Start typing with a keyboard in the Start screen to quickly search and launch applications. Find additional applications (e.g. accessories) can be found in the application list by clicking on the “Search” charm.

New shell keyboard shortcuts:
WIN+Q for application search
WIN+W for settings search
WIN+F for files search
WIN+I for “settings” charm
WIN+O for rotation lock
WIN+C to bring up simple “Start menu” and time/date

Most old shell keyboard shortcuts also work: e.g. WIN+D activates desktop, WIN+R opens “Run”, WIN+L locks user. WIN+E opens Explorer.
In mouse mode, activate the options/charms by moving the mouse to the bottom left edge (where the Windows button used to be).
In mouse mode, right clicking activates in-app options.
With a keyboard, you can use the arrow keys and page up/down to select tiles. Enter launches them. The “menu” button (the key with a drop down) selects them.

Make sure to check the “settings” charm in applications to reveal app-specific settings. Enable the “high contrast” mode in Control Panel > Ease of Access to see a dark themed Start screen (above)

To get back the old start menu, open regedit, go to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

change value of RPEnabled from “1″ to “0″

Using the mklink Command in Windows

The command that you need to use is mklink, which you’ll use from the command line. Just type it on the command line to see the options:
C:\Users\Jas>mklink
Creates a symbolic link.

MKLINK [[/D] | [/H] | [/J]] Link Target

        /D      Creates a directory symbolic link.  Default is a file
                symbolic link.
        /H      Creates a hard link instead of a symbolic link.
        /J      Creates a Directory Junction.
        Link    specifies the new symbolic link name.
        Target  specifies the path (relative or absolute) that the new link
                refers to.

For instance, if you wanted to make the folder C:\Users\Jas\Test available from C:\Test as well, you could use the following command.

C:\mklink /D C:\Test C:\Users\Jas\Test
symbolic link created for C:\Test <<===>> C:\Users\Jas\Test

Now if you look in C:\Test directory, you’ll see whatever files were in the other directory.

Understanding the Options.

MKLINK link target

Using the command without any extra options creates a soft link to a file.

/D creates a symbolic link, or a soft link.

This essentially acts like a shortcut to a folder in prior versions of Windows, except you don’t have to use an actual shortcut.

/H creates a hard link, which points directly to the file.

This option can’t be used for folders directly for some reason, you’ll have to use the next option.

/J creates a “Directory Junction”

A Directory Junction is actually just a hard link to a directory. This is a feature that existed prior to Vista as well. If you are trying to symlink to a directory using a hard link, then you should use this option.
Understanding Hard vs Soft Links

Hard Link

A hard link directly points to the file, and acts to the operating system as if it is the file itself. You’ll want to use this option the majority of the time if you are trying to fake an application’s directory.

Soft Link

A soft link is essentially a shortcut to a file or folder – if you are using Windows explorer, you’ll be redirected to the directory if you double-click on a shortcut, it won’t pretend its part of the filesystem. You can still directly reference or open a file with the symlinked path, and it mostly works.
Using Symlinks from a Network Share

One of the things that’s been extensively discussed is that you cannot use the Vista symlinks from another operating system (not surprising), but you cannot use them from a network share either. This is troublesome if you expect to use this feature on a web server or a file server.
Deleting Symlinks

To delete a symlink, you can just delete the link. Just make sure you don’t delete the original file.

Windows 8’s new tablet UI, coming in 2012! I so can’t wait….

Microsoft launched its official Windows Live Messenger app for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch in the US, Canada, UK and France. A free download from the App store, Windows Live Messenger for iPhone is a slim downed version of its Windows desktop big brother.

Sharing is caring

As soon as you launch the Windows Live Messenger iPhone App, you are able to update your status on Windows Live and see the “social updates” from your friends. You can easily send text, emoticons, nudges, URLs and even photos with your IM messages.

The Hotmail icon (to the right of the status update area) displays new unread email messages. A quick tap on the icon, takes you to the mobile web version of Hotmail within the app itself. The Social tab aggregates all of the activities from your friends. You can filter the content by clicking on “status messages” or “photos” just to see that content. Clicking on the Friends tab, displays the familiar view that Windows Live users will already be accustomed to.

Chatting with friends is easy, by selecting the Chats tab you can easily see the flow of conversation. Notice, the new emoticons.

One of the cool new features of the iPhone is app, is the ability to include photos in your status messages. Creating a photo status message from your iPhone is straightforward. Either, take a new picture with your phone, or select one from your local album. Alternatively, you can also pick a photo from your Windows SkyDrive, if you have photos stored there. You can add labels or add annotations to your photos and even “style” them with the included photo effects feature

The app also provides push notification alerts, even when the app is closed.

One of the other interesting features, is that the Live Messenger app supports Multiple Points of Presence (MPOP). This means, I can keep my desktop version of Windows Live open and the continue to chat with my friends on the phone app. Updates appear in real time on the desktop client app. As you can in the picture below, Windows Live Messenger also shows you all of the locations that you are signed into, and allows you to easily sign out of them.

Overall, Windows Live Messenger for iPhone is a strong release and has already replaced many of the 3^rd party services that I used previously to connect with friends on Windows Live.

Windows Live Messenger for the iPhone is available to download here

This was post was originally cross posted on liveside.net

There is a way to upgrade Windows 7 Enterprise to Ultimate

Go to, Start, Run: and type: regedit.exe
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion
Change the key : ProductName from "Windows 7 Enterprise” to “Windows Vista 7 Business”
Change the key: EditionID from "Enterprise" to “Business”
Do not restart
Now insert Windows 7 Ultimate CD and start upgrading (the option Upgrade will not be graded out anymore)

The same rule would also apply to Windows Vista too

All DVD versions of Windows 7 contain the possibility to install all and any version of Windows 7, from Windows 7 Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional to Ultimate edition. Actually, the ability to select the version or edition of Windows 7 during setup installation, lies with a small configuration file named ei.cfg on the Windows 7 DVD, disc media or ISO image.

The content of the ei.cfg file, inside the “sources” folder of the DVD looks like below:

[EditionID]
Ultimate
[Channel]
Retail
[VL]
0

When ei.cfg does not exist, Windows 7 setup process will display a screen during Install Windows wizard to ask user to select the operating system (edition) to install. The selection of OS includes Windows 7 Starter, Windows 7 Home Basic, Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate. Thus, in order to be able to install any editions or install another different edition of Windows 7 without having to download ISO image or order a new DVD of Windows 7 with all SKUs enabled (allSKU version), use the following hack to delete or modify ei.cfg file.

1. Download and install an disc image utility such as PowerISO or UltraISO to open the ISO image of Windows 7 DVD. If you own a physical DVD disc media, the similar tool allows you to rip the DVD to ISO or other image format too.Another alternative for user with Windows 7 DVD ISO image downloaded via torrent or from Internet is to extract all contents of the ISO image by using extraction tool such as WinRAR or 7-zip, or mount the ISO and copy contents to a folder.
2. Browse to /sources/ folder.
3. Locate ei.cfg file.
4. Depending on preference, it’s possible to modify/edit or simply delete ei.cfg file, as explained below.

   Choice 1: Delete ei.cfg

   When ei.cfg is deleted, Windows 7 setup wizard will give user an option to select and choose which version (SKU) of operating system user wants to install during installation.

   Choice 2: Edit and Modify ei.cfg

   By modifying the EditionID section of ei.cfg by replacing Ultimate (or other edition specified there) with another edition, user can preset another edition SKU of Windows 7 that user want setup to install automatically. The Edition ID available for installation are as follow:
   Ultimate
   Professional
   Home Premium
   Home Basic
   Starter

   Save the ei.cfg after editing.
   

Will Bing.com give Google a run for its money?  Time will tell.

Learn more about this new search engine and Discover Bing

According to Microsoft, it is not possible to directly or in-place upgrade from Windows 7 Beta or RC build versions.  A few tweaks and enhancements have been introduced during the development process, which can enhance support of Windows Vista to Windows 7 build-to-build upgrade.

Download the Windows 7 ISO.

1. Burn the Windows 7 ISO image to a DVD, and then copy and whole image to a storage location that you wish to run the upgrade from (can be either any directory/folder on any partition/drive on the machine running the pre-release build, or a bootable USB/FireWire flash drive).Alternatively, it’s possible to directly extract the content of the ISO to a desired folder using file extraction tool such as WinRAR.
2. Browse to the sources directory.
3. Open the file cversion.ini in a text editor such as Notepad.
4. Modify the MinClient build number to a value lower than the down-level build. For example, change 7xxx to 7100.
5. Save the file in original place and original name.
6. Start the setup process of Windows 7 as per normal from the modified copy of the installation files, and the version check will be bypassed.