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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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Microsoft is investigating public reports of a non-security issue that prevents the distribution of any updates deployed through Microsoft Windows Server Update Services 3.0 or Microsoft Windows Server Update Services 3.0 Service Pack 1 to client systems that have Microsoft Office 2003 installed in their environment. Microsoft is aware of reports from customers who are experiencing this issue.
Upon completing the investigation, Microsoft will take appropriate action to resolve the issue within Microsoft Windows Server Update Services 3.0 or Microsoft Windows Server Update Services 3.0 Service Pack 1.
Note The issue affecting System Center Configuration Manager 2007 first described in Microsoft Security Advisory 954474, where System Center Configuration Manager 2007 systems were blocked from deploying security updates, is separate from the issue described in this advisory.
Mitigating Factors:
This issue is limited to customers who deploy updates through Microsoft Windows Server Update Services 3.0 or Microsoft Windows Server Update Services 3.0 Service Pack 1, and have Microsoft Office 2003 installed in their environments.
In an effort to improve car performance during races, Chip Ganassi Racing has selected a high-performance computing (HPC) solution based on Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, Microsoft Corp. announced today.
Chip Ganassi Racing uses computer simulation software to help its NASCAR team determine optimal starting configurations for its cars before each race. With the solution, the team increases its competitive edge by running simulations approximately 38 times as fast as before, providing enough time to run multiple simulations before each race.
“With Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, we were able to easily put a solution in place that helps our teams better prepare for race day,” said Mark Paxton, research and development engineering manager for the NASCAR team at Chip Ganassi Racing. “With simulation times reduced from 24 hours to about 30 minutes, we now can run multiple simulations for each race and better tune the situations for each car, track and set of track conditions. Faster simulation times give our car teams more time to rerun simulations if issues arise at the track or expected race-day conditions change.”
Since its founding as a one-car IndyCar team 18 years ago, Chip Ganassi Racing, based in Concord, N.C., has grown into a highly competitive racing team that competes in the NASCAR Nextel Cup, NASCAR Nationwide, Indy Racing League, Indy Pro and Rolex Grand-AM series. The team has used simulation software for several years, but its usefulness has been limited by the massive computing power required...............................Continue At Source
Microsoft Office Live Small Business (http://www.smallbusiness.officelive.com) has reached a pivotal milestone: In less than two years since its November 2006 commercial debut, the online service that helps entrepreneurs take, promote and manage their businesses online has surpassed more than 1 million subscribers. This milestone demonstrates that increasing numbers of small businesses — particularly those with fewer than 10 employees, for which the Office Live Small Business service is specifically designed — are realizing the importance of having a Web presence.
Although Internet access is pervasive among U.S. small businesses, many very small businesses still lack a company Web site, signaling a strong opportunity for millions more to get online.1 Today, as more and more consumers turn to the Web to search for products and services, small businesses are increasingly choosing to embrace the power of the Web through services such as Office Live Small Business, which has more than doubled its subscriber base in the past year alone.
“From the outset we knew we wanted to tailor Office Live Small Business to the smallest of small businesses because they have unique needs that were not being addressed by any other service at the time,” said Baris Cetinok, director of product management, marketing and planning for Microsoft Office Live Small Business. “We focused on three key things: make the service easy to use, make it affordable and make it all work together.”
Office Live Small Business customers who immediately saw the positive effects of having a Web presence are Mary Hetherington of Brentwood, Calif., who runs a women’s health club called FitDimensions, Lisa Christian of Kirkland, Wash., who runs a yoga studio, and Afua Anim of Washington, D.C., who runs a boutique bakery................Continue At Source
Ever since I first installed my Dell PowerEdge 2900 with Virtual Server I have been experiencing issues with the Broadcom Nextreme II Gigabit adapter also known as the BCM5708C. After my latest disaster at a client with Hyper-V RTM with the same network adaptere in an HP Proliant ML 370 G5, I think it's time to send out an alert.
In my case I the two hosts I was installing with Hyper-V ended with corrupted network stacks on Virtual Machines and hosts that initially worked flawlessly and all of a sudden caused strange error messages. This in the end forced me to completely reinstall all systems from scratch.
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Thank you for your support during the MAP 3.1 Beta phase and from the past few releases. We are pleased to let you know that we have declared RTW today (Release to Web) and the MAP 3.1 tool can be downloaded immediately from this link here:Download MAP 3.1: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=111000Read more about MAP: http://www.microsoft.com/MAP View demos on Team Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/MAPBLOGIf you are interested in assessing your IT infrastructure and planning to migrate to Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, Virtual Server 2005 R2, SQL Server, Windows Vista, 2007 Microsoft Office, and Microsoft Application Virtualization, you should give this assessment and planning tool a try.Thank you and keep in touch!Baldwin Ng (on behalf of the MAP Team)
Next time you're on a multiplayer server, you might want to ask everyone who's a Canadian, and then ask who among them are dudes. Because according to a Microsoft survey, every fifth one of them (in the long run) has gamed in the nude, and might be doing so now.
Microsoft commissioned a pretty serious poll up in the Great White North, asking Canadians all sorts of questions that sound like a Cosmo bedside astrologer survey, if "game" is used as a euphemism for "sex." Do you game at work? (30 percent). Do you game in the bedroom? (27 percent). The bathroom? (7 percent — WTF?!) In public? (19 percent). And yes, they asked who does it completely bare. The answer 17 percent of Canadian men, 9 percent of Canadian women.
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Employees Welcome Gates (00:22)Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer introduces Chairman Bill Gates at the Employee Town Hall. June 27, 2008Download: Zune-quality (.wmv) | Broadcast-quality (.mpeg)
Gates - Starting Microsoft (00:17)Bill Gates describes how he and co-founder Paul Allen started Microsoft with the dream that software would be important one day. Download: Zune-quality (.wmv) | Broadcast-quality (.mpeg)
Ballmer - Microsoft Vision (00:21)CEO Steve Ballmer describes Bill’s vision of a computer on every desk and in every home. Download: Zune-quality (.wmv) | Broadcast-quality (.mpeg)
Gates - Microsoft Leadership (00:51)Gates describes the opportunities ahead for Microsoft’s leadership.Download: Zune-quality (.wmv) | Broadcast-quality (.mpeg)
Ballmer - Microsoft Culture (00:37)Steve Ballmer talks about how Bill Gates has instilled a culture of intensity, tenacity and passion at Microsoft. Download: Zune-quality (.wmv) | Broadcast-quality (.mpeg)
Ballmer - Changing the World (01:14)Steve Ballmer thanks Bill Gates for the opportunities Microsoft employees have to change the world and realize their true potential. Download: Zune-quality (.wmv) | Broadcast-quality (.mpeg)
Gates - The people he worked with (02:04)Bill Gates describes what has made working at Microsoft so special to him: smart people, making an impact in the world and having fun every day. Download: Zune-quality (.wmv) | Broadcast-quality (.mpeg)
The bushy beards and big hair are gone, replaced with receding hairlines and streaks of gray.
For the first time in 30 years, 11 of Microsoft's 12 original employees got together to re-create a famous photo taken just before the company moved from its Albuquerque birthplace to the Pacific Northwest in 1978.
"Paul doesn't have his mustache," quipped Bill Gates at the April photo shoot at Microsoft's Redmond campus. "Facial hair is on the decline, I guess," answered Paul Allen.
Reshooting an image known for its young faces (and of course groovy outfits and far-out hair) gave the company's founders a chance to look back at what Microsoft has accomplished over three tumultuous decades. Everyone was there except Bob Wallace, who passed away in 2002.
Many at the reunion wished they had stayed on longer. All but Gates left the company by the mid-1990s. None of them knew how big Microsoft was going to get, except maybe Gates.
As Allen tells it, thinking big in the early days meant just getting the company off the ground. When he and Gates talked about forming the company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, "we thought, wow, God, if we're successful, maybe we'll have 30 people."
Still, it was obvious to everyone that Gates had big plans for Microsoft.
"Right from the start…Bill knew this was going someplace, and we were along for the ride," said Bob Greenberg, one of Microsoft's original "hardcore coders." "I joked with him about lots of different things, but I learned very quickly the one thing you couldn't joke about was the company itself. You couldn't touch that ground." Today, Greenberg manages several investments, is an officer with several Jewish organizations, and is an investor in a start-up company.
Microsoft's original employees got together to reshoot the famous photo in April. Front row (left to right): Bill Gates, Andrea Lewis, Miriam Lubow, Marla Wood, and Paul Allen. Back row: Bob O'Rear, Steve Wood, Bob Greenberg, Marc McDonald, Gordon Letwin, and Jim Lane. Not pictured is Bob Wallace, who has passed away. Click for high-res version. Allen added, "Bill was Bill," driving the company hard and driving himself harder.
"I think Bill tried to set a very high benchmark," he said. "He wanted to make sure everybody emulated that [work ethic]." Gates said it was in Albuquerque where he laid out his famous vision for Microsoft. "'A computer on every desk and in every home running Microsoft software' was the slogan of the company," he recounted in a roundtable discussion that took place after the photo shoot.
A young Gates wasn't always taken seriously, though. Just ask Miriam Lubow, who was the original receptionist for the company. (She missed the Albuquerque photo shoot because of a snowstorm.) She was hired by Steve Wood while Gates was away. She is retired and actively involved in many projects, including an autobiography.
"One morning in comes this kid, sneakers and blue jeans and hair disheveled, and I'm thinking this kid doesn't belong here, what is he doing?" Lubow recounted to many laughs from her old colleagues. "He runs by my office and goes into the computer room that Steve said 'nobody should go in there; it's private. Don't let anybody in there.'"
She quickly went to tell Wood. "I said, look Steve, this kid runs in there, and he's in that room, and he's working like he owns this place, and Steve says, 'Well, you know what, he does. He's your boss. He's the president.'"
Once the company started to grow, Gates and Allen found they were having trouble wooing people to New Mexico, so they decided to move home.
From left to right, Marla Wood, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Bob O'Rear, and Marc McDonald participate in an April roundtable discussion about the first-ever reunion of Microsoft's original employees. Click for high-res version. "Bill and I used to talk about the fact that a lot of people didn't even know what state Albuquerque was in," Allen said.
Aside from Andrea Lewis, "nobody was based in Albuquerque," Gates said, so there were no real ties there except for the good weather and the difficulties associated with moving everyone.
There was some initial resistance to the move, but everyone decided to make a go of it. It was at that time that Greenberg won a free portrait with a local photographer by correctly guessing the name of an assassinated president on a local radio program.
Perhaps foretelling what would soon become a major moment in Microsoft's history, he wrote a memo to the team on December 6, 1978, titled "Esprit De Corps."
"As a suitable culmination of Microsoft's productive stay in Albuquerque, I have arranged a sitting to make a company-wide portrait," Greenberg wrote. The photo was to be taken at Royal Frontier Studios with "regular informal attire."
"Regular informal attire" turned out to be a blend of earth tones, collars, tweed, and just maybe a bit of velvet. Gates and Allen are in the front row with their torsos mostly cut off, making it hard to tell what they are wearing.
When asked about their choice of clothing, the jokes started flying. "We didn't know of anything else to wear," one person said. Another said, what's the big deal, "we were all wearing clothes," while someone else said "we're engineers—don't ask us that."
The photo has gained a foothold in history for its look but also because "it's the only photo" from that era, explained Marc McDonald, who left Microsoft in 1984. He returned to work with Design Intelligence in 2000 and still works at the company.
For many in that original group, the photo is how they are most often recognized.
"It's iconic," Greenberg said. "It's taken on a life larger than any of ours, really."
For Allen, the photo brings back memories of what it was like to work at Microsoft in the beginning.
"It does capture a moment in time and the spirit that we had there in the office," he said. "You see we're all smiling. We're all really having fun. When you try to explain to people about the early days of Microsoft, it's just hard to explain how much fun it was. Some people, especially Bill, would sleep in the office. You'd come in the office, sometimes you'd see his feet sticking out the door."
In the end, the early pioneers would like to be known for the work that they did to build the company's foundation.
"[The Albuquerque photo] represents our legacy, but it's not our legacy," said Gordon Letwin, who, for the record, had to be coaxed to tuck in his shirt during the photo re-take, something he did begrudgingly. "Our legacy is what we've done, not a picture."
Today, Microsoft reaches a significant milestone for customers and partners with the release of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the hypervisor-based virtualization feature included in select versions of Windows Server 2008. Those who have already deployed the x64 versions of Windows Server 2008 can receive Hyper-V from Windows Update beginning July 8, while new customers and partners can download Hyper-V later today (12:00 pm PT). The Windows Virtualization team will be counting down the days to download from Windows Update, so be sure to visit the Windows Virtualization Team blog to see daily spotlights on specific features and benefits of Hyper-V technology, as well as to read about customer stories and see postings from guests.
Following the launch of Windows Server 2008, Microsoft reached another milestone today with the release of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the hypervisor-based virtualization technology that is a feature of select versions of Windows Server 2008. The nearly 1.5 million copies of the Hyper-V beta version that have been distributed demonstrate how customer interest in virtualization is moving from evaluation to production environment deployments.
Virtualization can help companies maximize the value of IT investments, decreasing the server hardware footprint, energy consumption and cost and complexity of managing IT systems while increasing the flexibility of the overall environment. Microsoft’s strategy and investments in virtualization — which span from the desktop to the datacenter — help IT professionals and developers implement Microsoft’s Dynamic IT initiative, whereby they can build systems with the flexibility and intelligence to automatically adjust to changing business conditions by aligning computing resources with strategic objectives.
Hyper-V offers customers a reliable, scalable and high-performance virtualization platform that plugs into customers’ existing IT infrastructures and enables them to consolidate some of the most demanding workloads. In addition, the Microsoft System Center product family gives customers a single set of integrated tools to manage physical and virtual resources, helping customers create a more agile and dynamic datacenter.
“Customers who buy Windows Server 2008 are not only getting the scalability benefits, the high performance and reliability, and all the great things that Windows Server is known for; as of today they can benefit from integrated virtualization with Hyper-V,” said Bill Hilf, general manager of Windows Server Marketing and Platform Strategy at Microsoft.
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On June 27, 2008, Bill Gates transitions from his day-to-day role at Microsoft to focus more time on his work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates will remain Microsoft’s chairman and will be involved in select projects based on direction from Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer and the leadership team. Watch the video and hear from his friends, family and Microsoft leaders about Gates’ amazing journey — from coding BASIC for the Altair 8800 to leading the world’s largest software company.
Bill Gates Looks Into the Future of the PCUSA Today, June 25, 2008
Ballmer Heads New Age of Microsoft LeadersSeattle Post-Intelligencer, June 24, 2008
Q&A: Bill Gates UnfilteredForbes.com, June 23, 2008
Microsoft Braced for Post-Gates EraFinancial Times, June 20, 2008
Pair Picked to be Brains Behind MicrosoftFinancial Times, June 20, 2008
Transcript: Steve Ballmer of MicrosoftFinancial Times, June 20, 2008
Gates Without Microsoft; Microsoft Without GatesFortune, June 20, 2008
Hyper-V has RTM'ed ! That is way earlier than the initial 180 days after Windows Server 2008 release. Expect more information and official press release later today.