Microsoft is planning a 64-bit version of its Office product franchise, although it remains mum on details.
Even as the company's top dogs last week talked up the newly shipping 64-bit Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP, insiders confirmed plans for a 64-bit version of Office 12, the successor to Office 2003.
The current plan is for a 64-bit Office 12 for the AMD64 platform to ship "sometime after" the 32-bit Office 12. No Itanium version is planned, but that processor is primarily server-oriented, insiders said.(
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The battle of the operating systems heated up this week as Apple Computer unleashed Tiger and Microsoft showed off some of the beef to expect in Longhorn.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates gave computer makers a brief look at Longhorn, but acknowledged that many of its key features will not be evident until much later test versions of the new Windows. A fraction of the new features will make it into an initial beta this summer. Microsoft wouldn't say when a subsequent beta, with more new features, will arrive, but Gates said the company is still focused on trying to release the final version of Longhorn in time to make it into PCs sold for the holiday season in 2006.
The company demonstrated a new XML-based document format, code-named "Metro," that it will use in Longhorn to both print and share documents. Among other features Gates discussed was the ability of PCs running Longhorn to take advantage of storage that combines traditional hard drives and nonvolatile flash memory. By using flash for frequently accessed information, laptop PCs will be able to get much better battery life given that substantially less power is used accessing flash than is needed to spin a hard drive.
NAT-T (IETF RFC 3947 and 3948) detects the presence of any NAT devices between two hosts, uses a non-IPsec port and encapsulates the IPsec traffic in UDP. NAT-T does this by inserting an additional header between the IP header and the ESP header. This header contains the original source and destination ports. (
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Everybody likes to keep their systems running smoothly and tuned for performance. For simpler scenarios with basic configuration you can probably use Exchange 2003 out-of-the box without ever having performance issues. But if you are responsible for a complex environment, then you have probably already felt the bitter taste of a system bottleneck. If you identify yourself with this description or if you are just a tweak fanatic, then this article is for you.
10 Tips to Optimize Exchange 2003 Performance (Part 1)
While doing my daily wander around the net, I came upon
this site detailing some research into search results from several companies, (primarily MSN and Google, but Yahoo and Teoma as well.) The conclusions are by no means concrete at this stage, and work is continuing but Ivor Hewitt seems to have found something of potentially significant interest to web developers.
Basically he has been testing the returned results from both Google and MSN (and the others in some cases also.) for 1000 common search terms, (lifted mostly from Google Zeitgeist) and then checking what web server software the top results are using and storing the data from each search. The results thus far show that MSN consistently seems to choose more sites running IIS (Internet Information Services) Microsoft’s web server software compared to the other engines.
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Users of the latest 64-bit version of Microsoft's Windows XP Professional x64 Edition operating system will not have the option to install Norton or McAfee antivirus software, vnunet.com can reveal. Users trying to install the Norton Internet Security 2005 security suite for consumers on the 64-bit version of Windows see an error message stating that the product can not be installed.
They are referred to a web page which states: "Symantec currently does not sell any consumer products that are certified to be compatible with 64-bit processors and operating systems."
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Microsoft says servers running the company's website and MSN Search and Messenger applications have been migrated to the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2003. 'Our MSN search engine is actually built on several thousand systems running the x64 version of Windows,' a spokesperson said. In addition, 'the entire Microsoft.com site has been migrated, and we serve 30 million unique visitors every day.' According to the company, the Messenger servers handle about 70 million users.
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Steven Bink has information about the new Microsoft Clustering support in Longhorn. He writes: "A lot of stuff is changing, here are the highlights":
Improved Cluster Setup
Setup is streamlined and simplified: create an entire cluster in one seamless step. Thorough cluster testing to ensure your cluster will function properly. All the power of a full cluster test suite in your hands to guarantee the actual cluster you are setting up will provide rock solid stability. Fully scriptable for automated deployments.
Cluster Migration Tool
A cluster migration tool Will assist migration of a cluster configuration from one cluster to another. Rolling upgrade of Windows 2003 to Longhorn cluster. It will be a “roll forward” model. Migration from Windows 2003 to Longhorn cluster will not be as simple under the hood as from Windows 2000 to 2003.
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It is easy to manually setup one or two Exchange Servers, but what if you must install more than one Exchange Server in a short time and every Exchange Server with the same configuration?
The answer is simple – you must use an answer file with the Exchange Setup process.
Exchange 2003 has the capability to automate the installation process with the help of an unattended file. An unattended setup creates an answer file that stores information about a sample configuration. The file can then be used to set up multiple Exchange 2003 servers.(
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Installations of Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 now contain the Windows Firewall. Windows Firewall is a host (software) firewall, a firewall around each client and server computer on a customer’s network.
Unlike Windows XP Service Pack 2, the Windows Firewall is off by default on Server 2003 Service Pack 1, and must be turned on to begin protecting systems. The Windows Firewall is enabled for a brief time during Service Pack 1 clean installs for the duration of the new Post-Setup Security Updates (PSSU) portion of setup.
Servers are vulnerable in the time between initial installation and having the latest security updates applied. To counter this, Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 uses Windows Firewall to block all inbound connections to the server after installation until Windows Update delivers the latest security updates to the new computer. After updating, Windows Firewall is turned off until it is configured for server roles. PSSU also guides users through immediate configuration of Automatic Updates.
Passwords are an important step in a security plan for your network. Users may see passwords as a nuisance; however, the security of your enterprise relies on a combination of password length, password uniqueness, and password lifespan. These three items help defend against dictionary attacks and brute force attacks. A dictionary attack occurs when a malicious user tries known words that are in the dictionary and a number of common password names to try and guess a password. A brute force attack occurs when a malicious user tries all of the possible permutations until one is successful.
Because most users prefer passwords that they can easily remember, dictionary attacks are often an effective method for a malicious user to find a password in significantly less time than they would with brute force attacks. Therefore, the strength of a password depends on how many characters are in the password, how well the password is protected from being revealed by the owner, how well the password is protected if it is intercepted by a malicious user on the network, and how difficult the password is to guess. Even good passwords that are protected by cryptography on the network and that are not subject to dictionary attacks can be discovered by brute force in a few weeks or months by a malicious user who intercepts the password on the network.
Read the full article on Account Passwords and Policies on Technet
Need to keep track of all those great command Sean Deuby told you about?
Download and print this quick reference sheet and you'll be a commmand line guru too.
Download the Command-Line Reference
After abandoning plans for a future Microsoft Exchange Server version, code-named Titanium, that would have replaced Exchange's Jet data store with a next-generation data storage engine that uses Microsoft SQL Server technology, Microsoft decided to refocus. Rather than follow a purely technical path for the next Exchange version, the company is addressing customers' key pain points and upcoming business trends. The result, code-named E12 (for Exchange 12), will be one of the most impressive upgrades to Exchange that Microsoft has ever released. Here's what you need to know about E12.(
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Microsoft is expanding support for 3rd party guest OS's in Virual Server 2005, including Linux, Solaris and other x86 operating systems. They are commited more than ever to provide interoperability in heterogenous environments. With service pack 1, due out later this year, there are a number of improvements to Virtual Server including:
3rd party OS support
64 bit host support (run VM's from ramdisk)
an estimated 30% increase in performance
opening up .vhd standards to enable extensibility
Bruce Cowpers' Weblog
VeriTest is the only authorized worldwide lab to test enterprise applications for Microsoft’s “Certified for Windows” program. There are varying levels of certification - and each one has a set of standards associated with it. These standards and the levels of certification are established by Microsoft. The goal? To identify applications that are secure and manageable and that run reliably on Microsoft Windows.
The idea behind VeriTest executing the tests is to remove any bias from the equation. As a completely independent organization, it receives a fee from the application developer and executes the tests in complete confidence. According to the website, vendors can even sign up to have their application tested without the knowledge of Microsoft. But the question is - how do you know if an application has been tested and approved? And how do you know at what level the application is certified and which versions qualified? Well, there is a nice searchable database that allows you to receive all of this information.
VeriTest Catalog of Certified Server Applications
SEATTLE—Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates on Monday laid to rest talk that Microsoft might be scaling back its commitment to the Tablet PC, saying there will be a major new version of the Tablet operating system in the Longhorn timeframe. In his opening keynote address here at WinHEC (the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference) before several thousand attendees, Gates also reiterated Microsoft's call for developers to start building 64-bit device drivers to meet the burgeoning user demand for them.
Gates also demonstrated several new prototypes of the Tablet hardware, including one in which the screen slides up and down off the keyboard. Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp. are backing the idea of an auxiliary display and are working with OEM Acer around this. The companies aim to let users get information such as the time, their e-mail and their meeting details on a small, auxiliary display that does not power up the actual computer.
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SEATTLE--In a move that could rankle privacy advocates, Microsoft said Monday that it is adding the PC equivalent of a flight data recorder to the next version of Windows, in an effort to better understand and prevent computer crashes.
The tool will build on the existing Watson error-reporting tool in Windows but will provide Microsoft with much deeper information, including what programs were running at the time of the error and even the contents of documents that were being created. Businesses will also choose whether they want their own technology managers to receive such data when an employee's machine crashes. "Think of it as a flight data recorder, so that any time there's a problem, that 'black box' is there helping us work together and diagnose what's going on," Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said during a speech at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference here.
Tom Warren from Neowin writes: "Bill Gates kicked off todays Keynote by explaining the advantages of 64bit computing, his vision for the future of mobile computing and demonstrations of Longhorn. Here’s some of the pictures ReflectiaX has taken today:"
History of Windows
Microsoft 64bit Solutions for the future
Microsoft’s Moves to 64bit
Mobile Computing in 2006
Longhorn Next Gen Platform
Build5060.vbl_wcp_avalon.050417-1805
Windows Longhorn “Ready PC Program”
Longhorn Beta Sign-up on XP SP2 |
Longhorn Build 5048
Longhorn Glass Effects |
Longhorn Desktop Search
During the keynote of WinHEC 2005, Bill Gates showed the roadmaps for the different Windows platforms. Steven Bink took some pictures and posted them on his website. As you can see on the pictures, Longhorn will be broad available during the holiday season of 2006. Have a look for yourself:
Windows Client roadmap
Windows Server roadmap
Steven Bink's weblog
Microsoft has postponed most of its Next-Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB) security plan, company officials confirmed. Only a sliver of it will appear in the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, due out late next year.
Microsoft unveiled NGSCB, formerly known by its Palladium code name, in 2002. A year ago the company said it was retooling the technology so some of the benefits would be available without the need to recode applications. The vendor promised an update by the end of 2004. But it has remained silent, fueling speculation about delays and the demise of NGSCB. (
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Today at WinHec 2005 Keynote, Microsoft announced a new printing technology that will be part of Longhorn, it is codenamed: METRO.
"Metro offers a unified framework to address the growing use of electronic document-based workflows, and inclusion of advanced graphics and extended color information in everyday documents and Web applications. “Metro” offers an open document format that uses Extensible Markup Language (XML), a public standard for exchanging data between disparate systems, and other current, industry standards to create a modern, cross-platform document and imaging technologies. “Metro” simplifies creation, sharing, printing, viewing and archiving of digital documents, while also improving image fidelity and print performance.(
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Microsoft System Center Capacity Manager 2006, Express Edition, provides the IT professional with the tools and guidance required to architect a deployment in the most efficient manner, while facilitating future planning by allowing for "what-if" analyses. Microsoft System Center Capacity Manager 2006, Express Edition, enables the IT professional to effectively size an application implementation by:
Collecting organization-specific data about the end-user workload and network environment.
Recommending a topology—a particular configuration of servers, software, and network—using predefined knowledge and dynamic performance modeling. This knowledge is packaged with the tool and can be updated via the hardware vendor with server-specific metrics.
Simulating the load against the proposed architecture to measure its impact on the environment.
System Center Capacity Manager 2006 Datasheet
WinHEC (Windows Hardware Engineering Conference) 2005 has now begun and Microsoft have given the Longhorn preview build to attendees today. Build 5048 sports the new "Aero" theme and new search features. We will be covering WinHEC from tomorrow onwards at the Neowin WinHEC05 blog.
Screenshots:
wallpaper |
desktop |
internet explorer |
search
As Mentioned in a previous article on techlog concerning
'Why Memory Optimizers are fraudware' the techlog crew visited a Windows Internals session given by David Salomon. The slides of this presentation are now online and can be downloaded.
Download the Windows Internals & Advanced Troubleshooting slides
We’ve heard some great feedback on what web developers would like to see in IE7, both from the responses to my last post and from the resources I referred to. The rest of the team was cranking away while I was away on parental leave, and I wanted to share a few details about what they were doing: The first couple of things they’ve done are:
Support the alpha channel in PNG images. We’ve actually had this on our radar for a long time, and have had it supported in the code for a while now. We have certainly heard the clear feedback from the web design community that per-pixel alpha is a really important feature.
Address CSS consistency problems. Our first and most important goal with our Cascading Style Sheet support is to remove the major inconsistencies so that web developers have a consistent set of functionality on which they can rely. For example, we have already checked in the fixes to the peekaboo and guillotine bugs documented at positioniseverything.net so use of floated elements become more consistent.
We’re doing a lot more than this in IE7, of course, and we’re really excited that the beta release is almost here - we’re looking forward to the feedback when we release the first beta of IE7 this summer. Stay tuned for more details as we get closer to beta.
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John Howard writes: I was setting up a new virtual machine (for playing with Windows Server 2003 R2 as it happens, but that's for another day) this morning and getting frustrated when you double-click files which have no application associated with them. On most machines, I add notepad for the list of options to "Send" a file to. Then you can right-click a file in Windows Explorer, select "Send To" and then "Notepad". To quickly set this up:
Open Windows Explorer
Navigate to \Documents and Settings\UserName\SendTo
Right-Click and select "New Shortcut"
Notepad.exe as the program
Notepad as the name
John Howard's Weblog
Bob Roudebush writes: "I ran into an issue trying to configure my SmartPhone to work with the Exchange 2003 at the new job. It seems the Windows Mobile OS ships with a short list of pre-defined trusted root certificates. If you’re trying to use ServerSync to synchronize your Exchange mailbox with your phone and the Exchange server is configured with an “untrusted” or home-grown root certificate, synchronization will fail. There’s an easy fix - described in the knowledge base article below - which allows you to import a 3rd party root certificate into the trust root cert list on the SmartPhone."
MS Knowledgebase Article 841060
Microsoft released a nice document on connecting Mac OS X 10.3 clients and higher to a Windows SBS 2003 Network. I have monitored the SBS documentation weblog previously and they put out a beta of this document. It was right on. I recently had a client with Mac OS X and following the doc was smooth sailing to get everything going. This client has a Windows XP laptop, a PowerMac laptop, a Treo 600 and a Mac at home and all have Outlook synchronized with his calendar, email, and contacts on everyone! Now that’s a powerful Server Operating System.
Connecting Mac OS X 10.3 and Higher Clients to a Windows Small Business Server 2003 Network
Today is a memorable day, as Techlog celebrates its first anniversary. On 23-4-2004 we went live with daily posts about Microsoft and their technologies. The first few weeks we posted in Dutch, but as the audience grew, we switched to english. Currently we are receiving more than 30.000 users monthly and are increasingly discovered by people using Google. We had some great comments from Microsoft employees and feedback from regular users. We want to thank you for your visits and hope to see you in the second year of Techlog!
While Microsoft Corp.'s Windows team is laser-focused on Longhorn, many Windows users are more concerned with older versions of Windows, for which the support-clock is ticking away. Mainstream support from Microsoft for Windows NT 4.0 ended on December 30, and the Redmond, Wash., software maker is set to phase out mainstream support for its Windows 2000 client and server releases on June 30.
Microsoft divides its support lifecycle into two phases: Mainstream and extended. Once a product enters the extended support period, Microsoft charges for support. Microsoft continues to provide security-specific hot fixes for products during extended support, but nonsecurity hot fixes may be obtained for extended-support products only by purchasing an "extended hot-fix agreement." Windows 2000 is still the operating system of choice for a number of businesses, especially those in the small and midsize business space, according to industry watchers.
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Malcom Smith is someone working on the Transactional NTFS feature coming in Longhorn, on his blog you can find some interesting facts about this new feature:
Transactional NTFS can't guarantee that changes you make to a set files will always be successful, but it can guarantee that on failure the result will always be consistent. Consider an application install: if you can't copy a particular file, and want to undo all of the files you've already installed, what happens if your undo fails? Maybe a user has your readme opened, and locked, in their editor; maybe they've already moved your start menu entries; maybe they've deleted or moved files you carefully put there. With Transactional NTFS, all of your changes can be removed - this is guaranteed.
A better example would be a patch or service pack. If it succeeds, great, if it doesn't, that's okay, but if it half-succeeds, that's terrible. Transactional NTFS will protect your application from inconsistency.
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Troubleshooting is merely the methodical application of common sense and technical knowledge to the inevitable problems that crop up in a fallen world. If common sense can be codified (and perhaps it can with AI) then it starts with answers to simple questions like: Why? How? What? In this article I'll try to distill the issues, tools and procedures of troubleshooting Windows XP/2003 boot problems into a small amount of easily digestible information that you as a system administrator can write on the back of a note card or store in your PDA for easy access when the proverbial poop hits the fan. Let's begin with the Why question.
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Basically, you create a barrier between your domain members and non-members by using IPsec policies. Computers inside your domain can talk to one another with no problems but outside computers cannot initiate communication with your domain members. Basically, all you do is create IPsec policies and distribute and assign them using AD. Of course there are a few steps involved in the process (and some great documentation for domain isolation), but that’s really all you do.
Does It Really Work? Yup! In fact Microsoft has deployed IPsec across several domains (including the largest one). I didn’t even notice it. No bumps, hiccups, outages, no problems. (the “Improving Security with Domain Isolation” document covers the whole experience). I have set this up in a lab (using Virtual Server over Remote Desktop) and it went without a single significant problem.
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You may have heard of blogs (or "Web logs"), a new name for something that's existed since the dawn of the Web: Personal Web sites, updated regularly, containing any kind of information imaginable. Bloggers--i.e. those who maintain blogs--might argue, however, that blogs are different in some ways from personal Web sites. For example, many blogs are dedicated to a certain topic, like politics, technology, or a love of cats. Those blogs are generally as uninteresting as they are innumerable. What's really interesting about some blogs--and about the capabilities in Microsoft's free new blog service, MSN Spaces--is the same thing that's been interesting about the Web since its inception. Blogs provide people with a way to publish information on the Internet at little or no cost, and with little or no technical expertise. In a nutshell, blogs, like any personal Web site, are about giving power to the people.
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Paul Thurott's WinSuperSite
The Norwegian Competition Authority is considering investigating Microsoft Norway for breach of competition laws. Special deals for Norwegian schools involve a new generation of computer users having no choice but Microsoft.
Microsoft agreements with schools prevent competition in practice, NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting) reports. Many local authorities agree deals on behalf of their school systems, and this makes it more difficult for competitors to get a foot in the door.
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My Outlook from SAM-Consult Software | If you use Microsoft Outlook as your e-mail client/PIM then you might be interested in My Outlook. My Outlook is a new plug-in that will enable you to read your emails, view your calendar, browse your Contacts, check your tasks and look up a notes within Media Center. In addition check out My Web News which includes: My Web News, My Weather, My File Manager, My Special Folders, My Menu Editor, My Music, My Translation, and My Outlook! Damn!
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Screenshot
The Live Communications Team is pleased to announce that the Release Candidate build of Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 is available for immediate download on Beta Place. The Release Candidate (RC) build represents significant improvements over the previous release; it is also a major step towards shipping RTM. Please download and begin testing as soon as possible.
Microsoft Beta Place
Microsoft security update e-mail would will be discontinued in July. However, you can subscribe to their RSS feed. This feed delivers the headlines on major security update releases, which are usually released on the second Tuesday of each month. To subscribe, add this URL to your RSS reader:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/bulletins/updates.xml
The Security Newsletter for Home Users provides general notice about major new security update releases. You can preview it on the Microsoft
Security at Home Web site
Neowin Reports that MSN is currently developing a next generation version of their popular MSN Toolbar Suite.
The updated version will include an implementation of tabbed browsing allowing users of IE6 without Windows XP SP2 (& IE7) to benefit from tabbed browsing in Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer 7 is set to debut in beta form this summer with various improvements including tabbed browsing, inbuilt MSN search and an RSS aggregator, however, IE7 will only be made available for customers using Windows XP with SP2.
It's not year clear when the new toolbar will be available and at time of writing an MSN Spokesperson said the following:
Since the launch of the beta in December, we are thrilled with the strong consumer interest we have seen. We continue to receive constructive feedback both from consumers and internet enthusiasts, which will help us deliver an industry-leading final product. Feedback topics range from accuracy of search results to suggestions on possible new features. We will continue to incorporate the consumer feedback we receive and we hope to ship the final product in the next few months. We are getting great feedback from beta customers, and continue to improve the product, and are committed to shipping a great solution for consumers when it is ready.(
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AMD says production-ready CPUs are now shipping to some leading OEMs and system builders world-wide. General system availability is scheduled for June, we learned.
The chippery will be available for both mobile (Desk top replacement) and desktop computers and feature enhanced virus protection and 'Cool 'n' Quiet' declocking marchitecture. (
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