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Sara Ford's Weblog

My adventures embracing open source on CodePlex and at Microsoft

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Did you know that today’s tip on msinfo32.exe ends the series? -#382

‘Cause nothing lasts forever… even cold November rain

My most sincere thanks to you for reading the 17 month series. Because of you, people from my hometown are going to college. All because of community inspiring community.

I want to part ways saying community is about people, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It is not the “if you build it they will come” infrastructure theory (that’s just a movie). Community is about the connections we establish and foster. Or better stated by someone whose name I cannot recall, Community is about being excellent to each other.

I *really* wish I could continue, but I haven’t worked on VS in 3 years now. And 80% of the series was written in my personal time. I would tell people I refuse to calculate just how much time I’ve spent writing tips. But now that it’s over, the answer is 12,500 minutes or 208 hours. And no, this doesn’t count the hours writing the book, which I refuse to ever do.

My next quest is to do something with the CodePlex community (my actual day job) like I did here with Visual Studio or Accessibility or the Legal Evangelism Thinkweek paper. yes, i know, i know, “legal what??” 

I’ve been waiting a very long time to run some experiments in connecting with the CodePlex community, and finally I can start to play in this space. If you have any ideas for engaging the CodePlex / Open Source community that you think I should try, you know where to find me. Never underestimate the power of community inspiring community.

And now, here’s your final Tip of the Day for Visual Studio 2008, already in progress…

msinfo32.exe

I can never remember the executable name (msinfo32) to start the System Information application.

System Information application

Fortunately, I can always rely on the Visual Studio Help About dialog to launch the app for me. Go to Help-About, and on the bottom right corner of the page, you’ll see the System Information button.

Visual Studio Help About window

Clicking System Info will do the same as running msinfo32.exe from the command prompt.

Happy Visual Studio’ing!!!

But don’t unsubscribe yet! Starting in 2009, I plan to create a separate feed somewhere (just not on this blog) to restart the series all over again, but 7 days a week. Stay tuned.

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Posted: Friday, December 19, 2008 3:00 AM by saraford

Comments

swautier said:

Ouch! You mean we'll have to learn to live without this nice little daily "disturbance" :-( ?

Thanks anyway for the excellent blog... and for your time! Go Sara, Go!

# December 19, 2008 6:16 AM

Community Blogs said:

URL : http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/archive/2008/12/... After 382 Visual Studio Tips and a book, Sara

# December 19, 2008 6:58 AM

Laurent said:

Wow that feels weird... thanks for the hard work, Sara, congrats again on the book and see you at the next conference ;)

Cheers,

Laurent

# December 19, 2008 7:41 AM

Skip Valentine said:

Sara, you've rocked! I'm looking forward to the re-run(s).

Thank You

and remember... Go-Sara-Go! in everything that you do !-)

# December 19, 2008 9:35 AM

Ryan Cromwell said:

It's been a great series and a grat help.  It will be missed.

# December 19, 2008 9:42 AM

Antonio said:

Oh, God, that's sad. I didn't see it coming. Is it end already???

What I'm gonna do when I just get in the office??? !!!

Thank you for all those hours of hard work, Sara. I'm following your tips since November 2007. I'd wish I started before...

Anyway, I'll keep reading your blog... so it's not a "goodbye", it's a "see you later!"

GO SARA GO !!!

# December 19, 2008 9:52 AM

Beth Massi said:

Thanks for all the great work, Sara!!!

# December 19, 2008 10:17 AM

Catto said:

Hey Now Sara,

WOW! Let us read CodePlex tip of the day or something.

Thx all the info,

Catto

# December 19, 2008 10:53 AM

AaronM said:

"Be excellent to each other" : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096928/quotes

:)

# December 19, 2008 11:28 AM

Travis Illig said:

Thanks for all the hard work, Sara - you're a credit to the community and I look forward to seeing what's in store next!

# December 19, 2008 12:05 PM

Eber Irigoyen said:

thanks for all the work you put into this, it is greatly appreciated

til next time

# December 19, 2008 12:10 PM

Nevada said:

Thank you very much for the time you contributed. This blog was, is, and will be a great resource for the community. Best wishes in your future endeavors with the CodePlex community.

# December 19, 2008 12:17 PM

Joe Brinkman said:

Did I hear you correctly that you are ending the VS 2008 Tip of the Day and starting work on the VS 2010 Tip of the Day? ;)

It was good reading while it lasted.  Can't wait to see what you come up with next.

# December 19, 2008 12:25 PM

Ulf Elfving said:

Ohhh no!

Well I can think you might get tired of this, but I have to tell you since I found your tip blog, I just wait for the next episode.

Thanks for a very good job, all entires had really warmed me up here in cold northen Sweden!

Thanks for every tip!

# December 19, 2008 12:26 PM

Tanmoy said:

Thanks for the amazing series. It really helped us a lot. Whatever is coming next here will be great for sure. I will miss the daily tips coming in my feed reader though.

# December 19, 2008 1:32 PM

Kevin Dente said:

Sad to see it go. Who's going to pick up the mantle for Visual Studio 2010?

# December 19, 2008 2:08 PM

Kirk Jackson said:

Hi Sara,

I have enjoyed reading the series on your blog, and have presented tips and tricks talks in New Zealand 6 times now using a lot of your tips and others I collected. Well done, and good luck for your future endeavours.

Kirk

# December 19, 2008 2:11 PM

MarcT said:

Don't Go, Sara, Don't Go!

Your tip of the day basically got me using RSS, saved me innumerable hours and clicks, made my VS experience more enjoyable, and put a nice happy face sticker on MS's Giant Wall of Corporate.

Will it make your day if I mention you in the same sentence with Raymond? I hope so.

As others have suggested, "someone" should start blogging VS2010 tips before it's even released. If they're as good as yours have been, you'll have us banging down the doors of our directors' offices to buy it the day it comes out, if not sooner.

# December 19, 2008 3:22 PM

Jack M said:

Your tips come up on a sidebar gadget on my computer.  I've learned a lot from you.  Your tips will be missed.

# December 19, 2008 4:58 PM

Aaron said:

Thanks for all your hard work!

# December 19, 2008 5:08 PM

Michael Stum said:

Thanks for the series! Truly some real gems in there.

# December 19, 2008 7:37 PM

Nidonocu said:

Thanks so much for all of these! They've been a fun way to start my programming sessions.

I look forward to the reruns and the new CodePlex stuff too! Hope you have a great holiday. :)

# December 19, 2008 11:03 PM

Jitin said:

You had helped us lot. Spending 208 hours saved somewhere around 2080 hours of mine in grasping VS which become new & interesting for me n my colleagues...

Cheers,

Jitin.

# December 20, 2008 2:26 AM

Steven the .NET Junkie said:

Thank you very much Sara for all your hard work! I'm also very pleased to read that you will serve us all tips on a daily basis again.

# December 20, 2008 7:19 AM

Minnesota Mike said:

I was a bit late in getting hooked up with your blog and the tips.  Thanks very much for all of your hard work.  I can honestly say I learned something new with each and every tip.

Have fun, and best of luck in the future...

# December 20, 2008 9:18 AM

Community Blogs said:

In this issue: Nikhil Kothari, David Wynne, Damon Payne, Laurent Bugnion, Terence Tsang, Scott Morrison

# December 20, 2008 5:08 PM

AlanO said:

I caught your blog at the tail-end of the series (maybe the past few months). It has been very helpful in reminding me of VS's features as well as uncovering some that were unknown to me.

Thanks for everything and good luck!

# December 21, 2008 10:48 AM

John Sheehan said:

Thank you so much for the hard work and dedication you put into this series. Multiply that by the 1000s of developers and the time they saved or productivity they gained every single day because of your tips to see how much impact these simple little tips have had. Thanks again!

# December 22, 2008 12:05 AM

Michel said:

Sara,

tnx for the tips and your spare time :) Good luck with Codeplex !!

# December 22, 2008 2:14 AM

Timothy Fries said:

Thanks for the time and effort you've invested into the series, Sara.  It's been a great read, and I'm truly going to miss learning features of Visual Studio I never knew existed.

# December 26, 2008 6:03 PM

Leonard Lee said:

Thanks for your great work on Visual Studio tips and tricks.

Appreciate this blog and looking forward to your next endeavors.

# December 28, 2008 4:43 AM

KarinM said:

Thanks so much for the awesome dedication to this long running series!  

# December 30, 2008 2:00 AM

JasonG said:

Who knew you could do so much with VS; thanks for all the tips!

As far as this last tip and remembering msinfo32?  Well myself coming from a DOS background it's pretty easy to remember winmsd.  Strangely start->run...->msinfo32 doesn't work on my XP SP3 system and looks like it's been replaced by

"C:\WINDOWS\pchealth\helpctr\binaries\helpctr.exe" -mode hcp://system/sysinfo/msinfo.xml

# December 30, 2008 10:51 AM

Anderson Lima said:

Excellent blog, Sara! Thank you for your work!

# December 30, 2008 11:06 AM

Jeff Handley said:

Thanks a ton and congrats on the book and everything else.  I look forward to the re-runs!

# January 4, 2009 9:25 PM

Rafael said:

Umm Sara, after 382 daily tips :'( ; hope you make a so much better work with CodePlex (i hope to start sharing some project there).

:)

# January 7, 2009 8:58 PM

Brend said:

Hi Sara,

I have the same dysfunction with msinfo32 and have as long as I can remember used the about boxes to open it :)

Thanks for the series. Its been great!

# January 29, 2009 12:08 PM

Wooseok said:

Thanks for all your series.

It's been a great helpful for me and all developers.

I'm looking forward to seeing your new tips again.

# February 7, 2009 10:24 PM

SeriousM said:

ugh.... bad news.

now i can switch off the vs-startup-rss feature :(

u teached me a lot of hints!

best regards...

# February 9, 2009 9:08 AM

Jeff Handley said:

Quickly Change Profiles in Visual Studio

# March 31, 2009 6:29 PM
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