Some days ago, I discussed a couple of features that only come into play if Vista and Server 2008 work together. Today, I stumbled across another Microsoft page listing several of these features. Unfortunately, it also contains features that are available as extensions for Windows XP. However, some of them seem to be Vista/2008 only features.

First of all, I should note that I was quite surprised how difficult it is to find out what these “better-together features” really are. Microsoft’s marketing texts give hints, but they also do their best to disguise the real benefits of Vista+Server 2008. Journalists tend to just copy Microsoft, often without really understanding what it is all about.

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Todd Bishop hosts the birthday party. He invited a couple of interesting people, not all of them came to wish a happy birthday. This post just contains my favorite snatches of conversation I picked up at the party.

The consumer version of Windows Vista was released exactly one year ago, that is on January 30, 2007. Volume license customers were able to get it two months earlier. At that time, I wondered why Microsoft missed the Christmas sales. Considering how long it took until the first Vista computers showed up in the shops, this move was not too bad with hindsight. It seems as if Microsoft already knew that it would be a long way to go for Vista. Nobody believed that adoption would still be a topic on Vista’s first birthday.

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Office 2003 SP3 can already be downloaded for some weeks now. The Microsoft Update Product Team Blog announced that SP3 will be available via Microsoft Update at the end of February. I suppose that means that you will also see it in WSUS or in your third party patch management solution. So you can use the remaining time to decide whether you would like to push it to your clients or not.

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The speculation about Windows 7 continues. Some screenshots and a Windows 7 video (see below) are going around in the blogosphere. Basically, they just show Vista with some minor changes. Whoever published them in the first place might not have figured out yet what Milestone 1(M1) is all about. But, I guess, we would have heard more about it by now if something really exists that would just justify the name “Windows 7″. The truth is probably that Windows 7 is just in an early planning stage as this interview with a Microsoft official indicates.

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The adoption of Windows Vista in corporate environments is probably not as fast as Microsoft had hoped for. The question is, can Windows Server 2008 accelerate Vista adoption after it’s released? This certainly depends on the features that can only be used if you deploy Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista together. In this post, I examine all these features I am aware of.

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I can’t help it, but join this speculation game. Several sources have information about the release date of Windows Vista SP1. It seems as if Windows Vista SP1 will be available on February 15.

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Ok, Vista topics are already getting a little bit stale. It is time to start blogging about Windows 7. Rumors about Windows 7 have already been spreading for some time, but so far I haven’t found anything really worth mentioning. However, today, I read an interesting post about Windows 7 at TG Daily. Wolfgang Gruener claims that they have information that Windows 7 might be released in the second half of 2009.

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Some days ago, I mentioned that there are rumors that Windows Server 2008 and Vista SP1 might come out on January 16^th. Well, as it turned out now, those were nothing other than rumors, even though they were spread by usually well-informed sources. InfoWeek reports that the original time schedule is still valid. That is, Windows Server 2008 will probably be released at the end of February.

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Rakesh, who runs the program management team for System Center Virtual Machine Manager, (VMM) outlines in his blog why Microsoft decided to support VMware’s virtualization products in the next version of VMM and what this “support” actually means.

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Update: The Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) for Vista SP1 replace the Adminpak.

A new Adminpak version is available now. Officially, it doesn’t support Vista, but I installed it today and, at least, some of the tools I tried worked properly. You probably know by now that the Adminpak tool will be replaced by RSAT, which most likely will come out soon after Service Pack 1 for Vista is released.

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The event logs are the first place to check when something goes wrong on a Windows machine. But even more important is keeping a constant eye on the event logs to make sure that you will be informed immediately about problems coming up. The Event Viewer that comes with Windows can only be used for the first purpose. If you want to keep yourself up-to-date about what is going on in your Windows network, you need a third party utility. EventSentry Light from NETIKUS.NET is a great a tool that does just that, and it is free like in beer.

The name would already let you guess that there is also a commercial version. Please, check out this comparison table regarding the differences between the two editions. This review is about EvenSentry Light. Before you try this tool, you should have a general idea of how EventSentry Light works. Even though it is free, its many options might confuse you when you just want to have a quick look at it to see if it suits your needs. This post will give you a first idea about it. I will only scratch the surface of this sophisticated tool, though.

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Robert McLaws ran a performance test with the refresh of Vista SP1 RC which I blogged about yesterday. He compared the performance with a patched Vista RTM using PCMark Vantage. This benchmarking program leverages specific Windows features such as Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Media Player, etc.). McLaws ran this benchmark on systems with Vista x86 and Vista x64. The results are quite interesting.

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The new release of Service Pack 1 for Vista that has been available for some days already for the more privileged beta testers can now be downloaded via Windows Update. As usual, you have to download a script first. It adds some registry keys which will make SP1 visible at Windows Update. Note that you have to uninstall prior versions of this SP. Also note that you will have to do the same when the final of Service Pack 1 comes out.

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Did it ever happen to you that your computer was unbelievably slow because your hard disk was so busy? I am sure it did. Sometimes you know the culprit keeping the light of your disk drive blinking like wild. But most of the time you probably wonder what the heck could have a higher priority for Windows other than loading the application you just launched.

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