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January 7, 2010 :
By Michael Stanclift ·
Category : CES
If you couldn’t get a chance to watch the Microsoft CES pre-show keynote last night, you didn’t miss much. If you were actually at the event, I feel sorry for you, it must have been hard to stay awake.
After starting late due to power issues (which fried one of the Microsoft demo units on stage) the keynote got off to a rather boring start with Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, giving various statistics about how well recently released products like Windows 7 and Bing are doing. For the first half hour, the audio stream for the webcast was so bad, it kept cutting out and then required constant volume adjustment. Note to Microsoft, hire a decent sound engineer next time.
It was all pretty much downhill from there. The much discussed “Courier” tablet that many in the tech press was excited they would announce never came, and there were no details about Windows Mobile 7… at all. Only “we’ll have more about mobile at Mobile World Congress.” So overall, the keynote failed to deliver much of anything that we didn’t know or have not seen already. But, here is a breakdown of what was covered, after the break.
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January 6, 2010 :
By Michael Stanclift ·
Category : CES
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Robbie Bach, president of the Entertainment & Devices Division, will deliver the pre-show keynote address in Las Vegas to kick off the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES). You’ll be able to watch the keynote live starting tonight, at approximately 6:30 p.m. PST. If you can’t make it, check back here tomorrow for a break down of what was covered. Expected topics include Windows Mobile 7, as well as a possible announcement about a new tablet developed with HP. Even if they don’t cover that, you can at least watch Ballmer jump around the stage for a while.
Take a trip over to the Microsoft CES website tonight to be able to watch their live stream.
Those of you who know me, know that I have been an avid BlackBerry proponent for many years. I held fast to the opinion that BlackBerry coupled with Microsoft Exchange was the solution for business mobile communications. Be it BlackBerry Enterprise Server or Microsoft ActiveSync, I held steadfast in my opinion that nothing could perform as well or better in maintaining perfect harmony between my desktop, my laptop, my phone, and anywhere access to my information. I am here to say, that era has ended. A moment of silence, please. Now that the mourning is over, let me tell you the changes I’ve made, how, and why.
First, let me say that I had not been looking to leave the BlackBerry/Exchange family, but I was holding out for a full screen BlackBerry with a physical keyboard, a slider if you will. Those of you who follow mobile devices closely, especially those who follow BlackBerry hardware, are well aware of the numerous design concept drawings, mock-ups, etc. of a BlackBerry slider that have been floating around for at least a year. Never revealing just exactly when we would see such a device, RIM has only been willing to confirm that several design options have been considered. This secrecy is nothing unusual among device manufacturers, but the lack of information and an opportunity provided by a competitor presents a precarious position, and, in this case, caused a long time RIM fan to jump ship.
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September 17, 2009 :
By Michael Stanclift ·
Category : News
Windows administrators, mark your calendar for the drop dead date to get those old servers upgraded. Microsoft has outlined July 13, 2010 as the date Windows 2000 will no longer be supported by Microsoft. There are already a variety of security threats in the wild where Microsoft has said they will not be releasing updates to protect Windows 2000 because they say it is not feasible. After next July, no support or new updates (except for online self-help) will be available.
These changes were posted by Crissy House, the Windows Server operations manager, on their team’s blog.
House also announced that there would be no more service packs for Windows 2003 or Windows 2003 R2. Both 2003 releases will move to extended-support on July 13, 2010, which means only security updates will be published for these operating systems. Non-security hotfixes developed during this phase will be provided only to customers who enroll in Extended Hotfix Support (EHS).
Microsoft released Windows Server 2000 in February 2000, Windows Server 2003 was released in April 2003 and Windows Server 2003 R2 was released in February 2006. In February 2008, Microsoft released Windows Server 2008 which was developed along side Windows Vista, but will quickly supplant it with Windows Server 2008 R2 which was developed along side Windows 7 and will be released along side the client OS on October 22, 2009.
Windows Server 2008 R2 will only be avaliable in x86-64 and Itanium editions, so administrators needing to run 32-bit implementations of 2008 will need to use the original 2008 release.
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August 27, 2009 :
By Shane Pitman ·
Category : News
Microsoft has announced the release to manufacturing, RTM, of its System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, and scheduled general availability via volume licensing for October 1. System Center Virtual Machine Manager is a unified, multi-vendor management solution for the virtualized datacenter that helps enable centralized administration of physical and virtual assets, increases server utilization, and provides dynamic resource optimization of virtual IT infrastructure.
The initial VMM 2008 release entered beta in the second quarter of 2008, roughly 8 months after the release of VMM 2007. The initial release of VMM 2008 introduced support for technologies like Hyper-V and VMware ESX. Now, a little over a year later, VMM 2008 R2 extends these capabilities to include:
Live Migration — for moving virtual machines between hosts with no downtime
Additional enhanced migration support for SAN migration in and out of clusters
Multiple virtual machines per LUN using Clustered Share Volumes
Hot add of virtual machine storage
Functionality to migrate storage for running VMs
iSCSI target and SAN-based migration across clusters
Template-based rapid provisioning
Maintenance mode to automate the evacuation of VMs off host machines,
This, more then likely, last major update for Microsoft’s e-mail server comes a week after the final beta on Exchange Server 2010 and is said to provide the foundation for transitioning to the upcoming, final release of the 2010 version.
The Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 can be downloaded from this page for free and includes the following:
Enhanced Auditing – New Exchange auditing events and audit log repository enable Exchange administrators to more easily audit the activities occurring on their Exchange servers. It allows the right balance of granularity, performance, and easy access to audited events via a dedicated audit log repository.
Exchange Volume Snapshot Backup Functionality – A new backup plug-in has been added to the product that will enable customers to create Exchange backups when a backup is invoked through the Windows Server 2008 Backup tool.
Dynamic Active Directory Schema Update and Validation – The dynamic AD schema update and validation feature allows for future schema updates to be dynamic deployed as well as proactively preventing conflicts whenever a new property is added to the AD schema. Once this capability is deployed it will enable easier management of future schema updates and will prevent support issues when adding properties that don’t exist in the AD schema.
Public Folder Quota Management – SP2 enables a consistent way to manage quotas by improving the current PowerShell cmdlets to perform quota management tasks.
Centralized Organizational Settings – SP2 introduces new PowerShell option that enable centralized management of many of the Exchange organization settings.
Named Properties cmdlets – SP2 enables Exchange administrators to monitor their named property usage per database.
New User Interface for Managing Diagnostic Logging – SP2 enables Exchange administrators to easily configure and manage diagnostic logging from within the Exchange Management Console.
Microsoft has begun pushing out Windows Internet Explorer 8 via Windows Server Update Services, as it announced back in June that it would start doing. The package is published as an update rollup, so WSUS administrators who have their systems set to automatically approve such packages will want to be careful after synchronizing if they’re not ready for a full IE8 deployment.
Only systems with Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008 will be able to upgrade to Internet Explorer 8. Systems still running Windows 2000 will be stuck on Internet Explorer 6.
Internet Explorer 8 was released to the general public in March 2009.
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August 26, 2009 :
By Michael Stanclift ·
Category : News
If you thought Office 2010 was more than just ribbon improvements, you’re in for a surprise.
Microsoft has released, through the PowerPoint Team Blog, a new video and some details about some of the updates PowerPoint 2010 will be receiving. The team says this will be the biggest visual update to the product in the last 10 years. PowerPoint’s graphics engine has been rebuilt to take advantage of 3D accelerated graphics cards by using DirectX. Through hardware acceleration, they’re able to add new transition and animation effects. They’ve also added a new timelines UI, animations choreography and painter.
Another feature which was highlighted last week, is a new Protected View, which allows PowerPoint and other Office applications to run in a sandbox when downloading and opening presentations from the Internet. This allows potential malicious code to be isolated and contained within the file. More information on that feature can be found over at the Office 2010 Engineering Blog.
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August 22, 2009 :
By Frank Owen ·
Category : News
Microsoft is running a launch campaign for Windows 7, Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010. The campaign is called “The New Efficiency” and is focused toward IT Professionals and Developers. There are three different tracks that you can take at this event, Windows 7, Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010.
There are 25 events across the country so I am sure there is one near you. Sorry international folks, Microsoft will not be holding similar events abroad.
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August 16, 2009 :
By Michael Stanclift ·
Category : News
Thursday, Microsoft announced that the next version of the Office suite for Apple OS X would include Outlook, replacing Entourage as the bundled mail client.
“It is an exciting time for the MacBU with updates to our current products and the first public announcement about the next version of Office for Mac. For several years we have focused on providing the best Microsoft Exchange client for the Mac, and the Web Services Edition delivers that today for Entourage users,” said Eric Wilfrid, general manager for the Mac Business Unit at Microsoft. (more…)
DonRSmith: RT @MacHeist: Don’t forget to join our Facebook group… you never know when we might post something “special” there. ;) http://www.facebo ...
11 Mar 2010
fowen: @Scobleizer You probably already know this, but on TweetDeck there is a geo location icon for your tweet as well.
11 Mar 2010
fowen: @MSSpringboard Avaya implementation to replace an aging Siemens phone switch for 2 call centers. Not fun at all.
11 Mar 2010
Marshalus: My poor doggies have been locked away in their houses almost nonstop since 7am, they're wild things now, no chance for me to sleep soon. #fb
10 Mar 2010
If you couldn’t get a chance to watch the Microsoft CES pre-show keynote last night, you didn’t miss much. If you were actually at the event, I feel sorry for you, it must have been hard to stay awake.
Windows administrators, mark your calendar for the drop dead date to get those old servers upgraded. Microsoft has outlined July 13, 2010 as the date Windows 2000 will no longer be supported by Microsoft. There are already a variety of security threats in the wild where Microsoft has said they will not be releasing updates to protect Windows 2000 because they say it is not feasible. After next July, no support or new updates (except for online self-help) will be available.
