring Services, Identity and Workflow out of the firewall and start expanding the scope of what Enterprise developers are producing by exposing it to the clouds.

However, I was still worried by the message you get at the bottom of the home page of the http://labs.biztalk.net/- "Keep in mind that the technologies available at BizTalk Labs are experimental. In many cases we have not decided on what they will be named, whether they will become fully released products, or how we will charge for them"

So every time I wanted to show this implementation to someone else, I was always threat whenever it would actually still exist in the next day, and since it was an experimental lab, I was also wondering if I could really rely on its architecture for future scenarios and start to evangelizing it. Now I have my answer : YES.

Steve's presentation was really emphasizing BizTalk.net services as the vision of Microsoft platform and as a master piece of how the .NET Framework and the BizTalk Server product will evolve. So, for those who are not very familiar with BizTalk services, let me introduce it quickly.

BizTalk Services (http://labs.biztalk.net) is a set of online connected Services. It has a Relay service that enables you to publish your service to the Internet without having to set up the entire infrastructure behind exposing a Service to the clouds. It also provides an Identity Provider Service (Security Token Service) compatible with CardSpace that delivers SAML tokens in order to protect your services. Finally, it plans in a short future, to host your Workflow Foundation Business Process for a fully-integrated business scenario implementation; all of this IN THE CLOUDS!

Imagine a world - not too far from now - where you won't need to build a complex DMZ, buy extra boxes for hosting your services & business processes - because of course, they can't sit in your Intranet - and have a dummy Identity Service (AD, LDAP service, Membership Local Database) sitting in your DMZ, completely separated form your enterprise identity provider, that uses its proprietary token just for the purpose of securing your Internet Services. This world is almost there and you can already benefit from it .

"Oslo" is the code name for a set of technical investment and architecture design we'll be making in the next release of a series of products that will support Model Driven development and that will enable Services to cross boundaries - BizTalk Service is one concrete experimentation that is serving Microsoft to envision not only .NET Framework future versions but also BizTalk Server, Active Directory through ADFS, Visual Studio and Infrastructure products like System Center.

Where should you start? Start writing Services using WCF; make sure your services are interoperable, use WCF eXtensible Security Infrastructure for Claims-based Authorization. Claims are WCF internal mechanisms for managing/mapping identity and authorization but also, Claims are easily transportable from systems to systems and from organizations to organizations using Federation.

Second, try out http://labs.biztalk.net and experience building WCF services that has been designed with the principals above, can be easily exposed to the world through just a few mouse clicks and start imagining how far you could go not only with your personal services but also with Enterprise business or Corporate business as well.

Stay tuned ... there will be more around BizTalk Services later this month.

Another "RAID" Vista advise on Toshiba Portégé M400

Last week, I was so excited about the Windows Vista RTM (6.0.6000) that I decided to upgrade. I still have the same Toshiba M400 and got the latest driver for the RAID controler (1.6.12.0) from TOSHIBA CORPORATION.
In addition to have to load it during setup (my previous blog), I was really disappointed when I first booted my system! Vista was simply hanging for 10-15 seconds every 5 minutes or so. I tried to roll back to a previous version of the driver (... the XP driver) and it was even worse: Blue Screen !!

Fortunatly, one of my colleague showed me the trick ... indeed, there is no way to figure this out!
First of all, open your Device Manager panel for the Control Panel. Then navigate to "Disk Drives", right click on the "TOSHIBA RAID LD0 SCSI Disk Device" and select "Properties"

Select the "Policies" tab and check the "Enable advanced performance" - There you go, you now have a new computer running with no hangs at all! Enjoy!

Attached are the new M400 RAID controler drivers.

Toshiba BIOS & Drivers Update for Windows Vista RC1

In addition to my previous post on Windows Vista on a M400, you'll now be able to find official updates on Vista Drivers for Toshiba M4, M5 and M400

Check this link here

Wanna Get Vista RC1 on Toshiba M400?

It's been a hard time installing Windows Vista RC1 on a Toshiba M400 but I finally succeeded in doing it. You have to be careful that what was running smoothly with earlier builds will not with the RC1 - Drivers that do not comply with quality tests have just been removed - which is a good thing on one hand - no more blocking or crashes but on the other hand, prevents you from installing this cool OS on your cool Laptop ;-)

Indeed, first of all, you will find out that when booting your M400 from the Vista DVD, the setup program will not find your hard disk(s) - why? - because the M400 has a SATA-RAID controller that doesn't have a "Vista Ready" driver at YET! Then, what you have to do is to pick-up the one from the Toshiba Support site which is certified for Windows XP.

The driver I was using is posted at the Toshiba WebSite here.

Once you have downloaded the driver, unzip it to an USB Memory stick and keep it ready for the disk management panel during setup. Use your Vista DVD to boot from and just stick the USB memory stick into any left hand USB port on your M400 - you may try both ports until it is recognized by the setup - and then, point to the memory stick when setup program ask you to load an external driver.

Once Vista has load the driver, you should see the disk and you should be ready to moving forward in the installation process. There are maybe two things that you don't want to do using the Windows XP driver for this device:

• Don't do any RAID1 or RAID0 configuration
• Don't use the BitLocker functionnality

for this, you should wait for an Official Vista Ready driver from Toshiba.

Bottom line, it worked for me but do not take this as an Official Microsoft solution - think about it as a temporary solution ;-)

[PS: I changed the Original article because of a formatting problem and some other things ...]

E3 Coverage - beyond Xbox Live - Masterchief is back !

As you might know or not know, E3 as started this week in Las Vegas till the end of the week.
Despite Sony(R) - Sorry, I had to do it - I think we did a better job by launching our console last year ... now we definitely have a competitive advantage and will be able to "refine" the price of the Xbox 360 when PS3 will be out.  This year, the emphasis has been put on the Xbox Live, the Xbox 360 evolution and THE GAMES !!! ... while in fact, the buzz on SONY was "how much it's gonna cost you to get to the next gen of gaming?" - $499 or $599?

Our News?

• Masterchief is back with HALO3 (trailer)
• Xbox Live (R) will become Xbox Live Anywhere(R) - Imagine you playing a game on your Xbox 360 and have to travel like myself and continue your online gaming experience on Windows Vista and more, on your Cell phone using Windows Mobile 6.0 !
• Not only that but next generation of Xbox Live will allow playing your favorite FPS - you on your Xbox 360 while your friend be on Windows Vista!
• HD DVD support for Xbox 360 this fall
• A new ear headset for Xbox Live, Hard Disk, Camera and Force Feedback Wheel also available this fall

Our Games? (my favorites)

• Gears Of War(r) (trailer) - my favorite waiting for HALO3
• LOST Planet - Excellent demo available on the Xbox Live MarketPlace and trailer here.
• Forza Motosport (TM) 2 - A  trailer is available on the Xbox Live Market Place
• MotoGP 06 (trailer)
• ...

I think that with the poor Press conference from SONY and Microsoft, not playing the game of mystery but showing "LIVE" what we have instead of PPT show, a lot of people and gamers are now trusting Microsoft in its capability to deliver the next gen gaming experience.

With Xbox 1, we were challengers, Xbox 360 will make the momentum - next year at E3, I bet it will be OUR year! rendez-vous is taken ...

Bye Office "12" - Hello "Microsoft Office System 2007"

Yesterday Microsoft announced its new Office System called Microsoft Office System 2007. Besides the packaging you already know - Professional, Standard etc ... Microsoft Office is not a solely packaged product anymore.

Started with Office 2003 and SharePoint 2003, Office System 2007 delivers not only a new line of client products but also introduces new Server products and Live Services as well. Let me walk through new items:

Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 – A replacement for Office Student & Teacher Edition 2003. It is time to bring the Office « Suite » Home at a sweet priceJ. In the 2007 release, Microsoft Office Outlook has been replaced by Microsoft Office OneNote.

Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 - The ultimate suite which includes all Microsoft Office Suite client Products but also powerful tools for managing and analyzing data, integrating content management and workflow, protecting documents with rights management and integrating instant messaging and application sharing. This will be possible using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Microsoft Office Groove 2007 - A peer-to-peer and workspace collaboration tool.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 - A powerful tool to deliver compelling and attractive SharePoint sites and quickly build workflow-enabled applications and reporting tools on the SharePoint platform.

Microsoft Office Forms Server 2007 - provide a scalable, security-enhanced, standards-based solution that centralizes control and management of electronic forms by allowing customers to use a common Web browser to interact with information. It will help streamline organizations’ forms-driven business processes with existing systems

Microsoft Office Groove Server 2007 - provide IT organizations with enterprise-class server software and tools to deploy, manage and integrate Office Groove 2007 across the enterprise.

Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 - will be a top-down portfolio management governance solution. The solution has been designed to help ensure that organizations gain visibility, insight and control over their project, program and application portfolios.

So be prepared for the new Server, Client and Service product lines and do forget to visit the Microsoft Office System 2007 Packaging where you will find much more information and also the Pricing list and much more here.

Let's "1st" Blog

Emmanuel Mesas, ISV Architect Evangelist, EMEA HQ

Ok ... you might say "Blogs exist for a long time now ... why only blogging now?"
This is probably because of my former role within Microsoft and my motivation for blogging which were not in favor of doing so. Anyway, if you're passionnated about Microsoft Technologies and the fun we are able to provide through VS2005, BizTalk 2006 ... ok ok also Age Of Empire III, Xbox 360 and the Xbox Live, you might come often and enjoy!

Thanks,

Manu.