Latest version of WLM fixes feed updates limit; new WLW out

The latest version of Windows Live Mail (currently in development) has addressed a major reason why I couldn’t switch to it, the failure to update feeds. When it was clear that IE was able to update its feed count, there seemed no clear reason why WLM, which uses IE to supply it with feed XML, couldn’t work out that updates had occurred. Maybe this means that Outlook’s RSS feeds will work as well. It should now be possible for me to switch to two email clients instead of three at home. The mail system has stopped flagging Gmail’s “[Gmail]” IMAP folder as a problem, though it needs to understand that its own junk mail folder is not part of Gmail and it should not flag errors for that folder.

WLW, which I’m using to write this post, has also been updated and now has a toolbar with justification buttons on it. It seems to be able to display inline Google maps now without crashing. One thing I dislike about both is the insipid colour scheme, which replaced strong UI background colours with washed out ones.

Rolling out Vista to the student desktop NOT

Unfortunately it didn’t take long to burst my bubble over the idea that we were going to roll out Vista on student desktops. It was not easy to predict. We have a modest amount of experience with Vista mainly on my own desktop where I have been using it all year, and I saw few problems in getting it to work (but then I log on with a domain administrator’s account). It was a whole different story getting it rolling for a student’s account. First was a little matter of creating a v2 mandatory profile. Then it would not update the user’s policies when we made a change in GPMC. Turns out you need to give the Domain Computers group permissions to access the base OU for the computer account. With such arcane and obscure technicalities as that to overcome we were not able to progress further, as Folder Redirection GPOs refused to execute. For most of our users, redirecting My Documents is important. In Vista, even when it is redirected, there is still a shortcut to the local Documents folder in the user’’s profile.

Rolling out Vista to the student desktop

We’re about to deploy the first Vista desktop for pupil use at our site. The hardware itself is nearly a year old, but has been in storage for most of the year. With 1 GB of RAM, I expect it should give satisfactory performance with this OS. When it comes to cloning this box, there is going to be a bit of work learning how to use the new version of SysPrep, given I’ll be imaging with Ghost Solutions Suite 2.0. So far, there have only been a few small issues to resolve, such as creating a new Vista mandatory profile. Due to our use of Start Menu redirection in the policy and Vista’s use of a different folder location for the old All Users start menu, I think it’s now time to create a hardcoded specific path on C drive for the built in menu, that is never changed between OS versions. With the introduction of Vista will also come the use of Office 2007 for pupils, leveraging the advantages of a new separate profile over previous versions of Windows. As is now the case, Office policy settings will be used to specify that the default file save format is Office 2003 or earlier. I’ll be watching closely to see how well Vista performs with the highly locked down environment that we impose on pupil PCs.

Epson Perfection V200 Photo Scanner

Last year I posted a brief review of the Epson V100 photo scanner. The V200 succeeds the V100 at the low cost end of the photo scanner market and has similar features and pricing to its predecessor. Setting it up is very easy to use, with a USB connection that created none of the hassles I remember from old parallel port scanners or certain HPs that would be forgotten every time the PC shut down. Whereas the V100 I looked at was a work scanner that I’ve used rarely, the V200 is my home unit and was bought to scan all of our extended family’s slide and photo collection. As there are only small differences between the V200 and V100 you should read the earlier review for more indepth information about the scanners as most things written there are equally applicable to the current model. The maximum optical resolution has been boosted to 4800 dpi in the V200.

To begin scanning my family’s slides, I’ve used Full Auto mode throughout, even though it doesn’t scan at more than 300 dpi by default. Still, a typical 35mm slide produces a file of approximately 1800x1200 pixels. Although as noted before the plastic film holder is fiddly to load and unload, the easiest way to insert the slides is to place the holder onto the platen first and then put the slides into the four openings by pressing them flat against the glass. Removal is a simple step of lifting up the holder and pushing the slides out to fall onto the glass, then collect them up. As with the V100, the scanner’s great redeeming feature is its ability to automatically identify the slides in the holder and produce up to the number of files required for the number of slides or negatives loaded without any user intervention, selecting the area to scan, or trimming off borders after scanning is completed. There were a few small points I would like to see rectified in future editions of the software:

• Setting changes are not saved between sessions
• Slides are best scanned horizontally. Vertical scans often have original detail omitted and extra black bands on each side of the result.

If you have a few originals that are vertically oriented, you can use software such as IrfanView to perform a lossless JPG rotation of the scan output file so to reorient it correctly without resaving the file and losing more quality. So far the first four boxes of originals, all Ektachrome and retaining the original colour accuracy well, up to 40 years for the majority of slides, have scanned flawlessly without a single hitch. Due to its combination of ease of use with the low price point, as before, this scanner definitely gets the thumbs up from me for film scanning; it is a great bargain at a typical retail price of $299.

[UPDATE: The so called “300 dpi” minimum resolution for slide scanning, it turns out, is actually 1200 dpi, and the 1200 dpi setting is closer to 4800. One wonders why the software lies this way, because changing to professional mode and setting those dpi numbers directly produces radically differently sized images from the obviously falsely labelled Full Auto mode’s choices]