PaulSpoerry.com

A rather silly “trick” ( and really that’s all it is, has been making headlines over the last few days. From what I can tell it was really brought to the forefront by Ina Fried from CNET who says:

“By creating a new folder in Windows 7 and renaming it with a certain text string at the end, users are able to have a single place to do everything from changing the look of the mouse pointer to making a new hard drive partition.”

So somebody decided to call this “God Mode” because to enable this “trick” you make a folder called GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} and double-click on it. What you end up with is… drum roll… the control panel; it’s just in a different view than you’d normally see.

First of all, the text ”GodMode” has nothing to do with making the trick work. You can call the folder “IFreakinRawk.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}” and now you’ve discovered the magical “IFreakinRawk” feature hidden in Windows.

In reality all you have discovered is:

A documented feature of the shell. Folders can be easily made into ‘namespace junctions’. The whole thing is described on MSDN. Basically, any folder named <DisplayName>.<CLSID> will show up with just the <DisplayName> portion visible in Explorer, and navigating into the folder will take you to the namespace root defined by the <CLSID> portion of the name. This isn’t for USERS, it’s really more of a developer feature.

The second thing is that it’s really the “All Tasks” folder. This is a special shell folder which is used as the source of the “Control Panel” search results seen in the Start menu. This folder was not designed to be browsed to directly, as the normal Control Panel folder (accessible via Start -> Control Panel) contains all the same items but with a custom view designed to be easier to navigate. The “All Tasks” folder has no custom view, so you just see the standard Explorer list view and little else.

The existence of this folder and its CLSID are implementation details and should not be relied upon by anybody for any purpose.

WOW – lame excuses for ads.  It’s no secret the Microsoft is constantly destroyed in the ad space. Apple always seems to one up them… in an attempt at hipness they teamed up with Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy to do a spot promoting Windows 7. To their credit they did NOT run these, to their discredit, they released them on YouTube.

Whoever does the advertising for Apple is amazing. The commercials keep getting better and better (yes yes yes, I’m still a PC guy… but these are hilarious).

Broken Promises

Teeter Tottering

Like so many of the recent Windows 7 promotions, it’s a limited time offer with more than a few caveats. But, details aside, Microsoft is offering college students Windows 7 for $29.99, according to a new deal announced on September 17.

The www.win741.com site has the details:

“For a limited time, eligible college students can get the sweetest deal on Windows 7 – for only $29.99 USD. That’s less than most of your textbooks! Hurry — offer ends January 3, 2010 at 12:00 am CST”

A frequently asked questions document, linked from the promotional site, has more details. Students may purchase one copy of either Windows 7 Home Premium or Windows 7 Professional. The FAQ advises:

“If your school requires Domain Join, then you might want to consider Windows 7 Professional, which will let you connect to your school network so you can take advantage of features like HomeGroup and Remote Media Streaming.”

The FAQ also is up-front about the challenges in upgrading to Windows 7 from Vista:

“To upgrade easily from Windows Vista, you should upgrade to the same version you currently have in Windows 7. For example, if you’re moving from Windows Vista Home Premium with 32-bit software, it would be easiest to upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium with 32-bit software. Most of the other upgrades require a custom (clean) installation, which is a fairly complex installation process that needs several steps and can take quite a few hours.”

The guidelines for moving from XP to Windows 7, which are even more complicated, are there, too, in all their glory. Bottom line, according to the FAQ:

“Upgrading a PC with Windows XP to Windows 7 is an involved process. If you’re at all uncomfortable with it, please consider having the upgrade done by a local PC or electronics retailer.”

The promotional site points to Microsoft’s student site for a list of other discounts offered to the academic community.