The New England Digital Media Users Group (NEDMUG) is conducting a full day of training on Windows Media Center and Windows Home Server, geared at novice computer users. The all-day event is being presented at Microsoft’s offices on September 13, 2008, and is co-sponsored by Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard.

Even if you’re beyond novice stage, you might want to look into this event. It should offer the opportunity to see some features and system configurations that you might not otherwise have a chance to experiment with.

For more details:

The Connected Home – A Full Day of Training

I keep reading about how Microsoft is freezing out OEMs from information about Windows 7. But today, Ina Fried, who is hands down the best Microsoft beat reporter on the planet, says that is not true:

Microsoft has said that it is engaging much earlier and deeper with computer makers as part of the Windows 7 design process. From what I’ve heard from PC manufacturers, this has been true so far. "It’s like night and day," one PC company executive told me.

Looks like the people who are telling other reporters that they aren’t getting access are being frozen out because, uh, they’re the kind of people who talk to reporters about their early access.

As time goes by, I continue to be impressed with how tightly Sinofsky and Co. are keeping the news lid fastened. In the 21st Century, that’s a major accomplishment.

I get occasional questions from people wondering how to learn the new Office 2007 interface. Of course, a good book helps (like Special Edition Using Microsoft Office 2007′>Special Edition Using Office 2007 and Special Edition Using Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007′>Special Edition Using Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007). But if you prefer a more kinetic approach, you can try one of the Flash-based interactive tutorials at the Microsoft Office Online site.

Here, for example, is a snippet from the Excel version. Move your mouse over the simulated Office 2003 screen and point to a command for a quick pop-up pointer:

Then click for an animated display that shows you the procedure in detail:

You can find the help tools for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook by clicking the blue Help arrow (in Outlook, click Help, Microsoft Office Outlook Help). Search for interactive command reference and click the first link in the search results.

If you’d prefer to go straight to the pages on the web, use these links:

Word 2007 Interactive Command Reference

Excel 2007 Interactive Command Reference

PowerPoint 2007 Interactive Command Reference

Outlook 2007 Interactive Command Reference

Windows boss Steven Sinofsky is ready to start talking about Windows 7.

He’s been blogging all along, I’m told, on a site available only on the Microsoft internal network. But this is the first public communication in years.

The biggest news: if you’re even remotely interested in Windows 7, be sure you have your tickets for the PDC in Los Angeles in late October.

If you have a computer running Windows Home Server, the long-awaited Power Pack 1 update should show up as an automatic update beginning today – assuming you didn’t install it weeks ago when it was released as a download. (For more details about why you absolutely must install this, see my ZDNet post.)

For a home-built system, the update should be a one-shot deal (but make sure you check any installed add-ins to see whether they’re compatible with PP1). If you have an HP MediaSmart Server, you have some slight extra complications. In addition to the PP1 code from Microsoft, you need to install a software update from HP (version 1.3). (In fact, you get x64 support only if both updates are installed.) The HP update in turn enables a pair of server add-ins, a streaming-media server from Packet Video, and a 7-month trial version of McAfee Total Security.

The order in which you perform these updates matters, and on the HP machine, which has only 512MB of RAM, performance will be noticeably slowed while you’re performing the updates, and will slow even more if you decide to install and configure the optional add-ins.

Ian Dixon has the full text of the guidelines as published by HP. If you have the time, they’re worth reading.

Terry Walsh of We Got Served has a superb summary of the installation guidelines along with some very perceptive comments about HP’s hardware and its development program:

I know that HP have spent a lot of time testing a wide range of upgrade paths with various server configurations along with Microsoft over the past two weeks to try to understand and mitigate the slow server response users are experiencing when PP1, PVConnect and McAfee are installed at the same time.

However, the fact that they’ve had to publish this advisory tells me the following (and I’ve made these points variously to Microsoft and HP directly)…

He goes on to list three criticisms, which are spot-on. Here’s are Terry’s three bullet points along with some commentary of mine (but go read his whole post, please) :

“1. The recommended hardware specification for Windows Home Server must be raised.”

My take: Terry’s absolutely right. The 512MB of RAM and Sempron CPU in the MediaSmart server are certainly good enough for out-of-the-box functions. But when you begin to install and use add-ons such as the iTunes server that comes with the original HP software or the new PV Connect product, performance can drag. The difference in performance on my home-built system is noticeable, thanks to a faster CPU and much more RAM. I greatly prefer the form factor of the HP machine, especially its size and ability to quickly add or remove up to four disk drives. Someone who is less patient than I am might chafe at the occasional sluggishness of the MediaSmart server.

“2. HP (and other OEMs) really need to provide customers with a supported memory upgrade path that does not invalidate their warranty.”

My take: I’m planning to perform a memory upgrade on this server today (a process that’s not for the faint-hearted), so I can compare its performance at 512MB and 1GB. The cost of the RAM is trivial, but it will be major surgery to open the case and swap the single SIMM. Partly, that’s a problem with the ultra-small design, which forces some very tight engineering. But when this box is redesigned, I hope that easier access to RAM is part of the new feature list. Having said that, I have to add that I have yet to see a small home-built PC that handles more than two drives well, much less four, as the HP does.

“3. I really hope HP manage to sort out a beta testing programme soon.”

My take: There really seems to be a disconnect between the folks at Microsoft and the folks at HP right now. I’ve had multiple conversation with people on both teams in the past six months, on and off the record, and it’s pretty clear that there’s not a clear line of communication between them. As the biggest OEM player in the world (and the only one in the U.S.), they deserve special status. If Microsoft wants to encourage innovation on this platform, they need to get down to HP’s HQ in Cupertino a little more often. I know that resources and priorities (and nerves) were probably stretched pretty thin over the past 8-10 months as the saga of the data corruption bug played out. Fine. That’s all in the past. Can you guys please sit down and work together on the next release of your respective products? I’ll be happy to pick up the tab for coffee and doughnuts.

That’s all in the future. For right now, if you’re using Windows Home Server, be sure you have these updates.

This e-mail arrived via a Hotmail account this morning:

A couple things jumped out at me. First, it’s pretty well done, much better than your average phishing attempt. (The only typo is a stray comma right after the “clicking here” URL that they replaced. Oops.)

Second, the Windows Live Mail header correctly noted that the message was encoded in Cyrillic.

I’m pretty sure that no official e-mail from Apple is being sent to American customers from Russian client machines, especially not using Outlook Express as the message source, as an inspection of the headers revealed.

The more success Apple has in the marketplace, the more likely they are to become targets of all sorts of attacks. This sort of phish attempt is just the first wave.

Jeremy Toeman brilliantly summarizes words the Internet killed.

I’ve been doing maintenance on a few systems here and just saw a flurry of optional driver updates appear on several systems. New ATI video drivers (June 2008 release) appeared for video cards on two separate systems here. On my dedicated Media Center system I was offered an updated driver for the USB Bluetooth adapter. My HP TX2500 and ASUS R1F Tablet PCs were both offered new drivers for the integrated Realtek 8168 Ethernet adapter.

Unless a new driver fixes serious bugs or compatibility issues, it’s going to be categorized as Optional, which means you have to get the process started manually by going to Windows Update in Control Panel and clicking the Check for updates link. Here’s what you’ll see:

To see the optional updates, click View available updates (under the Install updates button).

Note that the check box to the left of the update isn’t selected. You have to manually click that box before the Install button is available. If you want to know more about what’s in the specific update, right-click the entry in the Updates list and click View details. That opens a dialog box like the one shown in the screen above.

Oh, and best of all: None of these updates required a reboot.

Earlier this week I wrote about Ben Drawbaugh’s hands-on look at the new Media Center TV Pack for Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate editions, formerly known by its codename, “Fiji.” (See Read all about the new Media Center TV features you can’t have, and also see Mary Jo Foley’s excellent coverage here and here.)

Today, in a post at The Green Button, Microsoft’s Ben Reed, Product Marketing Manager for Windows Media Center, confirmed most of the details in those posts, including this feature list:

The Windows Media Center TV Pack is primarily targeted at adding support for additional international broadcast standards including:

• Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting – Terrestrial (ISDB-T) Digital television standard for Japan
• Digital Video Broadcasting – Satellite (DVB-S) free-to-air satellite standards  in  Europe
• Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial (DVB-T) digital television with  improved user experience in Europe
• ClearQAM (Unencrypted Digital Cable)in the United States
• Interactive television with integrated Broadcast Markup language (BML) in Japan and Multimedia and Hypermedia information coding Expert Group (MHEG) (MHEG5) in Europe

He also confirmed that the update “does not include native support for subscription-based satellite tuners or the H.264 video standard.” The explanation is diplomatic, to say the least: “We test many features in beta releases, and optimize our feature set in the final code for the best user experience.”

So what does that mean? I wish Ben had been a little bit more forthright. My guess is that the unvarnished answer would sound something like this: We tested the crap out of the new satellite tuners and wrote code until our fingers were bleeding, and they just don’t work well enough for us to ship ’em. We’d rather take the hit for not releasing this product than put out a buggy product that makes your life miserable.

In fact, it’s hard for me to come up with any alternative scenario that makes sense. I know that Microsoft and DirecTV are dying to get satellite tuners into the market to compete with CableCARD-based products. The process should actually be easier with satellite companies, which have a single infrastructure to support, than it is for the cable industry with its thousands of local infrastructures, no two of which are alike. CableCARD devices haven’t exactly set the world on fire. Does Microsoft really need to launch a new product that doesn’t work as promised? Does Vista really need more bad reviews?

As for the decision to ship the new code only through OEMs, that sure sounds like the fallout from a design decision made early on. It’s a lot easier to test and support code on new, clean installations than it is to support thousands or even millions of unique upgrade configurations. The tendency of Media Center enthusiasts to push the envelopes of hardware, software, and codec support makes it even riskier for upgraders.

I’m willing to cut Microsoft a lot of slack in this case, although others in the Media Center community aren’t so sanguine. Chris Lanier calls Fiji a “mess” and predicts it will “go down in history as one of the worst coordinated projects to come out of Microsoft in a long time.” But I’m trying to figure out how they could possibly have done things differently. They ran a beta test program as quietly as possible, making no public promises or announcements along the way. Some features didn’t clear the quality bar, so they got cut from the final shipping product. I understand being disappointed in that result, but how do you change that without either (1) not testing at all or (2) shipping a buggy product?

I should have pointed this out earlier this week, but better late than never. The How-To Geek has an excellent post over at Lifehacker that every Windows user should read.

Mythbusting: Debunking Common Windows Performance Tweaking Myths hits just about every one of the myths you’re likely to find at various how-to sites, including several I’ve written about extensively here.

Excellent reading, and the conversation in the comments section is entertaining as well.