technical solutions and commentary

Microsoft engaged a focus group consisting of 140 people and had them use and rate Windows "Mojave". The results where interesting from several aspects…

• 94% of respondents rated Windows Mojave higher than they initially rated Windows Vista
• 0% rated Windows Mojave lower than Windows Vista
• The average post-demo score for Mojave was 8.5 out of 10. with many saying they may have ranked it higher, but wanted more time to play with it themselves.
• the user base: 84% xp users, 22% mac users…

check out video clips of individuals from the recorded focus group at: www.mojaveexperiment.com

oh yeah, and Windows "mojave" is actually Windows vista as a "blind taste test".

Microsoft, which acquired Caligari, has recently made the new version of trueSpace (v7.6) available for FREE. you can now build high-resolution 3-D models for use in games, on your web site, in Virtual Earth and in other projects using this free high-powered software. the software, documentation, and video tutorials are all free as well., along with the community forums. registration is required to download the software and get access to the forums, but that’s hardly any effort for getting TrueSpace for free when it used to be sold for $599.

Get it from http://www.caligari.com/.

Also, check out the post from the Virtual Earth Team Blog on how to integrate your 3-D models with Virtual Earth.

Microsoft launched the "Evalu’08" promotion where you have the chance to win prizes for evaluating Microsoft professional software - either via download or virtual test drive.

Take a test drive for a change to win

Included in the paper:

• Performance Tuning for Server Hardware
• Performance Tuning for Networking Subsystem
• Performance Tuning for Storage Subsystem
• Performance Tuning for Web Servers
• Performance Tuning for File Servers
• Performance Tuning for Active Directory Servers
• Performance Tuning for Terminal Server
• Performance Tuning for Terminal Server Gateway
• Performance Tuning for Virtualization Servers
• Performance Tuning for File Server Workload (NetBench)
• Performance Tuning for Network Workload (NTttcp)
• Performance Tuning for Terminal Server Knowledge Worker Workload
• Performance Tuning for SAP Sales and Distribution Two-Tier Workload

download here: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysperf/Perf_tun_srv.mspx

Microsoft released Service Pack 1 for ISA 2006 Standard and Enterprise. highlights of the service pack changes:

• Configuration Change Tracking—Registers all configuration changes applied to ISA Server to help you assess issues that may occur as a result of these changes.
• Traffic Simulator—Simulates network traffic in accordance with specified request parameters
• Support for integrated NLB mode in all three modes, including unicast, multicast, and multicast with Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP).
• Support for Kerberos Constrained Delegation (KCD) cross-domain authentication. Credentials from users located in a different domain than the ISA Server, but in the same forest, can now be delegated to an internal published Web site by using KCD.

More information:

• ISA 2006 SP1 detailed information is at Microsoft Article 943462
• download ISA 2006 SP1 here.

For those considering migration to the next versions of Windows (client and server) there are a lot of free resources from Microsoft available to help you.

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit Solution Accelerator (MAP)- allow you to scan the devices on your network (using agentless technology) to gather a detailed inventory of the computer. The resulting report will identify what computers can run Windows Vista, Office 2007, and Application virtualization technology. Hardware and driver updates are also recommended per machine in the report. Windows Server can also be assessed for compatibility with Windows Server 2008. If you are looking at data center consolidation, this toolkit will also provide guidance on what servers could be consolidated onto a Windows Hyper-V host.

Microsoft Deployment - is the fourth generation deployment accelerator. It provide a proven methodology, guidance, and tools to help you automate the deployment of Windows XP/Vista, and Office 2007, Windows Server. Using this toolkit you can create "lite-touch" or "zero-touch" deployments for your organization. this should be used after the assessment and planning is complete.

Active Directory Migration Tool (ADMT) - If you are migrating to Active Directory from another Directory Services, or you are consolidating domains in separate forests, you want to use this tool. ADMT simplifies the process of migrating objects in AD. you can migrate users, groups, computers among other features.

Password Export Server - this tool lets you migrate passwords, when performing accounts migrations between different Active Directory environments.

Application Compatibility resources for Windows vista - along with checking your hardware and drivers for vista compatibility using the MAP, you also need to test your applications to make sure they will run under vista. Here are the primary resources for application compatibility.

• TechNEt Application Compatibility and UAC - resource center tools for IT Pros.
• Microsoft Windows Vista Compatibility Center - centralized collection of resources
• MSDN Windows Vista Application Compatibility - for developers
• MSDN Application Compatibility Cookbook - for developers

Microsoft announced the acquisition of PowerSet,a natural language, contextual search company. the technology from Powerset will be incorporated into Live Search. The idea behind PowerSet is to understand the intent and meaning of a search phrase that a person enters in the search engine.

More on what this acquisition means:

• http://blogs.msdn.com/livesearch/
• http://www.powerset.com/blog/
• eWeek blogs: Will Microsoft Make Us Smarter?

Microsoft announced the release of "Microsoft Equipt" a yearly subscription for consumers that includes "Windows Live OneCare" and "Office Home and Student". Also Equipt makes it simple for consumers to install and take advantage of the other Windows Live and Office Live Services.

The estimated retail subscription price is under $70 a year for the entire suite and it can be installed on up to 3 PC’s. That price is nice considering some Consumer PC security suites, which are comparable to "OneCare" by itself cost nearly that much per PC.

I had the opportunity run the product and provide feedback during it’s last two private betas - the product them was code named "albany" - before the Release. I was impressed with the easy installation and configuration of the core products and also the optional Windows Live Add-on services. I ran the suite on Windows Vista and Windows XP SP2 and had great user experience on both platforms. As well, I have been running Onecare for the last two years - apart from the Albany beta - and have seen great new features and services added, and the product improves since the 1.0 release.

I would recommend Equipt to anyone that wants a solid PC security product and productivity suite. You don’t have to be connected to the Internet to use the suite, you get full featured office products, and price is right - especially if you have more than one PC.

The Microsoft Press Release is here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/jul08/07-02EquiptPR.mspx

You can view the Keynotes from the RSA Conference 2008 online, free. Access the keynote list here: http://media.omediaweb.com/rsa2008/keynote_catalog.htm

The Session breakout recordings are not available free, but can be purchases for about $400 if you are interested. Not inexpensive, but cheaper than attending the conference in person. A link to purchase the session recording are on the same page as the keynote list.

The Microsoft Virtualization Team Blog has a post on the Top 5 things to know about Hyper-V by a guest author. The Guest author is a Microsoft MVP of Virtual Machine Technology based in Amsterdam and has extensive Experience with VMWare and Microsoft Virtualization technologies. The basics are:

1. Understand the hypervisor model and performance consequences
2. Understand the use of snapshots
3. How to use Quick Migration
4. Consider System Center Virtual Machine Manager
5. Hyper-V can run on Server Core Installation

You can see the top 5 list with extensive explanations here: http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2008/07/01/Top-5-things-to-know-about-Hyper_2D00_V.aspx