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Archive for February, 2009

Windows 7 on a Macbook Pro – 1 Month Review

Thursday, February 26th, 2009


So its over a month now since I installed Windows 7 on my Mackbook pro. I thought now would be a good time to review how its gone.

I’ll start by giving my overall view, pretty good. I’m enjoying using Windows 7 when I need to use Windows, which is mainly for .net development work. Once I had completed the install my first response was like many others, oh, its Vista. But after a few hours use it had grown on me, it was faster and far more responsive than Vista had ever been. This was compounded when I had the need to install the Telnet client. On vista this process took about 10 minutes, on 7 it took 20 seconds, I was impressed.

The next test came with installing my applications. To be honest I’m not in need of anything terribly taxing. Visual Studio was the main app and that installed and worked just fine. In fact I really had no problems with any software, other than the slight issue I mentioned in the previous post about ISO mounting software.

One of the other reasons I have a Windows install is to play games, and I’m happy to report Call of Duty 4 runs without a problem on Windows 7. Which would have been a stopping point for me!

I like the new StartBar, being able to pin applications to it, and view a preview of all the open windows for an application is great. I tried installing Ultramon for my dual monitor setup, but that wasn’t so successful. It installs and runs, but errors at the start. It still works, but the toolbar on the secondary monitor is very thin and hard to read and doesn’t interact well with the superbar.

Hardware wise, the drivers from the OSX leopard CD worked without issue, even my iSight camera worked. Any peripheral devices like printers worked with Vista drivers.

There are problems however, but not specific Macbook related problems. Explorer has an annoying habit of stopping working when you open windows. For example, you’ll open the C: drive and get a blank window. However if you open the C: drive from the run command it opens fine. However if you then try and browse from there, it stops working again, very strange error.
The shutdown process hangs quite often as well, even when you dutifully shutdown every programme before initiating it.

Finally, the one big Mac related problem is VMWare Fusion. I’ve tried running Windows 7 from inside Fusion and it boots and I could eventually get into unity mode. This is with the latest VMWare tools installed and the VM set as being a server 2008 instance. The problem is I cannot get the network to work on the VM, in either NAT or bridged mode it gets a self assigned IP address and no network access. I guess this issue maybe more of a VMWare issue than a Microsoft one, but it maybe the one thing that sends me back to Vista or XP, which is a shame.

I really like Windows 7, and I’m happy to use it as a day-to-day OS. It works well on a Macbook pro, just like XP and Vista do. Software and drive support is great, but you would expect that from something based on Vista. There are some problems, the explorer error is infuriating at times, but it’s a beta, and you find a way round it. Hopefully theses issue will be ironed out by release time, and I’d be happy to use it.
The Fusion issue is annoying and I really want that to work. But again its Beta and VMWare don’t officially support it. When it gets to release time, I’m sure it will work in fusions to.

So overall, if you want to run Windows 7 on a Mac, go for it. It works, the drivers are support, your apps should work. Just beware of the issues I’ve mentioned and the Fusions issue. If you rely a lot on running windows in fusions, I wouldn’t go for Windows 7 right now.

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Open Source Control Panel for Exchange 2007

Saturday, February 14th, 2009


I’m contemplating open sourcing the control panel I’m currently developing for MS Exchange 2007, for a university project. I think with some work this could become a pretty useful application for all those people in small business, who want to get back control of their exchange server without paying for expensive IT support, or with adaption, a simple control panel for hosted Exchange services. Any thoughts, anyone interested in its use, or being involved in development?

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64bit Conversion

Sunday, February 8th, 2009


So I’ve been developing my project application on a 32 bit Exchange 2007 server. You can’t buy 32bit Exchange 2007, but you can download a 90 day trial of it for testing, and as my decrepit old server I have for developing on is firmly stuck in 32 bit land, I used that.

Now that my application is working well I decided I ought to test in a 64bit environment, so I set about setting up a virtual server to test it on, and as .net should compile for all processors, I deployed my app.

It didn’t work. I was getting errors that basically translated to dll’s I was using being 32 bit, I expected this, I was using 32bit PowerShell and exchange dll’s so I was expecting to need to change these, but it was a dll I’d not used in the project, Interop.CertClientLib.dll.

So I spent some time searching to see if I could a. find out what this dll was for and b. where I could find a 64bit version, but with no luck on either account. So I gave up and decided to see what would happen if I removed this dll… It all worked fine.

So the moral of this story, know what your dll’s are doing, and if you’re using them!
So other than that, deployment in a 64bit environment was very smooth.

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Powershell confirmation in .net

Friday, February 6th, 2009


Certain commands in Powershell require confirmation by default, such as deleting a mailbox. If your running your powershell instance from inside a .net appication, it can’t handle this request for confirmation, so to prevent powershell from asking for confirmation, add this to your PowerShell Code:

-confirm:$false

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