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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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All subscribers of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) can register to download the update from Microsoft Connect and get ahead on their Windows 7 planning right now. Through MDOP, our goal is to continuously offer technology and updates to our enterprise customers. When Windows 7 releases, we are committed to supporting the final product within 90 days of general availability. App-V 4.5 CU1 also contains a small number of improvements such as instant access or removal of applications assigned to end users.
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The DHCP server in Windows Server 2008 R2 has invested in the areas of security, reliability, manageability and usability. Similarly on the DHCP Client in Windows 7 has invested on certain optimization for obtaining IP Address.
The following changes are available in DHCP server in Windows Server 2008 R2:
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Microsoft Corp. said Thursday it will cut the rates it pays temporary staffing agencies by 10%, as part of a broader drive to save costs.
The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant, which launched a broad cost-cutting drive last month, has informed its temporary staffing agencies that it will reduce billing rates by 10%. "We held discussions with some of the impacted agencies and settled on the 10% reduction based on the economic climate and the need to achieve greater cost reductions," a Microsoft spokesman said in a statement. It wasn't immediately clear how many positions would be impacted, or whether the agencies would pass on the pay cut to its employees.
A report in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer said the short-term contractors had been advised by Microsoft not to discuss the changes with their Microsoft managers, or to seek new assignments with the company. Microsoft didn't immediately comment on this. In January Microsoft announced a major cost-cutting initiative - the first in the company's 30-year history. The company will cut 5,000 jobs over the next 18 months.
The job cuts, which comprise about 5.5% of the company's approximately 91,000-person workforce, included an initial round of around 1,400 layoffs. Microsoft earlier this week gave a downbeat assessment of current macroeconomic conditions, saying sales of its core Windows operating system software were being hit by the slump in PC sales.
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Microsoft, which last year announced plans to bring a limited version of its SQL Server database online, now plans to offer a fully capable cloud version.
It plans to incorporate as many features from its flagship database into SQL Data Services (SDS) before the cloud-computing platform upon which it will run, Windows Azure, is released, according to an article on The Register.
Chief executive Steve Ballmer told Wall Street analysts earlier this week that Azure, currently in beta form, would be finalized by the time of Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in November. Microsoft could not immediately be reached for comment.
In a follow-up posting at its SDS blog, Microsoft confirmed that at its MIX web developer show next month, it will be "unveiling some new [SDS] features that are going to knock your socks off".
SDS was announced at MIX last spring. Still in beta, SDS was to offer a fraction of SQL Server's feature set and was aimed at developers at startups and smaller web-focused companies with limited database experience.
This would be easier and cheaper to set up than a full, on-premise SQL Server, or even hosted version of SQL Server, which Microsoft already allowed its partners to sell.
In that scenario, users often still need to manage - albeit remotely - a full SQL Server database, and usually also buy SQL Server licences and the underlying hardware.
Yesterday I arrived at Schiphol Airport (Amsterdam) from New York, we landed on the just re-opened “Zwanenburg” runway, out of my window I could see the crashed Turkish Airlines nearby the “Polder” runway. I took a picture with my iPhone so it is very hard to see it actually. The pic was taken less then 24h after the crash, which tragically killed 9 people. 3 Turkish pilots and 4 Americans (Boeing employees) are among the deaths.
We’ve been quite busy for the past two months or so working through all the feedback we’ve received on Windows 7. It should be no surprise but the Release Candidate for Windows 7 will have quite a few changes, many under the hood so to speak but also many visible. Some have asked if the featureset is "frozen" then what will we change--we change a lot of things in the beta based on feedback and we try to do so in a systematic manner with the focus on the goals for the release. The goal of having a fully functional Beta was to make sure we received reliable feedback and not a lot of "hey this doesn't work at all" sorts of reports. This has allowed us to really focus on delivering a refined RC where the changes we made are all the reflection of feedback we have received.
Building on the previous post that looked at the broad view of feedback, we want to start posting on the feedback and the engineering actions we’ve taken in responding to the feedback. We won’t be able to cover all the changes (as we’re still busy making them), but for today we wanted to start with a sampling of some of the more visible changes. We’re still on the same path working towards the release candidate and of course we know everyone is anxious for the next phase of our path to RTM. In the meantime, our full time machines are still running the Beta build.
Today’s post is from Chaitanya, who has previously posted on some of the core user interface work. --Steven
This blog post talks about a few of the improvements that will be in our Release Candidate (RC) based upon customer feedback. There are many under the hood changes (bug fixes, compatibility fixes, performance improvements, and improvements) across the entire dev team that we just don’t have room to discuss here, but we thought you’d enjoy a taste of some changes made by three of our feature teams: Core User Experience, Find & Organize and Devices & Media. The comments in this article come from a variety of verbatim sources, with identifying information withheld.
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Microsoft has some good news for movie fans. If you want to watch .mov files in Windows 7, you don't need to install Apple's QuickTime. Bye, bye annoying system tray icon! Adios, Apple update!
The support for .mov files was mentioned deep in a long list of changes that are coming to the Windows 7 Release Candidate.
On the Engineering Windows 7 blog, in a post entitled 'Some changes since beta for the RC', Chaitanya Sareena, Senior Program Manager on the Core User Experience team, talks up improved playback support for video content from digital camcorders and cameras:
"We've since added support for Windows Media Player to natively support the .mov files used to capture video for many common digital cameras," writes Sareena.
While this may delight owners of cameras which output in the .mov format, it's also good news for anyone who enjoys watching movies on their PC, as movie trailers, particularly those on Apple Movie Trailers, come in .mov format, and so require QuickTime (or a freeware player such as VLC) to view
Microsoft® Response Point™ 1.0 Service Pack 2 (SP2) introduces new-and-improved features that expand your voice service choices, empower the administrator to better manage the system, and enhance the phone system experience for everyday users and callers.In Service Pack 2, Response Point adds "digital service" to the list of flexible voice service options to help balance the voice and data communication demands of your growing small business. Digital service is transmitted through an enterprise-grade hard-wire connection. "T1" (in the U.S.), "E1" (in Europe),"PRI," or "ISDN" service providers will run a special cable into your office building, similar to the cabling installed by a telco. Digital service lines normally have up to 24 rotating channels that can deliver voice and data packets to phone system components. Using Response Point Administrator, you can configure the digital gateway device required for this voice service. Some digital service providers may offer fractional digital service, which means you purchase only a portion of the circuit that may have only 8 available channels instead of 24.Response Point Administrator gives you more control over how you manage the system. In this service pack, you can schedule the Automated Receptionist to handle calls after-hours, on holidays, and during business closures; enable access to a virtual private network (VPN), giving employees in remote locations secured access to the resources on the local area network (LAN); configure hybrid gateway devices that have both FXO and FXS ports, or that can be used for either analog or digital service; reduce speech misrecognition, often caused by background noise and variable service requirements, when you change the channel that detects the DTMF touch tones on your phones. Response Point Assistant improves the overall experience for everyday users and callers. In this service pack, you can control how you receive 2-way intercom calls and 1-way pages, and play a call-forwarding announcement (or not) for people when they contact you. Additional SP2 features include automatic parked-call return, which ensures that no callers are left waiting in park longer than 3 minutes; support for VoIP gateway devices that can help improve service quality; and customizable URLs in call notification windows.
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Microsoft Corp. today filed a patent infringement action against TomTom NV and Tom Tom, Inc., and issued the following statement from Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing:
“Microsoft has filed an action today in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington and in the International Trade Commission (ITC), against TomTom NV and TomTom Inc. for infringement of Microsoft patents. We have taken this action after attempting for more than a year to engage in licensing discussions with TomTom.
“We have an established intellectual property licensing program, and the patents involved in this case, relating to innovations in car navigation technology and other computing functionality, have been licensed by many others. In situations such as this, when a reasonable business agreement cannot be reached, we have no choice but to pursue legal action to protect our innovations and our partners who license them. Other companies that utilize Microsoft patents have licensed and we are asking TomTom to do the same.
“TomTom is a highly respected and important company. We remain open to quickly resolving this situation with them through an IP licensing agreement.”
This week we are announcing that Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 has hit an important milestone in development: Release Candidate (RC).
Starting today, the RC of SP2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 will be available to TechNet and MSDN subscribers to test prior to final release. In the very near future, we will be making the RC broadly available for anyone to download and test. You can expect another blog post from me when that happens.
SP2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 include updates that have been delivered since the release of SP1, as well as support for new types of hardware and emerging standards. As we’ve described since we first talked about SP2, we’ve taken your feedback into account when developing SP2. Specifically, we expect SP2 to continue the security benefits of both products and simplify deployment for our customers.
Microsoft Corp. said Sunday that in response to the economic crisis it would sponsor an initiative to help train up to two million people in basic technology skills.
Pamela Passman, Microsoft's corporate vice president of global corporate affairs, announced the program at a meeting of the National Governor's Association in Washington D.C. this morning.
The three-year initiative, dubbed Elevate America, comes at an awkward moment for Microsoft.
Exactly one month ago, Microsoft embarked on the first mass layoffs in its history, cutting 1,400 people.
Nevertheless, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has continued to try to rally the public around the idea that the technology industry will be a driver of an eventual economic recovery. He has urged Congress to support new technical skills training for the unemployed.
With Elevate America, Passman said that Microsoft wanted to do its part to help workers acquire the technology skills they needed now and over the next decade.
So, Microsoft has created a new Web portal (visit it here) where visitors can learn what skills they lack and easily find resources to learn them.
On the site, they will also be able to access various Microsoft online training programs, in order to learn some basic skills, such as how to use the Internet, send e-mail and create a resume, according to a Microsoft statement.
We wanted to let you know that an update was released earlier today that will improve Internet Explorer’s reliability for users running the Windows 7 Beta. The update is now available via Windows Update, and can also be downloaded via Microsoft Update.
In this post we’ll discuss how we used the information that we’re receiving from Windows 7 Beta customers to determine the reliability fixes to include in this update.
We use the term “reliability” to broadly encompass all types of stability problems including crashes, hangs, memory leaks, etc. When we measure reliability we rely primarily on instrumentation built into Internet Explorer 8 and Windows 7. For example, the Customer Experience Improvement Program enables us to better understand how customers use our products, and Windows Error Reporting provides detailed information about the problems customers encounter. Shortly after the Windows 7 Beta became publically available these systems began to send information back to Microsoft.
After a week of monitoring this feedback we felt that we had reached a representative sampling of our customers. We found that approximately 10% of customers who had downloaded the Windows 7 Beta had experienced some type of reliability problem in IE8. We also found that a small number of users were experiencing crashes on a more regular basis and that about 1.5% of all Internet Explorer sessions had encountered a crash. This is relatively good for a pre-release version of Internet Explorer running on a beta operating system. We were also pleased to see that the new IE8 Crash Recovery feature was successfully helping customers recover from these crash situations 94% of the time.
One of the approaches that we use to analyze this data is called a failure curve. A failure curve is essentially a bar chart where each bar represents a unique failure (crash, hang, etc.). The height of the bar represents the number of occurrences in the last 30 days. Below you can see the failure curve for Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7 Beta. The color indicates whether the failure is caused by Internet Explorer or a 3rd party toolbar or extension running inside of Internet Explorer.
The judge overseeing the “Vista Capable” suit against Microsoft has removed the “class-action” designation from it, but also declined Microsoft’s motion for summary judgment.
The latest court action on February 18, resulted in Judge Marsha Pechman reversing her original decision to allow the case class-action status. Pechman did note that individual plaintiffs will be allowed to continue legal proceedings if they can prove harm.
As TechFlash blogger Todd Bishop explains:
“According to today’s ruling, Pechman removed the class-action status after finding that the plaintiffs hadn’t adequately shown that the Vista Capable program caused widespread, artificial inflation in PC prices. However, she said, that doesn’t preclude specific plaintiffs from pursuing claims against Microsoft if they can provide ‘evidence of individual deception.’”
The Vista Capable suit, filed in March 2007, claimed Microsoft “engaged in bait and switch — assuring consumers they were purchasing ‘Vista Capable’ machines when, in fact, they could obtain only a stripped-down operating system lacking the functionality and features that Microsoft advertised as ‘Vista.’”