NAVIGATING SCREENS

Move cursor –> Roll Trackwheel
Exit a screen or dialog box –> Press Escape
Click an icon or menu item –> Roll Trackwheel to select item; Click Trackwheel
Select multiple items or characters –> Hold Shift and roll Trackwheel
Move to top of screen –> Press 1
Move to bottom of screen –> Press 7

ATTACHMENTS
Pan horizontally across an image –> Hold Alt key and roll Trackwheel
Zoom in on an image –> Press 3. To continue zooming, hold Shift and roll Trackwheel
Zoom out of an image –> Press 9. To continue zooming, hold Shift and roll Trackwheel
Rotate an image –> Press Period (.) key

GENERAL TIPS
Reboot –> Remove Battery
Save battery –> Turn off BlackBerry handset in fringe or no-coverage areas

CALENDAR
For these tips to work in Day view, in the calendar options, set Enable Quick Entry field to No
Create an appointment –> Press Period (.) key
Move to next day, week or month –> Press 6
Move to previous day, week or month –> Press 4
Move cursor horizontally in Week view –> Hold Alt and roll Trackwheel
Move cursor vertically in Month view –> Hold Alt and roll Trackwheel

BROWSER
Open browser and display list of bookmarks made available by service provider –> Press Convenience Key
Edit web address in Go To dialog box –> Hold Alt and roll Trackwheel. Select address. Edit text. Click Trackwheel
Move down a page –> Press 9
Move up a page –> Press 3
Move between full-screen mode and normal mode –> Press Exclamation Point (!) key

ON THE HOME SCREEN
Return to Home screen from any other screen –> Press End
Lock the keyboard –> Hold (*) or click Keyboard Lock
Unlock the keyboard –> Press Send + (*) or double click Trackwheel
Switch between Default and Vibrate notification profiles –> Hold #
Switch to another application –> Hold Alt. Press Escape. Continue to hold Alt. Select application. Release Alt to switch to that application

PHONE
Open phone –> Press Send
End call –> Press End
Call selected name or phone number –> Press Send
Call a speed dial number –> Hold assigned number key
Type an extension –> Press ZX. Type extension number
Call your voice mail access number –> Hold 1
Type a letter in a number field –> Hold Alt and press letter key
Type the first letter on a key –> Press once. To type second letter, press twice
Turn mute on/off during call –> Press Exclamation Point (!) key
Switch between the speaker and earpiece during call –> Press Period (.) key
Change volume during call –> Roll Trackwheel

MESSAGES
Open the selected message –> Press Enter
Compose message from messages list –> Press Comma (,) key
Reply to message –> Press Exclamation Point (!) key
Forward message –> Press Period (.) key
Reply to all –> Press Question Mark (?) key
View received messages –> Press Alt + 3
View SMS messages –> Press Alt + Question Mark (?) key
View MMS messages –> Press Alt + 9
View phone call logs –> Press Alt + Period (.) key
View voice mail messages –> Press Alt + 7

TYPING
To type words quickly using SureType

In this article, PC Magazine names the 7100t as one of their two Editor’s Choices.

Back at the beginning of September, I saw some reviews of the new Blackberry phone from T-Mobile and RIM, the 7100t. The reviews were excellent and so I ran down to my local T-Mobile store to take a look at their mock-up. They had it in the back and were very secretive about it but, still, I got to see the form factor and hold it in my hands. I liked it!

See, I’ve been carrying a Blackberry since 1999. It’s one of the originals, (the 850). I’ve seen and tried the newer models but they were all too big for me — the form factor of the original, pager-sized unit was perfect. But, over time, the software’s gotten out of date (they do’t maintain it much, anymore) and the synchronization’s not working too well and I’ve had to carry two devices: the Blackberry for my calendar, contacts, tasks and notes, and my phone.

So, the new unit was released on September 30. One of my local T-Mobile stores had 5 in stock in the morning. By 2PM, they only had 2 left. When I went in at 5PM, I got the last one. And, let me tell you, it’s sweet!. The predictive typing is superb, the synchronization software is first-rate (they use the Intelisync SDK from Pumatech), and the integration between all the components is excellent. If I just key in a phone number, and it’s associated with one of my contacts, it automatically associates the call with that person and displays that information on the call screen, plus, it logs all calls in the “inbox”. Very cool, very useful. I’m glad I got it.

Microsoft has recognized that they did a bad thing removing 127.0.0.2 as an alias for 127.0.0.1 (they’re both, or actually, everything on the 127 subnet) should be an alias for the loopback. They’ve issued KB884020 to address the issue. You can pick up the hotfix from this Majorgeeks link.

I’ve had a Blackberry since about 1999. It’s an 850 (the pager-sized unit) and I’ve never upgraded it. The newer models are all too big for me — I’m a nerd but I really don’t like to look like one, if you know what I mean.

So, the deal is, RIM has finally come out with a reasonably sized phone unit, the 7100t. PC Magazine wrote a review of it recently and it sounded pretty good so I ran on over to the Blackberry site and checked out their description. The only folks offering it for the time being are T-Mobile and, at that, it won’t be available till the end of the month but, that’s OK by me — at least I’m a T-Mobile customer. I’ll let you know what I think of it when I finally get it.

I upgraded my desktop at work to SP2 a little over a week ago with very few problems. The one problem that took a little research was why Cygwin’s SSHD would accept then drop inbound connections. It only took a little research because it’s discussed in the Cygwin distribution (/usr/share/doc/Cygwin/openssh-README):

===========================================================================
Important change since 3.4p1-2:

This version adds privilege separation as default setting, see
/usr/doc/openssh/README.privsep. According to that document the
privsep feature requires a non-privileged account called ‘sshd’.

The new ssh-host-config file which is part of this version asks
to create ‘sshd’ as local user if you want to use privilege
separation. If you confirm, it creates that NT user and adds
the necessary entry to /etc/passwd.

On 9x/Me systems the script just sets UsePrivilegeSeparation to “no”
since that feature doesn’t make any sense on a system which doesn’t
differ between privileged and unprivileged users.

The new ssh-host-config script also adds the /var/empty directory
needed by privilege separation. When creating the /var/empty directory
by yourself, please note that in contrast to the README.privsep document
the owner sshould not be “root” but the user which is running sshd. So,
in the standard configuration this is SYSTEM. The ssh-host-config script
chowns /var/empty accordingly.
===========================================================================

So, I turned off UsePrivilegeSeparation and it’s been working just fine. I can still SSH in to the machine as well as connect to it with Remote Desktop and VNC even with the new Windows Firewall turned on. Of course, I had to add some exceptions to the default rule set to allow those processes to accept incoming connections — Remote Desktop is specifically mentioned but VNC isn’t — but, still, it’s been pretty painless.

So, after taking a complete image of my laptop, I decided to give SP2 a try and,to my amazement, I’ve encountered no significant problems so far. Course, it’s only been about 2 hours but I’ve tried the applications I expected to have problems with and they haven’t hiccuped even once. The only thing that surprised me is that SP2’s Remote Desktop client will allow connections to localhost as long as they’re not on the standard port (3389) so, whereas prior to SP2 I had to set up an SSH tunnel forwarding 127.0.0.2 port 3390, now it’s simply 127.0.0.1 port 3390. This obviates the need for PuTTY/PLink (see my previous entries re: Remote Desktop and SSH tunnels).

The actual title is “Changes to Functionality in Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2”. You can read the entire article from this link.

There are any number of reasons you might have to/want to do this. TechRepublic’s got this article on how to do it.

If you don’t want to take the time to download it you can order XP Service Pack 2 on CD from Microsoft. Follow this link. It’s free.

SP2 hits the support tools, too. These aren’t isntalled by default, you have to explicitly install them from the SupportTools folder on the XP installation CD. Anyway, this KnowledgeBase article (MSKB 838079) describes the tools and the updates.