Stories by: J. Peter Bruzzese

Microsoft has kindly extended its XP "downgrade" program for OEMs by another six months. Rather than appreciating the extension, some people have chosen to mock Microsoft and call for the curtain to close on Windows Vista once and for all.

Give an administrator a command-line tool ... and watch how quickly that admin searches the Internet for a GUI counterpart. But what if the CLI (command-line interface) is the only way to accomplish certain administrative tasks? Well, you might balk. That is why I stick with Windows; it has plenty of GUI interfaces.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the well-known (at least in the geek world) computer flick "WarGames," wherein a 1980s computer wiz accidentally connects via modem to the WOPR (War Operation Plan Response) mainframe, a supercomputer designed to conduct World War III scenarios. In doing so, he kicks off a series of events that bring the world to the brink of nuclear holocaust. Perhaps you recall the various times when, even in the underground NORAD bunker, there were speakers connected that allowed the computer program Joshua to read aloud. "Shall we play a game?" is a line we'll never forget.

The Microsoft home page caught my eye with an invitation to "Test Drive" Windows Vista. Now, I don't need to test it out; I've been working with it for the past two years. But I was curious about the quality of this online offer with a browser interface.

You may have heard of the Mojave Experiment: Microsoft took a bunch of XP users who were afraid to move toward Vista because of all the negative press it had received. In an attempt to reverse their negative feelings, the company sat them down in front of the latest desktop OS -- but didn't tell them it was Vista. And, lo, the people said they like it!

Open-source applications are available free of charge,, but that doesn't mean they won't cost you in other ways, a point I addressed last week. Without a vendor guaranteeing support and app stability, you may find that you need to invest countless hours learning how to work with all the little nuances involved in getting the open-source application up and running. Research, forums, installs, failures, troubleshooting; the time adds up, and as we all know, time is money.

Hyper-V lives! Is Microsoft ready to prove it has what it takes in the virtualization arena? As I mentioned last week, Sun is on board: Read this quote from Sun's Senior Director of xVM, Vijay Sarathy. However, the company challenged Microsoft to answer some serious questions about its virtualization technology -- such as how Hyper-V can compete with the open source Xen-based alternatives and whether a Windows-only virtualization technology can hack it in today's increasingly heterogeneous datacenters.

The buzz about Hyper-V, Microsoft's entry into the world of serious server virtualization, has been building for quite some time. This past week at Microsoft's mammoth North America TechEd 2008 conference held in Orlando, Fla., there was a focus on what Hyper-V (in Server 2008) was really all about and how it compares with VMware's ESX Server.

The new Office servers I've discussed in recent weeks are diverse, opening up a wealth of opportunities: online forms, anywhere/anytime collaboration, advanced presence detection and VoIP technology, project management solutions, business intelligence with digital dashboards, and high-caliber search abilities. Microsoft has certainly granted users several computing capabilities through the Office suite.

You've heard of a Microsoft Certified Professional. Perhaps at one time you've even dreamed of being a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE). You took one exam after another at a Microsoft testing center to reach this honored and prestigious pinnacle, then battled your way to prove to your employers (or future employers) that you had what it takes to administrate their Microsoft-oriented network.

Many admins don't know it, but SharePoint has two distinct faces: one quite costly, the other free. The pricey version is Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, or MOSS for short. The free one is called Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), currently at Version 3.0.