Category Microsoft

Thanks to the MSPress Blog!

Our celebration of 25 years of publishing by Microsoft Press continues this month with two more free e-books available for the next week! These offers expire on May 27, 2009, so download the e-books today:

Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services Resource Kit, by Christa Anderson and Kristin L. Griffin with the Microsoft Presentation Hosted Desktop Virtualization Team (PDF, 38.0 MB). In-depth and comprehensive, this Resource Kit delivers the information you need to set up, deploy, and manage a Terminal Services farm using Windows Server 2008. For more information or to buy the print version of this title, visit the Microsoft Learning website.

The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention, by Marc McDonald, Robert Musson, and Ross Smith (PDF, 4.3 MB). This practical, hands-on guide captures, categorizes, and builds a process of best practices to help avoid creating defects during the development process—rather than fixing them after extensive analysis. For more information or to buy the print version of this title, visit the Microsoft Learning website.

Note: You will need to temporarily allow pop-ups in order to download the free e-books.

Here is the mail I will be sending to the folks who I send vouchers to.. :)

Microsoft Learning (and I:))  are pleased to offer an exclusive discount on your Microsoft Certification exam

Use the discount code below and pay only $25USD for your Microsoft Certification exam

To register for your exam visit: http://www.register.prometric.com This offer is only good until June 30^th, 2009 so be sure to act quick on this!

These exams have “Second Shot” built in, meaning if for whatever reason you do not pass the first time, you can use the same voucher for your second time at $0 cost.

If for whatever reason you find yourself unable to use the voucher you’re given, let me know immediately so it can be recycled to someone else who can use it!

Your voucher code is: VoucherCodeHere!

If you need any help finding resources to study, train and prepare for your exam, let me know and I can help you get access to those resources.

Thanks!

Christopher Kusek, CISSP
Technology Evangelist, Consultant
CISSP | MCSE* | NCSA* | NCIE* | CWUG

NetApp
630.362.1320 Mobile
Christopher.Kusek@NetApp.com
Use 50% Less Storage with NetApp

www.netapp.com/guarantee

P Please consider the environment before printing this message.

Yea, so this is the ‘format’ for the emails I’ll be sending… for what it’s worth :)

Here are the details as published in the CWUG Regular mailing:

Plan to spend the evening of Thurs, May 21st with a laptop, RC software and the most technical and talented group of IT Professionals gathered in one place.  We are gearing up for a Release Candidate Loadfest – bring a laptop, blank DVD and/or 4 gb (or higher) USB thumbnail drive and leave with either the Release Candidate of Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 (hopefully you are already running one of these today; learn ways to run the other version).  We’re planning a packed agenda of presentations – Microsoft’s Daniel Savage will present System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 and Microsoft’s Rob Nottoli will present Windows Server 2008 R2.  Attendees can join us at either the Microsoft Downers Grove or Chicago office.  Your registration is your entry into our biggest giveaways of the year (but you must be present at one of the meetings to win). Please share with your technical teams.

1. Event URL : http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032416349&Culture=en-US
Event Title : CWUG May Meeting Chicago. There is a restaurant open in the basement of the AON Center.  Food is not provided at this meeting.

2. Event URL : http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032416350&Culture=en-US
Event Title : CWUG May Meeting Downers Grove. Because there isn’t a restaurant open or conveniently located, food is provided.

5:00 – 5:30 Networking

5:30 – 6:00 Room Introductions

6:00 – 6:15 Meeting Kick Off

Session 1:  SCOM 2007 R2 Presentation

15 minutes: Break and Q&A for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

Session 2:  Windows Server 2008 R2

Giveaways are planned – one of which will be running the Release Candidate of Windows 7 (and another that could back up a PC running or in preparation of the Release Candidate).

Chris Urban’s book is out!  Announced at MMS 2009, Mastering System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2 is available at http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-047017367X.html.

CWUG’s Christopher Kusek has been “On The Bus” and is attending Tech Ed 2009 this week https://www.pkguild.com/

For all the Microsoft Partner Program participants, check out the US Central Region Partner Team’s Blog at http://blogs.technet.com/uspartner_centralregion/default.aspx and attend CWUG’s May meeting for some great partner opportunities in May and June.

Save the date for the biggest CWUG event of 2009 (yet….) – Thursday, May 21st.

The CWUG Crew

To take things a step further, I will also have Microsoft Certification Vouchers available for people looking to take an exam before June 30th, 2009!   The vouchers entitle you to two chances to take an exam for $25.00 total, which is just great!

There is a caveat around this, in order to use a voucher you have to actually use it, and for every one who takes an exam, you will be entered into a drawing for a special prize for taking advantage of your education and certification! :)

So, get ready for the fun and adventure on Thursday, and get your Certification hat on! Every one of you who takes it to bear has a good chance of winning a major prize!   See you Thursday! (Oh, and I’ll be in Downers Grove for whoever is counting/asking :))

I know there has been a lot of banter, talk and discussion around Windows 7, and the this, thats and the other.  Well, let me tell you.  Wow, it’s fricking easy.  So simple, your own mother can do it!   What? No, it can’t be that easy!

I’m a technical person, deeply technical.. so technical I’ll sometimes make things take many times longer than it should to get done, as I not only understand it in massive depth, but also try to make sure we’re subscribing to the simplest path to that solution, so it’s worth it for a little bit up front for long term viability.

Want to setup WIN7 on your own? Want it to be an easy journey? How about on a NetBook? I opt’d to go for this video.    I did find some great videos on edge.technet.net however, in the threads which followed, they frankly left too open to interpretation of people ‘confused’ of how it was done, and confusion is not what I seek.

So, instead I direct you to uniquefree who produced this video!  I followed it to see how viable it worked, 15 minutes later, I had a brand new NetBook running Win7.

So, props are given where they’re due.   No external app downloads required, if you have the iso extracted, just copy the files in the same fashion he advises with Xcopy and you’re done.  Install complete and ready to go.   Can’t go wrong!

The time is finally here! With Exchange 2010 on the horizon (Oh, and that I’m back from being out for three weeks… ) the time is finally here to finally be able to begin re-embracing Exchange

Incase you missed it, I’m a hardcore Exchange guy.  I first got into Exchange as a means to do certain functions which the mail systems at the time were unable to support, so I adopted the Exchange model in the Exchange 4.0 Timeframe (Oh, and MSMail but I won’t go there ;))

And for everyone who was ever involved in Exchange, you’ll know that like Star Trek Movies, there are good movies “Wow, that was amazing!” and there are bad ones “Wtf?! That was terrible! Oh, it’ must be an odd/even thing!”    We all experienced that with Windows versions too.  NT3.1 rocked, 3.5 sucked, 3.51 was decent, 4.0 was great, and in the Desktop Space.. Win95 was ‘eh’ win98 great, winME, WTF?! (And albeit I personally liked Vista, enough people seemed to have enough issues that it didn’t make it too technically feasible)

Well, these same rules did apply in star trek movie terms to Exchange (Yes, my very own beloved Exchange) whereby Exchange 4.0 was great (first…?) 5.0 was horrible.  5.5 was SOLID! Exchange 2000 was a nice intro, but Exchange 2003 was immaculate (for its needs) and Exchange 2007.  Well, lets just say, you’ll notice I haven’t talked about Exchange 2007 for the most part in the past 6 years.. Ever wonder if there was a reason for that?

So, it brings me great honor to say Exchange 2010 (E14) is going to be the rock which we all know it to be.    So like you, I will look forward to all the great solid things, like a management interface, configuration management.. things not being done as a SEVERE afterthought.  Pretty solid usability (Oh, and at no point have I ever disagreed with the UI/UX Experience, so my good friends in E2K7 UI/UX, none of this is a knock against you, you just had to ride the bad movie train ;))

Look out.. this blog may start to cover more Exchange related things again, considering most of my most frequently visited hits tend to be around messaging, an area I was forced out of by a terrible movie ;)