Windows Virtual PC

I've just installed Windows 7 and started to have a look at the new Windows Virtual PC. There are a couple of nice new features.

First of all, you can now save notes as part of the Virtual PC configuration file, so you can record any relevant information about the virtual machine. In addition to that you can also save the logon credentials for the virtual machine in the configuration file, so you don't have to worry about remembering passwords for all various virtual machines you might have.

Second, it's now much easier to access the contents of virtual hard drives without firing up a virtual machine. If you run the Windows disk management console (diskmgmt.msc), you'll see that there are two new options on the Actions menu that enable you to mount a virtual hard disk in Windows, and to create a brand new virtual hard disk. Once you’ve created your virtual hard disk, you can initialise it and format it just like any other disk on the system.

Windows API Code Pack v1.0 released

If you've been watching your Visual Studio Start Page in recent days, you'll have noticed this already; MS have released a code pack that shows how to implement a whole bunch of functionality, including some new Windows 7 functionality such as Jump Lists in the Start menu, toolbar progress indicators and toolbar thumbnail customisations, to name but a few.

I'm planning on spending some time in the coming days investigating how to implement some of this functionality, so expect some articles to pop up sharing my findings. For those that want to play for themselves, you can download the toolkit here

(http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/WindowsAPICodePack/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=3077)

The toolkit itself contains multiple projects and samples that show how to implement the functionality you're after. The code contained in the toolkit is fully distributable, however don't take my word for it, naturally...there's an EULA for a reason, folks!