USB Safely Remove 4.1 for Free (limited time, ends August 25th, 2009, reg-ware) – Helps with the eternal “Device cannot be stopped right now”…

The Windows Club - Downloads for Window - 'USB Safely Remove' v.4.1 for Free (valid Aug 19th-25th)

“Proceed to the page below, enter your full name and email, press the button "I want license" and you will get the license in a moment. The license will let you use version 4.1 of the program for lifetime.

License giveaway page: Get USB Safely Remove for free!
'USB Safely Remove' is a USB and SATA external drive manager included by PCWorld magazine into "TOP 100 Best Products Of 2008". It solves a bunch of problems encountered by frequent USB and SATA users, for example:

…”

SafelyRemove.com - Get Your Free License for 'USB Safely Remove 4.1'!

“…

What's the restrictions of the free license key?

There are no restrictions except you can use the program only with the current version 4.1. All other aspects of our license policy will be the same as for paid licenses: you can use it personally on each of your computers. If you wish to upgrade to any future versions (and even to downgrade to a previous one) you have to purchase the lifetime license.

…”

SafelyRemove.com

“USB Safely Remove is a USB device manager. It saves time and extends user abilities on active work with flash-drives, portable drives, card readers and other gadgets.

It saves time...

• Displaying what prevent a device from being stopped
• Safe removal via hotkeys

Lets you recognize a device in a snap..

• The handy menu with device icons
• Real device names and ability to rename them
• Feature to hide unnecessary to stop devices

Extends your hot-plug opportunities...

• Program autorun on device connection\disconnection
• Command line for safe removal

Does unique things!

• Hiding of "empty" card reader drives
• Card reader memory cards ejection one-by-one
• Returning just stopped device back!

…”

SafelyRemove.com – Full Feature List

“…

The device cannot be stopped right now. Why?

Ever encountered the situation when Windows does not allow you to remove a device? Unlike Windows, USB Safely Remove will show you programs which prevent the device from being stopped and let you close these programs or just files they opened on the device.

…”

Sometimes you just need a little extra USB/Device removal help.

The thing that really caught my eye was the help with “The device cannot be stopped right now” issue. It bugs be that the the message is so unhelpful. So you start closing stuff, etc just trying to find the process that has something open on the drive. USB Safely Remove seems be the tool to help me fight the good device stopping fight.

And for the next four days the price is just right…

Free (reg-ware) SQL Server eBook - "SQL Server Tacklebox" from Red Gate

Michael Coles: Sergeant SQL - Rodney Landrum's Free e-Book: "SQL Server Tacklebox"

“Red Gate just published a new free e-book in their High Performance SQL Server series.  The book is SQL Server Tacklebox: Essential Tools and Scripts for the Day to Day DBA by Rodney Landrum. Rodney is a professional DBA by trade, an author by choice, and a SQL Server MVP. With the SQL Server Tacklebox Rodney demonstrates dozens of commonplace DBA tasks, approaching each from different perspectives. …

Now I'm not a DBA by trade--I'm a developer.  Where the DBA holds the keys to the kingdom, I generally get to play the barbarian at the gate.  I still get stuck playing the "ad hoc DBA" on occasion though, since most business people don't appreciate the difference in skill sets.  This book is perfect for ad hoc DBAs like me, since you can easily look up a wide variety of DBA-centric tasks by title and get (1) a thorough explanation of all the things you need to consider before you perform the task, (2) step-by-step directions on how to perform the task, and (3) a detailed description of what you should expect once the task is complete.  As a developer, and a guy who's really big on instant SQL gratification, I really appreciate Rodney's free source code (separate download, link is inside the book).

…”

Red Gate - FREE! "SQL Server Tacklebox" and SQL Response trial

“Free copy of the "SQL Server Tacklebox" eBook by Rodney Landrum

• Scripts, tools and techniques to tackle SQL Server issues
• Troubleshoot performance issues
• Receive notifications of impending issues
• Fight off data corruption
• Document and report on your servers
• Automate and standardize SQL Server installation
• Migrate data and manage data growth
• Secure access to your servers

…”

240 pages of SQL Server DBA “stuff” for your tool belt and tackle box is a quick registration and download away. I love the Chapter 1 title, “Eating SQL Server installations for breakfast”… lol

Jason Haley, Mr. Reflector Add-in Guy, is at it again, this time Babel’ing - Reflector.Babel Addin v1 released

Jason Haley - Reflector.Babel Addin

“…

The addin

Reflector.Babel addin is a small Reflector addin written to provide a simple UI for the Babel Obfuscator.  As is the case with several obfuscators and many other useful utilities – Babel is command line based.  Being command line based is a huge advantage when it comes to integrating with your build cycle - once you’ve decided to use it.  The purpose of this addin originally was to make it easier to demo obfuscation (for an internal presentation) – but in the end, the goal really became: to help make Babel more user friendly to get to test drive. 

Once you figure out that you want to use Babel – then you need to dig into what it takes to integrate it into your build cycle (which is detailed on the project’s home site and in the downloaded content which installs with Babel).

…”

While you’re there, make sure you check out all his other very cool Reflector add-ins and links. Jason Haley – Reflector Addin, AssemblyCollection.Sort Addin, Enums Addin, CodeShortcut Addin, OpenZip Addin, How to use Reflector series, and best of all, Reflector Addin Starter Kit.

And last but by far not least, I’ve said this before (here and here) but it’s worth repeating, if you like anything I blog about, you HAVE to read Jason’s “Interesting Finds” blog posts. He’s at the top of my “Feed you should read” list…

 

Related Past Post XRef:
You're reading Jason Haley's link blog... right?
Jason Haley - Human Feed Aggregator Extraordinaire

Creating a Reflector Addin? Check Out this Cool Walk Through from Jason Haley
The Reflector Add-in Starter Kit from Jason Haley - Hard to think of a way to make creating Reflector Add-in's much easier...

Reflector (yes that one) now a Redgate Property
.Net Reflector 5.1 Released
Reflector 5 Released
Reflector 4.2 Released...
.NET Reflector Add-Ins 4.0.3.0
Reflector for .NET 4.0.0.0
Reflector for .NET - Lutz Roeder's Programming.NET C# .NET VB .NET CLR

Some very cool Windows 7 Themes – 26 Different themes for all tastes

AddictiveTips - 26 Awesome Windows 7 Themes

Windows 7 is the first ever operating system from Microsoft that has been developed largely by keeping user feedback in mind. It is much more faster and better looking than Vista. If you are one of those users looking to upgrade or buy Windows 7, then you should definitely look out for some custom made themes. Today we present you 26 delighting and refreshing themes created by users of DeviantArt.

You will find the installation details along with other information on the respective developer’s page. I am sure that you will enjoy them all.

There are some pretty cool theme’s here, but I think my favorite is;

Windows 7 with Classic Theme by ~RainingSkies

:p

(via The blog of Rob Margel - Windows Help - 26 Awesome Windows 7 Themes from Addictive Tips)

ZOMG Win7 is just a SP of Vista because the Win7’s “version” is 6.1!? Then XP was just a service pack for Windows 2000 (5.0 vs 5.1) (I.e. “Version numbers” are just numbers, they do not, nor cannot, tell the whole OS story.)

Windows 7 Hacker - A list of Windows Operating System Version Number

“What I mean by version number is not necessary mean the OS name or service packs. For example, Windows 7, doesn’t necessary mean it’s the 7th version of Windows coming from Microsoft. As we have discussed before on our opinion of Why Windows 7 is named Seven. Here is a list of versions of Windows, since Windows Operating System 1.0. The distinguish of versions rather than OS names are important for developers and the distinguish of Windows structure. The list can also be found on MSDN OSVERSIONINFO Structure

Windows 2000 Professional	5.0.2195
Windows XP	5.1.2600	Current SP3
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition	5.2.3790
Windows Vista	6.0.6000	Current Version changed to 6.0.6002 with SP2
Windows 7	6.1.7600	RTM

…”

It irritates me when people jump up and down shouting that Win7 is just a SP for Vista because Win7’s “Version” is 6.1.x. Um a version number is just a number. Those same people would probably jump up and down if the version number changed to 7.0.x and broke allot of apps/installers.

Look people, every version of Windows is an evolution of the previous version. Do you really think every version is “new”? An OS is like your “[insert major appliance here]”. Think about every new model you’ve seen over that last few decades. How much is “new” versus an evolution over a previous model? [Insert car analogy here, etc, etc]

Yes, some changes have bigger impacts than others, like the new driver model introduced in Vista, but on the whole it’s still an evolution.

Would you really want something completely new every 3 years (cough… insert comment about people jumping up and down about the truly new UI in Office 2007 Ribbon)? No, you actually don’t. You just “want it work” don’t you? Me too.

That’s the real Windows 7 “version”, 6.1.JustWorks

;)

SQL Server 2008 Data Compression – Space savings, CPU cost, links and the new Unicode/NVARCHAR compression coming in R2

SQL Server Storage Engine - Update on Data Compression as provided in SQL Server 2008 RTM and links to white papers

“It has been a while since I blogged about data compression so I thought it will be good to provide an update on data compression usage within SQL Server community. I am happy to say that the Data compression feature has been a tremendous success in SQL Server 2008 with customers. Many customers have been able to reduce the size of their database significantly leading to reduction in the cost of hardware and storage management. The table below shows the actual space savings that some of the customers have achieved with ROW and PAGE compression in their production environment. Couple of key observations; First, the space savings can be huge. For example, one customer has been able to achieve 81% space savings with PAGE compression. Second, not surprisingly, the PAGE compression provides better compression at the cost of additional CPU cycles. As I had emphasized in my earlier blogs, the space savings achieved will depend on the schema and the data distribution.

…

SQL Server Storage Engine - A Unicode Compression example

“Now that we have Unicode compression available in SQL Server 2008 R2 as described in, let me take a simple example using AdventureWorksDW database to show you the additional compression that can be achieved on tables with one or more columns of type NCHAR or NVARCHAR.

…”

Since SQL Server 2008 came out I’ve been trying to get it deployed, focusing on building a case for the Enterprise Edition. IMHO the security (i.e. transparent disk encryption and thereby log/backup encryption, etc) and Row/Page compression in SQL Server 2008 makes it an easy sell as we’re fighting disk usage and toward better at rest security.

Yet what’s an easy sell to me isn’t to everyone when money is tight, and Enterprise is not cheap. So over the last year and a half I have been keeping my eyes open for information to help me prove the ROI and build the business case (sigh… I’d MUCH rather be coding. Isn’t being a Manager fun sometimes?…sigh). The above posts are great for that…

When R2 ships I hope I can get a test deployment of it and see what kind of compression numbers we get… As we’ve a number of DB’s in the 1TB range, 25%-50% would result in some serious savings, both in backup time and disk space.

 

Related Past Post XRef:
Tuning SQL Server 2008's Backup Compression
SQL Server 2008 – To buy Enterprise or Standard, that is the question…
SQL Server 2008 Edition Side–by-side Feature Comparison - (aka. What Edition do I need so I can get feature X,Y or Z?)

Windows 7 Keyboard Shortcut – The full, and searchable, list

The IO Guy - Windows 7 Keyboard Shortcuts – the complete list

“There has been a lot of articles written about the new Windows 7 keyboard shortcuts.  Well, here is the single source of truth, as posted on the Microsoft website.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/Windows7/Keyboard-shortcuts

Ease of Access keyboard shortcuts

The following table contains keyboard shortcuts that can help make your computer easier to use.

Press this key - To do this

  …”

For what ever reason (it’s funny how these things start) my team has gotten into a keyboard shortcut craze. Now we’re on the hunt for shortcut key information and the OS is the logical place to start.

When I saw this I knew I had to capture it for future reference. The IO Guy has taken the “official”  Keyboard shortcut list and expanded it out, making it MUCH easier to search and browse…

 

Before:

After: