• Top 6 Replacements for Windows Notepad http://snurl.com/2zz6w I tried to replace Notepad alredy several times, but I never succeeded somehow #
• Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and Application Virtualization 4.5 in Q4 2008 http://snurl.com/2zz8k VMM 2008 beta works fine. #
• VMware: Windows will be killed by virtual appliances. http://snurl.com/2zz9j Did anyone count how often Windows has been killed already? #
• Vista SP1 available on WSUS. WSUS team blog discusses the different packages. http://snurl.com/2zzb6 #
• Ready or Not, VMware, Here Comes Hyper-V. Nice review about Hyper-V on eWeek. http://snurl.com/2zzcn #
• Spammers Choose GMail. Google’s CAPTCHA system has been cracked. http://snurl.com/2zzd8 Expect more SPAM on your servers. #

The post entitled “Five Reasons Why VMware Virtualization is Better than Microsoft Hyper-V” on DABCC is already more than two weeks old. Perhaps I misunderstood some of the assertions in the article, but it seems to me that there are quite a few mistakes in it. I googled the topic to see if I had missed some essential news about Hyper-V; however, I wasn’t able to find anything that contradicts my view. So I decided to blog about it now because I am quite puzzled by the article’s arguments. Maybe you can tell me what I misunderstood.

I will reproduce the heading of DABCC article and sometimes a quote from Douglas Brown’s arguments, and add my comments afterwards.

1. Hyper-V is marketed as free but really isn’t.

Yeah it’s $28 bucks but that’s on top of a Windows 2008 License paid in full.

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Submitted by Jacob Beneke - Blog: OS Fanatic

From the project website.

UBCD4Win is a bootable recovery CD that contains software used for repairing, restoring, or diagnosing almost any computer problem. Our goal is to be the most complete and easy to use free computer diagnostic tool. Almost all software included in UBCD4Win are freeware utilities for Windows®. Some of the tools inlcuded are “free for personal use” copies so users need to respect these licenses. A few of the tools included in UBCD4Win are paid for and licensed software owned by UBCD4win. On occasion we work with software companies/authors for permission to include their software in our download or have requested their software better support PE.

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The Windows Server 2003 and Server 2008 Shutdown Event Tracker is a little like the UAC prompts. It gets on my nerves with a prompt whenever I have to reboot a server. What comment do you usually enter in the Shutdown Event Tracker? My favorite comment is “a” because it is the first character in the alphabet. You can disable this prompt easily with Group Policy or locally with gpedit.msc.

Shortly after this feature was first introduced, I always tried to think of a reasonable comment. But I have never needed to look up the reason why a server had to be rebooted. The problem is that Windows servers have to be rebooted so often, that it doesn’t matter anyway. However, I am sure this feature makes sense in some environments.

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Submitted by Darren Mar-Elia - Blog: The GPOGuy Group Policy Blog

SDM Group Policy Refresh Cmdlet is the PowerShell version of my Group Policy remote refresh utility. The PowerShell version has many of its options, but leverages PowerShell to trigger remote Group Policy refreshes on systems on your network. It allows you to send options like /force and /sync and also lets you provide alternate credentials when connecting to the remote system. And because it is based on PowerShell you can easily pass a list of computer names through an import of a CSV file.

GP Refresh PowerShell Cmdlet

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• Microsoft Active Directory Migration Tool version 3.1 is availabe for download. http://snurl.com/2wv4d #
• Save Windows 3.11. Ed Bott is right. It is not bloated and fast too. http://snurl.com/2waft #
• Cloud computing: 12 reasons to love it or leave it http://snurl.com/2wake #
• Microsoft Announces Software-Plus-Services Adoption on the Rise With Assistance From Hosting Providers http://snurl.com/2wam5 #
• Sysinternals Process Monitor v1.35 is ready for download. It seems this update only brings App-V support. http://snurl.com/2vnqw #
• Windows XP SP3 is on Windows Update. Use Windows Service Pack Blocker Kit if you don’t want it on your machines. http://snurl.com/2vnsy #
• Is Diane Greene leaving the sinking ship or was she fired? Former Microsoft exec becomes new VMware CEO http://snurl.com/2vo0h #
• TrueCrypt 6.0a is out: faster, create encrypted hidden operating system, system drive encryption on Vista and more. http://snurl.com/2vo4s #

Mary Joe Foley and Ed Bott blogged about Midori, which is supposed to be the code name of a new operating system, Microsoft is working on. As I understand their articles, we are not talking about Windows 8 or 9 here, but about something completely new, i.e., an OS built from scratch. Even though both journalists are known to have good connections to Microsoft insiders, they have little information on what Midori is all about:

• Midori is related to Singularity, a Microsoft research project that aims to build an operating system which is mostly written in managed code (C#). Only the lowest-level code is written in assembly language and C, and the hardware abstraction layer is programmed in C++. Singularity is easier to analyze and is supposed to have better performance.
• There is some speculation that Midori could be a revival of Cairo, a research project (1991–1996) into a new distributed and truly object-oriented operating system. To be honest, I have no idea what “distributed” and “object-oriented” could mean here. Perhaps this is just referring to the managed code I mentioned above.
• Midori might also have something to do with WinFS, which was the code name for a new file system based on relational databases. WinFS was one of the new features originally planned for Windows Vista. Maybe the reason why Microsoft had to drop this feature is because too many changes to the core OS would have been necessary.

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You probably know that you can record changes made to Active Directory and Group Policy objects by enabling auditing. But extracting the information that interests you can be quite cumbersome. You can use a more sophisticated event log management tool such as EventSentry or GFiEventsManager. However, if you just want to stay informed about which Active Directory objects have been changed, you might like NetWrix Active Directory Change Reporter.

There is a free and a commercial version. The limitations of the free version become obvious when you use the tool for the first time. There is a link to the commercial version at those spots where features have been cut. The main difference is that the free edition doesn’t allow you to see exactly when a certain object was changed and by whom. Thus, you will only be aware of the type of changes on a certain day. I think that this will often be sufficient. If you recognize a suspicious change, you can always check the security event log for more information.

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Two weeks ago I reviewed Symantec’s application virtualization solution Altiris Software Virtualization Solution (SVS). In that review I described how virtualized apps can be created, I explained the layer concept, and I outlined how layers can be activated locally or remotely via the command line. Symantec offers a more professional way to deploy such virtualized apps: the Altiris Streaming System. Streaming means that only those parts of an application that are actually required to run the functions accessed by the user are transmitted to the client.

Symantec purchased AppStream some month ago and renamed their streaming solution. It is a bit strange that the new name contains “Altiris,” because this is another company recently acquired by Symantec. It seems Symantec wants to keep the well-known Altiris brand alive. Like AppStream, Altiris Streaming System 5.2.2 allows you to stream not only virtualized Altiris applications (SVS apps), but also “conventional applications.” The corresponding packages have to be created with the Streaming Composer (a tool that comes with the Streaming System). There are three ways to package conventional apps, i.e. programs that are not virtualized. You can import an MSI file, track the application’s installation procedure, or create snapshots before and after the installation of the application. I won’t discuss streaming of conventional apps in this article because I want to focus on application virtualization in this series.

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According to Net Applications, the market share of Windows dropped from 93.34% in June 2007 to 90.89% in June 2008, representing a difference of 2.45%. Mac gained 1.91% in the same time period and now has a market share of 7.94%. Linux’s market share is 0.8%, which corresponds to a difference of 0.37%. Net Applications obtained this data by monitoring access to websites, thus we are specifically talking about market shares on desktops. According to the headlines of some news sites, the situation seems to be much more dramatic. Apple’s improvement corresponds to a growth of 32%, certainly a respectable success for Apple.

However, contrary to other commentators I am quite surprised that Windows did not lose more of its market share. There are two factors to consider here: first, Vista’s extremely bad image, and second, the hype regarding the iPod and the iPhone. In my opinion, one major reason for Apple’s advances with its operating system is related to the fact that many iPod and iPhone users learned about the existence of Apple in this way. If you love your white iPod, buying a white MacBook seems to be a natural decision.

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