Windows PowerShell is finally available for Vista, too. Download and installation took me only a minute or so. It is interesting to note, that WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) already checks Windows before the download. If you download it with Firefox, you have to install a plugin first.

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If you are a native speaker and a regular reader of this blog, you probably have noticed that my English sounds a bit odd at times. I live in Germany, and English is only my second language. I also write for German computer journals sometimes and often find this more time consuming since I know most technical terms only in English.

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One of my biggest worries with the upgrade from MS Office 2003 to Office 2007 is that our users will keep the helpdesk busy with questions about the new user interfaces of Word 2007, Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007. The changes are really big. Microsoft now offers a very useful and easy-to-use tool which allows users to find the new locations of commands they know from former Office versions.

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Microsoft published the Internet Explorer 7 Deployment Guide, a 67 page Word document, discussing how to plan and carry out IE7 deployment. I just skimmed over the document, but it seems to me that more things have to be considered than what I thought before.

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If not, you really should check them out. WindowsSecurity.com just finished a series of articles that discusses them in detail. The PsTools consist of a couple of command line tools, allowing you to view and manage many important Windows functions.

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Microsoft’s official recommendations are 512MB for a “Vista capable PC” and 1GB for “Vista Premium Ready“. Of course, nobody takes such recommendations seriously, anymore. Steve Row, a Microsoft employee, just posted an interesting comparison with the memory requirements for Windows XP.

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I just read this now, but the Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 SP3 Beta has been available for download at Microsoft Connect for some days. Most importantly, regarding its Windows Vista support.

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You probably know that Microsoft Word 2007 is using a new document format. Every time Microsoft makes such a change it usually causes many compatibility problems in the beginning. If one of your users sends a Word file using the new format to someone still using an older Word version, he will not be able to open it. So it might be a good idea to change the default setting of Word 2007 to the Word 97/2003 document format.

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This is what you get when you enter “xcopy /?” on a Vista command prompt. Of course, you can still use xcopy, but it isn’t wrong to move to Robocopy now. It has many interesting features.

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BDD 2007 is an essential tool and documentation set for deploying Windows Vista. Almost two months after the release of the business edition of Vista, its final version is finally ready for download. BDD 2007 contains important tools like ImageX and Windows System Image Manager (WSIM). I’ve been writing about some of the tools before. Please check out the Related section below.

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