It seems that some companies that are considering alternatives to upgrading or window shopping with Exchange 2010. For this group, it can be assured that Exchange 2010 offers significant improvements in business continuity, business resilience, and embraced adaptation of virtualization. However, this is only the beginning. Here are the reasons a company should seriously consider a migration to Exchange 2010:

Continuous replication

Gartner research shows that companies lose approximately $10,000 an hour due to email downtime. Exchange 2010 enables continuous replication of data, which can significantly minimize service interruptions and essentially save a company from such a loss. In addition, Microsoft estimates that the costs of deploying Exchange 2010 can be recovered within six months. This is due in part to the improvements in business continuity.

Virtualization

Exchange 2010 supports virtualization, allowing for significant consolidation. Server virtualization is not only just a cost reducer. Virtualization will also help in rapidly reducing expenditure related to maintenance, power, cooling, and server footprint space. It also improves business continuity. In a virtualized world, when a virtual machine is down, computers can run on another virtual machine with little or no downtime.

Cost savings on storage

According to Microsoft, Exchange 2010 has approximately 70% less disk I/O (input/output) than Exchange 2007. For this reason, Microsoft recommends moving away from SAN storage solutions and adopting less expensive direct attached storage. This translates to real and significant cost savings.

Larger mailboxes

With the ability to use larger SATA or SAS disks with Exchange 2010 environment for the underlying mailbox database architecture, larger mailbox sizes will become the norm. However, the relative cost to support such mailboxes does not significantly affect the overall cost of service.

Voicemail transcription

Unified Messaging, which was first introduced with Exchange 2007, promoted the idea of a “universal inbox”. This is a place where email and voice mail are available in a single location and consequently accessed from Outlook 2007 (or later), OWA, Outlook Voice Access (access from any phone), and/or Windows Mobile 6.5 (or later devices).

A new feature to Exchange 2010, Voicemail Preview, sees text-transcripts of voicemails being received, saving the time it takes to listen to the message. Upon reception of a voice message, the receiver can glance at the preview and decide whether it is an urgent matter. This improvement along with others such as managing voice and email from a single directory (using AD), offer companies the opportunity to discard third-party voicemail solutions in favor of Exchange 2010.

Help desk cost reduction

Exchange 2010 has potential to reduce help desk costs by enabling users to perform common tasks that would normally require a help desk call. Role-based Access control (RBAC) allows delegation based on job function. When this is coupled with the Web-based Exchange Control Panel (ECP), it enables users to assume responsibility for distribution lists, update personal information held in AD, and track messages. This helps reduces the call volumes placed on the help desk, with obvious financial benefits.

Higher System Availability

Exchange 2010 builds upon the continuous replication (CCR) technologies first introduced in Exchange 2007. The technology is far simpler to deploy than Exchange 2007, as the complexities of a cluster install are taken away from the administrator. It incorporates easily with existing mailbox servers and offers protection at the database level with Database Availability Groups rather than the server level. By supporting automatic failover, this feature allows for faster recovery times than in previous versions of Exchange. This is definite leaps and bounds over the days of ancient Exchange 5.5 disaster recovery practices.

Native archiving

A large gap in previous Exchange offerings was the need for a native managed archive solution. This in turn saw the proliferation of unmanaged PSTs, creative use of Public Folders, or the expense of deploying third-party solutions. All of these solutions, while technically viable, increased the overall messaging cost significantly. With Exchange 2010, and in particular the upcoming arrival of SP1 this year, a basic archiving suite is now available out-of-the-box.

Running on-premise or in the cloud

Cloud computing is big, really BIG, and certainly has its own set of cost saving and advantages for small to large companies. Exchange 2010 offers companies the option to run Exchange on-premise or in the cloud. This means that some mailboxes can reside in the cloud and some on locally held Exchange resources. This offers companies very competitive rates for mailbox provision from cloud providers for key mailboxes, in addition to the ability to decide how much control to relinquish by still hosting most mailboxes on local servers.

Easier calendar sharing

With Federation for Exchange 2010, employees can share calendars and distribution lists with external recipients easier that ever before. Exchange 2010 allows them to schedule meetings with partners and customers as if they belonged to the same organization. This might not appeal to every company, but those investing in collaboration technologies will see the true value Exchange 2010 offers.

1. Improved Picture & Video editing – Powerpoint 2010 will have improved and more advanced picture and video editing features. Enhanced image and video editing – Powerpoint have been improved and more advanced image and video editing features. You can perform basic editing and add effects like trimming, fades, reflections to photos & videos. You can perform basic editing and adding effects such as cropping, fades, the comments to the photos and video.
2. Connect & co-authoring – Word 2010, PowerPoint 2010 and OneNote 2010 lets you work on a file with multiple people simultaneously from different locations to brainstorm ideas, control versions better and meet deadlines faster. Connection and co-author – Word 2010, PowerPoint 2010 and OneNote 2010 lets you work in a file with multiple people simultaneously from different locations to discuss ideas, better version control, and meet deadlines faster.
3. Office on Web – Now You Can Microsoft work on Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote documents online using Office documents on web and access from phone or internet connected computer. Office on the web – now you can work on Microsoft Word, excel, PowerPoint and OneNote online with Office on the Web and access documents from the phone or internet connected computer.
4. Manage large amount of emails – Outlook 2010 improves the tracking and managing of e-mail conversations. Managing large numbers of emails – Outlook 2010 improves monitoring and management of e-mail conversations. It compress your long e-mail threads into a few conversations that can be categorized, filed, cleaned up within or ignored a few clicks. Long strings is compress your e-mail within a couple of conversations that can be sorted, filed, ignored or cleaning in a couple of clicks.
5. New analysis & visualization features – With new data analysis and visualization features in Excel 2010, you can easily track trends and highlight important data. New analysis and visualization features – With new data analysis and visualization features in Excel 2010, you can easily track and highlight important data.
6. Videos in Powerpoint presentations – With PowerPoint 2010, you can embed videos within and personalize your presentation. Videos in PowerPoint presentations – With PowerPoint 2010, you can integrate and customize videos within your presentation. The embedded video file can be customized by adding video triggers and styles directly within PowerPoint 2010. The embedded video file you can customize by adding triggers and video styles directly in PowerPoint 2010.
7. Store ideas & notes – With Microsoft OneNote 2010, you get the ultimate digital notebook for tracking, organizing and sharing your text, photos, and video and audio files. Store ideas and notes – With Microsoft OneNote 2010, receives the digital notebook of choice for monitoring, organize and share your text, photos and video files and audio.
8. Communicate & share – Business users can use the Office Communicator presence icon in when co-authoring in Word 2010, PowerPoint 2010 and Outlook 2010 to see who else is authoring a file at the same time. Communicate and Share – Business users can use the icon for Office Communicator presence when co-authoring in Word 2010, PowerPoint 2010 and Outlook 2010 to see who is the author of a file simultaneously.
9. Faster & easy menu access – The Microsoft Office Backstage view replaces the traditional file menu, helping you quickly get to operations such as save, share, print and publish with just few clicks. Faster and easier access to the menus – the vision of Microsoft Office Backstage replacing traditional file menu, to help you get to such operations as save, share, print and publish, with a few clicks.
10. Access to work documents – Office 2010 gives you a familiar and intuitive experience across PCs, Smartphones and Web browsers so that you have the freedom to use the system from more locations and on multiple devices. Access to documents – Office 2010 offers a familiar and intuitive experience across PCs, Smartphones and Web browsers so that you have the freedom to use the system more places and on multiple devices.

So get ready. Microsoft Office 2010 is coming soon.

Overview

This will walk through the steps to create a bootable USB flash drive for the purpose of installing a Vista or Windows 7 OS.  These instructions assume that you have a computer with Windows Vista installed on it.

Requirements

• USB Flash Drive (4GB+)
• Microsoft Windows 7 DVD (you choose the W7 flavor)
• A computer running XP or Vista

Step 1- Format the Drive
The steps here are to use the command line to format the disk properly using the diskpart utility. [Be warned: this will erase everything on your drive. Be careful and be sure that you have already backed up any data off the USB that you may want to keep.]

1. Plug in your USB Flash Drive
2. Open a command prompt as administrator (Right click on Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt and select “Run as administrator”
3. Find the drive number of your USB Drive by typing the following into the Command Prompt window:
   diskpart
   list disk
   The number of your USB drive will listed. You’ll need this for the next step.  I’ll assume that the USB flash drive is disk 1.
4. Format the drive by typing the next instructions into the same window. Replace the number “1” with the number of your disk below.
   select disk 1
   clean
   create partition primary
   select partition 1
   active
   format fs=NTFS
   assign
   exit
   When that is done you’ll have a formatted USB flash drive ready to be made bootable.

Step 2 – Make the Drive Bootable 
Next we’ll use the bootsect utility that comes on the Vista or Windows 7 disk to make the flash drive bootable.  In the same command window that you were using in Step 1:

1. Insert your Windows 7 DVD into your drive.
2. Change directory to the DVD’s boot directory where bootsect lives (I will assume d:\)
   d:
   cd d:\boot
3. Use bootsect to set the USB as a bootable NTFS drive prepared for a Windows 7 image. I’m assuming that your USB flash drive has been labeled disk G:\ by the computer:
   bootsect /nt60 g:
4. You can now close the command prompt window, we’re done here.

Step 3 – Copy the installation DVD to the USB drive
The easiest way is to use Windows explorer to copy all of the files on your DVD on to the formatted flash drive.  After you’ve copied all of the files the disk you are ready to go.

Step 4 – Set your BIOS to boot from USB
This is where I must depend on you to handle, since every computer is different. Most BIOS’s though, allow you to hit a key at boot and select a boot option.

It is as simple as that! Until next time … Enjoy.

In all a very successful night. And above all, after talking for about 2.5+ straight …. I still had a voice left.

Till next time.

The following lists five reasons why Windows XP user might want to make the switch to Windows 7.

Security

The introduction of UAC and several other security components in Windows Vista was probably one of the most annoying experiences for users who switched from XP to Vista. While it did increase the security of the computer system it annoyed users to no end to see UAC prompts all the time. Windows 7 will still use UAC but with a reduced number of user prompts. A convincing reason why UAC is good are the monthly security patches and classifications that Microsoft releases. Many vulnerabilities are classified as critical for Windows XP systems but only as important on Vista systems.

It is quite possible to pimp Windows XP with third party applications to reach the same, or even a better level of security, than Windows 7 will provide out of the box but installing those solutions is usually left to computer geeks and those with the know how to do so. The average user installs security software and that’s usually it. Microsoft will supply Windows XP users with security patches until 2014 with a likely scenario that support gets extended a few years after that.

Hardware Compatibility

There are not many differences in hardware support between Windows XP and Windows Vista. The only notable difference that might affect users in the future is the support of Direct X 10 in Windows Vista while Windows XP users have only access to Direct X 9. While this is not a huge problem at the time being thanks to both game developers and hardware manufacturers it could become an issue in the coming years.

Direct X 10 compatible hardware was scarce when Direct X 10 came out. Even more scarce were the games that supported the new standard. This was largely because game developers did not want to spend resources in both Direct X 9 and Direct X 10 development and because video cards that were able to deliver good frame rates were practically not available. Windows 7 will ship with Direct X 11 which again will not be available for Windows XP users. With  the release of Windows 7, we will see a critical mass shifting to Direct X 10 and 11 compatible gaming which might leave Windows XP gamers behind. They probably can play the games but will face a different game experience.

Other new hardware standards and devices might not work with Windows XP in the future. Hardware developers will eventually stop producing drivers for Windows XP. While this surely will not happen in the next two years it is likely that this is going to happen eventually.

Design

Many users don’t like the default themes and designs of Windows XP. The users once again created a thriving scene of theme developers and operating system modifiers. This again was something for the hardcore users who knew how to patch system files to use different themes and such.

Windows 7 comes with a never seen before customizability. It ships with regional themes, dozens of wallpapers, sound schemes and other interface elements. Users can create their own themes easily and even save the themes to share it with friends and the global community.

The Windows 7 design looks more eye pleasing and 21st century like than that of Windows XP (at least for most beta users who are asked the question).

Speed and Performance

Windows 7 beats Windows XP performance wise. It boots faster, uses less system resources like cpu and computer memory while running, and add better performance for SSD devices which will become a huge part of the storage device market in the coming years. It beats Windows XP (and Windows Vista) fair and square in all performance related benchmarks.

New And Overhauled Features

Windows 7 adds several new features to the table. Some are not really aimed at a mass market like the multi-touch support, biometric devices or handwriting recognition. Several key elements have been overhauled, most notably probably the Windows taskbar which integrates many interesting new features. Many of the features that have been added make Windows 7 more attractive. Think of included system codecs to play divx movies or DVDs without the need for third party applications.

Conclusion

It is likely that the majority of Windows XP users will make the switch from their operating systems in the first two years after the release of Windows 7. It is without doubt possible to run Windows XP for a few years without major problems, but it will mean making sacrifices in the end when hardware and software support exclude the operating system more frequently. One thing seems to be clear at this point: Windows 7 will be a preferred choice for individual users and especially businesses. It has already received glowing praise from beta and release candidate testers as well as early adopters.

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/07/21/when-will-you-get-windows-7-rtm.aspx

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032422339&Culture=en-US

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032422341&Culture=en-US   

 In short, critical patch is a test and deploy scenario. However, the patch for Visual Studio, etc., needs to be THOROUGHLY test as it directly affects application code. It will definitely need involvement from development staff at the client level / client environments.