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The Microsoft® Windows® Installer (MSI) is the application installation and configuration service for Windows. These download packages will update the version of Windows Installer on your system to version 4.5.

Full Article – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5a58b56f-60b6-4412-95b9-54d056d6f9f4&DisplayLang=en

The final version of Windows Search 4.0 has been released to the Microsoft Download Center. Windows Search 4.0 updates search in Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Home Server. This release comes after a public Windows Search 4.0 Preview, which was a success thanks to great community participation – with around 300,000 downloads. Since the Preview was released, a number of quality improvements have been made to the product based on feedback provided by the community.

Download Link – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940157

Windows XP is dead … long live Windows XP. You may have heard that as of June 30, you’re no longer able to buy the operating system or obtain support for it. But that isn’t quite the case. In fact, you’ll be able to buy XP on certain mainstream PCs at least until January 31, 2009, and possibly beyond. The cutoff date is even later for some ultra-low-cost notebooks such as those made by Asus: They’ll sell with XP until June 2010. As for technical support, that has a lot of life left as well–officially, Microsoft will provide at least some forms of support until 2014.

Given the confusion about XP’s future, we decided to lay out your options for buying XP and getting support for it beyond the official sunset date for the OS.

Full Article – http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,146330-pg,1/article.html

In March 2007 , when PC World developed its list of the 10 worst PCs of all time, the top two slots caught my eye because we actually used both of them at work. Well, “used” is a strong term. Perhaps I should say that I witnessed these machines, as they spent the majority of their productive lives in a Microsoft employee’s office.

The Mattel-branded Barbie PC ranked as second-worst in PC World’s list. This computer was a vast improvement over those cheap computers in a boring color. Instead, it was a cheap computer in a boring color that you could dress up with pink stickers applied to the case, the monitor, the speakers—you get the idea. It also came with Barbie-themed software pre-installed.

We acquired one of as a test machine, and the poor tester who was stuck with this computer at least had the sense of humor to dive in with mock enthusiasm, applying all the enclosed stickers and decorations to ensure that the computer was installed “as designed.” It was set on a table in clear view from the hallway and anybody who walked past and spotted the bright pink computing disaster was welcome to come on in and play with it.

Full Article – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc510335.aspx?pr=blog

“Velocity” is a distributed in-memory application cache platform for developing scalable, available, and high-performance applications. Using “Velocity,” applications can store any serializable CLR object without concern for where the object gets stored because data is cached across multiple computers. “Velocity” allows copies of data to be stored across the cache cluster, protecting data against failures. It can be configured to run as a service accessed over the network or can be run embedded with the distributed application. “Velocity” includes an ASP.NET session provider object enabling storage of ASP.NET session objects in the distributed cache without having to write to databases, which increases the performance and scalability of ASP.NET applications.

Download Link – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b24c3708-eeff-4055-a867-19b5851e7cd2&DisplayLang=en

“Velocity” is a distributed in-memory application cache platform for developing scalable, available, and high-performance applications. Using “Velocity,” applications can store any serializable CLR object without concern for where the object gets stored because data is cached across multiple computers. “Velocity” allows copies of data to be stored across the cache cluster, protecting data against failures. It can be configured to run as a service accessed over the network or can be run embedded with the distributed application. “Velocity” includes an ASP.NET session provider object enabling storage of ASP.NET session objects in the distributed cache without having to write to databases, which increases the performance and scalability of ASP.NET applications.

Download Link – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b24c3708-eeff-4055-a867-19b5851e7cd2&DisplayLang=en

A selection of screenshots about the Server Configuration can be viewed here.

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/sbs_2008_rc0_shots.asp

One of the most anticipated features for IIS is now available. Yesterday the first preview of the URL re-write module for IIS 7 was launched. It is free for all IIS7 users and available for download x86 and x64.

So what does it do exactly?
The URL Rewrite Module provides a rule-based rewriting mechanism for changing request URL’s before they get processed by IIS. The module supports regular expression based URL rewriting logic or a simpler wildcard-based URL rewriting logic. Rewriting decisions can be based on the URL, HTTP headers and server variables. While the primary purpose of the module is to rewrite URLs, it also has functionality to perform redirects, send custom responses and abort requests based on the logic expressed in the rewrite rules.

Full Article – http://www.msblog.org/2008/06/01/urlrewrite-module-for-iis7/

In Part 1 of my examination of Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), I rhetorically asked whether XP was still “good enough” given the many advantages of its successor, Windows Vista. In many ways, this argument will soon be rendered moot: Beginning on July 1, it won’t be possible to even purchase XP through normal means or acquire the aging OS with a new PC. (For the most part, that is: You will still be able to acquire Windows XP Home Edition with so-called Ultra-Low-Cost PCs, or ULCPCs.)

Full Article – http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/xpsp3_02.asp

Today’s case in point: I just got through reading ExtremeTech’s recent lab-based head-to-head comparison of gaming performance in Windows Vista SP1 and XP SP3. The conclusion was quite a surprise.

Here, I’m going to spoil it for you and go straight to the last page. After publishing the results of two synthetic benchmarks (PCMark05 and 3DMark06) and testing frame rates for three popular games (World in Conflict, Supreme Commander, and Crysis), ExtremeTech concluded.

Full Article – http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=458

Microsoft’s Live@edu, a suite of online tools focused specifically toward education, has now been expanded to include Exchange Labs, which is similar to a hosted Exchange service but with prototype features that are not yet available to the general public. Microsoft told us the move provides new opportunities for channel partners providing services around Live@edu.

Anna Kinney, group product manager for Microsoft Live@edu, told us, “Students are coming to universities with more technology background and experience than ever before. And what I’m hearing from [campus] IT administrators I’ve talked to is that they are continuing to look for more and more ways they can meet students where they are with their level of sophistication — online services, virtual collaboration spaces, online storage — and Microsoft Live@edu brings that capability to campuses in a very quick and seamless way.”

Full Article – http://entmag.com/news/rss.asp?editorialsid=9903#8

A video demonstrating the touch features from Windows 7.

Link – http://blogs.msdn.com/stevecla01/archive/2008/05/28/windows-7-demo.aspx

For all the flexibility server vitalization affords today’s IT departments, there’s one type of flexibility IT managers would love to have but aren’t likely to get: the ability to save money on Microsoft software licenses. Even when carving a physical server into multiple virtual machines, customers using vitalization probably won’t find any way to circumvent the licensing terms set by Microsoft for software running on virtual machines, Forrester analyst Christopher Voce said at Forrester’s IT Forum in Las Vegas Friday.

“If you are getting any benefit from Microsoft’s software, you need to have a license, whether that benefit is for physical machines or virtual machines,” Voce said in a session titled “Microsoft Licensing in a Virtual World.” “You cannot engineer your way around licensing requirements. You can’t use the technology as a way to cut corners around licensing.”

Full article – http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/052308-customers-frustrated-over-microsoft.html?fsrc=netflash-rss

The Windows Home Server team is pleased to announce details of the public beta of Windows Home Server Power Pack 1. This public beta will include the fix for the data corruption bug described in Knowledge Base article #946676 as well as a host of other bug fixes and new capabilities. The Power Pack 1 download is planned to be available in early June and Beta participants are encouraged to sign up and begin preparing now.

Due to the nature of the shared folder data corruption bug (KB #946676) a broad beta test program with sufficient time for feedback is required. The timeline for a final release will depend on this feedback and testing, in order to deliver a fix of the highest quality. To meet our goals for the beta test we need the number of beta testers who are actively using and testing the Power Pack 1 beta to ramp up very quickly. Therefore we are asking beta testers to begin preparing in advance.

Below is a set of instructions to prepare a home server for testing the beta of Power Pack 1:

• Ensure you have a complete backup of all of your files. While internal testing so far indicates that we have fixed the data corruption bug in the beta release, the whole point of a beta test is to validate internal testing. This means there is a risk that our internal tests have not detected all issues. As a beta tester it is your responsibility to ensure that your data is backed up and protected before you install the beta.
• If you are setting up a new home server to run the beta on, download and install the “Windows Home Server RTM Evaluation Edition” from Microsoft Connect.
• Ensure that Windows Updates are enabled for your home server. Your home server must have all the latest updates from Windows Update installed before you install the beta Power Pack 1 update package.

  o To turn on automatic updates:

  § Go to the Windows Home Server Console > Settings > General page.

  § Click On (recommended) in the Windows Update section.

  § Click Update Now to get the latest updates immediately

• Please turn on the Customer Experience Improvement for your home server. The information provided to the team through this program is invaluable in helping us understand how we are doing against our goals.

  o To turn on Customer Experience Improvement:

  § Go to the Windows Home Server Console > Settings > General page.

  § If you agree to opt-in to this program, ensure the Help make Windows Home Server better in the Customer Experience Improvement section is enabled.

• Please ensure that you have a backup of all of your files and data. If your data set is large (the larger the better for testing purposes) this will take a while, so you might want to get started now!

Thank you very much for getting ready to beta test Power Pack 1. More details and installation instructions will be sent within the next 1-2 weeks.

Best wishes,

The Windows Home Server team