Dwayne's Blog : Windows 7

Windows 7 USB ISO Tool

dwaynef — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:09:00 GMT

The Microsoft Store released a tool to allow you to place a Windows 7 ISO on a USB flash drive and boot directly from the usb drive to do your Windows install. Very useful for installing on systems without DVD drives, e.g. Netbook or people like me who use up both internal bays for hard drives.

More info here

Launch day !!! Windows 7 & Server 2008 R2 released

dwaynef — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:40:00 GMT

Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 both went to public release today (GA), both operating systems have been available via Volume License, MSDN & Technet previously. You will start to see some very cool hardware coming your way from the various OEMs, including laptops with multipoint touch and of course as I've mentioned on my blog before, Netbooks with Windows 7.

Try and attend an event (perhaps you saw me at AMC 25 launch in NYC) or attend one virtually.

Check the www.Windows.com (includes some discounts and options for your upgrades) and www.Windows.com/social (for all your twitter/facebook/rss/social 7 needs)

Free Windows 7 Ebook

dwaynef — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:49:00 GMT

Deploying Windows® 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and TechNet Magazine

Brief Description

Deploying Windows® 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and TechNet Magazine
Download the New eBook: Deploying Windows® 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and Microsoft® TechNet Magazine. Looking for guidance specific to Windows 7 deployment? Check out what the industry's leading experts have to say in this free Microsoft Press eBook with selected chapters from the Windows 7 Resource Kit on Deployment Platforms, Planning, Testing Application Compatibilty.

Download here

Windows 7 & XPM

dwaynef — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:16:00 GMT

Despite running Windows 7 for almost a year now, and the OS going to RTM sometime ago, Windows 7 only goes GA (general availability, i.e. on the shelf) on Thursday 22nd this week. Hopefully everyone has taken a look at this point, really good improvement, and especially if you are looking at low end PCs like netbooks (my S10 & NC10's are doing well at this point).

There has been a lot of talk about Windows 7 XP mode and the ability to run an underlying XP/Vista VM so you can run applications (like IE 6) that won't run under 7. It does require a 64bit OS and hardware that supports virtualization. More info here

One interesting piece that no one I've seen mentioned is Sysinternals (Sysinternals is now owned by Microsoft) has a P2V Tool for free that would allow you to P2V your previous desktop (or Server), you then could do a fresh install of Windows 7, and load your previous OS under XPMode and either access previous apps or the entire desktop as required.

P2V Tool here

Home Group

dwaynef — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 07:30:00 GMT

I've been posting some articles about how we share/carry our information around in the new world of multiple devices and form factors. Most of us today have some form of smartphone, probably a laptop/netbook and perhaps one or two more machines at home or the office with which we interact, not to mention those who have media centers or more ambitious uses of PCs.

A good place to start is really with something like Windows Home Server to have that central place for storage, our photos and media, automatic backup and recovery. Live Mesh provides a good way to sync that data between your multiple devices so you never get somewhere and find the files you need/want are elsewhere. I covered those in two of my previous posts, so want to cover two additional features Windows 7 brings to the table to make that connected lifestyle simpler.

First is Home Group, we often have multiple machines, but they may not be all in the same workgroup, some may belong to office domains, home do we get them to act together, share things like printers, give me access to my data without making life difficult or creating a new home IT project? Take a look here at how Home Group can help

The other feature is a really small one that I think makes life a lot simpler, the ability to set a default printer per network, so your default printer for work is different than your default printer at home. Check Jennifer Marsman's blog here for her take on it.

Windows 7 and form factor choices.

dwaynef — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 04:28:00 GMT

If you've read my blog before, you know I have a Samsung NC10 running Windows 7 since the early betas, I've now upgraded to RTM Ultimate and I am very happy with the results.

Netbooks are really a form factor choice, and I've always been facinated with another Samsung line, the Q1 (pic below) UMPCs. I've always felt a little price adjustment and the addition of a GPS would have me very tempted.

I am quite pleased to see that Archos is joining that particular form factor with a Windows 7 Touch based device pictured below

Really nice, price range still a bit over the average netbook. Come on Archos, just add the GPS (they do sell other devices with GPS included) and perhaps something similar to the Q1 thumb keyboard option.

If you are interested in the Archos, details here

Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 & Hyper-V R2 RTM'ed !!!

dwaynef — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:12:00 GMT

So big news today, 3 major products went RTM all at the same time, there will be lots of news and more authorative blogs out there, so I'll just throw in a few pointers.

Windows 7, the next desktop OS (replaces Vista), if you haven't downloaded the beta or RC yet, I strongly encourage you to pull down one of the trial copies when they become available. Very fast, very responsive, actually runs on less resources/hardware than it's predecessor. I'm presently running my Samsung S10 Netbook (1.6 Atom Proc, comes with 1Gb Ram) with Windows 7 and Office 2010 Technical Preview (another blog post) and it's great.

Windows Server 2008 R2 (note this is what people thought would be called Win 7 Server, it's not, it's called R2). Big change here is the great new functionality in Hyper-V (Live Migration, Clustered Shared Volumes) as well as support for some great better together functionality with Win 7 (Direct Access, Branch Cache, Bitlocker to go)

Hyper-V R2, Free Hypervisor with High Availability and Live Migration capability!!!

Really good blog from the Virtualization Team detailing all the Hypervisor improvements as well as regularly updating and answering questions/statements about Microsoft Virtualization, good read here

Windows Server Team announcement here

Windows 7 Team announcement here

RSAT for Windows 7 RC available

dwaynef — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:50:00 GMT

Microsoft made the Remote Server Administration Tools available for Windows 7 RC.

RSAT Client is the collection of Windows Server management tools which enable IT professionals to manage their Windows Server infrastructure from their PCs running Windows 7 and includes the following Server Manager, Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) Tools, Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) Tools, Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) Tools, DHCP Server Tools, DNS Server Tools, File Services Tools, Hyper-V Tools, Terminal Services Tools, BitLocker Password Recovery Viewer, Failover Clustering Tools, Group Policy Management Tools, Network Load Balancing Tools, SMTP Server Tools, Storage Explorer Tools, Storage Manager for SANs Tools, Windows System Resource Manager Tools.

The main download page is here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f6c62797-791c-48e3-b754-c7c0a09f32f3&displaylang=en

· Microsoft Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 RC (x86): http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/F/C/1FC27A82-15D9-4D93-B3BC-24204175F9DF/Windows6.1-KB958830-x86.msu

· Microsoft Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 RC (x64): http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/F/C/1FC27A82-15D9-4D93-B3BC-24204175F9DF/Windows6.1-KB958830-x64.msu

Release Candidates everywhere!

dwaynef — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:18:00 GMT

So the last week has had a lot of news about the public availability of release candidates for Hyper-V R2 Server, Windows 2008 R2 Server and the Windows 7 Client operating systems. They were initially available for Technet and MSDN subscribers, but now are public, see links below.

Hyper-V Server R2 RC

Windows Server 2008 R2 RC

Windows 7 RC

Hyper-V Server is a standalone free product, details here .The highlight features for the R2 release will be the inclusion of High Availability and Live Migration features (while still remaining a free product).

Netbooks and Windows 7

dwaynef — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:31:00 GMT

So Netbooks are the most popular thing at the moment, in the office we have amongst my team the HP, Acer, MSI and my own which is a Samsung NC10 "special edition" (has a longer, supposedly 9.5 hour battery)

sub 3lbs, 10"x 7"x1" they make a great machine for city folks like me that often spend a fair amount of time on public transport with a laptop bag on the shoulder. On those days when all I need is to check mail and perhaps do a ppt presentation it really works well, especially when I don't even need to take the power supply.

My disclaimer on this, I see a lot of people asking about screen resolutions and when is this feature being added, etc. Remember this is a compromise machine, you get a form factor and battery life at a cost, if all you are looking for is a cheap laptop, there are plenty out there, don't buy a netbook.

So bought mine, made myself use it for a few days with XP (ships with at the moment) as a baseline, then swapped over to Windows 7 beta. Really happy with result, sleep/resume, general performance better with 7, really impressed with Samsung here, all devices detected included built in Camera and off of Samsung's site all the control software (camera, function keys, etc) although XP specific work fine with 7.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta

dwaynef — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:13:00 GMT

So the Server side of Windows 7 (there will be no Windows 7 Server, it's called 2008 R2, see my blog below on Windows 7 clarity) has been released in beta to public, link to the public stuff below (MSDN also has downloads)

Client side (Windows 7) here as well

Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 will be the next version of the Windows Server operating system from Microsoft. Building on the features and capabilities of the current Windows Server 2008 release version, Windows Server 2008 R2 allows you to create organization solutions that are easier to plan, deploy, and manage than previous versions of Windows Server.

Developing upon the increased security, reliability, and performance provided by Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 extends connectivity and control to local and remote resources. This means your organizations can benefit from reduced costs and increased efficiencies gained through enhanced management and control over resources across the enterprise.

Evaluate Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta (available in English, German, and Japanese) by downloadable ISO format. Editions for evaluation include Datacenter, Enterprise, Standard, Itanium Based Systems, and Web. VHD and other download formats will be available shortly

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/R2-Beta.aspx