Two More Free e-books from Microsoft Press

You might have seen my earlier posts related to free E-Books offered from Microsoft Press. Now continuing the celebration of  25th Anniversary of Microsoft Press, its offering two more very popular E-Books -

Windows Small Business Server 2008 Administrator's Companion by Charlie Russel and Sharon Crawford (27 chapters, 3 appendices, 719 pages) (PDF, 25.4 MB)

 
Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition: Build a Program Now! by Patrice Pelland (9 chapters, Glossary, 255 pages)(PDF, 7.7 MB)

Its a Must have, full colored hands-on book to learn Visual Basic 2008

NOTE: Get them now, as this offer ends on April 22 from the links provided.

Please note that you have to register to download the Full Book and also it gets downloaded as ‘pdf_loader.pl’ which you have to rename them with .pdf extension to open them in pdf reader.

Windows Server 2008 IT 24-7 Robot Wallpapers, Screensavers and Buddy Icons

 

Check out Windows Server 2008 Unleashed's IT 24-7 Robot  Wallpapers in 4 Action Poses in 8 different screen resolutions.

Download from here, For each screen resolution there are 4 different poses wallpaper :

1920 x 1200 = IT 24-7 Robot Pose A, B, C, D

1600 x 1200 = IT 24-7 Robot Pose A, B, C, D

1600 x 1050 = IT 24-7 Robot Pose A, B, C, D

1440 x 900 = IT 24-7 Robot Pose A, B, C, D

1280 x 1024 = IT 24-7 Robot Pose A, B, C, D

1280 x 960 = IT 24-7 Robot Pose A, B, C, D

1280 x 800 = IT 24-7 Robot Pose A, B, C, D

1024 x 768 = IT 24-7 Robot Pose A, B, C, D

 

Also check out the IT 24-7 Screensavers :

• I.T. 24/7 Robot Screensaver #1 (size : 9 MB)
• I.T. 24/7 Robot Screensaver #2 (size : 12 MB)

And the Buddy Icons:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/serverunleashed/default.html

Here is IT 24-7 in one of the poses as shown in wallpaper

Thanks Blake

Windows Vista Service Pack 1, Windows Server 2008 RTM

Here it is , everybody was waiting for. Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 has been RTMed. This announcement was made just few minutes ago.
Windows Vista SP1 was RTMed for first set of languages (English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese).
I have been running SP1 RC for quite some time, and I have not faced any problem and in fact my system runs faster on SP1 RC. So I am looking forward to running RTMed version.

Here's the schedule of its availability according to Windows Vista Blog:
- In mid-March, we will release Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Update (in English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese) and to the download center on microsoft.com. Customers who visit Windows Update can choose to install Service Pack 1. If Windows Update determines that the system has one of the drivers we know to be problematic, then Windows Update will not offer SP1. Since we know that some customers may want to update to SP1 anyhow, the download center will allow anyone who wants to install SP1 to do so.

- In mid-April, we will begin delivering Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Vista customers who have chosen to have updates downloaded automatically. That said, any system that Windows Update determines has a driver known to not update successfully will not get SP1 automatically. As updates for these drivers become available, they will be installed automatically by Windows Update, which will unblock these systems from getting Service Pack 1. The result is that more and more systems will automatically get SP1, but only when we are confident they will have a good experience.

- The remaining languages will RTM in April.

(Above screenshot is of Windows Vista SP1 RC)

Windows Vista SP1 includes quality improvements that help enhance reliability, security and performance.

Service Pack 1 is a very important milestone because it addresses many of the key issues that customers have identified with Windows Vista over the last year both, directly and through programs like the Customer Experience Improvement Program. With Service Pack 1, great progress in performance, reliability and compatibility have been made.

Windows Server 2008 was also released to manufacturing today and will be available for purchase to new customers on March 1. Microsoft Volume Licensing customers with active Microsoft Software Assurance coverage or an Enterprise Agreement will be able to download the server software toward the end of February as part of the joint Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 “Heroes Happen Here” launch event.

For more details on Windows Server 2008 and Vista Sp1 please check :
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/default.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2008/feb08/02-04WS2008.mspx

Windows Hyper-V BETA ships !

Microsoft Corp. this morning delivered a holiday surprise for customers and partners, unveiling a public beta for its hypervisor-based server virtualization technology called Hyper-V, a feature with some versions of Windows Server 2008.
The beta is available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/ws08eval.
Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate 1 Enterprise with Hyper-V Beta
The beta was previously expected to be ready in the first quarter of 2008.

More information about Windows Server 2008 and the Hyper-V beta is available at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/virtualization/default.mspx.

Also check Windows Virtualization Team Blog for couple of Hyper-V videos.
and Windows Server Division Weblog.
and more information on the presspass site