Posts Tagged ‘Beta Product’

Windows Server 2012 Essentials Release Candidate available for download now

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2012

Windows Server 2012 Essentials aka the next generation of what was SBS, is now available for download from Microsoft.  They announced the RC release here overnight.

I’ve been doing quite some testing with this and it shows some real promise as a product for what could be something wonderful.  The biggest concern I have now with the product is the pricing for those that wish to grow above 25 users or those that wish to have an onpremise Exchange server rather than use a cloud hosted solution.

Check it out and see whats new and changed in this.  It’s going to be the Microsoft product if you wish to support SMB clients moving forward.

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Windows 8 Release Preview is out of the oven

Friday, June 1st, 2012

Come and get it… Microsoft today released the final public preview of Windows 8.  You can get yours here.

Windows 8 has the following minimum system requirements, which basically means any PC sold over the last 3-4 years can run it.

Additional requirements to use certain features:

Bear in mind, this is still beta product and you don’t want to go running it in a production environment without full vendor support.

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My Windows 8 Server keeps crashing…

Monday, April 9th, 2012

Sounds pretty horrific doesn’t it.  One of my servers I’ve got here is running the Windows 8 Server Developer Preview version and this morning, it started to spontaneously reboot every 2 hours.  This worried me initially as it has been 1000% rock solid since it’s installation.  I dug into the event logs and the first thing I noticed was that it happened every 2 hours without fail.  That told me it was something scheduled.  I did some more digging and found that in fact it was a scheduled expiration of Windows 8 Server Developer Preview that was due to expire on April 8th (ok it’s April 9th here in Australia, but you get my point).

This Microsoft KB here also shows how to get a hotfix via Windows Update that will extend the expiration date through to Jan 15, 2013 – far longer than I need.  In fact, next week I’m reinstalling this system with the latest Windows Server 8 beta, so it won’t be an issue.  Installing this hotfix however got around the issue for me for the moment.

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How can I remove the Internet Explorer 9 beta?

Monday, September 20th, 2010

Ok – I’ve had my play with the Internet Explorer 9 beta and whilst it seems to be great and all, my computer has had strange lockups and 100% CPU utilisation that began since I installed it.  I attempted to remove Internet Explorer 9 beta but it was not present in the Programs and Features section.

To remove Internet Explorer 9 beta, you need to

  1. Start > Control Panel > Programs and Features
  2. Select the Installed Updates from the left hand pane
  3. You will find Windows Internet Explorer 9 on the list of installed updates. 
  4. Select it and then select the Uninstall option.

The removal process needs a reboot but it’s all good after that.  Interestingly after I removed Internet Explorer 9, my problems went away… I’ll need to reinstall it in more controlled circumstances and do more testing.

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Internet Explorer 9 Beta Available

Saturday, September 18th, 2010

If you’ve not heard it yet, there is a public beta for Internet Explorer 9.  I’ve downloaded it onto my laptop and am testing right now.  First tests show it to be faster… much faster than IE 8.  It makes my website seem “prettier” when you compare them side by side to the older Internet Explorer 8.  I’m sure it’s doing something to the fonts but I’ve not yet figured out what or why.

Anyway – it’s in beta, so be warned you might have problems.  You need to test this out with all the normal websites and applications that you use in business.  Get into it and download it from here

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SBSv7 and SBS Aurora Videos online

Friday, July 30th, 2010

With the upcoming beta for SBS v7 and SBS Aurora, Microsoft have released a number of videos that give you more of an idea of what is inside each product.  You can check out the videos below.  Make sure you register for the beta program here to be able to play with the new products before they are released.

Still no name on what they will call SBSv7 – so for now I’m calling it SBS 2008 R2 as it seems to fit in the MS naming range the best.  Microsoft will in due course announce the proper names for both of these new products.

 

Becky Ochs talks about Aurora

 

Michael Leworthy talks about Aurora


Get Microsoft Silverlight

 

Beck Ochs talks about SBS v7

 

And to give you an idea about who Becky Ochs is check out her biography here.

 

Once the public beta is out there, I’ll be recording a number of my own videos on these two new products so you can get my real world spin on it :-)

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Un-Vail the beta now!

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

I’m prevented from talking publicly about the next version of Microsoft Server products, but now that Microsoft have announced the public beta of Windows Home Server aka Vail, I can at least talk about it :-)

I would HIGHLY recommend that ALL SMB IT Professionals look closely at the Vail beta.  Why?  Well think about the move to the cloud for many clients and about how Vail might well fit into the smaller client environments, allowing them central control over their files, backups of machines and so on.  Vail is something Microsoft have been working on for some time and I can see how we might use this technology in our current client environments.  Sure it does not have Active Directory, but honestly – when did you last use Group Policy to do anything meaningful in a 10 workstation network?

Get onto the beta TODAY here

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