Office 2003 SP3 has been available interactively on MU for many months now, but, as you may remember from our post last month, today marks the beginning of automatic distribution to MU users.

We’ve heard great feedback from customers who’ve already installed SP3, and feel confident in distributing it to the many users who rely on MU to keep their PCs secure, reliable, and up-to-date. Note: The automatic distribution process will be gradual, so some users may see it install today, and for others, it may take a little longer.

If you’d like more info on Office 2003 SP3, check out the Download Information and KB articles on Office 2003 SP3 or the Office 2003 SP3 Whitepaper.

Thanks!

The Office & MU Teams

Source: Microsoft Update Product Team Blog

LOS ANGELES — Feb. 27, 2008 — Kicking off more than 225 events around the world and joined by more than 4,000 customers and partners, Microsoft Corp.’s Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer today showcased the next generation of infrastructure and application platform products, including Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

The launch represents a major milestone to help customers on the road to Dynamic IT, Microsoft’s initiative to help customers optimize their people, processes and technology, and in turn position IT as a strategic asset for their business. These new enterprise products help customers more efficiently and securely manage their entire infrastructure and move to a virtualized environment while also delivering business intelligence and next-generation Web experiences to boost business results. The theme of the events, “Heroes Happen Here,” highlights the outstanding work that IT professionals, developers and partners do every day to create solutions and cutting-edge applications that keep global commerce and industry running.

“IT professionals and developers tell us they spend too much time and money managing existing systems and not enough investing in new capabilities that create strategic advantage,” Ballmer said. “That feedback is at the core of the innovations in this new wave of products. Already, the overwhelming response from thousands of IT professionals and developers around the world is that this is the most secure enterprise platform we have ever delivered, and that it will simplify management and enable them to focus more on driving their businesses forward.”

Big Benefits for Early Adopters

Researchers at consulting agency Capgemini looked at companies and institutions in the financial services, education, retail and high-technology industries using Windows Server 2008 in a mix of geographic regions. They found that the new operating system quickly adds value to IT operations through enhancements to management, security and reliability. On average, deployment duration was reduced by up to 60 percent and IT reduced costs by up to $124,000 per year. Cost reductions resulted from a wide range of areas, including the recovery of five IT staff hours per server and 91 percent less downtime. A white paper detailing usage scenarios and providing more data on the impact of deploying Windows Server 2008 is available at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/p...n.aspx.

Already IT professionals and developers around the world are using Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and test versions of SQL Server 2008 to implement more secure platforms and Web applications while reducing costs and speeding development.

With the introduction of Windows Server 2008, leading global communications provider Verizon Business will deliver this next-generation platform to its managed hosting customers worldwide, enabling them to achieve greater reliability, performance and control over their IT infrastructure. In addition, Microsoft’s advanced Windows Deployment Services suite will allow Verizon Business to increase the speed of deployments and simplify management.

“This next-generation technology means a great deal to our enterprise customers,” said Michael Marcellin, vice president of product marketing at Verizon Business. “Through our long-standing relationship with Microsoft and as an early adopter of this technology, we are poised to continue to deliver innovative solutions to customers around the globe that will help them harness the power of the Internet.”

Go Daddy, the largest paid, shared Web hosting provider in North America, with 27 million domain names under management, is incorporating the new Windows Server 2008 with Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS7) software into its Windows hosting product line. In its testing, Go Daddy has seen a 300 percent to 400 percent increase in server performance using the new technology. The performance gains will allow Go Daddy to run a more efficient and effective service for its shared hosting customers.

“We are excited to offer this technology to our customers,” said Bob Parsons, CEO and founder of Go Daddy. “With more than 5 million customers around the globe, Go Daddy prides itself on using cutting-edge technology that will help enhance Web site performance and provide our customers with a solid foundation for their IT needs.”

At Fidelity National Real Estate Solutions, the combination of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 enabled the creation of a cutting-edge Web site that provides near-instant access to real estate and neighborhood information about listings for sale, home values, schools and much more. The site operates significantly faster than was previously possible and was developed at a much lower cost.

“Not only is the new Web site visually cool — serving up customized content, 3-D aerial views and animations 10 times faster than was possible with older technologies — but it also was created for approximately $1.4 million less than it would have cost using other development tools,” said Marty Frame, senior vice president and general manager, Cyberhomes, Fidelity National Real Estate Solutions. “And, most important, visitors spend an average of 30 minutes on the site per visit, four times the typical average for competitors’ sites.”

These companies are just a sampling of the more than 3 million customers that participated in early feedback programs or as beta testers during product development.

The performance improvements and enterprise-class features of SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 have resulted in record-breaking results. Today Microsoft disclosed new world-record performance results on TPC-E and SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application 3-tier benchmarks running on four-socket industry-standard blade servers.** Microsoft also published breakthrough performance benchmarks for several customer scenarios, including leading results on Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Dynamics AX, Siemens Teamcenter and Camstar Manufacturing Execution Systems.

Microsoft also announced that Microsoft Windows Server 2008 with .NET Framework 3.5 delivers faster throughput than IBM WebSphere 6.1 on Red Hat Linux as shown through two new benchmark tests measuring scalability and performance in mission-critical enterprise scenarios. The sample application shows 117 percent better throughput of Windows Server using the IBM-designed Trade 6.1 benchmark; and Sun Microsystems’ WSTest Web services benchmark demonstrates 94 percent better throughput on Windows Server when processing Web Service requests. More information on the results is available at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/HHHlaunc...FS.doc.

Partners See Opportunity

Microsoft has worked with more than 1,000 industry partners to help plan, build, test and deploy leading-edge solutions by providing early access to code, training and testing, and certification support. Hundreds of independent software vendors have demonstrated their support with the development of a wide variety of business applications for industries that include retail, accounting, commerce, engineering, financial services, healthcare, supply chain and more. In a related announcement, Microsoft detailed extensive investments in programs and tools for software and hardware partners. More information on the announcement is available at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/feb0...R.mspx. A full list of vendors offering applications certified for Windows Server 2008 or pledging to provide support for their applications on Windows Server 2008 can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/hhhlaunc...FS.doc.

Further demonstrating support for the new products, more than 40 companies are making announcements today and more than 80 partners are participating in launch events around the world, including platinum sponsors Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), CA, Cisco Systems Inc., Citrix Systems Inc., Dell Inc., Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, Intel Corporation, Quest Software Inc., SAP AG and Unisys Corp. Highlighting the opportunity for industry partners, a 2007 IDC study* predicts that for every $1 Microsoft earns from Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 this year in the U.S., the ecosystem beyond Microsoft — software and hardware vendors that support or incorporate the products — will reap about $18 in revenue. In 2008, this ecosystem is predicted to sell more than $120 billion in products and services revolving around Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

Product Availability and Information

Windows Server 2008, including a beta version of the Hyper-V virtualization technology, and Visual Studio 2008 are available today. The feature-complete, February community technology preview of SQL Server 2008 is also available, with general availability expected in the third quarter of 2008.

Later this year Microsoft will release the Windows Essential Server Solutions family of products for small and midsize companies built on Windows Server 2008 and the newest Microsoft server technologies and services: Windows Small Business Server 2008 and Windows Essential Business Server 2008. Windows HPC Server 2008, the successor to Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, is on track for availability in the second half of 2008 and is designed to increase productivity, scalability and manageability for high-performance computing scenarios. In addition, Windows Storage Server 2008, the next-generation storage solution based on Windows Server 2008, will be available by the end of the year.

Additional information on the launch of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 is available in the virtual pressroom at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/HHHlaunc...t.mspx.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

* IDC white paper sponsored by Microsoft, “The Economic Impact of Microsoft’s Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 in the U.S.,” Doc. 5052007, May 2007.

** Certification Number 2008003: SAP SD standard SAP ERP 6.0 (2005) application benchmark in 3-Tier configuration certified on 02/26/08 with Number of benchmark users & comp.: 34,000 SD (Sales & Distribution) with an average dialog response time: 1.99 seconds running Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition (64-Bit) and SQL Server 2008 (64-bit) on RDBMS database server. Hardware configuration of RDBMS server: HP ProLiant BL680c G5, 4 socket/16 core/16 thread Quad-Core Intel Xeon E7340 / 2.40GHz, 64GB RAM. For more details, see http://www.sap.com/benchmark.

Join Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer as he kicks of a series of global events to launch Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008. Ballmer will introduce new software and tools designed to help IT professionals and developers make a difference at work and in their communities.

February 27, 2008, 9am-10:30am (Pacific Standard Time)

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Source: www.bink.nu

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Feb. 25, 2008
— Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the availability of Adobe® AIR™ and Adobe® Flex® 3 software, furthering the Adobe technology platform for rich Internet applications (RIAs). Developers and designers use Adobe RIA technologies to rapidly create and deploy rich, branded content and applications. The release of Adobe AIR signals the next wave of Adobe RIA innovation by bridging the real-time, dynamic capabilities of the Web with the computing power and data capabilities of the desktop. Businesses that leverage the Web as a platform are now using the latest Adobe RIA technologies to build and deploy more engaging applications with the widest reach across browsers, desktops and operating systems.

“For 25 years, Adobe has delivered technology innovation for our customers, beginning with desktop publishing and extending to multimedia and the Web,” said Kevin Lynch, chief technology officer at Adobe. “Now, we continue to advance the future of digital experiences by enabling our customers to create highly interactive, expressive applications. This is an exciting time for Adobe, for innovation in software, and for designers and developers who are driving the Web forward.”

Industry Leaders Embrace Adobe RIA Technologies

Leading companies across industries such as entertainment, finance, media, retail and social networking are embracing Adobe RIA technologies. Deutsche Bank, The Nasdaq Stock Market, Inc., and The New York Times Company, among others, use the Adobe technology platform for RIAs to help ensure customer interactions are engaging and effective. (See separate press release issued today.)

“Adobe has been focused on improving the Web experience and delivering the underlying technologies to produce more interactive and expressive Web sites and applications, and the Adobe technology platform for RIAs hits right at a key need companies have today,” said Al Hilwa, Program Director at IDC. “The ROI of RIAs is real. A more engaging product visualization experience in eCommerce applications for example, helps customers understand what they are buying, which leads to less online abandonment and increased average order size through cross-sell and up-sell visualization.”

Adobe is also delivering new applications built with Adobe Flex and deployed on Adobe AIR, such as Adobe Media Player, now in beta release, which is a fusion of TV and the Internet that allows users to watch their favorite shows anytime and anywhere, as well as Buzzword, an elegant online word processor that has built-in collaboration capabilities.

Adobe Technology Platform for RIAs

Adobe AIR, Adobe Flex and Adobe Flash® Player software are the foundation of the Adobe technology platform for RIAs. Adobe RIA technologies include tools, frameworks, servers, services, and runtimes that work together seamlessly, enabling the creation of engaging experiences with the greatest reach. There are a variety of learning resources at the Adobe Developer Connection (developer.adobe.com ) to help developers immediately start building RIAs for the browser and the desktop.

Adobe AIR enables developers to create RIAs on the desktop using the skills and Web technologies — such as HTML, Ajax, PDF, Adobe Flash and Adobe Flex — they already employ. Applications deployed on Adobe AIR have the advantages of browser-based RIAs, such as speed of development, ease of use, and access from virtually anywhere. Yet they also have the benefits of desktop applications, such as the ability to read/write local files, work with other applications on a user’s computer and maintain local data storage on the desktop.

Flex is a free, open source framework for building highly interactive, expressive RIAs. Adobe Flex Builder™ 3, an Eclipse™ based development tool, accelerates Flex application development and includes new capabilities for deploying RIAs on Adobe AIR. Adobe Flex Builder 3 integrates with Adobe Creative Suite® 3 software making it easy for designers and developers to work together more efficiently. Powerful new testing tools, including memory and performance profilers and integrated support for automated functional testing, speed up development and lead to higher performing RIAs.

Adobe Flash Player, which reaches over 98 percent of Internet-enabled PCs and hundreds of millions of mobile and set-top devices, delivers unparalleled creative options, highly engaging user experiences, stunning audio/video playback, and virtually universal reach.

Major portions of Adobe AIR, such as the WebKit HTML engine, Tamarin ActionScript™ Virtual Machine, and SQLite local database functionality, are open source. Adobe is committed to contributing to the open source community on multiple fronts, including the release of the free open source Flex framework and open source BlazeDS for high-speed data connectivity, as well as active membership in the SQLite Consortium. Visit opensource.adobe.com for more information.

Pricing and Availability

Adobe AIR and the Adobe AIR SDK are available immediately as free downloads in English and offered for both Windows® and Macintosh operating systems. Upcoming versions are expected to be available for Linux and other languages. For more information, please visit www.adobe.com/go/air .

The Adobe Flex 3 product line is available now in English and Japanese, and offered for both Windows and Macintosh operating systems. The open source Flex 3 SDK is available free of charge and a beta version of Adobe Flex Builder 3 for Linux is freely available on Adobe Labs (labs.adobe.com). Adobe Flex Builder 3 is available as a standalone product or Eclipse plug-in, with the Standard edition priced at US$249 and the Professional edition at US$699. For more information about system requirements and supported platforms, please visit www.adobe.com/go/flex .*

CANNES, France, Feb. 26, 2008 VMware (NYSE: VMW) and HP (NYSE: HPQ) today announced VMware’s ultra-thin hypervisor software, VMware ESX 3i, is expected to be broadly integrated and available beginning March 31, 2008, on 10 models of HP ProLiant servers. The joint offering helps customers adopt virtualization with greater speed and simplicity. Virtualization helps companies share and pool technology resources to better optimize their datacenters, resulting in greater flexibility to meet business demands and business pressures to reduced costs.

VMware ESX 3i for HP ProLiant features VMware virtualization capabilities with full support for HP System Insight Manager (SIM), the rich set of server management tools that come standard with HP ProLiant servers. This integrated offering enables customers to deploy VMware’s base hypervisor within minutes of booting up a ProLiant server, providing greater speed and simplicity for customers new to virtualization, as well as increased capacity expansion for customers who are already use VMware’s datacenter virtualization and management suite, VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3).

In addition, HP and VMware have worked together to make available software bundles that combine the VMware Infrastructure 3 software suite and additional automation products, with HP Insight Control Environment. These bundles offer customers a complete solution for seamless physical and virtual platform management.

“We are excited to work with HP to simplify datacenter management by pre-installing and pre-configuring VMware ESX 3i on HP ProLiant systems,” said Diane Greene, president and chief executive officer, VMware. “Today’s announcement is a major step forward in accelerating the adoption of virtualization by combining our respective strengths: HP’s global footprint with the ProLiant platform and rich heritage in platform manageability, and VMware’s portfolio of products for datacenter virtualization, desktop virtualization, and management and automation solutions for both the datacenter and desktop.”

“These unified offerings from HP and VMware help customers reduce costs and simplify the management and automation of virtual environments, leading to improved quality of the services that customers deploy,” said James Mouton, general manager and senior vice president, Industry Standard Servers, HP. “The combination of HP’s hardware and management tools with VMware’s industry-leading virtualization solutions delivers a truly differentiated experience. We are committed to supporting our customers’ needs for virtualized environments.”

VMware ESX 3i, HP ProLiant and System Insight Manager: Rock-solid Foundation for Industry-standard Virtualization

The combination of the market-leading HP ProLiant server lines with VMware’s rock-solid virtualization solutions fast-tracks customers onto the path to running a virtual datacenter.

The VMware ESX 3i hypervisor is based on core VMware virtualization technology in use by more than 100,000 customers. It is the industry’s smallest hypervisor (32MB), enabling high levels of security and reliability, and it is the only OS-independent virtualization platform. VMware ESX 3i delivers single-server consolidation with fast and easy deployment—the first virtual machine can operate within minutes of booting a server with pre-configured and optimized hardware configurations. Customers can upgrade from VMware ESX 3i hypervisor to VMware’s datacenter virtualization and management suite, VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3). VI3 provides the capability for automatic load balancing, business continuity and power management and the ability to move a virtual machine across physical machines to minimize service interruption. VI3 is also compatible with VMware’s desktop virtualization and management solutions.

HP ProLiant is HP’s family of industry-standard server, storage, blade and facility solutions, providing the innovation, total cost discipline and trusted experience that are the cornerstones of an adaptive infrastructure.

VMware ESX 3i for HP ProLiant provides seamless, out-of-the box integration with HP Systems Insight Manager (SIM), the industry’s only unified storage and server management platform. HP Systems Insight Manager 5.2 software incorporates user-friendly features and an improved installation process, and it supports association and discovery for VMware ESX 3i. Enhanced hardware alerting and inventory management allows customers to actively receive information about the health of their ProLiant servers. This enables companies to resolve server problems before they result in actual downtime, eliminate risk and lower potential costs. Future revisions to VMware ESX 3i for HP ProLiant can be made using the same tool used to update ProLiant system firmware. This feature helps simplify time-consuming lifecycle management—an example of the process efficiencies that can be achieved with close integration of VMware virtualization with ProLiant tools and platforms.

VMware Infrastructure and HP Insight Control: New Options for Integrated and Automated Physical and Virtual Datacenter Management

Customers who deploy VMware ESX 3i for HP ProLiant will be able to easily integrate their systems into their VMware Infrastructure environments, delivering the highest level of performance, availability and manageability for their datacenters. VMware Infrastructure virtualizes servers, storage and networks to transform manually-intensive datacenters into automated, self-managing virtual datacenters. For such datacenters, the unique OS-independent architecture of VMware virtualization delivers maximum reliability, uptime and security through reduced, firmware-like patching and a minimal security attack “surface area.” The pre-integration of VMware ESX 3i with ProLiant platforms also allows existing VI3 customers to expand their resource capacity with plug-and-play simplicity and also reduce in-house testing and certification.

In addition to SIM 5.2, VMware ESX 3i for HP ProLiant supports management tools from the HP Insight Control portfolio to unify the management of virtual and non-virtual machines. To extend management across storage, customers can also use HP StorageWorks storage area network and network attached storage solutions. HP’s unified management approach enables better control of assets through a common set of tools.

Also, HP Software’s Business Technology Optimization portfolio and the HP Data Center Automation Center automate the complete lifecycle of operations for heterogeneous datacenter environments that include virtual and non-virtual systems. The HP Data Center Automation solution works with HP Systems Insight Manager, providing a comprehensive solution for management of virtualized systems. HP’s unified management approach enables better insight and control of assets and automates their management through a common set of tools.

Availability

HP and VMware plan to make VMware ESX 3i for HP ProLiant available worldwide March 31, 2008, directly to customers and for channel partners to pre-integrate single server virtualization onto 10 high-volume ProLiant server models.

Customers can also get CarePack support services, sold as options with the base-level offering, and as a standard component of VMware Infrastructure 3 Enterprise Edition. HP offers integrated support of both ProLiant servers and VMware products.

More information is available at www.hp.com/go/vmware.

REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 21, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. today announced a set of broad-reaching changes to its technology and business practices to increase the openness of its products and drive greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for developers, partners, customers and competitors.

Specifically, Microsoft is implementing four new interoperability principles and corresponding actions across its high-volume business products: (1) ensuring open connections; (2) promoting data portability; (3) enhancing support for industry standards; and (4) fostering more open engagement with customers and the industry, including open source communities.

“These steps represent an important step and significant change in how we share information about our products and technologies,” said Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer. “For the past 33 years, we have shared a lot of information with hundreds of thousands of partners around the world and helped build the industry, but today’s announcement represents a significant expansion toward even greater transparency. Our goal is to promote greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for customers and developers throughout the industry by making our products more open and by sharing even more information about our technologies.”

According to Ray Ozzie, Microsoft chief software architect, the company’s announcement reflects the significance that individuals and businesses place upon the ease of information-sharing. As heterogeneity is the norm within enterprise architectures, interoperability across applications and services has become a key requirement.

“Customers need all their vendors, including and especially Microsoft, to deliver software and services that are flexible enough such that any developer can use their open interfaces and data to effectively integrate applications or to compose entirely new solutions,” said Ozzie. “By increasing the openness of our products, we will provide developers additional opportunity to innovate and deliver value for customers.”

“The principles and actions announced today by Microsoft are a very significant expansion of its efforts to promote interoperability,” said Manfred Wangler, vice president, Corporate Research and Technology, Software and Engineering, Siemens. “While Microsoft has made considerable progress on interoperability over the past several years, including working with us on the Interoperability Executive Customer Council, today’s news take Microsoft’s interoperability commitment to a whole new level.”

“The interoperability principles and actions announced today by Microsoft will benefit the broader IT community,” said Thomas Vogel, head, Information Management, Novartis Pharma. “Ensuring open connections to Microsoft’s high-volume products presents significant opportunities for the vast majority of software developers, which will help foster greater interoperability, opportunity and choice in the marketplace. We look forward to a constructive, structured, and multilateral dialogue to ensure stakeholder-driven evolution of these principles and actions.”

The interoperability principles and actions announced today apply to the following high-volume Microsoft products: Windows Vista (including the .NET Framework), Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007, and future versions of all these products. Highlights of the specific actions Microsoft is taking to implement its new interoperability principles are described below.

•    Ensuring open connections to Microsoft’s high-volume products. To enhance connections with third-party products, Microsoft will publish on its Web site documentation for all application programming interfaces (APIs) and communications protocols in its high-volume products that are used by other Microsoft products. Developers do not need to take a license or pay a royalty or other fee to access this information. Open access to this documentation will ensure that third-party developers can connect to Microsoft’s high-volume products just as Microsoft’s other products do.

•    As an immediate next step, starting today Microsoft will openly publish on MSDN over 30,000 pages of documentation for Windows client and server protocols that were previously available only under a trade secret license through the Microsoft Work Group Server Protocol Program (WSPP) and the Microsoft Communication Protocol Program (MCPP). Protocol documentation for additional products, such as Office 2007 and all of the other high-volume products covered by these principles, will be published in the upcoming months.

•    Microsoft will indicate on its Web site which protocols are covered by Microsoft patents and will license all of these patents on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, at low royalty rates. To assist those interested in considering a patent license, Microsoft will make available a list of specific Microsoft patents and patent applications that cover each protocol.

•    Microsoft is providing a covenant not to sue open source developers for development or non-commercial distribution of implementations of these protocols. These developers will be able to use the documentation for free to develop products. Companies that engage in commercial distribution of these protocol implementations will be able to obtain a patent license from Microsoft, as will enterprises that obtain these implementations from a distributor that does not have such a patent license.

•    Documenting how Microsoft supports industry standards and extensions. To increase transparency and promote interoperability, when Microsoft supports a standard in a high-volume product, it will work with other major implementers of the standard toward achieving robust, consistent and interoperable implementations across a broad range of widely deployed products.

•    Microsoft will document for the development community how it supports such standards, including those Microsoft extensions that affect interoperability with other implementations of these standards. This documentation will be published on Microsoft’s Web site and it will be accessible without a license, royalty or other fee. These actions will allow third-party developers implementing standards to understand how a standard is used in a Microsoft product and foster improved interoperability for customers. Microsoft will make available a list of any of its patents that cover any of these extensions, and will make available patent licenses on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.

•    Enhancing Office 2007 to provide greater flexibility of document formats. To promote user choice among document formats, Microsoft will design new APIs for the Word, Excel and PowerPoint applications in Office 2007 to enable developers to plug in additional document formats and to enable users to set these formats as their default for saving documents.

•    Launching the Open Source Interoperability Initiative. To promote and enable more interoperability between commercial and community-based open source technologies and Microsoft products, this initiative will provide resources, facilities and events, including labs, plug fests, technical content and opportunities for ongoing cooperative development.

•    Expanding industry outreach and dialogue. An ongoing dialogue with customers, developers and open source communities will be created through an online Interoperability Forum. In addition, a Document Interoperability Initiative will be launched to address data exchange between widely deployed formats.

The Interoperability Executive Customer (IEC) Council, an advisory organization established in 2006 and consisting mainly of chief information and technology officers from more than 40 companies and government bodies around the world, will help guide Microsoft in its work under these principles and actions. The full text of Microsoft’s new Interoperability Principles, and a full list of the actions Microsoft is taking, can be found on Microsoft’s Interoperability site.

The interoperability principles and actions announced today reflect the changed legal landscape for Microsoft and the IT industry. They are an important step forward for the company in its ongoing efforts to fulfill the responsibilities and obligations outlined in the September 2007 judgment of the European Court of First Instance (CFI).

“As we said immediately after the CFI decision last September, Microsoft is committed to taking all necessary steps to ensure we are in full compliance with European law,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft general counsel. “Through the initiatives we are announcing, we are taking responsibility for implementing the principles in the interoperability portion of the CFI decision across all of Microsoft’s high-volume products. We will take additional steps in the coming weeks to address the remaining portion of the CFI decision, and we are committed to providing full information to the European Commission so it can evaluate all of these steps.”

Date and Time: February 28, 2008 @ 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM PST (5:00 PM - 6:00 PM CET)

During this live online 60 minute presentation, you will learn about the latest Windows Server operating system and how it can be used to build dedicated servers and appliances. You will also learn about key differentiators from earlier Windows Server operating systems and the resultant benefits to the embedded space.

Who Should Attend: Anyone who is interested in building dedicated servers and appliances using Windows Server 2008 for Embedded Systems.

Discover Windows Server 2008 for Embedded Systems
Windows Server 2008 for Embedded Systems provides new functionality that will be of value to Appliance OEMs including a smaller footprint, virtualization and new management and security functionality. Learn about the new features, SKUs and pricing for Windows Server 2008 for Embedded System in this presentation.

Demonstration
We will walk through a demonstration of Server Core which is one of the new features in Windows Server 2008 that reduces the footprint of operating system.

Registration link:

https://secure25.activehost.com/microsoftembeddeds...id=129

Microsoft published a nice guide on how to reset Windows Server 2008 evaluation period and keep it active for 240 days.

Here is the summary:

This article describes how to extend, or re-arm, the Windows Server 2008 evaluation period. The evaluation period is also known as the “activation grace” period. These instructions apply to any edition of Windows Server 2008. This includes evaluation copies.

Full KB article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948472

From Windows SDK blog :

The Windows SDK team is proud to announce that the RTM release of the Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 is now live for customers to install!  

 Availability:

The Windows SDK is available to install as either an

1. ISO, or
2. Web Setup

Platforms:

This SDK release supports Windows Server 2008, .NET Framework 3.5, and Windows Vista SP1 and is compatible with Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2005 SP1; including Visual Studio Express Editions.

What’s New:

The following is a small sampling of what’s in this SDK, with a more complete list available in the Getting Started section in the Windows SDK documentation.

• Support for Windows Server 2008 (x86, x64, and Itanium), .NET Framework 3.5, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista (including SP1), and Windows XP
• Visual Studio 2008 C++ command line compiler toolset (with /analyze support) and matching CRT
• The SDK headers, libs, and tools integrate with VS2008 when both the SDK and VS2008 are installed
• New tools such as XPerf, SqlMetal, xsltc, gc, topoedit, aspnet_merge, and wsdcodegen.
• Documentation and samples (2200+ sample projects) to explain usage of new Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 features as well as previous platform features.

Learn More:

Stayed tuned to the Windows SDK blog as well as the Windows SDK MSDN Developer Center over the coming days and weeks for more information about the Windows SDK. As always, please look over the Release Notes for a description of known issues before you install the SDK.

Thank you

Barry R. Butterklee

Windows SDK Release PM

barrybu@microsoft.com

The Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK) is designed to help corporate IT professionals customize and deploy the Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 family of operation systems. By using Windows AIK, you can perform unattended Windows installations, capture Windows images with ImageX, and create Windows PE images.

This update is provided to you and licensed under the Windows Vista License Terms.

Direct download URL:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info.aspx?na=90...en.iso