Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

Some links and resources about how to improve your use of Windows 7 and understand more about cloud options with Windows tools and server technology.

• Getting the most from Windows 7 - Microsoft Technet article with lots of links
• Optimising Windows 7 Across the Enterprise - a good read for system administrators and architects
• Windows Tweaking and Optimization: Myths and Reality - this is great stuff - main tip - uninstall crap you don't use!
• The Cloud on your terms - a 30 part series
• Screencast - building a private cloud - 3 part series
• Windows, iPad and Android - Managing and Using Your Office Assets in a Tablet World - a 6 part series

Windows 7 is definitely the most advanced OS Microsoft has produced to date. Slicker than Vista. less memory hungry and smaller install footprint as well. Way more secure than XP and more efficient user of memory, it also takes great advantage of GPU memory (in video cards).

Windows 8 is coming and it is a huge step up from Windows 7. It will feature touchscreen tablet like screen layouts (similar to the Windows Phone touch screen objects, and will allow metro style apps to be developed and displayed anywhere you like on your screens.

Here are some news items, links and videos etc. for you to preview.

Improvements in Windows Explorer in Windows 8

Previewing Windows 8

Download the Windows 8 Developer Preview

A preview of Windows Live for Windows 8

I have had a lot of articles, news and other tech information filling up my browser and its time to de-clutter before Christmas.

Microsoft Excel

INDEX -MATCH - a much better lookup function combination than using VLOOKUP or HLOOKUP. Charley Kyd writes a very good instructive post on using this combination. We use this a lot where the failings of VLOOKUP make it impossible to use.

MSDN announces the new developer roadmap for Excel and VBA. Interesting reading and has lots of useful links.

Power Pivot is an amazing AddIn for Excel 2010. I have written about Power Pivot before. Dick Kusleika has written a simple function to determine whether an Excel Workbook contains power pivot data.

Microsoft Outlook

Conditional formatting and highlighting your emails based on content, subject, sender etc.

Roy MacLean asks some interesting questions about storing data in Outlook. I love Outlook and think it is a very good tool, however there are lots of limitations with using it. Mind you I don't see any other email client out there that can do everything that Outlook can do or even half as well in most cases. Still Roy has some good points.

Is that confusing? So are the backflips and name changes Microsoft have performed in this absolutely bizarre name changing fiasco.

Lets review shall we.

Live Mesh Beta - know to all users by the spinning blue circle, the blue folders in explorer, the 5GB of data and the sometimes very annoying conflict resolution process, (at least it had one) has been in use for the the last few years, and was touted as an awesome mobile, device rich, application development platform. People developed car stereo systems that synched playlists, mobile handsets that synched photos to their family from their phone, and many many people used it to share files and photos both between their friends and family and co workers and their own many devices.