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There is no doubt that Ballmer is the funniest CEO in the IT bizThis article was written by Gilberto J. Perera from GilsMethod.com. Gil’s Method is the online resource for Windows related How-to Guides for the rest of us.
As an administrator you are probably dreading the possible transition from Windows XP to Windows 7 at your company, except this time you won’t have to worry Microsoft has been thinking about you for while developing Windows 7.
Microsoft got the message after the debacle with Windows Vista and its lack of success to attract larger businesses to transition from XP to Vista. In order to make that transition simpler, Microsoft has provided Windows 7 users with the capability to run a virtualized, fully licensed copy of Windows XP for program capability.
Using Virtual PC Beta and Windows XP Mode Beta (separate downloads) users will be able to run applications that may not be fully compatible with Windows 7. Applications running inside the virtual machine are fully integrated into the host operating system. Users won’t realize that the application is running in a virtual environment and when they save a file it is automatically stored on the host file system.
In my last two posts, I introduced Softinventive Lab‘s Total Network Inventory (TNI), an easy-to-use inventory solution. Today, I will discuss TNI’s reporting capabilities. The reporting functionality is probably the most important part of an inventory tool. Reports are not just for printing or exporting data, they allow you get an overview of your whole infrastructure.
Note: You can win a TNI license for an unlimited number of computers. More information is at the end of the article.
I didn’t really believe anymore that those two companies would find themselves together. The press release is quite clear about the deal:
Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.
In other words: Bing gets Yahoo’s search requests and Yahoo! sells the ads.
I am not sure if I like this deal or not. On the one hand it is good that there will be more competition in the search business, but on the other hand, I am afraid that Microsoft will neglect its core business.
In my last post, I explained Total Network Inventory’s (TNI) scanning features. Today, I will discuss the tool’s inventory capabilities and show you how you can manage software licensing with TNI.
Note: You can win a TNI license for an unlimited number of computers. More information is at the end of the article.
TNI’s user interface basically consists of three panes: The Network View on the left-hand side, the main windows in the middle, and the Category Selection on the right-hand side. The toolbar of the Network View allows you to sort computers and to search for computer names or IP addresses. I like that TNI also can show you which computers are currently online. The main window in the middle displays inventory data TNI has collected. You can use the Category Selection to navigate quickly to the inventory categories and properties that interest you.
There are three inventory categories: Hardware, Software, and Other Information. Each of these categories has a couple of subcategories and each subcategory is divided into properties. The properties are also structured and quite detailed. For example the “system memory” subcategory offers general information about the computer’s RAM, the paging files actually on disks, the paging files possible to store, and specific information about each memory slot. For the subcategory system memory alone, you have about 20 data fields (see screenshot).
I reviewed the tool some days ago: Softinventive Lab, the publisher of Total Network Inventory (TNI), has a generous offer for 4sysops readers. You can win an unlimited worldwide license for Total Network Inventory, worth $1,695. This means that you can take an inventory of as many machines as you wish. For a quick overview of the tool, I recommend watching this Flash demo.
Even if you already have a systems management solution with inventory capabilities, TNI could be useful because it allows you to quickly retrieve very detailed information about the computers in your network without hassle. I tested TNI and liked the tool immediately because of its straightforward user interface. As you have noticed, I am testing many Windows administration tools, and TNI certainly belongs in the click-as-you-go category.
Even faster. I tried it. I can now read web pages twice as fast. 
Those of you who can’t wait to get their hands on Windows 7, might be interested to hear that a Microsoft blogger posted the Windows 7 RTM CRC and SHA-1 checksums. The article is in German and I didn’t find a corresponding English post. I just copied the hash codes at the end of this article. Somehow I think this was just an independent initiative of a Microsoft employee even though a major German news site puts it as if Microsoft officially published the Windows 7 RTM hash sums. Let’s see how long this blog post stays online.
You probably saw this odd competition on many blogs in the last couple of weeks. Almost every day they reported about a new leaked Windows 7 RTM ISO image. Even though I am also very curious about Windows 7, I usually don’t download software through torrent sites. The risk is too high to install software that contains viruses, rootkits or botnet code. If you have the correct checksum, then you are safe. But usually it is not worth the hassle. After the 30 days grace period has ended or after you have rearmed Windows 7 three times, you need a valid product key anyway.
I think it is a good time to post an article about a free hash/checksum calculator tool because so many impatient IT pros have to compute the checksum of Windows 7 RTM now. There are many such tools out there, but HashCalc is probably the most comprehensive free hash sum computation utility. It supports 13 popular hash and checksum algorithms: MD2, MD4, MD5, SHA-1, SHA-2( 256, 384, 512), RIPEMD-160, PANAMA, TIGER, ADLER32, CRC32, and HMAC. Crypto purists probably will say that HMAC is not really a hash function though.
The download page doesn’t mention Vista as supported OS, but it works fine also on Vista x64. HashCalc calculates checksums of files, text strings and hex strings. SlavaSoft, HashCalc’s publisher, claims you can compute the hashes of files sizes up to 15GB.
I tested HashCalc 2.02.
(3 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
Loading ... 17% decline in revenueThis short video was taken yesterday in Atlanta at Microsoft’s internal Global Exchange (MGX) conference. I found it interesting because it demonstrates nicely that Microsoft indeed has got its mojo back. One can sense how enthusiastic Microsoft’s employees are about the positive feedback that Windows 7 has received. Just in case you are wondering who the third guy is who gives the signed DVDs to Steven Sinofsky (President Windows Division); it is Kevin Turner (Chief Operating Officer). Also interesting: 5000 engineers have been working on Windows 7. Does anyone know the number of engineers that worked on Apollo 11?
Windows 7 Sneak-Peak from MGX
With all this excitement on the Windows 7 RTM release date, I almost forgot that Microsoft released a second OS to manufacturing, Windows Server 2008 R2. I somehow assumed that the release date would be the same because Windows Server 2008 R2 basically is Windows 7 Server even though Microsoft’s management decided against this name. I suppose they deeply regret this decision by now considering the enormous buzz around Windows 7.
Of course, a desktop OS always gets more attention than a server OS, simply because more people are using it. However, there is no doubt about it that Windows Server 2008 R2 is in the shade of Windows 7. This is certainly not justified because it comes with quite a few interesting new features. In my view, Windows Server 2008 R2 could be even more important for businesses than Windows 7. Windows Server 2008 R2 has at least one absolute killer feature. It is Hyper-V 2.0 with its new Live Migration feature. By the way, Hyper-V Server 2.0, Microsoft’s bare-metal virtualization solution, also RTMed.
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