Welcome to MSDN Blogs Sign in | Join | Help

March 2004 - Posts

Windows XP SP2, or the joys of defragging

Posted Monday, March 29, 2004 11:57 PM by jonathanh
Reminder to self: never eat dogfood just before heading home, it'll keep you up all night. The "dogfood" in this case is release candidate 1 of the upcoming XP Service Pack 2 . We're not recommending that customers use it in production environments, but Read More...
9 Comments
Filed under:

Electric sheep, or the finest eye-candy in the world

Posted Thursday, March 25, 2004 11:29 PM by jonathanh
If you haven't seen electric sheep yet, you're missing out. It's a distributed evolutionary ecosystem of fractal screensaver e-life. Which is to say, you contribute cycles, and in return you get the finest damn eye-candy in the entire world. The "best Read More...
1 Comments
Filed under:

At last, a Sim game for techies - "IT Manager"

Posted Thursday, March 25, 2004 11:00 AM by jonathanh
Last year I took a course on the Microsoft Operations Framework . One of the best parts of the course was the McKinley airport simulation , which is an evolving simulation of IT support at a busy airport. You have to operate as a team with different roles, Read More...
8 Comments
Filed under:

Free downloads for MOM 2005 and SMS 2003

Posted Wednesday, March 24, 2004 10:38 PM by jonathanh
Ok, for all those of you who weren't at MMS 2004 last week, here are the free downloads that you missed: MOM 2005 beta 3 and MOM 2005 Express beta . Yep, our latest bits. SMS 2003 Admin Feature Pack - three tools that let you manage site accounts, transfer Read More...
0 Comments
Filed under:

Tablet PC power schemes, or how not to burn a hole in your lap

Posted Saturday, March 20, 2004 11:25 AM by jonathanh
By default, Windows XP comes with a pretty good set of power schemes . But if you're a control freak, you'll really love the Power Saver application that Toshiba ships with its Tablet PCs. You can create an unlimited number of additional power schemes, Read More...
6 Comments
Filed under:

"I would regard Indy as a mechanism for approaching adulthood"

Posted Thursday, March 18, 2004 10:38 PM by jonathanh
Last of the news summaries of this year's Microsoft Management Summit: Infoworld's article " Microsoft offers glimpse of management software future " reports on Kirill's keynote, where he talked about capacity planning (yay Indy demo!) and desired state Read More...
2 Comments
Filed under:

Announcing Indy (and other news from MMS 2004)

Posted Tuesday, March 16, 2004 11:14 PM by jonathanh
Well, our demo's not till tomorrow, but apparently "sources close to the company" (and I have my guesses as to who they are :-)) have already been talking to the analysts. Mary Jo Foley gets it pretty much exactly right in Modeling the Datacenter With Read More...
5 Comments

Calling all administrators

Posted Monday, March 15, 2004 9:43 PM by jonathanh
If you actually get to kick real hardware in your job, then head on over to KC Lemson's blog and add your name to the comments - we're wondering why there are so many developer blogs around, but so few administrator blogs. Where are tomorrow's BOFH s? Read More...
(Comments Off)
Filed under:

Font choices, and other religious wars

Posted Sunday, March 14, 2004 5:32 PM by jonathanh
Scoble's interview with Bill Hill reminded me that font choices are another weapon in the ongoing battle against information overload. Of course, any conversation about fonts is almost as likely to escalate into an all-out religious war as is a conversation Read More...
15 Comments
Filed under:

What is all this stuff doing on my computer?

Posted Saturday, March 13, 2004 6:48 PM by jonathanh
Update : autoruns has gotten even better — check out my latest post about it. The first time I ran task manager on my Tablet PC, I was faintly horrified at the long list of Windows background processes. What were they doing? And how could I make them Read More...
23 Comments
Filed under: ,

Tablet PC + ArtRage + Cross Pen = happiness for dummies

Posted Friday, March 12, 2004 10:07 PM by jonathanh
I think the Tablet PC is one of those things that people often don't "get" until they actually use one. So this post probably has two audiences - my fellow drooling gadget freaks who didn't order a laptop at work until they could get a Tablet PC, and Read More...
9 Comments

MMS 2004 is sold out!

Posted Friday, March 12, 2004 9:33 PM by jonathanh
Ok, they might not be blogging about it, but we've got over 2000 customers coming from 45 different countries. We've even added extra late-night lab sessions to cope with demand. In other words, our customer are so keen on computer management that they're Read More...
2 Comments
Filed under:

You're Never Alone With A Scoble

Posted Wednesday, March 10, 2004 10:48 PM by jonathanh
Thanks to Scoble's nice mention *, I'm not feeling so alone any more. That, plus the PR machinery is starting to kick into gear for the Microsoft Management Summit next week - and right on cue, Mary Jo Foley is running some analysis . If you're only going Read More...
0 Comments
Filed under:

"Communicate Or Die"

Posted Wednesday, March 10, 2004 10:04 PM by jonathanh
" All alone in the night " was originally entitled "Point man" - but I couldn't get a really good analogy going between being the first blogger in a Microsoft group, and being the first guy through the door in a game of XBox Live Counterstrike, so I went Read More...
6 Comments
Filed under:

All alone in the night

Posted Monday, March 08, 2004 10:33 PM by jonathanh
Some disheartening Feedster results: "Microsoft Management Summit": my introduction , a couple of analysts, and some job postings "MMS 2004": zero, nada, nothing Yep, that's right, the ANALYSTS are doing more blogging about our upcoming conference than Read More...
4 Comments
Filed under:

Using your laptop as a second screen

Posted Sunday, March 07, 2004 6:13 PM by jonathanh
Advertisers, Wall Street traders, and anyone who's ever fought for a share of the Windows desktop knows that the most important real estate on the planet is the screen you're looking at right now. And like all real estate, while some is good, more is Read More...
12 Comments
Filed under:

Must Work Harder

Posted Sunday, March 07, 2004 11:48 AM by jonathanh
Hi - I'm Jonathan Hardwick, and I'm software architect for the Indy team in Microsoft's Enterprise Management Division. EMD are the fine folks who make it possible to manage thousands of computers using SMS and MOM - and if you know what those TLAs mean, Read More...
5 Comments
Filed under:
 
Page view tracker