Michael Niehaus at myITForum.com

Directions from San Diego to Stockholm

Try asking Google Maps how to get from somewhere in the US to somewhere in Europe.  For example, San Diego to Stockholm:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&saddr=Stanford,+California,+United+States&daddr=KTH-hallen,+Stockholm,+Sweden&ie=UTF8&sll=44.590467,-45.351562&sspn=72.777899,141.328125&z=3&ll=48.341646,-52.207031&spn=69.041077,141.328125&om=1&layer=t

Be sure to pay attention to what they say to do once you're in Boston.

Live Search Maps (http://maps.live.com) tells me that it "cannot find a route for the locations you entered."  Obviously the correct answer, but not nearly as entertaining.

While we're looking at maps, here's where I work:

http://maps.live.com/?v=2&sp=Point.ry6mw14tp8gn_Microsoft%20Building%2018%20%28building%29%2c%20Redmond%2c%20Washington%2c%20United%20States___

The aerial views are amazing.  (Scroll towards the soccer fields - the one to the right has people on the field.)

BDD 2007 Overview Demo

A new BDD 2007 overview demo was posted to the web today, available at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/desktopdeployment/demos/index.html.  If you don't know what BDD 2007 is and want more information, check it out.

Going on vacation

I'll be on vacation from February 17th to February 25th.  I won't be checking e-mail or newsgroups.  I won't be available through instant messaging and won't be answering my phone.  So you can go an entire week without me polluting your inboxes :-)

Channel 9, Channel 10 - I detect a pattern

Some of you have probably seen or heard of the Channel 9 website at http://channel9.msdn.com (former home of Robert Scoble's podcasts from various groups around the Microsoft campus).  That web site, as part of MSDN, is developer focused.

Speaking of Channel 9, some of the people in my group (the Solution Accelerators Team) are featured in the most recent video posted this week.  Mike Danseglio, Jose Maldonado, and Kelly Hengesteg talk about the "Windows Vista Security Guide" (available for download from http://go.microsoft.com/?linkId=6118544) in the posting at http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=283191.

Enough about Channel 9 though.  While reading through a blog entry, available at http://gartenblog.net/2007/02/15/from-analyst-to-evangelist-lets-get-it-started, from Juniper/Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg's jump to becoming a new "enthusiast evangelist" at Microsoft, I saw a reference to another web site that I hadn't seen called Channel 10.

So what exactly is Channel 10?  Think of it as the technical enthusiast's site - where Channel 9 focuses on developer topics, Channel 10 can focus on (as they describe it) "passionate digital citizens reaching out to enthusiasts around the global".  Visit http://on10.net to see more.

BDD 2007 Released

See Manu Namboodiri's announcement on the Windows Vista blog for the full details.

For those of you who tested out the beta and release candidate versions of BDD 2007 and provided feedback, thank you for assistance.

BDD 2007 Release Candidate 1 Now Available

Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is now available for download on Microsoft Connect. BDD 2007 provides end-to-end guidance and automation for large scale deployment of Windows Vista and the 2007 Office System.

BDD 2007 RC1 is feature complete and has been updated to support the released version of the User State Migration Toolkit (USMT) 3.0. BDD 2007 RC1 includes a new version of the standalone task sequencer derived from System Center Configuration Manager 2007. Documentation is now complete and has also released to web at: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/desktopdeployment/bdd/2007/default.mspx.

This release supports Windows Vista and Windows XP imaging and deployment. For more information, please see the Release Notes included with BDD 2007 RC1.

Where to Find BDD 2007

BDD 2007 RC1 is available as an open beta download, visit http://connect.microsoft.com and navigate to the Downloads page for the "Business Desktop Deployment 2007 (RC1) for Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system" program. Dependent tools such as the Windows AIK and USMT3 are downloaded from the Workbench.

Please send your comments and feedback to cisfdbk@microsoft.com or through the Connect site.

Feel free to forward this mail to anyone who may be interested.

Thank you for participating in the Business Desktop Deployment 2007 (RC1) for Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system program

BDD Team

Solution Accelerators - Management and Infrastructure

The Gartner blog

Michael Silver of Gartner posted an interesting blog entry today about Windows Vista and Office 2007:

http://vista.blog.gartner.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1591

It addresses a topic that was active on the MSSMS list today:  when will Vista ship. While he doesn't get into exact dates either, it does at least acknowledge that it will be sooner than Gartner originally predicted

The Gartner blog on Windows Vista (the posting above is from it) is the Gartner blog I find most interesting:

http://vista.blog.gartner.com/blog/index.php?blogid=19

But they do have quite a few others available too:

http://weblog.gartner.com/weblog/weblogIndex.php

TechNet webcast on Friday, September 29

Interested in deploying Windows Vista or the 2007 Office system?  You can listen and watch my TechNet webcast Friday, September 29.  The details:

So what am I going to be doing this evening?  Why, creating the demos that I need to be delivering tomorrow

BDD 2007 Beta 2 is now available

We've been busy adding capabilities into BDD 2007 Beta 2, now available for download.  See the full announcement below.

-Michael Niehaus
 BDD 2007 Developer
 Systems Design Engineer
 Core Infrastructure Solutions
 mniehaus@microsoft.com

BDD 2007 Beta Updated for Windows Vista RC1

Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007 Beta 2 is now available for download on Microsoft Connect. BDD 2007 provides end-to-end guidance and automation for large-scale deployment of Microsoft® Windows Vista™ and the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

BDD 2007 Beta 2 has been updated to support Windows Vista RC1 and now includes guidance and automation for Zero Touch Installation (ZTI) using Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 as well as image creation of Microsoft Windows® XP desktop images.

BDD 2007 Beta 2 extends Beta 1 with the following key features:

• Zero Touch Installation (ZTI) using SMS 2003 (requires OSD Update build 3726) in addition to Lite Touch Installation (LTI) when SMS 2003 is not in place.
• Windows XP desktop image creation.
• x64 hardware (running Windows XP or Windows Vista).
• BDD Workbench installation of the Windows AIK during first use.
• Windows Deployment Services images for Refresh, Replace, New, and Upgrade scenarios.
• BDD Workbench now builds the set of files needed for SMS 2003 OS Deployment Feature Pack package creation.
• Office 2007 deployment is integrated into the BDD Workbench to build the source share, create, and populate the application selection screens.
• New OS source move feature—faster than copy when adding a new OS to Workbench and the source is the same drive—primarily added to enhance demos and training.
• Application grouping with dependency checking.
• Product ID key handling for Windows XP and Windows Vista deployment scenarios.
• Removable media deploy points and better filtering to reduce media size.
• Fewer restrictions on version mixing of newer WAIK and Vista releases.  Version checks now performed and detected issues are displayed.
• User State Migration Tool (USMT) update for Windows Vista RC1.

This Beta release of BDD 2007 is not feature complete; some documents in this release are legacy documents from BDD 2.5 and are currently receiving updates for Windows Vista. Release versions of BDD 2007 will add complete documentation and support for Windows XP image deployment, language pack deployment using ZTI and multiple partition handling. For more information, please see the Release Notes included with BDD 2007 Beta 2.

Where to Find the Accelerator

BDD 2007 Beta 2 is part of the Windows Vista Tech Beta and TAP programs. It is also available as an open beta download.

Visit http://connect.microsoft.com and apply for the Business Desktop Deployment 2007 (Beta) for Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system program.

Please send your comments and feedback to cisfdbk@microsoft.com.

At WPC 06 in Boston

I'm in Boston again this week, at the World-Wide Partner conference, WPC 06.  I'll be at the IT Solutions booth (close to the Windows Mobile display), so stop by and say "hi".

At TechEd Boston this week

Anyone attending TechEd Boston this week?  It's a huge conference, with about 10,000 attendees discussing all things Microsoft.  The event kicked off last night with a keynote from 7:00 to 9:30pm, and continues through Friday.

I have three presentations this week (CLI310, OFC315, CLI413) focused around BDD, Windows Vista, Office 2007, and Zero Touch Installation.  Our team also has a booth at the exhibit hall for "TechNet IT Solutions"; if you're at the show, stop by and say hi.

Interested in testing Windows Vista Beta 2 or Office 2007 Beta 2?

More information on SMS 2003 Desired Configuration Monitoring

You've probably seen the announcements on the SMS 2003 Desired Configuration Monitoring add-on solution:

http://blogs.technet.com/tmintner/archive/2005/11/23/415018.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/eileen_brown/archive/2006/01/19/sms_dcm_guides.aspx

http://marcusoh.blogspot.com/2005/11/sms-2003-desired-configuration.html

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/cits/mo/sman/dcm.mspx

One of the developers of the DCM solution has posted some additional information and some short samples on his blog, available at http://blogs.msdn.com/saikodi/.  Check it out, and feel free to post comments and suggestions on additional information you would like to see posted about the solution.

World-Wide Partner Conference in Minneapolis

Anyone attending the Microsoft World-Wide Partner Conference (http://www.microsoft.com/partner/events/wwpartnerconference/) in Minneapolis this week?  If so, be sure to look me up.  I'll be at the conference until mid-day Saturday.

Cool new tool: Shared Computer Toolkit

Don't you wish you could let someone use a computer and do whatever they wanted to it, knowing that you could throw away all of the changes that were made?  Sure, you could do that using something like Virtual PC or VMware, but that's not really seamless.  It's hard to hide the virtual machine from the user.

There is another solution: the Shared Computer Toolkit, now in the final beta testing cycle.  You can find more information about it at http://www.microsoft.com/sharedaccess.  What exactly does it do?  There are three main components:

• Windows Restriction Tool.  Think of this like “group policy without AD“.  You can define, through a GUI, what a local user can and cannot do on the machine.
• Windows Accessibility Tool.  Also similar to “group policy without AD“, although for appearance-related settings rather than policy-related settings.
• Windows Disk Protection Tool.  You can configure the system so that all changes made by some or all users of the computer are temporary.  They are written to a separate “scratch“ partition on the disk and can be discarded when the computer is rebooted.

The Windows Disk Protection Tool is the coolest part.  Imagine shared lab computers, packaging computers, library computers, training computers, etc.  Maybe right now you either refresh them after every use, or just wait until something breaks and then start clean.  Imagine if all it took to get them “clean“ again was a quick reboot.