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Lots of people who are testing the various Windows 7 builds have already reported that Windows 7 is faster and snappier than Windows Vista, and some even say that it approaches Windows XP. Apparently, web browsers in particular will benefit from running on Windows 7 instead of Windows Vista SP2. BetaNews ran tests of all the major browsers on both Vista SP2 and Windows 7, and concluded that in general, browsers are round and about 12%-18% faster on 7 than on Vista.

The tests were performed using a fully up-to-date Windows Vista SP2 installation and the Windows 7 release candidate on the same machine. The results show that when looking at stable releases, all browsers show a performance boost when run on Windows 7 as compared to running on Windows Vista SP2, with Safari 3 leading the pack with an 18% speed increase, and Opera 9.64 coming in last with only a 2% speed increase.

Full Article – http://www.osnews.com/story/21583/Windows_7_Gives_Browsers_Speed_Improvement

Microsoft has released a standalone installer for Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2 today.
The software giant posted some things to know about the service packs last month, one of the warnings is if “vLite” was used to customize your Windows Vista installation, you may have removed required system components which prevent Service Pack 2 from installing. Microsoft has a workaround for this issue.
Microsoft is expected to post the bits to Windows Update in the coming weeks but if you are eager to install SP2 today then the download links are listed below.

Download: Vista SP2/Server 2008 SP2 32 bit
Download: Vista SP2/Server 2008 SP2 64 bit

Our Virtual Switch got smarter in Windows Server 2008 R2. In Windows Server 2008, VMs are susceptible to MAC spoofing. MAC spoofing is where a (generally) malicious machine pretends to be another machine on a network (there are legitimate applications which do spoof MAC addresses though – Network Load Balancing being one such example).

A MAC (Media Access Control) address in physical NICs is burnt in, although it can usually be over-ridden. In a virtual machine environment, there’s no physical counterpart, so we have to “make up” our own addresses. In fact, that can sometimes cause other networking issues which I talked about last year.

Full Article – http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2009/05/21/new-in-hyper-v-windows-server-2008-r2-part-2-mac-spoofing.aspx

Our Virtual Switch got smarter in Windows Server 2008 R2. In Windows Server 2008, VMs are susceptible to MAC spoofing. MAC spoofing is where a (generally) malicious machine pretends to be another machine on a network (there are legitimate applications which do spoof MAC addresses though – Network Load Balancing being one such example).

A MAC (Media Access Control) address in physical NICs is burnt in, although it can usually be over-ridden. In a virtual machine environment, there’s no physical counterpart, so we have to “make up” our own addresses. In fact, that can sometimes cause other networking issues which I talked about last year.

Full Article – http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2009/05/21/new-in-hyper-v-windows-server-2008-r2-part-2-mac-spoofing.aspx

Ever wonder how we build Visual Studio and the .NET Framework? I mean literally. You know, the build process that spits out a product at the other end?  Well I sure did and it’s not just hitting F5 people . In this interview I sit down with Matt Gertz, frequent VB blogger and also the guy in charge of the builds in Developer Division (he has a long title, but I forget what it is ). He explains how the build and test processes work on a team of two thousand people all on Team Foundation Server. I must say it’s pretty darn impressive. Many thanks to Matt for taking time out of his busy schedule to do this interview!

Full Article – http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/funkyonex/How-We-Do-It-Building-the-Visual-Studio-Product-Line/

Go ‘n get it! Microsoft’s My Phone service is now ready for all Windows Mobile users to test. The beta service syncs any Windows Mobile 6+ phone to Microsoft’s 200MB per person cloud. That includes contacts, calendars, tasks, photos, text messages, music, videos, and more. In essence, anything on the My Phone website is on the phone and vice versa. Hey free is free and this is a goodie.

Go ‘n get it! Microsoft’s My Phone service is now ready for all Windows Mobile users to test. The beta service syncs any Windows Mobile 6+ phone to Microsoft’s 200MB per person cloud. That includes contacts, calendars, tasks, photos, text messages, music, videos, and more. In essence, anything on the My Phone website is on the phone and vice versa. Hey free is free and this is a goodie.

Exchange Server 2010 includes a new unified platform for both high availability and site resilience that is very different from the high availability model and solutions provided in previous versions. Exchange 2010 includes significant changes at its core that integrate high availability deep in its architecture, making it even less costly and easier to deploy and maintain than previous versions of Exchange.

In this and upcoming videos, I’ll give you a tour of the new high availability features, such as database availability groups and mailbox database copies.

Please download the attached video and watch it full-screen.  It’s just over 5 minutes, and it will familiarize you with the concepts and process for configuring highly available mailbox databases.  Part 2 is coming later this week.

Please click on the video thumbnail below to see the video. There is a Download link where you can download the video (Right-click, Save Target As…):

Part 1:

Full Article – http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/05/18/451353.aspx

One fairly controversial aspect to this policy was our support (actually non-support is a better word) for “guest” failover clustering. We didn’t support installing SQL Server failover clustering in a virtual machine. Well this policy is now changed effective immediately as updated in the article.

The article now contains the following new wording on this topic:

Full Article – http://blogs.msdn.com/psssql/archive/2009/05/19/sql-server-support-policy-for-failover-clustering-and-virtualization-gets-an-update.aspx

One fairly controversial aspect to this policy was our support (actually non-support is a better word) for “guest” failover clustering. We didn’t support installing SQL Server failover clustering in a virtual machine. Well this policy is now changed effective immediately as updated in the article.

The article now contains the following new wording on this topic:

Full Article – http://blogs.msdn.com/psssql/archive/2009/05/19/sql-server-support-policy-for-failover-clustering-and-virtualization-gets-an-update.aspx

As display technologies advance and the world begins to fully embrace accessibility on the web, the Zoom and High DPI experience of all browsers has become increasingly important. This is the first in a series of posts describing changes and improvements to Internet Explorer 8 to enable a more readable web on today’s displays. In this post, we’ll focus on enhancements to the Zoom user experience.

How to Use Zoom

First, let’s review how to take advantage of Zoom in Internet Explorer 8. Internet Explorer 7’s zoom was closer to optical zoom, where every element on the page was scaled relative to its size as rendered at 100% or ‘normal’ view. This led to a number of issues for users, such as the overabundance of horizontal scrollbars. The new zoom in Internet Explorer 8 scales elements that are defined in absolute units, such as pixels, while not affecting the size of elements defined in relative units, such as percentages. For a full description of the zoom layout and rendering behavior in Internet Explorer 8, please see Saloni’s blog post from Beta 1. Preferences for individual users differ greatly, so there are four ways to zoom in and out on web pages:

• Via the user interface
• Via keyboard shortcuts
• Via the mouse wheel
• Via touch gestures (available on Windows 7)

Full Article – http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/05/18/making-the-web-bigger-part-1-improvements-to-zoom.aspx

If a company with 8 percent market share revamped its search engine would anyone notice? That’s the looming question as Microsoft prepares to unveil its search upgrade at the D: All Things Digital conference next week.

John Paczkowski writes:

The long-awaited upgrade to Microsoft’s search engine will soon make its debut. This unveiling will be the long-awaited ‘Kumo’ search revamp.

Sources with knowledge of the situation said the company is expected to demonstrate it at our D: All Things Digital conference next week.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is scheduled to appear onstage at the event, a three-day event that hosts top players from the tech and media industries in interviews by AllThingsD.com Co-Executive Editors Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.

Full Artilce – http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=18458l

This blog entry describes the support in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 for creating and managing Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) files as a native format, and booting a physical machine from a VHD file.  Native VHD support helps our enterprise customers and developer community use a common image format and common tools to manage and deploy Windows images that run either in Hyper-V virtual machines or on physical machines.

The Microsoft Virtual Hard Disk file format (VHD) is a publicly available format specification that specifies a virtual hard disk encapsulated in a single file, capable of hosting native file systems and supporting standard disk operations. VHD files are used by Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Virtual Server and Microsoft Virtual PC for virtual disks connected to a virtual machine.   VHDs are useful containers and the VHD file format is also used by Microsoft Data Protection Manager, Windows Server Backup as well as many other Microsoft and Non-Microsoft solutions.  To create a VHD on Windows Server 2008, you install the Hyper-V Server role and use the Hyper-V Manager to create a VHD file, and then install a version of Windows onto a partition in the VHD. 

Full Article – http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/05/14/native-vhd-support-in-windows-7.aspx

We are pleased to announce the availability of Internet Explorer 8 Multilingual User Interface (MUI) packs for Windows XP SP2, Windows XP SP3, and Windows Server 2003 SP2. The MUI packs can be downloaded from here :

• Windows XP
• Windows XP Professional x64
• Windows Server 2003 x86
• Windows Server 2003 x64

As detailed in our previous blog post, the following Internet Explorer MUI packs shipped today –

Full Article – http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/05/14/now-available-internet-explorer-8-mui-packs-for-windows-xp-windows-server-03.aspx

Earlier this week we learned that Microsoft would be giving out the Office 2010 Technical Preview to select testers on an invite-only basis. In January, screenshots of the alpha (then still codenamed Office 14) were leaked a week after select testers got them. This time, testers don’t even have the Technical Preview yet, but new screenshots have already arrived (see below). Office 2010 will be available in 32-bit and 64-bit, and both flavors have been leaked.

The most important part to remember here is that this version is build 14.0.4006.1010. The build number of the official Technical Preview, which is scheduled for two months from now, is not known, so it is perfectly possible that this is not the build that testers will be getting.

Full Article – http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/05/leaked-office-2010-technical-preview-screenshots.ars