client – TechVirtuoso

Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 coming February 22nd

February 10th, 2011 at 10:45 AM 2 Comments Michael Stanclift

Microsoft has officially announced that Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 will be released to the general public on February 22, 2011.

Volume License customers, TechNet and MSDN subscribers will get access to the download on February 16. OEM and other Microsoft partners got access to the bits yesterday.

For server admins, one of the more interesting features of Service Pack 1 is Dynamic Memory. From the Windows Server Blog:

Our first new feature, Dynamic Memory, takes Windows Server’s Hyper-V feature to a whole new level. Dynamic Memory lets you increase virtual machine density with the resources you already have—without sacrificing performance or scalability. In our lab testing, with Windows 7 SP1 as the guest operating system in a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) scenario, we have seen a 40% increase in density from Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM to SP1. We achieved this increase simply by enabling Dynamic Memory.

For desktop users, RemoteFX will be a boost for users who frequently RDP into their clients, or are running desktops in virtual machines.

RemoteFX is an exciting technology that lets you virtualize the Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) on the server side and deliver next-generation rich media and 3D user experiences for VDI.

Windows 7 SP1 coming Tuesday

January 14th, 2011 at 9:44 AM 4 Comments Michael Stanclift

Get ready to start patching systems, according to Tom Warren at Winrumors, Windows 7 Service Pack 1 will be released on Tuesday and is being pushed out for last minute testing to OEMs today. Tom explains:

In a blog posting on Thursday, Microsoft’s Russian Windows Virtualization team confirmed that the final build of Windows 7 SP1 is 7601.17514.win7sp1_rtm.101119-1850. The Russian site also explains that the Service Pack will be available publicly today. Microsoft generally releases Service Packs on a Tuesday so it’s not clear whether the Russian technet post is referring to a public release to select partners or a full web release. WinRumors understand the software giant will ship the release to its OEM partners today but that a web release is expected at a later date.

Along with Windows 7, Microsoft will likely release Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2 at the same time, as the code base is the same and testing for that update has been inline with the client version.

Trillian for Android beta released, continues its multi-platform/multi-protocol domination

August 20th, 2010 at 10:01 AM 7 Comments Michael Stanclift

The good folks over at Cerulean Studios have released the first public beta of their Trillian instant messaging client for Android. Having recently dumped my Nexus One to go back to iPhone 4, I have not had a chance to test this software, but knowing the quality that is the entire Trillian platform, I’m going to tell you to go download and install this client anyway.

They’ve engineered Trillian for Android to run on devices running at least Android 1.6, which means your 2-year-old G1 won’t be left behind! At the same time, users with the latest and greatest phones can enjoy shiny high-res graphics!

For anyone who lives on multiple IM networks (AIM, Facebook Chat, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ) Trillian is one of the original multiprotocol clients, having lived through the times when they’d frequently be clicked off AOL’s network. I’ve been using Trillian for Windows forever (their new Windows 5.0 beta is out, and it’s awesome as well) and have been using Trillian for iPhone since the day it was released.

Cerulean Studios have done a fantastic job of making sure their clients are native to the environment they’re running on, yet are all tied together by their Astra cloud platform. They also have clients for Blackberry and Mac OS available, as well as an awesome secure web client for getting to your IM’s on public computers. For anyone who is multi-platform as well as multi-protocol, Trillian is the best choice to keep your instant messaging contacts in sync.