Designed for Small and Medium Businesses   Windows XP Mode was designed for the small and medium business user who doesn’t have a lot of resources to spend on IT or on revamping important software. Windows XP Mode extends the lifecycle of many older Windows XP applications to continue providing business value. Once you install these applications directly in your Windows XP Mode environment, they will be published to your Windows 7 desktop. With just one click, the business user can run many Windows XP applications from a Windows 7 desktop just as if it were a Windows 7 application. There’s no need to re-train the user, or to re-learn the application.

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Finally, after a year-long development phase, Microsoft Security Essentials has been publicly released. If you can’t wait to get your hands on Microsoft’s latest security software, you don’t need to wait any longer.

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Unattend deploy Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010 RC (Release Candiate). MDT 2010 is the next version of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, a Solution Accelerator for unattended / automatically operating system and application deployment. Look for new features in MDT 2010 including flexible driver management, optimized transaction process, and access to distribution shares from any location to simplify deployment and make your job easier. Save time and money when you deploy faster and easier with MDT 2010.

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The Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 is now available for download.

The Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 provides documentation, samples, header files (including C++ compilers), libraries, and tools designed to help you develop Windows applications using both native (Win32®) and managed (.NET Framework) technologies.

System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7

Windows 7; Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista; Windows XP Hard disk space – choose a disk drive with a minimum of 2.5 GB of free space. We highly recommend that you have your machine fully patched through Microsoft Update before beginning setup. The .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 tools and samples contained in this SDK require installation of the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 which is available with Visual Studio 2008 or a standalone install of the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1.

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Missing the classic telnet.exe  (Telnet Client) on Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2? Microsoft removed the Telnet Client starting with Microsoft Windows Vista / Windows Server 2008.

To get it back / install it, use pkgmgr on the Client Operating Systems and ServerManagerCMD on the Server Operating Systems..

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Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) for Windows 7 – To ease remote server management, you can download and install Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows® 7 on computers that are running Windows 7.

About Remote Server Administration Tools

You can install the Administration Tools pack on computers that are running the Windows 7 operating system, and use the Administration Tools pack to manage specific technologies on computers that are running either Windows Server® 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, or, in some cases, Windows Server 2003.

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Did you know, in Microsoft Windows 7 there’s a shortcut to start an application elevated. Just press ctrl-shift and double click on the application icon and it will prompt you for elevation. i think this is a nice and handy feature!

I don’t know, and can’t test it a the moment – my systems are all upgraded to Microsoft Windows 7 – if this shortcut is also available in Windows Vista. Maybe one could write a comment and confirm whether this shortcut is available in Microsoft Windows Vista or not.

Microsoft offers – probably for downwards compatibility issues – a free Microsoft Windows XP Licence in the form of a Virtual Machine plus the virtualization ‘platform’ Windows Virtual PC, successor to Virtual PC 2007. This version of WindowsVirtual PC is only compatible to run on Microsoft Windows 7.

Features of Virtual PC for Microsoft Windows 7:

• USB support and redirection – connect peripherals such as flash drives and digital cameras, and print from the guest to host OS printers
• Seamless application publishing and launching – run Windows XP Mode applications directly from the Windows 7 desktop
• Support for multithreading – run multiple virtual machines concurrently, each in its own thread for improved stability and performance
• Smart card redirection – use smart cards connected to the host
• Integration with Windows Explorer – manage all VMs from a single Explorer folder (%USER%\Virtual Machines)

The virtual machine is called Microsoft Windows XP Mode (XPM) for Microsoft Windows 7 and is – as of today – available for download in Release Candidate (RC) state.

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On Microsoft Windows 7 there’s a new Group Policy (GPO) Setting to manage biometric devices and permissions to log on to a domain using fingerprints.

To configure the use of Biometric devices.. Read more…

An improved feature on Microsoft Windows 7 is fingerprint logon using biometric devices.

This is a quick tutorial about configuring fingerprint logon / biometric devices.

I’ve also published an article about how to manage biometric devices / allow fingerprint to logon to domain here

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