I have been using an Apple iPhone for the past 3 years, and for the most part have enjoyed using it. The iPhone replaced my older Windows Mobile 6 phone. I switched to the iPhone as many of my customers had iPhones and I wanted to be able to support them.

In the past year, several of my customers have purchased Android phones. I have had good success with the Android phones, the biggest issue being  its interface with Microsoft’s Exchange server. But, we have that all working now.

Windows Phone 7.5

Soon after the first of the year, I started talking with people who had switched over to the Windows 7 phone (code name Mango) – such as the Samsung Focus or the Nokia Lumia. In fact the raves were so great, I had all but convinced myself that I would switch to the Nokia Lumia 900 as soon as my two year agreement with my iPhone was up.

Windows Phone 8

Well my two year period ended this month. So today I went to the AT&T web site to purchase the phone. I literally came within seconds of clicking on the final “Are you sure you want to buy this phone?” button, when, for some unknown reason, I decided to cancel my purchase and told myself to wait until I was back at my office.

Well, this evening as I’m checking my email, I read that Microsoft officially announced their new Windows Phone 8, to be available later this year.

That’s great, or so I thought – I’ll get the Nokia Lumia 900 now, and then upgrade to Windows Phone 8 when it’s released.

WRONG!!!!

According to Microsoft’s Windows Phone Team Blog, current Windows 7 phones will NOT be able to upgrade to Windows Phone 8. To appease those who may have just bought a Nokia Lumia phone, Microsoft did say that they would provide a software update for Windows 7 users that will give them the Windows Phone 8 Start screen.

A line from a popular song says it best: That don’t impress me much.

I suspect I’ll just hang onto my iPhone 4 until such time as Windows Phone 8 is available and I can buy a phone that supports it.

Microsoft’s North America TechEd 2012 conference is set for next week, June 11-14, 2012. General attendance is already sold out!  I’m honored that I have been asked to lead/facilitate two “Birds of a Feather” (BOF) discussion sessions during the week.

This is one of those “when I get a few minutes” type of issues. On my Windows 7 workstation, I kept seeing Task Manager report that the PresentationFontCache.exe service was using nearly 50% of processor resources on a regular basis. Today I finally decided to fix it, and of course, the solution is fairly easy.

Before starting, you will first need to adjust Windows Explorer to show hidden files and protected operating system files. One way to do this is to go to Control Panel –> Appearance –> and under Folder Options, click  ‘Show hidden files and folders’. A new window appears. Click (to enable) ‘Show hidden files, folders, and drives’ and then click (to UNcheck) ‘Hide protected mode operating system files’.

Now, to fix the issue at hand:

1. Drill down C: –> Windows –> ServiceProfiles –> LocalService –> AppData –> Local
2. Locate and delete all Font*.data files. There will be several of them (FontCache3.0.0.0, FontCache-System, FontCache-S-xxxxxx…_

Reboot your computer, and your computer should be more responsive than before!