I thought it would be interesting to see where things stand with Operating System usage in the Active Directory. These figures are based on 10984 active computer objects.
Windows Clients: 10398
Windows Vista: 472
Windows XP: 9894
Windows 2000: 32
Windows Server: 392
Windows Server 2008: 65
Windows Server 2003: 323
Windows Server 2000: 4
Other: 192
Windows 7 Ultimate: 9
No Operating System: 125
Mac OS X: 43
Samba: 17
One of the first ports of call (at least for me) when troubleshooting performance issues on standalone PC’s is to have a look at the start-up programs using ‘msconfig.exe.’ While msconfig.exe is fine for IT Pros it’s not the most friendly of things for the average end user.
I was recently helping out a friend over IM and explaining the concepts and working out which entries to remove was taking a long time. I did some research and found this handy command.
wmic startup get caption,command,description > outputfile
Simply get the person at the other end to run this command and then they can send you the full list for you to inspect.
As well as the Beta of Windows 7 (and it’s companion, Windows Server 2008 R2), Microsoft has also used the CES to announce the final availability of its Windows Live Essentials suite.
These are products that have been around in Beta and Release Candidate forms for a while. The announcement that they’re now final, should actually read that they were ready a little while ago – the final version is the same as the recent release candidate!
The suite includes the latest version of Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Photo Gallery (which is a great improvement over the Photo Gallery built in to Vista, includes Flickr support and works on XP), Windows Live Mail (also better than the version that ships in Vista) and the fantastic Windows Live Writer, which is the best blogging software available (sadly this blog’s host doesn’t support it, which is partly why I don’t post as much as I might!).
You can get the suite from download.live.com.
This morning saw the release of the Windows 7 Beta to MSDN and TechNet subscribers. It will be available for limited (2.5 million) download to the public on the Windows 7 web site on the 9th.
So is there no point in installing Windows Vista?
I don’t agree with this point of view and putting aside the fact that Windows XP will be over 10 years old by the time Windows 7 is released here are my main reasons.
Windows 7 features updates to the UI for example the Office ‘ribbon’ will now be on Paint and other built in applications. The taskbar and other menus will be reorganised and I expect that there will be other features added but at the core.
In short, Windows 7 is be the same as Windows Vista in every way which matters.
Those choosing to wait (perhaps 18 months or more) for Windows 7 to become available on CAMPUS will only find themselves in exactly the same position but without having taken of the massive benefits that Vista as to offer and facing an even bigger jump in terms of functionality.
I’ll be posting some of these benefits later today.
Finally I’ll leave you with a screenshot of the new Windows 7 Start menu. Look familiar?
This morning I attended a session on Windows Client Deployment. There was some mixed news.
The good
A tool called Deployment Imaging Servicing and Management (DISM) is due for release next year as will an updated version of ImageX. This will form part of WAIK 2.0
The Bad and the Ugly
Last week at PDC Microsoft announced that Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 will be the server variant of Windows 7.
Here at TechEd we are seeing demonstrations of some of W7/R2’s features. Here is a quick run through. More detail to follow.
I’ve just attended a Windows 7 Roadmap session and some of the enhanced security features of Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 were demonstrated.
Bitlocker to go
Bitlocker will be available for USB keys and other removable devices. The demonstration showed a once click encryption of a USB stick which is secured against a passphrase or smart card. Group policy preferences will be able to enforce the use of Bitlocker and Bitlocker to go in the domain. Bitlocker to go encypted devices will also be backwards compatible with Windows Vista and XP.
Applocker
A white list of applications can be created using digital signatures. They can be filtered by publisher, version number and other fields which are automatically extracted from an applications executable package.
The keynote was given by Brad Anderson the General Manager of Microsoft’s Management and Services division and focused on ‘Dynamic IT.’ One of the main elements was Virtualization and its management. The video of the Keynote will be available online soon if it is not already but here are some notes that I jotted down.
Some interesting figures were mentioned.
We saw a demo if System Center Virtual Machine manager including the live migration feature in Windows Server 2008 R2. Application virtualization was also mentioned and we were told that this will make application compatibility issues a thing of the past. Brad Anderson also said that Microsoft had observed a trend in enterprises towards only running server services on physical machines ‘by exception’.
A demo of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Beta then followed which supports cross platform extensions and will be able to monitor Solaris, Suze, Redhat, MySQL, Oracle on top of the services it can currently manage.
The keynote then went in to detail on Windows Server 2008 R2 (M3 available for download) but I will post separately on this.
The Keynote finished with an overview of Microsoft Online services focusing on a mixed local and hosted implementation of Microsoft Exchange. The service is due for release in EMEA during spring 2009.
There were also demonstrations of features of the next version of SQL server ‘Kilimanjaro’ and some other areas which Jonathan may like to discuss.
Next week Jonathan and I are off to Barcelona to join 5000 other IT Professionals at Microsoft Tech Ed EMEA 2008 for IT Professionals.
Tech Ed will give us the opportunity to learn about new the new products and features coming from Microsoft as well as drilling down into our own areas of interest. So far I have booked some sessions on Group Policy, Server Core, Security and Windows 7.
I will be trying to make at least a couple of blog posts each day and I am sure Jonathan will too.
Feel free to make comments, suggestions and ask questions. We will have the opportunity to put questions directly to Microsoft and we will be happy to do so on your behalf so please let us know.
You can also keep up with the action as it unfolds on Tech Ed TV.
Windows 7 will be imaginitively called Windows 7 unlike previous versions of ths OS, see here for details
Dave