In this article, the analysts give recommendations Microsoft should follow to prevent collapsing of Windows. That’s interesting to see that some of their recommendations reaches some of my wishes stated in this post.

I’ve been using many Linux distributions (mainly Ubuntu) for over a year now and I’m getting more and more familiar with them. With the acquisition of a little NAS I have restructured my network and my home server. I took the opportunity to rebuild everything from scratch and now my server is running Ubuntu Server and my Windows Server is now a virtual machine. Nice but, what’s the relation with the title of the article? Well I could have done it using VMWare Server on a Windows host but I chose Ubuntu Server because its faster on my hardware. The longer Microsoft will take to answer market needs, the more irreversible market shares the competition will take. That ain’t bad since good competition brings innovation.

Another sign of Microsoft opening itself… Interesting to see that it will be easier for Java application to look more like native applications when running in Windows

Click here to read the article

Under Planning and architecture for Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft made available “advanced lectures” in video or white paper format (and sometimes both):

click here for Advanced lectures and white papers

ScottGu’s blog contains a nice post (again) about the upcoming Silverlight 2 with a sample application plus tutorial to demonstrate the concepts behind the product.

People are wondering if Silverlight is going to raise or die. In my opinion it will depend on the general acceptance by the developers and how big is the learning curve… I think it has a chance to stand up if Microsoft delivers what it says:

We will ship Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio tool support that enables great developer / designer workflow and integration when building Silverlight solutions.

Here is the link to ScottGu’s blog article

Microsoft as made the .NET framework source code available. The interesting part is that you can configure Visual Studio 2008 to support stepping into the .NET Framework’s code automatically while debugging.

Instructions on how to setup Visual Studio 2008 are available from Shawn Burk’s blog here:
Configuring Visual Studio to Debug .NET Framework Source Code

If you do not have Visual Studio 2008 or you just want to download the code for viewing… well, you will need to wait:

from Shawn’s blog post:

10) Can I just download all of the code at once?
Not currently, but we are currently working on enabling this functionality in the future.

14) Can I point a web browser at the symbols URL and download the symbols directly?
No, you’ll get an HTTP 400 (Bad Request) response.

Here is a series of posts from ScottGu’s blog about the new ASP.NET MVC Framework.  That seems pretty interesting…

• Part 1 - Introduction
• Part 2 - URL Routing
• Part 3 - Passing ViewData from Controllers to Views
• Part 4 - Handling Form Edit and Post Scenarios

Here is a link to Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 training kit that contains a bunch of information, examples and labs (it’s about 120MB download).  Good to discover and try the new features of VS and the new framework.

Note: Check minimum system requirements first (only for labs).

Link: Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Training Kit

Here is an interesting serie of blog posts from Tobias to start learning Microsoft PowerShell:

• Day 1: Getting Organized
• Day 2: Writing Scripts and Translating VBScript
• Day 3: Discovering objects (COM, WMI & ADSI)
• Day 4: Ins and Outs of the Windows Registry
• Day 5: Using WMI
• Day 6: ADSI Connecting to Domains/Computers and Binding to Objects
• Day 7: Manage Users

Funny: The “Windows Genuine Validation Tool” recognized Linux Ubuntu as a Genuine Windows installation:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=475709

It is probably not easy to build a tool that would be able to perform this Genuine validation and be 100% accurate, and that makes me wonder if it is worth it.

I’d like Microsoft to change its strategy, drop the genuine validation tool, Windows activation and other strategies that slow down machines and exist only for the sake of protecting Microsoft against piracy. I’d like Microsoft to go back to its old strategy… one OS for desktop. Combine all editions of Vista into a single one where you can choose to install packages (ex: aero, business tools, multimedia tools, etc.). All that at a decent price of 100-150$ per PC. To compensate for the lost, you may have less pirates willing to spend their time just to “fight” Microsoft strategies. That may not be enough, so since the price is low, I’d agree that Microsoft charges annual subscription fees for accessing the Windows Update site and allowing automatic updates. For those who wouldn’t sign-up, they should wait for the next service pack.

With its millions, I’d like Microsoft to work on what is worth it, enhance its operating system and increase security, stability and interoperability. Stop reworking user interface, end users need to learn it again and again, that’s not going to help increase user performance (and ROI)… We knew Microsoft Office menus and options, now we have to re-learn them in Office 2007.

It is not hard to find where Windows needs enhancements:

• Make the shell easy for administrators to script tasks
• Make it easy to work using reduced privileges
• Allow more desktop customization
• …

But doing all that would be listening to their users… not their investors…