Introducing Microsoft Assessment and Planning 3.0 

For those of you who are considering the migration of your desktop and server infrastructure to Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008, we have good news for you!

As we’ve announced at TechEd IT Forum 2007 in Barcelona last November, the Microsoft Solution Accelerators team is going to release the expanded version of Windows Vista Hardware Assessment 2.1 called Microsoft Assessment and Planning 3.0 (aka MAP).

In short, MAP is an automated agent-less network-wide inventory and assessment tool that can quickly determine if your organization’s desktops and servers are ready for migration to Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

What do I mean by AGENT-LESS inventory?  Simply put, it means that you do not need to launch any software agents on any of those machines you want this tool to inventory and query - so no more security concerns and user interruption!

It offers quick network-wide inventory of machines and generate hardware and device compatibility reports with actionable recommendations in the form of auto-generated proposal documents - perfect documentation for your IT project planning in the new fiscal year!

The best part is that

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This week we posted some new videos on www.windows.com and www.windowslive.com . We call them demos but really they’re little stories about people using Windows to do more, connect with loved ones and share memories. I’m excited about the videos for a Read More……(read more)

This week we posted some new videos on www.windows.com and www.windowslive.com. We call them demos but really they’re little stories about people using Windows to do more, connect with loved ones and share memories. I’m excited about the videos for a couple of reasons (besides the fact that it’s always fun to have something you had a hand in producing actually Out There – in front of real people who will have real opinions about them) – naturally I’m excited about the chance to paint a picture of Windows Vista and Windows Live working together and to showcase new features and capabilities in the product, but what I’m most excited about is the opportunity to put Windows in the context of people’s lives – which is an approach we haven’t traditionally taken with product demos on the Windows website.

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I went out on a limb a bit with these videos because of this – our initial storyboards revolved around the product, just showing the UI

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On this most auspicious of days — assuming you’re into that sort of thing — I figured I’d continue the 10 Things You Didn’t Know series by highlighting what I think is one of the most universally applicable and beneficial developments in Windows Vista:  the addition of Photo Gallery.  Millions of digital cameras (~100M, to be precise) are sold annually and if you have a cell phone, you likely have a camera in it as well.  All the images we take each year require a place to store them and then find them when needed.

Enter Windows Vista Photo Gallery.  Not only does Photo Gallery make it a lot simpler to manage your photos, but the great thing is that all users can take advantage of Photo Gallery, as it’s included in all versions of Windows Vista.  In addition to automatically displaying pictures and videos stored in the Pictures folder on your computer, you can also easily add and remove folders to the contents of Photo Gallery by simply dragging them to (or deleting them from) Photo Gallery’s navigation pane on its left-hand side.  If you only want to add a couple of photos rather than

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