The official press release is now available on MS Press Pass.  Enjoy!

In related news, Omar is also stoked about the change.

This, um... "enthusiastic" fellow was seen sitting in the front window of Jamba Juice in Downtown Disney:

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Yep, it looks like the articles are starting to roll off the presses, even before any press releases are out from MS Press Pass.  How do they do it?

Here's what's important: we're not trying to have a "storage war" as some would say, we're tying to make storage not be "the issue".  We're putting in a lot of effort to make sure we have the features users really want and need.  In the rush to announce the storage bump the articles gloss over that we'll be doing things like improving security by changing the anti virus cleaning to be free for all users (we have had free anti virus scanning for all users for over five years).

I guess the basic thing is this: I want people to know that we love making cool software, we'll continue to do that.

Related news:

• Hotmail to offer 250MB of free storage
• Microsoft to boost Hotmail storage capacity
• Microsoft to increase Hotmail storage, add virus protection
• Microsoft Boosts Storage Capacity in Email War

... and especially if you've been drinking, this kind of thing is really funny.

 Clicky for biggie

Perhaps they really know their customers.

The nice help desk guy got me up and running once again (and in fairly short order too).  There are a lot of perks to to working at Microsoft, not the least of which is getting questions answered (either from tech support or the people who designed the software in the first place).

The solution to my problem was to use the recovery module on the XP install CD to manually copy a new system file over from the CD's system folder.  There may have been an automated method but it wasn't obvious (not to mention the MCE install CD I had wouldn't do the trick).  There was no way I was going to get it solved on my own except by wiping out Windows and starting fresh.

Now I just need to fix all drivers that managed to break in the repair process... how does replacing that one file cause all the other stuff to break?

... I thought that warm feeling was heart burn.

My lovely wife has started a blog... it does me proud.

I was hoping to keep a record of my vacation (more for my sake than for any interest it might have) but my laptop threw a shoe. 

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

Kee-rap!  Wouldn't you know it, I have CDs of Windows from 98 to XP home but no XP pro cds to attempt a repair (I have MCE CDs but they seem to lock up when attempting to use them).

Oh Joy.  I get to pull my hard drive.

The first three hours of parking at Downtown Disney is free with validation.

Reeves: “Can you validate me?”

Waiter: “You're a wonderful human being.”