The two major ones are
Losing Sleep (If you load all your daily-used applications and use it like a production OS)
Whenever my windows 7 laptop goes into sleep or hibernation, when it tries to wake up, you get BSOD. On a bare minimum Windows 7, you won't get this.
Unlocking the hidden features of Windows 7
www.withinwindows.com shares that there are hidden features in the M3 build that is not available to people who are not under Microsoft's payroll. Workaround are given to unlock those features, and they work. However, don't do it on a machine that is shared by various people. The unlock steps I believe changes the permission of explorer.exe. On my wife's laptop, after I unlock the feature using my account (domain admin), and I log in using her account (normal user) you will get a blank gray desktop. Basically, normal user account do not have rights to run explorer.exe. Changing the permission does restore the desktop, but not to full functionality.
Minor stuff
Other minor issues do happen, especially when you are installing drivers and applications. Most of them can be solved by running the installation in Vista RTM compatibility mode.
EndPoint Protection won't install properly too. You need to manually install life update first, before installing EndPoint protection. Even then, proactive thread protection is not enabled initially. Just antivirus. After running it for a few days, Endpoint protection will return to normal operations.
And that product is, Windows 7 M3 Build! In fact, I am so happy with the performance of this build that I have actually killed all instances of Vista on my home network! (Ok, I only had one Vista which my wife uses on her laptop, since I deployed Windows 2008 on all the machines I use because of HyperV).
There are a lot of things I like in Windows 7. The most important one is performance! Anyway, I'm going to list down all the points I like and dislike.
Performance
Performance increases by a lot. In fact, I'm taken by surprise by the performance this M3 build delivers, even in pre-beta stage, though I suspect performance is optimised because it is planned to be released in PDC.
One of the pain points I absolute hated in Vista is the windows explorer. On my T42, which is a 1.7ghz mobile processor (doubt it is even a duo core), just a simple clicking on a local folder (not even network), takes more than a minute to display the content. It absolutely makes Vista unusable. Put in Windows 7 on that laptop kills this problem. Now I'm just waiting to see if my wife still complains that the laptop is slow.
Graphics is damn smooth too. Especially when I just drag my mouse across the unlocked taskbar, and watch the preview window slide smoothly from one window to another.
Task bar
I had mix feeling about the new taskbar though. I'm still trying to get used to the new interface, and I wonder if the grouping actually gives a better user experience to the end user. I for one sometimes uses different IE windows to group researches I am doing concurrently together. But with the new taskbar, it is a bit more difficult to find the window I want, since I cannot just ungroup IE windows.
But I like the new "pin menu", for lack of knowledge of the official term.
This is what I get when I click on the up arrow besides the IE Icon on the taskbar. Notice the history and the feed section? In fact, I didn't even click on any feeds when I was browsing, IE picked them up itself.
This is what I get when I click on the up arrow besides the media player. The smaller icon compared to the IE one, means that I have pin Media Player to the taskbar, but didn't start any instance of it. From the Pin menu, I can now play my favorite playlist without starting media player first, or play all the music in the library. So now I don't need to click so many times, nor do I need to wait for media player to start. I just select what I need media player to do, and continue to work with media player loading and playing.
Even some older applications that was not build for windows 7 can take advantage of this. The above is a screenshot of snapit editor, showing all the recent screenshots I have taken. Now I wish Live Messenger can pin all my favorite contacts here, instead of @ the main window.
Program opening the file
Another feature I like is the ability to tell which program is accessing a file when I tried to delete it. What happens is Windows 7 was not able to restore after a sleep or hibernate operation on my work laptop (but it is able to do so on my wife's one, which is not heavy loaded with applications). Colligo, which I used to synchronise my company's fileshare which is not accessible over Internet to my own SharePoint repository, complained about a corrupted database, and crash. The resolution to this is to delete the folder which Colligo used to store the files and other information.
Colligo wasn't running when I deleted the file. Windows explorer shows me this dialog.
Oh, so Outlook is accessing the file! Closed outlook, and I was able to delete the file. Just want to make sure Windows is not lying, I started Coligo, which recreated the file. Tried delete the file, and this is what I get.
Neat!
I'll continue with some points to take note of in my next blog post.
Or I quote someone today, who says "SharePoint is not a real portal", here are some statistics I emailed internally to change the perception.
The list of SharePoint sites are taken from wssdemo.com. I ran some of them with www.quantcast.com, which tells me monthly traffic and profile of the visitors. I don't know how they get it, but if someone knows of another more reliable statistics, let me know. I don't mind going through the list again.
I went through a demo with another platform. Their portal product, to me, is no different from using asp.net to build a portal, plus 3rd party controls to make it easier to build. While I agree that there are areas where other platform is much better than MS stack, there are also areas where other platform are far worse than where MS was in 2002. (Think VS 2002).
I'm quite sick and tired of hearing people telling me that Microsoft product is not good enough for enterprise. If someone give me the kind of resources and time enterprises spend on a portal of the other platform, I'm sure with that resources, I can make SharePoint perform at least on par!
Wiki Discussion - Factors that leads to this design talks about the factors which I have considered when I came out with this design.
Wiki Discussion - Preparing the storage talks about how to create a new link in the wiki page library settings page, and how do I go about preparing the storage.
Before discussion can take place in a wiki page, we need to allow the designer to decide what kind of discussion to take place in the wiki page, and where to store them. I decided to allow the designer to do this when he activates the feature in the wiki...
I plan to use wiki as a library to capture issues developers faces in the product which they are working on, and share creative solutions that they thought of to solve the problem. Each of these wiki library sits inside a site that focuses on the product...
I'm in the process of building a SharePoint community within the company I'm in, and I'm being aided by Ting Fong, one of the bright chap I had the pleasure of training, and microlau, my friend and colleague whom I'm sure you are no stranger to. He is working on enhancing the forums, to be able to mark a post as answer, as well as rating the thread.
While he is working on the forum, I am working on the wiki, to provide the ability to have a threaded discussion on the wiki page itself. Yes, I am also involved in CKS:EWE, but the features in EWE doesn't meet my needs.
The above shows a screenshot of the customisation I did. It is using a OOTB discussion list to store the threads, and have no problems with using other discussion lists that maybe introduced in your enviornment via CAML. What this little pet project has acheved are the following.
1. Able to limit your customisation to a single wiki page in the entire farm, something Mark Miller is trying to achieve.
2. Able to bring the context menu of the content type into any SharePoint page, not fully tested since I haven't added any new custom menu into the content type, but the context menu is showing and working fine!
Lets hope I can find time to document this soon!
P.S., the controls you see in the screenshot, the RAD tree view and RAD editor is Telerik's new ASP.Net AJAX controls. Very easy to use, considering someone who has never touched AJAX before!
I always thought that a discussion thread is just a special content type that inherits from folder. So I thought creating a discussion thread is just as easy as adding a new item into a discussion board, and set the content type to thread. So I created a lookup field with the name "related" to use the discussion board as a storage for discussions done in a wiki library. Using the UI to create a thread, and link to a wiki page works perfectly, so my definitions are correct. However, creating a thread using object model yields a different result.
1. When clicking on the thread, it brings me to the item display form, instead of the flat view.
2. While the lookup field is established, and links to the wiki page, the rendering of the lookup field is not. Its always [ID]_.000.
Then I stumbled upon SPUtility.CreateNewDiscussion(). Used that, and everything works perfectly...
I had a single server moss setup on a windows 2008 virtualised box, and it was crawling fine. I don't do much search, it was until when I wanted to install iFilter for pdf from FoxIt, I realised the crawler is hitting access denied error. Application log as captured warnings from Office Server Search, while nothing in is captured in the Security logs.
Did a search, and found that it got to do with loopback check, which prevents the crawler from authentication as the fqdn doesn't match the machine name. You can either disable loopback check all together, or specify the fqdn which can be accessed.
More info in this kb.
I had that problem for quite a long time. Changing the maximum allowable file size in SharePoint, or web.config doesn't help. I will just keep hitting a 404 error. Very frustrating indeed.
It was until recently, I found this KB, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/944981/en-us. It states that you will not be able to upload files bigger than 28mb, unless you add the following into the web.config, which will allow you to upload 50mb file into SharePoint, the default configuration.
<system.webServer>
<security>
<requestFiltering>
<requestLimits maxAllowedContentLength="52428800"/>
</requestFiltering>
</security>
</system.webServer>
Add this after the configSections, and change the maxAllowedContentLength to [YourMaxFileSize] * 1024 * 1024, and you are done!
I have a slight background in BizTalk, after having the luxury of working with a BizTalk Expert in one of the projects. BizTalk doesn't really differentiate short running processes from long running processes by requiring the architect to first categorise the business processes, and then use either ESB or BPM to host them. Unlike the other camp, (OK, I haven't really went through IBM's training, just Oracle because of the recent acquisition) which requires you to do so, as ESB does not keep the state of the processes. This means that if the architect uses the wrong tool to do the job, system resources will be wasted. But BizTalk automatically releases the resources if the process is long running. I guess there are pros and cos, as gut feel is the ESB created by other vendor would be much more efficient compared to BizTalk. But I also think it adds unnecessary complexity.
What do you guys look at when evaluating ESBs?
Just wanted to share some of the better shots I took when we watched NDP (National Day Parade) Preview (which is one week before the actual day) 08 @ Microsoft's Singapore Office. This show made me dream even more for Nikon D300... D70 is simply too obsolete for me...
This is a shot showing the flag flyby. The background is Marina Bay, with the Esplanade, which locals sometime call the Durian... Lower right is where the audiences are sitting, hence the flag is mirror images, just for the benefit of the overseas readers...
Shot showing the same flyby, but with newest addition to Singapore landscape, the Singapore Flyer. The shot shows the side view of the Flyer.
Fighter jets doing the salute.
The Black Hawks, Singapore's Aerobatic pilots doing their airshow. I couldn't take their show because of where we are, and also because I didn't know how to... My shots came out blurred...
Fireworks!
The finale fireworks was so bright that the shot was overexposed. D70's processing in low light condition was so slow, I missed so many nice fireworks... :(
Do comment on the photos, especially how to improve...
According to this entry, after I upgrade my TytnII to Windows Mobile 6.1, I should be getting more than just threaded message conversation. But I'm not getting any of the fanciful home page features. A site has been going on to hit HTC on the video drivers issue, but HTC doesn't seem to bother... My keyboard is getting more and more unresponsive. Picking up calls is slow... Wrote to HTC, and I get no response after waiting more than a month...
From now on, I will probably active avoid HTC if I can...
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