The Windows 7 Tech Update that we delivered a few weeks back is now ready as a On-Demand Live Meeting. Details below:
Title: Windows 7 – Technical Update Abstract: The Windows 7 beta is here and everyone’s talking about it. In this session we’ll discuss what Windows 7 means for the IT Pro and enterprises and mid-market customers in general. Technologies covered include DirectAccess, BranchCache, Federated Search, Bitlocker to Go and the ways in which Windows 7 streamlines PC management. Demo’s include DirectAccess, BranchCache, Bitlocker to Go, User Account Control changes and many of the management changes.
Click here to view the On-Demand Live Meeting
Don't forget to register for the Windows 7 – The Security Story Live Meeting which is happening on April 3rd.
Original article at TechNet Edge. Final build (RTW) of IE 8 is released! Why as an IT Pro should you upgrade now from IE 6 or 7 or switch from a competing browser? Here are the top 5 reasons why you should upgrade to IE 8 now:
More Productivity – Get things done and browse faster and easier. Microsoft gathered a huge amount of data to understand how people use the browser and the tasks they accomplish. IE 8 is designed out-of-the-box to help get tasks accomplished quicker along with an overall increase in browser performance and reliability. Webslices and Accelerators are innovations you’ll want which no other browser have.
Performance – Overall page load times are faster than IE 6/7. Also, IE performs faster than Chrome or Firefox loading the entire page on half of the top 25 websites.
Reliability – If a tab crashes, only the tab will crash – not the entire browser. Easily recover all of your tabs/sessions in the unlikely event of the entire browser crashing. Chrome does tab isolation, Firefox does session recovery, IE 8 is the only one to do both.
Search – Automatically get more than just text visual search suggestions while you type along with a history of your previous searches for your favorite search plug-in such as Live search, Google, Facebook, or Wikipedia. Additionally, get a history of your previously visited websites and favorite sites as you type in the address bar.
Accelerators – Highlight text on a webpage and in one click do things like get a map of an address, define a word, send an email, do a search, share on a social networking site, or translate text into another language. Your company might develop a custom accelerator or find one of the existing ~100 which help your users.
Webslices – Get a small “slice” visual update for frequently updating content such as stock quotes, traffic, ebay auctions, and weather - dropped down from the browser favorites bar. Your company might also develop a custom webslice or find one of the existing ~30 which might help your users.
Better Security – Don’t let leave your company at a higher risk by using a competing browser or an older version of IE. IE is the best browser at protection from malware and were the 1st to innovate with far more security and privacy enhancements than I can list below.
In-Private Filtering – gives an added level of control and choice about the information 3rd- party websites can potentially use to track browsing activity.
Per-Site and Per-User Active X controls – allows the lockdown of individual Active-X controls to a specific site or user(s), therefore significantly reducing the attack surface for Active-X controls, minimizing your risk.
Domain Highlighting – automatically highlights the owning domain of whatever site you’re currently viewing. This helps users identify the real site they’re on when a website attempts to deceive them.
Granular Management – IE is the only browser which gives you the complete control to lockdown and fine tune features via group policy. There have been over 100 group policy settings added, bringing the total to ~1,400 policies (xlsx file) which allow you to easily control how you'd like to run IE in your environment.
Easy to Deploy – IE is the only browser on the market which allows the customization of the initial install package and gives you the support to deploy with so many options. IE 8 can be easily deployed using Windows Update, WSUS, SMS, SCCM, group policy, a network folder or even quickly slipstreamed into your existing Vista images. Furthermore, the Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK) 8 allows customization of the installation package and builds upon the functionality and feedback received from IEAK 7.
Easy to Migrate – With the capability to emulate IE7 on the browser and websites having the capability to force IE 8 into IE 7 mode with a simple piece of HTML code, there should be little reason to not move from IE 7 to IE 8 while maintaining compatability with your existing sites. IE 8 is embracing open standards for browsing and will continue to do so; in the long run making it easier for developers and IT Pros to do fewer testing with their web applications and upgrades, such as future generations of IE. Additionally, there are some great resources to help with your migration:
Application compatibility toolkit (ACT) 5.0 – enables you to test your applications and websites to identify compatibility issues with IE 8 and Vista.
IE 8 Add-on to report compatibility issues – This allows Microsoft to collect data you submit for public websites which you believe are having problems displaying. Microsoft works with or notifies the website owner or identifies and resolves potential IE 8 issues.
IE 8 Developer tools – There is capability built-in to pass to your developers to fix your site
VPC images to download for testing – images for: IE6 with XPSP3, IE7 with XPSP2, IE8 RC1 with XPSP3, and IE 7 with Vista.
Download IE 8 RTM
IE8 is ready for download for Windows Vista 32-bit and 64 bit, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 32-bit and 64-bit and Windows Server 2008 32-bit and 64-bit. For Windows 7 Beta Users Windows 7 Beta already includes a pre-release candidate version of Internet Explorer 8 that is optimized for that release. Windows 7 enables unique features and functionality in Internet Explorer 8 including Windows Touch and Jump Lists which require additional product tests to ensure we are providing the best Windows experience for our customers. We will continue to update the version of Internet Explorer 8 running on Windows 7 as the development cycles of Windows 7 progress and plan to include the final version of Internet Explorer 8 in the release candidate version of Windows 7 later this year. Check out some of these Web Slices and Accelerators Windows Live Hotmail ESPN Top Headlines We also have some cool local Web Slices and Accelerators Rugby Australia National Geographic Australia TV Schedule OzBargain StaticICE Search Accelerator For more Web Slices and Accelerators check out the IE8 Add-ons gallery
Registration for our next Live Meeting on Windows 7 is ready.
Language(s): English. Product(s): Other,Security. Audience(s): IT Manager,IT Professional. Duration: 75 Minutes
Start Date: Friday, 3 April 2009 11:00 AM Australia (East)
Event Overview Windows 7 has many features for the consumer, developer and IT Pro. But what about Security? In this session we’ll talk about and show some of the important security features that are coming as part of Windows 7. These include Applocker™, Bitlocker™ and Bitlocker To Go™, DirectAcess™, User Account Control and the security changes to Internet Explorer 8. There will be demo’s on all these technologies so you can see firsthand how Windows 7 security has been improved!
Speaker - Jeff Alexander, IT Pro Evangelist, Microsoft Jeff Alexander is a IT Pro Evangelist for Microsoft and travels across Australia speaking to customers and partners about the latest technologies. Jeff can be seen speaking at Security events, TechEd and other recognised Industry Tech events. Jeff started as employee number 27 at Microsoft Australia and has been with the company for 21 years. Jeff’s blog is http://blogs.technet.com/jeffa36 Twitter Hashtag #win7live Click here to Register for the Live Meeting Event If you have any questions prior to the event that you would like us to address please Twitter it with the hashtag #win7live
Windows Server 2008 SP2 RC and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 RC is prerelease code offered to the public through our Customer Preview Program. Please see the Windows Server SP2/Windows Vista SP2 Customer Preview Program page on TechNet/MSDN for additional details, documentation, and forums. Windows Vista SP2 TechNet Windows Server 2008 SP2 TechNet Windows Server 2008 SP2 RC and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 RC apply to people, organizations, and technical enthusiasts who are comfortable evaluating prerelease software. This prerelease software is provided for testing only. Installation of Service Pack 2 RC will result in Microsoft collecting information about the installation process, even if the installation is not completed. We do not recommend installing this software on primary or mission-critical systems. We recommend that you have a backup of your data before you install any prerelease software. SP2 is an update to Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista that addresses feedback from our customers and partners. By providing these fixes integrated into a single service pack, Microsoft provides a single high-quality update that minimizes deployment and testing complexity for customers. In addition to all previously released updates, SP2 will contain changes focused on addressing reliability and performance issues, supporting new kinds of hardware, and adding support for several emerging standards. SP2 will also continue to make it easier for IT administrators to deploy and manage large installations of Windows Server 2008. Service Pack 1 is a prerequisite for installing Service Pack 2. Please make sure that your system is running Service Pack 1 before you install Service Pack 2. Windows Server 2008 SP2 Release Candidate and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Release Candidate - Five Language Standalone version can be installed on systems with any of the following language versions: English, French, German, Japanese, or Spanish. Support for Windows Server 2008 SP2 Beta and Windows Vista SP2 Beta can be received by visiting the Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 TechNet forum.
Thanks for all of those who attended today, We had a great response to the session. We will post the recording of the session up some time next week so keep your eye out for that. I have put the questions and answers from the session below, If you had more questions please let us know. A big thank you to John Pritchard for answering the questions during the session.
Question: Do you require Windows 08 for the direct access function? can it be implemented with 2003 server?
Private Answer: Direct Access requires WS2008 R2
Question: Is DirectAccess a built-in feature or paid extra?
Private Answer: DA is part of the Windows 7 Enterprise SKU - basically the enterprise/corporate version
Question: with regards to business users, why doesn't MS make a professional / workstation version of server 2008 instead of doing a business version of windows 7. Keeping home and business OS separated so that they can be developed separately
Private Answer: the code base separation is a complex issue. WS2008 shares the same kernel as Vista. Win7 has a Vista Kernel. My take is that keeping the base the same ensures the security features are built into both home and corp environment
Question: does branchcache cache outlooks rpc-over-https traffic?
Private Answer: BC caches file downloads so a copied file is cached
Question: Does that caching affect the sharing security of the systems
Private Answer: Good question - need to check but I suspect you find that user access is preserved. Let me check with Jeff at the end of the session
Question: What if you plug in a BIT Locked USB key into a WinXP computer, do you get the same password request feature there? or is it only valid on WinVista >
Private Answer: It is supported for read access on XP and installs from the bitlocker appln on the USB mem stick to read the files
Question: what about brute force attacks
Private Answer: Same as per a bitlocker drive now. The key is stored under an encrypting key just like a hard disk. The data is protected the same and like any encryption the brute force will work eventually, just whether we are still alive when it succeeds is the debate :-)
Question: does that gpo can be configured on server site or has to be local?
Private Answer: local gpo for workgroups and domain gpos for domain joined PCs
Question: is bitlocker backwardly compatible
Private Answer: Yes to Bitlocker Vista and WS2008. More cross compatible than back compatible. Does that help?
Question: Can this be made to be "dumb proof" for users: ie: once finsihed recording, it automaticlly emails the administrator or specified address? instead of creating the zipfile to be saved and manually emailed?
Private Answer: Good point - this would be a good integration for Operations Manager and Desktop Error Monitoring. Not available in the current version.
Question: When Downgrading windows, i would like to clear up a issue i was having with another friend, When you downgrade, are you required to let microsoft know and they issue a new key to you to use, or can you just use any windows XP pro key and when activating just activate by phone - i have called microsoft about it previously, but none could give me a clear answer from a legal stand point --> am i breaching licensing using any Windows XP pro key on a machine that is licensed for Windows Vista Business?
Private Answer: no breech - XP downgrade is permitted
Question: Is bitlocker what will do full drive encryption for hdds? Eg laptops. And does this utilize a hardware TPM chip?
Private Answer: Bitlocker using the TPM v1.2 and encrypts HDD, External HDD with Vista SP1 and with Win7 USB memory
Question: Will the Microsoft deployment tools (MDT) add the ability to restrict the installation of drivers to specific models of hardware (to address the co-existence of conflicting PnP drivers)? Thanks
Private Answer: Already there now with the database feature for drivers by make and model
Question: With DirectAccess can I customise what the users have access to? i.e. Internet access via the corporate network or via direct internet access.
Private Answer: Yes - can be customised once DA is established
A reminder that we have the Windows 7 Tech Update Live Meeting tomorrow, it starts at 11.00am Sydney time.
The Windows Server Fufillment site is designed to provide a one-stop shop for FPP and OEM customers who need to downgrade to Windows Server 2003 R2 to order a downgrade kit that contains both the media and product key of Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition or Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition. You can obtain downgrade media and product keys from the Windows Server Fulfillment website via the existing Downgrade Rights page on MS.com. This page has also been fleshed out to provide education regarding Windows Sever licensing.
The Engineering Windows 7 Blog has outlined some of the changes in Windows 7 Release Candidate. Here is the list, check out their blog for more information. Looks like there are some direct changes from what Beta testers have been requesting. Desktop Experience 1. Windows Flip (ALT + TAB) with Aero Peek 2. Windows Logo + <#> keyboard shortcut 3. Needy State 4. Taskbar “Open With” 5. Taskbar scaling 6. Anchoring taskbar thumbnails 8. Jump List length 9. Increased pinning flexibility with Jump List 10. Desktop icon and gadget view options Touch 11. Aero Peek for touch 12. Multi-touch touch keyboard 13. Multi-touch right-click 14. Drag/Drop and selection Networking 15. Internet access feedback Control Panel 16. User Account Control 17. Locking a machine without a screensaver 18. Faster access to High Performance power plan 19. Custom theme improvements Windows Media Player 20. Improved Internet Radio playback 21. Improved playback support for video content from digital camcorders and cameras 22. Cleaner Now Playing view 23. Filtering content that cannot be played 24. Resume from sleep 25. Quieting Windows Media Player sync relationships 26. Easier access to advanced settings 27. Jump List improvement Device Stage 28. Enriching the Device Stage ecosystem Sound UX 29. Improving the headphone experience 30. Increased audio reliability Windows Explorer and Libraries 31. Improved header 32. Reduced confusion with drag/drop 33. Reviving familiar entry points 34. FAT32 support 35. Arrangement view enhancements Performance 36. Improving performance through data