Why did I want to do this? A friend bought a new laptop which had a trial version of Outlook 2007 – Once the trial had run out, they had to move to something else, and WLM is only found on Windows 7. Outlook Express is no more.

Let’s start …..

Note: I did all of the below on my friend’s PC while Outlook was still installed. Once I ahd imported all my email into WLM, I then uninstalled Outlook.

* Download a program called Mailstore from here. This free program is for archiving of mail, but also is perfect for achieving what we want to do.

* Run Mailstore. The first thing you need to run the archive process. Follow your nose and (obviusly) select Outlook as your email program. Here is a screenshot of the archive window:

* You will now need to export your email into a format that WLM will recognise:

With the options for Export, select “file system” and the message format will be “EML”:

Browse to any folder on your hard drive or thumb drive and kick off the process.

* OK, Now you are ready to import into WLM. From the File menu, select import>messages and then select the ‘Windows mail’ format. Browse to your folder where you exported all the mail and start importing.

Once finished you should be ready to go!

When I did the above on an another PC, I got a message to say that there was no files in the folder or another program has locked the folders. When i worked out which ones had not been imported, I just click and dragged them over to my WLM inbox from Window Explorer. End result still the same.

1. Press win+r key and Type Regedit at run prompt

2. Locate following registry key

HK Local Machine\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background

3. Now in right-side pane, change value of OEMBackground to 1.

4. Now place your custom image in %windir%\system32\oobe

5. Create a new folder info and background within newly created info folder

Folder path should look like this %windir%\System32\oobe\info\backgrounds

6. Now place your desired logon wallpaper within this background folder with file
name as backgroundDefault.jpg

Images Name with resolutions

backgroundDefault.jpg

background768×1280.jpg

background900×1440.jpg

background960×1280.jpg

background1024×1280.jpg

background1280×1024.jpg

background1024×768.jpg

background1280×960.jpg

background1600×1200.jpg

background1440×900.jpg

background1920×1200.jpg

background1280×768.jpg

background1360×768.jpg

NOTE: Images must be less than 256kb in size

The backgroundDefault.jpg image is loaded and stretched-to-fit when a resolution/ratio specific background cannot be found.

And might I say justified hype. I personally have found it a good step up from XP, but without the pain of Vista.

A few weeks ago, Microsoft released the RTM version to MSDN and technet subscribers, and I have been using it without any problems at all. They’ve done a good job this time.

Windows 7 is officially released until mid October but what I saw on the net today is a 90 day trial of Windows 7 Enterprise available to try. This trial is mainly aimed at IT pros so they can get familiar with the inner workings and differences to previious Windows operating systems.

Check it out here.

Couple of key notes from MS:

* You have 10 days to activate it.
* After 90 days, the PC will shut down every hour.
* If you wish to use Windows 7 after the 90 days, you need to purchase it and reinstall it from scratch. Bit of a pain, but rememeber it is only a (free) trial

So, if you want to give it a go before deploying it in your business, you have a great opportunity.

I found another program that works well with Windows 7. It’s called Input Director and works quite well – in fact I think better than Synergy does.

It certainly is much easier to configure, where you define a master and slave (in fact you can have many slaves), and can selesct what subnets (or individual hosts) you can accept connections from (on the slave of course).