If you rely on a remote connection client to get access to your files at the office or from your home, chances are you have probably tried using the client built-in into Windows called Remote Desktop Connection (also Terminal Services Client).

Personally, I don’t like opening up my main PC to the Internet but only to those computers on my local LAN (which only I use). So I use RDC to access my desktop when I’m in bed or somewhere else around the house using my laptop. The biggest gripe of using RDC (which has been way improved since Windows 2000 days) was that I couldn’t use any font smoothing (Cleartype in Windows) so reading documents or browsing the web on an LCD screen was adequate at best.

Well, it just happens that with the latest update of the RDC client (6.0) for Windows XP and Server 2003 that dates back to November, you can now use font smoothing as long as the client PC is running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008. I just noticed about the change over the last few weeks, so now I’m happily writing this from my laptop running the RDC client connected to my main PC…

Over a LAN it’s not any slower than with Cleartype off, plus it should save some battery on the laptop since I’m not accessing the hard drive or processing stuff on the laptop itself, and my desktop PC is much much faster in the first place.

If you don’t have the latest RDC client installed you can download it here, and enable font smoothing using these instructions:

To enable font smoothing, follow these steps:
1.    Click Start, click All Programs, click Accessories, click Communication, and then click Remote Desktop Connection.
2.    Click Options, click the Experience tab, and then click to select the Font smoothing check box.

A complete list of features on the latest version of Remote Desktop Connection can be found here.

I must admit I’m a console gamer on a very limited basis. I have owned a PS2 for years but for the most part I have limited myself to a handful of what I consider great games, beginning with the Pro Evolution Soccer/Winning Eleven franchise.

It wasn’t until recently that I got myself an Xbox 360 to go along my new HDTV, and man was I impressed. The fact that I started up by booting the Bioshock demo probably added to the experience, but even with the gorgeous graphics that can now be had using new high-def TVs, I did not buy Bioshock (for the 360), and I’m yet to decide if I will jump ship on either Gears of War or Microsoft’s recently released Halo 3. The fact is, I still feel much more comfortable playing shooters on my PC, for that same reason I went and bought the Orange Box so I could get some TF2 beta action.

Now, you will excuse my rambling, but back to where I wanted to go with this post… Microsoft’s Games for Windows initiative is great, I mean, at least it’s something! But you will want to think again if you believe the software giant is really committed to PC gamers. I find it ridiculous and even insulting that Halo 2 was released for the PC just three months ago when the console version was launched back in November 2004!

I’m pretty sure PC game sales wouldn’t cannibalize those of the Xbox, and because both platforms have so much in common, I’m also sure a really committed team of developers would have been able to bring a Windows version in no time if they wished to.

It’s not that we desperately need Halo 3 for Windows. The PC without a doubt has received and will continue receiving a number of AAA titles by the end of the year (Crysis, anyone?), but looking at Microsoft’s Games for Windows efforts, they could do so much better.

Some good looking fonts coming our way with Microsoft’s next generation products. Although it will take years until these can become standards (backward compatibility), it will be a welcome update for those of us upgrading from XP in the near future.

“The following are examples of 10 new Vista/Office 2007 fonts, taken in Office 2007 at 11 pts. Although Microsoft has made quite a few more new ones, these are the primarily latin-based scripts that ship with every install, regardless of regional options.”

Noticed over on The Burning Edge that several changes have been made to the tabbed interface;

* Close buttons on tabs, including background tabs (as long as browser.tabs.disableBackgroundClose is true & each tab is at least browser.tabs.tabClipWidth pixels wide).
* Make it easier to get back to the “parent tab” when you click a link that opens in a new window: if a link opens a new tab with focus, when that tab is closed, focus returns to its parent tab only if you have not manually switched to another tab.
* Simplify the preferences available for tabs.
* Improve the visual appearance of keyboard-focused tabs.

Seemingly these were conceived a little too late to make it into Firefox 1.5, though will certainly be in Firefox 2.0.

Speaking of next version Browsers, I’ve also had a look at Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 (As you may have seen in the news in the past few days). The interface is actually quite like Firefox in some regards (Address bar + Search bar on top, along with menu to add/modify search engine). While the Delete Browsing History feature is the exact same as Firefox 1.5’s Clear Private Data. IE 7 also features a phishing filter (Firefox 2.0 is due to implement one also).

It’ll be interesting to see how rapidly site developers conform to the security & other changes in IE 7 though. We’ve all read how Firefox & Opera have compatibility issues with certain sites & ironically IE 7 will encounter these in part due to actually improving compliance with standards, e.g. by default I was unable to download iPod Updater from Apple’s site (Due to the security pop-up after submitting my details), at an iVillage forum my wife visits the layout was incorrect.