Microsoft has made the long awaited Windows Server 2003 SP2 available as a release candidate (read: beta, broken, not for production) with some fairly interesting and worthwhile updates.

Click here for the SP2 site.

MMC3 is going to be a must for those that will be early adopters of Exchange 2007 but most of the improvements are going to be a hard sell initially. I can tell you from experience of thousands of Windows Server boxes we manage that they are rock solid and have performed remarkably well. Still nice to see Microsoft continue development on its flagship server product and adjust to the market needs. Niiiice.

Ok, not really but I just couldn’t resist taking this photo.

Talk about stress testing. Though if I indeed pointed it to my collection I’m sure it would go up in smoke. As usual, if you find this offensive you’re in the wrong place.

P.S. Google Mini is Google’s smallbiz search appliance. It works on the Intranet (or public sites) to collect and index information without relying on Google.com’s main index. So if you’ve got something sensitive that needs to be searchable such as your corporate document database or porn collection, this is the toy you need to get. Nice paint job too. Not as flashy as the $24,000 yellow one for big environments but for SMB’s this ought to do the trick.

Spent the last day or so going through the process of Vista rollouts on our development systems and I thought I’d give you an honest take on the changes from RC2 to RTM that went live on MSDN and Connect last night.

The Good: Vista, Aero & Performance

• Performance: Microsoft really optimized Vista, full Aero runs on entry level video cards. I have so far tested it on the laptop and the PC and with all features enabled the system performs admirably even with the integrated video cards.
• Laptop: Dell Inspiron 6000 with ATI X300 with Vista Ultimate x32. System “Windows Experience Rating” rated at 1.7 with the graphics performance ranked at 2.4. The system performs very well but can get choppy with full screen video. 
• Desktop: AMD Athlon x64 3200 with NVIDIA 6100 with Vista Ultimate x64. System “Windows Experience Rating” rated at 2.8 with the graphics performance ranked at 2.8. The processor and memory speed (not capacity) really trump the laptop in terms of Windows Experience rating but the video ranking is almost the same.
• Stability: Rock solid, 0 blue screens, 0 crashes during setup, 0 crashes in networking setup, 0 timeouts on the core components and flawless integration with the registration site, activation and else.

The desktop has less ram but it is significantly faster ram. The desktop also has an integrated video card with no dedicated memory while the laptop has dedicated video memory. The result: desktop outperforms the laptop handily even under heavy graphics load.

Conclusion: Ever since the famous “640k ought to be enough for anybody” fake quote from Bill Gates one tradition still alive with Vista is: you better get a lot of ram. Initially when we first started testing Vista the general advice was to be prepared to spend a lot of money on the video adapter (get at least 256MB DDR dedicated to video) but as you can tell from the numbers above that is simply not going to be a requirement for business computing. While gamers always live on the edge, businesses will do quite alright with the integrated video controllers even with all the Aero goodness.

So Vista team…. again, congratulations. After about 12 hours of uptime I’m extatic.

The Bad: Microsoft Office 2007

I hate to do this at the launch but Office 2007 appears to have been rushed and so far I am only going to talk about Outlook since thas what I live in. The stability is nowhere near 2003 levels and despite working through several crashes the experience on the laptop and on the desktop is in line with the B2TR (Beta 2 Technical Refresh) code. The configuration and setup are done remarkably well but the overall experience of hanging, crashing, timing out, lack of responsiveness makes this for a very bad experience for a released product.

So right now Vista good, Office Outlook 2007 bad… will update as I make more headway.

Microsoft is really winning me over today. First Vista comes online, now pirates get it in the … On behalf of the community that bashed the crap out of Microsoft and all the inaction over the past 7 years, thank you. 

Ten years ago my friend and I often joked about running the worldwide business as we were applying for our occupational permits. I remember us sitting around his garage/bedroom on a pile of cases and thinking about racking them up and taking pictures in front of them to pretend we’re a huge ISP. Well, 10 years later I truely run a global business and in global business people definitely do not have the same sense of humor the world over.

So every now and then, intentionally or unintentionally, I end up insulting a small country, island or the entire continent. Every now and then I get an IM from Susanne, my PR agent: “What did you say now? I am getting complaints”; Susanne has been doing really well lately so I figured I’d throw some business her way. So, I would like to thank the countries in which we do a lot of business.

So first of all, thank you UK for all your money!

I’ve been working really HARD on my monkey. Shockey Monkey. Everyone on the list will go live in December 1st, 2006. 

And my Ausies… The nicest damn people on earth, I mean that. We have something called Southern Hospitality where I live.. It’s basically being very nice to the person directly in front of you as you proceed to insult everyone else. Never met a bad Australian, folks, thank you for all your money.

And for my kiwi’s, I haven’t forgotten about you. Is kiwi insulting? I dunno, but this ought to make up for it (email vlad@ownwebnow.com for a 6Megapixel shot)

“Who would marry Vlad? Poor girl!” Don’t worry, she’s as big of a bastard as I am.

And for anyone that hasn’t hit ALT+F4 yet…

Have a nice weekend folks, enjoy your Vista deployments! Say hi to Susanne.

Just a heads up, Microsoft Vista DVD (full release) is now available on MSDN’s web site.

Gentlemen, start your leeching.

Update: As of 9:14 AM EST: “None of the MSDN subscribers are able to obtain a Vista product key. They are working on that.” According to Microsoft MSDN Support line (800) 759–4744

Just a heads up that I will be in Dallas,TX this weekend and beginning of next week. Unfortunately, I will not be able to participate in any social events but wanted to post this as to not offend anyone that I’ve promised a visit to in the DFW area. So I’ll be in but unfortunately quite unavailable. Yes, I know, I’m horrible:

Mark: you used to be cool, man
Mark: now you’re a married, corporate guy who turns off anonymous comments

As for all my girls and monkeys… Infomart and Whataburger on Stemmons Fwy. See you there.

You may have missed it but Microsoft launched what it calls its “iPod killer” the other day. The problem: nobody else would call it that.

That in the nutshell is the most underhanded launch of a product I have seen in a long time. Zune has come to life with terrible reviews and even objective reviews illustrate just how much is left to be desired. The video reviews are equally harsh. The most telling and perhaps the most critical take on Zune came from my local NBC affiliate in Orlando, FL:

I was watching the technology specialist join the anchors to discuss Microsoft Zune. After his initial 30 second pitch on the new “iPod Killer” he listed the two downsides but attempted to downplay them.

In words of my eloquent college roommates: Thats where you lost da ball game!

The anchors themselves tried to help but just dug Zune an even deeper grave:

But you can keep the songs you copy from others? Oh no?

So you have to buy them after 3 days?

So this doesn’t work with my stores?

So… umm..

And thats where the interview ended. It perhaps is where the Zune dies as well.

Microsoft did a phenomenal job replicating Apple’s attempt. Unfortunately, it lacks Apple’s adoption rate, Apple’s fanatical user base and the time to perfect the offering. In reality, Microsoft created a heavier, bulkier, less user-friendly iPod that shares the same features iPod users hate about their device: proprietary store with lackluster feature set driven to sell content from a single provider with little choice.Well, almost – unlike iPod which seamlessly works with its OS, Zune will require a patch to work with Vista. This my friends is like killing two birds with one ugly Zune – dead player and a dead promise of a seamlessly integrated OS that plays well with the gadgets. Did I mention it also now competes head to head with other device makers that supported Microsoft’s assortment of failed media stores, technologies and DRM schemes.

Microsoft likes to talk about how it helps its partners succeed. With this brillaint move Microsoft has really slammed its partners in Napster, Plays-for-Sure Family, Sandisk, Toshiba, nearly every Windows powered mp3 player. So which partner is going to win here? You’ve guessed it, the very partner that owes its entire existance to perhaps the worst $100 million dollar loan in the American corporate history: Apple Computer.

It has been a while since I’ve written a technical article and my Vista laptop reminded me tonight just how much the Windows Update process has improved. Not very earth shattering on the surface, but very elegant and streamlined to put most of the functionality at the fingertips. Click on the images to zoom in.

The first, and most important, change that I cannot actually show you was the one reminding me that there is an update available. Consumers and businesses do not have a special mark on their calendar for “Second Tuesday” and most never bother to click on the link to install Windows security updates. Most even ask me: “Should I install those?” I have to say I cannot blame them, have you seen a workstation lately? It has at least five items all screaming to be enabled, upgraded, patched, refreshed or looked at. I can say with a small level of certainty that the lower right hand corner of the screen has permanently been placed out of focus for many Windows users because of its continuous annoyance.

Vista, to its credit, makes the availability of the security patch front and center. Mine came with a large yellow bar asking me to update my Windows Vista. Nice touch. When I clicked on it I was taken directly to the Control Panel for Windows Update. As you can tell, it is quite clear as to what is important and why:

“Always install the latest updates to enhance your computer’s security and performance”

Now you can actually see the available updates in full detail by clicking on View available updates.

Check the ones you wish to install and click on the Install button.

You’re presented with a license to install updates. Still a bug there, as you can tell the textbox only has vertical scroll although the license text itself continues to roll on. They either need to turn on the wrapping in the text area or add in a horizontal scrollbar. On the plus side, you can print the license agreement.

Click on Finish and the update process gets started.

If you want to look at the details “Click to view progress.” cloud does give quite a bit of details. It gives you an idea of your current patching process. Mine for example is set to apply updates at 3:00 AM automatically. I can see my update history and literally everything related to patching in Vista off the single control panel. Very slick.

Ahh… watching the security patch on a beta system… we’ve certainly made it far.

And we’re finished!

Just to check, let me see which updates I have made:

Every now and then you will have to roll back a patch, this will not change with Vista. In the past you had to go through the Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs panel, check the box to show updates and then navigate down to the KB article. As you can tell from the above the accessibility has really improved.

And the screen we all hope we never have to see is very interesting as well. It groups into categories (Organize dropdown) so you can quickly find your program and uninstall the problematic patch.

Not earth shattering but I dig it. The entire process seems thought through and presented in a way that a user will get more information on their fingertips without being overloaded with unnecessary details that would discourage patching.

You may have noticed lately that the comments have been disappearing on more and more of my posts. I’ve been on the road more and more lately and unfortunately the blog spam has gotten out of hand. It seems I spend more time deleting comments than writing posts and quite frankly it seems quite disheartening.

So, from now on comments will not show up automatically, instead I will pick con and pro arguments and post them once a week.