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Microsoft Touch Mouse
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A little while ago I decided it was time to buy a new mouse to work with. My last mouse is a 5 year old Logitech mouse that works sorta, but is starting to show its age. Whilst there are many different mice which you could select I opted to buy a Microsoft Touch mouse. Its one of those new fancy mice with a touch surface that is suposed to make it easier to manipulate windows.
Before anything else I need to mention that the mouse is specially designed for use in Windows 7, it’ll work for other OS-es. But the special features are only available in Windows 7.
So what is that amazing promise that Microsoft is giving us. Well basically that this is an entire new way of using a mouse, easier and more control over Windows 7. But is it really??
The good
- As promised the mouse has some multi-touch features that allow you to manipulate Windows easier
- A way to look at all the open windows in one instance and select one for viewing
- It’s still a mouse (so you can do all that any other mouse can do)
- The back / forward gesture is frustrating and often gets triggered without you actually wanting it (my advice disable this feature)
- Right click is not properly recognized by the mouse, the mouse will pretend my right click is actually a right click
- It’s only gonna have the multi-touch gestures in Windows 7
Searching in TFS history, made easy by Microsoft
One of the greatest things about version control systems is the ability to keep track of changes. Or is it? Well Microsoft certainly has a unique look on this. Team Foundation Server (TFS), also known as the Team Failure Server, has a very unique way of keeping track of changes.
To be honest the tracking of changes works fine, for the most part. But what happens when you made a change sometime in the past, you know roughly what you did but not which files were affected or which branch was used. Yes I sometimes don’t know what version (branch) of the software a fix was made in. In any normal version control system you would open up the history log and start searching for a comment you entered. That would result in some result popping up, and with any luck the change-set you were looking for.
Alas Microsoft in all its wisdom decided that searching is overrated and not needed for a version control system. After all you can read through the entire history log to find the change-set can’t you. Ah you can’t, silly you!
Here is a quick work around for this ‘missing’ feature:
- Open up the History view on the ROOT of the TFS server
- Scroll all the way down, in most systems that will be just a few thousand change-sets
- Select all and copy
- Open Excel and paste
Voila now you can search. At least Excel offers a way to search your Team Foundation Server history.
Microsoft’s impossible ‘Close your live account’ option
I’ve recently been very busy trying to close my Windows Live account. One would think this would be a simple task, since it is not that unusual that after some 11 years I might want to close all my live services including the account. But Microsoft seems to think otherwise!!!!! 
The reason behind wanting to close the account is not that relevant for this post. But Microsoft has made it darn near impossible to close your own account. First you would find this hidden feature in the options of your account on Live Account management. It even provides you with a link that says you can close your account. But alas, you are not allowed to do this.
At first it told me that I had subscriptions linked to the account, which is true. My Xbox Live account was attached, note the word was. I signed that over to another account some time ago, since I wanted to close my old one. But every time I click the close your account link it keeps telling me that I have:
One or more paid services or a Microsoft Points account is linked to your account. To close this account, make sure each service is canceled and your Microsoft Points account is closed.
But I cannot find any services when visiting the Microsoft Billing pages. So for some reason Microsoft seems to want to prevent me from closing my account, for whatever reason they might have. If any of you have any advice to help me close my account then please give it. I’m at a loss at the moment.
