AdminSpy Latest Gadgets and Gizmos

Microsoft Explorer Mouse With BlueTrack Technology

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 02:05:00 +0000

The large, blue beam and specular optics architecture, in conjunction with a Microsoft-designed image sensor and proprietary pixel geometry, generates a high-contrast picture of the mousing surface that allows exceptional tracking accuracy.

The BlueTrack Technology light beam emanating from the bottom of the mouse is more than four times as large as the average laser beam used in today’s mice, enabling reliable mouse tracking even on difficult surfaces such as carpet.

Microsoft has fitted two futuristic-looking mice with BlueTrack tech: the Explorer Mouse and Explorer Mini Mouse.

Both mice are wireless and come with little USB receivers that snap into the bottom of the mouse.

The Explorer Mouse with BlueTrack Technology and the Explorer Mini Mouse with BlueTrack Technology will be available at BestBuy.com and Best Buy stores in November

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How to capitalize a paragraph in Microsoft Word?

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Q. Is there a way to capitalize a paragraph or perhaps all the text written in Microsoft Word 2003?

A. The answer is yes, you can capitalize or put selected text into uppercase without rewriting everything in uppercase
There are 3 possible solution and we will start with the most convenient answer:

Highlight your text that you want to covert and press SHIFT and F3. This will make every letter a small letter. Press it again it'll capitalize the first letters. Press it again it'll capitalize everything. That SHIFT+F3 saves so much time!
Select/Highlight text that you want to capitalize
right click on it
select Font
select All caps tick box
Select/Highlight text that you want to capitalize
Click on Format > Change Case. (If you don't see Change Case in the Format menu, click the down-pointing arrows at the bottom of the menu to reveal all the commands there.)
Make sure UPPERCASE is selected, and click OK

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Microsoft set to kill Windows XP

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Windows XP will stop being available on new PCs from the end of January 2008.
Microsoft is keeping to a plan to stop selling the operating system even though surveys show a lukewarm response to Windows Vista among consumers.

PC makers will be forced to stop selling machines running the legacy operating system by the end of the year. As of 31 January 2008, you will have to put up with Vista, despite it having compatibility and performance issues that make gaming not terribly good on the new OS. After that, support for the old OS will continue until the end of April 2009.

If you still want to get your hands on a machine running XP then Dell will sell you a business system as its said there is still a strong demand from small business through its "Customise with Windows XP" scheme.

"Dell recognizes the needs of small business customers and understands that more time is needed to transition to a new operating system," said Tom West, director of small business marketing at Dell, on the company's blog. "The plan is to continue offering Windows XP on select Dimension and Inspiron systems until later this summer."

Also, people running pre-release versions of Vista will find that it will stop working on 1 June. The company said that these version of Vista had a limited life and were only there to help people see what the new OS was like and iron out any last minute problems.

Oh my, thousands of IT Managers will hate Microsoft for it's decision to kill XP and force them to replace it with Vista. Any Linux fans out there :)

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Excel: How to Copy Formatting from One Cell to Another

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Q. How can I copy formatting from one cell or range to another cell or range of cells ?

A. To copy formatting from one cell to another cell or range of cells, use the Format Painter feature.

1. Select the cell or range that has the formatting you want to copy.
2. Click the Format Painter button on the Formatting toolbar. Excel will change the cursor to a brush and display an outline around the cell or range that
contains the copied formatting.
3. Select the cell or range, to which you want to apply the formatting.

After applying the formatting, Excel restores the normal cursor. If you need to
apply the formatting to multiple cells or ranges, double-click the Format Painter button to lock it, when finished click the Format Painter button again to unlock it.
Excel tips and tricks copyright adminspy.com

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Top 10 Most Popular Microsoft XBox 360 Games

Sun, 19 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Rumble Roses XX
The vixens of wrestling are back.

The Elder Scrolls IV
Another title in the hit RPG series.

Gears of War
Teamwork-oriented shooter.

Dead Rising
Third-person zombie killfest.

Prey
Revisiting the first-person shooter.

Frontlines: Fuel of War
Infantry and vehicle-based shooter.

Battle for Middle-Earth
Elves and dwarves just can’t agree.

Chromehounds
Robots and guns galore.

FFXI: Treasures of Aht Urhgan
An expansion of Final Fantasy.

Splinter Cell 4
Sam Fisher goes to jail.

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Microsoft Outlook Out Of Office doesn't work

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

If your Out of Office does work internally but not externally then follow the instructions below

If you use the Out Of Office Assistant and turn on the out-of-office reply, the internal senders (on the local network) receive the automatic reply message, but external senders (on the Internet) may not receive the automatic reply.

PROBLEM
By default, the out-of-office reply to Internet recipients is turned off. Many administrators do not allow out-of-office replies to be sent outside the Exchange Server organization, so that unauthorized people do not know when users are out of the office.

RESOLUTION
To turn on out-of-office replies to the Internet, follow these steps:

On the Exchange server, start Exchange System Manager.
Go to Global Settings, and then click Internet Message Formats.
In the Details pane, right-click on your domain name, and then click Properties. The default SMTP domain is "*".

In the Properties dialog box, click the Advanced tab, and then click to select the Allow out of office responses check box. This turns on out-of-office responses to the Internet for the selected domain.

This was tested no Windows 2003 server with Exchange SP1 installed
You may need to restart the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and Microsoft Exchange Routing Engine services

Server Tips / submitted by: N Rajsic

keyword:out of office assistant does not reply to external email addresses

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Microsoft completes Office 2007

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Microsoft on Monday said that its upcoming 2007 version of Microsoft Office has gone "gold," a designation that marks the productivity software code's release to manufacturing (RTM).

After months of sliding deadlines and revised release dates, the completion of the Office code is a cause for merriment at Microsoft and perhaps to a fair number of customers��"450 million people worldwide use Office, and Office 2007 beta was downloaded 3.5 million times.

Microsoft says it has sent the software package code to be mass produced, known as the release to manufacturing (RTM) process.

According to Microsoft, this marks a "critical step" in confirming the availability of the product to businesses by 30 November, barely meeting the previously announced November release date.

Microsoft also said general availability for consumers will follow in "early 2007".

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Microsoft Xbox 360 HD-DVD Price and Release Date

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Add-on HD-DVD drive will include Peter Jackson's King Kong.

Today at X06 in Barcelona, Microsoft officially announced pricing and release dates for the anticipated HD-DVD add-on drive for the Xbox 360. The drive will hit retail in North America in "mid-November" and will retail for $199.99. Europe will also receive the drive in a similar time period, where it will retail for €199.99/£129.99 in the U.K., France, and Germany. For a limited time, all 360 HD-DVD drives will include a copy of Peter Jackson's "King Kong" on HD-DVD as well as the Xbox 360 Universal Media Remote.

The Toshiba-backed HD-DVD standard is currently involved in a format war with the Sony-led Blu-ray format. Both technologies offer movies encoded at 6 times the resolution of standard DVDs. Sony took the initiative in the format war in the videogame arena by making Blu-ray an integral part of the upcoming PlayStation 3, which will use the new technology for both games and movies. The Microsoft HD-DVD drive will only be used for movie watching.

Hardware prices have become a critical issue in the format war. Sony will launch two versions of the Blu-ray based PlayStation 3 at $499 and $599. The combination of the premium Xbox 360 ($399) and HD-DVD drive ($199) will place Microsoft's offering directly in price competition with the high-end PS3 version. A Core 360 and HD-DVD combination will compete with the lower-end PS3. In this configuration, the PS3 takes the value edge, as the low end model still has a hard drive, something the Core 360 does not.

Microsoft is unique in offering gamers a choice in adopting one of the next-gen DVD formats. The popularity of the HD-DVD (or lack thereof) will likely provide interesting insight into the videogame market's enthusiasm for the next-gen DVD formats.

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Microsoft to help Mozila with Firefox for Vista

Sat, 02 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

According to reports, Sam Ramji, director of Microsoft's Open Source Software Lad has sent a letter to Mozilla developers offering them help to get Firefox working with the Vista, Microsoft's upcoming operating system.

Ramji has invited Mozilla developers to Redmond to have 1:1 discussion with the open source team on how to ensure that the Firefox browser and the Thunderbird mail client work smoothly with Vista.
The invitation was posted on the Google group as Ramji was of the view that their @microsoft .com email id might get blocked by Mozilla's spam filters.

Further elaborating on the invite, Ramji wrote that as part of his mission as an advocate for open source applications on Windows, he has got spaces set aside at the Windows Vista Readiness ISV Lab. In the past, the company has only invited commercial software developers to these labs. He further expressed his commitment to evolving the company's thinking beyond commercial companies to open source projects. That's why he went for to what he called as "non-trivial effort" to get slots for non-commercial open source projects.
Reportedly, Mike Beltzner, Phenomenologist, Mozilla Corporation has said that Mozilla would definitely be interested in getting some 1:1 support, though Firefox 2 and Thunderbird 2 are already being tested on Vista.

However, industry people are of the view that people don't buy operating systems (OS), but applications. So OS actually succeed only if there are compelling applications. Firefox is a popular browser and therefore Microsoft will want it on Windows Vista.

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Outlook 2003 configurations and file locations

Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The following is a list of data store and configuration files used by Microsoft Outlook. Some of the folders might be hidden folders. To view them, do one of the following:

Windows XP
Click Start, and then click My Computer.
On the Tools menu, click Folder Options, click the View tab, and then click the Show hidden files and folder option.

Windows 2000
Double-click My Computer on your desktop.
On the Tools menu, click Folder Options, click the View tab, and then click the Show hidden files and folder option.

Your configuration may not include all of the following files. Some files are created only when you customize Outlook features.

Outlook data files (.pst)
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

Outlook Offline Folders file (.ost)
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

Oulook Personal Address Book (.pab)
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

Outlook Offline Address Books (.oab)
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

Outlook Command bar and menu customizations (.dat)
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

Outlook Navigation Pane settings (.xml)
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.xml

This file includes Shortcuts, Calendar, and Contact links.
Registered Microsoft Exchange extensions (.dat)
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

Outlook contacts nicknames (.nk2)
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

Outlook Rules (.rwz)
drive:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

If you upgraded from a version of Outlook prior to Outlook 2002, you may have a .rwz file on your computer hard disk drive. The file is no longer needed and the rules information is now kept on the server for Microsoft Exchange e-mail accounts, and within the personal folders file (.pst) (Personal Folders file (.pst): Data file that stores your messages and other items on your computer. You can assign a .pst file to be the default delivery location for e-mail messages. You can use a .pst to organize and back up items for safekeeping.) for POP3 and IMAP e-mail accounts. You can delete the file.

If you use the rules import or export feature, the default location for .rwz files is:
C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\My Documents.

Print styles (Outlprnt with no extension)
drive:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

Outlook Signatures (.rtf, .txt, .htm)
C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Microsoft\Signatures

Outlook Stationary (.htm)
C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Microsoft\Stationary

Outlook Custom forms
drive:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Forms

Outlook Dictionary (.dic)
drive:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Microsoft\Proof

Outlook Templates (.oft)
drive:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates

Send/Receive settings (.srs)
drive:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

Message (.msg, .htm, .rtf)
drive:\Documents and Settings\<user>\My Documents

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