The one thing I dislike about my Acer Aspire One Netbook is the anaemic battery life.  My unit came with a 3-Cell 2200mAh battery and all I could get was 2 to 2 1/2 hours out of it so I bought a new 9-Cell 7800mAh battery on eBay and now look at this: more than 9 hours!!!

Of course the new battery is much larger then the original one (434g instead of 162g).

The way the battery is made, it tilts the Netbook just a little bit.  You can also use the battery to hold the Netbook firmly.

Joey deVilla (The Accordion Guy from MSDN Canada) has started a crusade against Netbooks:
Fast Food Apple Pies and Why Netbooks Suck
Like I Said, Netbooks Suck
Netbooks, R.I.P.

Owning a Netbook, I feel like I should jump in and say that I love mine.  Of course, I don’t use it as my main computer, I have another laptop.  I use it on the road when I travel by airplane or train.  I’m OK with the slow processing because I’m not programming on it full time.  I use it to catch emails, read documents and watch movies while on the road.  I use it to present when I don’t need a fully beefed up laptop.  It’s light enough that carry it even if I don’t need to bring a laptop with me.  Best of all, Windows 7 runs as fast as XP on it! 

I guess it’s a matter of perception.  If I go see this movie:

I don’t except to see this:

We do live in a giant zone of suck, blame it on advertising.

My only pet peeve if with the poor battery life of the 3-cell battery (more on this in another post).

Got an email via our local user group from Insofta, an ISV that sell Cover Commander, a utility to create nice software boxes and eBook covers images.  I haven’t tried it but it’s dirt cheap and the results look great.  You might want to look at it if you’re publishing software or eBooks.

Use this code to get 20% off: ICC-RRDJ-DUG

In the project I currently work on, none of the developers previously worked with Team Foundation Source Code and in a project where a build server is installed.  I asked them to install Team Build Tray, a build notification tool that pops a toast when a build completes so they can be notified if it built successfully or not.  BTW, there are many such tools, one is included in the TFS Power Tools.

That’s cool but I wanted to add more punch to it so I looked for an app that could display full screen the build results and I found TFS Build Wallboard and installed it on a computer near the dev team.

I wanted to add even more punch so I looked on the Internet for Homer Simpson WAV files where he would says “Woohoo!” and “Doh!” and modified the code to play the WAV files to add sound to the notifications and to change the background color for green when a build builds and red when a build fails.

OMG!  The psychological aspect of the whole thing works like I never thought it would work.  I know that in a perfect world, we should never have a failed build but in real life, it happens.  So when we hear a loud “Doh!”, you can be sure that the error is fixed almost right away.  Cool!

I had an issue where I couldn’t see the SQL Server 2000 (x32) performance counters on Windows Server 2003 x64.  Looks like it’s an x32 on x64 issue.

To enable the x32 counters:

1) Stop the Performance Logs & Alerts service. Open up the registry editor (regedit.exe) and browse down to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Sysmonlog.

3) Change the ImagePath from the default value to %SystemRoot%\syswow64\smlogsvc.exe. (This would launch the x32 service on starting the Counter logs)

4) Open the x32 Perfmon from Start - Run - %SystemRoot%\syswow64\perfmon.exe, & add the SQL counter objects to a Counter log.

5) Set the various parameters of the Counter log, & start it to collect the data.

 

To see the counters afterward, you need to use the x32 Perfmon by running this:

mmc /32 perfmon.msc

Love Bing but the background image takes too much bandwidth when you connect with a remote machine?  You can disable it by clicking on the Help link at the bottom of the Bing pages.

You can then set the background image on and off.

You can also use this hyperlink: http://www.bing.com/?rb=0

The Bing image archive is available here: http://www.istartedsomething.com/bingimages/

Here’s a video tour of Bing features:
http://www.decisionengine.com/Default.html

Laurent Duveau has a great post listing Bing cool features:
http://weblogs.asp.net/lduveau/archive/2009/06/01/bing-com-new-decision-engine-by-microsoft.aspx

I was wondering if I could use a store procedure that returns multiple result sets with LINQ to SQL.  Looks like out of the box with the designer generated code, only the first result set will be returned.  A quick search lead me to this blog post by the Swiss MSDN team where they explain how to extend the DataContext code to retrieve more then one result set:

http://blogs.msdn.com/swiss_dpe_team/archive/2008/02/04/linq-to-sql-returning-multiple-result-sets.aspx

I saw John Bristowe twit about Demo Dashboard today and I was intrigued.  Sure looks cool but does it add “noise” to a presentation or is it really useful?  I guess I’ll have to try it some day.  The cool thing is that it shows how VS2010 can be extended.

Source code is available on CodePlex:
http://demodashboard.codeplex.com/

Due to popular demand, John even made a quick intro video:

http://www.visualstudiotalkshow.com

Eric Coté: Rétrospective

Pour cette 100ème émission un peu spéciale, Mario et Guy se joigne à Éric Coté pour prendre un temps d'arrêt et profiter de l'occasion pour faire une rétrospective des 99 premières émissions. Entre autres, nous discutons de nos coups de cœur personnels, de nos bons coups et de nos mauvais coups, le tout pigmenté d'anecdotes sur les dessous du Visual Studio Talk Show.

Éric Côté est formateur en technologies de développement, ainsi que consultant indépendant. Il est membre du regroupement .Net Expertiseet il possède près de 15 années d'expérience sur la plateforme Microsoft et est un spécialiste de l'architecture .NET. Diplômé de l’Université de Montréal (BSc), il détient aussi plusieurs certifications technologiques de Microsoft (MCSD, MCDBA, MCT). Il a donné de la formation certifiée dans plusieurs grandes entreprises. (Desjardins, Motorola, Bombardier, Bell, UbiSoft, CAE… La liste ne fait que s’allonger.) Éric adore partager son savoir. Il est intervenu comme conférencier lors de plusieurs événements dont la conférence internationale pour les développeurs DevTeach. Enfin, ajoutons qu'Éric a été co-animateur et chroniqueur au Visual Studio Talk Show, de sa création en 2004 jusqu'en 2006.

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http://www.visualstudiotalkshow.com

Francois Vigeant: PerformancePoint et l’avenir des solutions d’intelligence d’affaires

Nous discutons avec Francois Vigeant de PerformancePoint, un service d'amélioreration des performances inclus avec la version entreprise de Microsoft Office SharePoint et conçu pour le domaine de l'informatique décisionnelle. Entre autres, nous discutons en quoi l’ajout de PerformancePoint, à titre de services SharePoint, vient carrément faire exploser la capacité des usagers, des gestionnaires et de la haute direction pour accéder et analyser les informations critiques de l’organisation.

François Vigeant est conseiller principal à Montréal pour la firme CGI, pour laquelle il œuvre à titre d’architecte SharePoint en plus d’être le responsable du volet d’intelligence d’affaire, au sein de la pratique Microsoft. François est certifié MCDBA, MSCD .NET, MCTS et MCPD. Passionné par la modélisation et l’administration des bases de données depuis la version 6.5 du serveur SQL de Microsoft, il s’est rapidement intéressé aux solutions d’intelligence d’affaire. Au sein de différents mandats, il a modélisé des comptoirs et des entrepôts de données, bâti des packages d’extraction, de transformation et de chargement de données au moyen des outils DTS et SSIS, pour finalement créer, administrer et optimiser des cubes OLAP, toujours à l’aide de la technologie Microsoft. Au cours des dernières années, François s’est particulièrement intéressé aux volet de la présentation des données d’intelligence d’affaire au sein de la plateforme SharePoint avec l'application PerformancePoint. L’avenir des solutions d’intelligence d’affaires est des plus captivants.

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Bing, the new Microsoft search/decision engine, is now live but it is not Live.  You see, Bing is not Live, it’s brand new and it went live today but Live is still available.  Anyway, here’s the link: www.bing.com

In this video, Steve B. talks about Bing:
http://video.allthingsd.com/video/d7-video-steve-ballmer/B6291873-95A2-4164-9006-F1D5589CCAD9

Here are my Code Camp Montreal 2009 pictures:
http://cid-13e3fe758c3a4f06.skydrive.live.com/play.aspx/2009%20-%20Code%20Camp%20Montreal?ref=1

Soma announced earlier today that Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 and the .NET Framework 4.0 Beta 1 are now available for download from the MSDN Subscribers site.

http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2009/05/18/visual-studio-2010-and-net-fx-4-beta-1-ships.aspx

I downloaded the bits but I’m waiting to double-click on Setup.exe since I can’t find any info at this moment on the compatibility of the Silverlight and Azure Beta bits with 2010 Beta.  Patience 

Stephen Forte will speak at the Montreal .NET Community this Tuesday May 19th 2009. 

Data Access Hacks and Shortcuts
Struggling with Data Access? Who isn’t? Come and see some Data Access hacks and shortcuts that will make your life easier! In a high energy demo-only session, Stephen shows: how a mere mortal can pass a custom .Net collection to a stored procedure, improve your LINQ (to SQL, Entities, and 3rd party ORM) queries by eavesdropping on the server and understanding deferred execution, making complex data models easier to manage in the Entity Framework, creative Sliverlight databinding, and transforming your database back end to get enormous performance and productivity enhancements no matter what data access methodology you use. This is data access for the 21st century! Stephen will also provide guidance along the way about ORMs, LINQ to SQL, and the Entity Framework and will encourage Q&A.

Demos:
ADO.NET: Passing a Custom Collection to a Stored Proc
LINQ: Using SQL Server Profiler for eavesdropping on the conversation between your data access components and SQL Server
Entity Framework: Model Complex Relationships with Views
Astoria: Binding to Sliverlight
Database Architecture: Transform Data for Faster Performance

Stephen Forte is the Chief Strategy Officer of Telerik, a leading vendor in .NET components. He sits on the board of several start-ups including Triton Works and is also a certified scrum master. Prior he was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and co-founder of Corzen, Inc, a New York based provider of online market research data for Wall Street Firms. Corzen was acquired by Wanted Technologies (TXV: WAN) in 2007. Stephen is also the Microsoft Regional Director for the NY Metro region and speaks regularly at industry conferences around the world. He has written several books on application and database development including Programming SQL Server 2008 (MS Press). Prior to Corzen, Stephen served as the CTO of Zagat Survey in New York City and also was co-founder of the New York based software consulting firm The Aurora Development Group. He currently an MVP, INETA speaker and is the co-moderator and founder of the NYC .NET Developer User Group. Stephen has an MBA from the City University of New York.

Yeah, sounds good but the real question is: do you really want to spend an evening listening to this guy?

Seriously, Stephen is a killer presenter.  Don’t miss his talk!  More info here: http://www.dotnetmontreal.com/dnn

Sponsored by DevTeach