Jeff's Connected Corner

October 2006 - Posts

• Windows Defender Exits Beta

  Microsoft just released Windows Defender to the web.  Check the Windows Defender home page for download links and additional information.  Aside from some basic UI changes, the big news is that Windows 2000 is no longer supported.  The FAQ says this change is due to Windows 2000 being outside mainstream support.  However, given that the previous release worked just fine on Windows 2000 (and not much appears to have changed since then) we are left to guess that marketing trumped the product group on this decision. Note: Make sure to upgrade to the final release sometime before December 31, 2006 (official end-of-life for Defender Beta 2). Check out the WindowsConnected Windows Defender RTM photo gallery for screen shots of the install & first-run experience. Enjoy - and let me know what you think about the Windows 2000 decision.  Thanks. Posted Oct 23 2006, 09:44 PM by Jeff with 3 comment(s) Filed under: Security

• Software Assurance (Finally) Adds Value

  Let's face it - most Microsoft customers purchase Software Assurance (SA) for the version upgrade rights.  Sure, SA offers other benefits like work-at-home usage rights, training vouchers, and other relatively minor technical offerings.  However, the cost of SA vs. other software vendor 'maintenance' offerings has put Microsoft in hot water with customers in the past.  Not to mention the unlucky customers who were promised ship dates for Vista and Office, only to find out those products would ship late... and potentially fall outside the time window of their SA contract.  Trust me, I'm only venting because I hear this from my customers all the time - not because I've ever paid a dime for SA myself. Fast forward to 10/17/2007 and a post on the Windows Vista Team Blog.  It seems that Microsoft is bundling some recently acquired products/technology into a new 'add-on' offering for SA customers called Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance.  The bundled products include: Softricity SoftGrid (Application Virtualization) AssetMetrix (Software Asset Management Technology) DesktopStandard (Group Policy Tools) Winternals (System Recovery Utilities) Technically this new bundle isn't free (it's $10 per desktop, ERP) but compared to the pricing of these products prior to acquisition, it's a steal.  Estimated availability for the MDOP (that's an ugly acronym, huh?) is January, 2007.  More info can be found in the official press release or the associated FAQ (PDF download). I'm excited to get my hands on this bundle... oh, wait - I'm not an SA customer.  For the first time I'm envious of SA customers Posted Oct 17 2006, 02:19 PM by Jeff with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Windows-General, System Center

• 8Mbps Upgrade - Better…Stronger…Faster

  I don't know about the rest of you out there, but I've been doing the 'online' thing since we measured speed in baud.  I fondly remember the days of my local BBS at 1200 baud, then CompuServe at 14.4kbps, and finally the wide open Internet at 56kbps.  Heck, one time I even experimented with an ISP that supported bonding two dial-up lines together.  Anything for a 'fatter pipe' as the saying goes. Today my surfing got another bump in speed - to 8Mbps down/512Kbps up.  I live in an area serviced by Time Warner's Road Runner cable modem service, and they recently dropped the price of their Turbo package.  So now for around $45 per month I have some serious bandwidth.  It's not Fiber or GigE... but I'm sure that's only a matter of time. Aside from the low price (only $10 more than the standard 5Mbps service) I opted for the upgrade to bump my upload speed to 512Kbps.  My wife is a huge fan of uploading digital photos to the Target/Yahoo photo service, and with a 7MP digital camera... the pics are quite large.  Plus, I've become addicted to Orb, which allows me to access all my Windows XP Media Center content when I'm away from home.  Both the Yahoo photo uploads and remote Orb streaming really benefit from the improved upstream bandwidth. Here's a before & after view of my connection courtesy of SpeedTest.net: Before (5Mbps/384Kbps) After (8Mbps/512Kbps) What's everyone else running/paying for home Internet these days?  Did you ever think we'd have so much bandwidth for such little money (relatively speaking anyway)?  Cheers! Posted Oct 14 2006, 10:12 PM by Jeff with 8 comment(s)

• Come And Get 'Em - October Patches on WSUS

  NOTE: The post below (including cumulative sync numbers and WSUS 3.0 Beta 2 info) is current as of 9:00PM Central Time. After a few hour delay where my WSUS server was reporting a sync failure, then a brief time where I only got a sub-set of updates, the full list of October updates is now available via WSUS.  3.0 Beta 2 servers should also see updates, although I can't say exactly when that content stream came online.  My 3.0 server did a full sync at around 8:30PM Central Time. WSUS 2.0 Synchronization Summary (4:48PM Central Time) New Updates 52 Revised Updates 9 Expired Updates 0 Errors 0       WSUS 3.0 Beta 2 Synchronization Summary (8:30PM Central Time) New Updates 29 Revised Updates 1 Expired Updates 0 Errors 0       I also noticed a new DirectX 9.0c release (why not call it 9.0d?).  It's referred to as version DX on the download page.  Anyway, here's the official text. Brief Description The Microsoft DirectX® End-User Runtime provides updates to 9.0c and previous versions of DirectX — the core Windows® technology that drives high-speed multimedia and games on the PC. Link to download page (validation required) http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&DisplayLang=en FWIW, DXDiag reports the same version number after updating as it did before. Posted Oct 10 2006, 03:37 PM by Jeff with no comments Filed under: WSUS