I generally agree with Starbucks CIO words about Windows and Microsoft because with Android I can do 70% of what I ever do during my day, especially browsing, searching and reading news. For consuming information. But it is very hard to create something more then a tweet - possible, of course, but still hard. Any notebook with keyboard and mouse is better then gestures and onscreen keyboard when you need to type an article, make a 3D model or create a software. And as on the mobile market our main choice is between Android and iPhone, on the notebook market our main choice is between Windows and Mac. And for many cases Windows is unbeatable, especially because of its corporate features and software that exists only for Windows. But I really have no idea of what Microsoft can add to the next Windows version. Stability? Windows 7 is beyond any criticism. Interface? Current window manager is very nice. Integration? It is already possible. Now I have Windows 7 on my desktop and XP on my notebook and I do not know why should I upgrade my notebook operating system. I want, of course, because Windows 7 just looks cool, but it will costs me money and a lot of time to install and configure dozens applications that I have. And now it looks like purchasing a new notebook is the only chance for Windows 7 to supplant XP. And Apple wireless keyboard makes this chance even lower... This is why I agree with Starbucks CIO.

I have Virtual PC machine with Windows XP and .NET 2.0 and I need to start .NET application from the shared folder which is mapped to Z drive letter. But the application executable gives me "Application has encountered a problem and needs to close." dialog right after start.

I've tried to compile it with MSBuild from sources on Z: and it have displayed the following error:

...
System.Security.SecurityException: That assembly does not allow partially trusted callers.
...

Aha, incorrect permissions! MSBuild does not want to load and execute logger assembly from mapped drive because it is in the Intranet zone, which does not allow full trust. It looks like the application executable could not be started because of the permissions too. So how to give allow assemblies from mapped network shares run with FullTrust permissions?

As I have read this can be done in two ways: by configuring permissions in mscorcfg.msc, or by modifying code access security policy with caspol.exe.

Because mscorcfg.msc is not included in .NET 2.0 redistributable I've executed the following command in the Run dialog (Win+R)  to allow assemblies from mapped networking shares run with FullTrust permissions:

c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\caspol -q -machine -addgroup 1 -url file://z:/* FullTrust -name "Z Drive"

Works perfect.

As usual, my Windows XP starts asking me to reboot it after installing new updates. In Vista I can postpone notification for several hours and forget about it, but XP pop ups the notification each several minutes giving me a big chance to shut down the computer and lose my work. 

To turn it off just press Win+R and type the following command and press Enter:

net stop "Automatic Updates"

This will completely shot down the automatic updates till the next reboot. Remember that you still need to reboot your computer after completing the work unit to apply the updates - your computer may be vulnerable before reboot.