NOTE: Chuck is a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft Australia living on the Gold Coast and also works on a lot of offshore stuff Wink [;)]

How long have you been running Vista for on your desktop (honestly)?
I loaded it at PDC 2003 and built some apps but haven’t really started using it as a primary OS since the Feb CTP.


Tell me about a Vista feature have you discovered recently.
My favorite “Vista” feature is one of the features that run on XP and Server 2003 called Ximage….

This technology offers the best of VPC’s and the best of Back ups….it allows me to build a machine once like a VPC but do it on the Native hardware yet restore back to a known state in about 12 minutes.


You are organizing the upcoming Innovations Vista events right?  Got everything under control?  What were some of the last minute jobs that you had to do?  
The Innovations content is going pretty well for the Vista half.  Unfortunately I still need to spend a bunch of time in the Office12 area as there have been last minute challenges like the fact Vista Beta2 while works with Office 2007 Beta2 is incompatible with the latest VSTO CTP’s leaving me with attempting to get another SATA drive going in my M400 with Beta2 and Winfx–not as easy as it sounds!!


Any interesting Vista stories to tell?
I haven’t had much time lately for hardware so building out the computers we will using on the tour was fun but certainly the most interesting Vista stories have been people’s reactions to Vista. Some people thought many of the features were LONG over due and others just don’t understand why we would introduce some of the new technologies.


There are actually a few upcoming Vista events: Innovations, Touchdown, and User Groups.  Who is the Innovations event targeted at primarily? 
My team is tasked with looking after both IT Pro’s and Developers so we have tailored the content for this audience…but since much of this stuff is so new I am guessing almost anybody that uses a computer in anger would appreciate this content.