There is an event next Saturday you might consider watching and listening to.  It’s the first of many Springboard Technology Expert Panel (STEP) events to come.  The STEP program is made up of Microsoft employees, MVPs and MCTs.  This particular event is being delivered live in our west coast offices, but we will simulcast the event via LiveMeeting.  So you’ll be able to listen to the presenters, see the demos, etc.  Attend remotely via Live Meeting . Here is the registration

WARNING – this is a progressive download video. It is not streamed. Therefore the entire 400MB video is downloaded and played if you click the big START button above. What’d you expect for 60 minutes of video? If you want to download the video and play it offline, right mouse click the following URL and then use the SAVE AS function to save it locally to your hard drive. Get it @ http://msinetpub.vo.llnwd.net/d1/keithcombs/videos/SpringboardPerformance.wmv

The astute know the Windows Vista Resource Kit is shipping and in the wild. When I arrived at my house Friday, my copy was sitting on the front door step. I'm surprised UPS didn't charge extra for the weight. The resource kit book is huge. 1500+ pages huge. The microsoft.com/mspress area strangely didn't have a current view and description of the book, table of contents, cd contents, etc. So, you'll need to get that information from other sources on the grid like Barnes and Noble , Amazon and other

The February CTP of Windows " Longhorn " Server is now available at a couple of locations. For those of you that signed up for the technical beta program at connect.microsoft.com, you'll see the download there. Not to be outdone, this release is also available to TechNet Online subscribers download area. For more information on this build, see http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2007/02/21/february-2007-ctp-of-windows-server-longhorn-released.aspx . If you haven't subscribed to the TechNet

Virtual PC 2007 is a great virtual machine execution environment. John Howard, Virtual Machine PM blogs that we have released it to the web and it's currently propagating across the microsoft.com cluster complex. This is the core tool I use for my job and I think you'll find we have added some great new features to this release. What is Virtual PC 2007? Use Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 to run multiple operating systems at the same time on the same physical computer. Switch between virtual machines with

Lets face it, our new deployment tools rock. However, one significant customer feature request has been missing from the portfolio. Every time I do a deployment tool session around ImageX, BDD, WAIK, etc., the question of multicast support comes up. And the answer until today is we don't have multicast support. Well, we now have multicast support checked into the build tree for Longhorn Server. It will be tightly integrated into the Longhorn Server Windows Deployment Services (WDS) role. We'll release

Each week for the next couple of months, my team will demonstrate a variety of tools that make operating system and application deployment easier. The demos of course show off how to deploy Windows Vista and Office 2007. However, you can also use the new tools to deploy Windows XP and Office 2003 if needed. If you have not looked at the tools yet, you should spend some time getting familiar with them. I would recommend starting with the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) first because it will

As you’ll recall, I posted a preliminary version of the Windows Vista Product Guide (also known as “The Book of Windows Vista”) a few weeks ago. It was in .xps form and initial feedback was very good. However, in order to view and print the must have information, you needed to install WinFX . XPS is the XML Paper Specification. Well, we got some good critical feedback and guess what, we listened. Now, you can download this puppy in Microsoft word or XPS format. Careful though, it’s

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

Monday the TechNet Team kicks off some of the really serious stuff around Windows Vista from an IT Pro perspective . I’m going to lead things off with a look at security changes implemented inside the new client operating system. We’ll discuss group policy objects, Windows BitLocker drive encryption, Windows Firewall, and User Account Control (UAC), and illustrate how changes in these items affect overall security from the standpoint of an IT professional or system administrator. We are

Well the buzz this weekend is all about Origami . The website reveals very little. The music there is all mysterious and spooky. Actually it sounds a bit like some of the sound effects in Halo. Dig around and see what you find. A marketing company called D-Kitchen has a very interesting video about the Microsoft Origami device. After you click the link to their site, click Enter, Work, BrandTheatre, Microsoft Origami. Their site requires Flash 7.x. UPDATE : The D-Kitchen site links have disappeared.

[UPDATE] This post is now out of date . Please see the update at http://blogs.technet.com/keithcombs/archive/2006/08/21/448316.aspx . Well, today we released the Windows Vista February CTP build 5308 to the MSDN download center. Obviously it was a little busy today as a result. We also released a bunch of new documentation on the product. If you haven’t had a chance to start messing around with Windows Vista, now would be a good time to start your adventures. The 5308 build is still a bit shaky