technical solutions and commentary
TechEd is now two seperate back to back conferences. TechEd for Developers and TechEd for IT Professionals. These are being held in Orlando, FL.
Go to the Microsoft TechEd 2008 site to get more information and to register.
SQL Server 2008 Release to Manufacturing (RTM) date moved from Q2 to Q3 2008. On January 25th, the Data Platform Insider Blog on TechNet Blogs posted the updated roadmap information. The reason cited for the new release timeframe is because the “goal is to deliver the highest quality product possible and we simply want to use the time to meet the high bar that you, our customers, expect.”
This does not affect the Joint Launch event which is scheduled for February 27, 2008. Even with the new product release roadmap, the product is still on track to release in the planned timeframe of 24-36 months after the release of SQL Server 2005.
From the “Microsoft Acquires Calista Technologies” post on the Terminal Services Team Blog…
Calista’s products dramatically improve the end-user experience of 3D and multimedia delivery for Microsoft multimedia applications, virtualized desktop deployments, and server-hosted virtualized desktops or applications using Windows Terminal Services. Their technologies support all file and streaming media type available, and optimize Microsoft’s widely available Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to reduce the network bandwidth requirements for remote display of rich media content; thus, remote workers can receive a modern Windows desktop experience without the need for dedicated hardware.
I just posted a detailed Windows Vitsa Editions Features Table chart to the “Technical Guides” area on the blog. The chart takes 4 pages to compare the fetures in Windows Vista - Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate. It also page 5 has the ‘channel’ information, or how you can buy them - Retail, Volume License, OEM, Etc. This is a great resource if you are wondering why you should concider one edition over another or you are a reseller and need a quick chart to show customers.
Software management has become a big topic. Companies and government agencies have seen the need to keep control of software assests and determine if they have too little or too many licenses. There many tools that can be licensed and installed locally or hosted in an attempt to get a handle on the organizations software.
One of the Online Services I am framiliar with is the System Center Online - Asset Inventory Service provided by Microsoft. This service has a software catalog of over 420,000 software applications and is being expanded continually. This software catalog was origionally obtained through an acquisition of a company called AssetMetrix. If you are running Microsoft SMS SP2 or Configuration Manager, you have access to this catalog within these on-premise management tools.
If you do not have a great on-premise solution, you should take a look at the hosted offering from Microsoft. The January 2008 edition of TechNet Magazine had an article about this service. You can learn more about it here.
Howard Hughes, one intersting person. He was known by the public as:
After reading about the personal life of Howard Hughes, there was a lot more to him. He had a great business mind and knew how to accomplish the goals he set in life. Unfortunately, he had no idea how to deal with people - especially family - and it got worse the older he got. He also had an out of control phobia of germs, and was on the working on the line between reality and insanity for the mojority of his life.
When people would think of Howard Hughes, they no doubt thought of what he was publicly known for. If anyone knew wat his personal life was like, they wouldn’t trade places with him for anything. This book investigates the private life of Hughes and for those looking past the surface has a powerful lesson.
A great book if you like to read biographies.
This book is one of the most facinating books I have read. While it is not releated to tech, it’s still a great read.
It goes through one mans journey in life of working for major US contractors which are engaged by the world bank and government to work with developing countires in building a economic “growth” plan. This in itself is not to interesting, but when he reveals the inner-workings of the collaboration between the US government and big busineess it gets facinating. That’s all I’m going to give away.
Check out the book from your local library or pick it up at a book store, its worththe investment in time to read.
Microsoft continues to update it’s tools and guidance around deploying it new products. Currently available in beta is the ‘Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator’ which is built to assess a client and server environments for possible upgrade to the lastest respective OS’s. There are other great resources consistently released for planning and evaluating ’upgradability’ to Vista and Office 2007. After using Vista and Office 2007 for over 1 year, I definately prefer it over my previous Windows XP and Office 2003 machine.
It’s been a long time since the last Service Pack was released for Windows XP. But now you can now download Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Canidate. Befire you install SP3 RC review the Release Notes here. When you are ready to test the software (it’s recommended to test it only on non-production systems in your environment), download the Release Canidate for XP SP3 here.
The Microsoft Office Team has released a Calendar Print Assistant for Outlook 2007. IT allows you to customize your calendar informaiton and layout for printing. It allows you to print different views of your calendar including customizing your schedule and printing it in the traditional hanging wall calendar complete with a photo. See the details of the Print Assistant and download it directly from Microsoft.
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