The January 2015 build of Windows 10 is now available for download for those who signed up for the Windows Insider program. If you’re not signed up, you should be – it’s free!
This release is labeled Build 9926. To learn what’s new in this release, go to the Windows 10 January Build blog page.
Please note: it does NOT include all the new features that were shown during the Windows 10 presentation on Wednesday.
Enjoy!
At the Windows 10 briefing event today (Jan-21-2015) they announced that Windows 10 would be a free upgrade to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users for the first year!!!
Read the specifics from Arstechnica
And here is the link to the video of today’s presentation:
New Year’s arrived this morning with an email from Microsoft announcing that I have received the 2015 Microsoft MVP award for Small & Medium Businesses. This is my 12th consecutive year to receive this honor.
Dear Kevin Weilbacher,
Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2015 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Windows Server for Small and Medium Business technical communities during the past year.
On Thursday Dec 11, 2014 Microsoft released new updates for Exchange 2007, 2010, and 2013. Read more here.
However, an issue has been identified in the Exchange Server 2010 SP3 Update Rollup 8. The update has been recalled and is no longer available on the download center pending a new RU8 release. Customers should not proceed with deployments of this update until the new RU8 version is made available. Customers who have already started deployment of RU8 should rollback this update.
The issue impacts the ability of Outlook to connect to Exchange.
Please note: this issue only impacts the Exchange Server 2010 SP3 RU8 update, the other updates remain valid and customers can continue with deployment of these packages.
This is my 11th year as a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for the Windows Server Small & Medium Business group. Microsoft is hosting our annual conference for MVPs worldwide this week. I arrived into Seattle on Sunday afternoon, and that evening our group gathered for a great dinner and reception at Daniel’s Broiler located on the 21st floor of the Bank of America building in Bellevue.
Here’s a group photo from this event (I’m 7th from the right)
This week Microsoft announced that the next version of Windows would be called Windows 10. Many of us (myself included) wondered “why did they skip calling it Windows 9”?
Today I read of one plausible explanation.
It suggests that there may be plenty of third party Windows programs still in use that have lines of code in their software to perform specific tasks if it was running on a legacy version of Windows (specifically Windows 95 or Windows 98). If so, those programs could include code similar to this:
True? False? I don’t know. But being a long time programmer, I could be convinced. Just look back to the “Y2K” fears 15 years ago:
Back in the 1960’s and 1970’s, we only stored the last two digits of the year in computer records. So, “12” meant “1912”. None of us programming back then ever envisioned that our software would still be running 30 or 40 years later, past the year 2000. Suddenly, we weren’t sure if ‘12’ was meant to be 1912 or 2012?
I keep thinking to myself … the more things change, the more things remain the same.
Here is a video of Microsoft’s VP, Joe Belfiore (Microsoft VP) introducing the next version of Windows – Windows 10!
Microsoft announced today (Oct 30, 2014) that the next release of Windows will be called Windows 10. Their main goal is to have a single, common operating system that runs on desktops, laptops, tablets, and smart phones. Windows 10 will be in various stages of internal and beta testing thru 2015, with an anticipated general release date sometime in the second half of 2015.
If you want to get a running commentary, with photos, of today’s release, click here.
Here is a quick summary of new features and changes to Windows 10:
In case you missed it, Microsoft rolled out version 5.0 of their Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) in July 2014. This follows on the heels of EMET 4.0 (Nov 2013) and EMET 4.1 (May 2014).
What is EMET?
You may be asking yourself What is EMET? Why should I install it? Where or when should I install it? Susan Bradley has written an in-depth article on EMET, covering all of these questions. I highly recommend reading her article.
EMET helps defend against zero-day threats. It is a standalone security application, but that does not mean that it should be installed on every workstation. The basic guideline is to install EMET on this systems where you do any online tasks that involve sensitive personal information, purchases and online banking.
EMET: A Customer’s Perspective
Installing EMET
EMET can be installed standalone, which is what I am showing here. The EMET manual offers additional information and guidance for businesses and domain-based networks.
If you have a previous version of EMET installed, you will need to uninstall it first and reboot before installing EMET 5.0.
If you wish, go ahead and download and install EMET 5.0 now! Installation is straightforward, and does not require a reboot of the workstation. EMET 5.0 supports Window clients Vista SP2, Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8/8.1, as well as Windows Server 2008 SP2, 2008 R2 SP1, 2012 and 2012 R2.
The only suggestion I would make when installing EMET 5.0 is to select “Use Recommended Settings”:
After installing EMET 5.0, you will find a new Padlock icon in your list of notification-area icons in your taskbar.
Right click on the Padlock icon, and select Open EMET to view the EMET Settings.
The “Transform the Datacenter” MVP Roadshow was held at the Microsoft office in Tampa FL on Monday Sept 22, 2014. Many kudos to Adnan Cartwright. Due to an illness in the family with our first presenter (Telmo Sampaio), Adnan had to step in at the last minute to do both the first and second presentations.
Topics covered new features in Windows Server 2012 R2, Hyper-V 4.0, migrating from Windows 2003, public/private/hybrid clouds, Azure and more. More than half of the presentations were live demos, with lots of questions throughout. One comment from an attendee: “I can’t wait to get into Azure!”.
