RTM Announcement - Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1 Hello, It's been a few months since I last blogged about the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1 - formerly known as WVHA or Windows Vista Hardware Assessment. Today, I'd like Read More......(
read more)
Written by Windows Vista Team Blog on June 30th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on 1354 and 1426 and 1429 and 1673 and 169 and 2065 and 2157 and 401 and 544 and Announcement and Business and Business Deployment and Contributors and Enterprise and Featured News and Hardware and IT Professionals and MAP and Microsoft Assessment and Planning and Release-to-Manufacturing and Release-to-Market and Virtualization and Windows Vista and Windows Vista Capable and Windows Vista Hardware Assessement Tool and Windows Vista SP1 and desktop optimization pack.
Not necessarily a "Windows Experience" (although it does improve the Windows Experience) - I'm making this post on behalf of the Windows Search Team. Oh and I am really excited for this release. Today we released the final version of Windows Search 4.0 Read More......(
read more)
Written by Windows Vista Team Blog on June 3rd, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on 1426 and 1429 and 1673 and 169 and 2065 and 2157 and 401 and Announcement and Contributors and Featured News and Windows Vista and download.
Not necessarily a "Windows Experience" (although it does improve the Windows Experience) - I'm making this post on behalf of the Windows Search Team. Oh and I am really excited for this release.
Today we released the final version of Windows Search 4.0 to Microsoft Download Center. Windows Search 4.0 updates search in Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Home Server. This release comes after a public Windows Search 4.0 Preview, which was a success thanks to great community participation - with around 300,000 downloads. Since the Preview was released, a number of quality improvements have been made to the product based on feedback provided by the community.
Download: Windows Search 4.0 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (x86)
Download: Windows Search 4.0 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (x64)
More download packages are available on http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940157.
So, what's new in this release?
First and foremost: we've introduced some performance and reliability improvements. Queries are faster, as is indexing - how much faster depends on your machine and your data. Improved reliability means that system failures won't get in the way of the indexer and all of your data will be scanned and available for searches.
We've also extended remote index discovery, also known as PC-to-PC searches, which allows data to be searched quickly and efficiently across machines running Windows Search 4.0. This means that Windows Vista-to-Windows XP or Windows Vista-to-Windows Server 2008 queries are now possible.
Additionally, Windows Search 4.0 offers manageability improvements that IT Pros should take note of.
For starters, we have extended Group Policy to control more aspects of search functionality and made this control more granular with per-user policies. You can use Group Policy Objects to control how desktop search accesses remote resources - such as Microsoft Exchange Server resources or file shares - to manage network utilization.
Speaking of accessing Microsoft Exchange Server - if your organization selects not to use Microsoft Office Outlook in cached mode, you can set a Group Policy to index Exchange in online mode. Windows Search 4.0 will then index with minimal impact to the server. Our internal testing of this configuration shows significant decrease in the load on the server and the network as compared to Windows Desktop Search 3.01.
IT Pros can deploy a new link that will be added to the Instant Search UI of Windows Vista (or Windows Search UI on Windows XP) on client PCs and allow the query entered in the search box to access your company's search server, by opening the search UI of the server in your browser and executing the query in it. With this functionality, users get a single launch pad for all of their searches. For more information on how to add customized links into the instant Search UI, click here.
Based on a large amount of customer feedback, we have added support for indexing files encrypted with EFS. Users in an organization can now encrypt files and still be able to search their contents. When running on Windows Vista, they also can get an additional level of data protection by using BitLocker and storing their index on the protected drive.
Today, Windows Search 4.0 can be downloaded for installation (download links from Microsoft Download Center listed above). If you need Windows Search 4.0 deployed in a large organization, you can use System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) or other infrastructure solutions.
In the future, we will make Windows Search 4.0 available on Windows Update as well. At that time you will be able to install Windows Search 4.0 off the update site directly or deploy it in your organization using WSUS.
Once Windows Search 4.0 becomes available on Windows Update various Windows users will experience the following:
- Windows XP users will see it as an "optional" update, which requires users to select the update for installation.
- Users running Windows Vista will see the update as "recommended." By default, recommended updates are installed automatically; however, users can prevent automatic installation of Windows Search 4.0. We will publicly post specific instructions prior to publishing Windows Search 4.0 on Windows Update.
- On Windows Server 2008, the update will be applicable only if the File Server Role is enabled.
More on the improvements in Windows Search 4.0 can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940157.
Written by Brandon LeBlanc on June 3rd, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on 1426 and 1429 and 1673 and 169 and 2065 and 2157 and 401 and Announcement and Contributors and Featured News and Windows Vista and download.
Want to try out for yourself what made Robert Scoble cry ? Tonight, Microsoft Research has made available the Spring Beta of WorldWide Telescope . Download: WorldWide Telescope Spring Release WorldWide Telescope is an application designed to turn your Read More......(
read more)
Written by Windows Vista Team Blog on May 13th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on 1429 and 1673 and 169 and 2065 and 2157 and 401 and Announcement and Beta and Contributors and Featured News and Windows Vista.
Want to try out for yourself what
made Robert Scoble cry? Tonight, Microsoft Research has made available the Spring Beta of
WorldWide Telescope.
Download: WorldWide Telescope Spring Release
WorldWide Telescope is an application designed to turn your PC into a "virtual telescope" by stitching together terabytes (soon to be petabytes) of high-resolution images of the universe. Massive amounts of data are generated by the various scientific and research facilities and WorldWide Telescope brings the catalog of that data together for anyone to access using the power of the Internet. This new application is particularly exciting for me being someone really heavy into astronomy. You can also use WorldWide Telescope and connect an ASCOM-capable Telescope to your PC to watch the night sky.
WorldWide Telescope lets me connect to Communities, access Collections of celestial objects such as the Solar System or Constellations, or take Guides Tours.
Using my mouse, I can navigate the cosmos zooming in and out to any object in the rich catalog of celestial objects. I can right-click to access quick information on any celestial object.
I can use WorldWide Telescope for 4 different "looks" - Panorama, Sky, Earth, or Planets. By default you are looking into the Sky when WorldWide Telescope but you can change the "look" in the lower left-hand corner of the application. You can view planets of the Solar System in 3D or view a panoramic shot as if you were standing on Mars (my favorite view so far!) taken from one of the NASA's Opportunity and Spirit rover missions.
I can also use WorldWide Telescope to browse the Earth using Virtual Earth.
WorldWide Telescope also lets you copy a view to your clipboard. In browsing the universe tonight with WorldWide Telescope I spotted several of these weird reflection-like images that I'm not entirely sure what they are:
Looks like a reflection from the telescope (or device) that took the image but I'm no expert.
By default, WorldWide Telescope is configured to view the night sky as if you were standing at Microsoft Building 99 in Redmond. But you can change your Observing Location very easily via View options.
WorldWide Telescope observes the night sky in real-time (which is awesome) however there are controls that let you move backward or forward as well as pausing at any given moment.
There are so many features in WorldWide Telescope that it would be hard for me to go through them all tonight in this post. Give WorldWide Telescope a try yourself and let me know what you think. And if anyone has any suggestions for ASCOM-capable Telescopes I might go out and buy that might work with WorldWide Telescope - let me know!
Written by Brandon LeBlanc on May 13th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on 1426 and 1429 and 1673 and 169 and 2065 and 2157 and 401 and Announcement and Beta and Contributors and Featured News and Windows Vista.
Today Microsoft is unveiling a
technology preview to a really neat new software+services platform called
Live Mesh. Live Mesh is a brand new platform that helps your devices act together through the internet enabling users such as you and me to manage, access, and share their files and applications from nearly anywhere. By bringing user's files, applications, and devices together along with the combination of social networking (such as with news feeds) - Live Mesh creates a unique platform experience.
First and foremost Live Mesh is a new platform. The first phase of the technology preview process provides a foundational experience that exposes core concepts and functionality of the platform. In the near future developers can expect to be able to take advantage of Live Mesh to extend their software to the Web, and their services to the desktop and devices.
Today's technology preview is a pre-Beta release designed to get early feedback to make the platform even better.
I've been lucky to be given the chance to play with Live Mesh for the last couple weeks. I've had a great experience with Live Mesh so far and thought I'd share my experiences with you.
So the first thing I did was logged in to http://www.mesh.com/. Live Mesh of course supports Windows Live ID. After logging in with my Windows Live ID - I am taken to the screen where I can add/remove devices to my "mesh".
To set up folders to sync with my devices in my "mesh" I need to go to my Live Desktop. This is essentially your device in the cloud where I can manage all my Live Mesh Folders when I'm not in front of one of my usual PC or mobile. You create folders in your Live Desktop and choose which devices you want to sync them with (after you add them to your Live Mesh of course). You'll notice I have three PCs added to my Live Mesh.
On my Live Desktop I have three folders I've created. The first Live Mesh Folder I created was the one you see here called "Mesh". I use this folder to toss files that get synced to the Live Mesh cloud - and then synced to all my Live Mesh devices. You'll notice that the Live Mesh folks have tried to present a familiar approach to file management. You can even drag the folder window to any place on your Live Desktop.
After creating a folder on my Live Desktop, I can choose to sync it with specific devices in my Live Mesh. I chose to sync with all devices. Because the Live Mesh client was installed on my PCs, the "Mesh" Live Mesh Folder automatically appeared on the desktop of all of those PCs I chose to sync with.
When I open the "Mesh" Live Mesh Folder on any of my Windows Vista PCs the standard Windows Explorer window opens but with a Live Mesh addition on the right-hand side. The Mesh Bar on the Windows Explorer window lets me access my Live Mesh information for that folder.
Each Live Mesh Folder has a News Feed where it displays a history of information like when files were added, when they were removed, as well as who added them and notes. This experience exists both on my Windows desktops as well as my Live Desktop.
A Live Mesh client sits on my Windows PCs in the taskbar. I can use it to quickly access my Live Mesh "stuff" (Live Mesh Folders, devices and news).
I have three tabs that you can switch between my news feed for all my Live Mesh Folders, my Devices, and my news.
From the Devices tab, I can use Live Mesh Remote Desktop to easily access any of my PCs. Building on the awesome Windows Remote Desktop technologies - I can login to any of my PCs running Live Mesh. You'll see that Live Mesh Remote Desktop also has a Mesh Bar.
I can also login to my PCs remotely using Live Mesh via the website as well.
I continue to use Live Mesh for syncing data and the overall all-out access to my information and devices. The above is just a quick overview of my experiences. To quickly recap - Live Mesh provides me with a way to manage and interact with all my data, devices and people.
You can read more about today's Live Mesh Technology Preview announcement from Amit Mital who is the General Manager for Live Mesh on the Windows Live Dev Blog. Keep your eyes on the Live Mesh Blog as well. Noah Edelstein, Group Program Manager for Mesh Platform Experiences, has a in-depth post discussing Live Mesh and possibly answering your questions about Live Mesh - like why you should care about this platform experience.
Channel 10's Nic Fillingham has a great hands-on video of Live Mesh worth checking out! Watch it here in Silverlight bliss:
Hands on with Live Mesh
I believe this is Nic's first video since joining the Channel 10 Team. I look forward to seeing more from Nic in the future.
Oh and Jon Udell over on Channel 9 got a chance to sit down with Ray Ozzie to discuss his role as Chief Software Architect and discusses Microsoft's overall software+services strategy.
You can sign up to get an invite to test Live Mesh for yourself here by logging in with your Windows Live ID.
Written by Brandon LeBlanc on April 23rd, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on 1429 and 1673 and 169 and 2065 and 2157 and 401 and Announcement and Channel 10 and Contributors and Featured News and Software+Services.
Today Microsoft is unveiling a technology preview to a really neat new software+services platform called Live Mesh . Live Mesh is a brand new platform that helps your devices act together through the internet enabling users such as you and me to manage, Read More......(
read more)
Written by Windows Vista Team Blog on April 23rd, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on 1429 and 1673 and 169 and 2065 and 2157 and 401 and Announcement and Channel 10 and Contributors and Featured News and Software+Services.
Today, you can now download Windows Vista SP1 via Windows Update. For those of you eager to receive the benefits of Windows Vista SP1 - you can now do so! We've seen quite a bit of questions in our comments so we want to communicate as much as possible Read More......(
read more)
Written by Windows Vista Team Blog on March 18th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Announcement and Contributors and Featured News and Windows Update and Windows Vista and sp1.
I use about 2-3 different PCs throughout the week for work - including my laptop when I travel away from the office. In doing this - I have files scattered on multiple PCs. I'll go to one PC and find I need a file from another PC. So to make sure all Read More......(
read more)
Written by Windows Vista Team Blog on March 10th, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Announcement and Featured News and PC-to-PC Sync and Windows Live and Windows Live FolderShare and Windows Vista.
I use about 2-3 different PCs throughout the week for work - including my laptop when I travel away from the office. In doing this - I have files scattered on multiple PCs. I'll go to one PC and find I need a file from another PC. So to make sure all my PCs are in-sync with all the important files I need and use - I use
Windows Live FolderShare. Windows Live FolderShare is a service that lets users sign-in to set up Libraries that consist of folders on multiple PCs. These Libraries are synced using the Windows Live FolderShare client that sits on each PC. Users can have multiple Libraries setup as well as Shared Libraries with friends.
Today, the FolderShare Team is shipping a Beta Refresh of both the Windows Live FolderShare website and client that offers some great improvements to the Windows Live FolderShare service at http://www.foldershare.com/. Those improvements include:
- Improved usability with the Windows Live FolderShare website - UI aligns with other Windows Live services.
- Updated Windows Live FolderShare Client.
- Back-end improvements.
- Full Windows Vista support with updated Windows Live FolderShare Client.
Today's Beta Refresh supports Windows Live FolderShare's already supported countries and regions: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.
If you are already a Windows Live FolderShare Beta user - it is recommended you upgrade to today's new beta client. Your account information, folders, device, and settings should migrate over just fine. Users who don't upgrade to the new Windows Live FolderShare client Beta should expect to be asked to upgrade in the near future.
I thought I'd do a quick over view of my experience with the new Windows Live FolderShare website.
To login to the new Windows Live FolderShare site - I logged in with the same credentials I did with the previous Windows Live FolderShare site. You account remains exactly the same despite the awesome new site.
After logging in, I was able to view all my Libraries and PCs configured with the Windows Live FolderShare client. Here I can create and manage Libraries (both shared and private). I'll get to the remote access stuff here in a second but essentially this is where I can see which of my PCs (running the Windows Live FolderShare client) are online. I can also use remote access to access files on the PCs that are online.
I was able to click on one of my Libraries I have set up and see the sync status. You'll see here my "Microsoft_Work_Docs" Library. I have 37 of 37 files synced between two PCs with another PC offline (this is my laptop).This is a Library I have set up that syncs up all my blog posts I write. I write my posts in Word or Windows Live Writer and save them to a specific folder on my PC which is then synced with Windows Live FolderShare and my other PCs. I sometimes write posts on my laptop when I'm out traveling but want to come back to them later on one of my desktop PCs at home. The Library makes sure all my drafts for blog posts are all synced on all my PCs.
As mentioned above, PCs that are shown as online under "Remote access" allow me (via the Windows Live FolderShare website) to access files and folders remotely. This is an absolutely wonderful feature. Here I am accessing my Dell XPS 420 desktop PC.
I can access the specific storage devices I have on my XPS 420 (darddrives and removable media like external harddrives and USB sticks) or pre-determined folders.
NOTE: The pre-determined folders are folders under which ever user account Windows Live FolderShare is running under.
If I click on the "Photos" folder, I can view all my photos.
I can pick and choose any file - in this case any photo - and download them to the PC I am using to access the Windows Live FolderShare site at that time. This works for music, videos, or any other files stored in specific folders.
Beyond the Windows Live FolderShare website - we have the updated beta client. The Windows Live FolderShare client sits on the taskbar in Windows Vista and runs in the background. By clicking on the Windows Live FolderShare client icon on the taskbar, I can view all the Libraries I am syncing on my PC.
I can also use the client to quick go to the Windows Live FolderShare website to set up new Libraries. It's very easy to set up new Libraries and they show up almost immediately. You can also view the Activity of the files being synced to your PC as well through the Windows Live FolderShare client.
Windows Live FolderShare is an amazing way to sync your files with multiple PCs and access your files remotely. It really saves a lot of time from bouncing between multiple PCs. Thanks to Windows Live FolderShare, all I have to do is sit at any of my PCs and I have all my important files I need.
To get started with today's Windows Live FolderShare Beta refresh - just head on over to http://www.foldershare.com/!
UPDATE: The kinks are still being worked out after migrating to the new Windows Live FolderShare. If you are having a problem downloading the client installer - you can download it directly here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=111309
Written by Brandon LeBlanc on March 10th, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Announcement and Featured News and PC-to-PC Sync and Windows Live and Windows Live FolderShare and Windows Vista.
« Older articles
No newer articles