There are a lot of people out there still using Windows XP. Microsoft has just RTM'ed SP3 for Windows XP, as can be read on the MSDN Forums.

So here it is the Windows Live 2.0 wave in the form of 1 installer.

http://g.live.com/1rebeta/en-us/WLInstaller.exe

Here you can read more about the individual products. Note that there is also an updated version of Live Writer included in the package.

Enough said! Even Mac displays run on Windows... Need we say more?

At its partner conference in Denver, Microsoft unveiled the launch dates of their most anticipated products: Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008. All 3 products will be released on February 27, 2008 on an official launch party in Los Angeles.

It was expected that at least Windows Server 2008 would be released this year, since Microsoft is hosting their websites currently already on the new platform. This prediction is thus not true, however, just as with Windows Vista, it's expected that Microsoft will release an RTM version as early as November via MSDN and Technet.

Visual Studio 2008, currently still in Beta 1, will soon be brought to beta 2 status, probably in about 3 weeks from now, as rumour has it in the Microsoft hallways ;-) .
SQL Server is currently available as a CTP.

Microsoft wants to present the combination of this 3 products as the premium platform for developing webapplications and services.

On a sidenote, Microsoft will release Vista SP1 as a beta around July 16th, with the final release coming mid November.

Now, that's a lot of joyous news on the release front, isn't it?

Today, Microsoft officially responded to some bloggers on Vista Ultimate Extras. Here's what was said:

Today, Microsoft released some new and free Virtual PC images (VHDs or Virtual Hard Disks) on Technet. They can be downloaded here:

Windows Vista (30 day eval)

Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite

Windows 2003 Server R2

Microsoft officially released the box designs for Windows Server 2008. Here they are:

 

Appearantly, there is going no big surprise in the naming game for Windows Longhorn. Like its predecessor, it's likely to become a simple name, as simple as Windows Server 2008. Microsoft will probably make this name official next week at WinHEC in Los Angeles.

It was actually Microsoft who slipped the name early on the Technet site.

Microsoft's official response on the new name: "Microsoft does not comment on rumors or speculation."

For the beta-testers among us, there's a new CTP build released of Longhorn, the successor of Windows Server 2003.

These are the available versions:

Although the time gap between XP and Vista’s release dates was more than five years, Microsoft is claiming it will be different this time around. At the RSA Conference in San Francisco, representatives said the software giant is planning for the next client operating system by the end of 2009. Vista shipped about two-and-a-half years after XP SP2, and Vista's follow-up is expected to take about the same amount of time, according to Ben Fathi, corporate vice president of development with Microsoft's Windows Core Operating System Division: "You can think roughly two, two-and-a-half years is a reasonable time frame that our partners can depend on and can work with. That's a good timeframe for refresh.”

Last year, Microsoft code named Vista’s successor as Vienna, but Fathi said he could not disclose the current name or what would be the major improvements in the release. "We've been told not to use it publicly. We're going to look at a fundamental piece of enabling technology. Maybe its hypervisors, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's a new user interface paradigm for consumers. It's too early for me to talk about it. But over the next few months I think you're going to start hearing more and more."

More here

It's officially here! V6 of Windows Mobile.

New features include:

- HTML support in email
- Windows Live for Windows Mobile
- File transfer capability in Windows Live Messenger
- New versions of mobile Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint with rich editing
- Remote wipe capability for stolen and lost devices
- Call history in contact cards
- Tight Vista integration
- "Calendar ribbon" for more easily viewing schedule by day or week
- New versions of .NET Compact Framework and SQL Server built-in.

At the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week Microsoft previewed its long-awaited Windows Home Server (WHS) product, a Windows Server 2003 R2-based server for consumers that dispenses with the complexities of most Windows Server versions and provides the core storage, sharing, and remote access functionality that digital media and home networking enthusiasts require. It's an innovative and exciting product, and I'm happy to finally be able to discuss it. Chances are, if you read this site regularly, you're going to want Windows Home Server.

Codenamed "Q" (and previously codenamed "Quattro"), Windows Home Server is designed to be almost diabolically simple, and after two and a half years of active development, Microsoft feels like it's arrived at an interface that is simple enough "even for mom" while being powerful enough for even the most jaded power user. The only downside to WHS, from what I can tell, is that there won't be a public beta. Instead, Microsoft will open up the product to an outside private beta test in late February and then ship it in late 2007. But if you can bear the wait, take heart: WHS will be available via both standalone software and pre-made servers. In short, it's all good news. Let's take a look.

More here

Microsoft is definitely going to talk — at long last — about its plans for Windows Home Server (code-named Quattro) at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, according to my sources.

But what will this product be? That's still murky. Will it be based on the Windows Server core? Or be some kind of Windows-Vista-based system? Or more of a package of Vista Ultimate plus some Media Center Extenders, plus a router? Will the Windows Home Server systems be AMD-based? Intel-based?

I've heard from a couple of folks that, contrary to initial belief, Windows Home Server will be a Vista-based system, not a Windows Server-based one.

When Microsoft Server and Tools chief Bob Muglia let it slip in an online chat back in June 2005 that Microsoft was contemplating a "home-server" SKU, he made it seem that it would be Windows-Server-based. Muglia also told chat participants more than a year ago:

"We are always looking for new opportunities where server technology can be leveraged, and the home definitely represents an exciting new area that we are looking at along with many others. Much of the great storage, replication, and management technology would be great in a home," Muglia said. "We have seen many people install Small Business Servers at home, which really works quite well."

Months before Muglia mentioned Microsoft's mullings, blogger Rick "One Man Shouting" Hallihan outlined his suggested feature set for a Windows Home Server product. Such a product "would be a scaled back and customized version of Windows Small Business Server, running on specialized hardware, and it would simplify home networking to the point where everyone could enjoy the benefits of modern network management," Hallihan blogged, back in January, 2005.

Source

It's official! The consumer release of Windows Vista and Office 2007 will be celebrated in New York on January 29 at a launch event the software giant has dubbed "The WOW starts now." The invitation to "The "WOW starts now" event includes a note signed by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, in which he says that, "on January 29th, Microsoft will celebrate the launch of two amazing products that represent the culmination of a tremendous team effort."

Attendees will be treated to a celebratory lunch at Manhattan's famous Cipriani restaurant, followed by the actual launch event at the Nokia Theatre in Times Square later in the day.

Gates goes on to say that millions of people--Microsoft employees, developers, customers, bloggers, families, media, the entire industry--"have come together like never before and added their own individual imprints to help make Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office system the most tested products in Microsoft history."

Hard to believe, but our OS is celebrating its 21st birthday today!

When it was launched in 1985 the PC market was barely out of it’s infancy, and whatever you may think of Microsoft it is amazing what they Bill Gates & Co have built in such a relatively short time.

This site lists 21 interesting facts about Windows.
Some very nice ones...

If Bill Gates had got his way, he would have called it “Interface Manager”. 21 years later, I don’t think Interface Manager Vista, or Vista Interface Manager would have had the same ring to it….

Windows crashes an estimated 25m times a day.

Windows 1.0 included a large number of utilities that are still part of Windows today - Calendar, Notepad, Terminal, Calculator, Clock, Windows Write and Windows Paint, Control Panel, and the Reversi game.

The Windows operating system has 50 million lines of code (a line averages 60 characters) and grows 20% with every release. It’s put together by 7,200 people, comes in 34 languages and has to support 190,000 devices–different models of digital cameras, printers, handhelds and so on.

Today, I was installing the VPC (Virtual PC image) that Microsoft provides for all early adopters on future technologies, including .net 3.0. I intend to use this VPC for my presentation later this month.

This image-file includes a whole lot of CTP/preview versions, as can be seen here.

However, when opening the file, I received the following notice: E:\VPC\TimeBombedBase\Base01.vhd cannot be found... Appearantly, this is the parent image, of which the CTP is a differencing disk.

On the setup instructions page, MS appearantly forgot to mention that this 4GB download also requires you to obtain the parent VPC image, a 1.1GB download...
This file can be found here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/4/9/5499b008-8ae7-46f0-89ae-aeeb18df67ae/VSCTPBase.exe 

Should you want to play around with .net 3.0/LINQ... and don't feel like installing all these on a VPC yourself, you can grab the download here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=82243606-d16d-445c-8949-9ee8c10cda2e&DisplayLang=en  

Early feedback from testers already using Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is that the OS is more stable than expected, which bodes well for Microsoft's plan to have Vista out according to its current schedule.

Microsoft has said since March it will release Windows Vista to business customers in November, and consumers in January 2007. Though many have suspected the release will slip further, testers now say there's a good chance the company will meet its goal if the condition of RC1 is any indication.

"Overall I think Vista is looking very good at this point....I think all the worries of Vista slipping went out the window," said Brandon LeBlanc, a writer for LonghornBlogs, via e-mail on Tuesday.

LeBlanc said that Microsoft has made performance and stabilization tweaks that testers requested after Beta 2, and the latest test version of the OS -- which could be the final one before Vista is released to manufacturing -- is solid enough for regular use. LonghornBlogs can be found here.

"RC1 is quite usable for everyday work, as I am currently doing myself," he said.

Full story

Is today "Release Day" or something? So many new releases...

Let's begin with IronPython, which reached status 1.0:

IronPython 1.0 has been released to the .NET community and is available on CodePlex.  IronPython is an implementation of the Python dynamic programming language.  IronPython is built on top of the .NET Framework and is interoperable with other .NET languages.  Binaries, source code, and tutorials are available at CodePlex.

Click here to download IronPython at CodePlex.

Another release is Expression Web Beta 1:

We are pleased to present the Beta 1 release of Expression Web (formerly Expression Web Designer).

Expression Web is a professional design tool that helps you create and work with:

• Standards-based Web sites
• Sophisticated CSS-based layouts
• Extensive CSS formatting and management
• Rich data presentation
• Powerful ASP.NET 2.0-based technology

To download, go here .

Still going strong ;-) Next is WCF, which reached RC1 also.

The release candidate 1 for the .NET Framework 3.0 is now available!  You can download the components for the RC1 here:

• .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components RC1
• Windows SDK for Vista RC1 and the .NET Framework 3.0 RC1
• Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows Workflow Foundation (WF RC5)

More info on RC1 .


The Interactive Designer got updated, and now the September CTP is available:
Microsoft® Expression® Interactive Designer September 2006 Community Technology Preview (CTP) is a professional design tool used to create engaging, rich user interfaces for desktop and Web applications.

To download, go here.

To finish, this one isn't actually released as of yet, but it's an interesting project being researched at MS:

Microsoft researchers are experimenting with an automatic code zapper for the company's Internet Explorer Web browser.

Researchers at the Redmond, Wash., company have completed work on a prototype framework called BrowserShield that promises to allow IE to intercept and remove, on the fly, malicious code hidden on Web pages, instead showing users safe equivalents of those pages.

The BrowserShield project—the brainchild of Helen Wang, a project leader in Microsoft Research's Systems & Networking Research Group, and an outgrowth of the company's Shield initiative to block network worms—could one day even become Microsoft's answer to zero-day browser exploits such as the WMF (Windows Metafile) attack that spread like wildfire in December 2005.
More here.

That's all folks ;-)

Will Vista cause the web to slow down? Experts disagree whether or not the new operating system will cause the internet traffic to slow down (or come to a complete halt) or not.

Paul Mockapetris, one of the inventors of the DNS system, says it will cause problems. He believes that due to the fact that Vista uses 2 versions of the Internet Protocol, a lot of extra load will be put on the servers.

If you adopt Vista, your DNS traffic is going to double," Mockapetris said . With many DNS servers already running close to capacity, this can have serious consequences, he said. "You're going to see brownouts. All of a sudden, it is going to be mud season on the Internet, where things will just be kind of slow and gooey."

Let's hope he is wrong ;-)

Yes folks, it's finally here!! RC1 of the upcoming Windows Vista!

MS just opened the doors to CPP (Customer Preview Program), so everybody can starting to enjoy vista now already.

Microsoft notes on the website: Windows Vista RC1 is available for participants of the Windows Vista Customer Preview Program. Please go to the Customer Preview Program website to register and receive a Product Key, which is required to install and activate the software.

32 bit: download iso - 2,584.25 MB (Expires June 1st 2007)
64 bit: download iso - 3,677.22 MB (Expires June 1st 2007) (Lots bigger that 32 bit ;-) )
Get yer keys here (note that if you have a beta 2 key, that is also works!)
Download page

My experience so far with RC1: I installed it on Saturday in a Virtual PC environment. At first, I had not installed Virtual Machine Additions Beta 2... Oh my, that was a real disaster! After installing them in the Vista VPC, it worked like a dream! Fast and pretty reliable...
Some negative points too... it's not ready, you can see that easily. Annoying things like "the-first-file-is-not-selected-when-I-open-a-folder-in-Explorer" still can't make you enjoy the OS completely. But I'm sure they will pull this off (I'm not sure if they will in 6 weeks, however, but we'll see that...).

Should you also want to install Vista RC1 in a VPC, do install the VMaddtions for Vista Beta 2! You can download the here.

CA's eTrust software wrongly identified Windows' in-built security as malware, and a fix has been made available.

Some Windows 2003 users have been experiencing problems with the operating system recently after antivirus software from CA wrongly detected part of the operating system as malware.

At the heart of the problem is part of Windows' in-built security, a file called Lsass.exe. This was wrongly detected as a virus by CA's eTrust software and was deleted, causing some servers to crash and fail to reboot.

More here.

Microsoft has quietly released build 5536 for the first 100,000 people to download it from their Windows Vista site.

5536 was recently released to tech testers and is the best build that has ever been officially released!

Get it here!

It appears that RC1 is to released in September, like I predicted earlier :-) .

A while back, when Vista beta 2 was announced, the IE blog mentioned the "renaming" of Internet Explorer 7 for Vista to 7+.

After a lot of people didn't like the idea, it has now been renamed to IE7.
The reason for the differened names between the XP and Vista versions was mainly to emphasize the differnces between the 2 versions (mostly based on the differences of the underlying OS like Protected Mode, Parental Controls, and improved Network Diagnostics).

The new user-agent strings will now become:
-IE7+ running on Windows Vista: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)
-IE7 running on Windows XP: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1)

For more info, head over to the IEBlog.

Vista’s installation process is dramatically different to any previous version of Windows: rather than being an ‘installer’, the install DVD is actually a preinstalled copy of Windows that simply gets decompressed onto your PC.

So how does it adjust to your hardware? How do you slipstream updates and drivers into it? Can you also ‘preinstall’ your favourite apps into your Vista DVD?

And most importantly, can you build a custom Vista install DVD that doesn’t install all the ‘free AOL trial’ crap that typically comes bundled in with Windows?

This article has all the anwers! A very interesting read!

Microsoft just opened virtual labs for Office and Sharepoint 2007. Free Training? YES!! ;-)

Go here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/traincert/virtuallab/office.mspx 

If you run Microsoft Virtual PC or Virtual Server products you will want to head over to connect.microsoft.com and pick up the latest version of the Virtual Machine additions designed for Windows Vista Beta 2!

To download the additions go to http://connect.microsoft.com

Log into the site, and sign up for the Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta if you're not already in it.  In the downloads section, you'll see the Additions for Beta 2.

Today, Microsoft released a public beta of Internet Explorer 7.

Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) Beta 3 has been designed to make everyday tasks easier, provide dynamic security protection and improve the development platform and manageability. End user improvements include a streamlined interface, tabbed browsing, printing advances, improved search functionality, instant feeds (RSS), dynamic security protection, and more.

To download this new beta, go here.

For a nice changelog, look on the IE Blog.

Finally, a new post on Snowball.be... I have been very busy in the last 2 weeks, and there are some very "secret" things going on at the moment, on which I'll be posting more later on... But enough about me ;-)
Back to Microsoft news!!

The Big M is, according to rumors, which seem confirmed by Samsung, making a monitor, specially crafted for use with Windows Vista! This monitor should make you get the best experience using Vista. It's supposed to be a 22" widescreen (vista is designed for best use with widescreen). No word on the resolution, though, however, I guess this will be quite high, maybe 1920 x 1280?

MS has not confirmed the rumors, but Samsung, which will actually make the monitor, has. No pics on this either... pity.

UPDATE: MS is also to release a very nice keyboard, with backlighting! More can be seen on this here.

Kinda sad to read this, actually... Thinking that in just 2 years, he'll be almost gone...

Anyhow, I can still say that I worked for a project at MS in Belgium "under Bill"...

Here's the mail.

From: MSBILLG
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2006 1:41 PM
To: Microsoft and Subsidiaries: All FTE
Subject: My Transition Plans

I wanted to take a moment to share some of my thoughts, as well.

As Steve's mail indicates, I've decided that two years from now, in July 2008, I want to devote more time to the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Right now and for the next two years, my full-time job is here at Microsoft, and my part-time job remains the Foundation. Beginning in July 2008, I will switch that, to be full-time at the Foundation, while remaining involved with Microsoft as Chairman and an advisor on key development projects on a part-time basis.

To prepare for this change, we have a well-thought-out transition process. Again, I will continue at Microsoft full-time for the next two years, but over the course of those two years, my day-to-day responsibilities will shift to a team of incredible technical leaders who are already doing amazing things at the company.

I feel very lucky that we've got extraordinary technical leaders at the company, like Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie, who can step up to assume the roles that I've played. I've known Ray for the last 20 years, and he has created some of the most important developments in the industry. Craig and I have worked together for nearly 14 years, and he's been a technical visionary and a leader on policy throughout his career. With Ray and Craig stepping up, I feel very confident that the technical stewardship of Microsoft is in very capable hands.

And I feel the same way about our business leadership. Our core businesses are strong and we have a clear vision for how we will meet new challenges and opportunities. We just had our first $12 billion quarter, and we continue to generate almost a billion dollars in profit every month. We are about to launch breakthrough versions of Windows, Office and Exchange, which are already generating a lot of excitement.

Six years ago, Steve and I made a major transition when he stepped up to be CEO. He's done a fantastic job by every measure, whether it's the people he's brought in, the new ways he's running the company, or just the objective results - like doubling our revenue in six years. Steve has driven us to make bold bets on things like Xbox, Real Time Communications, business applications, IPTV, and many others including the Live platform. Steve is the best CEO I could imagine for Microsoft - he is changing the company in ways it needs to be changed. He is bringing in new leadership at all levels. And, he is focused on the long-term - making Microsoft a great company not just today but for decades to come.

With Steve's organization of the company into three divisions led by our incredible presidents - Jeff Raikes, Robbie Bach, and Kevin Johnson - we've laid a solid foundation for greater autonomy, agility and entrepreneurial spirit in our product groups. And with the great addition of Kevin Turner as our COO, our leadership team has never been stronger.

Our deep technical strength is one of the key reasons I believe Microsoft is well-positioned for great success in the years ahead. I'm very pleased that in addition to Ray, Craig, David and Rick, Steve has asked J Allard, Bob Muglia, and Steven Sinofsky to play an expanded role in shaping the company's business and technology strategy. And when you consider all of our remarkable Technical Fellows, Distinguished Engineers, all of the brilliant researchers working at our MSR labs around the world, and all the technical people in the business groups, I can safely say that our technical talent has never been stronger or deeper.

Obviously, this has been a very hard decision for me. Microsoft will always be a huge part of my life, and I'm lucky to have two callings that are so important and so challenging.

On a personal note, I know that my work on global health and education issues at the Foundation would never have been possible without the enormous success of Microsoft, so I want to thank you and all of the employees past and present who have contributed so much to this company.

For these last 31 years, I've had the best job in the world. I've worked with some of the brightest and most passionate people in the world. Together, we've built a great company whose products have empowered people around the world.

We're only at the beginning of what software can do, and I'm excited about the impact that Microsoft can have. I'm going to take an extended vacation this summer with my family, but I'll be back in late August and I look forward to working with all of you for the next two years and beyond, to make those dreams a reality.

Thanks.

Bill

Soma announced a few days back on his blog that WinFX is to be renamed .net Framework 3.0. Kinda confusing, isn't it?

When speaking to developers about WinFX one question that repeatedly comes up is, “WinFX sounds great, but what happens to .NET?” .NET Framework has becomes the most successful developer platform in the world.  Developers know and love .NET.

Ok, that is true... But why not WinFX.net or something like it?

The .NET Framework has always been at the core of WinFX, but the WinFX brand didn’t convey this.
... With this in mind we have decided to rename WinFX to the .NET Framework 3.0.  .NET Framework 3.0 aptly identifies the technology for exactly what it is – the next version of our developer framework.

And... is the name all that changes? Appearantly yes...

The change is in name only and will not affect the technologies being delivered as part of the product.

Still, some things remained unclear...
That's why I'll try to de-mistify some facts anout .net Framework 3.0.
-The compilers used to compile 3.0 compilers are still the 2.0 compilers. 3.0 is built on 2.0,  including the CLR and BCL.

-3.0 will NOT contain LINQ support. LINQ will be included in the Orcas release, which is due in Q4 2007. 3.0 will ship with Vista (Q4 2006).

-It will install into %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\V3.0. This is to be updated in the next CTP.

-3.0 will install 2.0 in the same installer. This is to make things easier (yes, they are already quite complicated now).

-For all the resources you need, Microsoft launched a community site: http://www.netfx3.com/ .

A question that is still open: what version number will the Orcas release get then? 3.5?

The new issue of MSDN magazine is available. All articles can be read online for free here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/07/default.aspx .

This month, among others, 2 articles in particular are a very good read: the one on Ajax (on which I'll be doing a presentation later this week at Ordina Lummen) and one on WinFX.

Did you also know that you can download a chm-copy of the magazine for free? Go here for this months issue or here for an entire archive on back-issues!

The first CTP (which is I guess now the official new word for Beta ;-) ) is available to download and test. Here you can get the image-file.

More info can be found here.

Tech Ed 2006 has taken off! Countless of speeches, demonstrations... are about to take place.

If you want to see the keynote, go here.

More on Tech Ed: http://www.microsoft.com/events/teched2006/default.mspx 

Oh and btw, it is also time for some new designs of laptops Intel showed to the public. You can see them here.

MSDN now has its official Wiki! Yes, it's true :-)
For the "official" announcement, you should take a look at Soma's blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2006/06/08/622875.aspx).

In the MSDN Wiki beta, you can add code samples and content directly alongside the Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET Framework 2.0 documentation in a Community Content section that we have added to each documentation topic.  Right now the MSDN Wiki site only features English documentation, but we are planning to expand this functionality to the localized documentation in the future.

Pay a visit to them at: http://msdnwiki.microsoft.com/en-us/mtpswiki/default.aspx .

Great work, guys!

Although it was already available for MSDN subscribers for about 10 days, today Microsoft released Vista Beta 2 as a download for the public.

Now, the real testing can actually begin, when thousands and thousands of PC's will run on Vista. Although I hope (really really hope...) that Vista will make it by the end of this year (22nd November for business users), this will depend on how many (major) problems are encountered in this release.

At the moment, the servers are overwhelmed, and you are asked to try again later...

For the download, you can try the following addresses:

English:
32 bit: http://download.windowsvista.com/preview/beta2/en/x86/download.htm
64 bit: http://download.windowsvista.com/preview/beta2/en/x64/download.htm

To obtain a key, go here.

Over 500.000 people have downloaded Office 2007 Beta 2 in the couple of first days it was available. That's a lot, a whole lot! Chances are that you are 1 of these, isn't it?

Now, finding some spare time to get to know the new interface, learning how to program for the new office... that's the hardest part.

Here are some interesting resources to get you started with the new suite in no time (even without installing it!!)
1. To get to know the basics, go to the Office 2007 preview site. Don't feel like installing it? No problem, just watch some videos on the new interface.

2. If you are a developer like myself, you're probably more interested in developing for the new Office. Chances are that you find what you are looking for in the Office developer center. In the What's new section, you can also find links to the most important Office blogs.

3. If Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server is your cup of tea, you're gonna be thrilled when reading in the Servers section of the developer site. Some nice screenshots of Office Sharepoint 2007 can be found here.

Hope this brings some clarity in all the "Office violence" that awaits us!

Now that WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) is coming closer, it's getting high time that we developers start looking at what WPF can do for us.

The Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation provides the foundation for building applications and high fidelity experiences in Windows Vista, blending together application UI, documents, and media content, while exploiting the full power of your computer.

This site has 4very nice looking, downloadable examples. You'll need WinFX Beta 2 to run them, though.

I've been reading a lot on Vista these last days, so I wanted to share some interesting resources with you.

-To start with, there is a completely revamped site on Microsoft.com: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/ 
-Some official Vista Blogs: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/community/default.mspx
-Top 10 things to do for developers: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnlong/html/vistatopten.asp
-Aero Aesthetics: here

Enjoy!

Now that Beta 2 has been around for some days, more and more tests are coming out. ExtremeTech did a special on games in Vista: installation, performance and the eventual problems were investigated.

We feel that Beta 2 is the appropriate time to start looking at compatibility and performance issues in Vista, and that goes for gaming (one of the big selling points of Vista) as well. So we spent the better part of a week installing a bunch of modern, popular games on the upcoming OS, noting what works and what doesn't, and trying to find some simple workarounds. Has Vista got game yet? Let's find out.

A lot of modern games are tested, like WoW, Black & White 2...

The conclusion: Overall, we're pretty happy with the state of gaming on Vista. This isn't a release candidate yet – we're still at beta 2. This is where most things should work, with only a few minor problems to work out between Microsoft, the games makers, and the hardware driver writers. On the whole, that's exactly where it's at.
...
So, while the current Vista gaming situation is encouraging, there is clearly still plenty of work to be done. Most games work, but there are some tricky bits with Punkbuster (run games as admin to work around), a big problem with StarForce copy protection, and some performance kinks to work out. With Microsoft proclaiming a "PC gaming renaissance" around the launch of Vista, they need to really deliver a fantastic experience, and it's not quite there yet. They need an A+ games platform, and it's a B- right now.

More here.

Now, this is one hell of a nice site, courtesy of MS :-)

http://www.seewindowsvista.com/ 

Oh yes, it's about Vista... Windows Vista... but you already got that, right ;-)

Read the full story, here's an excerpt:

It will not have escaped your attention that Microsoft is labouring to finish the next version of its Windows operating system, Vista. A version aimed at the corporate market is supposed to be ready for Christmas, with the consumer edition following some time later (missing the Christmas market, which has irritated computer manufacturers and retailers more than somewhat). Last week, Gartner, a leading IT consultancy, predicted that Microsoft would miss those shipping dates.

'Microsoft's track record is clear: it consistently misses target dates for major operating system releases,' the firm wrote. 'We don't expect broad availability of Windows Vista until at least the second quarter of 2007, which is nine to 12 months after Beta 2.' Microsoft challenged this. A company spokesman told CNET News: 'We remain on track to deliver the final product to volume-licence customers in November 2006 and to other businesses and consumers in January 2007.'

So there! The significant thing about Vista, however, is not the shipping date but the fact that it has been an unconscionable time in the making, subject to endless slippages (which have triggered major organisational changes within the company) and - when it eventually ships - will be just a shadow of the system envisaged when it was conceived. And while all this has been going on, Apple has released several major upgrades of its OS X operating system, and the programmers behind Open Source Linux have significant upgrades over the same period.

The difference between Microsoft and Apple can be largely explained by two factors. One is structural: Apple's OS X is based on Unix, which has a different architecture from Windows, and may be inherently easier to upgrade. The other is that Microsoft is a victim of its past monopolistic success: any new version of Windows has to be 'backwards compatible' with the thousands of programs and hardware devices built to work on earlier versions of the operating system. Apple has much less of a 'legacy' problem in this sense.

The really interesting comparison is with Linux, a product of comparable complexity developed by an independent, dispersed community of programmers who communicate mainly over the net. How come they can outperform a stupendously rich company that can afford to employ very smart people and give them all the resources they need?

Here's a possible answer: complexity. Modern operating systems are staggeringly complicated. In terms of the number of their components, and the richness of the interactions between them, they are far more complex than an Airbus or a jumbo jet.

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