Microsoft’s Windows Server Division weblog announced that Windows Server 2008 RTM (release to manufacturing) is now scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2008. Originally, Microsoft planned the product launch for February 2008. Since it usually takes some months until a Microsoft product becomes finally available thru distribution channels this amounts to a delay of several months. It is a bit disappointing for me because we expected the RTM in Q4 2008.

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Plans for the Windows XP SP3 release are getting a little more concrete now. Mary Joe Foley reports that a beta might be available for MSDN and Technet subscribers by mid September. The final version is still scheduled for H1 2008. I think this SP is not nearly as important as the one for Vista because it supposedly won’t influence OS rollout decisions. The only interesting new feature of XP S3 I know of is the support for NAP (Network Access Protection). I just hope that this service pack is not released too long after Windows Server 2008 because I am keen on introducing NAP in our network.

Everyone has the news. Vista SP1 is scheduled to be released in the first quarter of 2008; a beta version will be available in September. That is not really an exact release date, but one shouldn’t expect this six months in advance. In this post I summarized the new features of Vista SP1. My summary is based on the white paper about SP1 in the Windows Vista Team blog.

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Just in case my blog post on Monday didn’t convince you that it’s is worth to upgrade to Vista, you should have a look at this impressive feature list at Microsoft. I don’t know if it is new, but I just saw this in a Microsoft Newsletter. I think this site confirms what I said before. Vista has no wow features, but so many tiny improvements which when summed up makes your daily work more productive. And I bet that you’ll find at least one feature that might turn out as your personal wow feature. This list could also be useful if you want to convince your boss to upgrade to Vista in your organization. For this, you only have to find her or his personal wow feature.

It was hard to miss the news about the WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage (?)) outage Microsoft had this weekend. Just in case you managed it somehow, you might want to catch up on it in this Computerworld article. Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage blog has an update about the “continuing investigation”. Alex Kochis claims that “fewer than 12,000 systems were affected”.

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These days, I often read that Vista skeptics are gaining the upper hand. For example this PC World article cites a Patchlink survey according to which 87 percent of businesses would stay with their existing operating system. And Chris Pirillo even believes that “Windows Vista loses users” to the arch-enemy Mac OS.

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Thanks to everyone who took part in my KMS (Key Management Service) vs. MAK (Multiple Key Management)
survey. 270 voted so far for one of the four options, I offered in this poll. You could choose among four options to activate Vista in a corporate environment: KMS, MAK, MAK and KMS, and OEM/retail. The fifth option is for those of you, who still have to make that choice.

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Jason Buffington, the “Data Protection Guy” at Microsoft explains the difference between DPM 2006 and DPM 2007 (Data Protection Manager) with respect to continuous data protection. Whereas DPM 2006 uses a file system filter “to grab a copy of the file operation”, DPM 2007 uses a VSS writer (Volume Shadow Copy Service) instead.

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Network Access Protection (NAP) is certainly one of the most interesting new features of Windows Server 2008. Originally, it was planned to be delivered together with Windows Server 2003 R2. After reading a couple of texts and playing a little with it, I understood why Microsoft postponed it to Windows Server 2008. It is a very complex application having countless different features. This post only contains the core essentials of NAP. Part of it is based on Mitch Tulloch’s chapter about NAP in his Windows Server 2008 book.

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I just ran across the new McAfee Rootkit Detective 1.0. There are so many anti-rootkit tools available now, and it’s about time that McAfee comes out with its own free rootkit detection utility.

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Exchange Service 2007 Pack 1 Beta 2 is now available through MSDN and Technet Plus Subscription. Jeremy Kirk from Computerworld writes that it is scheduled for release at the last quarter this year.

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I didn’t know that one can upgrade Firefox to Internet Explorer. At least this is what Microsoft recommends when you access the new Microsoft Update Catalog with Firefox. This catalog allows you to perform a full-text search in Microsoft Update database and download the patches. You can import these updates in WSUS or System Center Configuration Manager 2007. This is all quite useful.

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Microsoft released Process Monitor v1.2 just two weeks ago. Now there is a newer version available again. It is only a minor update, just as the ones for TCPview and PSExec. Since all three utilities belong in every admin’s tool box, it is worth a blog post.

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Microsoft has a new site dedicated to virtualization. It is mostly a marketing site, but they also have some valuable information. I found two or three new interesting blogs in the Resources section and there are also some technical white papers.

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There are several changes in Windows Server 2008 with regard to the way Terminal Services work in remote administration mode. Some are enhancements; at least one is a change for the worse. This post summarizes the most important changes.

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