Smart-sizing the Terminal Services client

I didn’t know you could do this but it appears that when connected to a Terminal Server, you can size the window like you can any other and the contained desktop will change resolution to accept the new size – this means no scroll bars!

Full details at the Microsoft Terminal Services blog!

JamesNT

Windows Clustering and High Availability Resources

The Microsoft Clustering and High Availability blog recently made a post linking several documents that pertain to, you guessed it, clustering and high availability.  Check out the blog post here.

JamesNT

Terminal Server – Preventing Man-in-the-Middle Attacks

The Terminal Server Team over at Microsoft has an interesting article on how to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks in terminal server.  You can check out that article here.

JamesNT

Vista provides excellent Bluetooth support

As hard to believe as this may sound, I was running out of USB ports on my Dell XPS M1710 laptop.  I have a USB printer, a USB mouse, a USB thumb-drive for Readyboost, and three external drives connected to my laptop when home.  My laptop comes with six USB ports – four in back and two on the left hand side.  Fortunately, things were working out pretty good since the printer and three drives where hooked to the back and the devices I always found myself swapping out were hooked on the left side.  But still, swapping out devices is a pain.  I either lost Readyboost or I lost my mouse and had to use the touchpad on the laptop – and when is the last time anyone saw an easy-to-use touchpad?

When I purchased my laptop I didn’t go for the Bluetooth option as it was fairly expensive at the time.  However, today the small card is a mere $20 from Dell so I ordered one and installed it myself.  You can see the instructions for how to install the Bluetooth chip in an M1710 XPS laptop here (you may need to scroll down).  I went to my local Best Buy and purchased a Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000.  As you can see from the instructions, installing the Bluetooth card in the XPS is pretty easy.  Once done, don’t forget to go into the XPS’s BIOS to ensure Bluetooth is enabled (mine was disabled by default).  Once Vista starts up, it may ask for the driver CD (included with the Bluetooth chip).  Once the driver is installed, you’ll see the Bluetooth icon in your system tray (fourth icon from left to right).

The Bluetooth wizard also starts and you can add new devices.  Incidentally, most Bluetooth devices come with a code you need to type in to use the device so don’t be to hasty about throwing away the instructions.  As one would expect from Microsoft, the wizard is easy to go through and I had my new mouse operational within just a few seconds. 

There are some settings I do recommend you change regarding Bluetooth.  Right click on the Bluetooth icon and choose Open Bluetooth settings then go to the Share tab.

These options sure are neat to have but I recommend turning them off until you need to use them.  Although you do get a notification when someone tries to connect to you, we get enough notifications from the various software we use in my opinion – and this is easy enough to turn back on. 

On a final note – those of you with Bluetooth enabled smartphones are about to enter a new world of convenience.  If you have a document you made in Microsoft Pocket Word, for example, you can print it once you get home or transfer files back and forth easier.

If you want to Bluetooth enable your desktop, you can buy a USB or internal card for your PC.  Doing a search for “Bluetooth card” turned up several results at Amazon.com.

If you’re looking forward to having one less USB cable or need to free up a USB port, Bluetooth may be your answer.

JamesNT

Source code for game written in .Net 1.0 available

Fresh from the Windows SDK blog:

The Windows SDK team is happy to announce the availability of the source code for .NET Terrarium 2.0 on http://www.codeplex.com/terrarium2 . For those who are not familiar with Terrarium, I’ll provide a little history. It is a game that was created by members of the .NET Framework team in the .NET Framework 1.0 timeframe and used initially as an internal test application.

Pretty neat.  Looking at the graphics of a game might be a good way to learn how graphics are done in .Net.  I haven’t checked this out myself yet but it certainly looks pretty cool.  If you know anything about Terrarium, please provide feedback.

Full story at the Windows SDK blog here.

JamesNT

Terminal Services Client 6.1 Released

While the release of Hyper-V is getting all the attention, let’s not forget another important release.  The Terminal Services Team is announcing the release of the RDP client version 6.1 for XPSP2 and above.  Read more here.

JamesNT

Component One releases Studio 2008 V2

If you do Visual Basic development like I do, there’s just no way to live without the Component One suite of tools. 

I just got an email from my rep that version 2 of the 2008 tools has arrived.  You can see what’s up at www.componentone.com.

I highly recommend giving Component One a try. 

Controls and tools for Silverlight

Controls and tools for Winforms

Office 2007 Ribbon toolbar

Various ASP tools

Mobile tools for Windows Mobile

and much more!

JamesNT

Where has JamesNT been?

It’s been a long time since my last blog post.  What’s up? 

Well, the short version of the story is my work life has been upside down lately.  2008, needless to say, has been a rough year so far.  This isn’t to say some good things haven’t happened, they have, but some of the negative stuff has been annoying to say the least.

Thankfully, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it isn’t a train!  Therefore, expect to see more blogging.  In fact, if you’ll notice, I’ve already made some changes such as cleaning up the blog roll and adding more categories.

Also, I’d like to tip my hat to a good person and good blogger, Kent Chen.  Kent contacted me a few days back wondering where in the world I had dropped off to.  You can catch his blog here.  Kent’s blog is a worthy addition to anyone’s blog roll.

Be blogging to you soon!

JamesNT

The Return of Windows Ultimate Extras?

According to Bink, it appears Microsoft is getting back on track with Windows Vista Ultimate Extras.  If you recall, Ultimate Extras are additional features MS is supposed to occasionally release for those who purchased the Ultimate edition of Windows Vista.  A few extras were released in the beginning – most notably Dreamscene.  After that we hit a long dry spell.  It’s nice to see that those of us who shelled out the cash for Ultimate are finally going to get those extras.

JamesNT

Sci-Fi Channel really leaping forward this year

Took this snapshot off the email they sent me the other day.  Check out the date!

JamesNT