Microsoft Mobile PC

Just Rambling

I hung out with the tabletpc folks on Thursday at Microsoft and was lucky enough to hitch a ride back to Seattle with Geetesh ________. Geetesh is on the Mobile PC team. I thought at first that this meant handhelds but in fact it just means Notebooks/Laptops – though not Tablets. Apparently, there was a Microsoft application in the past (similar to Journal) called Notebook, so they couldn’t use the name again.

So remember, with Microsoft “Mobile PC” = notebooks/laptops.

Just thought it was notable.

Okay, back upstairs to continue the installation of XPSP2 (with latest lonestar bits) on my tablet…

AngryCoder threatens to switch to VB.NET just for Edit & Continue – will he give up Web Development, too?

dotNET

If you have spent any time on Jonathan Goodyear’s www.angrycoder.com site, you will know that he has never been shy about how he feels about VB.NET (well, sometimes I think he targets the VB developers, not just the language). So in his ASP.NETPro Mag commentary on the lack of Edit & Continue in ASP.NET 2.0 (yes, E&C will only be in Windows Forms!) it is amazing to hear him say (well, see him write…) :

I think that omitting Edit-and-Continue from VS 2005 would be a colossal miscalculation that Microsoft will regret. The future will validate this obvious prediction. Edit-and-Continue is so important to me, that I plan to make VB.NET my preferred development language if C# does not support it (the future of that is hopeful, but still unknown). Those who are familiar with my history of commentary regarding C# vs. VB.NET can appreciate just how big a move that would be for me. If ASP.NET doesn’t support Edit-and-Continue, we’re back at square one.

I don’t really think Jonathan will EVER give up web development of course…

Lonestar and XPSP2

Tablet

well THAT was embarrassing. I have been parading around for months showing off Lonestar on my Tablet only to discover tonight that – egads – I had the OCTOBER 2003 bits! No wonder I kept having my wifi wig out and getting a BSOD. It was a known issue that has been fixed.

So what I have is XP with the 10/03 lonestar bits.

When I get home I have to UNINSTALL Lonestar (note – this is a must for updating those bits) and then just install the XPSP2 RC1 bits which, of course, include the latest greatest build of the tablet pc o/s.

My favorite thing to show off to people about Lonestar is opening up the TIP and hand scrawling the words “crappy handwriting” in my worst chicken scratch and Lonestar’s hand writing recognition is perfect at deciphering it. My favorite brag so far of the sdk is the ink enabled web-control. Apparently there are gobs of goodies in the Tablet SDK 1.7 and it’s darned well time I started playing with them. But not tonight.

I had a great time tonight hanging out with a bunch of tablet mvps (will name and link later) as well as Arin Goldberg from the tablet pc team.

Dare’s other mission

Just Rambling

I met Dare Obasanjo last night. If you have ever written something with the words xml, remoting or web services on  you blog, you may have had a comment from him and wondered how on earth you got on his radar. I think he must google a select group of words daily to find ANYTHING written on these topics because his mission, he tells me, is to stop the dissemination of misinformation about anything xml! So be careful out there – but the worse that can happen is that you’ll get a great education.

Or don’t wait – just educate yourself here  msdn.microsoft.com/xml!

(caveat – if I got anything wrong here – just keep an eye on the comments for my education!)

 

VSNet2005 – Drag and drop a table onto a windows form

dotNET

I have not used drag and drop data features since I first started learning VB4, but I don’t mind doing it just to explore the features of the IDE, so even though the README says this

“Drag and drop from data source window onto a form is not very stable. “

I wanted to see how “not stable”. LOL – pretty “not stable”!  It gave me 164 errors. It’s just test bits and I don’t have a problem with that at all… but it was just funny to see. I had to stop playing though since Rich rented a DVD and that box is what we use as a DVD player to plug into the t.v.

Carefree install of VS2005 bits

dotNET

Well I ended up just dedicating my laptop to installing VS2005. It already had Whidbey PDC bits on it so I wasn’t planning on depending on it for anything else. I had to do a LOT of uninstalling first – VS.NET Whidbey, .NET Framework Whidbey, then the new install also forced me to uninstall .net 1.1, VS.net 2003, vs.net2003 help files. But after that, the install went just peachy. Sadly, I am not bringing my laptop with me to Seattle tomorrow, so I will play for a few hours tonight and then leave it for a week. My tiny little tablet is coming with me to Microsoft and I plan to bring reading materials – one novel – Scott Spencer’s new book (Scott is a “local” in Rhinebeck, NY where I used to live, so I thought it would be fun to read his latest) and one [JUST ONE] .NET book. Maybe I’ll bring the ADO.NET 2 book with me that is the current book for the .NET book club. Or maybe I’ll bring Paul Vick’s new VB book or – hmm that stack is VERY tall these days….

The INETA Volunteers

Ineta

Many of the people who volunteer for INETA have been doing it for a long time. As INETA grows, we are fortunate that our volunteer base grows.

For those of us who have been at it for a while, it has really become a part of our life. Many of the INETA volunteers spend time almost every day, sometimes hours, doing things related to INETA. Sometimes that is connecting with user group leaders (there are over 500 groups now) and helping them out with questions or problems. Other times it is helping to be sure that these leaders are well aware of great opportunities that are available to them and their members — whether it’s a booth to promote their group at DevDays (thanks to MSDN), the ability to drive the focus of a .NET Magazine publication through the INETA Choice program, or even have the Visual Basic or C# Team come right to their group to do a presentation.

The revision of the INETA website is a major undertaking that is being led by Devin Rader and his team is doing the work of a full time job during their own personal time as volunteers.

Whether it is someone coordinating flights and hotels for a speaker going to a user group, or a user group liaison giving a user group leader some advice on running their group, an academic committee member helping a student group find judges for their Imagine Cup events, it amazes me the amount of passion that everyone who is volunteering for INETA brings to the table. It amazes me every day.