IE 8 Beta 1 Now Available

Internet Explorer Beta 1 is now available for download.  For the first time ever, Microsoft’s IE passes the Acid Test, a test designed to check web standards compliance in browsers.

Strange Refresh Problems with Vista

I noticed several days ago when I had downloaded a file that it didn’t show up on my desktop where I had saved it.  I thought I maybe inadvertently saved it somewhere else, so I proceeded to download again, selected the Desktop as the save to location, and clicked Save.

“Do you want to overwrite the file?”  I thought that was weird.  It’s there, but I can’t see it.  I went back to my desktop, hit F5 and … BAM!  It appeared.

So, I did a little searching and found that there is a Vista update for this.  Knowledge Base Article 932406 “The Windows desktop may stop updating correctly after a Windows Vista-based computer has been running for an extended period of time” appeared.

Sure, I run my computer for extended periods of time, and my icons are AWOL.  It seems to fit my scenario.  So I downloaded it and installed.  We’ll see how things go after the reboot.

Here’s the link to the knowledge base article.

While writing this, I was listening to “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Sixpence None the Richer

More Information on AutoTuningLevel and the Vista TCP Window Scaling

I first introduced this issue in a previous post.  It turns out that this problem occurs if a network hardware device, such as a router, does not support TCP Window Scaling. TCP Window Scaling is a new Windows Vista feature. 

The TCP window scale option is an option to increase the TCP congestion window size above its maximum value of 65,536 bytes.

I also have found that this can resolve problems like slow file copy operations in Vista as well as momentary loss of Internet connectivity.

Here are a couple of knowledge base articles from Microsoft:

• “It takes a very long time to download an e-mail message from a POP3 server in Outlook 2007”
• “Network connectivity may fail when you try to use Windows Vista behind a firewall device”

Slow RDP Performance from Vista to Windows Server 2003

I have one Windows Server 2003 box in my environment that connects fine through RDP, but once I start clicking around in the RDP session, the response time is extremely slow even though the processor and memory usage is very low.

I’m not sure why one particular server would cause this problem, but I did some searching today and found in one of the forums which appears to be my solution.

From a command prompt, type:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

This disables the autotuning parameter, which by the way, I have no idea what it does.  More research on that to come.

Windows Vista Speech Recognition

I was in Seattle this past week, and I got to thinking about the advancements in speech recognition.  As I was thinking, I started wondering if the speech recognition functionality was any good in Windows Vista.  So I decided to give it a try myself.

Setting up is very easy.  The process is completely wizard driven.  You select the type of microphone that you’re going to use, and follow the directions that are given as you walk through the training process.

The setup and the training take about 15 minutes.  Then you can start using speech recognition to do anything from dictating an email, creating a blog post, or controlling Windows.  It is actually pretty cool!

So, I used Windows Vista speech recognition to create this blog post.  It took me about 10 minutes to do so, but it’s kind of fun to not have to type and just be able to kick back in your chair and relax.

What has been your experience with Windows Vista speech recognition or your favorite speech recognition software?