Today, the Windows Home Server Team has announced the availability of the Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 Release Candidate for download on Microsoft Connect. You can read Charlie Kindel’s post announcing today’s release on the Windows Home Server Team Blog.

Microsoft Connect: Windows Home Server

Power Pack 1 for Windows Home Server contains numerous bug fixes – including the data corruption issue – as well as many new enhancements to Windows Home Server many users will enjoy:

• Support for PCs running Windows Vista x64 editions
• Backup of Windows Home Server Shared Folders
• Easier, enhanced remote access capabilities
• Better energy efficiency
• Improved performance
• Chinese and Japanese versions

I’m currently running the Power Pack 1 Release Candidate on my HP MediaSmart Server and enjoying new functionality Power Pack 1 adds to my Windows Home Server. I recently added several harddrives putting my storage at 1.1TB. Having more storage allows me to utilize Folder Duplication for my Shared Folders. I also have 1 drive setup specifically for backups of my Shared Folders. I utilize my Shared Folders for quite a bit of data storage so I really appreciate having this functionality to ensure the data is safe (on top of Folder Duplication). Having more storage also lets me store my CompletePC Backups from my Windows Vista PCs on my Windows Home Server as well – but I will talk more about this in a later blog post. I am also enjoying the ability to backup my PCs to my Windows Home Server running Windows Vista Ultimate x64 with the Windows Home Server Connector that now runs on 64-bit versions of Windows Vista. On top of data storage and backups, I utilize my Windows Home Server for remote access when traveling as well.

Your testing of the Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 Release Candidate is very important to the Windows Home Server Team. They will not ship the final release of Power Pack 1 until the community validates their work in Power Pack 1.

Remember – Power Pack 1 is a Release Candidate and is not the final version – essentially it’s a beta. If you choose to run the Release Candidate on your main Windows Home Server (aka your “production” Windows Home Server) you should make a backup of everything prior to installing the Power Pack 1 Release Candidate.

To leave feedback for the Windows Home Server Team – you can head on over to the public Windows Home Server Forums. Make sure you file any bugs you find with Power Pack 1 on Microsoft Connect.

The next version of Windows SteadyState has been released.

Windows® SteadyState™ is now available. (Windows SteadyState was formerly known as Microsoft® Shared Computer Toolkit for Windows XP.) Whether you manage computers in a school computer lab or an Internet café, a library, or even in your home, Windows SteadyState helps make it easy for you to keep your computers running the way you want them to, no matter who uses them. Windows SteadyState is easier to download, set up, use, and maintain than Shared Computer Toolkit.

Download – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d077a52d-93e9-4b02-bd95-9d770ccdb431&DisplayLang=en

Microsoft made available to select testers on June 5 the near-final Release Candidate (RC) 0 of SQL Server 2008.

As of Friday, Microsoft had released the latest test build of its database to TechNet Plus and Microsoft Developer Network(MSDN) subscribers only. The new build wasn’t on the private Connect test site. (Not sure if availability has changed since then.)

Full Article – http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1434

This guide helps you design Windows Firewall with Advanced Security settings and rules that meet your goals for network security. This guide answers the “what,” “why,” and “when” questions. The Windows Firewall with Advanced Security Deployment Guide answers the “how” questions.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e4a6d0d6-c8c3-414a-ad61-abce6889449d&DisplayLang=en

As the 2nd part in our Windows Live Wave 3 series, we’re taking a look at the new header UI that Microsoft is working on. It was almost exactly a year ago that we started talking about the Wave 2 UI, which saw the removal of the Flair. This next change is just as noticeable.

Full Article – http://www.liveside.net/blogs/main/archive/2008/06/05/windows-live-wave-3-new-header-ui.aspx

Microsoft Videos is your central location for viewing rich media from Microsoft. Scan our Quick Picks for the latest videos, enter a search, or choose from our Video Categories. Then tell us what you think by rating what you’ve watched. If you like what you see, share it with a friend or colleague, or link to it in your blog using one of our community features.

http://preview.microsoft.com/video/about.aspx

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