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Windows 7 for XP ProfessionalsUpdating Support Skills from XP to Windows 7by Bink.nu's Raymond Comvalius
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With opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games scheduled for Friday, Microsoft Silverlight, MSN and Bing teams have worked with NBCOlympics.com to deliver 2010 Winter Games to the online audience. Silverlight, a cross-browser, cross-platform Web plug-in, and Internet Information Services Smooth Streaming technology, will power the interactive online player on NBCOlympics.com. Features include:
You can check out the Silverlight-powered video experience now on NBCOlympics.com now, with more content to come as the 2010 Winter Games get started next week.
IbarraReal is a public-domain font of Ibero-American character, created in 2005 as a revival of the types cast by Jerónimo Gil for the Royal Spanish Academy's edition of Don Quixote, printed in Madrid by Joaquín Ibarra in 1780. Its elegant design mixes tradition and modernity and is a genuine badge of Spanish culture.
Download details IbarraReal font download
At the beginning of January Microsoft launched its Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud computing offering: Windows Azure. Despite the company’s Chief Architect Ray Ozzie said that Azure will be able to compete with Amazon EC2 and similar Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) clouds, this component is not yet accessible, or at least we couldn’t find it, and Microsoft didn’t even officially confirm it exists.
A couple of months ago virtualization.info suggested that the IaaS component of Azure may appear in March, because Microsoft is going to release a cloud toolkit that month. It seems that Azure will indeed start hosting virtual machines in March 2010 according to TechTarget:
…Microsoft has announced plans to add support for Remote Desktops and virtual machines (VMs) to Windows Azure, and the company also says that prices for Azure, now a baseline $0.12 per hour, will be subject to change every so often. Prashant Ketkar, marketing director for Azure, said that the service would be adding Remote Desktop capabilities as soon as possible, as well as the ability to load and run virtual machine images directly on the platform. Ketkar did not give a date for the new features, but said they were the two most requested items…
…Microsoft has announced plans to add support for Remote Desktops and virtual machines (VMs) to Windows Azure, and the company also says that prices for Azure, now a baseline $0.12 per hour, will be subject to change every so often.
Prashant Ketkar, marketing director for Azure, said that the service would be adding Remote Desktop capabilities as soon as possible, as well as the ability to load and run virtual machine images directly on the platform. Ketkar did not give a date for the new features, but said they were the two most requested items…
Continue: Windows Azure may host virtual machines starting March virtualization.info
Microsoft Small Basic is a project that is aimed at making computer programming accessible to beginners. The project comprises a simple programming language that gathers inspiration from the original BASIC programming language; a modern and attractive programming environment; and rich, extensible libraries. Together they make programming fun for kids and adults alike.
Download details Small Basic
Bulletin 1
- Affected Software:
- Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4
- Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows XP Service Pack 3
- Windows XP Professional x64 Edition Service Pack 2
- Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2
- Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition Service Pack 2
- Windows Server 2003 with SP2 for Itanium-based Systems
- Windows Vista, Windows Vista Service Pack 1, and Windows Vista Service Pack 2
- Windows Vista x64 Edition, Windows Vista x64 Edition Service Pack 1, and Windows Vista x64 Edition Service Pack 2
- Windows Server 2008 for 32-bit Systems and Windows Server 2008 for 32-bit Systems Service Pack 2 (Windows Server 2008 Server Core installation affected)
- Windows Server 2008 for x64-based Systems and Windows Server 2008 for x64-based Systems Service Pack 2 (Windows Server 2008 Server Core installation affected)
- Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems and Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems Service Pack 2
- Windows 7 for 32-bit Systems
- Windows 7 for x64-based Systems
- Windows Server 2008 R2 for x64-based Systems(Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Core installation affected)
- Windows Server 2008 R2 for Itanium-based Systems
- Impact: Remote Code Execution
Bulletin 2
Bulletin 3
- Windows Server 2008 for 32-bit Systems and Windows Server 2008 for 32-bit Systems Service Pack 2 (Windows Server 2008 Server Core installation not affected)
- Windows Server 2008 for x64-based Systems and Windows Server 2008 for x64-based Systems Service Pack 2 (Windows Server 2008 Server Core installation not affected)
- Windows Server 2008 R2 for x64-based Systems (Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Core installation not affected)
Bulletin 4
Bulletin 6
- Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 - Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows XP Service Pack 3
Important Security Bulletins:
Bulletin 7
- Microsoft Office XP Service Pack 3
- Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac
Bulletin 8
- Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2002 Service Pack 3
- Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 Service Pack 3
Bulletin 9
- Windows Server 2008 R2 for x64-based Systems (Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Core installation affected)
- Impact: Denial of Service
Bulletin 10
- Impact: Elevation of Privilege
Bulletin 5
Bulletin 11
- Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Service Pack 4
Bulletin 12
Moderate Security Bulletins:
Bulletin 13
Other Information:
Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool:
Microsoft will release an updated version of the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool on Windows Update, Microsoft Update, Windows Server Update Services, and the Download Center.
Open security advisories
A summary of the three open Security Advisories so customers know what to expect on Tuesday:
· Advisory 980088, Vulnerability in Internet Explorer Could Allow Information Disclosure: this advisory was released yesterday (Feb 3). We do not have an update for this issue planned for the normal February bulletin release. However, this vulnerability only affects versions of windows older than Vista in their default configuration, and there is a “Fix It” available so customers in non-default configurations can protect themselves.
· Advisory 979682, Vulnerability in Windows Kernel Could Allow Elevation of Privilege: we are on track to release an update for this issue next Tuesday.
· Advisory 977544, Vulnerability in SMB Could Allow Denial of Service: we are still working on an update for this issue so it will not be addressed in the February bulletins. As a reminder, this issue cannot be used to allow an attacker to take control of a system remotely, but instead results in a system becoming unresponsive due to resource consumption.
We are not aware of any attacks on these vulnerabilities and continue to encourage customers to implement the mitigations and workarounds outlined in the advisories.
Windows versions end of support:
Important information about Windows versions that are reaching the end of their product lifecycle. Customers using these versions should consider upgrading before support for these products end as, once they do, we will no longer provide security updates:
My favorite Software PBX firm 3CX which I use in combination with Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging, has recently released a new version of their free (!) softphone:
The just released 3CXPhone 4 a new version of our free softphone which has a pretty cool new interface with an iphone look and feel.
“3CXPhone is a great VoIP phone for businesses. It’s easy to deploy and manage for network administrators. Users will love it for its cool look and intuitive interface.” Said Nick Galea, 3CX CEO.
Completely free
3CXPhone is provided completely free of charge to individuals and organizations including commercial entities. All features (including call transfer) are enabled. This makes it easy for companies to deploy it on any Windows desktop without having to worry about cost or licensing hassles.
Remote extensions are easy with the 3CX Tunnel
3CXPhone can easily be configured as a remote extension, allowing users away from the office to easily connect to the corporate phone system. The unique tunnel feature proxies all SIP & RTP traffic over a single port and makes firewall and NAT configuration a breeze. It is also possible to configure it as a remote extension using ‘direct SIP’.
“The soft-phone is becoming a serious ‘IP phone option’ for businesses. They are easy to manage, save on electricity and administration. 3CXPhone is free of charge and is also very easy to setup as a remote extension, allowing users to connect into the company phone system from wherever they are” said Nick Galea, 3CX CEO.
3CXPhone 4 is international
3CXPhone 4 is available in several languages. Besides English, it is also available in German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian and very soon in French.
3CX Phone – key features:
You can download the free phone here: http://www.3cx.com/downloads/3CXPhone4.msi, the size is only 3MB.
Blog: http://www.3cx.com/blog/news/free-3cxsoftphone/
By the way: I’ll write a little guide how to setup 3cx software PBX in combination with Exchange 2010 Unified messaging, which will get you Voicemail (office phone and Celluar Phone) in your OUtlook inbox and Outlook Voice Access, which enables you to talk to your Exchange server to hear your voicemails, emails and appointments. Very very cool.
http://www.3cx.com/
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Voice Mail with Unified Messaging
Back in July of 2007, Microsoft released its first iteration of Windows Home Server (WHS). Over the three years that followed, Microsoft has updated the product with three Power Packs, each of which has provided significant functional improvements. And of course, some WHS partners, most notably HP, have also contributed to making WHS more usable and functional via a series of machine-specific enhancements and other add-ons.
Windows Home Server "Vail", the next major version of this product, will be based on the current generation Windows Server platform (Windows Server 2008 R2) and will share a number of features and capabilities with Small Business Server and Essential Business Server. Unfortunately, Microsoft has been tight-lipped about Vail and the quality of information we have today is lacking, to say the least. Fortunately, a recently leaked build of Vail – tagged build 7360 – has shed some light on what the WHS team has been working on.
Others have written quick overviews of this leaked Vail build. But while anyone can find a torrent, download, install and then make a quick YouTube video, I think I can provide something quite a bit more detailed… and useful. Using some home-baked tools I used for gathering information for "Windows 7 Secrets," I was able to mine Vail for its actual capabilities. Here’s what I have thus far:
A look at Windows Home Server Vail (Build 7360) - Within Windows
This week, Net Applications released their January browser market share report. Their report shows that Internet Explorer 8 is not only the most popular browser on Windows with 27.9% usage share, but that it now has 25.6% of market share across all OS’s on a worldwide-weighted usage share basis (data provided by Net Applications). We launched just less than a year ago, so it’s both humbling and thrilling to see so many people choose our product so quickly – making it the most popular browser of choice worldwide.
There are many reasons people choose which browser to use. Most people want to know and trust the company behind their browser. And people are looking a browser that protects them – and their privacy online. In an August 13th, 2009 post on the IEBlog, we announced Internet Explorer 8’s SmartScreen Filter had hit over 80 million malware blocks. But that was back in August. As of today, Internet Explorer 8 has done over 350 million malware blocks. You can see Internet Explorer 8’s SmartScreen Filter in action in this blog post. Internet Explorer 8’s SmartScreen Filter blocks malware over 2 million times a day.
Continue: Internet Explorer 8 Officially Becomes World’s Most-Used Browser - Windows Experience Blog - The
An area where Microsoft doesn’t seem particularly active is the so-called virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). So far the company made just a few progresses, letting its partner Citrix dominate the scene and compete head to head with VMware.
Rather than on products, Microsoft is focusing on VDI licensing. In July 2009 it introduced two new VDI licenses, the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Standard Suite and the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Premium Suite, on top of its well-known Virtual Enterprise Centralized Desktop (VECD). Now the company may perform additional adjustments to its offering.
A couple of days ago TechTarget reported that Microsoft plans to modify the VECD to reduce the cost per user ($23/seat/year if you are a Software Assurance customer, $110/seat/year if you are not).
Continue: Microsoft to modify the VECD licensing virtualization.info#disqus_thread
Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is an update for BizTalk Server 2006 R2. The SP1 installation program that’s available on this page offers a unified installation experience: It will automatically detect and update all of the BizTalk Server components that are currently installed on your machine. It will also detect all BizTalk Server hotfixes currently installed, and will distinguish between hotfixes that predate this service pack, and those which were issued after this service pack was released. An SP1 Guide document is also available for download on this page, and describes the installation experience in detail. SP1 includes a roll-up of hotfixes from the BizTalk Server 2006 and 2006 R2 releases, some hotfixes from the BizTalk Server 2009 release, as well as some additional enhancements. Some of the key fixes and enhancements in this service pack are the following: Better reliability, performance, and scale for the following key features:
To see a list of the customer-reported issues that are fixed in this service pack, go to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=164985. For the documentation of the new feature updates included in this service pack, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=163958.
Microsoft Corp. today announced record revenue of $19.02 billion for the second quarter ended Dec. 31, 2009, a 14% increase from the same period of the prior year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $8.51 billion, $6.66 billion and $0.74 per share, which represented increases of 43%, 60% and 57%, respectively, when compared with the prior year period.
These financial results include the recognition of $1.71 billion of deferred revenue, an impact of $0.14 of diluted earnings per share, relating to the Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program and pre-sales of Windows 7 to OEMs and retailers before general availability. Adjusting for the deferred revenue recognition, second-quarter revenue totaled $17.31 billion, and diluted earnings per share totaled $0.60 per share.
“Exceptional demand for Windows 7 led to the positive top-line growth for the company,” said Peter Klein, chief financial officer at Microsoft. “Our continuing commitment to managing costs allowed us to drive earnings performance ahead of the revenue growth.”
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 launched globally on October 22 as anticipated. Through the second quarter, Microsoft has sold over 60 million Windows 7 licenses making it the fastest selling operating system in history......................Continue At Source
This week Microsoft released an update for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 with a utility for restoring backups made on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 to computers that are running Windows 7 and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2.
This utility has been available for Windows Vista and Server 2008, but did not work on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
Why should you backup an Exchange 2010 DAG implementation with DPM?
What should you be thinking about before you make a final decision?
What is the way out of this conundrum?
….Well, it depends. Let me walk you through a scenario.
First, let us make a couple of seminal assumptions:
· That you will you will have more than one copy of an Exchange DB in a DAG. OK, you are allowed a duh!
· That you will be deploying Exchange 2010 DAG with cheap JBODs, which will undoubtedly save you a bundle.
· If you are going to use JBOD, then you really understand how to interpret MTBF and its relationship to uptime SLA.
All Exchange Mailbox Servers in one site (HA but no DR)
If you want to deploy Exchange 2010 with JBOD, it is recommended that you should deploy with at least three copies. In addition to this, if you want to also use the DAG copies for Point In Time (PIT) recovery, then you will need a server to host the lagged copy of the DB. Lagged copies are a means to safeguard against store/logical corruption events (and possibly accidental mailbox deletions). If you are going to distribute the lagged copies among your primary severs, then you will need at least two lagged copies. If you are going to use dedicated servers with lagged copies with JBOD, for better reliability you are well advised to deploy enough servers to house two lagged copies; otherwise you could deploy dedicated lagged copy servers with RAID and thus only have one lagged copy per database.
So how many copies are we up to? …and how many servers?
OK, three copies per DB; two more for PIT lagged copies; one less if you share and distribute the lagged copy on more than one primary server or if you use RAID for PIT. That is, 1, 2, 3, wait. All right, you are big boys/girls (smart Admin people), you know how to fire up Microsoft Excel to do the math and cost it out.
From all accounts, recovering PIT from lagged copies is not a walk in the park. In fact, you are well advised not to plan for it too frequently. Plus, you can only have a maximum of 14 day replay lag for lagged copies. This is a limit imposed by Exchange 2010. If you also decide to share the primary servers and implement lagged copies, then you will be using the primary mailbox server for your recoveries – so plan your IOPS so that you do not impact Outlook client SLAs during these recoveries and re-seeds and manage your Active and Passive nodes carefully.
Introduce DPM into this equation:
Let us say you implement only three copies of an Exchange DB with JBOD, and use DPM for backup and PIT recovery. Now what? You have:
· As many PIT as you like
· Recovering a PIT from DPM is far easier
· You may not need that 4th DAG copy
Continue:
Ctrl P - The Data Protection Manager Blog! DPM 2010 Protecting Exchange 2010 DAG in a Single Sit
This download contains a two Virtual Machine set for evaluating and demonstrating Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010.
Virtual machine “a” contains the following pre-configured software:
1. Windows Server 2008 SP2 Standard Edition x64, running as an Active Directory Domain Controller for the “CONTOSO.COM” domain with DNS and WINS
2. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 SP2 Enterprise Edition with Analysis, Notification, and Reporting Services 3. Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007 R2
4. Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Ultimate Edition
5. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition Beta 2
6. Microsoft Office Web Applications Beta 2
7. FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 Beta 2
8. Microsoft Project Server 2010 Beta 2
9. Microsoft Office 2010 Beta 2
10. Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2
Virtual machine “b” contains the following pre-configured software:
1. Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Evaluation Edition x64, joined to the “CONTOSO.COM” domain
2. Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Active directory has been preconfigured over 200 “demo” users with metadata in an organizational structure. All of these user profiles have been imported and indexed for search within SharePoint Server 2010, with “contoso\administrator” granted administrator permissions.
SharePoint Server 2010 has been configured in a “Complete” farm using Kerberos authentication and the default SQL Server 2008 instance for data, and has a site collection created using the Team Site template at http://intranet.contoso.com/ and a FAST Search Center at http://intranet.contoso.com/search/.
Performance Considerations
1. If possible, unpack and run the VM image on a separate, fast hard drive (7200 RPM or better) from the operating system of the host machine. If this is being done on a laptop, a second internal drive or external eSATA drive works best, though USB 2.0 (make sure it's 2.0, 1.1 is too slow) or Firewire is acceptable. For absolute best performance use a second internal SSD drive.
Aaron Dietrich's job was far from glamorous: making Windows 7 start faster than its predecessor. He was floored when reviews touted the new operating system’s start-up speed.
Months before Windows 7 launched, Aaron Dietrich's boss forwarded him an early product review from CNET, an online technology news site. Until then, Dietrich hadn't heard an outsider's take on the new operating system. When he read the article, he found a prominent—and glowing—mention of lightning-fast start-up times.
“I always viewed myself as just one piece of the whole Windows puzzle,” Dietrich says. “It's really when we brought it all together that we got such a great product.”
Click for larger version.
"It gave me a really good feeling," Dietrich says. "I thought, 'Wow, it's not just that we're on the right path, but we're really making a change in perception for reviewers and the general public here.'"
As senior development lead on the Windows Client Performance team, Dietrich had toiled to make sure Windows 7-based PCs would fire up like rockets. But he was surprised again and again when praise for the faster start-up performance popped up repeatedly in the press and in the blogosphere.
"It's not a fancy new UI feature," he said. "It's not that thing in your face all the time like a desktop feature or window switcher or something like that." Still, he took pride in the kudos that Windows 7 was receiving.
Dietrich, who came to Microsoft nine years ago after completing graduate studies at Rochester Institute of Technology, worked with Windows 7 features teams to keep the operating system lean enough to clock significantly faster start-up times. He said it really did take a village to build Windows 7.
"I always viewed myself as just one piece of the whole Windows puzzle," he said. "It's really when we brought it all together that we got such a great product."
The Microsoft News Center talked recently with Dietrich about his work on Windows 7.
The News Center: What was your role working on Windows 7?
Dietrich: For Windows 7, I was on the Windows Client Performance team. Rather than owning a specific feature, we kind of work as a liaison with many different teams within Windows to help them analyze and resolve performance issues with the operating system.
The News Center: How did you increase start-up performance in Windows 7?
Dietrich: There were a couple of key features that allowed us to get better boot times. The first was we introduced what we call the fast boot feature, which allows some parts of boot to happen in the background while Windows is discovering and initializing devices. That helped us gain up to 25 percent of our boot time over Windows Vista, depending on the hardware.
The other big one was that we significantly reduced the size of the operating system required to be read from disk in order to boot. Whereas Windows Vista required somewhere on the order of 220 to 240 megabytes of operating system code to boot, Windows 7 requires anywhere from 140 to 180 megabytes, depending on the configuration of the system.
Continue at:
The Man Behind Windows 7’s Fast Start Aaron Dietrich's job was far from glamorous making Windows