Aidan Finn, IT Pro

• Windows Vista Business
• Windows Vista Business N
• Windows Vista Home Basic
• Windows Vista Home Basic N
• Windows Vista Home Premium
• Windows Vista Ultimate

The license key you input during the installation determines which version is installed.  Neither of the N version keys are available at the moment.  I doubt anyone outside of the EU offices in Brussels will give a $&!% about that.

Microsoft launched their new scripting language, Powershell this week.  The Minasi MR&D forum added a new section specifically for Powershell.  Considering some of the command line commandos who hang out there, it’ll be a good place to learn and share ideas about this new platform.

Powershell is going to be for Windows what Bourne, Korn and C have been for UNIX for 30+ years.  Already, the 2007 range of products are already featuring it to enable administrators to script complex tasks.

There release of Powershell for Vista isn’t until the end of January.  One of the MS guys gave a good explanation for this on the MR&D forum today.

The Powershell team has also got a blog running.

This one got past me but Windows IT Pro highlighted it.  Last week, MS launched the Windows Vista Secuirty Guide.  In it’s words:

This guide provides instructions and recommendations to help strengthen the security of desktop and laptop computers running Windows Vista™ in a domain with the Active Directory® directory service.

In addition to the solutions that the Windows Vista Security Guide prescribes, the guide includes tools, step-by-step procedures, recommendations, and processes that significantly streamline the deployment process. Not only does the guide provide you with effective security setting guidance, it also provides a reproducible method that you can use to apply the guidance to both test and production environments.

Microsoft shipped Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 today.  There’s an X86 and an x64 edition.  I’m a fan of Sharepoint.  I really think an organisation can change the way shared storage is provisioned and can take the concept to a nother level.  Storage becomes a shared workspace where dynamic teams can work together independant of the involvement of IT.  The platform can be customised to their needs and becomes an interactive web application that is very simple to maintain and develop.  This technology is slowly gathering momentum.  It appears to have taken hold abroad but has been slow to garner attention here in Ireland, unfortunately.

The FAQ states that the following are new features in WSS 3.0:

• Improvements to collaboration workspaces: SharePoint sites now offer e-mail and directory integration, alerts, RSS publishing, templates for building blogs (also known as weblogs) and wikis (Web sites that can be quickly edited by team members—no special technical knowledge required), event and task tracking, improved usability, enhanced site navigation, and more.
• Enhancements to content storage: SharePoint lists and libraries now provide per-item security for better data control and integrity, a recycle bin, and enhanced flexibility for storing more types of content. Row and column capacity has also been increased, as has retrieval speed. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 can be easily integrated with smart client tools. In particular, close integration with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 provides offline access to events, contacts, discussions, tasks, and documents.
• Easier provisioning of workspaces: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 provides more sophisticated and flexible security, as well as greater control over security settings and permissions.
• A more robust foundation for Web applications: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 provides greater flexibility for customization and development of Web-based services and applications built on the Windows SharePoint Services platform.

For me the key things in there are:

• RSS: it ties in nicely with IE7 and Outlook 2007.  RSS is a fantasitc way to gather information from disperate locations.
• Blogging is here to stay.  Having a blog template makes WSS 3.0 more friendly not only to the small business but it can be excellent for internal communications in a corporation.
• Recycle Bin: WSS 3.0 backup/recovery without the aid of an agent from the likes of Commvault is painful.  Having a recycle bin is excellent.

If you’ve not heard of WSS or seen it in action, I strongly encourage you to check out the MS virtual labs for Sharepoint technologies.  Don’t be scared, you do not need to be a "web slinger" to get great functionality out of this product.

I’ve seen some people asking about this, even on the day IE7 released.  MS has released Group Policy ADM templates for configuring IE7.

I just received the below in the mail.  Remember to check out my document on W2003/XP x64 SP2.

Windows Serviceability is pleased to announce the release of the Release Candidate (build 2825) of Service Pack 2 for Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.
This build contains:

Roll up of hotfixes released to date
Roll up of security updates released to date Fixes for bugs reported by Beta customers and other known issues on previous Service Pack 2 builds This build should be used for full deployment purposes, including pre-production testing or general compatibility testing. In order to have a stable test environment we strongly recommend un-installation of any previous SP2 builds from your machines before installing build 2825.

If you previously installed an integrated build of SP2, you cannot upgrade your system to build 2825 with this refresh; you will need to re-install a released version (RTM, SP1, or R2) of Windows Server 2003 before upgrading to build 2825. Go to https://connect.microsoft.com/content/content.aspx?SiteID=98&ContentID=1799 to find an evaluation copy of Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1.

Release notes for this build can be found at https://connect.microsoft.com/content/content.aspx?ContentID=3881&SiteID=98.

With SP2, Windows Server 2003 x64 Editions will start supporting 9 new languages: Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, French, German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese (Brazilian). Russian, and Spanish. With RC, Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition is available in German for the first time.

Additionally, with RC, a MUI servicing package is available, which is specific to 3 components (Microsoft Management Console (MMC) 3.0, Windows Deployment Services and Microsoft File Server Management). This is not a re-release of the Windows Server 2003 MUI Pack. This MUI servicing pack is designed to increase the compatibility between MUI and localized languages for these 3 components. More information about this pack can be found at https://connect.microsoft.com/content/content.aspx?ContentID=3890&SiteID=98.
The list of releases is as follows:
x86:

– Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 ISO image
– SP2 32-bit x86 standalone updates
– SP2 Standalone x86 check build (for debugging)
– Windows Server 2003, Web Editions with SP2 (32-bit x86)
– Windows Server 2003 R2, Standard Editions with SP2 (32-bit x86)
– Windows Server 2003 R2, Enterprise Editions with SP2 (32-bit x86)
– Windows Server 2003 R2, Datacenter Editions with SP2 (32-bit x86)

x64:

– Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 for x64 Editions ISO Image
– SP2 x64 standalone update
– SP2 Itanium Standalone check build (for debugging)
– Windows Server 2003 R2, Standard x64 Edition with SP2
– Windows Server 2003 R2, Enterprise x64 Edition with SP2
– Windows Server 2003 R2, Datacenter x64 Edition with SP2
– Windows XP Professional x64 Edition with SP2

Itanium:

– SP2 Itanium standalone updates
– SP2 Itanium standalone check build (for debugging)
– Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 for Itanium-based Systems ISO image
– Windows Server 2003, Enterprise with SP2 for Itanium-based Systems
– Windows Server 2003, Datacenter with SP2 for Itanium-based Systems

Tools:

– Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 symbols
– MUI Servicing Pack

We encourage you to continue WS03 SP2 Beta testing with this build and provide feedback.

This full length session discusses how Microsoft sees virtualisation in the market place.

Some highlights:

• Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 2 is expected to RTM in Q1 2007.
• A commitment to release the Windows "Longhorn" Hypervisor within 180 days of WIndows "Longhorn" RTM.
• The Hypervisor will be around 700KB in size … that’s the entire OS that will run on the physical host!
• 64bit CPU’s with Intel/AMD virtual technology are required.
• There will be support for 32bit and 64bit VM’s.
• VM’s can have up to 8 CPU’s.
• A VM will be able to have 32GB+ RAM.
• You can hot-add RAM, CPU, storage and network.
• You can run more than 64 VM’s on a host, depending on host hardware.
• An MMC 3.0 snap-in will be used to manage Windows "Longhorn" Hypervisor.
• A tunable MOM 2005 management pack is on the way for automatically identifying virtualisation candidates.

Mark Minasi has just published a new newsletter on his site.  In there, Mark talks about BitLocker, how to edit the hosts file and how to configure Vista to respond to pings without using GPO.

That’s the first thing I asked myself when I heard about the ADMX migrator.  Simply put, it’s the new version of Group Policy ADM templates but in an XML format.  Jeremy Moskowitz (consultant, speaker, trainer, author and AD whiz) briefly describes the new format for Vista and "Longhorn" in a recent newsletter.