Recently I bought a Sony Vaio laptop that runs Microsoft Windows Vista. When I try to open the Vista sidebar I get an error window saying that “Windows Sidebar is managed by your system administrator”. Even when I tried to run the sidebar.exe (that launches the sidebar) as administrator, I was still getting the same error message. Googling around, I found the fix, which is very simple and requires basic skills of registry editing.

1. Click Start, type regedit.exe in the search field and press ENTER
2. Navigate to the following path:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \
   CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Windows \ Sidebar
   

3. In the right-pane, delete the value named TurnOffSidebar
4. Repeat the same in the following path (if there is a sidebar value there):

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \
   CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Windows \ Sidebar

5. Exit Registry Editor

Finally Windows Vista sidebar is up and running as it should from the very beginning!

Microsoft Mobile Memory 8000 mouse is a pointing device designed for notebook users (I purchased it for my notebook as I dislike touchpads ). This mouse features also 1GB flash memory, which can be used as a usual portable flash drive. Apart from this, this device features a rechargeable NiMh battery, so you do not need to carry extra batteries.

As you see on the image above, the pack contains the pointing device, the reciever which is also a 1GB usb flash drive, a magnetic cable which is used for charging your battery, a case for carrying the mouse and a poor leaflet with instructions on how to install the mouse alongside with the IntelliPoint driver cd.

Microsoft Mobile Memory Mouse 8000 can be connected to your notebook via Bluetooth if your notebook supports it. If you choose to connect it via bluetooth, you do not have to plug the transceiver, so you have one more free usb port on your notebook. Changing interface between 2.4Ghz and bluetooth can be easily done via a button on mouse’s bottom. A button for turning the device on and off is also located there.

Charging the mouse is really easy. There is a led light near the tilt wheel: if the led glows red, it needs to be charged. You have to plug the magnetic cable to the transceiver and to the mouse. When the cable is connected, the indicator light becomes green and solid green when its fully charged (needs up to 5 hours for a full charge). You can continue using the mouse while it is charging, but the computer must not be on hibernate mode or turned off.

Mobile Memory Mouse 8000 uses laser technology. The pointer is accurate enough and well responsive. IntelliPoint software lets you customise buttons’ behaviour and point speed. If you would like to use the mouse under Windows Vista and want the tilt wheel to support Flip 3D function, you have to update IntelliPoint to version 6.2 (the mouse is shipped with version 6.1). Tilt wheel features 4-way scrolling and there are also two customisable buttons on the right which by default are used as “back button” and magnifier.

The device’s design is great. Touch feeling is nice, solid and very ergonomical even for people with big hands. Although the mouse is small and lightweight, so it can be carried easily using the included carrying case. The transceiver is bigger than many others in the market, but is as big as a usual usb flash drive.

Overall
Microsoft Mobile Memory Mouse 8000 is an elegant device, with nice design, easy-to-carry which features also 1GB flash memory built in the transceiver. To pros should be considered that it can be charged straight from notebook by connecting the transceiver with the mouse via the magnetic cable without stopping working or having to change battery every so. Its package should be considered full, although its price is high (€ 98 here in Greece).

I visited today the digital technology expo (called dte) that takes place in Athens, Greece from 8-11 November. There were many IT companies stands including Microsoft, Cisco, HTC, EA, Google and LG alongside with some famous greek companies like Otenet and OTE. Although there were many absenses from large resselers like Apple product resselers, Sony resselers etc. Management was pretty good, but I would like to see more cutting edge technology stuff and not only products that are already shipped in the market.

Microsoft had the largest stand, giving out Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition packs, Visual C# 2008 beta cds and presenting the concept of digital home using Windows Home Server system. Xboxes were there too of course. HTC stand was large too, full of the latest palmtops and pdas, providing the ability of real time testing. Google stand was mainly about enterprise stuff like Google Mini and Adwords. The LG stand focused on notebooks and the company’s latest displays (the design of the new LGs is amazing) alongside with LCD tvs playing 1080p High-Definition video via a player that supports both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD media. Cisco featured some of the latest network switches and routers for large networks. Below you can see some photos from the exhibition. Images are also available in my Flickr account.

It is time to tell you something about what we use to create our products (like the cards from our Pet Shop Cards collection above). Our equipment consists of:

• Two Dell workstations powered with Intel Pentium D 3Ghz processors, 2GB RAM, running Windows XP Pro
• One Intel Core 2 Duo MacPro running Mac OS X with 8GB RAM
• One workstation equiped with a Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor and 2GB of RAM running Windows XP Pro
• One G3 Mac with 512RAM running MacOS 8.1
• Our server which features a Pentium 4 processor, 2GB RAM, running SuSe Linux 10.2
• 2TB of total storage (multiple internal and external hard drives plugged to our systems).
• For printing we use an Epson Stylus Photo 800 inkjet printer, an HP Laserjet Plus laser printer, a Roland HifiJet 52 for quality CMYK printing (we use Light Magenta and Light Cyan colors as extra colors instead of the Orange and Green which are plotter’s selection). For digital printing, we use Xante Illumina.
• For scanning we use a Linotype Hell Topaz scanner, driven by Linocolor Software, running on the G3 Mac.
• For photocopier we use an Infotec which prints on any type of paper (A4, B3, A3 etc).
• All of our stuff is connected to an 100Mbit LAN via a 3com router and to the broadband Internet (we use a 2Mbit connection) via a Speedtouch 585.
• We also own a Wacom Intuos3 A4 Tablet.
• Our workstations have Eizo ColorEdge CE210W displays.
• For monitor callibration we use Pantone Huey.
• For color control we use Pantone Color Que 2.
• The software we run mainly is Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Fireworks, Quark Xpress, Adobe Acrobat and since January Adobe Indesign.