Office 2007 group policy – error in Outlook ADM file

May 31, 2007 1 Comment

If you are using the Vista Group Policy console to edit GPOs for using the downloadable ADM files Office 2007, create a policy (with or without any Outlook settings) and then try to see the report of which settings are configured, you may get an error similar to this (including the bad grammar of “is in not in”):

The .adm file path\Outlk12.adm is in not in a valid format and must be replaced. Details: A value name is expected before line 2461

The fix is described in typically long-winded but easy to follow fashion in KB926537 (although that article refers to line 3304 which is a bit odd). This basically involves moving one line of the file up so that a name appears before the values to which it refers. but it is not clear why the files are still available for download with this error in them and with no reference on the download page to this bug report and simple fix.

Filed under Group Policy, Office System, Windows Vista

Get touchy feely with your digital media

May 30, 2007 Leave a Comment

Microsoft’s new Surface platform looks set to be the Next Big Thing for interactive experiences. The same level of “wow” factor as when touch screens finally got reliable ten years ago or so and started appearing in all sorts of kiosk type environments. It remains to be seen whether this will be as intuitive to use as we would like, or will require a steep learning curve as with any other new GUI.

http://www.microsoft.com/surface

This seems very similar to this multi-touch screen with gesture-based control from Perceptive Pixel (a bit like the ones seen in the film Minority Report, albeit with a physical screen and 2d images, no gloves, and no Cruise).

And this intelligent white board for motion modelling based on engineering sketches just blows away any of the current crop of over-priced boards being installed in schools up and down the country.

Update: a much longer presentation with more background explanation from Mark Bolger, MS Director of Marketing for Surface computing can be found here: http://on10.net/Blogs/larry/first-look-microsoft-surfacing-computing/

…and another MS Surface marketing exercise published through Popular Mechanics

Update2: A further demo and talk by Jeff Han (founder of Perceptive Pixel) from Feb 2006 (just sit through a short advert first): http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/65

Filed under Gadgets, Industry News Tagged with , , ,

Shock! Amazement! Longhorn ‘project’ now has a product name for release

May 20, 2007 2 Comments

After much debate over the release schedule for Longhorn, the lesser discussion was about what the final product might actually be called.

At long last Microsoft reveal how their internal brainstorming and creative teams work and show how they came up with a radical new approach to product marketing for their latest server operating system:

http://www.microsoft.com/winme/0705/30054/Windows_Server_Naming_HD_MBR.asx

Filed under Windows Server 2008

Making presentations clearer by zooming with NLarge

May 15, 2007 1 Comment

When I’m delivering training sessions about Microsoft Office and I start a demonstration, I find that it is often hard for the audience to see the detail of what I’m doing. While I can zoom in on a document I can’t easily make the toolbars and other details bigger – such as the formula bar in Excel.

Of course, I could lower the screen resolution, use big fonts and large mouse schemes to address some of the issues, but then the PowerPoint parts of the course become clunkier, and anything which involves seeing the ‘whole picture’ loses some impact due to lack of screen real-estate.

There are several great tools to help with this by providing a magnified area around the mouse. One such tool is ZoomIt by Mark Russinovich, but this does not work for all my machines (partly due to .Net 3 requirement I think). I have subsequently come across NLarge which is based on the same principles but seems to ‘just work’ so it is now my utility of choice for this kind of work.

Filed under Presenting skills, Utilities + Tools

Free IT training – TCP/IP, Cisco, CompTIA

May 4, 2007 Leave a Comment

Train Signal have some free videos available to watch online as a demonstration of their training course content. These are also useful as refreshers on certain topics (especially if you have an exam coming up!)

Interestingly the prepared lesson sections (as distinct from demonstrations) are done using Microsoft OneNote, with the trainer writing and drawing directly on the page, rather the ubiquitous PowerPoint.

Read more of this post

Filed under Training + certification

Moving the offline files cache (CSC folder) in Vista

May 1, 2007 1 Comment

I have found, as many others may have, that my old partitioning scheme which worked great for XP is simply not sufficient for Vista. 

A 20Gb boot partition does not go very far on my Vista Ultimate laptop, and this is made a lot worse by my habit of having loads of files synchronised to work offline, which uses up even more space on this critical C: drive.

Of course, it was possible to move the CSC folder under XP (although the caveat seems to be that you can’t put it back in the original location). Under Vista it is a slightly more long-winded process, but here is a great step-by-step procedure for moving Vista’s client-side cache by changing the appropriate registry keys and using the Windows Easy Transfer wizard (migwiz.exe) to help move the files themselves.

Filed under Windows Vista

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 86 other followers