I bought a Mac mini out of the same curiosity. In fact, I got a discount on one that someone had opened and returned. The main "gotcha" is that the poor thing is woefully under-powered. Mine had minimal RAM (512MB), and the hard drive is a laptop hard drive. I ended up buying RAM and opening it, which is kind of like opening up an iPod -- everything is close together, and the experience is like biting off your own leg to get out of a trap. I've considered doing something about the hard drive, but am trying to keep away from it. That said, maybe there's a souped-up version on offer, with a 7200 RPM drive. It's unobtrusively small, and could be a good introduction to the world of Apple.

Next: a giant white elephant

I mean, nesting the Frame as a child control, like so

<ScrollViewer>
<Frame/>
</ScrollViewer>

As I said, this doesn't seem to help.

I have a Frame control inside a main WPF page. The frame shows other WPF pages. For some reason, the frame clips the content without scrolling. I've tried embedding the frame in other controls, but no luck. Has anyone dealt with this issue? Thanks! Evan

I'm sure this has come up before, but ... It appears that the cost of upgrading to VS 2008 Pro is DOUBLE outside the US -- ouch!! All the UK vendors sell at roughly the same price, so I imagine that Microsoft has given them "guidance". Does anyone know the best place to avoid the squeeze? Also, would there be problem applying a US-obtained upgrade to my UK version? Thanks!

I'm thinking about using obfuscation software for key parts of a product. There's a bunch of obfuscators on the market, and each one claims to do something all the others don't do! I haven't seen many reviews, and some of these things are hugely expensive. Does anyone have direct experience with various obfuscators? (Candidates so far are CodeVeil, Xenocode, DotNet Reactor and Spices, but that's a moving target.) Any helpful advice in general on what obfuscation can and can't accomplish? Thanks!

Your solution will work, though copying is extra effort. The solution I proposed is to get an 8.3 name from Windows. This name is a direct substitute for the long name of the file. It will have a tilde (~) character and a number in it, and can be used to access the DBF file you want. I've had the darndest time putting in the code, and have found that it's possible to put in when the code is by itself, without a message. Therefore, the code for the function is separate. Good luck. Evan

[DllImport("Kernel32", CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
static extern Int32 GetShortPathName(
String path, // input string
StringBuilder shortPath, // output string
Int32 shortPathLength); // StringBuilder.Capacity
public static string ConvertLongPathToShort(string longPathName)
{
StringBuilder shortNameBuffer;
int size;

shortNameBuffer = new StringBuilder();
size = GetShortPathName(longPathName, shortNameBuffer, shortNameBuffer.Capacity);

if(size >= shortNameBuffer.Capacity)
{
    shortNameBuffer.Capacity = size + 1;
    GetShortPathName(longPathName, shortNameBuffer, shortNameBuffer.Capacity);
}

return shortNameBuffer.ToString();

}

Hi. By all means, you should continue to find out why the driver thinks it's a DOS program! But if the driver turns out to be inflexible, you can adapt the file name to the mangled "FILE~01.DBF" type of format. I've been trying to post the code to you all day, but there's something about the message that causes the Code Project to time out. I'm reduced to hinting! It's a function in Kernel32 called GetShortPathName(), and I found the C# example myself using Google when I was in a similar situation. If you have trouble finding it, we can figure out some other way of getting you the code. Hope this helps. Evan