Windows 7 - Update

I am not an early adopter, especially when it comes to technology.  However, I have been so impressed with Windows 7, I have upgraded both my laptop as well as my home/work desktop toWindows 7.  It seems to me that Windows 7 is just that much better than Vista.  If I were to compare it to XP, I personally think Win 7 is just slightly better. 

It is stable.  I have a lot of software installed on these machines, Visual Studio, VirtualBox, accounting software, Adobe products, just to name a few.  And they all work.  Driver support is awesome.  I no longer have to install the software that came with the HP printer that I have.

The AeroPeek feature is nice.  What I like the most is the ability to snap the active window to the left and/or right of your screen by simply holding down the Window key and pressing either the left arrow key / right arrow key.  I believe that these Winkey combinations is new for Windows 7.  Here's a short list of Winkey combinations:

Win+Up arrow	Maximize current active window
Win+Down arrow	Minimize current active window
Win+Left arrow	Snap current active window to left
Win+Right arrow	Snap current active window to right
Win+Home	Minimize / restore window
Win+T	Focus the first taskbar entry Pressing again will cycle through them, you can can arrow around. Win+Shift+T cycles backwards.
Win+Home	Minimize / restore window

If there are others that you have used and found useful, please let me know.

Cloning a Virtual Harddrive - VirtualBox

I use VirtualBox to allow me to run multiple OS on one machine. It is a powerful virtualization product, with rich features. It is an Open Source Software. It runs on Windows, and supports all of Windows OS'es, Linux, Solaris, OpenBSD, just to name a few.

One feature that I use a lot is the cloning feature. Here's what I do.

1. Create a new virtual machine

2. Create a new virtual hard drive ( this will be my template )

3. Install the OS ( Windows XP Pro, for example )

4. Update the OS with the latest patches, etc.

5. Install any additional software necessary

Once complete, I open up a command prompt and navigate to the VirtualBox folder. I type the following command and then hit Enter:

VBoxManage clonehd "sourceTemplate.vdi" "newCloneDisk.vdi"

You will replace the VDI names in quotes with the path and filename where the source is located and where you want it to clone to. It will do it's thing and will return to the command prompt once it completes.

I then return to VirtualBox and do the following steps:

1. Create a new virtual machine

2. Here, I would select an existing virtual harddisk, in this case, I would select the newly cloned VDI.

I also found that there is another way of cloning. I have not yet tried this out myself ( I will try this the next time I need to clone ) but here it is anyway.

First copy the VDI file ( or your template ) using Windows Explorer. Name the copy to what you want. Open up a command prompt and navigate to the VirtualBox folder. Type:

VBoxManage internalcommands setvdiuuid "newCloneDisk.vdi"

You will replace the VDI names in quotes with the path and filename where you want the new VDI to clone to.

I hope this helps. If someone has already used the second option, please let me know how you like it, if you ran into any issues, etc. Thanks.

UPDATE: The second option works and it is a whole lot faster to complete.

St. Louis Day of .NET Review

St. Louis Day of .NET is over. It was a two day conference that was held in the Ameristar Casino in St. Charles, MO.

The conference started with Jumpstart events ... which are basically introductions. Each sessions were 1 hour 15 minutes long and the topics covered were awesome. WCF, Silverlight, Architecture and Patterns, C#, MVC, DotNetNuke, LINQ, and many more. I believe that there were over 40 sessions. Some of the sessions were repeated, which is great, as it allows you the opportunity to attend it if you missed the first session.

One of the things that I really liked about this event compared to other events like VS Live, was the ability to talk to the speakers. They were just hanging around talking with folks. It did not seem like I had that opportunity to do that at VS Live. I had the opportunity to meet with Mr. Phil Japikse, Mr. Lee Brandt, Mr. Chris Deweese, Mr Kevin Grosnicklaus, Mr. Jeff Fattic, and Mr. Dan Rigsby, just to name a few. I also had the opportunity to meet and talk with Mr. Jeff Strauss, who happens to be one of the organizers of this wonderful event.

If you were not able to attend this event this year, please plan on checking it out next year. I will be providing the information on here. For the organizers and speakers that just happens to be seeing this blog, I want to thank you for making this a great conference. Top class event. Looking forward to next year.

PLINQO

A new and better LINQ to SQL. It is call PLINQO. You can find it at http://plinqo.com. It is available in C# and VB.

Installing Win7 from USB Drive

Found this article. Check it out here. Great post and HOWTO.