Hopefully by now you’ve heard Visual Studio 2010 and Fx 4 Beta have shipped, if you live in Oz and not an MSDN subscriber then the best place to download it from is http://www.microsoft.com/australia/visualstudio/default.mspx. 

If you are feeling a bit nervous about installing on your base machine then install it in a Virtual Machine, it works just fine!! 

There is a great set of training resources for Visual Studio 2010 & Fx 4 Beta 2 in the form of the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit. 

You’ll find material covering

1. What’s new for Common Language Runtime
2. ASP.NET 4
3. Windows
4. Windows Workflow
5. Windows Communication Foundation
6. Silverlight
7. Data Access
8. Parallel Computing
9. Extensibility Framework
10. Application Lifecycle Management

so check it out and get up to speed fast with the Visual Studio 2010 and Fx 4 Beta 2!!

Ohhh, lol, I have installed VS2010 Beta 2 on my ASUS Eee PC 1005HA-H with 2 gigs of RAM, running Windows 7, that plus TFS 2010 B2 Basic – ok, it’s not going to set any speed records but useable and fun for trying stuff out esp when you are on the move…

Cheers Dave

Wow, just spotted this amazing solution utilising Windows 7 Touch and Silverlight 3 with Deepzoom.

Check out http://rubrik.ch.msn.com/reportagen/zermatt.aspx and click on the Info button and read how it was created, stunning!!

Yes, it works with a mouse too if you don't have Windows 7 with a Touch display (or for that matter Windows 7), but yeah, the experience is not as immersive!!

Check out the Windows 7 Training kit if you want to build amazing stuff too!!

Cheers Dave

original posting at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/bb821275.aspx

On 16 May, Western Australians rejected by referendum a proposal to extend their trial of daylight savings. As a result there will be no daylight savings in WA this year or for the foreseeable future.

This change will affect Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office Outlook and other Microsoft, third party and custom applications, which are currently programmed to adjust their clocks on 25 October 2009. However, we have taken important steps to help you proactively address the issue.

The Australia 2009 Daylight Saving Planning Guide provides detailed guidance on preparing Microsoft solutions in complex environments for changes in daylight saving. Click on the links below to download the document in your preferred format:

• Australia Daylight Saving Planning Guide (Word, 1.5mb)
• Australia Daylight Saving Planning Guide (XPS, 1.4mb)
• Australia Daylight Saving Planning Guide (PDF, 2.7mb)

What is the impact of Daylight Savings changes?
Effects can range from the incorrect time display on the clock, to calendaring problems, to changes in business critical services that are time dependent.

What is affected?

• All Microsoft Windows PC, server and mobile devices in the affected time zones must be updated to ensure accuracy of internal time zone tables and correct operation of the system clock.
• Microsoft Office Outlook calendars may need to be adjusted. Client and Server-based tools are available to automate this service.
• Microsoft, third party and custom applications which schedule events at future dates should be reviewed to ensure they will operate correctly from 25 October onwards. Previously scheduled events may also need to be adjusted.

What do I need to do?
Thorough planning and testing for these changes is critical to ensure the change results in minimal user impact, so to help customers prepare Microsoft has developed the Australia 2009 Daylight Saving Planning document which details the nature and impact of the DST changes, along with planning guidance to avoid user impact.

What if the systems have been previously patched?
Where servers, workstations and mobile devices have been added to the infrastructure, organisations will need to audit their environment to ensure all systems are updated according to the organisation's Daylight Savings Plan.

Where the environment does not have a consistent Daylight Savings Time (DST) update level, appointments may have been created with a mix of correct and incorrect DST transition dates.