Best of the blogs: Confessing to a little confusion about the best means of preparing for Silverlight Martin Heller dives in nonetheless. The basic question was whether or not to install both the 1.0 and 1.1 SDK, or simply pick one. “The two do not install side-by-side, although you can certainly install them on separate machines of in separate Virtual PCs on the same machine,” Heller writes in Silverlight: How to set up for development. Of course, “there is one small disadvantage to doing this.” Notes from the field: Are OEMs bowing to pressure from Microsoft not to sell systems with XP installed but, instead, to require a ‘downgrade’ process from Vista? One Cringester writes in to say that, and more. “I’m disgruntled because this will cause extra work for my staff, and because I’m being used by Microsoft to falsely pump their Vista sales numbers.” Another reader feels slimed by a Dell promo promising the chance to win a new car, while a third points out that Trend Micro seems to have missed the whole Y2K thing. Reader writes and wrongs. Green IT: Taking a contrarian’s view to Gartner’s suggestion that Green Grid try to “influence legislation and behavior for broader issues,” Ted Samson explains in this Sustainable IT post that there are already other organizations pushing environmentally-oriented legislation. “If the Green Grid is to effectively pursue its ambition of being an independent body for developing vendor-neutral recommendations on best practices, metrics, and technologies for all datacenter operators, the last thing it needs is to let itself be distracted — or potential members and supporters to be put off — by dabbling in politics.” Software Development