There is a bunch of hidden goodness from Vista that takes a while to discover, but after you do, saves a lot of time in everyday use. Here are some of the things I personally like that you may too:

Integrated Search

Search is tightly integrated everywhere in Vista. The Start menu, Explorer windows, and the Control Panel allow you to quickly find what your looking for, whether an installed application, utility, or document. By far the most productive way to use search is via keyboard shortcuts (if you don’t have a Windows key, use Ctrl + Esc):

To find any installed application, use the following keyboard keys: Windows + <application name> + Enter. For example, Windows + Excel + Enter.

To find a control panel option, type: Windows + <option>. For example, Windows + network sharing center + Enter.

To find a document, type: Windows + <words in document name> + Enter. For example, Windows + ToDoList.doc + Enter.

If you have Office 2007 installed, your email is also accessible from integrated search. To find email from Mark, type: Windows + from: mark. You’ll then see a list of all your email from Mark.

Launch Elevated

Given the new User Account Control (UAC) security in Vista, sometimes it is necessary to launch an application with elevated privileges. You can do this by right-clicking the application and choosing “run as administrator.” We’re talking about keyboard shortcuts, so using the tip above to find any installed application, rather than simply hitting Enter, hit Shift + Enter. This will launch the application or utility elevated, resulting in a security prompt.

Copy as Path, Pin to Start Menu, & Add to Quick Launch

Hold shift when right-clicking any file and you’ll get some new options. I personally like Copy as Path because you can then paste the full file path string wherever you like. For me, this comes in handy when I need to enter a full path in the command prompt.

Un-Hide Old Menus

 

 

 

From any Explorer window, simply press the Alt key to un-hide the XP style (and older) File/Edit/View/Tools menus.

 Stack by Type & Saved Searches

From an Explorer window, click the downward pointing arrow in the “Type” column heading to reveal a new concept called “Stacks.” This allows you to see a stack of each file type (or stack of whatever column you chose to stack by) in that directory and all of its sub-directories. This is especially cool when done from the root of your drive. Below is an image of the resultant stacks.

You can then save this view by selecting “Save Search” in the action toolbar at the top of the window. You can then quickly return to this view by selecting “Searches” on the left side of an Explorer window.

For those of us invested in Media Center, one of the missing links thus far has been to get access to the protected music, TV shows, and movies available from iTunes. Apparently MCE Tunes has stepped up to that challenge to deliver this content through the Media Center. There are; however, a couple of questions I’m unsure of yet without giving this a try myself.

• Does the plugin integrate with the Vista Media Center?

All screenshots show the 2005 interface; however, that could just mean the new UI rendering capabilites have not been implemented. I would overlook inconsistency for a while so long as I could get my hands on some TV and movie goodness.

• Does the plugin support playback on Xbox 360 and new extenders (codename Pika) that will hopefully be on the market soon?

I’m fairly certain that this isn’t possible because the content encoding (mpeg4) of iTunes TV and movies is not supported on extenders. For music, the Xbox 360 supports the encoding (AAC) if you download the iPod support from Xbox Live (free); however, I am not certain whether this is limited to USB connected iPods or if the network streaming path is also supported.

Looking forward, a critical issue for Media Center Extender is providing access to premium video content. Apple has a lead in this area with iTunes TV and movies, with livingroom extension capability from the Apple TV product. The Xbox video marketplace; however, is quickly closing ground. The problem is none of this Xbox video marketplace content is accessible from within the extender UI; only the Xbox dashboard.

Xbox and eHome folks: please open the gates and create better integration between the two platforms. I hate switching between UI’s and video inputs!

Remember the days when you closed the lid of your laptop expecting it to go to sleep (or maybe you manually told it to sleep), shoved it in your bag, then arrived at your destination only to find the laptop hadn’t shut down, a melted candy bar, and no battery power left to finish the document due that evening! I do too. It wasn’t that long ago we were all using Windows XP. See, it turns out that the XP kernel trusted drivers far too much when it came to sleep modes. If a buggy driver didn’t handle the power event properly, the kernel would just block forever and happily drain your battery (while melting your candy). Some changes in the Vista kernel remedy this situation. If a driver doesn’t behave in defined amount of time, the kernel will skip it and eventually tuck your laptop into bed with plenty of power to spare. Sometimes the little things make a huge difference! 

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If you use command line for copying files, replicating, etc. and use xcopy.exe, it’s time to start using robocopy.exe (robust copy) which is now included by default on Vista. Very cool! robocopy /? for details on this really powerful utility. For a quick summary of capabilities, robocopy can:

• Copy and backup/archive files robustly and very flexibly
• Handle common situations which require retries
• Log
• Leverage saved jobs for easy batching

I’m personally a Canon user, so hopefully they’ll follow in-step soon with Nikon who just made their RAW image codec available for Vista. This means you don’t have to use separate software for viewing your HUGE raw files on Vista. You can use the built-in Photo Gallery app, which I’ve really come to appreciate, the same way you would for viewing JPEGs and other common formats. Enjoy!

I was very happy to see Windows Vista support native support for Windows Mobile devices (smartphones in particular). When I connect my phone via USB, the driver (RNDIS for you techies) is automatically installed. Also, a separate application install is not necessary (ActiveSync) because the Windows Mobile Device Center is a built-in. Great!

This allows me to sync my music library from Windows Media Player to the phone, but email, contacts, and calendar are primary smartphone scenarios. I was astounded to find that the new and improved built-in Windows Vista Calendar, Contacts, and Mail do not syncronize with Windows Mobile devices. Lame! I need Outlook to get that functionality.

Looking forward, if Microsoft has hopes for Windows Mobile to gain adoption by average consumers, not just business users, this has to be fixed. A focus on completing end-to-end scenarios, accross different teams and organizations is essential.

What do you think? Have you seen any other incomplete scenarios like this?

Recently, I did a quick search on the web for how to create a custom ringtone for my Windows Mobile smartphone, and was drowned by the massive amount of useless information. Sure, if I wanted to purchase a ringtone, I had all the information I needed, but what I really wanted to do was create my own ringtone from songs I already have in my music library. Here is how I did it, and what you need to know before you begin:

• Windows Mobile (WM) phones can use WAV, MP3, or WMA formats for a ringtone
• You simply put the file in \Application Data\Sounds on your phone

Rather than putting the whole file (big) on my phone as the tone, I wanted to chop out a just a small portion of the song to make it both smaller and unique. To do this, I used the free Audacity software as my sound editor and also grabed the free LAME (yes that’s the name, but it really isn’t lame) MP3 encoding library, which you’ll be asked for by Audacity later.

• Of the supported WM ringtone formats, Audacity can only open, edit, and save WAV and MP3 (sorry WMA folks)

If you already have a WAV or MP3, you can skip the next paragraph and just open the song in Audacity.

All the songs in my music library; however, are WMA Lossless, so I had to do one step first: convert the WMA lossless back to WAV (a nice thing about the WMA lossless format) before I can edit the file. Luckily, Microsoft provides a free tool to do this, wmal2pcm. After using this command line tool (wmal2pcm /? for usage), I was able to open my song in Audacity and start the editing process.

Use the zoom button (I drew a red square around it on the above image) so you get a closer look at the song. It takes a little getting used to, but after you play the song and find the section you want as your ringtone, delete before and after that part and export as MP3 (you’ll be asked where you saved the MP3 encoder library from above). Take this MP3 file and copy it to the location I mentioned above on your phone (using ActiveSync or the new Mobile Device Center in Vista for example), then from the phone settings/sounds menu, choose your new tone.

I’m sure there is a *much* quicker way to do this, so if you know, tell me.

Microsoft has created a new document format, XML Paper Specification, or XPS for short, which is designed to ensure accurate paper representation of digital content; web content in particular is a top scenario. We all know how frustrating it is to print a web page and all the text/images/etc. are squished or not printed at all! As the name suggests, the format of the resultant XPS document is XML, so the specification is very portable. Saving documents in this format ensures that what you intended for someone to see is actually seen, which makes it a great archival format. There is also Adobe’s PDF though; which most of the web uses today and has great cross-platform (Windows/Mac/Unix) support. Personally, I feel XPS is a better format as it is specifically designed with printing in mind, but rather than abandoning PDF users, a save-as plugin has been made available for Office 2007 users so they can easily save in PDF or XPS format. Handy! It’ll be interesting to see if XPS takes off. It has a lot of potential.

The folks over at LifeHacker talked about the top 15 reasons to adopt Vista, and the high-level quote represents the Network Map feature. In general, the network map feature is designed to be a diagnostic tool for your network. For those who are tech-savvy, it is a visual replacement for ping, traceroute, and arp. For the non-tech savvy, the network map shows you what your network looks like in addition to providing rich information about the PCs and devices connected to the network. Billy and I posted about this feature a couple of times on the core Windows networking blog should you want some more depth:

• How to Enable the Windows Vista Network Map
• Xbox 360 Fall Update Includes LLTD
• LLTD is Available for Non-Windows Platforms

I’ve read from myriad different sources over the past few months about opinions on the digital rights management (DRM) restrictions Windows Vista implements for displaying or streaming (to Media Center Extenders [MCX]) high definition (HD) premium content (like HBO), and have found a lot of misinformation. Hopefully this post will clear up, once and for all, the real deal on Vista’s restrictions surrounding premium content. This is a long one, so bear with me…

Here is the story: content owners specifically indicate what restrictions to put on their content with respect to playback. All things simplified, they impose three restrictions:

• No restrictions (always display in HD)
• Downgrade resolution from 720p/1080i/1080p to 960×540
• Don’t display at all

These options are applied based on how the display is connected to your PC (or MCX):

• DVI/HDMI with end-to-end content protection (HDCP)
• DVI without content protection
• VGA (doesn’t have content protection)
• Component video with content protection (MCX relevant)

Note that end-to-end content protection is very important because even if your new shiny display supports HDCP, your video card must also support HDCP (the mass majority on the market do not today). All that said, here is the general restriction imposed by premium content owners:

• Protected (HDCP) DVI/HDMI, and protected (Macrovision) component video will display in full HD glory

Everything else (unprotected DVI/HDMI and VGA) will either not display (resulting in some error) or be down-graded to roughly 960×540, which by the way is better resolution than DVD! This is where people are screaming, and what I’ll comment on. For starters, if you want all the gritty details, check out the official post on Windows Vista Content Protection - Twenty Questions and Answers. These restrictions have always been in place, you just haven’t been able to consume this great HD content on your PC before. The only way Microsoft can create a path for getting you that great content is to implement the exact same restrictions that are imposed on every other device in the market. The problem with PCs is there is a huge ecosystem of different component makers that must deliver a scenario in concert (capable PC platform, video card, and display); which represents an unprecedented challenge. Microsoft delivers the capable PC platform and creates incentive for the industry to complete the scenario. Consumer electronic (CE) companies have a much smaller ecosystem, and the folks over at Apple do a great job by controlling the hardware (like the CE companies). Microsoft handles this by creating a logo program. If you purchase a complete system (PC and display), and each component of the system has received a “Certified for Windows Vista” logo, the OEM (like Dell) guarantees that you will be able to watch all the premium HD you can get your hands on. Alternatively, I suppose Microsoft could get into the business of displays too, but they’ve been sued for less by the govenment for monopolistic practices

I do; however, believe Microsoft has a responsibility to solve these types of problems in an innovative way that meets the needs of PC users. Because of this, I do not believe the don’t-display-at-all option is reasonable. There must be a better way, and I’ll bet there are smart people at Microsoft working on that very problem. Time will tell.

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