Swisscom has launched a new Television offering: “Swisscom TV air” for computers and Mobile Phones.

Live TV, Video on Demand and also Sport Events, that are currently only available on Swisscom-TV und Teleclub is now available to everyone in Switzerland.

The platform supports HD (H.264) and is based on Microsoft Silverlight, PlayReady and IIS Smooth Streaming

This question seems to be coming up more often these days: Is PowerShell a requirement for the installation of SQL Server 2008 Express Edition?

Well, it depends on the Edition of SQL Server 2008 Express you are wanting to install.

• SQL Server 2008 Express – No. Has no GUI or PowerShell, only the SQL Server Engine and SQLCMD (replacement for OSQL and ISQL tools). Download.
• SQL Server 2008 Express with Tools - Yes – In the edition “with Tools”, a management GUI (similar to SQL Server Management Studio) and PowerShell scripting are included. Download.
• SQL Server 2008 Express with Advanced Options – Yes – In the edition “advanced option”,  a management GUI (similar to SQL Server Management Studio) and PowerShell scripting are included, as are Reporting Services and Full Text Search. Download.
• SQL Server 2008 Workgroup Edition, SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition, SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, SQL Server 2008 Developer Edition, SQL Server 2008 Evaluation Edition – Yes.

Microsoft .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 und Windows Installer 4.5 are a requirement for all editions. To download PowerShell, visit this the PowerShell 1.0 download page.

OEM-, ROK- and FPP Licenses

Windows Server 2008 OEM-, ROK- and FPP Products are supplied with 2 license keys, one Product Key and a Virtual Key.

Importantly, you must use the Product Key for the Physical System (Parent Partition) and the Virtual Key for the Guests (Child Partitions).

If a Product Key is used in a Child Partition, then you may need to activate the Child Partition again if you move the VM to another physical server.

As to how many Child Partitions that can be activated with a Virtual Key depends on the Windows Server Edition and the definitive resource is http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/949748

Volume Licenses

Volume License Keys do not differentiate between Parent and Child Partitions and only 1 key is supplied. It is recommended that a KMS Server is used to manage Volume Licenses which will re-activate the system automatically if needed. How to setup a KMS server is documented here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc303280.aspx

The existing Support Statement on the Visual Basic version 6 runtime for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 has been updated to include Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

So, the VB 6 runtime will continue to be shipped with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, exactly the same way it was with Windows Vista and Windows 2008 Server. Beyond that, there no plans to ship or support the VB6 runtime on future Operating Systems.

There are still some older applications, and some application installers that are 16 bit.

Some customers have only noticed it now that those applications don’t work when running on 64 bit Operating Systems.

The support of 16 bit on 64 bit platforms has never existed. SysWOW64 supports 32-bit, but not 16bit. Windows Server 2008 R2 will only available as x64 and Itanium (IA-64) editions. Windows 7 will be available as x86 and x64 editions.

(x86 = 32 bit, x64 = 64 bit, IA64 = 64 bit)

If you are running a 16-bit application in this day and age, there must be a good reason. If the application is that important, then the investment should be made to redevelop it as long term solution. In the meantime, if you need to run it on a Server edition, you can run Windows Server 2008 x86 or Windows Server 2003 SP2 x86 in a Hyper-V Virtual Machine and run 16-bit applications on that Guest OS.