Vista, Longhorn and Office 2007

These days everyone at Microsoft is very busy and so they are keeping us busy as well.
Yesterday I downloaded and installed Windows Vista Beta 2, Windows Longhorn server Beta 2 and Office 2007 Beta 2.

Now, the testing can begin.
It all looks very good at first sight. The Vista Aero Glass is nice, Internet Explorer 7 has some great features (tabbed pages - search - rss feeds) and for the gadget freaks there is the Sidebar: here you can add all kinds of gadgets like a clock, a slideshow, postits, ...
But of course there is much more to Vista than good looks. So in the next weeks we'll take a closer look at all the exciting new stuff Microsoft has to offer.

Office is nice too, by the way. I think it's going to take some getting used to, but at the first glimpse I like it.

Everyone seems to be very caught up in the Vista mania, and I feel that noone is ever talking about Longhorn server. I know that it's still a long time before the server is released and Vista will be available a lot sooner, but still, it's worth looking at the server as well.

And for all the Unix and Linux fans and everyone else that is fond of commands, when you install Longhorn Server, you can choose to install the full package (Windows as we know it) or you can install the LonghornserverCore only. This is a basic server that can only host a limited number of server roles and after installation all you have is a command prompt (well, 2 actually, that's even better!)!

Over the next days and weeks, I'll be checking out Vista and Longhorn and I'll let you know what I find!

ABDE

Last week, someone asked me if it was possible to show only the folders that users actually have permissions on in Windows.
This is a comment most Novell people have as well, since Novell automatically only shows folders that you can access.
And you must admit that it is annoying to see an entire list of directories, but when you click on them, you receive "Access Denied" over and over again.

Well the solution came with SP1 of Windows Server 2003. One of the features listed is called Access-based Enumeration.
There is not much to explain, by enabling Access-based enumeration, users will only see those folders they have permissions on. Simple.

The only problem is that SP1 doesn't really provide an interface to enable this feature, only the API is available.
Luckily for us, in the mean time Microsoft has made both a graphical and a commandline tool available for Abde. You can download these tools here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=04A563D9-78D9-4342-A485-B030AC442084&displaylang=en

So from now on, you can make sure that a user will only see the folders he/she actually has access to!

First post

Today I started my own blog, like so many others out there.
It is surprisingly simple to do anything on the internet nowadays and so was setting up this blog.
The hardest thing I had to do was come up with a name.
That took me like 10 minutes, and as you can see, it is not that original.
But I've never been a very creative mind.

As a Microsoft trainer, I work with Microsoft products every day, and in this blog I will try to share the things I experience and learn with you.
The technologies I work with most are R2, Active Directory, DNS, Exchange and clustering.
And of course, Vista and Longhorn are also on my list.

See you tomorrow, for my first real post!

Note to Hans: I hope you're happy now and you'd better read my blog!