IT Resource

Microsoft are releasing more snippets of information about the forthcoming Window 7 edition. Here are a few of the promised highlights that relate to IT professionals:

Manageability

• Windows 7 will extend the reach of what Group Policy can manage, and how settings are applied to specific users or computers, including non-GP aware components.
• Windows 7 will introduce DirectAccess, a capability that allows IT to manage and update internet-connected remote PCs, even when they are off the corporate network, while giving mobile users seamless secure connectivity while on the road without having to open a VPN connection.
• The new Powershell v2 and its graphical editor will help automate repetitive tasks with minimal scripting expertise required.

Security and Compliance

• Windows 7 will provide customisable User Account Control (UAC) that allows IT to “tune” the UAC feature based on their environment.
• For data protection, Windows 7 introduces BitLocker To Go, extending encryption to removable drives. This feature gives greater control over information leaving the corporation, as well as protecting lost or stolen USB drives.
• Windows 7 will also allow greater control of access to specific applications by specific users

Deployment

In Windows 7, system image creation and deployment is enhanced with advances such as Dynamic Driver provisioning, the Deployment Image Service and Management tool, Multicast Multiple Stream Transfer, and improvements to user state migration. 
 

Microsoft offically launches the Small Business Server and Essential Business Server products in Australia today (12th November), so here are some handy details of the two products:

These integrated sever packages aimed specifically at small and medium sized business and provide depoyment, management and security solutions.

Windows Small Business Server 2008

For small businesses running fewer than 75 PCs. Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 runs multiple technologies, which are integrated and configured specifically for small business needs:

• Access to e-mail contacts, calendar and files from anywhere
• Increased reliability of hardware and software
• Internal Web sites for rich collaboration
• Lower costs through easier installation and management
• Better protection with automatic backups and file restoration

Windows Essential Business Server 2008

For mid-sized business. Essential Business Server offers:

• Secure remote access to e-mail, files, and applications
• Streamlined administration console for all included technologies
• Preconfigured platform to Microsoft Best Practices
• Simple, wizard-based setup of key workloads
• Centralised, easy-to-use license management tools

 You can find out more via the Microsoft Webcast: here

An interesting post on MaximumPC sheds some light on the reasons why the Microsoft Vista rollout process was flawed. It includes some benchmarks testing between XP, Vista and Vista SP1, plus some feedback from Microsoft staff giving an insight into how the problems arose and what’s being done.

Of course, it basically boils down to an underdone release, made too early with inadequate co-operation between Microsoft and driver manufacturers. The article lists 7 major areas where the release really failed: 

Instability

At launch, Vista was much less stable than XP, and the problems weren’t limited to high-end hardware - users with low-end & standard setups also reported instability. Considering that improved stability was one of the biggest promises Microsoft made for Vista, users were understandably upset.

Incompatibility

If a desktop application didn’t follow Vista’s rules for behavior, Vista wouldn’t let it run. The program would fail to load, crash on use, or eat the user’s data, depending on the development infraction. This even affected such mainsrteam programs as Acrobat Reader, iTunes, Trillian, and dozens of others.

Hardware incompatibilities could be just as challenging, and Vista also shipped without support from major VPN manufacturers, including Cisco.

The sheer number and range of compatibility problems meant that every user would be affected in some way.

Performance

New OS releases can suffer from performance issues – but Vista showed dramatic degradation in performance on release. This poor performance affected even the most common of tasks.

User Account Control

Vista brought  improvements in the overall security of Windows, but one of the mechanisms that helps enable that security comes at a high cost – it’s incredibly annoying.

User Account Control, or UAC. Even if you don’t know what it’s called, if you’ve used Vista, you’ve used UAC. It prompts you whenever an app tries to write to an area of your hard disk or registry that Windows finds suspicious. This seems like a good thing but UAC prompts every time the installer does something suspicious. A problem compounded by the fact that each prompt looks and behaves differently, even though they’re all asking for basically the same thing.

To make matters worse, none of the UAC prompts tell users what the application is trying to do. When you click that Allow button, you still don’t know what it is you’re agreeing to.

Activation

Activation was introduced with Windows XP, and Vista activation includes the Windows Genuine Advantage software, which periodically checks in with Microsoft to ensure that the copy of Windows you’ve already activated remains genuine. WGA isn’t foolproof though, and it can be easily confused by something like a BIOS reset.

Version Overload

In the good old days, there were two distinct versions of Windows: one for home users and one for corporate users. For home, you bought Windows 98; IT departments bought Windows NT. With Windows XP, this trend continued, despite the fact that both the home and enterprise versions used the same core.

With Vista, Microsoft added three more versions of Windows, removing crucial features from the low-end release and forcing power users who want access to both work-related and enthusiast features to shell out for the $400 Ultimate edition.  The upgrade path from XP was also inflexible and expensive.

‘One More Thing’

To put it bluntly – Vista didn’t come with any ‘killer’ apps or new features.
 

The full article can be read  here

There’s been some wild and panicky stuff in some of the Tech press lately about a potential exploit that could bypass Vista’s security model. It all sounds pretty drastic but please bear in mind that most reports have been pretty sensationalist about it.

A ZDNet blog post contains a bit more ‘measured’ information about it along with responses from one of the guys who reported the exploit.

The August upate from Microsoft is likely to contain a number of critical and major fixes.

The update will include seven items rated as ‘critical’, the highest of Microsoft’s security alert levels. All of these will address issues that may allow an attacker to remotely execute code on a targeted system.

Four of the critical fixes relate to Office issues, one addresses critical flaws in Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003, another fixes a critical issue in Windows Media Player while the last addresses a critical vulnerability in Internet Explorer.

Also planned are five fixes rated as ‘important’. The patches include two remote code execution flaws in Windows and one in Office. The other two updates address information disclosure vulnerabilities found in Windows Messenger, Outlook Express and Windows itself.

The company plans to release the update on Tuesday 12th August. The release will also include non-security updates for the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool and the Windows Update, Microsoft Update and Software Update Services

Here’s a handy little list of useful Vista keyboard shortcuts:

• Win + d – show Desktop
• Win + f- search for files
• Win + g  – cycles through Gadget selections
• Win + l – lock your computer
• Win + m – minimize windows
• Win + t  - cycles through Taskbar programs
• Win + u  – activate the ‘Ease of Use’ Center
• Win + x  – cycle through the ‘Mobility’ Center
• Win + Spacebar  – bring Gadgets to the front

Also – if you use the Quick Launch toolbar, pressing the Win key + a number (from the top row of the keyboard) will launch the corresponding application in the Quick Launch toolbar.

e.g. if your first 4 Quick Launch icons are Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint – If you press Win+2, that will start up Word, Win+4 will start Powerpoint and so on. This only applies to the first 10 QuickLaunch icons Win+0 being the last). 

Microsoft is proceeding with plans to stop selling the Windows XP operating system to retailers and major computer as from June 30th.

Once major manufacturers such as Dell and HP have cleared their stocks of machines loaded with XP, then new machines will only be issued with Vista, and anyone wishing to revert to XP will have to buy Vista Ultimate or Vista Business and then legally “downgrade” to XP.

Smaller PC makers will be allowed to buys XP for resale through til January 2009. Cut down versions of XP will also remain available for use on machines such as the Asus Eee PC.

The decision comes despite vociferous protests from large numbers of people unhappy with Vista and amid calls for XP to be kept on-line until the release of the next Windows version 7, pencilled in for sometime in 2009.

Last week, Microsoft said it would provide full technical support for Windows XP through 2009, and limited support through 2014.

Microsoft has released its Windows Search 4 to the web, updating its Vista, XP, Server 2003 and Windows Home Server offerings.

Microsoft said that this release followed an earlier preview that was downloaded some 300,000 times and has resulted in a lot of feedback, and as a result, a number of quality improvements.

One improved area is the system’s ability to search across machines. Windows Search 4′s remote discovery service will now let users run data queries between Vista and XP machines, for example.

For now Windows Search 4 is available to download from the Microsoft web site, however, in the future it will be included in the Windows Update service as an option, the firm said.

Microsoft Corp. announced that following the success of Windows on netbooks, the Windows offering is being extended to include nettop devices. Netbooks are commonly referred to as ultralow-cost PCs (ULCPCs) and were originally intended for students and other first-time PC customers in emerging markets. Nettop refers to desktops that are ultralow-cost.

In April, Microsoft announced the worldwide extension of the availability of Windows for this emerging class of devices that are primarily used for e-mail, accessing the Internet and instant messaging, and the company is seeing much demand among industry partners who want to ensure that customers can have the benefits of Windows on both new and existing devices.

Customers are asking for Windows on these devices because the experience is familiar to existing PC users and easy to learn for customers who are new to computing. Customers want to be able to take advantage of the wide range of applications, devices and online experiences supported by Windows today. Microsoft partners also appreciate Windows-based solutions for these computers because they already know how to build and support high-quality systems that are powered by Windows.
Read more…

Windows 7, the successor to the much-criticised Windows Vista, will come with multi-touch features that Microsoft chairman Bill Gates predicts will ultimately replace the mouse.

Due for release in 2010, Windows 7 will come with a touch-screen interface that will allow users to enlarge and shrink photos, trace routes on maps, paint pictures or even play the piano.

Gates said at the All Things Digital conference in San Diego in the countdown to his July departure from the company that Windows 7 would embrace new forms of communication and interaction.
Read more…

Microsoft Corp plans to give users of the next version of its Windows operating system touch screen controls as one option for controlling the software, its top executives said on Tuesday.

Chairman Bill Gates and Chief Executive Steve Ballmer showed off new Windows features based on software it calls “multi-touch” that will be part of Windows 7, the next version of Windows, which Ballmer said was due out in late 2009.

The ability to use touch to give users fingertip control of their screens could help revolutionize how computer desktops and mobile phones are controlled and would be an alternative to existing mice, keyboard and pen-based user controls.

During a joint interview that kicked off the Wall Street Journal’s three-day D: All Things Digital conference, an annual gathering of the computer industry elite taking place north of San Diego, Ballmer said touch screen controls was one example of how Microsoft would improve on existing Windows software.

More Info: Reuters

Steve Ballmer is in no way disappointed with Windows Vista. It is selling “incredibly well”, he told a press conference in Herzeliya, Israel today.

“Vista sells on almost 100 per cent of all the new consumer PCs around the world,” the Microsoft CEO proclaimed. He added that the operating system was also selling on, “45 percent of all of new business PCs”. Which is enlightening, since business users are about the ony buyers of new PCs that get a choice.

Ballmer, speaking at a press conference at Microsoft’s new Strategic R&D centre in Herzeliya, said overall, Vista, “has had a good unit volume market reaction.” He said he was happy with sales of the product to date.
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Software developers are still writing applications for Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Linux in preference to Windows Vista more than 16 months after its worldwide release.

A survey by Evans Data questioned 380 US software developers and found that just eight percent are developing applications for Vista.

Almost half the respondents are focusing development efforts on Windows XP, while more than one in 10 are still writing applications for Windows 2003.

Linux was the preferred development platform for a further nine percent of those questioned.
Read more…

The long-awaited and much-delayed update to Windows XP, Service Pack 3, is giving owners of machines with AMD hardware headaches aplenty it seems.

The problems, which first arose just one day after the push, have been causing lots of noise on Microsoft support sites and angry user blogs.

One user reported, “I just installed Windows XP SP3 and after completing the processes and when the system reboots, the system cannot proceed to load the Windows. It just displays the flash screen of Windows then after it reboots again.”
Read more…

Many people have asked me where on earth the Administrator account has gone in Windows Vista. Quite simply, it hasn’t gone anywhere, it still exists however, Microsoft made a very smart move as far as I’m concerned and disabled the Administrator account by default.

To be quite honest, the average home user and, dare I say, ‘power user’ shouldn’t need to enable this account for any reason what so ever. Those individuals who have already enabled the Administrator account and more importantly those who work exclusively with it are just asking for trouble and clearly have no idea about general system security.

If you have a genuine reason for enabling and working out of the administrator account, then please excuse my comment above as it doesn’t apply to you.

Enabling the Administrator Account

All warnings aside, if you still feel like being a cowboy, then here’s how you can enable and log in under the Administrator account.

First you’ll need to open a command prompt in administrator mode by right-clicking and choosing “Run as administrator” (or use the Ctrl+Shift+Enter shortcut from the search box in the Start menu).

Now type the following command:

You should see a message that the command completed successfully. Log out of Windows, and you’ll now see that you have a choice to log into the Administrator account.

There will be no password for this account.  Once you are logged in as the Administrator, I strongly advise that you set one.

Disable the Administrator Account

Make sure you are logged in under your regular user account, and then open the command prompt in administrator mode (as above). Type the following command:

The administrator account will now be disabled, and shouldn’t show up on the login screen any more.