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Your questions: how do I connect an Xbox 360 to my Windows PC?

A question from an Xbox 360 owner with a Media Center PC: “how do I connect an Xbox 360 to my Windows PC?”


For the latest info, see this article on xbox.com on connecting your PC up to an Xbox 360 with Windows Media Connect. If you are connecting an Xbox 360 to a PC running Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate, then take a look at this article on microsoft.com. (I did reference blog about the Xbox 360 as a Media Center Extender previously with a link to Chris Turkstra’s Expert Zone Support WebCast.)


And if a picture is worth a thousand words then a video is, well, worth a few more than that:



  CNET: Insider Secrets: Connect an Xbox 360 to your Windows PC


If you have a firewall on your home network, you may need to open up specific ports – see also http://support.microsoft.com/kb/911728.


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Now available: 180 day Trial Version SharePoint Server 2007 for Search

Courtesy of the Microsoft Download Notifications today (Go to the Microsoft.com Profile Center to sign up)


Now available on the Download Centre: the x86 bit trial version (180 days) of SharePoint Server 2007 for Search Standard Edition (at a whopping 235MB).


http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9A79CA73-9D64-4F92-B3B7-2EB3B78A2AA4&mg_id=10114&displaylang=en


As noted on the DLC page, the following product key is needed to for the trial software installation: P8WKK-RMXK7-WJ3XD-B2H7M-2K4PQ


You can sign up for newsletters from the Microsoft.com Profile Center. You will be prompted to sign in with your Windows Live ID. After you sign in, click Subscribe to subscribe to any newsletters you select.

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Remember: April 1st is not this year’s daylight saving time ‘spring forward’ date

If you did not apply the updates to your various PCs and devices as noted on our http://www.microsoft.com/dst2007 daylight saving time information site, but manually adjusted the time, please note that older devices may ‘spring forward’ on the first Sunday in April (the old beginning of DST).


As USA Today reports today… 



“…a few new glitches might pop up this weekend. Daylight-saving time began three weeks early this year, causing a problem for thousands of older PCs, cellphones and other electronic devices. They were programmed to automatically switch the time on the traditional daylight time start date, this Sunday (on April 1st).


“And there may be more (glitches) on Sunday night. It’s likely that some consumers didn’t upgrade their older devices. Instead, they changed their clocks manually. That’s worked so far. But the devices are still programmed to change the time on the original daylight time start date. They will change the time by an hour unless that feature has been turned off.”


So, if you haven’t already updated your PCs and devices for daylight saving time, consider the following steps:



  • Verify the time and date programmed on your PCs and consumer electronic devices. Some older DVRs (ReplayTV, Tivo) and PDAs may need to be updated especially if they are not always connected to a network service.

  • Download the updates – visit http://www.microsoft.com/dst2007 for more details.

(ZDNet‘s Mary Jo Foley picked this up in her blog Beware false Daylight Saving Time resets on April 1.)


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Your questions: Who do you work with in COSD at Microsoft?

A question received this afternoon from a friend in SiValley (thanks, Kim P.)



“So, who do you work with these days at Microsoft in Windows COSD?”


BTW, COSD = the Windows Core Operating System Division, the group that develops the core bits of Windows technology that ultimately becomes Windows Client (XP, Vista) and Server (2003, Longhorn). (See this article in the Seattle PI and on CNET News for more details.)


I’m still working my way around the Windows buildings and meeting people in the groups, just getting back into the thick of things following my tour of duty on Daylight Saving Time (please, no more “what time is it?” jokes). But for more details on our management team in COSD, one needs to look no further than Channel 9, with a couple of videos of people on the team including this one just posted of…







Mark Russinovich: From Winternals to Microsoft, On Windows Security, Windows CoreArch
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A more technical video, I learned a lot about how Mark spends his days. Of interest to me were…



46.11 – why he’s at Microsoft and how he started as an “Apple II Internals” guy long before Winternals and then to Microsoft, and
48:10 – what he does in COSD


Mark was a co-founder of Winternals and is now a Technical Fellow and on the CoreArch team. For more on Core Architecture, Rich Ward from Core Arch is featured in this video from last year (we need an update). Rich leads Core Arch, focused on the architecture of the Windows system.


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Last summer, Scoble sat down in this Channel 9 interview with Jawad Khaki. Jawad is super passionate about working with our customers and partners: I had the opportunity to work with Jawad in the past when I first joined Windows back in 2003. 








 


We’ll have to get the rest of the management team from COSD on a Channel 9 session one day, with the Windows Core System Team including Ben Fathi (Dev), Darren Muir (Test) and Chuck Chan (PM), as well as Wael Bahaa-El Din from the Engineering System and Services Team (ESS). Pam and Lou, too. 😉


And of course, Scott Charney, know for one of his infamous quotes: “If we don’t do security well, people will migrate away from us. And if we don’t do security right, they should.”


On the customer satisfaction and experiences part of my job, I have the opportunity to work with more of the best and brightest people across the company in the product groups as well as the field and services organizations. Toby Richards in Kathleen Hogan’s group is my partner on Customer and Partner Experience (CPE) and leads the extremely effective and dynamic team across the Sales & Services organization. Gayna Williams joined our team in the prodict groups from Windows, only to return to Windows. 😉


More on that later, as I must now tend to a child (who should be fast asleep) looking for a glass of water.


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BBC reports: the new Xbox 360 Elite, coming in April ’07

Back from the eye doctor, and ‘though I thought my vision was off… Black is the new black: this just in from the BBC on th enew Xbox 360 Elite… “Xbox revamp aims at digital home.”  



The sleek Xbox 360 Elite is a digital entertainment powerhouse.“The long-awaited revamp of the Xbox 360, designed to store and display high definition video, has been launched.


“The black Elite console has a 120GB hard drive and will go on sale in the US in April for $479.99 (£255). No details of a UK release were announced.


“…Microsoft has said it will include the necessary cables with its Elite machine. But users will have to pay extra for a high definition HD-DVD player…


Perhaps we’ll also see an improvement of the media playback software as well, allowing the now-larger HDD to aid over-the-home-network viewing to content, or better, allowing me to designate the Xbox 360 Elite HDD as a repository of TV content from my Media Center PC.


More on the Xbox 360 Elite is now available on Xbox.com at http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/xbox360elite/default.htm.
 
Although there’s no mention of the Xbox 360 HD DVD player on this new Elite page, the BBC reports it will continue to be an add-on.


Does that mean we’ll see both a white and a black HD-DVD peripheral on store shelves?


Perhaps to drive the interest in HD-DVD one might think that you would include it in the Xbox 360 hardware. But given the price premium still for HD-DVD playback, this certainly leaves room to have a follow-on Xbox 360 system SKU at a future date that includes HD-DVD playback: as there are more titles, the players will undoubtedly appear in more places, including in PCs (in what has commonly been slotted for DVD). That would drive me to buy a new Xbox system for Christmas 2007… just one less piece of CE hardware in our collection of devices.