Microsoft relaunched its Exam Discount Program.

With new exams for Windows Vista, Exchange 2007, Office 2007 and Microsoft Dynamics in the pipeline in the next few months, Microsoft has relaunched its popular exam discount program. Microsoft divides the discount among partner groups this way:

• Registered members: 25 percent, limited to five vouchers per registered organization.
• Certified Partners: 25 percent, limited to 25 vouchers per partner organization.
• Gold Certified Partners: 30 percent, limited to 100 vouchers per partner organization.

Vouchers must be ordered by June 30, 2007, with redemption requirements based on the exam topic. For example, vouchers for SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005, BizTalk, Live Communications Server and Windows Mobile expire August 31, 2007. Because Microsoft has yet to go live with the Windows Vista, Exchange 2007, Office 2007 and the new Microsoft Dynamics exams, vouchers for those exams won’t expire until Nov. 30, 2007.

The discounts are offered as part of the company’s Partner Skills Plus initiative, which provide Microsoft Certified Partners with exclusive benefits and savings on training and certification. To find out more about the discount program, click here. For more detail on Partner Skills Plus, click here.

Also making a slight return is Microsoft’s popular “second-shot” offer, but this time in a different form, which the company calls “Exam Insurance.”

Micrososoft’s exam retake policy, which they offered within the last two years, required registration into the program, with vouchers issued upon failure of qualifying exams. Microsoft is taking a new approach, with the company requiring that candidates pay up front to buy exam insurance. If a candidate buys exam insurance prior to taking any MCITP, MCPD or Microsoft Dynamics exam and then fails that exam, the retake comes free. If the candidate passes that exam, the next exams gets discounted 25 percent. In the U.S., exam insurance is $170 at most Certified for Learning Solution Partner companies. (Exams typically retail for $125.)
Exam Insurance is a limited time offer and must be purchased by May 30, 2007; vouchers issued through the program must be redeemed by June 30, 2007. To find out more, go to http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/offers/insurance/.

Exam discounts and exam insurance cannot be combined. Both can be used at Prometric and Vue testing centers.

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Piping with DSQUERY.

Command-line tools for AD modification require that you have the fully-qualified distinguished names for each user or computer object, which can be a pain to enter. For some modifications, you can get around this need to enter them all in manually by querying using the DSQUERY command and redirecting the results of that query to an action command. This is also called “piping” because the character used to do the redirection is the “” or pipe character.

For example, what if you need to update the description field for all Research groups in all OUs to read, “Used for Research Only”? If all your Research groups start with the word “Research,” you canquery on that word and pipe the results to DSMOD for updating the description field:

dsquery group domainroot -name Research* dsmod group -desc “Used for Research Only”

A useful way to use piping is to query for all inactive user accounts and immediately disable them. Want to disable any user account that’s gone inactive for at least half a year? It’s done like this:

dsquery user domainroot -inactive 26 dsmod user -disabled yes

Nearly the same command will work to locate computers that have gone MIA on your network:

dsquery computer domainroot -inactive 26 dsmod computer -disabled yes

The biggest benefit of any of these command-line tools is the ability to drop them into a batch file and set them to fire on a schedule. Now, you’ve got a verifiable and repeatable process for ensuring that aged users and computers regularly get disabled.

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VISTA EVENT LOG BLOOPER.

Redmond contributing editor Greg “Greggo” Shields pointed out a little blooper in the Vista RTM event log. Instead of “browser,” they talk about a “bowser” event type.

Shrink a fixed size virtual hard disk.

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WINDOWS TIP: FOR expressions to compact files.

We all know that the best practice is to set the compact attribute at the folder level. But this isn’t always practical. Some files just don’t compact well, while others do. You may find it more advantageous to compact specific files that you know have great compression ratios like text, bitmaps and Word docs, while leaving other files untouched.

Here is a single-line command to compact such files:

FOR /f “tokens=*” %x in (‘dir C:\*.txt,*.bmp,*.vbs,*.doc /s /b’)do @compact /C /I /Q “%x”

This command will find all .TXT, .BMP, .VBS and .DOC files on C:\ and
compact them.

/I ignores any errors
/Q displays only minimal information.

If you don’t want to see anything, simply redirect the entire expression to NUL.

FOR /f “tokens=*” %x in (‘dir C:\*.txt,*.bmp,*.vbs,*.doc /s /b’)do @compact /C /I /Q “%x” > NUL

Should you find yourself in need of reversing your decision, simply use /U instead of /C with the Compact command.

If you need to target some specific areas of your file servers to trim a little fat, this is a quick and easy method.

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Unable to Install Panda Internet Security 2007after uninstalling Windows Onecare.

I had an issue installing Panda Internet Security 2007, because it said Windos Onecare was still installed even after I had uninstalled Onecare via XP’s Add Remove Programs applet.

Here is a solution from Microsoft that eventually resolved my problem:

From your description, I understand that after removing Windows Live
OneCare, Panda cannot be installed onto the system, indicating OneCare is
still installed.

This issue is caused by certain Windows Live OneCare registry keys that remaining in the system. I suggest we perform the following steps to delete them manually:

1. Restart your computer.

2. Click Start, click Run, type “regedit” (without quotation marks) in the
Open box, and then click OK.

3. In the left pane, expand to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MalwareProtection

Note: if the registry cannot be found, please go ahead to install Panda
again and check the result.

4. Right click on “MalwareProtection” and choose Permissions.

5. Select “Administrators” from the list and then check “Allow” next to the
“Full Control” entry.

6. Click OK. Right click on “MalwareProtection” and choose Delete.

7. Restart your computer and install Panda again.”

Corel What?

Amazing MS Paint, painter:

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Video Game "Numbies" History.

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The real Office 2007 Installation Guide Series.

Part 1

Office 2007 is now a reality. It’s available for MSDN subscribers and organizations with volume licenses. Retail boxes will be available in January 2007.You might not get Office 2007 right away and might not get it at all – which is fine.

Microsoft likes to push the line that installing their software is simple and easy. For the most part it is easy, but there are things that you should do to make the process easier and your computing more efficient.

GETTING READY FOR OFFICE 2007

Microsoft lists only a ’system requirement’ for running their software. http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/products/HA101668651033.aspx

It’s in Microsoft’s interests to scale down the requirements down as much as possible because higher computer specs might discourage people from buying. It’s a pity they’ve stopped the practice of minimum and recommended hardware specs.

The Microsoft requirements will let Office 2007 operate but usually so slowly as to be more frustrating than useful. The situation gets worse when you use multiple programs at once (eg Word and Excel at the same time).

Microsoft specs don’t make allowance for that lumbering behemoth known as Microsoft Outlook. We like Outlook a lot but it uses up plenty of computer resources. Most people run Outlook all the time so it is gobbling up memory and processor cycles even before you start Word, Excel or Powerpoint.

Finally, the Microsoft recommendations make no allowance for other software you might run on your computer. The unspoken assumption is that you’re using Office and nothing else, which is unrealistic.

THE BARE MINIMUM

This is a summary of the Microsoft’s system requirements for Office 2007. It’s mostly the same as the Office 2003 specs:

• Computer and processor: 500 megahertz (MHz) processor or higher
• Memory: 256 megabyte (MB) RAM or higher
• Hard disk: 1.5 gigabyte (GB); a portion of this disk space will be freed after installation if the original download package is removed from the hard drive.
• Display: 1024×768 or higher resolution monitor

But there are plenty of footnotes on those basic requirements.

Although there no single good answer for recommend hardware specifications here are some suggestions that you can use as a starting point for your own decisions:

COMPUTER AND PROCESSOR

At least a 1 gigahertz (1,000 MHz) processor, preferably 2 gigahertz or more.

Intel and AMD spend a lot of money to advance the view that faster processors are better – that’s true but in reality a slightly faster chip won’t make any noticeable difference. The currently fastest chips are often much more expensive than the real speed improvement you’ll get.

In Microsoft footnotes:

• 1GHz processor or higher and 512 MB RAM or higher recommended for Business Contact Manager
• 2 GHz processor or higher and 1 GB RAM or higher recommended for OneNote Audio Search.

MEMORY

At minimum 512 megabyte (MB) RAM but preferably 1GB plus.

What matters far more for Office then processor speed (especially using Outlook) is memory. The base memory of 512MB we see offered with many new computers is now the bare minimum that you should have. Office and Windows make good use of any extra memory to speed things up.We feel that a bare minimum of around 750MB is the practical lower limit for using Office with Outlook and other Office apps at the same time. 1GB memory is better and anything up to 2GB is great. Past 2GB is useful but there’s diminishing productivity returns for most regular users.

In a footnote to Microsoft’s requirements are some important notes related to memory:
512 MB RAM or more is recommended for using the Instant Search feature in Outlook.
Word’s Grammar and contextual spelling features won’t work at all if the machine has less than 1 GB of memory.
As noted above, 512MB of RAM is the minimum for Business Contact Manager and 1GB is least workable for OneNote’s Audio Search feature.

HARD DISK

Much of the time you spend waiting for Office or Windows is hard-disk related. You’re actually waiting for information to be read from or written to the hard drive. More memory can help alleviate the waiting (memory is used as a drive cache) but a faster hard drive is better.

Installing a new hard drive is not simple but when you’re next buying a new computer you should look for any options for faster hard drives.

Around 1.5 gigabyte (GB) is needed during the install but then Office 2007 uses about 600MB in the ” /Program Files ” folder plus another 600MB of setup files held in a hidden folder to ease repairs. A total of around 1.3GB – give or take for common use files and depending on which Office programs you install.

In these times of 40GB plus hard drives, a major program using 1.5GB or less isn’t an excessive proportion of the available space.

Keep in mind the space needed for your documents and the main Outlook storage file (PST or OST) which can grow into many gigabytes on its own.

DISPLAY

1024×768 or higher resolution monitor is good. If you have more than one Office program running at once, having more screen real estate is worth it.

The speed and memory of a video card is also important. It’s not just a question of a better picture but also improving performance. Clearly it’s better to have a video card with its own memory, rather than one which ‘borrows’ some of the main computer memory (a common shortcut on a laptop).

A video card with twin monitor support is useful for future expansion.

If you’re getting a new computer or upgrading make sure the new video card is ‘Aero’ capable. Aero is the gee-whiz graphics system available in most (but not all) incarnations of Windows Vista. Even if you’re not intending to use Vista – ‘Aero’ capability is a useful yardstick for a decent video card that will be more than adequate for Office users and give future upgrade opportunities.

In short, Aero requires:

• a video card with DirectX 9-class GPU that supports,
• a WDDM driver,
• Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware,
• 32 bits per pixel and ‘Adequate graphics memory’.

See http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/evaluate/hardware/vistarpc.mspx and in practice it’s best to check the manufacturers web site to see if your new video card is Aero capable.

Series Source
Part 1…
Part 2…
Part 3…

What about Frontpage 2003?

FrontPage, Microsoft’s web page editor, has been dropped from the Office 2007 lineup.
It’s been replaced with two products, one part of Office 2007 and the other still in development.
Sharepoint Designer 2007 looks like Frontpage at first glance and can be used to edit web pages and sites. However its focus on editing Microsoft Sharepoint sites makes it clumsy to use for purposes beyond Sharepoint.

For general use will be Expression Web which is not for sale yet but the beta is available for download from here (not to be confused with the ‘CTP1’ beta dated May 2006 but still available for download).

The good news is that FrontPage 2003 will continue to work after Office 2007 is installed. Sometimes mixing versions of Office programs doesn’t work very well (or at all in the case of Outlook), but Frontpage 2003 seems OK.

In fact, if you install Office 2007 on a computer with an earlier version of Office (including Frontpage) the Office programs are updated but Frontpage is left untouched.

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