Building Community One Brick At A Time

Richard and Greg talk to Stephen Rose about how businesses are installing Windows 7. Stephen references the case studies on Windows 7 installations that started even before the product had shipped. The conversation digs into the ROI calculators that shows how an organization can save time, effort and money with Windows 7. Application compatibility is also an important story - Windows 7 offers built-in XP virtualization, shims and redirection to keep older apps working. Check out http://www.microsoft.com/map  to figure out what applications you're running and help plan your migration. Also check out http://www.microsoft.com/springboard  for more information!

To hear the interview, visit http://www.runasradio.com/ and download the show.

What’s new on Talking About Windows? Well. hear from Jeremy Chapman, Senior Product Manager for Microsoft, as he shares his knowledge on the User State Migration Tool (USMT), which transfers information from XP to Windows 7 faster and easier than ever before.

Program Manager Michael Kleef knows the benefits of making edits offline. Listen as he talks about using Advanced Group Policy Manager to eliminate mistakes and make changes before going live

Ashwin Palekar, Principal Group Program Manager, addresses remote application accessibility, data security and compliance, and other related scenarios.

Mike Mitchell, Principal Group Program Manager, talks about the advantages of the Microsoft Assessment Planning Toolkit (MAP) for IT pros and business decision-makers as they begin to integrate Windows 7.

All of this and the most complete list of live and virtual events for IT pros anywhere on our Talking About Windows events portal.

Come stop by and join the conversation!

Just before the holiday, I asked the fine folks at Microsoft Press to send me some of their Windows 7 books for me to read and review. Several days later, a huge box arrived with a half dozen books. Over the holidays I had the chance to read through two of them. Windows 7 Inside Out by Ed Bott, Carl Siechert and Craig Stinson and Plain & Simple Windows 7 by Jerry Joyce and Marianne Moon.

The first of these, Windows 7 Inside Out is a solid reference guide for IT Pros and Tech Enthusiasts alike. This book assumes you are familiar with the Windows 7 basics and dives right into the meat.

Topics covered include:

• Configure and customize your system with advanced setup options.
• Manage files, folders, and media libraries.
• Administer accounts, passwords, and logons—and help control access to resources.
• Troubleshoot errors and fine-tune performance. Monitoring system health and troubleshooting errors
• Advance Search techniques
• Deep dive into the event viewer
• Registry Editing
• Automating routine maintenance with scripts and other tools.

Included is a fully searchable eBook, “Before You Call Tech Support” reference guide, links to download gadgets, tools, blogs (like this one) and more…

If you are looking to tweak your Windows 7 system or help to support others, this book will more than cover your needs.

The second one, Plain & Simple is a great book for those IT Pros who were directly or indirectly involved with the purchase of a Windows 7 PC for someone else who is not PC savvy. (ie: You are now or have been the tech support line for Mom, Dad, Grandma, etc…) With huge photos and solid walkthroughs, Plain and Simple is a must have addition to that new PC purchase. The book covers the key areas to get you set up and running.

• Running programs and sending e-mail
• Browsing the Web and sharing your files.
• Working with digital media, including photos, music, and videos.
• Burning CDs and DVDs; make your own movies.
• Setting up printers and home groups
• Managing security settings and performing backups

The book offers easy-to-follow steps and screenshots show you exactly what to do, lots of tips to teach you new techniques and shortcuts and their TRY THIS! exercises to help you apply what you’ve learned right away. One thing for sure, this book will reduce the number of “how do I” calls you will receive from friends and family.

Even I learned a few cool new tips and tricks reading through these books. :)

For even more tips and tricks, check out our recently updated IT Pro At Home Tips and Tricks area on Springboard and look for more book reviews over the next few weeks.

Thinking about deploying Windows 7? Need to crunch the numbers to show your boss the  reduced TCO and quick ROI that Windows 7 will have for you’re company?

The Windows 7 Return on Investment (ROI) Tool, powered by Alinean, can help you evaluate your current PC total cost of ownership (TCO) and identify the potential benefits of deploying the Windows 7 operating system to help lower costs, improve service levels, and increase productivity.

This new tool can quantify the tangible value of Windows 7, estimate migration costs, and calculate the financial metrics necessary for your a project review and approval.

To check out the the Windows 7 ROI Calculator visit the Pilot and Deploy area of Springboard or just click here.

Visit the Windows 7 Test Drive for IT Professionals and take a guided tour of Windows 7.  The short virtual labs and supporting videos will give you a chance to explore Windows 7 by feature with no installation required.

What can you try?

• Search Federation: See how Search Federation works and see how to set up search federation connector.
• BranchCache: Try BranchCache and enabling BranchCache in a virtual environment.
• Med-V: Learn about Med-V and enabling Med-V in a virtual environment.
• BitLocker/BitLocker to Go: Learn about enabling BitLocker and BitLocker to Go encryption using group policy.
• User Account Control: Controlling user access through User Account Control.
• Windows Troubleshooting: Observe first hand how the Windows Troubleshooting features work.

Try out a few of the virtual labs and watch a few videos today and learn how Windows 7 can help you and your organization. There are more labs coming in the next few weeks including Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5, AppCompat using Shims, Windows 7 Deployment, Internet Explorer, Powershell, Problem Steps Recorder and App-V.

To check out the labs, visit the Springboard Series on TechNet and go to our Latest Content and Expert Advice area and click on the Windows 7 Test Drive for IT Professionals

Don’t forget to download the free Windows 7 Enterprise 90 day trial version here – and discover how these scenarios work in your own environment.

Now that Windows 7 has been released you may be interested in understanding what Microsoft Certifications are available, and how you can update your certification.

Jim Clark, Sr. Certification Manager for Microsoft Learning is here to answer some of the common questions.

Stephen: Are there any new certifications for Windows 7?

Jim: Yes, in addition to new versions of the Enterprise Desktop Support Technician Pro credential and the core configuring TS exam we have created a new credential with Windows 7 that is focused on the Enterprise Desktop Administrator.

Stephen: What is the difference between this new Enterprise Desktop Administrator (EDA) credential and the Enterprise Desktop Support Technician (EDST)?

Jim: Good question. The primary difference is that the EDST is focused on reacting to customer issues as a helpdesk or technical support responder?, but the EDA roles is focused on proactive desktop tasks that include designing, deploying, and managing. The EDA role is part of a design team that is looking into the future to determine what the desktop infrastructure will need to maintain, grow, or gain efficiency. This could be by upgrading or deploying a new OS, or modifying an existing deployment.

The simple answer is to look at these two credentials the same way we look at the Windows Server 2008 credentials:

• Windows Server 2008, Server Administrator – Operations focused, responsible for today, tomorrow, and next week
• Windows Server 2008, Enterprise Administrator – Engineering focused, responsible for next month, next year and beyond
• Windows 7, Enterprise Desktop Support Technician – Operations focused, responsible for today, tomorrow, and next week
• Windows 7, Enterprise Desktop Administrator – Engineering focused, responsible for next month, next year and beyond

Stephen: So those are the two Pro credentials for Windows 7, are there also new Technology Specialists (TS) exams for Windows 7?

Jim: Yes, there is one new TS exam that will support both the Enterprise Desktop Administrator (EDA), and the Enterprise Desktop Support Technician (EDST) credentials. That exam is 70-680: TS: Windows 7, Configuring. This exam is the backbone of our credentials and it validates all of the common how-to tasks associated with Windows 7. It is a requirement for both the EDA and EDST credentials.

Stephen: Will any of these new exams also count towards the Windows Server 2008 credentials?

Jim: Yes, the 70-680 TS: Windows 7, Configuring exam will count towards the Desktop requirement for the Enterprise Administrator Windows Server 2008 credential.

Stephen: How about people with the Vista EDST credential or even people with the XP DST credential, will they have a way to upgrade their credential to Windows 7?

Jim: Yes, we are creating an exam so that either XP DST’s or Vista EDST’s can take this one exam and become MCTS: Windows 7, Enterprise Desktop Support Technician certified. This upgrade exam will be out in early 2010.

Stephen: So what would you suggest is the first step to become Windows 7 certified?

Jim: If you are new to Windows client certification, or are not currently certified as either an XP DST or Vista EDST, then I recommend you take the 70-680: TS: Windows 7, Configuring exam. This exam is required for both of the Pro credentials and can be used for the desktop requirement for the Enterprise Administrator credential, so it’s the best place to start.

Stephen: Are there any other Windows 7 exams beyond the ones you’ve mentioned?

Jim: Yes, we also have an exam that is geared towards OEM Preinstallation specialists. This exam 70-683: TS: Windows 7, Preinstalling for OEMs is designed to validate skills of OEM vendors that preinstall Windows 7 on desktops and laptops for corporate or retail sales.

Stephen: Are any of the exams live now?

Jim: Yes, all of the exams (except the upgrade exam) are live now. Anyone can register to take an exam at www.prometric.com.

Stephen: Where can I learn more about Windows 7 certification?

Jim: Best place to start is the Windows Client Certification portal. This page will link you to all the Exam Preparation Guides for the Windows 7 exams.  If you decide you would like training before you take the exams then here Windows – Training Portal is the place to start or to get the latest information around the world of training and certification, check out the Born To Learn Blog.

NOTE: Until Dec 31st enjoy 15 to 25 percent off select Microsoft Certification exams. Click here for details.

While I was in Stockholm for their Day of Evidence, I had a great chance to sit down and do a Q&A panel with their top MVP’s. Here is the article and the last link will take you to TechNet Edge where you can see the video. Since I do not speak Swedish, the interview and answers are in Englsih. Also, check out the article on Danish TechNet on my trip and thoughts here: http://www.microsoft.com/sverige/technet/mail/nyhetsbrev_091210.html. Plus like my title in Swedish “Stephen Rose till. Han är Community Manager för Windows 7 på Microsoft i Redmond”

Du kanske har sett Stephen Rose på Talking About Windows, där han och andra i IT branchen delar med sig av sina Windows 7-erfarenheter.

Stephen Rose jobbar i Windows 7 teamet i Redmond och tidigare i november besökte han Stockholm. Självklart tog han då också chansen att prata om det nya operativsystemet.

I en 20 minuter lång videoklipp samtalar Stephen Rose med fem svenska MVPer om vad de tycker om Windows 7.

With Windows 2000 Server and Client and Windows XP SP2 support ending July 13, 2010 are you aware of all the resources available to help you move to a new client and server operating system?

We have created a End-of-Support Solution Center to help with the planning of your migration strategy from Windows 2000 or Windows XP to Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2.

Client Migration

There is no supported migration path from Windows 2000 or Windows XP to Windows 7 using the User State Migration Tool (USMT). You must first upgrade to Windows XP and then migrate to Windows 7 with USMT 4.0 included with the Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK).

Windows XP to Windows 7 Migration Guide
This guide helps walk through the decisions you will make when migrating from a Windows XP environment to Windows 7 and to learn about the tools and resources available from Microsoft to help you each step along the way.

Download the Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows 7
The Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows 7 helps you to install, customize, and deploy the Microsoft Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 family of operating systems.

User State Migration Tool 4.0 User's Guide
Windows User State Migration Tool (USMT) 4.0 is a scriptable command-line tool that provides a highly-customizable user-profile migration experience for IT professionals included with the Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK).

Here are some resources to help guide you:

• Migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7 - Learn how to use the User State Migration Tool (USMT) to migrate user files and settings from Windows XP to Windows 7 using a default installation. (Screencast)
• User State Migration Tool - The User State Migration Tool (USMT) for Windows 7 is now part of the Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) and provides fast and flexible options to migrate user profiles and data from one operating system to another. Explore how the new Hard-Link Migration feature highlighted in his demonstration can dramatically reduce migration time for in-place operating system migration or computer refresh scenarios.(Screencast)
• Planning Windows Optimized Desktops and Windows 7 Projects with MAP - This demo will show you how to use technical guidance and automated tools to clarify infrastructure planning process and speed up asset discovery and hardware readiness assessment for Windows 7, App-V, and more. (Screencast)
  
• Migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7 - Guidance for IT pros – This 5 part blog series covers :
  • The "One-Pager" for Moving from Windows XP to Windows 7 (Overview)
  • Migrating User Files and Settings from Windows XP to Windows 7
  • Application Management and Preparing for a Windows 7 Deployment
  • Choosing and Image Strategy and Building Windows 7 System Images
  • Automating the migration from Windows XP to Windows 7 End-to-End
• Check out the Windows client and server support forums and our Deployment zone on Springboard where we have additional screencasts, walkthroughs, whitepapers, FAQ’s and much much more to help guide.

If you are looking to move from Windows Server 2000, the best place to start is at the Windows 2000 End-of-Support Solution Center where they have key information to help guide you through the upgrade paths, migration tools, and toolkits you will need.

if you haven’t visited Talking About Windows.com in awhile, look at all you have missed.

Lidiane Souza a Sr. Group Program Manager at Microsoft discusses the concept of isolated applications and the benefits it provides to IT administrators, including flexibility, the ease of management, and a seamless experience for end users.

Listen in as Greg Lambert from ChangeBASE AOK discusses Windows 7 application compatibility, and highlights ways for developers to optimize the application experience for end users and Stephen Hall from District Computers, LLC. shares his thoughts on the speed, security, and remote capabilities of Windows 7 and how it can benefit end users who require on-site and off-site access to their information

Hear what Peter Menadue from Dimension Data has to say about early deployments of Windows 7 and methodologies used to ensure OS ease of use for both end users and IT administrators. Listen in as he also dispels the myths of virtualization

And, if your looking to learn more about Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008, come find a live or virtual event in your area by visiting the Events tab on the Talking About Windows site.

Listen, comment, join the conversation at Talking About Windows.com

Click to hear the podcast I did with Ruth Morton while in Canada a few months back.

In this episode of the AlignIT IT Manager Podcast, I talk separately with Rob Geller, Microsoft’s Senior Product Manager for Windows Client, and Stephen Rose, Microsoft’s Senior Community Manager for Windows Client. I speak to each about our latest client operating system – what’s new and can add value for businesses along with what’s compelling for IT shops. We also talk about some of the lessons learned and changes made with the release of Windows 7 as compared to when Windows Vista launched.

Additional Windows 7 resources for IT professionals can be found at www.microsoft.ca/springboard.

More information about this podcast series can be found on the AlignIT IT Manager Podcast web page.
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Comments, suggestions and ideas for future topics can be left below as a comment or emailed directly to the AlignIT program feedback alias at alignit@microsoft.com. You can also reach us on our comment line at 1-800-693-3827.

Some of you had asked for the presentation I used on the Bus Tour.

Thank you again all of you who attended the sessions.

With Windows 7 now available to everyone, we are beginning to hear more and more requests from IT Professionals for content they can use to get their support teams and users up to speed on the end user features of Windows 7. We have spent a lot of time creating this content and you can find it various places like the Windows 7 Help and How To page, Springboard Series IT pro Tip and Tricks and the Microsoft Learning site, but we know there is a lot of content out there and you want a simple way to find it.

To help you find this information quickly and easily, we have updated the Enterprise Learning Framework (ELF) with content for Windows 7. ELF is a is a web based tool that helps corporations develop a training and communication plan for employees during a Windows 7, Windows Vista, and 2007 Microsoft Office system deployment. The tool helps you find content for three different audiences, Information Workers, Influential Information Workers, and Support. It also helps you find the right content for topics you are interested in, within particular deployment timeframes. ELF even gives you the ability to generate customized email messages or a Microsoft Office Word document that you can send to your users with all content you find.

The Enterprise Learning Framework is a  great tool to help you prepare your end users and your support staff for Windows 7. You can find the tool here.

Until now there were a couple of ways to determine if your applications were compatible with Windows 7 – you can test everything, look them up one-by-one in the Windows Compatibility Center, or inventory your production machines using the Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5 and synchronize your inventory with hosted compatibility data from Microsoft and ISVs. For about a year, we’ve been posting regular updates to the Windows Vista Application Compatibility List for IT pros and even though compatibility between Windows Vista and Windows 7 is pretty high, there has still been huge demand for a Windows 7-specific list. If you already have a list or inventory of the applications you want to move forward in a Windows 7 deployment, the new Windows 7 Application Compatibility List for IT Professionals lets you download a spreadsheet of known vendor-supported applications so that you can query the list against your pre-existing application inventory. This list represents a sample of the total ecosystem focusing on top products as defined by customers and deployments with a public statement of support provided by the vendor.

There is compatibility status listed for both 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows 7, plus each application’s major and minor version numbers are listed to help normalize your data queries. Since October (yes, last month) we have already collected more than 5500 applications and the list is growing every day. If you are working through a list of hundreds or thousands of applications, this list will help you validate your applications more quickly. We will be updating this list regularly, so keep checking back to avoid any unnecessary testing. Click here to download the spreadsheet and get started.

If you are in the process of testing in-house developed applications, download the Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) and use its in-box evaluators and test tools. Although we released ACT 5.5 back in April coinciding with Windows 7’s RC release, there were no changes needed to support the RTM version of Windows 7. Even though you will see an occasional “RC” in ACT’s reports, ACT 5.5 is the RTM-supporting version.

To access these and other application compatibility resources, check out the Springboard Application Compatibility Zone where we host the latest application compatibility content for Windows 7.

What an amazing week here in Berlin. We had over 60 sessions presented by over 80 different speakers on Windows 7 this week.

We had hundreds of people stop by our Springboard Series on TechNet booth and the Talking About Windows booth. Since we localize Springboard in 10 languages we had a cool time showing demoing the site in all of the different languages. I also want to give out a huge thanks to our STEP (Springboard Technical Experts Program) members who helped to work our booth. These amazing guys came from Ireland (Aiden), Bolivia (Miklos), New Zealand (Erdal) and the UK (Justin) to help support Springboard and Windows 7.

I even had a chance to be part of the Pre-Keynote. Check out the video of the bus arrival with keynote hosts Hyper-D and Hyper-T.

We met tons of IT pros excited about Windows 7 as well. We worked with a STEP member named Alex de Jong from the Netherlands. Alex asked the delegates at Teched EMEA about their Windows 7 experience. Alex manages NGN, the Dutch community of IT Pros. To learn more about Alex and all he does for the community, follow him on Twitter at @alexdejongngn. So ready to see the cool interviews and hear what over 100 IT pros from all over the world had to say about Windows 7 and Springboard? Check out our Talking About Windows events page under the TechEd EMEA event listing here. (Also a huge thanks to his crew, Ed Wens and Michel van den Einden who did all the camera, editing, and production).

 
Also, make sure to check our our newest Engineering and IT pro videos on the main page from Lidiane Souza, Greg Lambert, Stephen Hall and Peter Menadu.

Tuesday night was our Springboard Party at the Water-Gate Club. Over 300 It pros from around the world showed up to party and share their love of Windows 7 and Springboard. It was a great time with great music courtesy of DJ Joey Snow and DJ David Lowe. Thanks again to our co-sponsors on the Windows Server team and TechNet+ team as well as everyone who showed up to celebrate with us.

It was a week of listening to amazing speakers, everyone asking great questions,cool demos, people working in HOLs all day and getting certified that evening, amazing food and people passionate about all of our products. All of this and the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall. Our motto, “Life Without Walls” really took on a whole new meaning for me as I stood in front of the wall and outside the Brandenburg Gate on Monday.

Thank you Berlin for an amazing time.

Stephen

Mark and I at the Springboard Party at TechEd Berlin