Well it seems as though its finally happened-Service Pack 3 for every-ones favourite OS, Windows XP has been released to manufacturing (however not available to the public just yet-expect to see it on April 29th).

Service Pack 3 updates all 32-bit versions of Windows XP from Starter to XP Professional (the x64 edition of XP is based on Server 2003 and requires the Service Packs for that product). The complete package from the Download Center will reportedly be some 320 MB. Downloads via the Update function will be around 70 MB according to Microsoft’s current plans; this update can be so much smaller because only the data required for a specific XP version are downloaded, not the entire package.

Support for Windows XP without any service packs expired long ago and officially SP2 has to already be installed before SP3 can be installed, despite the fact there is no technical reason for this requirement. However Microsoft is inconsistent and SP3 can in practice be installed on XP with only SP1. Strangely, the complete SP3 contains all of the patches you need to update even a fresh base version of XP. Microsoft says that a slipstream

IE8 Beta is officially launched in the MIX08. And you may download it and try it now. Here is the email from the IE team,

As of 12 pm today, we officially launched IE8 Beta!! Please check out Dean Hachamovich (IE General Manager) in the MIX08 keynote. To download IE8 Beta 1, please click here. Please read the Release notes and the IE8 Readiness Toolkit which will give a detailed description of the features.

We would like to introduce to you our feedback form, which allows you to submit bugs directly to the IE team! Before submitting an issue, please search for your bug. If you find your bug, please rate the bug which will give us an idea of how many people have run into the same problem. Please only rate bugs that are important to you. If you do not find your bug, then submit a feedback form with the details of your bug.

We have made several updates to the IE8: Technical Beta Program available on connect. Please check it out!

Best regards,
The IE Team

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One of my favorite documents for Windows Server 2003 is now available in beta form for Windows Server 2008.  If you have never reviewed these guides I strongly recommend them.  The guide makes it easy to tailor the security configuration to accommodate the needs of your organization.  There is also a really cool GPOAccelerator (Group Policy Object Accelerator) tool to help you rapidly setup, test and deploy configurations of Group Policy security settings.  Here are some of the resources for Windows Server 2008 Security Guide:

Check out the Executive Overview.

Join the Windows Server 2008 Security Guide beta.

2008 Is here, its now time to face the truth… The clock is ticking on Microsoft’s Windows XP. And whilst Microsoft may view this as a natural stage in the evolution of a product that was RTM’ed (released to manufacturing) all the way back in 2001, a healthy proportion of people will fail to see eye to eye with the company on this one. In this context… Windows Vista.

Vista In 2007

Even with Vista hot off the presses, XP did not give one inkling that it was going to give up the fight, with Microsoft focusing on winding XP up for good-Ending support for SP1 and soon to be SP2.

-Microsoft’s Windows Product Management vice president Mike Nash on September 27th: “with more than 60 million licenses sold as of this summer, Windows Vista is on track to be the fastest-selling operating system in Microsoft’s history.”
They had done it-sold over 20 million licences in the first month since RTM, passing 40million within the first 100days and 60 million by mid 2007. The last statistics made available to the public, dating back to the end of October, pointed to over 88

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Zumobi, the mobile startup spun off from Microsoft Research, has launched its first beta. The Zumobi lets you access, enjoy, and share web-based content on your mobile phone in an innovative, new way. The Zumobi software presents a unique way to access content, with a grid of sixteen tiles that you can zoom in and out of, and the tiles acting as widgets that display web-based content.
Currently, mobile browsing goes something like this…

1. 1. Either you navigate through a list of web sites pre-loaded on your phone, navigate through static bookmarks, or maybe even attempt to type in a long URL with your thumbs. Ugh.

   2. Now that you’ve chosen your content, wait while it loads. And wait. And wait.

   3. Ok, site loaded. Read a few lines and scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down, deeper into the abyss searching for what you wanted buried somewhere in all that content. Tedious. Often frustrating.

   4. Rinse, repeat.

Ultimately, it’s an underwhelming experience.

Enter Zumobi. Beta Launch Video On YouTube

They are also recruiting Beta Users, To participate in the Zumobi Beta you’ll need the following:
Zumobi Tiles create a solution through which advertising and marketing communications are highly

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Today, Microsoft Live Labs is announcing the Volta technology preview, a developer toolset for building multi-tier web applications using existing and familiar tools, techniques and patterns. Volta’s declarative tier-splitting enables developers to postpone architectural decisions about distribution until the last possible responsible moment. Also, thanks to a shared programming model across multiple-tiers, Volta enables new end-to-end profiling and testing for higher levels of application performance, robustness, and reliability. Using the declarative tier-splitting, developers can refine architectural decisions based on this profiling data. This saves time and costs associated with manual refactoring. In effect, Volta extends the .NET platform to further enable the development of software+services applications, using existing and familiar tools and techniques.

You architect and build your application as a .NET client application, assigning the portions of the application that run on the server tier and client tier late in the development process. You can target either web browsers or the CLR as clients and Volta handles the complexities of tier-splitting. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and all communication, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together. In effect, Volta offers a

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