The Windows Home Server Team has announced today the beta of Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 (PP3). And if you’re running Windows 7, Windows Home Server PP3 comes with several new features designed to take advantage key Windows 7 features:

• Full Image-based Backups of Windows 7 PCs. After the Windows Home Server Connector is installed on your Windows 7 PCs, Action Center should no longer display that your files are not being backed up.
• Windows 7 Libraries Support. Music, Photos and Videos shared folders from your Windows Home Server will be added to Windows 7 Libraries. Content saved to these shared folders will be able to be quickly accessed through your Windows 7 Libraries. And any application, like Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center, will be able to access content saved on your Windows Home Server through Libraries as well.
• Windows Search 4 is now included. With Windows Search 4, PP3 offers improved query search times, indexing times and reliability. Easy search through a Library in Windows 7 with files stored in multiple locations.
• Windows Media Center Enhancements. Archive old recorded TV shows onto your Windows Home Server in a variety of formats. Use Console Quick View to see statistics about your Windows Home Server through Windows Media Center.

More in-depth information on these features – see their blog post on PP3.

The Windows Home Server Team does not yet have a final release date for PP3 however they are shooting to have PP3 available shortly before GA of Windows 7. If you’re running Windows Home Server and have several Windows 7 PCs – I encourage you to give PP3 a try and help the Windows Home Server Team make PP3 rock.

To beta test PP3, please sign up as a beta participant of the Windows Home Server program on Microsoft Connect. Once you’ve signed up, you’ll be able to download PP3.

Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 will be a free update to existing Windows Home Server users via Windows Update.

I’ll be installing PP3 on my HP MediaSmart Server EX470 either tonight or sometime over the weekend. I’m stoked about the Windows 7 integration!

1. Click the Start button, type services.msc in the Search box, and then press Enter (or in Run Command). This loads the Services utility.
2. After Services has loaded, scroll through the list and locate the Windows Search service. This is the indexing service. Right-click this service and select Stop.
3. When the service is stopped, make sure that it does not start again. Right-click the service again and select Properties.
4. Locate the Startup type drop-down box. Change the Startup type from Automatic to Disabled.
5. Press OK to close the window.

In the last video, Esther told you all about how Instant Search makes her day-to-day life easier. Today, she's going to talk to you about Live Icons, which makes searching even faster by letting you see a preview of the files you're searching for. If you're a visual person you'll especially appreciate seeing icons instead of file names or folders, and not having to open each file individually, which saves a ton of time.   

Video: Windows Vista Demo: Live Icons

A lot of times when the Product Team is showing off Windows Vista, the crowd is pretty impressed by all of the useful features we built into the OS. Most of these are things that will make day-to-day work quicker or easier - especially for those of us office drones. But many of our users just don't know they exist. So we figured, why not show you some of our favorite features? 

Over the next week or so, our own Esther Choi from Windows Vista Product Management will be hosting a series of short videos that don't just cover what these features are, but also how and when to use them. We hope to make videos from the Windows Vista Product Management Team a regular thing, so let us know what you think by leaving a comment...and what you want to hear more about! 

Today we're kicking off with Instant Search, which is really cool in Windows Vista. Finding stuff can be a big pain, but the search capabilities built directly into the OS help me locate the documents, music files, photos, emails and whatever else you're looking for quickly. 

Video: Windows Vista Demo: Instant Search

By the way, while we're on the topic of features, I wanted to let you know that the Windows Vista Product Guide - a great resource on all things Windows Vista - is now available for FREE in paperback.  All you have to do is pay for shipping.  Order your copy here.  I should note that the paperback guide doesn't include the new stuff in SP1, but you can download all of that information here.

Since Windows Search 4.0 (WS4.0) was released to the web on June 3rd, we've seen a good number of downloads, and a number of positive responses from customers who started using it.  Users are telling us that they're seeing better performance and reliability of search after WS4.0 is installed.  As a result, we feel it's time to make WS4.0 available to the broader audience.

In late July WS4.0 will become available for installation off Windows Update. Customers using Windows XP will see WS4.0 available as an Optional update, meaning they can manually install it from update.microsoft.com.  Windows Vista customers will see the update as a recommended update. Depending on the Windows Update settings on your Windows Vista SP1 client, WS4.0 may be installed automatically, updating the search capability in Windows Vista SP1. 

Not everyone will get it on the same day; the release of Windows Search 4.0 will be very gradual.  While every user will be able to install the update off the Windows Update site interactively, the automatic update may not come to your machine for some time. The update will go to a small percentage of Windows users each day, the percentage increasing gradually. If you want to have the update installed sooner rather than later, you can do it by opening the Windows Update control panel and installing the update manually.

It should be noted that installation of WS4.0 requires a reboot, and after that, your data is indexed by the newly installed search engine. This is done due to the significant performance and reliability work that was done for WS4.0, which required changes to the structure of the search index. As we observed in our internal testing, the indexing process doesn't take too long and won't lock your PC: any action you take in the UI or application activity on your PC will make the indexing process back off and release most of computer's resources.

For those organizations that prefer to take control over the deployment of WS4.0, we provide a mechanism to block the automatic delivery of WS4.0 to Windows Vista SP1 computers in environments where the Automatic Updates feature is enabled: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/953959. However, an update management solution remains a recommended method of managing the schedule of updates. Visit Update Management Solutions for more information.

Later this year we are planning to make WS4.0 available for installations via WSUS. Keep an eye on the Microsoft Update Team Blog for more information.

Not necessarily a "Windows Experience" (although it does improve the Windows Experience) - I'm making this post on behalf of the Windows Search Team. Oh and I am really excited for this release.

Today we released the final version of Windows Search 4.0 to Microsoft Download Center. Windows Search 4.0 updates search in Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Home Server. This release comes after a public Windows Search 4.0 Preview, which was a success thanks to great community participation - with around 300,000 downloads.   Since the Preview was released, a number of quality improvements have been made to the product based on feedback provided by the community.

Download: Windows Search 4.0 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (x86)

Download: Windows Search 4.0 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (x64)

More download packages are available on http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940157.

So, what's new in this release?

First and foremost: we've introduced some performance and reliability improvements. Queries are faster, as is indexing - how much faster depends on your machine and your data. Improved reliability means that system failures won't get in the way of the indexer and all of your data will be scanned and available for searches.

We've also extended remote index discovery, also known as PC-to-PC searches, which allows data to be searched quickly and efficiently across machines running Windows Search 4.0. This means that Windows Vista-to-Windows XP or Windows Vista-to-Windows Server 2008 queries are now possible.

Additionally, Windows Search 4.0 offers manageability improvements that IT Pros should take note of.

For starters, we have extended Group Policy to control more aspects of search functionality and made this control more granular with per-user policies. You can use Group Policy Objects to control how desktop search accesses remote resources - such as Microsoft Exchange Server resources or file shares - to manage network utilization.

Speaking of accessing Microsoft Exchange Server - if your organization selects not to use Microsoft Office Outlook in cached mode, you can set a Group Policy to index Exchange in online mode.  Windows Search 4.0 will then index with minimal impact to the server. Our internal testing of this configuration shows significant decrease in the load on the server and the network as compared to Windows Desktop Search 3.01.

IT Pros can deploy a new link that will be added to the Instant Search UI of Windows Vista (or Windows Search UI on Windows XP) on client PCs and allow the query entered in the search box to access your company's search server, by opening the search UI of the server in your browser and executing the query in it. With this functionality, users get a single launch pad for all of their searches. For more information on how to add customized links into the instant Search UI, click here.

Based on a large amount of customer feedback, we have added support for indexing files encrypted with EFS. Users in an organization can now encrypt files and still be able to search their contents. When running on Windows Vista, they also can get an additional level of data protection by using BitLocker and storing their index on the protected drive.

Today, Windows Search 4.0 can be downloaded for installation (download links from Microsoft Download Center listed above). If you need Windows Search 4.0 deployed in a large organization, you can use System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) or other infrastructure solutions.

In the future, we will make Windows Search 4.0 available on Windows Update as well. At that time you will be able to install Windows Search 4.0 off the update site directly or deploy it in your organization using WSUS.

Once Windows Search 4.0 becomes available on Windows Update various Windows users will experience the following:

• Windows XP users will see it as an "optional" update, which requires users to select the update for installation.
• Users running Windows Vista will see the update as "recommended." By default, recommended updates are installed automatically; however, users can prevent automatic installation of Windows Search 4.0. We will publicly post specific instructions prior to publishing Windows Search 4.0 on Windows Update.
• On Windows Server 2008, the update will be applicable only if the File Server Role is enabled.

More on the improvements in Windows Search 4.0 can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940157.