Windows Server 2008

The latest service pack for Windows XP continues to cause problems for users. According to an online user forum, the latest glitch in Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) causes problems with the remote desktop access feature of Windows Home Server.

Microsoft Friday confirmed that it has yanked parts of a backup feature from a major upgrade to its Windows Home Server software scheduled for release later this year.

Microsoft this week announced the immediate availability of pre-release versions of its upcoming Windows Essential Server Solutions for small to midsize companies, as well as pricing for the software bundles.

Microsoft said it plans to post four security updates next week, three of them "critical," to patch Windows, Word, Publisher and all of the company's anti-malware applications.

Microsoft Tuesday confirmed that its Hyper-V server virtualization technology is likely to ship up to a couple months ahead of the previously projected date.

It may look like Windows Vista. It shares the same code base as Vista. It even rolls in Vista's first Service Pack. But in terms of customer adoption plans, Windows Server 2008 is no Vista.

Don't say you weren't warned. Your 32-bit Windows applications are going the way of analog television: Unless they're upgraded, in the next few years they'll go dark.

Microsoft created an imaginary competitor to (Canadian coffee and donut chain) Tim Horton's this week as a way of demonstrating the kind of organization that might use its latest versions of Windows Server, SQL Server and Visual Studio.

Windows Server 2008, popularly known by its code name Longhorn, is a significant release for Microsoft and represents the result of a very long development cycle.

A standing complaint about Windows Server is its resource footprint. Those in IT just take as rote that it requires lots of memory, lots of CPU, and lots of disk to put any substantial services on the air with Windows Server 2003. I think it's safe to say that the typical x86 rack server's characteristics reflect the requirements of Windows Server. Microsoft's big OS has always been designed under the presumption that it will have a full physical server to itself.

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.