Archive for December, 2008
Localized Visual Studio 2008 in 9 new languages
Visual Studio 2008 has been localized into Arabic, Czech, Hebrew, Hindi, Polish, Tamil, Turkish, Malayalam and Oriya as a free "CLIP" download package.
"CLIP" stand for "Captions Language Interface Pack". It’s basically an add-on with localized user interface that you install on top of the English version of Visual Studio. The CLIP package allows you to see translations of menus, button and so on as tooltips when running Visual Studio.
It’s designed for users who use the English version, but want to see the most common user interface in their own language as well.
The translations in the CLIP package are a joint-effort between Microsoft and local communities.
Source- MSDN Blog
Windows PowerShell V2 Community Technology Preview 3 (CTP3)
Use the Download link on this page to download the installation package for the Windows PowerShell V2 CTP3. Windows PowerShell V2 CTP3 introduces several significant features to Windows PowerShell 1.0 and Windows PowerShell V2 CTPs that extends its use, improves its usability, and allows you to control and manage the Windows environment more easily and comprehensively.
Selected New and Updated Features in Windows PowerShell V2 CTP3
(Please refer to Release Notes and Help topics for more details)
After you install this product, you might have to restart your computer.
XBOX:Horde for the Holidays Play & Win Sweepstakes
What better way to celebrate the New Year than a whole weekend of Horde-blasting action on Xbox LIVE®? As part of the big Horde for the Holidays Promotion, we’ve got a special Play & Win Sweepstakes with some great Gears of War® 2 prizes up for grabs.
Battle the Locust Horde for a chance to win.
You could win some great Gears of War 2 merchandise, including a custom Gears of War 2 Xbox 360 console or a Gears of War 2 Zune® player. To enter, just register your gamertag and then play an online match between December 30 – January 1, 2008.
Before registering for the sweepstakes, make sure your Xbox LIVE account information is accurate! Potential winners will be notified by the sweepstakes administrator and have their prizes shipped using the contact info (e-mail, phone, and address) on their Xbox LIVE profile. If your contact info is not up to date you will be disqualified from winning a prize.
Check your account information here.
Sweepstakes Registration
You must register for the sweepstakes before the end of the entry period on January 1, 2009. You can register online here, or by downloading the free Horde for the Holidays Registration Gamer Pic from Marketplace. To download the picture pack to your console:
- Sign in to Xbox LIVE Game Marketplace
- Select Explore Game Content
- Select All Games
- Select Browse
- Under title, select G
- Select Gears of War 2
- Select Horde for the Holidays Registration Gamer Picture from the list of gamer pics and select Confirm Download
- Upon the successful completion of the Gamer Picture download, you will see a Thank You for Registering message.
You can also access the free Horde for the Holidays Registration via the banner ads running on the Xbox LIVE dashboard.
Source- XBOX.com
Microsoft Extends XP Availability For Distributors
Microsoft system builder partners who’ve been feeling queasy about the impending Jan. 31, 2009, deadline for selling PCs with Windows XP pre-installed can now breathe a bit easier, as Microsoft is giving them a way to obtain XP licenses through distribution after the deadline.
In an e-mail to ChannelWeb, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the existence of a flexible inventory program that will allow distributors to place their final orders for Windows XP OEM licenses by Jan. 31, 2009, and take delivery against those orders through May 30.
Previously, distributors had planned to purchase as many XP licenses as they could afford before Jan. 31, 2009, and sell them after the deadline. But once that inventory was gone, they’d have no choice but to turn away XP-seeking customers.
Distributors have until Dec. 31 to submit their XP license demand forecasts to Microsoft, and system builders are reportedly being asked to provide their own forecasts to distributors.
It’s yet another sign of the market’s resistance to Windows Vista, and of the growing realization within the channel that many customers have decided to simply skip Vista and wait for the arrival of Windows 7. Microsoft says that’s slated for late 2009 or early 2010, but some reports have suggested it could come as early as mid-2009.
Source: ChannelWeb
Announcing Service Pack 2 (SP2) for the 2007 Microsoft Office System
We’re pleased to announce that Service Pack 2 (SP2) for the 2007 Microsoft Office system is expected to be released in the near future. Although we aren’t yet announcing the exact release date, it will fall between February and April of 2009.
Historically, we have waited to communicate details about service packs until their release (or very shortly before). As we communicated with SP3 for Office 2003 and SP1 for the 2007 Office System, we will be taking steps to increase transparency and visibility into the Office servicing model at the request of our customers. To that end, we would like to start sharing some details into what will be included in SP2 for the 2007 Office system. This is by no means an exhaustive list of everything included in this service pack and we will share more details prior to the final release, but we want to start communicating to customers what they should be aware of at a high level.
To be fair, this is not the first time we have talked about SP2. Several months ago, we announced that we’ll be further demonstrating our increased commitment to interoperability by including support for Open Document Format (ODF), XML Paper Specification (XPS), and Portable Document Format (PDF) in SP2. In addition to those file format additions, some other highlights that you’ll find in SP2 include:
For Office Desktop Programs:
· Improved Outlook Calendaring Reliability
· Improved Outlook Performance
· Enabling Object Model support for Charts in PowerPoint and Word
· Improved cryptographic functionality by supporting all cryptographic algorithms offered by the operating system
· Improved functionality in Excel’s charting mechanism
· Ability to ungroup SmartArt graphics (and as a result, the ability to add animations to them in PowerPoint)
· Ability for Visio to export UML models to an XML file compliant with the XMI standard
· Tool that enables the uninstall of Office client Service Packs
For Servers:
· Performance and manageability improvements to variations in Enterprise Content Management (ECM) including STSADM commands for repairing links between source and target pages
· Improvements around processing status approvals from Office Project Web Access into Office Project Professional 2007
· Improvements to read-only content databases and index rebuild timer jobs in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
In the coming weeks, individual product teams across Office will begin updating their blogs and highlighting some of the specific work that they’ve included in SP2. You can find the links to some of the blogs at the end of the post.
In the next few days we will also invite a select set of Office enterprise customers to a private SP2 beta. From these customers we hope to gather great feedback about the service pack, including areas that we’ll need to improve upon before we release it to the general public. Based on the success of the SP2 beta program and customer needs, we will certainly evaluate whether to expand this in the future.
I have been testing office 2007 SP2 beta for the past 2 months or so and indeed they have improved a lot specially in Outlook which loads much faster then the Office outlook 2007 SP1
Source- Technet Blog
Windows Sysinternals Updates: Autoruns v9.37, AccessChk v4.23
Autoruns v9.37: This update adds support for viewing the Local System account’s profile and adds a new option, Hide Microsoft and Windows Entries.
AccessChk v4.23: Changes the behavior of object manager name parsing to make enumerating the objects in an object manager directory more straight forward.
Source- Sysinternals blog
Microsoft Answers Launches Beta
There’s a new web site just for Windows Vista users: Microsoft Answers (beta). On this site, designed as sort of a cross between a Q&A answers service and an online tech support forum, you can get your computer questions answered or you can share your own knowledge with the community. To use the site, you can do one of three things: search the site, browse the top questions and answers, or you can pose a new question to the community:
The site has the same clean and simplistic design that we’ve come to expect from all the new Microsoft services, like Windows Live for example. Thanks to this aesthetic, Microsoft Answers is very easy to use.
Why This is Awesome
Until now, getting computer help has meant searching the web for keywords only to stumble upon tech support forums where answers are often hit-or-miss (or sometimes even answered by very unhelpful trolls!). To get actual support from Microsoft professionals, the only other options has been delving into the more I.T.-friendly sites from Microsoft like TechNet. But with Microsoft Answers, getting help finally has a consumer-friendly face…and it’s staffed by actual Microsoft employees! Really! If you browse to this page and click on any of the folks listed under “Meet the Microsoft Answers Team,” you’ll see that that they are listed as Microsoft employees. That should certainly make you feel more comfortable about the quality of answers you receive.
If you end up asking a question, you don’t have to keep returning to the web page to see if it’s been answered. Instead, you can subscribe to your question to get automatically updated via your browser or email program (or RSS reader, of course!). How convenient.
If you have any burning computer questions, you should check out Microsoft Answers and see if they can help.
Source- Channel 10 Blog
Download System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 Service Pack 1
DPM 2007 SP1 maintains DPM 2007 as the new standard for Windows backup and recovery by introducing new workload capabilities, performance enhancements, features and options.
New workload capabilities include host-level and guest-level protection for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server. DPM SP1 also enables protection of SQL Server 2008, Windows SharePoint Services and SQL Server mirrored databases, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 indexes, and Exchange Standby Cluster Replication (SCR). DPM SP1 also enhances Windows SharePoint Services catalog backup performance.
DPM 2007 with SP1 can protect data across multiple Active Directory® forests (with two-way trust) as well as Hyper-V and file data stored locally on the DPM server. DPM SP1 also bundles features introduced in previous updates such as Windows Server 2008 System State and SQL Server 2008 protection, tape library sharing, and improved tape utilization.
Installing DPM SP1 adds functionality relevant to the new Data Protection Client Management License offering. This offering provides existing DPM Client protection at a preferred price.
With DPM SP1, DPM 2007 provides an integrated approach for backing up DPM data to the cloud. This new option is delivered in conjunction with a solution provider that provides a backup and recovery service in the cloud specifically designed to support DPM. To enable backup to the cloud, in DPM Administrator Console, go to “Manage online protection” in the Protection task area.
For release details for DPM SP1, please refer to Knowledge Base article KB959605: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=137147.
DPM SP1 Release Notes can be found at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=135756.
For detailed information on features available in SP1, please visit http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=132612.
Download the 32 bit version here and 64 bit version here
