Snow Problem What a winter! The long range weather forecasters got it wrong, traffic in south eastern England ground to a halt at the first sight of snow – my usual 25 minute journey home turned into a 4 hour drive battling against the elements - but Microsoft was ready! For several years now Microsoft...

I managed to finally import, edit, and clean up the video from The SharePoint EDU Conference that took place back in the Summer 2009 in Birmingham.  There is a heavy SharePoint focus as you can tell by the name.  The content below is one of six videos that were recorded so stay tuned for more...

I’ve been meeting a lot of open-source devs lately and most tend to be genuinely surprised about the ability to now use SQL Server 2005/2008 with PHP applications. The best PHP devs, especially those who own or run development houses, tend to be a platform neutral bunch even those that work almost exclusively...

TechNet Webcast: Microsoft Virtualization Best Practices for SharePoint (Level 200) Wednesday, December 02, 2009 - 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Pacific Time Vipul Shah, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation Tom Brauch, President, Fpweb.net - SharePoint Hosting Pioneer Steve Laux, Product Manager, Fpweb...

There is a lot of noise in the SharePoint world post SharePoint Conference 2009 and PDC.  I’m getting hammered for requests regarding briefings and overviews of the product so I thought I should just make my slides available.  Check it out!   Share Point 2010 Product Overview BETA View...

I read a great list of free applications on TechRadar that really enhance the usability of Windows 7 especially if you’re a power-user.  Windows 7 is great, but some of these apps really take window management to the next level!  There is a good mix of freeware and open-source software. ...

While I’m really busy tweeting live at this conference, I read a great overview for IT Pros who are interested in SharePoint 2010.  I’m doing more of a dev focus for this conference so if you’re interested, follow me on Twitter @tarpara  See Natalya's post.

I just got a Orange Broadband since they have a deal for Microsoft UK employees.  They conveniently provide a wireless b/g router from Seimens, unfortunately its not the most high-performance access point on the market.  For the last few days I’ve been scouring the internet on forums for a...

Bpos Architectural Consideration Architectural Forum View more presentations from ukdpe . One of our partners at CSC posted an excellent presentation of Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS) offering which introduces IT to SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Office Communications Online...

For October we are releasing 13 bulletins (eight critical and five important), addressing 34 vulnerabilities, affecting Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, Silverlight, Forefront, Developer Tools, and SQL Server. Most of these updates require a restart so please factor that into your deployment planning...

Microsoft security experts have never really been fans of SAML, a markup language, that is crucial to many e-government initiatives and SSO models.  The problem with SAML is that it is obese and almost no one had a full implementation of it until recently, yet it was always Microsoft that receive...

I just finished installing our Microsoft IT build of Windows 7 x64 with Office 2010.  After I installed all the updates on my Lenovo T61p with 4GB RAM, I decided to reboot my machine a few times and clock it with my stopwatch.  From shutdown to usable desktop interactivity, my laptop required...

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 4.0 is Now Available! With Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 becoming available in the near future, the Solution Accelerators Team is offering customers and partners a head start on deployment planning with the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit...

Windows XP Mode Release Candidate is publically available today at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx Since the beta release of Windows XP Mode, several updates have been made responding to user feedback. These changes reflect Microsoft’s goal to increase ease of use for users...

Spend a Day with the Experts: The Converging Paths of SQL Server and SharePoint Date: Wednesday, 27th May Time: 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. (breakfast and registration begin at 8:00 a.m.) Location: Microsoft Office, Victoria, London We invite you to this full day seminar featuring SQL Server and SharePoint...

Edge has a really great video with Ram Rathnam, Director of Product Management for Windows Activation Technologies.  Windows Vista introduced new activation concepts like Key Management Server (KMS) and Multiple Activation Key (MAK).  From a conceptual view, these technologies are the same...

The Engineering 7 Blog outlines enhancements made in newer solid-state disk technology that will improve user experience in Windows 7 significantly.  Because SSDs are essentially giant flash drives with no moving parts, there are inherent performance benefits in theory, however the blog discusses...

I absolutely love Fora.TV because it is one of the highest quality sources for policy-based discussions and videos on the web.  Recently they post a fascinating piece done by Derek Slater, a Policy Analyst at Google, who discuss the state of broadband policy primarily in the US but it’s ramifications...

There has been a lot of press about the leaked Windows 7 RC.  For the most part, the press and bloggers have been extremely positive. One very minor but significant tweak that I’ve found useful as an IT Pro has been full path display in the address bar.  In Vista and Windows 7 Beta looked like...

Interesting article from ComputerWorld about UAC improvements and a reduction in prompts to the end-user by the operating system. “Among the changes Microsoft's made to UAC that will drive that decrease, Cooke cited several specific examples, then pointed to the new "slider bar" that will let...

Did you ever wish you could defrag your workstation in 3 seconds?  Have you ever accidentally opened ALL the applications in your start menu *not really* ?  What about jump up and down with 24 running hard drives in your hand?  The boys at Samsung have and they have a pretty amazing story...

In my earlier article I discussed a strategy about how to upgrade Windows XP machines to Windows 7 using an in-place method.  My method essentially used Windows Vista as an interim OS.  If done properly via automation and deployment tools, it would only add about an additional 30 minutes to...

Windows 7 Engineering today confirmed that that Windows 7 will allows users and IT Pros the ability to disable or turn-off IE8.  Although IE will on by default, administrators who want to standardized on a different browser will be able to turn off the IE components.  Read the Engineering 7...

One great new feature in Windows Server 2008 is a feature called Group Policy Preferences .  Unlike Policies , Preferences are not enforced.  Before this feature was introduced, IT administrators would have to often write a whole bunch of logon scripts or tediously build the settings into an...

There has been a lot of noise about the fact that Microsoft is not providing an in-place upgrade for Windows XP users to Windows 7.  This is ironic considering that during the Vista launch, I got laughed at every presentation for actually recommending an in-place upgrade to Vista.  No one believed...