In some scenarios, when using your (or someone else’s) computer, there may be situations where you are not able to exit out of Windows XP without access to the Start bar. The typical and mostly used method of shutting down or exiting Windows is by going to the “Start” menu and then clicking on the “Shut Down” button; however, the case may be that the distribution of Windows XP you are using has been modified to where you cannot access the Start bar nor the Power button on your computer. In this tutorial, I have provided an alternative method that you can use to exit out of Windows and shut down your computer.

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With all of the Windows versions currently available on the market, you will more than likely have to pay for extra software after you install your Windows distribution, or buy a new computer with a fresh installation Windows on it - especially if you are in the corporate or graphic design fields. With this in mind, I would like to bring your attention to two alternatives if you are in either of these fields.

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Rackspace has introduced the Rackspace Cloud Plug-In for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, a Visual Studio toolkit that allows .NET developers to extend development to Rackspace Cloud Servers for Windows.

This set of tools allows developers to deploy applications written with Visual Studio tools directly to Rackspace’s cloud infrastructure.
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Microsoft Security Essentials continues to win industry-backed, third-party security certifications. A good, comprehensive anti-virus is a must-have application in any Windows system. An anti-virus application that scans for up-to-date virus signatures, one that runs concurrently in the background for real-time protection, and also importantly, one that does not hog system-valuable resources during runtime is what a pro user desires whatever the cost. For years that personally has meant only one choice for me: using Kaspersky. Keeping up with yearly subscription costs of many anti-virus applications can be an expensive proposition, and its second-class citizen status on the Windows platform often means system performance degradation. In recent years, Microsoft has continued to improve Microsoft Security Essentials to the point where choosing anything else seems nonsensical.
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LaCie, a maker of computer peripherals, has introduced a backup server for small office environments called LaCie 5big Backup Server.
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Dell said today it will use the Windows Azure platform appliance, for its Dell Services Cloud to develop and offer cloud services.

The Windows Azure platform appliance will allow Dell to offer private and public cloud services for Dell and its enterprise, public, small and medium-sized business customers. Dell will also work with Microsoft to develop a Dell-powered Windows Azure platform appliance for enterprise organizations to run in their data centers.
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During its Application Infrastructure Virtual Launch Event, Microsoft introduced the Windows Server AppFabric Release Candidate and announced that final availability will follow in June.

The company also made available the first public beta for BizTalk Server 2010, which supports Windows Server AppFabric and is scheduled to release to manufacturing in the third quarter of 2010.
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May 11, Windows will be receiving some critical patches for both Windows and Microsoft Office. They will be plugging holes which can leave users vulnerable to remote attacks. The patch will be issued for both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 users. Along with Microsoft Office, the patch will address Visual Basic problems as well.
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One of my favorite features of Mac OS X is how PDF (portable document format) tools are tightly integrated into the operating system. Want to save something as a PDF document? Any app that can send a document to the printer, be it a Web page, a screen capture, or a nicely formatted report, can just as easily do a “Save As PDF”, and even specify what image quality should be used. Sure, Adobe sells its Distiller program, but on a Mac I would estimate that 95%+ of your document to PDF requirements are already included in the operating system.

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At the Mix10 conference, the Windows Phone 7 teams had some very big announcements – a lot of it had been kept secret and first revealed to the public now. There is however still some details they keep secret. Some of these secrets are the user agents of Internet Explorer for Windows Phone 7, which they simply wouldn’t give us.

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