The Electric Wand
Weekly tips from the "Tip o' the Week" email distribution inside of Microsoft.
XP Mode in Windows 7 saved me money
I've been running Windows 7 at home for a while now, and have been very pleased with it - on a...
Author: EwanD Date: 10/11/2009
Outlook 2010 beta and E.164 number format updater
Well hello again; it’s been a while. Normal service should now infrequently resume. I thought I’d...
Author: EwanD Date: 10/06/2009
Pinpoint a Microsoft Partner
This site has had something of a quiet launch – I first saw it a couple of weeks ago and was really...
Author: EwanD Date: 08/14/2009
Mapping with Bing
As a follow on to the Bing post from the other day, I was talking with a guy who’d spent some years...
Author: EwanD Date: 08/08/2009
I Bing; do u Bing 2?
It might take a while before you “bing” someone before going out on a date with them, or you “bing”...
Author: EwanD Date: 08/06/2009
Office Web Apps complement, not replace, Office
The Office 2010 announcement a couple of weeks ago, (publicly) lifted the lid on the Office Web...
Author: EwanD Date: 08/04/2009
Playing with Microsoft Tag
I know it’s been around in some form for a little while now, but I’ve only started looking at Tag –...
Author: EwanD Date: 07/31/2009
The Emperor’s New Clothes
Firstly, apologies for the silence in recent weeks – it’s been a busy time and, well, y’know. Once...
Author: EwanD Date: 07/28/2009
Windows 7 Release Candidate available now
I’ve now upgraded 4 different PCs to Win7 Release Candidate (build 7100) and each one has gone...
Author: EwanD Date: 05/05/2009
Office 2007 SP2 now available
I’ve been beta testing Office 2007 SP2 since the beginning of the year, and it’s been great – the...
Author: EwanD Date: 04/28/2009
Exchange 2010 beta & high availability strategies
Today, the Exchange team released details of Exchange 14, now to be known as Exchange Server 2010....
Author: EwanD Date: 04/15/2009
Outlook Thread Compressor download now available
Nearly a year ago, I wrote about Thread Compressor on here – it’s an add-in to Outlook which removes...
Author: EwanD Date: 04/11/2009
Microsoft Roundtable transitions to Polycom
Microsoft & Polycom announced yesterday that the Microsoft Roundtable conferencing device (used...
Author: EwanD Date: 03/31/2009
SMSE – a System Center light hidden under a bushel
SMSE – pronounced (in the UK at least) as ‘Smuzzy’, short for Server Management Suite Enterprise –...
Author: EwanD Date: 03/26/2009
Apple put the ‘Networks’ in their place
Having just read Andrew Orlowski’s article over on The Register, it chimes exactly with a belief...
Author: EwanD Date: 03/22/2009
Formula 1 back on the BBC – only 2 weeks to go…
I haven’t been looking forward to an F1 season as much, for ages – since the Damon Hill years,...
Author: EwanD Date: 03/15/2009
Sign of the times: new car registrations
I recall the 1st of August in years gone by, as the day that new car registrations would be released...
Author: EwanD Date: 03/12/2009
Lessons of over-promise, under-deliver
UPDATE: 28/2/09 Just got an email from the general manager of the restaurant (after my message back...
Author: EwanD Date: 02/25/2009
HTC s740 – great phone, just one thing…
I got one of these things a couple of weeks ago… in essence, a great phone (I prefer the...
Author: EwanD Date: 02/20/2009
Happy 1,234,567,890 seconds since 1/1/1970
Well there’s a thing. CNET reported that today officially marks the 1.2-odd billion seconds past the...
Author: EwanD Date: 02/13/2009
Custom presence states in OCS – revisited again
I posted a while back about custom presence states (here and here). Well it turns out that a change...
Author: EwanD Date: 02/06/2009
Windows 7 tips & tricks, and Media Center tuner drivers
I put Windows 7 Beta 1 on my home PC the other day (as a dual boot config with Vista x64) to see...
Author: EwanD Date: 01/13/2009
Top ten things for to do in 2009
It seems this time of year brings out the soothsayer in lots of IT journalists and analysts, if the...
Author: EwanD Date: 01/13/2009
What next for Windows Mobile?
I've been a big fan of Windows Mobile for years - ever since the original Orange SPV Smartphone, the...
Author: EwanD Date: 12/24/2008
Updated LifeCam software
It's not exactly "news", since the Microsoft LifeCam web-camera driver & software package was...
Author: EwanD Date: 12/19/2008
How Microsoft can help you save money
There's been much said & written about the credit crunch, the downturn, the recession - whatever...
Author: EwanD Date: 12/16/2008
Border Lines in Word & Outlook
OK, I've been bad. Let my blog - which I used to update fairly frequently, though not the...
Author: EwanD Date: 12/12/2008
The biggest file I've ever seen - 3Tb PUB.EDB
Well I haven't seen this for myself, but I was sent a screenshot of it. Actually, it was 3 different...
Author: EwanD Date: 04/25/2008
Tips for optimizing Vista on new hardware
Ed Bott over at ZDNet posted a really interesting article yesterday, detailing the journey he had of...
Author: EwanD Date: 04/23/2008
Tip for finding when an appointment was created
Here's a tip for when you suspect someone has magicked up an appointment to coincidentally collide...
Author: EwanD Date: 04/21/2008
Imperialism, Metric-centricity and Live Search
I'm a child of a mixed up time when it comes to measures and the likes. I am feet and inches tall,...
Author: EwanD Date: 04/17/2008
Exchange 2007 clustering advice
I appreciate it's been a while since I blogged last - a combination of "not much to talk about,...
Author: EwanD Date: 04/15/2008
Seadragon begets Silverlight "Deep Zoom"
There's a headline that might baffle... Seadragon Inc was a Seattle-based software company who had...
Author: EwanD Date: 03/12/2008
Windows Media Center query-based recording
Here's a tip for anyone running Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate editions (the ones with Media...
Author: EwanD Date: 02/23/2008
Virtuali(z)sation & datacenter power
It's been very quiet here on the Electric Wand for the last month or so: I took a new job in...
Author: EwanD Date: 02/21/2008
Exchange updates Transporter suite for Domino & IMAP
I posted a while back about the release of the Transporter Suite for interoperability with (and...
Author: EwanD Date: 01/23/2008
The Firmware of Everyday Things
(with apologies to Donald Norman, for paraphrasing his excellent book title) As an IT person, I'm...
Author: EwanD Date: 01/15/2008
Bird's Eye view on Live maps - how cool is that?
The Windows Live search team did a pretty major update (a few months ago) to a number of elements of...
Author: EwanD Date: 01/06/2008
Unified Communications licensing made easy
Well, hopefully. I get asked a lot about what licenses customer need when they want to deploy...
Author: EwanD Date: 12/14/2007