Ever had the feeling that Microsoft is scrambling to salvage what little it still can out of Windows Vista? While continuously claiming that its latest Windows client is not a failure, and pointing to the 140 million licenses sold as of March 2008, the Redmond company seems keen on demonstrating that it can pull the operating system out of the sinking sands of public opinion. In this regard, Service Pack 1 is indeed used as a floating device, but a tad of marketing on the side can’t possibly hurt, can it? The focus for the time being, as far as Microsoft is concerned, is business users. Traditionally slow to upgrade to a new Windows release, corporate clients are now looking at Windows XP SP3 and Windows 7 as alternatives to Vista upgrades. The software giant is working to push Vista SP1 down their throats even if XP SP3 continues to work, and despite the proximity of Windows 7. Read More»
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One of the most critical tasks in preparing a deployment of Windows Vista is to test the compatibility of your applications. Many applications that run perfectly under Windows XP simply do not run on Windows Vista. Since you don’t want to spend time and money to deploy Vista if none of your users are able to run their applications afterward, it is absolutely imperative to test each application ahead of time.
What’s the best way to test?
Of course, you still have to make sure to test all of the applications in your organization. Although it’s tempting, you don’t necessarily have to set up a workstation and install a copy of every application your company uses (not at first, anyway). Unless you are very thorough in your testing, installing all those applications onto a workstation isn’t a good testing method for of couple of reasons. Read More»
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Windows Preinstallation Environment (PE) 2.0 is a slimed down version of Windows (hence all the MiniNT references) that used to be the exclusive domain of OEM’s providers. Microsoft has wisely chosen to offer this to the masses as part of the Windows AIK. USB keys can be found just about anywhere these days for next to nothing. Combine the capabilities of WinPE with the portability of a USB key and you just made a very powerful troubleshooting, imaging, and data recovery tool. Here is a quick step by step on how to do just that: Read More»
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