Microsoft News Tracker

One of the best introductions to Indigo (now Windows Communications Foundation) has been David Chappell’s MSDN paper. He now has an updated version linked in his blog which is always worth reading although he only posts infrequently.

Again catching up on some news from late in July, David Boschman has a great summary of the Vista Beta announcement. Quoting liberally:

Today (July 27 - ed.), Windows Vista Beta 1 is being delivered to select Beta testers via the Windows Vista Technical Beta Program, MSDN developer program and Microsoft TechNet.

Software developers can start start building applications for Windows Vista with this release. All developer-related information for Windows Vista can be found on the newly launched MSDN Windows Vista homepage.

The focus of Windows Vista Beta 1 is on the “fundamentals”: security, deployment, manageability and reliability & diagnostics. Windows Vista Beta 1 is primarily an infrastructure release and as it’s a beta release it does not contain all of the end-user features. These end-user features will be included in Beta 2.
Developers will be able to leverage their Win32 and .NET Framework development skills to build applications using the full beta 1 of the WinFX Runtime Components, formerly code-named the “Microsoft Pre-Release Software Code Named “Avalon” and “Indigo” Beta1 RC“.

With the arrival of beta 1 of the WinFX Runtime Components the codenames “Avalon” and “Indigo” have received their final names: Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly “Avalon”), Windows Communication Foundation (formerly “Indigo”), and “InfoCard” for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

More by following the link.

I posted earlier on the simultaneous Windows Server Longhorn beta.

PCWorld says:

Windows 2000 Worms Still Spreading

Zotob and its variants are affecting businesses, but home users remain largely unaffected.

Not a real surprise since Windows 2000 was never a home favorite plus the not surprising revelation from the study that was in the news in June by AssetMetrix that showed substantial continued use of Windows 2000 in business, particularly large organizations:

The report also found that while Windows XP is now the most popular operating system for companies with fewer than 250 PCs, Windows 2000 still has a greater than 50% market share in larger organizations.

Smaller businesses also don’t have an IT organization qualifiying all patches before they are applied, so given that they are actually applying updates, they are likely ahead of the malware writers.

In related news, Microsoft has updated their Malicious Software Removal Tool to remove Zotob.

Expanding on the question of whether it will be Windows Server 200X or Windows Server Vista, I got a laugh out of Joe Wilcox’s comment:

I still can’t understand why Microsoft would risk creating unnecessary customer confusion, with BizTalk Server 2006, SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio .NET 2005 launching the same day, Nov. 7. Shouldn’t the products all be either 2005 or 2006? To me, the naming convention makes no sense.

It’s the perils of putting a year in the product name.

Catching up with an item earlier in the month, Microsoft released Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) Service Pack 1. There are a variety of updates listed at the link, but I’d like to note especially the addition of x64 support. The MOM home page is here if you are not familiar with it.