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For homo sapiens, getting older is painful. Take me for example. Nine hours on a plane never bothered me when I was in my 20s with a rubber backbone. But a couple of weeks out from birthday # 43 and one cross-country airplane ride translates into a sudden spinal meltdown that has me lying in bed, rigid as a vampire, popping painkillers like Christmas chocolates.

Fortunately, it’s not the same thing for software. In the life of Windows Server, today marks general availability of public beta for the new Windows Server 2008 R2-and, for me personally, I’ve never had my geeky mitts on a better version. The new release incorporates a host of new features and capabilities that I hope you’ll check out; the code is as stable a beta as I’ve ever seen and combined with the beta of Windows 7 you’ll be able to evaluate not just a bevy of new server-side capabilities, but a new level of synergy between server and client operating systems, too.

Full Article – http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2009/01/07/announcing-windows-server-2008-r2-beta.aspx

In the two weeks or so since I received the Windows 7 Beta, I’ve been trying to come up with something meaningful to say about the software and hardware compatibility of this new system, since that will be a major concern facing potential upgraders. The problem, however, is that Windows 7 Beta compatibility is hard to describe in a pithy manner, despite the fact that I’ve completely migrated virtually all of my PCs to this OS. It’s all over the map, mostly good, but with some odd lapses.

Full Article – http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/win7_beta_compat.asp

In yet another indicator as to the progress of Windows 7, the Tech ARP site reported that Microsoft plans to allow PC makers to offer customers who buy Windows Vista machines as of July 1 free upgrades to Windows 7 once it ships.

It looks as if Tech ARP may have obtained internal Microsoft information on its Windows 7 Technical Guarantee program. The Web site says that Microsoft provided PC partners with a first pass draft of its Tech Guarantee documentation on December 10.

Full Article – http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1791

It’s not much of a secret at this point, but CEO Steve Ballmer is expected to announce official availability of the closed Windows 7 Beta 1 release during his Consumer Electronics Show keynote address on January 7. The official (non-Torrented) Beta 1 bits should be available to pre-approved Windows 7 Beta 1 testers later Wednesday night or early on January 8.

Ditto with Windows 7 Server, a k a Windows Server 2008 R2. The private Beta 1 release of that product is scheduled for late January 7/early January 8, I’m hearing.

Full Article – http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1792

With 2008 drawing to close, Microsoft is at a crossroads between its past and the cloud computing future. But that doesn’t mean that the software giant’s most traditional products won’t continue to impact us in the year ahead. Today, I’d like to take a short side trip and look both back at 2008 and ahead to the year that’s coming.

First, let’s reflect a bit on the year that’s now coming to a close. I primarily cover Microsoft, of course, so I will focus on what I consider to be the top 10 most important Microsoft product releases of the year. Here they are, in alphabetical order.

Full Article – http://www.winsupersite.com/server/retro_2008.asp

I’ve been putting Windows 7 Beta candidate builds through their paces for over a month now, and with build 7000 finally making its way into the hands of testers around the world, I thought it might be time to highlight a few of the more interesting changes that have appeared or evolved since Microsoft issued its M3 (“milestone 3”) release back in October. In no particular order…

Full Article – http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/win7_beta_notes.asp

It’s been over a year since Citrix first demoed “Project Apollo,” their solution for remoting Vista Aero glass to clients. Displaying Vista Aero glass over a remote display protocol like ICA or RDP is complex, because Aero requires a GPU to render the complex graphics. (It’s not as simple as just enabling the “themes” service like when you wanted to add the Windows XP Luna experience to a Windows 2003 Terminal Server.) This is essentially impossible in a multi-user Terminal Server enviroment, since each session would require its own GPU. (Sure, maybe you could pop a graphics card into your server, but best case that’d just give you Aero in a single session–and that’s assuming that you had a remote display protocol that could support it.) Microsoft is rumored to be working on an Aero remoting solution for Terminal Services based on the Calista technology they acquired earlier this year, but so far nothing official has been announced.

Full Article – http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/brianmadden/archive/2008/12/29/citrix-project-apollo-aero-directx-and-opengl-via-ica.aspx

How does one review a supposedly new version of a product that they have, in reality, already been using for months? It’s not easy, believe it or not: The Beta version of Windows 7 (build 7000) that Microsoft will later deliver to tech beta testers and then, in January, to the public, is nothing more than a very finely tweaked version of the various post-M3 (Milestone 3, or build 6801–see my lengthy overview of that build) builds I’ve been using since October. In fact, there is almost no difference at all between this version of Windows 7 and M3, assuming you’ve enabled all the hidden M3 features using Rafael Rivera’s “Blue Badge” tool.

Full Article – http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/win7_beta.asp

Microsoft on Monday warned customers that attack code has been released targeting a critical vulnerability in older versions of its widely used SQL Server database software, and urged users to apply a temporary workaround.

The bug was first reported to Microsoft last April by an Austrian security consulting company, SEC Consult. But the firm apparently grew tired of waiting for Microsoft to decide when or whether it would release a patch, disclosed the flaw two weeks ago and published proof-of-concept exploit code.

Full Article – http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/12/23/Microsoft_warns_of_critical_bug_in_SQL_Server_1.html?source=rss&url=http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/12/23/Microsoft_warns_of_critical_bug_in_SQL_Server_1.html

A couple of weeks ago, while lamenting Microsoft’s poorly-articulated Previous Versions story, I alluded to an earlier post in which I detailed my attempts to reproduce Mac OS X’s “Time Machine” feature under Windows Vista.

At the time (mid-late October 2007) I found myself stymied by a lack of configurability in Vista’s File Backup utility. Specifically, there was no way to directly specify which files or folders to backup – only highly generalized categories like “Documents” or “Music.” Worse still, Vista File Backup made a habit of skipping files it considered to be part of the operating system, including the myriad .aspx files I had created as part of my web development projects.

Full Article – http://www.pcworld.com/article/155959/windows7_backup.html?tk=rss_news

A couple of weeks ago, while lamenting Microsoft’s poorly-articulated Previous Versions story, I alluded to an earlier post in which I detailed my attempts to reproduce Mac OS X’s “Time Machine” feature under Windows Vista.

At the time (mid-late October 2007) I found myself stymied by a lack of configurability in Vista’s File Backup utility. Specifically, there was no way to directly specify which files or folders to backup – only highly generalized categories like “Documents” or “Music.” Worse still, Vista File Backup made a habit of skipping files it considered to be part of the operating system, including the myriad .aspx files I had created as part of my web development projects.

Full Article – http://www.pcworld.com/article/155959/windows7_backup.html?tk=rss_news

Microsoft’s developers missed a critical bug in Internet Explorer because they weren’t properly trained and didn’t have the right testing tools, a noted proponent of the company’s secure code development process acknowledged last week.

The bug, which Microsoft patched last week with an emergency update, had gone undetected for at least nine years.

Full Article – http://bink.nu/news/microsoft-explains-how-it-missed-critical-ie-bug.aspx

A few weeks before Microsoft unveiled Windows 7 at the 2008 Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles, I gave a presentation about the company’s next operating system for the Boston Area Windows Server Users Group. That presentation was the subject of the previous installment in this series, and with the benefit of hindsight, it may be useful to briefly look back on that presentation and see how its suppositions and predictions have held up over time.

Full Article – http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/win7_shipping_05.asp

Windows XP has been granted yet another reprieve by Microsoft.

The software maker had originally planned to put the ageing operating system to pasture on 31 January 2009, but a “flexible inventory program” means system builders will now have until 30 May 2009 to get hold of their copies.

Full Article – http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/244311/xp-dodges-another-death-sentence.html

Microsoft released today SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 (SP3). SQL 2005 version should now be 9.00.4035.

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 (SP3) contains hotfixes that were included in cumulative update packages for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 from cumulative update package 1 to cumulative update package 9, and fixes to issues that have been reported through our customer feedback platforms. It also includes supportability enhancements and issues that have been reported through Windows Error Reporting.

Related links:

• What’s New in SQL Server 2005 SP3
• List of the bugs that are fixed in SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 (KB 955706)

Downloads:

• Download SQL Server 2005 SP3
• Feature Pack for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 – December 2008