A technology that’s been around for quite some time is IPSec, it helps to ensure security of communications between two network devices.  With IPSec in place two devices need to establish a peer-to-peer trust before communication can take place, it’s kind of like having a secret handshake.

If your enabling an environment where people will be able to bring their own device you probably have some requirement to prevent them accessing some services, such as the HR system, so that they don’t walk off with the CEOs pay slip.  IPSec is perfect in this situation to preform something called Server and Domain Isolation.  Essentially this means that only specific devices can access the super-secret servers but every device can have broad network access. 

Accesses to services and resources is somewhere that an 80/20 rule applies.  Most people need access to most of the network for most of their work, some people will need access to the other 20%.  Using SDI and IPSec you can require people to access secure information from devices you consider to be more trustworthy.  Perhaps they can’t access the HR System from their Windows Phone but they can from their Windows Laptop, that’s BitLocker encrypted etc.

IPSec is implemented in Server 2008R2 and Windows 7 using Group Policy controls for Windows Firewall with Advanced Security.  Essentially you place your super-secure resources into a group or OU that REQUIRES access and place clients that you are happy to have access to those resources into a group or OU that set things up so that clients will reply correctly if asked to do the secret handshake.  If the client doesn’t know the secret handshake that’s the end of the conversation.  Whilst you’re at it you can raise the general security level on your network by telling all clients to REQUEST access.  That way the first thing the client will say is “do you know the secret handshake” if the answer is no they can still talk to each other.

For Windows everything is controlled through Group Policy, so not only is it easy to administer it’s easy to get very granular, for example you could say that  only clients that match a specific WMI query get the IPSec policy’s applied.

If you’re wondering why you wouldn’t just do this with some app level access control or some file level access control then consider this: you don’t know what’s running in the background maliciously on any device that someone casually brings in.

RESOURCES for IPSec and SDI have been gathered together in one place already on this IPSec Page of TechNet but I thoroughly recommend the following:

• Build an IPSec test lab
• Build a CoIT test lab

There are plenty of people out there still using Windows XP, however many parts of the operating system have needed to be updated in order to keep things going. There have been three service packs released for Windows XP since it’s inception and…(read more)

Hopefully for lots of you reading this you’ll be looking for some resources off the back of the turn I’ve just done about DirectAccess and BranchCache.  Bellow are some places with some really useful information.

Here’s a video by Kevin Remde that shows setting up BranchCache in hosted cache mode…

…and here’s a second video by Kevin that shows BranchCache running in distributed mode.

And a few months ago I did another demo showing the effect of BranchCache which you’ll find if you view the recording here. In this demo I use performance counters to highlight what’s going on.  Here’s a video finally of the config of DirectAccess.

You might have just seen my UK TechDays 2011 presentation which will be available online after the show, however if you didn’t get time to make a note of the resources, here you go:

•Springboard: http://bit.ly/W7SB

•Download Windows 7 Eval: http://bit.ly/smw7trial

•Office 365: http://office365.com

•Windows Collection PCs: http://bit.ly/wincoll

Windows XP is cutting edge empowering a new wave of personal computing. The year is 2001 and Donnie Darko, The Fast and the Furious, A beautiful mind and Black hawk down are topping the movie charts…a short time later these will all be some of the first movies released on DVD. Since that medium wasn’t available to everyone we released the training materials for Windows XP on VHS cassette (this is of course 4 years before YouTube). It is time to move on because we all know this technology is no longer good enough for your business.

Why isn’t XP good enough? There are many reasons but we are going to concentrate on the ones that actually matter to you . No not your mum, dad, kids, pets and other animals but your users. In 2001 the term “Wi-Fi” did not exist as an accepted term, the Wi-Fi alliance hadn’t created the term and was still the WECA (Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance) so there were no real standard standards for wireless Ethernet and so support in XP is limited. Now you might be thinking that Windows XP got a couple of service packs, the last of which was SP3 released in 2008 and you might well be asking why that uplift doesn’t make Windows XP good enough for today’s world?

Without a doubt Windows XP requires Service Pack 3 to be considered anything like a modern OS but even then it’s a bit like a new coat of paint rather than a new roof or foundations. The big features of XPSP3? Network Access protection, Black hole router detection, CredSSP, additional descriptive text (it’s in the release notes), enhanced security protection, cryptography and activation changes. All essential, none of which matter to your mother, your CEO or Jane in marketing. What does matter to these folks?

Well being able to connect seamlessly from home makes Jane in marketing far happier, that’s where DirectAccess using Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008R2 comes in. She just connects to her home wireless (buy pressing a button on her router for one click WiFi Protected Setup) and DirectAccess connects her to her corporate resources. She didn’t need to mess around with complex WiFi passwords and encryption settings, no checking she has connectivity and initiating a VPN connection.

Dan in IT has life easy with this setup too. Jane’s PC gets anti-malware and patch updates whenever he releases them to the WSUS server because, although Jane’s rarely in the office DirectAccess keeps her connected to the office whenever her computer detects and Internet connection. Dan gets other fringe benefits from having Windows 7 deployed in his organization too, if a user gets stuck with something or encounters a problem all they have to do is type record steps into the Start menu search. Within a few minutes Dan has a recording of the steps required to reproduce the problem so he can trouble shoot it with the built in Problem Steps Recorder.

For me one the biggest additions that we did get with Windows XP SP3 was the addition of Network Access Protection (NAP). If you aren’t familiar with it NAP allows you to protect your network by isolating computers that aren’t up to an acceptable level of updates or malware protection until such time as they can be brought up to scratch automatically or remediated. It’s a technology that it’s easy to see can help reduce firefighting for malware outbreaks.

Obviously those are just a couple of the useful technologies built into Windows 7 but technology like BranchCache helps to streamline operations for branch networks by securely caching frequently accessed data in branches. Windows 7 is however far more about working in a much more modern way; the workflows that your users experience throughout are far easier and built for a modern world. Need to find a document: hit search; need to find a program: hit search; can’t remember the name of a setting you need to change: hit search. I normally explain this by encouraging people to work out how to change mouse buttons over (type mouse or button into search and you’ll have the job done in seconds).

From the point of view of the modern IT Professional it’s useful in two ways, firstly you don’t need to know the name of every setting and secondly your users won’t need to call you for every little thing, they just do what they expect to do today, search for it. With the emerging and accelerating trend of the consumerization of IT where people expect to be able to access everything they need and more on their own terms, including brining their own PCs in you start to see that you need a modern environment. In a consumerized environment you’ll want NAP protecting your network by the way, and you’ll want simple ways to recreate problems on nonstandard kit and you’ll want other things too.

However you might not be in a consumerised environment yet and you might be looking at other smart ways of doing things. So how about Application Virtualisation a feature available with MDOP that allows you to take an application and sequence it so that it can be delivered to any machine, without installation. Sounds good but pop central control onto the top and you’ve got a way of rapidly delivering applications to your computers – heck they don’t even have to have fully downloaded to the computer before the user can start using them. Say what? App-V sequences applications around the way that people use the application, so if it’s not needed immediately it becomes an on demand component that downloads only when needed.

MDOP’s a great addition to Windows 7 because it adds so much functionality for IT Professionals not only can you virtualize applications with App-V but Med-V allows you to virtualize applications that have compatibility issues with Windows 7 (IE6 is a prime example) so that you can provide support to help you over deployment hurdles. Your favorite feature though may well be the Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) which extends the troubleshooting functionality available natively in Windows 7 to enable even cooler stuff. Need to reset local machine passwords: DaRT is your friend! Need to pull a hotfix off the machine that’s made things go a bit hinky: DaRT it is. The raft of things it can help with is immense.

So we’ve discussed some new features, some awesome troubleshooting tools and things to make your life as an IT Pro easier how about we do the same with deployment. Microsoft Deployment Toolkit makes your life hear easy and I’m sure you all know how much Stephen loves MDT so I won’t go there but that functionality can be embedded into System Center for a big company.

Windows Intune, which is new to the party adds some excellent options (although not application and operating system deployment) for those running smaller enterprises. The remote assistance on Windows 7 is superlative as is the management of the Windows Firewall, Windows Update and the inclusion of brilliant anti-malware in the subscription price. The big ticket item for me though is that you get a Windows 7 Enterprise license included for each computer with an Intune subscription (and MDOP for pennies more).

I digress though; this is about why you should move away from XP and onto Windows 7. Let’s sum up and get back on track. Windows XP wasn’t built for today’s world, it was built when WiFi wasn’t around, before hardware was cheap and 64-bit wasn’t the norm, before people expected to be able to do at work what they can at home with their PC, before search engines were how you found something out.

No one wants to have to take a document home to make it look cool using spark lines; they want to make it look cool at work. They want to be able to use applications that don’t take hours to install, they want to be able to find things on their PC with search, they want to be able to work where and when they want.

For you though it means more. It means being able to add more value and enable business processes that enable cost saving or revenue generation, you can’t do that scrabbling to support things that are out dated. You don’t want the nasty surprise of someone brining their malware infected home PC in and it infecting the rest of the office, if they bring that machine in you wants it to be secure still. If they’re mobile you don’t want them on the road picking up a virus here, some spyware there and other stuff. Also you owe it to yourself and your career to stay up to date. The business benefits of Windows 7 are abound in countless case studies, but hopefully this made things more real for you of course you’ll find more on Springboard.

This article was originally written for Springboard.  Simon May is an IT Professional Evangelist in the UK for Microsoft; he writes, blogs, tweets and presents about Windows and Microsoft cloud technologies but most of all loves a good chat about tech especially if you can work in Windows Media Center. Follow him on Twitter or the UK TechNet blog.

Just a quick one to provide people access to the slides from todays OD unplugged session in London.  I can’t share my demo just now but I will record it…here are the slides for OD unplugged.  But also embedded in the post here courtesy of Windows Live and don’t forget to checkout Springboard and the Windows 7 Evaluation I mentioned.

And also here’s the productivity video from my session.

If you find Windows 7 deployment options to be confusing you might find this handy new – stick it to your wall and refer to it daily – tech sheet to be rather helpful.  The Windows 7 Deployment Options for Small and Midsized Businesses printable overview is one of those things you can print and stick to your desk to make your colleagues think you know what you’re doing…of course you could also try the deployment learning portal for a similar effect .

A few days ago as part of our Tech Days online series I did a webcast on how to deploy Windows 7 using free tools like WDS, MDT and WAIK and that practical deployment webcast has now been made available online.  We’re running these three weeks out of every four (we need a week to prep) and you can findout about the rest at the Tech Days site where you can also find out about the Tech Days event in May which is going to be pure brilliance itself!

Now that SP1 is pretty much out there for Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 it’s far off time to start thinking about upgrading things in your Hyper-V environment.  I’ve been running the RC version of SP1 on my Hyper-V laptop for a while to get the benefits of Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX, but what about when I need to move over to the final bits?  Well this is the process taken from KB2489240 :

1. Start all of the virtual machines and upgrade them from the Beta or RC build to the released build of SP1 using the following steps:
  a.  Uninstall the Beta or RC build of SP1 on the virtual machine
  b.  Reboot the virtual machine
  c.  Install the released build on the virtual machine
  d.  Reboot the virtual machine
  e.  Shutdown the virtual machine
2. Remove the RemoteFX video adapter from each virtual machine using Hyper-V Manager or System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1

3. Upgrade the Hyper-v host from the Beta or RC build to the released build using the following steps:
  a. Uninstall the Beta or RC build of SP1 on the Hyper-V host
  b. Install the released build of SP1 on the Hyper-V host
  c. Reboot the Hyper-V host
4. Re-install the RemoteFX role service on the host(it will be removed in Step 3-a above)
5. Add the RemoteFX video adapter back to each virtual machine using Hyper-V Manager or System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1
7.  At this point the virtual machines should be able to boot up and RemoteFX sessions can be established to them

So why all this complexity?  Well you need to update the Hyper-V integration services and the operating systems on each virtual machine to get everything working just so.

On January 1st 2011 Estonia joined the single EU currency and is now getting to grips with using the Euro on a daily basis.  Funny thing is with money that it affects all sorts of things, not least the layout of all those keyboards!  Imagine everyone in Estonia now needs a new keyboard with the correct symbol.  Also they need the correct mappings for the keyboards.  Luckily we’ve released updates to make that happen but it’s a good time to explain the manual way of changing currency.

1. Click Start, type Change the date, time, or number format in the Start Search box, and then click Change the date, time, or number format in the Programs list.
   Note If you are prompted for an administrator password or for confirmation, type the password, or click Continue.
2. In the Region and Language dialog box, click Additional settings under the Formats tab.
3. Click the Currency tab and then change Currency symbol from kr to €.
   Note If you have applied the update that is described in the "Resolution" section, and you want to change the currency symbol to the earlier version, click the Currency tab, click to select € in the Currency symbol list, and then type kr.
4. Click OK two times to apply the change.

After you make this change, the new currency symbol is displayed as your system currency in all Windows and Microsoft Office products.

Over the holidays I got into a sticky situation where I needed to use my Laptop as an access point to share a network connection. But it doesn’t give you much of a chance to change IP settings so if you have some other device that uses an overlapping IP range you might need to change some settings, thankfully there’s a KB on How to Change the IP Range for the Internet Connection Sharing DHCP. service.  It involves editing the registry so don’t forget to backup the registry first.

To change the IP address that is assigned to the host and the IP address range that is used by the DHCP service on the Connection Sharing host, use Registry Editor to change the following values. These values are located in the following folder:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\services\SharedAccess\Parameters

• (REG_SZ) ScopeAddress
• (REG_SZ) StandaloneDhcpAddress

The ScopeAddress value is set to the address range that you want to use with Connection Sharing. The StandaloneDhcpAddress value is the address range that is used when Virtual Wi-Fi/SoftAP is enabled. For both values, a network mask of 255.255.255.0 is used and is not configurable.

A very nice chap just wrote to Rachel asking for help with a problem* I think a few other people must have experienced so often so I thought I’d share how to fix it.  I just hope I’ve got it right from the problem description.  When clicking a link in an application, like your email program, you get an error that says “Application not found” and Internet Explorer doesn’t kick in to handle the link.  Basically Internet Explorer isn’t known to the PC as the default browser and nor is anything else so you get the error.  It’s simple to fix:

In Windows 7

Click Start and type default programs into the search, then select Set your default programs.

Then from the list select your broswer and click Set this program as default

Next select Set program access and computer defaults, select your browser under Choose a default web browser and click OK

That should sort things out.

If you’re on XP, it’s just a little different:

• Go to Start and select Set Program Access and Defaults
• Then select Custom and select the down arrows to the right, select the browser you would like to use (I recommend Internet Explorer and click OK

Then you should be fixed.

*people often writer to Rachel with problems, some of them are unprintable but she appreciated them all

The first step in any Windows 7 deployment is to start by understanding what your current environment looks like and what you’ll need to do to get your machines to meet the minimum system requirements or even better the recommended requirements.  The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP Toolkit) is a toolkit that lets you do that and the newly released MAP Toolkit 5.5 can be downloaded here along with full documentation.  In this post though I’m going to talk you through the steps you need to take and I’ve created a video that takes you through it too.

The MAP Toolkit is an agent less discovery tool which means that it’s easy to deploy and use since you only really need to install it onto one machine on your network and it can do the rest.  There are some pre-reqs for using the tool though.  You’ll need Microsoft Office 2007 or (obviously 2010 is best) and you’ll need SQL Server Express Edition installed on the PC on which you’ll run MAP.  You might be wondering what Office is used for:  The MAP toolkit creates pre-baked reports for you that you can use to help justify any required upgrades.

Once you have Office on the PC you need to install the MAP toolkit and as part of that installation SQL Server Express will be downloaded or you can provide a previously downloaded install.  You then setup a database to store the information that the tool collects.  That’s really all there is to setup, it’s quite simple and it’s covered from 00:00 to 2:56 in the video.

Next you’ll scan your network in order to gain an understanding of it.  To do this click Inventory and Assessment Wizard and then determine how you want to scan from various options including looking in AD and scanning using an SCCM database, a file containing a list of computer names or a range of IP addresses.  In the video I choose AD and an IP Address range as I know that I have some PCs that I’ll want to consider upgrading that aren’t members of my Active Directory Domain.  If you selected AD as a scanning option you’ll need to provide creds that give the tool access to AD DS to find computer accounts, for an IP range you’ll select the start point (for example 10.1.1.1) and end point (10.1.1.255).  IP Ranges don’t have to be contiguous or any such.  You then provide creds for the machines and an order in which to try multiple creds, so you can provide a Domain Admin account (eek) and a Local Administrator account.  Finally the scan runs and WMI is used to query each machine and populate your database. (2:56 to 6:28)

The next step is to dig through the data.  For the purposes of understanding Windows 7 compatibility use Windows 7 Readiness and for Office 2010 compatibility use Office 2010 Readiness, Internet Explorer also has a readiness check too.  These panels only provide you, the IT Pro doing the work, a view of what’s out there.  To produce something you can show the person with the purse you need to produce some reports by selecting Generate report from the task pane on the right. (6:28 to 9:21)

Once that’s done you’ll get reports that list more detail and tell you what you need to do to upgrade specific PCs.  In my video I have an XP PC with just 64mb of RAM so that will need an upgrade to the Windows 7 Professional minimum of 512MB. (9:21 to end)

The MAP Toolkit is a great tool to have in your box and as it’s free using it is a no-brainer really.  You can download MAP 5.5 here and for more info on Windows 7 deployment check out springboard.

I spent much of last week at the crazy busy BETT education fair at Olympia showing people Office 365 and meeting some very interesting techies working in schools, collages and universities all over the country.  I had a lot of misconceptions about the type of IT Professionals working in education before I got there, most were blown out of the water and my thoughts reset.  I’ll get a video of the Office 365 stuff out later this week…

Scale was the first thing I wrongly assumed.  I thought that schools would be small, but it’s the opposite.  Mail administrators in schools face a battle of provisioning hundreds of mailboxes each year, archiving old ones and constantly managing their users and storage requirements.  AD DS administrators face the same but with the added complication of load as every student logs on 4 , 5, 6 times a day as they move between classrooms.  Those AD DS servers are taking a battering folks and they need to be up to the job.

I was expecting lots of people to be stuck in the dark ages – and some are – but many are not.  Schools are readily adopting cloud technologies to cope with the scale and flexibility they need to provide.  Many have rolled out Windows 7 or are planning to do so in September.  Many are using Hyper-V to virtualise (the ones who aren’t are very actively looking to ditch Vmware because of cost), application virtualisation and VDI and RDS are hot technologies too as schools look to make it easier to rollout application updates.

Saving money is high on the agenda as you’d expect so using virtualisation, cloud and making their infrastructure easier to manage are top of the agenda.

Security is paramount.  Firstly they have lots of kids doing the Bring Your Own Computer thing and it’s causing infections and virus outbreaks a plenty – except those schools that have deployed NAP (Network Access Protection).  Secondly I was showing off a bunch of slate devices and the critical thing there is that they can be encrypted preventing anything that the kids do with them such as taking pictures with the web cams from falling into the wrong hands.

There are lots of people doing clever things with Windows 7 and much of what’s used in the class room, like digital white boards and interactive projectors are useful in the board room or the meeting room.

The best thing though was that there was a palpable enthusiasm for using technology to help reduce cost and more importantly help our kids to learn in better ways.  It seems education is a space full of early adopters and a good segment to watch for ideas.

Licensing is a complex subject and to be honest it’s not one that I talk about much because it’s a complex discipline in and of it’s own and there’s too much fun stuff to talk about in the client and cloud world.  This document, Licensing Windows 7 for Use with Virtual Machine Technologies tells you all you need to know about licensing with Software Assurance and Windows 7 on Virtual Machines.  Such nuggets as if you have Volume Licensing, an SA and the Windows 7 Professional Upgrade License (Volume Licensing Upgrade License) or Windows 7 Enterprise then you can run 4 virtual copies of Windows 7 on a server or desktop, just like this:

What’s more there’s a great FAQ in the document, some of which is worth calling out:

If I install and run four additional copies of the operating system, do I have to use Windows 7 Enterprise as the host operating system?

No. You may use prior versions of Windows, including Windows Vista Business and Windows XP Pro. In addition to third-party product to host the four virtual machine environments, Volume Licensing customers have some flexibility in how they can deploy Windows 7 in their organizations.  As a benefit of Software Assurance coverage for Windows desktops, customers may leverage virtualization use rights.  This use right allows running the software in up to four local virtual machines.  While a customer’s right to use Windows 7 Enterprise may survive the expiration of their Software Assurance coverage, the Virtualization Use Right does not.

Can I store my virtual machine in a .vhd file on removable storage media and open the .vhd file on another PC?

Yes, as long as both PCs are licensed for Windows VECD and are not already running more than three copies of the software.

Can other users remotely access virtual machines that I’m not using on my PC while I’m using my PC?

No. The use of the software is limited to one user at any given time.

How do I license my employee and contractor owned PCs so that they have access to my centralized desktop PC environment?

Employee- and contractor-owned devices can be licensed with Windows VECD, which enables them to remotely access your centralized desktop PC environment. Additionally, for devices with a pre-assigned Windows 7 Professional license, they may run the permitted instances locally in a virtual machine on the Windows VECD licensed device.

Go grab the document here (email it to your Licensing dude if you aren’t a licensing dude) and learn about Desktop Virtualisation

Being a bit of a fan of exams (!) on Friday went to a lovely little training centre in Wokingham and sat a couple of hours worth of exams, 070-680 and 070-685.  Thankfully I passed both and I can now report back on them, just like I did with the MTA exams.  The first thing to say is that these were, just as you’d expect, much harder than the MTA exams requiring both depth and breadth of knowledge of Windows 7 and how to deploy, manage and troubleshoot it.  Why are they worth it?  How did I study?  What’s next?

When I started my IT career just over 10 years ago I met a bunch of guys who had their NT4 MCSE and I also had a boss who knew his onions, the guys he hired with MCSEs knew their onions too, they didn’t just have the bit of paper.  They formed my view of why it’s important to be well trained and why it’s worth getting the cert.  What I learnt was that studying Microsoft’s products according to the official curriculum helps you flesh out all the facets and features of a product that you might not necessarily see in your day to day life.  Overall the biggest thing that certifications do is make sure you cover all the bases and widen your knowledge.

Some people expect that when they get a certification they should suddenly earn more money.  Wrong.  Some people expect that when you get a certification you should suddenly get a promotion.  Wrong.  It’s about how you apply the skills you’ve learnt to your business and add value, not about a bit of paper.  There’s one place that certs matter and that’s when you’re getting hired as a contract employee.  In my experience certifications get you past the junior recruitment consultants who vet CVs.  When you’re passed there you are back to how you’ve applied your skills again.

So why are they worth it?  Studying for a cert improves your knowledge and that improves the skills that you apply to your day to day life as an IT Professional.  I think of extra skills as extra tools in the kit bag, making me more capable in more situations.

Over the years I’ve developed a pretty good understanding of how I learn, every IT Pro probably has.  The way I do it is to grab a nice thick study guide, in this case I used MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-680): Configuring Microsoft Windows 7 by Ian McLean and Orin Thomas (review here tomorrow) and I grabbed it in eBook format from Safari Books Online downloaded it to my Kindle and took it away with me to Tenerife over Christmas.  There I proceeded to read it all, including all the bits I thought I knew.  As always in those sections I picked up new nuggets of knowledge that I’d never picked up before.  When I got back to the UK I sat down a couple of days before the exam and did all the exercises that I don’t do all the time…I use MDT quite a lot so I skipped those.  Finally I read all the chapter summaries over again in one sitting.  Essentially I was packing my brain with focused information about what I needed at a particular time.

I could not have done the exam with just that information.

If I hadn’t had experience to apply to the scenario questions in the exams there is no way I’d have made it.  In fact I didn’t think I had made it on either exam until I got the results.  The current crop of exams are really taxing.  They aren’t as taxing as the Windows NT to Windows 2000 upgrade exam but they really aren’t easy.

For me certifications are also a matter of professional pride and I don’t under estimate what that professional pride will drive me to.  I used to work in a team (of contractors) where certification was a competitive sport and that’s still with me.

So what’s next?  I’ll be doing Exam 70-686 next but I’m currently proofing some books and reading previews of others so it’ll probably be a few months.

You’re trapped by snow, you tried to escape in the car but hit some ice and and skidded into the curb at less than 10 mph and bent your wheel axle.  There’s limited mobile reception.  There’s internet but only directly connected by cable to one PC.  You’re a geek who needs to work and that involves 2 laptops.  Your wife also needs to work on her laptop and connect to work remotely.  Your hosts , providing the house to keep you warm, also need to be able to work…this was the situation I found myself in (and still do) this weekend.  The answer, turning one of the laptops into a WiFi hotspot and sharing that single Internet Connection (aka SoftAP)  And also calling the car insurance!

So what’s involved?

Well first off I turned a laptop into an WiFi hotspot, which is simple with the right drivers from Intel and Windows 7.  What happens here is a virtual network adapter is created to handle to the hotspot traffic.

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=SiWiFi key=password

Once the connection is setup you need to share whatever network connection is providing internet access with the new hotspot.  To do that simple open the adapter settings, select the sharing tab, tick the box and select your new virtual network adapter. Obviously change SiWiFi and Key= to a ssid and key that you like.  This can be used to share any internet connect, be it coming from WiFi or from Mobile or a wired connection.

The next step is to start the new adapter and hotspot whenever you need it done with a simple command at the command line:

netsh wlan start hostednetwork

Finally connect to the hotspot as you would from any laptop to a wireless hotspot.

I remembered hearing about this ages ago from Long at iStartedSomething.com but I got the detail from MSDN this time around and if you don’t like the sound of this in your corporate environment then this video on Edge will help you prevent it being used in your organisation.

Hi I’m Andrew Fryer and I have hacked into Simon May’s blog, to show you how more power uses less power.  I was checking out the latest technical goodness on the Dell stand at TechEd and I noticed they had a couple of their laptops hooked up to power meters one of which was a trusty old Dell 630 the other one of their state of the art machines sporting an Intel i7 processor. The rig shows how power management on the newer processors is surface through the Dell firmware to Windows 7  to carefully control the power used compared to what was possible 4 years ago. 

I grabbed a member of the Dell team briefed him on how to make movies on my Canon 60D and made this…

I was just thumbing around the Sysinternals site (for some handy tools for a deployment I’m doing) and happened across Mark’s PDC presentation which he re-ran at TechEd Europe last week and which I happened to be at.  It’s a fantastic way for the IT Professional to understand some of the (very) interesting back end of Windows Azure.  How it works, what it does, what fabric is, how it heals how it deploys how it all bolts together.  When you’re done watching the vid, go get an Azure trial.

If you’re looking to make sure that your enterprise desktops are secure and all to the same level then you’ll want to check out the recently updated Security Compliance Manager tool and with Windows 7 in your environment you’ll be wanting the Windows 7 settings pack.  Full details of the pack are available in the TechNet library.  Why is this tool useful?  Well the solution accelerator team have the best answer:

Since the release of the Security Compliance Manager tool, one of the most frequent requests has been to add all of the available Group Policy settings to the Microsoft-recommended baselines so that they can be accessed through the tool. While our baselines include hundreds of settings, there are hundreds of additional settings available in Group Policy. In response to this request, the team has created setting packs. The setting packs include the basic information required by the Security Compliance Manager tool to define custom baselines that you can use to create GPO backups, DCM configuration packs, and SCAP content. This is a temporary solution to address this request. A future version of the tool will provide the capability to add the settings customers need to their baseline without using a setting pack.

To learn more about Windows Deployment check out Springboard

What was the last operating system you deployed?…I’ll bet it was Windows XP and I bet you needed a bunch of 3rd party tools and experienced tons of pain to get to the end point.   With the right (free) tools it’s really easy to deploy Windows 7 though and you can self select just how much control and complexity you need depending upon the size of your deployment and how dynamic your infrastructure is.  When you first look at deployment though you might see the alphabet soup as a real turn off and feel it’s all too complex.  Here I’ll try to demystify it somewhat, covering deployment, data migration and application migration.

The Windows 7 deployment technologies build on each other and actually fit together like a jigsaw to present the whole picture.  Most guides to Windows 7 deployment start out explaining the underlying tools and components of a deployment but I think we sometimes need to picture the end goal first.  So what are the factors you need to consider?

Understanding the picture

To start out you need to determine what type of environment you have, who’s doing the deployment and even what the behavioural norms are of your users.  For example you might be in a position where you need to do everything for your users; either they don’t want to make backups and install Windows or they don’t have the capabilities (time / technical inclination).  Alternatively all your users might be highly skilled technical experts who need plenty of flexibility.  Either way the solutions are quite simple to build and maintain with the latest tools.  One option is to use the MAP toolkit to understand your environment.

The next thing you need to determine is the size of your environment and what tools you already have deployed.  If you’re on the medium to big size you’ll probably already have some System Center components deployed to manage your datacentre, servers and possibly your applications and operating system deployments.  If you’re on the medium to small end of the scale you probably have a bunch of those 3rd party tools cobbled together to provide a solution or you’ll be looking for something simple to deploy.  I’ve been intentionally vague with “small”, “medium” and “big” because they all depend on your self view.  Normally we consider “small” to be <100 and “big” to be >500 but I think you can self select better than that.

Do you have System Center?

With these few pieces of information we start identifying what type of deployment you need.  The next key consideration is if you’ve got System Center deployed.  If you do your Windows 7 deployment will be best with System Center at the helm leveraging MDT.  This will give you the ability to do a zero-touch or full automated deployment of Windows 7.  If you don’t have System Center deployed and you’re large enough that management has become a significant overhead then you’ll probably want to use your Windows 7 deployment to spearhead a System Center deployment to help take control of your environment.  System Center isn’t a fixed requirement though.

No, no problem!

What if you don’t have System Center in place?  Well then you’ll be looking at a tool called MDT (aka Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Update 1) which takes away lots of deployment pain for you and helps you deliver a dynamic and maintainable Windows 7 deployment environment.  It’s also free!  What MDT alone cannot do for you is provide a zero-touch Windows 7 deployment instead it provides a lite-touch (or semi automated) approach that does most of the work for your users.

Friends of MDT

Under MDT there’s another level of tools packaged up in something called the Windows Automated Installation Kit (better known as WAIK) which provides lots of the tools used by MDT to get the job done.  You’ll occasionally need to dip into this level to do more advanced things with your Windows 7 deployment (like service your images from the command line) and the WAIK actually includes a program for taking system images called ImageX.  If all you wanted was a very basic, repeatable installation of Windows 7 you could get away with just using WAIK but if you’ve got more than about 100 PCs you won’t want to go there.

Again to support an MDT based distribution you’ll need a couple more elements, a SQL Server and a Windows Deployment Services server (WDS).  For a SQL server it’s perfectly OK to use SQL Server Express or to use an existing managed SQL Server installation.  The SQL Server will house the configuration data used to dynamically provision computers.  WDS is a role of Windows Server 2008 and is used to provide PXE boot services (you can use a boot DVD if you need to install your customised Windows 7 install too).  WDS can also deploy XP and Vista, so you can move to a unified deployment infrastructure and it supports multi-stream multicasting, so if you use multi-cast deployment slower clients don’t slow faster clients.

So far we have key decisions made: Lite-touch or Zero-touch, dynamic deployments or static deployments but there are a couple more key considerations when thinking about your deployment, data and applications.

The data…

The data consideration drives whether you’ll need to migrate data from your users laptops or not and this in turn drives how you’ll migrate data if needs to be migrated.  If your users are storing data on their local machine you probably need to migrate it somewhere and you might well need to migrate their user settings too.  To achieve this you will want to use USMT 4.0  (User State Migration Tool) which is a component of WAIK.  USMT allows you to migrate users settings and files by either copying the files off the PC to a network share (which you might want to do it you want to take the opportunity to create a point in time backup of the users stuff) or to use hard link migration.  Hard link migration is cool!  It basically allows you to mark files to persist on the hard disk during migration to Windows 7 which saves you time and space by not having to move the files to a network share and back to the target PC again.  If you have technically savvy, or independent users you might want to use the Windows Easy Transfer too built into Windows 7 to transfer the files and settings as USMT isn’t user configurable so it’s conceivable you could miss stuff.  It is however the best approach to use en masse.

The apps…

Application compatibility is your only other real consideration.  You need to be sure that all the applications you need to deploy on your Windows 7 PCs will work on those PCs.  Again for that there’s a tool, ACT (Application Compatibility Toolkit) which can analyse your environment and tell you what applications are compatible and where they aren’t you can then workout a remediation strategy.  For example you could virtualise the application with XP mode and Virtual PC or App-V or if required with Med-V create an entirely virtualised desktop.

Why Dynamic deployment matters

Dynamic deployment really matters when you take application and data migration into consideration because the chances are that you can’t deploy purely to green field (new laptops and new users).  In fact you’ll probably have three deployment types as a minimum:

• New – a new user and a new laptop = nothing to migrate
• Replacement – an existing user and a new laptop = data and possibly apps to migrate
• Refresh – an existing user and an existing laptop = data and apps to migrate

In addition to those different scenarios your users probably have their own individual application requirements and if you went for a purely imaged based route you wouldn’t be able to install applications as needed and you’d have multiple images and quite a management problem.  Finally you will want the advantages of dynamic deployment to help manage driver and patch updates without having to rebuild your image constantly.

Summary in a picture

Finally I thought I’d try to simplify with the use of a picture, let me know if it works for you or not…it doesn’t cover everything but it tells part of the story.

Key resources to help you develop skills

MDT – Microsoft Deployment Toolkit – the easiest way to do a dynamic Windows 7 deployment

WAIK – Windows Automated Install Kit – mainly provides a tool set for the likes of MDT but you can use the tooling directly

MAP – Microsoft Assessment Planning Toolkit – can be used to understand your environment before deploying

WDS – Windows Deployment Services – you’ll use this for basic over the network installs and to provide PXE boot functionality.

USMT – User State Migration tool- for migrating users files and settings automagically

Springboard – THE place to learn about Windows 7 deployment.

Free eBook: Deploying Windows 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and TechNet Magazine – if you need all the in depth details, this is brilliant

How we did it, deploying Windows 7 at Microsoft

Thought I’d post my slides following on from the demo fail at Ezeit and provide a link to the awesome video about Windows 7 and Office deployment with MDT.

Hot off the TechNet press, so to speak, you can now download the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 Release Candidate. Here’s the blurb:

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 RC helps keep your PCs and servers on the latest support level, provides ongoing improvements to the Windows Operating System (OS), includes previous updates delivered over Windows Update as well as continuing incremental updates to the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 platforms based on customer and partner feedback, and is easy for organizations to deploy a single set of updates.

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 RC will help you:

• Keep your PCs supported and up-to-date
• Get ongoing updates to the Windows 7 platform
• Easily deploy cumulative updates at a single time
• Meet your users’ demands for greater business mobility
• Provide a comprehensive set of virtualization innovations
• Provide an easier Service Pack deployment model for better IT efficiency

There are some nice new themes available for Windows 7 online from Microsoft right now.  I’m currently sporting the Halo:Reach theme but there’s new hotness for Gears of War 3 and some other themes that passed me by like Lightening.  They’re building up nicely these themes…

Things have been quiet here for a couple of days whilst we were at IPExpo and interesting conference with a tangential subject line up but one that creates great conversations.  I know the talk was great ‘cos I’m drinking lemon tea to help ease my throat…where are my herbal sweets?  We had some great conversations around Windows Phone 7, Azure and around BPOS and Office 365, around System Center, Virtualisation, Desktop Deployment, Percy pigs, Windows Intune, Lync, Web Standards, IE9 and all sorts.  Basically it was ace.

I got asked some superb questions over the course of the two days and now that I’m back in the office I’ll be buying lots of people coffee to find out the answers to publish here, things like:

• How do I connect BPOS / Office 365 to my AD?
• What kinds of hardware does Lync need to connect to phone systems?
• What is Windows Azure and SQL Azure and how does Windows Azure and SQL Azure work?
• Hyper-V, is it enterprise ready?
• Hyper-V, can I live migrate Virtual Machines?
• What does Microsoft use?  What does our IT look like?
• Application streaming, what’s that, when and why would I use it?
• How secure is my data in the cloud?
• Cloud, is it really the future?

And so many more that I can’t currently remember them.  I also had Windows Phone 7 with me (as did @deepfat) and gave people some little demos.  Things like being able to link your contacts, so if you know someone on Facebook, Windows Live and have them in your Exchange inbox then that can become one contact.  Folks wanted a good look at the Market place so I showed them some of the apps from Tesco and Seesmic the Channel 9 app, oh and the Ebay app and the Bing Maps app.  They also loved the metro interface and smooth transitions and navigation.  I used it as a phone, apparently it does that too!  

Matt McSpirit (aka Virtual boy aka @mattmcspirit) and I presented on Windows Intune, BPOS and SQL Azure and you’ll find the slides embedded below – courtesy of Office Web Apps.  We’re going to re-run the session and record it and get the video out there.  Other highlights were meeting and talking to Zane Adam, who knows lots about SQL Azure and doing a round table with him before the show and some folks we invited along got to ask questions so we’ll have those vids online soon.

Next on the horizon is the Springboard tour, I can’t wait for that where we’ll be talking about the awesomeness of Windows 7 deployment and following that I’ll be at TechEd Europe where you’ll find me on the TechNet stand and squatting in presentations around the joint…can’t wait.

I was just helping someone internally with some deployment stuff and I came across these excellent videos by Richard Smith on MDT and doing Lite touch deployments.  We obviously have an update of the tools but the basics still apply MDT Update 1 is available here and if you want to know more about Windows 7 deployment, check out Springboard.

There are basically three basic aspects to securing your Windows 7 desktop, all are possible for free to home users and small businesses and with market leading technologies.  In this post I’ll discuss how to work with these basic component and how some of those same technologies can be scaled for big business too.  The technologies we’ll take a look at are: Anti-Malware (Antivirus, spyware, adware and phishing) courtesy of Microsoft Security Essentials and Forefront, Windows Firewall and Windows Update.

Anti-malware

Lets start with Microsoft Security Essentials which as of 7th October is free for small businesses (small is less than 10 PCs).  Lets just hold on that for a moment.  Just over a year ago Microsoft had no free anti-malware option for home users, now we have a product that gained huge respect in that space and has been expanded to small businesses.  What people like most about the software is that it follows an almost “Install and forget” model, only really letting you know it exists when you need to take some action.  The quality of the protection is really high too in fact it uses the same signatures as our Forefront protection engine that big businesses use.

So what is the experience like?  Lets take a look at the user experience first.  After MSE is installed the latest definitions (the details about how to match viruses) are downloaded and a scan of the computer is undertaken to establish that everything is ok.

When a virus is found, in this case it’s just a test virus, the user gets a message pop up letting them know that’s something’s been found.

Clicking Show details gives them all the info they need to make an informed decision and it’s a simple case of clicking Clean computer to remove the infection

All the red and green colouring on the messages and dialogues mean that there’s no confusion as to there being a problem that needs some type of action.

As MSE isn’t intended for larger install bases it doesn’t have the capabilities, such as centralised alerting and policy, that commercial products do.  Instead the focus is on making the users journey easier to understand.  That said we have some great alternatives to that do scale really well.  When it is released Windows Intune will be one of those products and it focuses very neatly on providing that control whilst still maintaining the ease of use that consumers are used to.

Right now though businesses over 10 users will want to go for something like Forefront Client Security that allows a more granular level of customisation and alerting.  Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 is the next version of our enterprise level client offering however that’s currently in Beta but available for download. 

Taking a quick look through Forefront is a tough thing to do because essentially there are lots of components that you need to pick up for your enterprise.  There is however a great learning resource for it on TechNet.

Andrew has summed it all up expertly with a video:

Firewall

Windows Firewall in Windows 7  can alter the level of restriction around what can be accessed network wise depending up on the network you’re currently connected to.  For example at home you can have the ability to share and stream music to other computers in the home enabled, at work you can have that same access disabled and in public places you can ensure that all the sharing features of Windows 7 are disabled.

Most consumers come across this when they connect to WiFi in a new location and they receive a pop up asking them to classify the type of the location they just connected to.  It’s very good to get you users into the habit of classifying correctly to help them protect themselves.

Windows Firewall can be configured for enterprise use using group policy and with that you can control specific applications to be allowed through the firewall, specific applications and ports to be blocked to prevent them accessing the network and what happens in each of the profiles.

Patching

Patching is one of those things that you just have to take care of if you don’t it’s like allowing a whole to form in the wall of your house without taking care of it, one day someone is going to try to get in through the hole or at least they might try to take a peak.  Most IT Professionals who manage Windows are used to the regular and predictable patch Tuesday model that Microsoft have employed for years.  One of the great bits of feedback that we get about this is that it’s got the high level of predictability that allows you to plan around the rhythm of releasing patches at the same point in time, wouldn’t it make life easier if everyone followed the same rhythm?

There are again lots of ways for you to manage patching in your environment.  If you have a small business of 10 or so machines you’ll probably find it easiest to just have Windows automatically pull updates from Windows Update (which by the way is a massive Microsoft cloud that regularly handles millions of update requests totally seamlessly).  If you’re larger or you have very limited bandwidth available you’ll want to think about deploying Windows Software Update Services. 

WSUS looks at Microsoft’s Windows Update servers and watches for new updates to be released, when they are they’re downloaded to the WSUS server. WSUS essentially replaces the public Windows Update servers as far as the clients are concerned.  Because WSUS comes within the control of your network you can control which updates are made available to your clients, so if you should have a particular update that you know breaks your line of business (LOB) apps you can hold off on installing it until you’ve had time to fix the LOB app.  WSUS also allows you to test updates to avoid any problem with your LOB apps by grouping your clients, that way you can test new patches on a group of typical machines before rolling a patch to your entire estate and potentially hitting any repercussions from incompatibilities.

You need to do quite a bit of planning to implement WSUS optimally but the guide makes lots of sense.  WSUS can be seen as a core part of a Windows infrastructure and it not only controls updates for Windows but it’s leveraged by other services.  For example Forefront Client Security uses the WSUS service to manage updates.

To step up the management a level then System Center Essentials 2010 or the full System Center are needed to provider more granular and device specific management.

Of course all of this is just a part of deploying your Windows 7 Optimized Desktop and Springboard has some stunning resources for you there.

XP mode is one of the tools in your armoury for deploying Windows 7 if you want to learn more about it check out this: Installing, Configuring, and Managing Windows XP Mode.  It’s official courseware for Implementing and Managing Microsoft Desktop Virtualization and it’s a great introduction to the technology.

For more of this stuff you might want to check out Springboard.

I think Ed Bott’s a superb Windows advocate, be it his excellent books or his ZDnet articles or his blog.  Yesterday he had a superb object lesson on why it’s time to ditch XP and move to Windows 7.  The answer, it’s more secure.  See for yourself at Ed’s blog.

DNS security and the way to spoof and poison DNS is a pretty complicated area.  Luckily we have DNSSEC which can help to resolve the issues quite simply.  It’s an area that I needed to understand a bit more about and as I happened to be doing so I found this video with Mark Minasi.  Oh and yes, it’s another reason to move to Windows 7, as XP and Vista don’t support all the DNSSEC flags.  He’s got some other great background on why you should choose to go 64bit over 32 in your Windows 7 deployment.

Mark Minasi at TechEd North America | Media | TechNet Edge

What do you deploy to your people as part of your corporate standard desktop?  Windows 7 – yep gota have that! Office 2010?  Yep you know you need to moving to it if you want your people to work as efficiently as possible.  MDOP – well obviously you’re going to be using parts of MDOP to get the job done, be it App-V to deploy your line of business app or Med-V to deploy the actual desktop.  Over and above that what more are you packing in?  Is Silverlight in there?  In this post that’s exactly what I propose.  You should be rolling Silverlight as part of your standard practice.

I can already hear the question screaming in over the ether…Why? Why? Why?!

And I can hear the reasons for not doing it too… “it’s another thing to maintain”, “it’ll encourage people to watch x-y-z instead of working”, “we don’t code for Silverlight, none of our own apps use Silverlight”, Actually that’s a good way to answer the why.

“it’s another thing to maintain”

That is a stance that you could take, given how hard other plugins are to manage.  But we’ve thought about it well in advance and there are two very easy ways to do it.  Firstly Windows Update is aware of Silverlight, so your WSUS, SCCM or SMS infrastructure that you’ve already deployed to manage your business is ready to keep your Silverlight clients on the latest version.  Then there’s Windows Intune, when it’s released there’s yet another option for management. 

Secondly Silverlight itself can check for updates and install them, something that’s controllable via group policy.  What’s required for this “self update” option is for the user to have Administrator access to their PC and an Internet connection.

If you have a more tightly controlled environment then option one is probably for you but if you’ve chosen not to do too much in the way of management you’ve got yourself covered with option 2.

“it’ll encourage people to watch x-y-z instead of working”

Really?  I’m not sure there’s a huge amount of merit in the argument for blocking peoples access to specific sites these days.  It might be me, I might not be seeing it, but we don’t block access to iPlayer (or SkyPlayer which uses Silverlight) at Microsoft and I don’t see people watching TV shows all day.  Surely as an IT Pro it’s better to provide the flexibility in case they do come across a business critical site that uses Silverlight – perhaps something using Pivot for really rich BI?

“we don’t code for Silverlight, none of our own apps use Silverlight”

Ahh the famous case of the chicken and the egg.  I’m a firm believer that if you give people the ability to build something they’ll push the envelope and really build SOMETHING.  How much of a difference would it make to your people if your line of business application actually looked the part and was so easy to maintain that the dev guys were able to keep it beating with the pulse of your business and users?  IT Pros should be leading here, providing the tools and capabilities to make things better.  It’s the same reason that I always think it’s best to deploy 64bit over 32bit where possible.  Not because you need it right now, but you might. 

I always remember being forced to deploy another browser plugin because a CBT (Computer Based Training) course was developed that would only run with version 9.55 or later and we were on version 7, in a regulated industry where you need everyone (that was about 10k people) to complete the training in 30 days time it was a painful lesson.

Do you deploy Office?  Well if you do and if you intend to allow people to use Office 2010 Web Apps then you’ll get a much better experience with Silverlight installed as helps with even little things like synchronising files to the web.  The Office deployment guide goes into far more detail:

Silverlight enables a better online experience with Office.com, powers the Office 2010 interactive guides (available with Office 2010), improves the user experience of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, improves the performance of Office Web Companion applications, and helps with the process of uploading Office documents to cloud services.

So all up, if you want the best Office 2010 experience you want to be installing Silverlight and if you don’t you’re going to miss out on some great features – the interactive guides significantly diminish the learning curve for your users!

From the why we move into the how:

How do I deploy Silverlight at work?

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times above, Silverlight is pretty easy to deploy and we’ve done all the heavy lifting for you with the trusty deployment guide.  But to summarise it you can:

• Deploy manually
• Deploy with just WSUS
• Deploy with SCCM and WSUS together
• Use group policy
• Deploy as part of your standard image

The last option isn’t mentioned in the deployment guide, however it’s as simple as installing before you sysprep your image and you can then mange Silverlight using WSUS and Group policy to keep it up to date.  It’s probably best to use this option as a more tactical move if you’re a large organisation.

Resources:

For more information on Windows 7 deployment see Springboard, for more on Silverlight see Silverlight.net for more information on Optimized Desktop see

I was just browsing around our internal sites and found this excellent white paper on Solutions for Virtualising Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), what amazed me was that it was externally available.

If you’ve got some applications that rely on IE6 (like the British government) and you need to go Windows 7 (EVERYONE NEEDS to go Windows 7! ) and IE6 compatibility is slowing you down or bloating your deployment project costs, or if it’s a show stopper, then this papers got great advice.  It covers solutions like:

• MED-V which is part of MDOP
• XP mode (which no longer needs a processor capable of virtualisation)
• Terminal Servcies

And it weighs up the pros and cons of each, the licensing considerations, system requirements and just about anything you can think of.  I’m currently building a list of essential reading and learning for desktop deployment and this just made the list.

If you can think of any other creative ways of doing it, let me know.

Get the whitepaper: Solutions for Virtualising Internet Explorer

Today I went to grab a copy of the Windows 7 resource kit that I reserved from the learning center to read on holiday.  It has since been used as a dumbell, a door stop and has as a booster to help a colleague feel taller.  It might be heavier than my baggage allowance.  Still it’s a good resource…who out there considers it invaluable…I do!

I’ll actually be reading and reviewing the new Step By Step book for Outlook 2010 on hols.

I’ve been using Windows 7 for almost 18 months now and the little things still make me very happy.  That’s an important thing to remember because people love this OS for it’s simplicity, deploying it will make them feel better.  I love the way the folder icons tell you what’s going on.

In the example above the first tolder has nothing in it, the second files, the third sub folders.  I can see it at a glance and it makes me happy.

I was just browsing around on TechNet for info and came across Paul Addams blog and a post about UAC.  It’s one of the best write ups of what UAC is and why you should be using it not turning it off that I’ve seen.  It goes into superb technical detail too.

USER Account Control… but I’m an ADMIN! by Paul Adams

Lots of people are looking at how they should go about deploying Windows 7 in their organisation, a few I’ve seen first hand are struggling to understand how to migrate.  One of the major steps in planning your deployment is probably to build a proof of concept to see just how easy it is and just what the pitfalls are in your organisation.  Have you thought about your application compatibility, are you making the most of things by deploying Office at the same time?

Our Springboard Series resources around Building a Proof of Concept came up in meeting the other day and there really is some great stuff in there.

I’ll be back looking at some of the fun around various aspects of a deployment soon, but if you want a specific question answered then post a comment and I’ll try – or if you want to keep your identity secret because you work for a criminal mastermind in his secret-but-very-expensive volcanic layer filled with retro furniture then drop me an email using the form.

Very handy little guide form Lifehacker here on how to get the best out of an SSD.  I’ve just ordered one for my “demo beast” laptop and it should help my VMs fly…interesting ideas around hibernation in this guide…not something I’d thought of but very useful.  Should be quite nippy on an SSD.

How to Take Full Advantage of Your Solid-State Drive

[image from flickr.com and kawanet]

I thought the black version was good, but now I’m all about the white version.  I’ll be getting me one these, it;s stunning and will look super in our all white office!

The Arc Keyboard: White | The Office Stylist.

The Live Side guys have noticed a new Bing Screensaver that looks very cool if you like the Bing daily images.  Bing Screensaver – LiveSide.net.  I’m currently using my Honeymoon photo’s as my wallpaper and screensaver and I’ll post a how to on setting that all up in a super nice way soon.

All I need now is a nice WiFi photo frame with HD res…

Windows 7 is amazing at getting most things working on any laptop, however I constantly have a problem with my very old Gateway laptop and the card reader driver.  This is how to fix it: Getting Your Laptop Card Reader to Read 4GB SD Cards – A step by step tutorial – Softpedia.

Uncrate have short piece on the very nice looking HP EliteBook 2740p notebook and tablet.  I’ve love my TX2 for quite some time, and this looks like it’s from the same stable.

Frankly I want to try one now….

Firstly let me say, I’m usually a giant fan Logitech’s products they have superb build quality and excellent performance, I love my Harmony Remote and Squeezebox and the webcams are really well designed.  Second I never really post negative opinions but if I’m not writing about it there’s probably a reason.

This post is about something that goes against both of the above.

On the left is a survey screen that appeared on my PC today, I’ve just installed some Logitech software for video conferencing – which I won’t be talking about.  On the left is a very deceptive survey screen; I’ve highlighted why.

You see that red outline, it’s around a button that’s “active” i.e. you can click it but Logitech have taken the step of making the text gray to convince you to click “Take Survey”.  This is underhand it’s bad UI design and, Mr Glenn Rodgers, Director Customer Experience, I feel ashamed FOR YOU that you’re name is on this.

This is a bad customer experience.  It’s poor, unprincipled UI design designed to deceive the user, no designed to deceive your customer into giving you information.

I started getting these, as expected, a couple of days ago.  It’s a guess but lots of others are receiving them now too so I thought I’d take the opportunity to remind people about what’s going to happen:

http://simon-may.com/windows-7/windows-7-rc-has-15-days-left/

I’ve already got my RTM key ready to go, but don’t have time for a rebuild before the end of the month so you can follow here to see what happens….

– Simon May

Download squad have found a great tool for those times when you want to get into your PC fast but you want all the freshhhness of a newly booted PC. Boot Snooze combines the goodness of hibernation and rebooting.

Essentially the tool allows you to reboot and then set the PC to go into hibernate immediately or go to sleep immediately after the reboot.  The result, a fast start up when you next come to your PC.  The best of both worlds.

Today is the 1st of Feb and that means you have 15 more days to use the Windows 7 RC (release candidate) before you need to upgrade to the final RTM version.  A timely reminder from Technet: Windows 7 RC expiration coming soon | Media | TechNet Edge.

What does this mean for you, if you are running the RC.  Basically you need to backup and rebuild your PC running the RTM version.  There is no direct upgrade route, essentially this is the same process as if you are on XP moving to Windows 7.

[EDIT: a few people have contact me now about what's specifically going to happen, this article explains all...

But the skinny is:

Effective February 15, 2010, the expiration notification process begins:

• Windows 7 RC users receive an expiration notification in the task bar one time per day.
• Windows 7 RC users are presented with the Notification Wizard one time every four hours and then one time every hour.

Effective March 1, 2010, Windows 7 RC enters the next phase of expiration:

• Expiration notifications in the task bar continue.
• Computers that are running Windows 7 RC restart every two hours.

  Important When the computer restarts, your work will not be saved.

Effective June 1, 2010, Windows 7 RC expires:

• Windows starts to a black desktop.
• Windows 7 RC users are presented with a Windows Activation screen. The screen states that the Windows that you are running is not genuine.

]

So basically, it’s really annoying!

TIP: Use the Windows Easy Transfer to transfer all your stuff and make the process as pain free as you possibly can.  Just hit start and type “transfer” into the search box.  Back everything up to a USB key or hard disk and then on your shiny Windows 7 RTM install do the same, but select restore.

15 days and counting, almost 14 and a half now…

Computers that are running Windows 7 RC restart every two hours.

Long’s spotted a great series of advertising by Microsoft in the US that’s got a digital home bent to it so I thought I’d throw it out there.  In Australia Microsoft are sponsoring part of the Open tennis coverage and (very cleverly) using the snap feature to do picture in picture switches between matches.  What a cool idea, never really thought about using it like that to say, watch the news and the Rugby at the same time, but it’s clever…

Anyone else doing that?

Head over to istartedsomething to watch the vid

Long’s spotted a great series of advertising by Microsoft in the US that’s got a digital home bent to it so I thought I’d throw it out there.  In Australia Microsoft are sponsoring part of the Open tennis coverage and (very cleverly) using the snap feature to do picture in picture switches between matches.  What a cool idea, never really thought about using it like that to say, watch the news and the Rugby at the same time, but it’s clever…

Anyone else doing that?

Head over to istartedsomething to watch the vid

Microsoft have released the security patch for the big news issue with Internet Explorer that just about everyone has been talking about.

If you have Windows Update turned on the you’ll get it automatically.  If you don’t download it below and read all about it.

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS10-002 – Critical: Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 978207.

TIP: Take my advice, turn on Windows Update.  Get Anti-Virus, Anti-Malware and Anti-Phising protections and LEARN enough about security and identity theft to be able to explain why it’s needed.  Just like you can explain why you need a lock on your house.  Also if you have an alternative browser installed then make sure that too is set to get automatic updates.

Wow, talk about a cool way of looking at tweets.  This, my friends, is Seesmic Look, the second output from Seesmic since they’ve started developing closely with Microsoft.  I’ve just downloaded it and started to play, and it’s very sexy looking.  @Loic (runs Seesmic) has just launched the product and you might be thinking “what the hell, this isn’t Media Center related”.  Well it is.

Just like Media Center it’s works brilliantly with the Media Center remote and it’s fully touch enabled.  Super cool.  Developer folks, this is what you can do.

Seesmic Look is designed to be far more consumer friendly than any other Twitter client.  I looks stunning and it focuses on getting Twitter content in front of your eyes.  You can get it here

–Simon May

IE is really good at it’s job.  There I said it.  It’s a really easy browser to use, it’s laid out well, it’s familiar and you know how to use it.  It’s fine to do so.  You should try other browsers out though and see if you like them, personally I’m currently loving Chrome and I’m playing with it and Chrome OS quite a bit.  Don’t however think that because you use a different browser you’ll be more secure.  You won’t.

Just like IE there are security flaws in other browsers, spending less than 2 minutes Googleing (actually I Binged it) I found the graph from a 2006 article by Ars Technica, proving this is no new thing, to the left that shows a comparison of vulnerabilities, interesting hey?

What matters here is that you have a security infrastructure on your PC that works for you to protect you.  You want it to:

• Speak only when spoken to, unless it’s life threatening
• Adapt or at least keep itself up to date
• Protect your identity, i.e. stop you falling foul of phishing scams and the like
• Be light weight on your PC, you don’t want it getting in your way
• Tell you if you’re about to do something unsafe, just before you do it, but not stop you.  It’s your decision

Great software exists, some of it free from the likes of AVG, Microsoft, Norton and tons of others.  So go find some right now.

Here’s the big one though, the thing you need to do, especially if you’re a parent (actually even if your the child you can do this) get educated.  Let me say it again if you missed it.

TIP: GET EDUCATED ABOUT ONLINE THREATS

It’s the most adaptive technology out their, your brain.  By learning about online threats you’ll develop a “spider sense” for scams and won’t fall foul of them.  The software will help you too, so much so that it’s the one thing you need to have on every PC.

But get Educated.

Parents, you need to be talking with your kids about what they should and shouldn’t share online, where they should go and who with.

Kid’s, you can do the same with your parents.  You’ll love doing it.  Sit them down and tell them why they shouldn’t store their online banking password in their favourites.