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Windows 7 contains a really nice tool called the Problem Steps Recorder:

It can be found via the Windows 7 start menu by typing ‘problem step’

Once it’s running you get the following UI:

From here you can record all the clicks and keystrokes that your undertaking, you can even add comments to parts of your display. It finally saves the file as a zip file, which contains a .mht file that can be viewed in your browser. This output file will list things like version numbers of applications running as well as a range of screenshots of each major activity recorded.

Now this is all well and good for sorting your mum’s computer problems, but as an IT pro who has had to document some awfully boring processes, I really think this tool will help me the next time I need to document the install of some software, or some mundane configuration change.

With the upcoming SharePoint conference releasing information about SharePoint 2010, it won’t be too long before everyone will be looking at the product. Interestingly SharePoint 2010 is 64 bit only, this will have an impact on developers using Virtual PC 2007, which only supports 32 bit guest OS’s.

However windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 supports boot to VHD, this provides the ability to create a single VHD file that can booted. Once you’ve booted up the VHD your computer has access to all of it’s CPU cores, which is a major win. I’ve read that the performance hit of virtualising the file system to write to the VHD is around 5%, so it’s barely noticeable. Most importantly you can boot into a 64 bit OS where SharePoint 2010 can be installed.

To recap, the advantages of boot to VHD:

• Can run 64 bit machines
• Access to all CPU cores
• Still keep portability by way of VHD files

Disadvantages

• Can’t multitask with the primary OS, the VHD OS is the primary OS
• Need to upgrade to windows 7 or server 2008 R2 (Not really a disadvantage, but might be an issue in corporate environments)

I was looking for a new smaller (i.e. lighter) laptop for out of work use, I settled on a Dell Mini 9 after reading a number of good recommendations. My only gripe so far is the keyboard, I’m still miss hitting keys and the keyboard layout still causes me to look at the keyboard more than I would like, but I can see that I will get used to it, it’s not unusable like the Asus eeepc.

I thought a new machine would be the perfect time to give Windows 7 a good try, so far it’s been great.

I really like the new taskbar of Windows 7, but one thing I found after a few days of using the keyboard shortcut of ‘windows key’ + m, was the ‘show desktop’ button at the far right of the taskbar, it’s a little button that when clicked will show the desktop. It seemed fairly hidden (at least for me).