Windows & .NET Magazine UPDATE, April 29, 2003

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Windows & .NET Magazine UPDATE--brought to you by Windows & .NET Magazine, the leading publication for IT professionals deploying Windows and related technologies.
http://www.winnetmag.com

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~~~~ THIS ISSUE SPONSORED BY ~~~~

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HP & Microsoft Network Storage Solutions Road Show
http://www.winnetmag.com/roadshows/nas (below COMMENTARY)

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April 29, 2003--In this issue:

1. COMMENTARY
- Intel's Mobility Push and the Laptop of the Month

2. HOT OFF THE PRESS
- Beta 2 Refresh Delays Office 2003 Until Late Summer

3. KEEPING UP WITH WIN2K AND NT
- a system file checker bug

4. ANNOUNCEMENTS
- File-Rescue Plus Recovers Accidentally Deleted Files and Pictures Quickly and Easily!
- Get Windows & .NET Magazine at 25% Off!

5. HOT RELEASE (ADVERTISEMENT)
- FAX from Outlook (Whitepaper/ROI/FREE Trial)

6. INSTANT POLL
- Results of Previous Poll: Windows Server 2003 Launch
- New Instant Poll: Laptop Features

7. RESOURCES
- Featured Thread: Number of CALs
- Tip: Why Does Windows XP Prompt Me to Change My Password, Even Though I Haven't Created One?

8. NEW AND IMPROVED
- Decrypt Files
- Receive Notification About System Problems
- Submit Top Product Ideas

9. CONTACT US - See this section for a list of ways to contact us.

1.

COMMENTARY

(contributed by Paul Thurrott, News Editor, [email protected])

* INTEL'S MOBILITY PUSH AND THE LAPTOP OF THE MONTH

You might have noticed the Intel Centrino advertisements that are suddenly appearing everywhere, including on buses, buildings, signposts, newspapers, magazines, and Web pages. The Centrino is Intel's first-ever, designed-from-scratch, mobile-oriented notebook computer chipset, and after working with a few different Centrino-based machines during the past few months, I'm becoming a convert. Like many of you, I spend much of my time on the move, be it locally around my home office, in town for meetings, or across the country. For this reason, I've been investigating various mobile-computing solutions to find the perfect balance between portability and performance, which is how the idea for Laptop of the Month began. And the Centrino notebooks I've examined so far are pretty close to perfect.

Historically, notebook computers have been a compromise. I can get ultramobile notebook computers, but they pack performance-challenged Pentium III Processor - M or Transmeta's Crusoe chips into a tiny package that typically lacks an integrated optical drive, large hard disk, or a keyboard large enough for my enormous hands. Furthermore, many of the tiny screens on these devices are difficult to read and feature less-than-optimal resolutions. On the other end of the spectrum are the desktop-replacement notebooks, typically behemoths that can carve a notch into your shoulder before you even get on the plane. These 8- to 12-pound devices typically feature massive screens, multiple optical drives, more ports than my desktop computer, and even desktop-style CPUs. But desktop replacements are tough on battery life and weigh a ton, which makes them hardly portable. Good luck opening a desktop replacement on a plane when the person in front of you decides to recline his or her seat.

In the middle of these two notebook groups are the midlevel notebooks. These devices are the true compromise machines and the ones I've typically favored. Midlevel notebooks feature Pentium 4 Processor - M processors, 14" screens, an integrated optical drive, good expandability, and decent battery life. They fall--by feature set, size, and weight--right in the middle of ultramobile and desktop-replacement notebooks. Midlevel devices offer decent performance and battery life, they're not too heavy or too small, but they're not perfect. Any device that's, by design, a compromise across the board, is never going to perfectly suit any particular task.

Then along comes the Centrino. A few years ago, Intel decided to change course and develop a new mobile chipset from scratch, rather than retrofit its desktop chips for the notebook market, as it has done in the past. Part of the reason for this sea change, frankly, was competition from Transmeta, which had always designed its chips with mobility as the first goal. But Intel's design, coming as it does from the world's largest microprocessor vendor, is more interesting than the Crusoe, which offers decent battery life but miserable performance. Centrino provides both better performance and battery life than the competition.

A Centrino-based notebook has three main components. The first component is the CPU, which is confusingly dubbed the Pentium M processor. Intel Pentium M processors typically run at 1.3GHz, 1.5GHz, or 1.6GHz but offer overall performance that rivals a 2.0GHz Pentium 4 Processor - M processor. The Pentium M is more power-management savvy than the Pentium 4 Processor - M or Pentium III Processor - M processors and automatically switches its clock frequency to meet your needs, increasing battery life in ways that are impossible with other chips. I've noticed Pentium M processors operating at anywhere from 200MHz to 1.6GHz on battery power (they remain at their top-rated speed while plugged in, of course). The second Centrino component is the supporting chipset, which Intel designed with power management in mind and features integrated USB 2.0 support. The third component is 802.11b (and, in the near future, 802.11a) support, also integrated directly into the supporting chipset. This design means that Centrino's wireless support is more battery-friendly than the mini-PCI or PC Card solutions that other notebooks use. What all this adds up to is a chipset that hardware makers can use to make small, light machines that are surprisingly powerful. An end to the notebook compromise? This could be it.

Laptop of the Month: IBM ThinkPad T40 And that brings us to this month's Laptop of the Month, the IBM ThinkPad T40, one of the first Centrino-based notebooks. IBM's ThinkPad T series is like a luxury car among more pedestrian notebooks, and the line has always featured surprisingly slim designs, beautiful screens, and IBM's best-of-breed keyboard. The T40 is no exception, and with this device IBM has pulled out all the stops. The T40 that I reviewed features a 1.6GHz Pentium M processor, a gorgeous 14" Thin Film Transistor (TFT) screen running at 1400 x 1050 resolution, a 40GB hard disk (up to 80GB drives are available), 512MB of RAM, integrated 802.11b and Bluetooth wireless technology, two USB 2.0 ports, an IBM ThinkPad UltraNav pointing system with both TrackPoint and thumbpad devices, and an ultraslim DVD/CD-RW combination drive. IBM included the ultraslim drive because the T40 is extremely thin--just 1"; the laptop also weighs just 4.5 pounds.

Despite its slight weight, the T40 outperformed every notebook I've ever tested, including a few 2GHz Pentium 4 Processor - M machines, and my desktop PCs. It can handle massive multimedia tasks, including processor-dependent video encoding, faster than my two 1.8GHz desktop machines, which astonished me. I also threw a few high-end games at the system, including the graphics-card-busting Unreal II, and the T40 handled them without hiccupping. Needless to say, Microsoft Office applications, Adobe Photoshop, and other mainstream Windows applications performed well also.

The T40's battery life is also amazing, especially considering the so-so results I've seen with most Tablet PCs lately. Using IBM's extended battery, which hangs extends about 1" off the back of the machine and adds about a half pound to its weight, I was able to get 4 to 5 hours of battery life during a recent business trip to San Francisco. If I'd been a bit thriftier with the screen backlight, I probably could have picked up even more time, and IBM says the machine can get up to 7 hours on one battery. I wonder if we've reached the point at which the two main problems with notebook computers--performance and battery life--have simply vanished.

I'd like to see IBM cut the width of this machine a bit--it has an additional .5" on each side of the keyboard, for example--and my eyes are a bit old for the high-resolution screen, although less strain-inducing resolutions are available. But other than these few nits, and an occasional graphics display glitch when coming out of Hibernation mode, the T40 has wholeheartedly changed my outlook about what a notebook computer can be. Although I understand that markets for ultramobile and desktop replacement machines will always exist, I'll have difficulty accepting the compromises of each when I know the perfect solution is sitting right in the middle. If you're in the market for a notebook computer, you need to consider Centrino-based devices first. And if you're looking for a top-of-the-line, no-compromises notebook, the T40 has no peer. (The T40 line starts at about $1700; however, the high-end model I tested lists at $3350.) I highly recommend this notebook.

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2.

HOT OFF THE PRESS

(contributed by Paul Thurrott, [email protected])

* BETA 2 REFRESH DELAYS OFFICE 2003 UNTIL LATE SUMMER A refresh of the Microsoft Office 2003 Beta 2 build will likely push the product suite's release date to late summer or early fall, sources at the software giant told me last weekend. But in an official statement about the refresh, a Microsoft spokesperson noted that the company is no longer sticking to arbitrary schedules and will instead release the product when it meets customer needs. "Microsoft's first commitment is to quality and doing right by our customers, and if that means adjusting our (shipment) targets, then that's what we'll do," she said. The delay might affect the release of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 as well because that product will ship with the version of Microsoft Outlook that's included in Office 2003. For the complete story, visit the following URL:
http://www.wininformant.com/articles/index.cfm?articleid=38816

3.

KEEPING UP WITH WIN2K AND NT

(contributed by Paula Sharick, [email protected])

* A SYSTEM FILE CHECKER BUG The System File Checker (SFC) utility is part of the Windows File Protection (WFP) feature in Windows XP and Windows 2000. WFP ensures that Microsoft and third-party software installations don't overwrite core components of the OS, including boot files, kernel files, and drivers. WFP tracks file-replacement activity for protected system files, primarily those in the %systemroot%system32dllcache folder. On Win2K Server platforms, WFP monitors files with a .sys, .dll, .exe, .ttf, .fon, and .ocx file type. On XP and Win2K Professional systems, WFP monitors a subset of these system files. When an application attempts to overwrite a file that appears in the protected files folder, you typically see a pop-up message saying that "a file replacement was attempted on a protected system file . . ." and that WFP prevented the file replacement from taking place. WFP also records such activities with messages in the event log. Before you experiment with this utility, you need to know about an SFC bug that can potentially corrupt a system. According to the Microsoft article "The SFC /SCANNOW Command May Overwrite Hotfix Files" ( http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=814510 ), Microsoft packages patches, hotfixes, and security updates in a way that's incompatible with the SFC utility. To learn more about SFC and how to correct this bug, visit the following URL:
http://www.winnetmag.com/articles/index.cfm?articleid=38821

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ANNOUNCEMENTS

(brought to you by Windows & .NET Magazine and its partners)

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HOT RELEASE (ADVERTISEMENT)

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6.

INSTANT POLL

* RESULTS OF PREVIOUS POLL: WINDOWS SERVER 2003 LAUNCH The voting has closed in Windows & .NET Magazine's nonscientific Instant Poll for the question, "Will you be attending a Windows Server 2003 launch event?" Here are the results from the 188 votes.

- 2% Yes, I'll be attending the primary launch event in San Francisco - 40% Yes, I'll be attending a regional launch event - 57% No

(Deviations from 100 percent are due to rounding error.)

* NEW INSTANT POLL: LAPTOP FEATURES The next Instant Poll question is, "What considerations are most important to you when purchasing a laptop?" Go to the Windows & .NET Magazine home page and submit your vote for a) Size and portability, b) Performance, c) Battery life, or d) Cost. http://www.winnetmag.com/magazine

7.

RESOURCES

* FEATURED THREAD: NUMBER OF CALS Scott writes: Many Microsoft products won't let a user access the application if the number of Client Access Licenses (CALs) are used up. Although I always follow the licensing and CAL agreements, I was wondering whether Windows Server 2003 simply stops you cold when you exceed the number of CALs or whether the OS warns you first. You can join the discussion at the following URL: http://www.winnetmag.com/forums/rd.cfm?cid=54&tid=57680

* TIP: WHY DOES WINDOWS XP PROMPT ME TO CHANGE MY PASSWORD, EVEN THOUGH I HAVEN'T CREATED ONE?
( contributed by John Savill, http://www.windows2000faq.com )

If you upgraded to XP from an earlier Windows version, the OS can sometimes get confused and think you have a password. To resolve the problem, you can create a password, then remove it by performing the following steps: 1. Open the Control Panel User Accounts applet. 2. Select your account, then click "Create a password." 3. Enter your password in both boxes, then click Create Password. 4. Click "Remove my password," type your password when prompted, then click Remove Password.

8.

NEW AND IMPROVED

(contributed by Carolyn Mader, [email protected])

* DECRYPT FILES ElcomSoft released Advanced EFS Data Recovery (AEFSDR), software that lets you decrypt files that were encrypted on NTFS partitions. AEFSDR can even decrypt protected files from an unbootable system. The software runs on Windows XP/2000/NT systems and costs $99. Contact ElcomSoft at [email protected]. http://www.elcomsoft.com

* RECEIVE NOTIFICATION ABOUT SYSTEM PROBLEMS TNT Software released ELM 3.1, a suite of systems administration software comprising ELM Enterprise Manager, ELM Log Manager, and ELM Performance Manager. New features include enhanced reporting, UI improvements, and the ability to monitor the ELM Server. For pricing, contact TNT Software at 360-546-0878 or 877-546-0878. http://www.tntsoftware.com

* SUBMIT TOP PRODUCT IDEAS Have you used a product that changed your IT experience by saving you time or easing your daily burden? Do you know of a terrific product that others should know about? Tell us! We want to write about the product in a future Windows & .NET Magazine What's Hot column. Send your product suggestions to [email protected].

9.

CONTACT US

Here's how to reach us with your comments and questions:

* ABOUT THE COMMENTARY -- [email protected]

* ABOUT KEEPING UP WITH WIN2K AND NT -- [email protected]

* ABOUT THE NEWSLETTER IN GENERAL -- [email protected] (please mention the newsletter name in the subject line)

* TECHNICAL QUESTIONS -- http://www.winnetmag.com/forums

* PRODUCT NEWS -- [email protected]

* QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR WINDOWS & .NET MAGAZINE UPDATE SUBSCRIPTION? Customer Support -- [email protected]

* WANT TO SPONSOR WINDOWS & .NET MAGAZINE UPDATE? [email protected]

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Thank you! __________________________________________________________ Copyright 2003, Penton Media, Inc.