There are some Microsoft Mac essentials [1] that must be on my Mac's HDD. Windows Media Player and IntelliPoint at least. I have also found but not tried yet an update for Virtual PC, which maybe can solve the previous installing issue [2].

I especially recommend IntelliPoint if you use any Microsoft Mouse. I became very frustrated by my Wireless Optical Blue Mouse on the Mac. It was slow and stucking; improving the speed within the Mac's System Preferences did not improve the handling cery well. However, the IntelliPoint software does support the devices very well, and by using the IntelliPoint pointer speed option instead of System Mouse Tracking the performance and reliability of the wireless mouse is improved dramatically. 

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It also has some additional information on the mouse, depending on the attached device. After replacing my Optical Wheel Mouse USB with the Wireless Optical Blue Mouse I got this additional tab showing the battery level.

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[1] http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/Browse.aspx?displaylang=en&categoryid=5
[2] http://blog.aheil.de/MyFirstMac.aspx

Prof. Brad Myers's HCI homepage, located at [1]

[1] http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/ 

Maria brought the Consolas Font Pack for Visual Studio 2006 [1] to my attention. After installing, the Consolas font is set up as default font in Visual Studio 2005. At least on my Portégé M200 it is very readable.

[1] microsoft.com/downloads

One of the first things to fix was to bring my CanonScan N650U to work with my Mac. Canon offers a plug-in for the CanonScan N650U [1]. I tried MSN Search and some Google Groups but I did not find any helpful solution. Actually I had no idea what to do with the package, so I started the CanonPI CS-U Installer in the package.  After the installation, the system needed to restart. After reboot, it was possible to scan images in Office using the Canon plug-in Module CS-U 3.8.

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[1] software.canon-europe.com

My favorite media player, Media Player Classic (guliverkli) can be found at [1].

[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli 

Actually, you can never have enough backups, but the original reason for getting Acronis' TrueImage was to copy an image of my 60GB laptop HDD to a new 100GB HDD. This worked surprisingly well, connecting the new disk, using an external USB case, the tool reboots the system and copies a bootable image of the disk.

Beside this, the tool can perform backups while you work on your system. Very cool and helpfully if you backup to a server, which could take some time. In addition the tool provides a very great feature, which makes accessing files within your backup very comfortable. You can just plug an backup image as a virtual disk to your system and this way you can access the complete backup and access specific files you are looking for.

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Windows XP Downloads Overview at [1].

[1] http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/default.mspx

Two months ago, when I just arrived at Seattle, someone was accosting me from behind. It was Damir Tomicic. So you have to travel 10,000 of miles to meet people... Let's see what he has to say: blogroll += http://tomicic.de/.

We are still working with the VRDK at Microsoft Reseach, Cambridge. During the last few months I did several talks, introducing the VRDK to a wider range of audience. Finally, a lot of people asked ms/us if and when we will release it. Unfortunately it is not a product, just a research plarform, yet.

However I checked the web and found some articles and weblog entries about the VRDK, predominantly written when it was presented to the public the first time.

Official Sites

• Microsoft Research Academic Days, Oslo 2004
• Microsoft Academic Days for Central and Eastern Europe
• Microsoft Scientists Offer Glimpse of the Future at European Innovation Fair

Weblogs

• S. Srinivasa: Cooooooooool: Visual Robot Development Kit
• robots that jump: Hey PC guys - Microsoft is getting into robotics
• unmediated: Microsoft Promotes Easy Robot Programming Kit
• Jean Michel Billaut: Tous aux abris, les Robosapiens débarquent… (French)
• gamedev.net entry (related to a talk given by me in March 2006)

Misc

• AI2005 workshop (held by Alexander Brändle and me in December 2005)
• generation5 posting (I should answer this...)

Three weeks ago I spent an evening together with Clemens Vasters at the University Arms' bar in Cambridge, UK. Great guy, just added him to my blogroll. Two months ago he joined Microsoft as Community Relations Program Manager for the Windows Communication Foundation: Hey Clemens, I still want to put in the WCF into our VRDK!