Scott Golightly's Blog

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Release Candidate Available

2010-02-09T11:53:00Z

I am downloading the release candidate of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 right now. It is available for MSDN subscribers. Yet another reason to subscribe to MSDN. According to the download manager in just 3 hours I will be able to install the release candidate and start playing with all the new goodness. It’s like Christmas in February....(read more)

Predictions for 2010

2010-01-01T01:04:00Z

It is the last day of 2009 and as we all know for most of us living on this planet 2009 wasn’t the best year. We had concerns over our jobs, wars, families, and other issues. Over the years I have made predictions or sworn them off based on how accurate I have been. I would like to make some predictions for 2010 and again I will break them into two broad categories of “safe” and “out on a limb”. Don’t expect any surprises with the safe predictions, they are the same ones everyone else is saying but...(read more)

.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 release delayed

2009-12-18T23:50:00Z

Scott Guthrie blogged that the launch date for Visual Studio and the .NET Framework will be delayed. They are delaying the release to fix some performance problems. Also according to the blog there will be a release candidate in February with a broad “go live” license that supports production deployment I think this is a win-win-win situation for most developers. Let me explain. The first win is that we get a much better product. Most developers I know want to work with the latest and greatest tools...(read more)

Intellectual Property and the Internet

2009-12-15T23:55:00Z

Yesterday and today I have been following a story that a contractor for Microsoft China ripped off a lot of code from another microblogging service. ZDNet has a short synopsis of the issue. This got me thinking about the problems of intellectual property. For years the idea of “copy and paste” reuse of JavaScript has been the fodder of programmer jokes. I am not a lawyer and I an not sure what the relevant laws are but I have mixed feelings on this issue. Like a lot of other people I like to view...(read more)

Virtualization Faceoff

2009-12-03T05:48:00Z

On the Windows IT Pro web site they are running a “faceoff” between Hypervisors (VMWare and Microsoft Hyper-V) to discuss some of the pros and cons of virtualization and each product. It also looks like Novell is posting information as well. The format is that of a blog on a topic with experts telling about each product’s strengths. I like the format of being able to see what the strengths of each tool is and how that tool can be used to complete your IT environment. The side by side format lets...(read more)

5 Years of Blogging

2009-11-23T23:51:00Z

I just checked and I have been blogging now for 5 years. Hopefully you have been enjoying the posts and the information that I have written about. I know that I have. I am looking forward to the next few years as there is a lot of exciting technology coming out. That means a lot of learning for me but I enjoy that. I have been thinking lately about my original vision for grokdev.com where I would create sample applications and write up how I did them. While I am still busy I am thinking about trying...(read more)

PDC 2009 Wrap Up

2009-11-21T03:32:00Z

The PDC is over and I am home. I am taking a few minutes to be a little reflective and put down some thoughts. 1. The Acer PC was great. I heard people complaining about it not having more software (Visual Studio 2010 being the most common) or RAM but I have to say I was looking for a second machine for demos and this is better than what I was looking for. It makes up for no breakfast or attendee party. Of course now Microsoft has set an expectation and it will be interesting to see if they give...(read more)

PDC 09 - SVC 15 – Windows Azure Monitoring, Logging, and Management APIs

2009-11-19T02:56:00Z

Local access infeasible so you can’t get access to any of the event logs or other tracing that you would normally do on a single server SDK supports distributed monitoring & data collection for cloud apps. Support Standard Diagnostics APIs Built on top of Windows Azure Storage The same infrastructure is used by Microsoft for their monitoring so they know it scales. Developers are in control of what gets collected and when to collect it. MonAgentHost.exe is the diagnostic monitoring piece that...(read more)

PDC 2009 – SVC 01 – A Lap Around the Windows Azure Platform

2009-11-18T02:14:00Z

Azure contains 5 main pieces: 1. Windows Azure Application Platform 2. SQL Azure 3. Windows Azure platform AppFabric 4. Azure “Dallas” 5. Pinpoint marketplace? (I came in late and only saw the screen for a second so I am guessing this was the 5th element) Different roles on architecture slide: Web Role Dynamic Worker Distributed Cache Worker Partitioned Worker Fundamentals: Security Performance and reliability High availability Scale out Multi-tenancy Service healing is available because the data...(read more)

.NET Framework 4 Poster Available

2009-11-04T12:00:00Z

I have been working with a lot of really good people at Microsoft and we have come up with a poster that lists the important namespaces and classes in .NET Framework 4. You can download the PDF version of the poster from http://download.microsoft.com/download/E/6/A/E6A8A715-7695-493C-8CFA-8E0C23A4BE1D/098-115952-NETFX4-Poster.pdf If you have a plotter or a printer that can handle 24” x 36” paper you will have a good looking poster. If not you can print it and do the cut and tape the printed...(read more)

Office Diagnostics Part 2

2009-09-12T00:20:00Z

I am following up on an earlier post . I ran Office Diagnostics again today. This time I was notified that it found 1 problem and fixed it. When I looked at the details it showed fixing something in the setup but didn’t tell me what. The funny thing is that I haven’t had a crash since I ran diagnostics last time so I had thought the problem was fixed already....(read more)

Office Diagnostics

2009-09-04T21:46:00Z

Yesterday and today InfoPath and occasionally Word was crashing. Out of nowhere after one crash I got a message saying I should run office diagnostics. It ran and did not find any issues. When I clicked on the continue button I was taken to http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/diagnostichelp.aspx?ShowHelp=30,15,23,25,11,10&Responses= where I followed the following instructions. Access, Excel, PowerPoint, or Word Click the Office Button , and then click Access Options , Excel Options...(read more)

Windows 7 Extended Ecosystem Mostly Completed

2009-08-18T18:27:00Z

In my last post on my experiences with Windows 7 I wrote how it helped me to find a driver and fix a problem I didn’t know I had. Today I have a slightly different take. I have been installing the important driver updates whenever they show up on Microsoft update. Along with the important updates I have been picking an optional update to install as well. Today I worked my way down the list to one that appears to be for my smart card reader but I wasn’t sure. I decided to click on the “More information...(read more)

First Impressions of Windows 7 in Production

2009-08-11T22:54:00Z

I spent the weekend backing up Vista and doing a clean install of Windows 7. When I went to bed Sunday night I thought I had everything set up and ready to go but yesterday I kept finding things like printers that I had neglected. I haven’t installed Office 2010 yet because I downloaded the 64 bit version (I am running Windows 7 64 bit) but I have installed a 32 bit version of Office 2007 and the beta tells me they can’t be installed side by side. I can live with that in a beta and expect that it...(read more)

Anxiously Waiting to Install Windows 7

2009-08-07T21:16:00Z

Yesterday the release version of Windows 7 became available to MSDN subscribers. I got on and started downloading it about 20 minutes after it was available. The expected download time jumped around between 33 and 21 hours depending on the current download speed. I left the download running overnight and was expecting to burn a DVD this morning. When I checked I found that I have only downloaded 63% and that the message says it is trying to connect. Bummer. At least I was able to get in and download...(read more)