First, the feedback, excitement, etc. we’ve been seeing since the launch of Windows 7 last week has been phenomenal! Thank you to all of you for providing your feedback to us to let us know how your Windows 7 experience is going.

Unfortunately, it looks like it is time to have this conversation again though. Over the past several days there have been various posts, etc. across a variety of social media engines stating that some “hack” (be it a person or a procedure) shows that a Windows 7 Upgrade disc can perform a “clean” installation of Windows 7 on a blank drive from a technical perspective. Of course, from the posts I saw, they often forgot to mention a very basic, yet very important piece of information… “Technically possible” does not always mean legal. Let me explain what I mean:

Here are some very basic facts:

1. When you purchase software, you are purchasing the rights to run the software according to the terms of the End User License Agreement (EULA) that comes with that software.
2. When you install that software, you are agreeing to the terms included in the EULA you purchased.
   • a. For instance, in the Windows 7 EULA it states, “By using the software, you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the software. Instead, return it to the retailer for a refund or credit.”
3. When you purchase an Upgrade license, the included EULA states that you must already own a qualifying full license to upgrade from in order to use the Upgrade license, hence the term “Upgrade.”
   • a. For instance, in the Windows 7 EULA it states, “To use upgrade software, you must first be licensed for the software that is eligible for the upgrade.”

To put it simply, here is a graphical representation of what this means:

General Example
Example with Product Names

In stark contrast to:

General Example
Example with Product Names

Full Story here

Windows 7 is now broadly available to the public, and to celebrate this launch Microsoft Hardware is offering deals on some of its innovative products that help make everyday tasks faster and easier with the new operating system. Consumers all over the world are celebrating the availability of Windows 7 by hosting their own launch parties from Oct. 22 through today, and party hosts have been able to receive virtual coupon books to share with their guests, which are filled with exciting offers on several products. These offers are now available to people who didn’t host a party so everyone has the opportunity to take advantage of the deals.

Deals from Microsoft Hardware include discounts on the latest products, including LifeCam Cinema, Wireless Laser Desktop 6000 and Explorer Mini Mouse. Information on these hardware deals can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/windows7/promos/launch-party.

Full Story

Microsoft launched its much anticipated Windows 7 operating system last week to great fanfare. One of the features of Windows 7 is DirectX 11, which is a superset of DirectX 10.1 already used in Vista Service Pack 2.

Windows Vista introduced the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM), which allowed new features such as virtualized video memory and scheduling of concurrent graphics contexts. Windows 7 also uses WDDM, albeit a newer version.
Microsoft had promised that Vista users wouldn't be left in the cold, and would be able to download and use DirectX 11. It included DirectX 11 in a beta version of its "Platform Update" available in September. The final version is now available via Windows Update.
The Platform Update is meant for computers running Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Vista SP2, and is composed of four parts: The Windows Graphics, Imaging, and XPS Library contains DirectX 11, DirectCompute for hardware accelerated parallel computing, and the XPS Library for document printing.

Continue at Source

Microsoft is shutting down its Office Accounting product on November 16.

"We have determined that existing free templates within Office used with Excel was a better option for small businesses, and the Microsoft Dynamics ERP products were appropriate for mid-range organizations," Microsoft said in a note on its Web site.

The move affects all versions of Microsoft Office Accounting products in the U.K. and North America, including Office Accounting Express, Office Accounting Standard, Office Accounting Professional, Office Accounting Professional Plus, Office Accounting 3-user and Small Business Accounting.

Availability ends on November 16, but customers will receive five years of mainstream and extended support through Microsoft's Web site. The product will also continue to operate after the company ceases distribution.

Continue at Source

 

The main phone screen has call-centric icons, plus shortcuts to regular Windows apps that can be categorized into icon-based tabs on the left.

The interface can also switch between landscape and portrait views, and there's a unified look to it all. I'd like to see some extra flair, though...like photos of contacts for incoming and outgoing calls. It's such an obvious thing, so hopefully that'll show up by the time the phone arrives. The xpPhone's maker—China's In Technology Group aka ITG—also says it will support direct access to the Outlook address book for contact management.

 

Continue Windows XP Phone- A First Look at its Touchscreen Interface

MSN Direct, the service that offers traffic, weather, movie times and more to some GPS units, including Garmin Nuvi 780, 880, 885, will go dark on January 1, 2012. The announcement was made with the backdrop of other technologies coming forward, namely the slow promising crawl of broadband connected devices. The service is a step up from the FM based TMC traffic, and has more capability to deliver other services directly to the unit while you drive.

Source MSN Direct to End Service Jan 1, 2012  GPS Lodge - GPSLodge.com

This problem occurs because the Iphlpsvc service stops responding during the upgrade.
Note Other services may also cause a problem in which the upgrade process stops responding at 62%.

To resolve this problem, follow these steps:

1. Restart the computer. Then, your computer will roll back to Windows Vista.
2. Click Start, right-click Computer, and then click Properties.
3. On the Advanced tab, click Environment Variables.
4. Under System variables, click New.
5. Type MIG_UPGRADE_IGNORE_PLUGINS in the Variable name field.
6. Type IphlpsvcMigPlugin.dll in the Variable value field.
7. Click OK three times to close the dialog boxes.
8. Start the upgrade installation again.

What I don't understand is why Microsoft does not fix this during its dynamic update feature that Windows setup has. It can download latest information and changes from the Internet before the upgrade starts. I assume the update mechanism has the ability to set the environment variable for the user. This would be a great help resulting in flawless upgrade. Now a non tech user has to go through these tough settings and that is if that user found this “solution”at all.

This download is an incremental release to Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2. If you do not have Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2, you can also download an evaluation copy from the Microsoft Download Center. Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 provides innovative technologies that help device manufacturers create devices with rich user experiences and connections to Windows PCs, servers, and services.

Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 delivers innovative new technologies to the proven and highly reliable componentized, hard real-time operating system for small footprint devices.

With Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3, device manufacturers can create consumer and enterprise devices that are differentiated by an immersive user interface, a rich browsing experience, and a unique connection to Windows PCs, servers, services, and devices.

By building on the high performance and highly reliable Windows Embedded CE platform, device makers can bring their devices to market quickly and efficiently.

Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 includes the following new features:
• Silverlight for Windows Embedded
The power of Silverlight brought to Windows Embedded CE to create rich applications and user interfaces
• Internet Explorer Embedded
Internet Explorer with panning and zooming capabilities and a customizable interface to optimize the browsing experience on devices
• Adobe Flash Lite
Browser plug-in to render rich media Web sites
• Touch and Gesture
Plug-in engine to enable natural input capabilities and gesture animations
• Connection Manager
Infrastructure technology to manage multiple network interfaces on the device
• Microsoft Office and PDF Viewers
Applications to render Microsoft Office Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Adobe PDF content on the device
• QQ Messenger
Device-side client to connect to popular Instant Messaging service

 

Download details Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3

Microsoft Commerce Server 2009 code name "R2" - October 2009 CTP is the fourth pre-release build of the next version of Commerce Server. Please note that this pre-release build is not feature complete.

Important We invite you to install this pre-release version of Microsoft Commerce Server 2009 code name “R2” into a non-production environment to learn how Commerce Server 2009 “R2” provides an improved business management experience, enhanced cross-channel enablement with multi-tier development and deployment support, and a more streamlined deployment experience. It is recommended that you install this pre-release on a clean machine and consult the Quick Installation Guide for manual steps required.

This release includes several breaking changes that will impact your development environment. Please consult the Commerce Server 2009 "R2" Readme and Quick Installation Guide for more information.

Note: Given the pre-release nature of this release, not all functionality is currently available. The release is for evaluation purposes only and is not intended to be used in a production environment. The October CTP will stop functioning on June 6, 2010.

 

Download details October 2009 CTP

Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2 is a deep-dive work, that'll get you up to speed on how R2's new features and capabilities work, including Hyper-V and RDS virtualization, management, IIS and the new Web application platform and, of course, all the synergistic goodness between Windows Server and Windows 7

Download

Now that Windows 7 is available, are you looking for some security baseline recommendations from the experts? Then here’s another timely release from the Microsoft Solution Accelerators team! Today, new security baselines for Windows® 7 and Windows® Internet Explorer® 8 are available for download.

Over the past few months, the Solution Accelerators team collaborated with Microsoft security experts, multiple government agencies worldwide, and a large community of IT security professionals to develop and test these new security baselines.All of these baselines are free for you to use.

In case you are not familiar with all of the security baselines available for Microsoft products, they ship as part of the Security Compliance Management Toolkit (SCMT) Series. The SCMT helps you to plan, deploy, and monitor security baselines for Windows® operating systems, Internet Explorer, and 2007 Microsoft® Office applications. It contains background information about compliance, and planning advice about how to automate security compliance. It also refers you to other tools and guidance that you can use to establish and deploy a security baseline, and then monitor and maintain compliance with your established configuration.

Where do you start?

At a high level, security compliance consists of four basic steps:

1. Plan how to meet security baseline requirements.
2. Deploy security baseline configurations.
3. Monitor security baseline configurations.
4. Remediate security baseline configurations.

The tools, guidance, and recommendations in the SCMT help you through each step of this process and give you the support to make key decisions about security baseline settings for your specific environment.

Here’s what you get:

• Security guide – The toolkits include new and updated security guides for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003 SP2, Microsoft Office 2007 SP1, and Internet Explorer 8. The guidance provides you with best practices and automated tools to help you plan and deploy your security baselines.
• Attack Surface Reference workbook – A resource that lists the changes introduced as server roles are installed on computers running Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008.
• Security Baseline Settings workbook – A resource that lists all of the prescribed settings for each of the preconfigured security baselines that the guides recommend.
• Security Baseline XML – XML files that allow you to consume the data defined in the security baseline settings workbooks.
• GPOAccelerator tool – A tool that you can use to create all of the Group Policy objects (GPOs) you need to deploy your chosen security configuration. This release also supports creating security configurations on computers not joined to a domain.
• Baseline Compliance Management Overview – The overview discusses best practices on how to monitor security baselines for Windows operating systems, Office applications, and Internet Explorer 8.
• DCM Configuration Pack User Guide – A step-by-step prescriptive user guide about how to use Configurations Packs with the DCM feature in Configuration Manager 2007 R2.
• DCM Configuration Packs – Configuration Packs that provide prescriptive security information, which you can use to check the compliance of systems in your environment.

What should you do next?

• Learn more about the Security Compliance Management Toolkit Series.
• Download the Security Compliance Management Toolkit Series.
• Find other Windows 7 Solution Accelerators here: Windows Desktop Solution Accelerators.
• The Solution Accelerators team is developing a new tool called the Security Compliance Manager. It will help you manage your security and compliance process for the most widely used Microsoft technologies. Join the Beta review program and provide your feedback on the features you want most.
• Get all the step by step guides, whitepapers, how to’s and screen casts on deploying and managing Windows 7 in your environment from the Springboard Series on TechNet.

Now Available Security Baselines for Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8 - Springboard Series Blog

The Active Directory Rights Management Services Bulk Protection Tool is a command-line tool for bulk decrypting AD RMS protected files or bulk encrypting multiple files to a rights policy template.

On Windows XP, you must first install Rights Management Services Client with Service Pack 2 and .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2.
Outlook 2007 is required to be installed and running for operating on Outlook PSTs.

Download AD RMS Bulk Protection Tool

• All the updated technologies in the Platform Update for Windows Server 2008 are already included in Windows Server 2008 R2. The Platform Update for Windows Server 2008 is not required for Windows Server 2008 R2.
• To apply the Platform Update for Windows Server 2008, you must have Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 installed.

 

• All the updated technologies in the Platform Update for Windows Vista are already included in Windows 7. The Platform Update for Windows Vista is not required for Windows 7.
• To apply the Platform Update for Windows Vista, you must have Windows Vista Service Pack 2 installed.

Download and Description of the Platform Update for Windows Server 2008 and the Platform Update for Windows V

The RDC 7.0 client can be used to connect to legacy terminal servers or to remote desktops as before. However, the new features that are mentioned in this article are available only when the client connects to a remote computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.

New features in the RDC 7.0 client update

The RDC 7.0 client update contains the following new features.

Web Single Sign-On (SSO) and Web forms-based authentication

Remote Desktop (RD) Web Access now uses forms-based authentication to improve the user experience. Web SSO makes sure that after a user is logged on, no additional passwords are required for RD Gateway, RD Session Host servers and RemoteApp programs.
For security, Web SSO requires remote applications to be signed using a certificate from a trusted issuer.

Access to personal virtual desktops by using RD Connection Broker

Users can access personal virtual desktops when they use the new Remote Desktop Virtualization Host in Windows Server 2008 R2. Personal desktops are assigned to users on a one-to-one basis and maintain state over time.

Access to virtual desktop pools by using RD Connection Broker

Users can access virtual desktop pools when they use the new Remote Desktop Virtualization Host in Windows Server 2008 R2. Pooled desktops are shared between multiple users, and all changes a user makes are typically rolled back when the user logs off.

Status & disconnect system tray icon

A single system tray icon enables users to see all of their remote connections. The user can disconnect all or individual connections that use this icon. The icon appears only when opening RDP connections which are associated with a RemoteApp and Desktop Connection feed.

RD Gateway-based device redirection enforcement

In Windows Server 2008, it was possible for non-Microsoft Remote Desktop clients to override the gateway device redirection controls. In Windows Server 2008 R2, device redirection settings are defined in RD Gateway and can be configured not to be overridden.

RD Gateway system and logon messages

System and logon messages can be added to RD Gateway and displayed to the remote desktop user. System messages can be used to inform users of server maintenance issues such as shutdowns and restarts. Logon messages can be used to display a logon notice to users before they gain access to remote resources.

RD Gateway background authorization & authentication

Background authentication and authorization requests are performed after a configured session timeout is reached. Sessions for users whose property information has not changed are not affected, and authentication and authorization requests are sent in the background.

RD Gateway idle & session time-outs

Configurable idle and session time-outs with RD Gateway provide better control of users who connect through RD Gateway. An idle time-out lets the user reclaim resources that are used by inactive user sessions without affecting the user's session or data. This helps free up resources on the RD Gateway server.

NAP remediation with RD Gateway

NAP remediation allows you to manage remote clients by updating them with the latest software updates and settings. This helps keep remote clients in compliance with network security policies.

Windows Media Player redirection

Windows Media Player Redirection enables content hosted in Windows Media Player to be redirected to the client for decoding on users’ computers. This improves the quality of the video and makes sure that video and audio are always in sync. This works for both full Windows Media Player and Windows Media Player controls hosted in Web pages.

Bidirectional audio

You can redirect audio recording devices such as microphones on the client computer. This is ideal for applications such as Windows 7 voice recognition, and applications that record audio.

Multiple monitor support

In Windows Vista and in Windows Server 2008, Terminal Services supported only monitor spanning. Remote Desktop Services now includes multiple monitor support for up to 16 monitors, and works for both Remote Desktop and RemoteApp programs.
Note For connections with multiple monitor support enabled, AeroGlass support is currently not supported and will be turned off.

Enhanced video playback

Bitmap acceleration improves the remote display of graphics-intensive applications such as PowerPoint, Flash, and Silverlight.

Download  and Description of the Remote Desktop Connection 7.0 client update for Remote Desktop Services (RDS)

It's not powered by Windows Mobile. It uses Windows CE, but each and every Apple store in the world was using a handheld device with scanner powered by Microsoft software. No more!
Apple is in a process of switching to iPod touch with a bar code scanner attachment. Apple was using these mobile point of sale (POS) terminals powered by Windows CE software because simply Microsoft had (still has?) a dominating position in enterprise-class handheld devices. However these devices were clunky, unreliable and simply not good looking enough for shiny shiny Apple stores.

While in past Microsoft was underlining that Windows handhelds are focused on professional applications and enterprises, clearly it was a mistake. Having millions over millions of consumer users means that mobile operating system of Apple mobile devices is very stable. Recently Apple released technical documentation and hardware components that are used to develop accessories that interact with iPod touch and iPhone so probably there will be more and more hardware accessories for these devices.

Source: msmobiles.com - Apple dumps Windows handhelds