Windows Vista (RSS)

My favorite features of Vista #1

If you click on the time on the tray you will get the following window. Here you can set different clocks and you can click through the calendar as well. Very neat! Once you added more clocks try to hover over the date in the tray.  

RoboCopy is now part of Vista

This one alone makes me want to upgrade from XP :)

Robocopy, or "Robust File Copy" as it calls itself, is a command-line file copying tool introduced as a standard feature of Windows Vista, but which beforehand has always been available with the Windows Resource Kit, free to licensed users of Windows. Robocopy is designed for reliable copy or mirroring of entire folders of any size ensuring all NTFS attributes and properties are copied (except security-related ones unless specifically requested), particularly over network connections that are subject to disruption or outages. Robocopy's default settings are geared for this purpose, whereas other built-in utilities such as XCOPY require numerous command line switches in order to get this behavior. Copying of security information is supported, but isn't default and requires an explicit /COPYALL switch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocopy

OSX's Expose on Vista

Simon created My Expose utility for Vista. My Expose is the OS X's Expose implementation using DWM and Windows SDK.

My Exposé : A Mac OS X Exposé implementation for Windows VISTA from Simon on (dot) NET.

Meet my new PC

Meet my new PC, it is a 20 inch iMac. I used "PC" instead of "iMac" or "Apple Computer" intentionally, because I do not wish to switch to the new OS. I am happy with Windows XP and looking forward for Vista. The reason why I picked iMac as my next PC, because I need a fast, quiet, high end PC what looks nice on my desk... I picked this one over a Dell, because for me iMac provided more value for money. 

The amount noise (lack of actually), the very nice display and that this machine is very compact are the killer features for me, but I would not purchase this machine if it could not run XP. Fortunately Bootcamp and Parallels are here to help me and I am currently evaluating which one to use for the future, but I might will end up using them both.

Regarding OSX, as geek of course I am interested to learn more about it, but after using it for a couple of days, I do not see anything earth shattering. It is a nice OS - Ooops I almost write overhyped, but I do not want thousands of Apple zealots to start spamming the comments of this article :) - it seems to be very polished. iLife is very nice and gadgets too. But I could not found anything what would make me switch from Windows. Apple for me is no more than a hardware vendor and all the nice design, the OS are for differentiate from the competitors. In this regards I give thumbs up for Apple and I am sure that there will be an Apple logo on my next laptop....

 

Creating UI widgets with the Expression line

Came acroos two nice tutorials demonstrating how to create nice UI widgets with the Expression tools Sparkle and Acryllic:

Creating a Glass Button - PART ONE
Making a gel style button with Acryllic.