Search results matching tags 'networking', 'internet explorer', and 'Windows Server'

Kevin's "the NEW efficiency" Windows 7 Launch Event Resources

KevinRemde — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 07:00:00 GMT

E-mail Technical Questions: Kevin Remde – Kevin.Remde@microsoft.com

Feedback e-mail to my boss: Brian Moore – BriMoore@microsoft.com

Future Live, In-Person Event Information:
TechNet (for IT Pros): http://www.technetevents.com/kevinremde
MSDN (for Software Developers): http://www.MSDNEvents.com

NEW - IT Managers Community Hub - http://technet.microsoft.com/itmanagement

NEW - IT Manager Community Forum - http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/itmanager

THRIVE: Me >> My Skills >> My Organization

http://www.microsoft.com/click/thrive/

25%-OFF Special TechNet Plus Subscription Promotion –
Yes, save $87.25 off of a TechNet Plus Direct Subscription,
and even more on others!
Use Promotion Code TMSAM08 (that’s ZERO-8) at
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/subscription

General Windows 7 Resources

“the NEW efficiency” Web Site - www.thenewefficiency.com

Windows 7 Enterprise Edition 90-day Trial

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/cc442495.aspx

Welcome to Winodws 7 - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx

TechNet Edge - Windows 7 Screencasts - http://edge.technet.com/Tags/Windows+7/

Windows 7 Springboard - http://www.microsoft.com/springboard

Training Offers (Specifically for you launch attendees!)

www.microsoft.com/learning/careeroffers

Talking About Windows - http://www.talkingaboutwindows.com

The Windows Team Blogs (includes the Window 7 Team Blog, among others)

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/

Windows 7 for the Optimized Desktop

MDOP – Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/enterprise/products/mdop/default.aspx

The Official MDOP Blog - http://blogs.technet.com/mdop

Screencast: Using Windows PowerShell 2.0

http://edge.technet.com/Media/Using-Windows-PowerShell-20-Windows-7-Demo-Screencast-3-of-5/

Screencast: Troubleshooting in Windows 7

http://edge.technet.com/Media/Troubleshooting-Packs-Windows-7-Demo-Screencast-5-of-5/

Windows 7: Make People Productive Anywhere

Screencast: Install and Configure Hosted BranchCache for Web Services

http://edge.technet.com/Media/Install-and-Configure-Hosted-BranchCache-for-Web-Services-SRV311-Part-4-of-5/

Screencast: Install and Configure Distributed BranchCache for File Services

http://edge.technet.com/Media/Install-and-Configure-Distributed-BranchCache-for-File-Services-SRV311-Part-5-of-5/

Screencast: Configuring DirectAccess

http://edge.technet.com/Media/Configuring-DirectAccess-Windows-Server-2008-R2-Demo-Screencast-5-of-5/

Screencast: Using Search Federation

http://edge.technet.com/Media/Using-Search-Federation-Windows-7-Demo-Screencast-2-of-5/

Windows 7 Enhanced Security and Control

Screencast: Configuring AppLocker

http://edge.technet.com/Media/Configuring-AppLocker-Windows-7-Demo-Screencast-4-of-5/

Screencast: BitLocker To Go

http://edge.technet.com/Media/Windows-7-Screencast-BitLocker-To-Go/

Engineering Windows 7 Blog – User Account Control

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/10/08/user-account-control.aspx

Windows 7 Deployment Enhancements

Windows 7 Feature Walkthroughs - very usefulscreencasts...

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd320282.aspx

...such as the video "Migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7"

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd671583.aspx

TechNet Edge - Migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7 with the
Microsoft Deployment Toolkit Beta (USMT "Hardlink" feature)

http://edge.technet.com/Media/User-State-Migration-with-Windows-7/

NEW Bigger Discount on TechNet Plus Subscriptions!

KevinRemde — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Whenever I present a live TechNet Event, I ask my audience to raise their hands if they are a TechNet subscriber. Usually about 1/3 of the audience raises their hand. Considering that this is typically a Microsoft-friendly audience, I'm a little shocked that there aren't more hands going up. The TechNet Subscription is such a great resource for IT Pros, for these reasons:

Downloadable (or delivered, if you subscribe to the disks-delivered-to-you-monthly subscription), full-version software licensed for evaluation purposes; which includes Microsoft operating systems, servers, and Office System software; all the software that IT Pros care about. Yes, these are for evaluation, testing, and training only; but they don't time-out. You can install these into a training lab, test lab, or use Virtual PC, Virtual Server, Hyper-V, or even your own downloaded evaluation copy of the latest beta or CTP or Release Candidate software! Use it to build a virtually networked playground, and play with (er.. “evaluate”, if your boss is watching) all the latest and greatest tools and technologies.
You get early access to beta versions and release candidates of new Microsoft products.
A Technical Information Library containing the articles, security updates, service packs, utilities and more - all in one convenient location.
Access to Online Concierge Chat service for live help from a Microsoft Online Assistant - to help you get the most out of your subscription.
Yearly subscription to TechNet Magazine (I love this magazine!)
Two (2) technical support incidents and a 20% discount on additional phone support incidents you purchase. (HINT: the savings here alone justifies the subscription cost)
Twelve free eLearning courses per year to keep your skills up to date. Just for TechNet Subscribers. (Good idea to watch the TechNet Plus Blog for details)
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For all of those reasons (Heck, for any ONE of those reasons), a TechNet Plus subscription is worth the yearly investment.

"Cool, Kevin. But how do I save $$$s?"

For new subscriptions, from now until December 2009, you can save 25% on any version of a TechNet Plus subscription.

"Is this worldwide, or U.S. only, or what?"

This is for residents of North America. So, if you're in the U.S. or Canada, this is for you.

“Why new subscriptions only? Why not a discount renewals?”

Renewals are already automatically discounted, even more than the 25% you get with this code. Besides.. we’re honestly trying to promote TechNet Subscriptions to those who haven’t yet benefited from it. We’re pretty confident that if you try it, you’ll see enough value in it to renew your subscription.

Write down or copy this promotion code to your clipboard: TMSAM08 (That's zero-eight. Not the letter O.)

Then GOTO the TechNet Subscription Center (CLICK HERE), and use the code to get your savings.

Chiuso per ferie: 08 agosto – 24 agosto 2009

g_malusardi — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Giorgio

Can your data center handle a hurricane? Ours can

Keith Combs — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 08:00:00 GMT

Usually we discuss hurricane or typhoon force winds in the warm tropical climates of the world. Well, unless you haven't been paying attention, Seattle and surrounding areas got hammered about 24 hours ago and a lot of essential services are still being affected. People got killed and the area will take days to recover. I am sad about that.

From an IT perspective, it's been interesting to watch from 1600 miles away. It has effected some of our services. We canceled the webcasts on Friday. My blog pictures are gone because my ISP has been done due to a lack of power. Power in our office buildings in Redmond is sparse but a few folks did find places to jack in and get power.

One thing that has not been down is email. In fact, many of our internal servers have been up round the clock. I've been using email all day. I submitted an order for some software and hardware for a project. I attended LiveMeeting online conferences to discuss our launch events. I've been in and out of our sharepoint and file servers via VPN all day. In fact, I'm pulling a massive content session off a server in the Redmond data center as we speak using a multithreaded copy tool and it's clipping along at about 650k per second.

Now lets reflect upon that for a second... We have literally thousands of servers in the data center and from where I sit, there has been zero impact to my day. When people talk about mission critical, this is what it's all about. Those services above are using Microsoft email, web, database and portal services all run in a data center of dedicated IT Pros.

In short, the Microsoft IT folks freaking rock baby!!!

I'm sure we'll have all kinds of interesting stories about this storm. It's sad to see there was loss of life. It's also sad so many people are going to be inconvenienced for many days ahead. I hope the recovery is swift, and Seattle people can have a decent Christmas.

The Glass is 10% Full

Keith Combs — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 08:00:00 GMT

Do you ever look to the past to see what the future holds? You should. I cut my computer teeth long before most people. My computer heritage goes back to my diapers. Dear Dad was a career IBMer and I was playing with IBM Selectric typewriters and dictaphones long before most people had ever seen Lotus 1-2-3. During a recent discussion with Rodney Clark, a rising Microsoft executive and the leader of my org, I found out he and I have very similar roots in that regard. His Dad was also a career IBMer. We both have technology in our genes.

The passion for technology was ingrained in me at a very early age. Hugh MacLeod talks about the rebirth of Microsoft in "The Microsoft Question" blog post and why he keeps an eye on us. He makes a lot of good points and gives the "Scoble Effect" a lot of credit. I think the core for a lot of the rebirth he describes is passion.

Have you ever seen Steve Ballmer on stage talking to Microsoft employees at our annual sales and technical pilgrimage? Talk about passion. His passion is strong enough to focus the troops in a direction, for months. When you watch the channel9.msdn.com videos produced by Scoble, Charles and Rory, you see passionate Microsoft people.

Successful companies hire passionate people. Passion also means not resting on your laurels.

So back to my original question... Do you look back? Should successful companies and people look back? I think they should. It's especially refreshing to look back at the progress that's been made over the past 15-20 years. Just look at Windows. See the history of Windows at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/WinHistoryDesktop.mspx. While you are at it, take a look at the Internet Explorer history. Some would say IE helped Microsoft rise from the ashes.

When I rewind, I think about Windows 3.x and the integration work I used to do with the Novell Netware 3.x of that era. Anyone remember Network Courier or Microsoft Mail? I still remember running my first COBOL compile with Microfocus COBOL on a personal computer. I was in heaven. Sure beats a 3270 emulator and CA Abendaide.

Last week I was in Las Vegas. We had just announced Microsoft Office 2007 had RTM'd and I knew the Windows Vista announcement would be coming soon. I am totally energized about all of this and had an absolute blast demonstrating the products. I was also working with some other Microsoft veterans of plus ten years. All of the veterans were super stoked. New products will do that.

Interesting enough, almost as soon as we announced the Windows Vista RTM, my brain had already placed the check mark next to Windows Vista and was on to what's next... Exchange Server 2007, Longhorn Server, Virtualization management, network management, etc.

Are great companies reborn? Or do they hire passionate people who want to change the world? Are passionate people ever satisfied? Is Microsoft done? What else is left to do? I think the answer is obvious...

The glass is 10% full.

Watching the TechED 2006 action poolside

Keith Combs — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 07:00:00 GMT

Get your frozen margarita, dual core laptop and favorite rubber ducky and head to the pool. Might as well since this year you’ll be able to watch and listen to the festivities on the http://VirtualTechEd.com website. It’ll be interesting to see how much of the show, seminars and “social” events are actually broadcast.

I would recommend tuning into the opening keynote on 6/11 at 7pm EST. We’ll have Ray Ozzie, Bob Muglia and Chris Capossela showing off some kewl stuff. Maybe they’ll do some of those kewl virtualization demos, or something fascinating from Windows Vista. It sure would be kewl if they did a BDD of Halo 3 to 1000 workstations and waiting TechEd gamers. Now that my friends is business desktop deployment. Time to get down to business fragging.

And yes, this is a current shot of the homepage at virtualteched.com from my patio. The laptop is on battery so the brightness is a bit low and obviously the exposure is set for the background, not the black Lenovo Thinkpad T60 in the foreground. The picture doesn’t do the pool justice but as you’ll recall, it’s big enough for a few of your friends. Sorry, you can’t see the “refreshments” just to the left of the laptop. Gotta go work on on some important business.

Got a phat internet connection? Download Windows Vista Beta 2 now!!!

Keith Combs — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 07:00:00 GMT

So I missed the date by a few hours, but you can help us bring the internet to it’s knees by downloading Windows Vista Beta 2 today!!! Ok, depending on your connection, maybe not today but hopefully shortly there after. After the download is complete burn the .iso image to DVD and you’ll have a shiny new operating system to test.

Go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/preview.mspx and decide if you want to order the DVD kit or download the bits right now.

As you can see, this is a rather large download so you’ll need to be patient with it. It might make more sense for you to simply order the DVD. The price will vary by region but to give you an idea, it’s $6 for the DVD, $4 for shipping and some taxes for me here in sunny 100 degree Texas. That’s slightly over $10 if you want to conserve bandwidth.

UPDATE: Well, we’ll hardly bring the internet to its knees when we get these. I was going through the process of trying the download for myself (so I could share your pain), and I got the lovely message to the right (click the thumb for better detail).

You can’t really read it, but it has bad news. I basically says our data center is a bit busy right now.

Now I’m really going to try to download the whole thing to see how long it takes. With my 15meg connection, it should take about an hour. Place yer bets.

Windows Vista User Account Control (UAC) - love it?

Keith Combs — Thu, 18 May 2006 07:00:00 GMT

There has been a raging debate inside and outside of Microsoft about the new security feature in Windows Vista called UAC. UAC stands for User Account Control. The debate has raged mostly about the effectiveness of the feature. Do a search on www.live.com for vista uac and you’ll see what I mean. The mainstream press has even decided this topic is worthy of “debate”.

By effectiveness, I mean that most of the negative articles mention that your are prompted so often for elevation consent, that you become a drone hitting the enter key without really looking closely at why you are being prompted.

Let’s get one thing straight about the feature set… you can control this. In the snip I have posted, you can see the policies that are available that control the behavior of this feature.

The policies can be set and controlled locally via secpol.msc, or via a Windows Active Directory Group Policy. In the snip above, you can see I took a harsh stance on the policies for my machine. I’m currently running a Windows Vista Beta 2 release candidate and have been running with these policies for over three weeks.

Keep in mind Windows Vista is in development. You get to tell us what is the right balance of security and control. Windows Vista Beta 2 is almost ready. Install it and try it for yourself. Post feedback to the UAC blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/uac/archive/2006/01/22/516066.aspx where they’ve outlined the settings and their meanings.

See the Step-By-Step at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/library/0d75f774-8514-4c9e-ac08-4c21f5c6c2d9.mspx

See http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/security/uacppr.mspx for more information.

See the Application Compatibility article at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/deploy/appcompat/acshims.mspx. This is a very nice resource and you should devote some time to reading that article (recently updated).

Windows Vista App Compat Readiness Labs @ TechEd06

Keith Combs — Thu, 04 May 2006 07:00:00 GMT

An unique opportunity to get one-on-one time with our Windows Vista application compatibility experts during the Windows Vista Readiness Applications Compatibility Labs at TechEd 2006. Bring your own Applications to test and troubleshoot and/or try out our self paced labs to test and catch up on the exciting new enhancements and opportunities Windows Vista has to offer – all in a single room.

Windows Vista Readiness Labs TechEd06

June 12th – 16th, 2006

Room 108, First Floor

Boston Convention & Exhibition Center (BCEC)
415 Summer Street
Boston, MA 02210

Application Developers (ISV and IT) are invited to the Windows Vista Readiness App Compat labs at TechEd06!

Use our test application to learn about changes that could affect applications in the Windows Vista environment.
Bring your Applications to the Vista Readiness Lab and have our experts assist in evaluating and debugging compatibility issues in your app.
In a single HoL session you will understand how to setup, run and uninstall scenarios for Vista and learn more about new features like UAC and how they can impact applications.
Spend 1:1 time with our Vista App Compat experts – learn how to fix your applications directly from Microsoft Development teams and experience the enhancements and opportunities Vista has to offer.
This is a great opportunity to learn about the (ACT) Application Compatibility Toolkit that would help enterprises to evaluate upgrade and deployment to Windows Vista options while reducing testing and other costs to a minimum. Additionally, ACT can be used by developers to learn about areas in their applications that need to be addressed.

How would you solve this security problem?

Keith Combs — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 07:00:00 GMT

Steve Riley sent me an email message about a post on his blog. He needs feedback from all of you on how to solve a challenging problem. The challenge revolves around using public computers or kiosks to access your corporate data. If we all used smartcards, and all machines had smartcard readers, then we’d have a nice multi factor auth system. However, smartcard utopia doesn’t exist.

You can read a nice description of the problem at http://blogs.technet.com/steriley/archive/2006/04/20/425824.aspx.

So what would you like a two factor authentication system to look and act like? Give Steve some good feedback at the post linked above.

My solution would be to create a smartcard emulator on a USB flash “drive”. Securely store the certs on the device. USB is a pretty prevalent port on machines, at least more so than anything else I can think of. Would that work?