Blog ala Vidar

I’ve been listening to RunAs Radio a lot lately, and I’ve picked up a couple of new cool things. The last podcast I heard was about “hidden” features in Windows 7.

PSR (Problem Steps Recorder)
A very simple application that allows you to record your steps. This will be great for you when you can’t reproduce an error a user gets. Just tell the user to start recording, then reproduce the error and stop recording. The application will create a zip-file with a MHT file inside with screenshots, OS information+++. You should try it out!

Default printers
Notice the S at the end. If you go to “Devices and Printers” you can click on the “Manage default printers” button. Here you can set up your home printer to be the default printer when you’re connected to your home network, and an other when you’re connected to your work network!

Bit locker to go
This is a really good security thing. By group policies you can force the user to encrypt USB-sticks etc when they connect them to their computers.

Direct Access
This will sort out MUCH of the VPN problems. By using Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, you can connect to any (public) network, and it will create a VPN connection to your work network, without the user having to do anything except connecting to the public network.

Branch Cache
With Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 you can now set up a branch cache on all your offices as a file cache. If a user at a branch office downloads a file from the main office, it will download the file from the main office. If a second user tries to download the same file (from the main office), it will automatically download it from the first user (in the same branch office) that downloaded this file. Pretty neat!

Aero Shake
If you have several windows open, you can “shake” one of them and the others will be minimized