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A look at Bill Gates’ “last day” at Microsoft

Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates at the event. (Photo: Microsoft.)Today in Bill Gates’ last day as a full-time employee; he remains as chairman and will — by his own admission — be here from time to time.  Todd Bishop from the Seattle P-I covers Microsoft for the paper, and is on-site covering an event this morning in Redmond.  Although not as detailed as the live coverage of Steve Jobs’ keynotes it’s an interesting look at the event today…

Microsoft is holding a town hall meeting here in Redmond this morning to send Bill Gates off into the new era of his life. It starts about 9 a.m. It’s clearly a big moment for people at the company — including Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who is already working the crowd with a big grin, bouncing around and snapping his fingers. More than 800 employees are here in a big conference room, and more will be watching on a webcast.

Stay tuned for more as the event unfolds…

Update, 11:15 a.m.: See this post for audio of Gates’ concluding remarks, his final comments to Microsoft employees before ending his full-time role.

Link to On the scene: Microsoft’s farewell to Gates

Also of interest:

Tags: Microsoft, Bill Gates.

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Seth Godin on treating customers right

From Seth’s Blog: Learning from frustration



“If you have to put me on hold, don’t play bad 1980s music. Play me Bill Cosby or Steven Wright. Or why not give me a choice of 100 songs/audiobooks to choose from?


Here’s the big lesson, I think: The person calling in is a person, a customer, potentially a blogger, potentially the CEO of a company you might want to sell to tomorrow, and yes, the person you’ve spent all that time and money marketing to.


Tags: seth godin

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Diversify Your Backups to Prepare for a Data Disaster (MSN Tech & Gadgets)

Rick Broida of PC World has an article on MSN Tech & Gadgets, Diversify Your Backups to Prepare for a Data Disaster

If a natural disaster wipes out your hard drive, it will probably destroy your local backups, too. Here’s a backup plan that will get you through even the worst-case scenario.

Method 1: The full-system backup, with external 300GB hard drives readily available for as little as $100 [and ] a drive-cloning utility

Method 2: The remote, data-only backup, with an online backup service …

Method 3: The spare-PC backup – create a “backup network” that leverages everyone’s hard drives? All you need is SyncToy 2.0, one of Microsoft’s free PowerToy utilities. With it, you can create “folder pairs” between PCs, copying files between them with a single click.

…and several more

My favourite back up method right now is via simple and integrated USB smart drive like the Sandisk Cruzer, for quick and relatively inexpensive and pain-free back ups of basic files, settings and documents.  For larger content stores (like photos and videos) I back up on an external USB 2.0 drive (like the Western Digital My Book) and the HP MediaSmart Windows Home Server for music and disc images.  Plus, I also archive to DVD-RW (for files I intend to modify, such as video edits) and DVD-R.  My next step is to move some of the basic file backups into the cloud.

Now, go and back up your important documents, contacts, email and photographs of the kids.

More from MSN Tech & Gadgets…

Tags: Advice, utilities, Windows, Windows Vista.

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New Xbox 360 license transfer tool now available

I have seen a couple of customer instances (including one at home 😉 where I wanted to move downloaded games and other content from an old Xbox 360 to a new system (as we did when we moved to an . Well, now there’s a way to do it.

Click here for more on Xbox 360 License Migration.

As the site notes, “With the license transfer tool, you can transfer the licenses of all your previously downloaded content from your old console to the new one.”

Major Nelson's How-To

Major Nelson has a How-To that walks you through the steps of transferring content licenses.

Also, as noted on the site, “if you received your new Xbox 360 as the result of a refurbishment or repair, the licenses have already been transferred as part of the repair process, and you do not need to use the license transfer tool, but you may need to download the content again. Check the repair and refurbishment instructions page for more information.”

Also of interest, the Joystiq interview with Xbox Live GM Marc Whitten (thanks, Engadget).

Tags: Microsoft, Xbox 360, utilities

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Quick list: Command-line access to Windows Vista tools

Greg Shields’ Vista EXE Deep Dive series, now on part 3, is certainly worth a look and a link, as it provided a list of GUI-based wizards and control panels accessible quickly via the command-line.

“…this series brings together many hours of research and work in finding information about each of these EXEs and how they can assist your administrative burden.”

How true.

My favourites/ most often used…

calc.exe — Launches the calculator.
control.exe — Launches the Control Panel.
Magnify.exe — Launches the Windows Magnifier utility.
mobsync.exe — Launches the Sync Center.
mrt.exe — Launches the malicious software removal tool.
msconfig.exe — Launches the System Configuration wizard.
msra.exe — Launches Windows Remote Assistance. Command line & GUI.
mstsc.exe — Launches the Remote Desktop Client. Command line & GUI.
notepad.exe — Launches Notepad.
osk.exe — Launches the on-screen keyboard.
perfmon.exe — Launches the Reliability and Performance Monitor tool.
regedt32.exe — Launches the Registry Editor.
SndVol.exe — Launches the Volume Mixer.
SnippingTool.exe — Launches the Snipping Tool for screen captures.
SystemPropertiesAdvanced.exe — Launches the System Properties tool with the Advanced tab showing.
userinit.exe — Launches Windows Explorer.
WFS.exe — Launches Windows Fax and Scan.
write.exe — Launches WordPad.
wuapp.exe — Launches the Windows Update control panel.

 

In part one, he provides executable files from the System32 folder that enable command-line functionality for viewing and manipulating system configurations, first with “letters “a” through “l” in my deep dive of the command-line tools found in the System32 folder of a default Windows Vista RTM instance.”

comp.exe — Compares the contents of files.

diskpart.exe — Disk partition utility.

expand.exe  — Uncompresses compressed files.

getmac.exe — Displays MAC addresses for network interfaces.

ipconfig.exe — Displays and updates IP configuration information.

logoff.exe — Used for logging users off computers.

 

In part two, Shields’ provides “the remaining 88” EXEs, m through z… of which I regularly use…

Ping.exe — Displays information about network connectivity to a remote computer.
print.exe — Used for printing text files.
printui.exe — Manages printer configurations.
regini.exe — Views and manipulates the Windows registry.
Robocopy.exe — Rich utility for copying files.
runonce.exe — Sets an executable to run at next reboot.
taskkill.exe — Kills processes on local and remote computers.
tasklist.exe — Lists running processes on local and remote computers.
w32tm.exe — Views and manages Windows Time.
xcopy.exe — Copies files and folders.

 

Tags: Microsoft, utilities, Windows, Windows Vista.