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!

SBSC is the acronym for Microsoft Small Business Specialist Community –  a recognition of one’s expertise in marketing, planning, and building solutions for small businesses. This program was first put into place back ion July, 2005.

It appears that Microsoft is planning to retire the SBSC program over the next 12 months, and replace it with a more costly competency process, and one that does not highlight the needs and requirements of small businesses.

Yes, this info may be a bit dated, but as it may be helpful to someone who reads my blogs, it doesn’t hurt to post it.

One thing I really liked about Vista was its Notes gadget app. The Sticky notes in Windows 7 is nice, but I don’t care to have a bunch of sticky notes literally all over my desktop. I recently stumbled over someone who was able to repackage the Vista Notes gadget for installation and use with Windows 7.

But first — there’s a little trick to getting it installed on your Windows 7 system. And before we can install it, we need to tell Windows to display file extensions (like .doc, .zip, etc.). And here’s how you do that:

Click on Windows Start icon –> Computer –> Organize –> Folder & Search Options. Click on the View tab, and then UNcheck the ‘Hide extensions for known file types’ options. Then close those windows.

Now, click on the link below to download the zip file, and click to ‘Save As’ and save the file to your favorite folder – but don’t open the save file yet!

Download Notes Gadget for Windows 7

Now, here come’s the trick!

After saving the zip file, you should have options to either ‘Open’ or ‘Open Folder’. Click on the ‘Open Folder’ option.

This will open up a Windows Explorer window, with the Notes.zip file highlighted. Right click on the file, click on the Rename option, and rename the file from Notes.zip to Notes.gadget. You will get a warning about changing file extensions, but click Yes to proceed.

Once you’ve renamed it, double-click on the Notes.gadget file, and then click on the Install button. You will now have the Vista version of Sticky Notes on your desktop.

Finally here’s a nice one page Dummies Guide to Using Vista Notes!