Windows Vista SP2 to be Delayed by a Month

As everyone including Ubuntu’s king Mark Shuttleworth are eagerly waiting for Windows 7,   comes news that Microsoft has delayed the released of Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista by a month. Microsoft now states that Vista SP2 will be available only in the second-half of 2009.

Microsoft was supposed to deliver its first release candidate to beta testers in February, but now has plans to release it in March. This Release Candidate (RC) is now being referred to as “escrow build” (also means frozen and only bug fixes will be done). Showstopper bugs are supposed to be only fixed and regression is to be avoided. Microsoft has in the past indicated that SP2 is very much an optional install to the OEMs and it wants OEMs to instead move to Windows 7 directly, when its released.

Windows 7 is running pretty much on schedule and we expect it release by early next-year. The RTM for Windows 7 may be out from the Microsoft stable even by the end of this year.

By the way for those wondering what changes SP2 will be bringing to Windows Vista, following are some of the known changes in SP2:

• Windows Search 4.0 for faster and improved search
• Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack, the latest Bluetooth spec
• Blu-Ray support to write discs directly for explorer
• Windows Connect Now (WCN) for simpler WiFi configuration
• Content Protection in Windows Media Center

Also on the blocks with Vista SP2 is Windows Server 2008 SP2 which was released with the label SP1. Hoping to see another Windows 7 beta before the Vista SP2 then!!??

Microsoft launches Visual Studio 2008, Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 in Mumbai

Microsoft has been running a campaign called "Heroes happen here" as part of the launch of 3 major products from the 27th February all over the world. The launch of Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 is supposed to be the largest software product launch from Microsoft ever and covers  the most important tools which Microsoft sells to developers and businesses. The campaign reached Indian shores yesterday at Bangalore and today the launch party reached Mumbai. The Mumbai launch about which I had blogged earlier was held today at Regal Theatre from 10am.

Microsoft's odd selection of a movie theatre for the launch of its product was explained VJ Gaurav Kapoor, who played the host to today's Microsoft party. Microsoft explains that developers who use Microsoft products create technology that can help change lives and play heroes in today's world of technology. "Like film heroes, this party is to celebrate their success story and what better place than a movie theatre to showcase heroes", said Gaurav Kapoor.

Microsoft has also created a song for the event, which was quite peppy I may add and definitely better than the "Vista Wow Song"!! A group of young dancers came up to the stage and performed on the song...

S.Somasegar, Senior VP at Microsoft started the keynote and mentioned all the new things that Microsoft brings with these new products. He talked about the upcoming Dynamic IT (read here) and how these products launched today are going to help reach that goal. He also talked about Virtualization being one of the primary goals and future technology in the IT world. A small demo on virtualization was also shown. I would have loved to ask why Hyper-V is still in beta (won't be out-of-the-box feature) and why understanding that the market needed virtualization took so much time for Microsoft. Alas! they didn't have a Q&A session.

 

Then there was a presentation on new features of SQL Server 2008. With SQL Server 2008, Microsoft brings a lot features that it lacked in previous versions. New Large User DataTypes, Data/Time Datatype, Spatial Data are some new things for SQL Server 2008, but have existed in other database systems like Oracle for sometime now. SQL Server 2008 didn't seem to me as a revolutionary product compared to the competition, but adds much needed features to this product line. A few SQL Server 2008 benchmarks do tell us that performance has improved considerably. SQL Server 2008 is actually not going to be released now. Microsoft is still testing it and adding last few touches. It will RC sometime in Q2 '08 and will be released in Q3 '08

Visual Studio 2008 was the next product that Microsoft talked about. Microsoft has done some hard work with Visual Studio 2008 and from the audience reaction at the product demo and technical presentations, it seems they have a winner. A lot of new features from ASP.NET were shown and out-of-the-box AJAX controls were shown. Time was running out and everyone was waiting for lunch... but I added to everyone's pain by requesting Harish (the speaker) to demo how to create an app with Silverlight. He obliged by explaining to the audience about Silverlight and its CLR and demo'd a small button animation. The audience loved it and everyone clapped. Silverlight seems to be an interesting proposition and Expression Blend 2 is turning out to be a good product so early in the game. Flash tools still are better, but Silverlight v2.0 with C# is more powerful compared to ActionScript or Flex.

Windows Server 2008 was the last to be introduced. It has a host of new features and IIS 7.0 was the main part which Microsoft highlighted. A few other things like WMS, failsafe clustering, Sharepoint services were also mentioned. Large part of the demo featured on how easy it was to manage the different services and talked about the small "core" of services that were enabled by default. Improved Security was also discussed to some extent and Microsoft said it was one of the main priorities in Windows Server 2008.

After lunch Microsoft showed the movie, "Transformers" to the audience and everyone attending the event left smiling with some goodies in a bag. The goodie bag contained lots of PR material and partner information. A 90-day evaluation DVD for Visual Studio Team System 2008 and Windows Server 2008 RC were part of the goodies. Having already played with Windows Server 2008 during the beta testing, these weren't exactly goodies for me. But all in all the event was fun, but I didn't wait to watch the movie!!

Microsoft To Show Blockbuster Movie At Server 2008 & VS2008 Launch

The launch of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 & SQL Server 2008 is upon us. Microsoft has just RTM'd these products and is ready to launch them across the world. Microsoft is celebrating the launch of these products in Bangalore, Mumbai & Delhi. Register today. You can also get a sneak peak on what's new in Windows Server 2008 by registering for live Webcasts.

Microsoft is doing the launch events at movie theatres in all these cities and it will be full day event. Look at the following screenshot for the event agenda:

I hope the blockbuster movie is something among the new Hollywood movies and not some viral Microsoft marketing video. Also it should not be the Bill Gates's last day at office video that they recently showed.

Windows Server 2008 WDK Released

Today, Microsoft released the RTM of the Windows Driver Kit (WDK) to developers and beta testers and is available for download on the Microsoft Connect website. The Windows Server 2008 RTM WDK is used to create drivers for Server 2008 as well as earlier operating systems like Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista. Microsoft advises everyone that this is the supported platform for the development and release of all production drivers.

WDK was earlier known as Windows Driver Development Kit (DDK). With the release of Windows Vista last year, Windows Driver Foundation (WDF), Installable File System Kit (IFS) were added and a separate Windows Logo Kit (WLK) was also created for signing the drivers.

A few highlights in this release are:

KMDF 1.7:

• A new wait/wake policy for parent drivers
• New samples
• New Tools

UMDF 1.7:

• Now supports Windows Server 2003 along with Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, and Windows XP
• New debugger extensions
• New and updated samples

WDF 1.7:

• WDF 1.7 is native on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1
• WDF 1.7 is completely backward compatible with WDF versions 1.0, 1.1, and 1.5

WDTF:

• SDEL has been added to WDTF to make querying simpler and easier

SDV:

• SDV supports KMDF drivers in addition to WDM drivers and parallelization over rules. Now, rules will be verified in parallel.

PFD:

• PFD is enhanced with driver-specific annotations that make it an even more powerful tool.

DSF:

• USB Power Management and now more robust and stable

Docs:

• New look of the WDK documentation for Server 2008/Vista SP1
• new docs for Viridian and Kernel Transaction Manager
• Subset Filtering (allows you to search by technology subset such as Audio)
• Requirements Block information for all new topics
• Kernel Reference technical scrub and TOC restructuring

After I downloaded, the new documentation felt simpler for navigation and allows easier understanding of the process of creating drivers. This release will be useful for all the hardware vendors who will be creating the next version of the drivers using this RTM release. I'm currently trying to find some mention on creating friendlier drivers supporting virtualization for Microsoft's new Hyper-V, but its surely not in the bold-print and would be useful if someone can point it out to me!!

Microsoft branding: 8 Versions Of Windows Server 2008

Guest Blogger: Steven Parker
12th Nov, New York

Steve Jobs recently said at the launch of Leopard OSX, "And everyone gets the 'Ultimate' version", just to take a swing at the different versions of Vista. If that was not enough, Microsoft is prepared to give the world many more versions of its server operating system. Actually, when Windows Server 2008 will be released it'll come in 8 different flavors!!

Microsoft has figured it out that marketing different versions of the same thing is profitable. They understand that packaging stuff with different set of features makes people want more. Microsoft seems to understand that the entire culture of marketing now-a-days is about tempting the customer to buy the bigger box, more that what he actually requires!! ;-)

Windows Server 2008 is special because of its thin-hypervisor called Hyper-V, which enables virtualization out of the box! Windows Server 2008 will come in Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter versions with and without the Hyper-V. And each of these would come in 64-bit and 32-bit versions. CALs (Client-Access License) means the number of clients that are allowed to access the server.

Version	Price	CALs
Standard (with Hyper-V)	$999	5
Standard (without Hyper-V)	$971	5
Enterprise (with Hyper-V)	$3999	25
Enterprise (without Hyper-V)	$3971	25
Datacenter (with Hyper-V)	$2999	per processor
Datacenter (without Hyper-V)	$2971	per processor
Web Server 2008 (without Hyper-V)	$469
Server 2008 for Itanuim (without Hyper-V)	$2999	per processor

The funny part of it is that "When Windows Server 2008 ships next February, those versions that have Hyper-V will include the beta bits for that, and those will be updated to the final version when that ships within 180 days". This means that you'll may for a beta product initially. When Microsoft releases the final product, which will be a standalone, you get the final as well...

Let's see how it all looks when Microsoft will release the product in all its glory in Feb 2008. I have heard good things about it from Sunny, who's been beta testing the Home Server and Server 2008 from it's early days. I seriously expected Vista to come with 32-bit and 64-bit versions on the same DVD, but that was not the case. Hope they have that for Windows Server atleast!

Windows Server 2008 Released For Public Testing

I have been testing Windows Server 2008 for a long time now and have given quite a bit of feedback on that till date. After 10-12 months of testing, Microsoft's latest server operating system, Windows Server 2008 was released today for general public evaluation.

Windows Server 2008 was earlier known as Longhorn and is built on the same core as the desktop version, Windows Vista. Windows Server 2008 is a major upgrade to the server-line of operating system from Microsoft and comes nearly 4 years after the previous installment called Windows Server 2003.

You can go read, the press release here. Or if you don't like the PR blabber, then go evaluate the download from here.

Some of the interesting stuff from Windows Server 2008 are:
1.) Virtualization
2.) IIS 7.0
3.) PowerShell
4.) Network Access Protection
5.) Newer Clustering Features

Microsoft calls this release as Release Candidate 0 (RC0) and will have 2 other release candidates available for public testing before the final release on 27th Feb, 2008