Innovation 2006 – Final Update

Hi folks,

As promised here is my second update from Innovation 2006 in Melbourne. As usual we had a huge crowd turnout to hear all about Windows Vista and Office 2007. I ran into several of my MVP mates and they even came along to my session to show support! What a great bunch of guys!

I also had a good turn-up for my session and it seemed people were really interested in the new reliability and security features of Windows Vista. Sorry for one of the demo’s not working but hey you get that sometimes with Beta software.

Some people were also interested in the Windows ReadyBoost™ feature which allows you to speed up your system with an external USB key. Essential this allows you to use the USB key as more virtual memory to increase system performance. Well Tom Archer who is in the Windows SDK team has put together a great FAQ on the Windows ReadyBoost™ feature which documents essentialy what type of USB key you will need to get this going in Vista. The reason I’m posting this is one of my MVP buddies at the Melbourne Innovation event threw me a USB key during an ad-hoc demo at the end of my session and it didn’t work. So I promised to find out more so check his FAQ on the subject for more details.

Since that session I found out more details about the User Account Control feature which I demo and talk about in my session on Windows Vista security. Check out the UAC Team Blog for lots of good details on this feature. Also the UAC team has released Beta 1 of the Standard User Analyzer Tool which allows ISV’s and IT Developers to check for compatibility issues with their applications and UAC in Windows Vista.

And for the first time I am using a really cool new feature in Office 2007 Beta 2. I’m posting this blog post directly from Word 2007. It’s really nice because it sets up a nice template for the post and you have all the power of Word’s formatting tools! Sweet!

Cheers, Jeff