Ken's Tech Note

After testing Windows 7 (RC) for a few months, I received Windows 7 RTM through the Microsoft Partners Program. It is a great program to join with benefits for software developers (for a fee). Windows 7 is reasonably good at compatibility. The only problem I had with Windows 7 so far is PCCW Netvigator Everywhere. The modem made by Huawei does not have driver for Windows 7. Research on internet yielded no answer but shared frustrations of many people. I believe this will be solved eventually by Huawei (not PCCW). On my D430, the performance is reasonable and is better than Vista Basic that comes with the machine. One thing that worth mentioning is through the repeated installing, formatting and re-installing, I start to use a tool called UNetbootin . Absolutely a pleasure to use. Read the full instruction and install Win 7 from a USB.

From time to time, I receive email with attachment "winmail.dat". This is because the sender is using Microsoft Outlook. It encodes attachment into a proprietary format ( TNEF ) making other e-mail clients fail to display the content correctly. Interestingly, this includes Microsoft Outlook Express. A quick Google research solves the issue. Thunderbird - use an add-on called Lookout . It decodes winmail.dat automatically in the background and put the attachment in the attachment pane. Mac OS X - use TNEF2.0 which is a free decoder written by Josh Jacob. Windows - use freeware Winmail Opener .