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

This white paper helps customers compare Windows Vista® advancements with Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional. Using this comparison, customers can adjust their expectations for the security, management, deployment, mobility, and productivity of either operating system. For each feature or capability, each section compares key Windows Vista advancements against Windows XP.

Full Article – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=37d0c614-9c06-4b61-bb2e-6ab9953a14ab&DisplayLang=en#filelist

The 2007 Microsoft Office system already provides support for 20 different document formats within Microsoft Office Word, Office Excel and Office PowerPoint. With the release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) scheduled for the first half of 2009, the list will grow to include support for XML Paper Specification (XPS), Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.5, PDF/A and Open Document Format (ODF) v1.1.

When using SP2, customers will be able to open, edit and save documents using ODF and save documents into the XPS and PDF fixed formats from directly within the application without having to install any other code. It will also allow customers to set ODF as the default file format for Office 2007. To also provide ODF support for users of earlier versions of Microsoft Office (Office XP and Office 2003), Microsoft will continue to collaborate with the open source community in the ongoing development of the Open XML-ODF translator project on SourceForge.net.

Full Article – http://blogs.msdn.com/koenvant/archive/2008/05/22/microsoft-office-2007-service-pack-2-will-support-xps-pdf-and-odf.aspx

HOUSTON — May 20, 2008 — Today at Citrix Synergy™, the event where virtualization, networking and application delivery meet, Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS), and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: “MSFT”) announced the immediate availability of Citrix Branch Repeater™, an innovative new line of branch office appliances developed and marketed as part of a strategic alliance between the two companies. By staging the delivery of applications and Windows services closer to branch office users, Citrix Branch Repeater helps make branch office computing faster and more cost-effective for companies of all sizes.

Citrix Branch Repeater will be sold as part of the Citrix Delivery Centerâ„¢ product family, an end-to-end infrastructure designed to help customers transform static datacenters into dynamic delivery centers. Just as digital television repeaters amplify and retransmit media signals to homes in a given neighborhood, Citrix Branch Repeater sits between corporate datacenters and branch offices, amplifying and retransmitting applications to branch office users. Based on Windows Server and available with Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server software, the Citrix Branch Repeater provides an ideal complement to application virtualization solutions, enhancing application delivery and performance while simultaneously delivering critical Windows Server infrastructure services in the branch.

Mozilla has unveiled Release Candidate 1 for Firefox 3, as the June release of the popular open-source browser creeps closer.

Mozilla claims the latest itineration contains around 14,000 updates, though the one most people are liable to notice is the page rendering, now handled by the Gecko 1.9 Engine which puts a significant spring in Firefox’s step when loading web pages.

Full Article – http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/198402/firefox-3-release-candidate-1-unveiled.html

This is the official software development kit that allows developers to integrate tools, editors, designers, languages, and other features inside Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 Beta.
Key features in the Visual Studio 2008 SDK 1.1 Beta include:

• Significant reduction in size for Visual Studio Shell redistributable packages.
• Support for progress feedback in a chained installation.
• Visual Studio Shell development now supports normal user.
• New XML Tree Editor sample.
• Updated shell documentation.

Full Article – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=7BD9F51B-DC46-4935-8D69-58E22AF94BD3&displaylang=en

Microsoft ® Windows Server ™ 2003 Performance Advisor is the latest version of Server Performance Advisor, which is a simple but robust tool that helps you diagnose the root causes of performance problems in a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 deployment. Server Performance Advisor collects performance data and generates comprehensive diagnostic reports that give you the data to easily analyze problems and develop corrective actions

Microsoft ® Windows Server ™ 2003 Performance Advisor provides several specialized reports, including a System Overview (focusing on CPU usage, Memory usage, busy files, busy TCP clients, top CPU consumers) and reports for server roles such as Active Directory, Internet Information System (IIS), DNS, Terminal Services, SQL, print spooler, and others.

Full Article – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=09115420-8c9d-46b9-a9a5-9bffcd237da2&DisplayLang=en

Microsoft ® Windows Server ™ 2003 Performance Advisor is the latest version of Server Performance Advisor, which is a simple but robust tool that helps you diagnose the root causes of performance problems in a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 deployment. Server Performance Advisor collects performance data and generates comprehensive diagnostic reports that give you the data to easily analyze problems and develop corrective actions

Microsoft ® Windows Server ™ 2003 Performance Advisor provides several specialized reports, including a System Overview (focusing on CPU usage, Memory usage, busy files, busy TCP clients, top CPU consumers) and reports for server roles such as Active Directory, Internet Information System (IIS), DNS, Terminal Services, SQL, print spooler, and others.

Full Article – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=09115420-8c9d-46b9-a9a5-9bffcd237da2&DisplayLang=en

If Microsoft follows the same schedule it did last year, the Spring system update for the Xbox 360 should be right around the corner. Today, an alleged and wholly unconfirmed list of changes included in the “Q2 2008” update was sent to us, supposedly forwarded from an internal source. The full list—which is after the jump—features about 80 new feature additions, tweaks and changes but was purported to be incomplete and subject to change.

Some are simply interesting as curiosities, such as an option to purchase Xbox Live memberships for charities and the addition of a Media section for audio delivered through feeds, such as podcasts. Others sound more feature robust, such as Windows Live Mail integration and an expanded “Inside Xbox” with news, weather, entertainment, help and community features.

Full Article – http://kotaku.com/5008939/rumored-xbox-360-spring-update-touts-motion-sensor-features-game-installs

If Microsoft follows the same schedule it did last year, the Spring system update for the Xbox 360 should be right around the corner. Today, an alleged and wholly unconfirmed list of changes included in the “Q2 2008” update was sent to us, supposedly forwarded from an internal source. The full list—which is after the jump—features about 80 new feature additions, tweaks and changes but was purported to be incomplete and subject to change.

Some are simply interesting as curiosities, such as an option to purchase Xbox Live memberships for charities and the addition of a Media section for audio delivered through feeds, such as podcasts. Others sound more feature robust, such as Windows Live Mail integration and an expanded “Inside Xbox” with news, weather, entertainment, help and community features.

Full Article – http://kotaku.com/5008939/rumored-xbox-360-spring-update-touts-motion-sensor-features-game-installs

SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP1 Beta is the service pack release for SQL Server Compact 3.5 and it also installs with SQL Server 2008 CTP and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta. The Beta release has the following new features:

• Support for the ADO.NET Entity Framework for creating flexible, strongly typed queries by using LINQ. Install Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta for developing ADO.Net Entity Framework applications with SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP1 Beta
• Case-sensitive collations at the database level
• SSMS in SQL Server 2008 can be used for administering a SQL Server Compact database
• Ability to replicate the new data types in SQL Server 2008 such as date, time, datetime2, datetimeoffset, geography, and geometry. The new data types in SQL Server 2008 are mapped to nchar, nvarchar, image, etc.
• Data replication with SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 by using Synchronization Services for ADO.NET v1.0 SP1 Beta for both desktop and mobile devices
• Data replication with SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 using merge replication and Remote Data Access (RDA) and enhanced version compatibility for merge replication

Link – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=68539fae-cf03-4c3b-aeda-769cc205fe5f&DisplayLang=en