Kurt Shintaku's Blog

And we’re giving away yet another Microsoft eBook. 
Interested in doing some development as a beginner?

Microsoft® Visual Basic® 2008 Express Edition: Build a Program Now!
February 27, 2008
Patrice Pelland
256 Pages

Make building new programming skills fun and fast with a quick-start, project-based approach!

In this lively, eye-opening, hands-on book, all you need is a computer and the desire to learn how to program with Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition. Featuring a full edition of the software, this fun and highly visual guide walks you through a complete programming project—a desktop weather-reporting application—from start to finish.

You’ll get an introduction to the Microsoft Visual Studio® development environment and learn how to put the lightweight, easy-to-use tools in Visual Basic Express Edition to work right away—creating, compiling, testing, and delivering your first ready-to-use program.  Let’s see if this post gets copied without a trackback.  You’ll get expert tips, coaching, and visual examples at each step of the way, along with pointers to additional learning resources.

REGISTER FOR FREE DOWNLOAD:
http://csna01.libredigital.com/?urrs4gt63d

Ina Fried wrote an article in CNet entitled “Windows 7 will allow downgrades too”, mentioning how people will be able to purchase Windows 7 and downgrade all the way down to Windows XP.

Here’s some of the “Q&A” we have on this topic to clear the air and clarify a few rather important points on why we’re doing this:

So does Microsoft have downgrade rights for Windows XP planned as part of Windows 7?
Yes. OEM Downgrade rights will be available for 6 months post Windows 7 General Availability (aka Launch). This is not the first time that Microsoft has offered downgrade rights to a version other than its immediate predecessor and our Volume Licensing customers can always downgrade to any previous version of Windows. 

Why is Microsoft allowing customers to downgrade to Windows XP from Windows 7, is it because of the poor reception of the marketplace to Windows Vista?
This is not the first time that Microsoft has offered downgrade rights to a version other than its immediate predecessor.  In fact, our Volume Licensing customers can ALWAYS downgrade to any previous version of Windows. 

What is this about Windows 7? Why are you already taking about downgrades of Windows 7 when it hasn’t even been released yet?
During the development process, we communicate to OEMs the roadmap for End User downgrade rights in OEM versions of the next OS. 

What about Windows 7, when will that be available?
We’re not making any new announcements about Windows 7 availability at this time.  As we have said, we are currently in the development stages for Windows 7 and expect it will take approximately 3 years from Windows Vista Consumer GA to develop. The specific release date will be determined once Microsoft meets its quality bar for release.

What are downgrade rights, and why does Microsoft offer them?
The product License Terms (formerly known as the end-user license agreement [EULA] http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4f4b3cfd-7f4e-46cb-8117-8275f7683d3f&DisplayLang=en), for Windows Vista Ultimate and Windows Vista Business products, grant customers end-user downgrade rights, which allow customers to uninstall the software that is preinstalled on their PC and to install a legally licensed copy of an older version of Windows software.  The customer also retains the right to use the newer version of Windows Vista that came installed on their PC when they chose to, making a future upgrade back to the original version of Windows Vista easy!

My organization isn’t ready to move to Windows Vista software. What should we do?
Microsoft recommends customers complete their testing and evaluation of Windows Vista software and determine the right time to migrate existing and new PCs to Windows Vista software.  For many customers and businesses, the most simple migration plan is to move to Windows Vista software as new PCs are acquired. If however, your business requires use of Windows XP Professional on new PCs and if you are running Windows Vista Business or Windows Vista Ultimate you have the automatic right to run a previous version of Windows on your PC for the life of your PC.

What is the downgrade rights policy?
OEM versions of Windows Vista Ultimate and Windows Vista Business provide the customer with downgrade rights, as outlined in the product license terms (formerly the end user license agreement [EULA] http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4f4b3cfd-7f4e-46cb-8117-8275f7683d3f&DisplayLang=en).  Under these rights, the customer user has the right to downgrade from Windows Vista Business or Windows Vista Ultimate to a previous version of Windows, such as:

• Microsoft Windows XP Professional
• Microsoft Windows Professional x64 Edition
• Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition

PC manufacturers (OEMs) shipping Windows Vista Business or Windows Vista Ultimate are able to order Windows XP media to help support their customers’ needs for a previous version of Windows software.

How long will I be able to obtain downgrade media from my PC maker?
For new PCs that come pre-installed with Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate, downgrade media may be provided by an OEM for Windows XP. Customers should check with their OEM directly to see if downgrade media is offered. Once installed on your PC, you can continue to use a previous version of Windows for the service life of that PC, or until you are ready to upgrade back to your originally-installed copy of Windows Vista.

Balesio, the makers of one of my favorite utilities, “PPTminimizer”, released a new version of their product.

AN ODE TO “PPT MINIMIZER 4.0”
One of my favorite tools in my arsenal of utilities is Balesio PPTminimizer.  It allows you to compress Office Powerpoint files (2007 and prior) by reducing the size and fidelity of graphics objects embedded within the document.

The premise behind this is that graphics objects are generally much larger than they need to be once they are embedded within the Powerpoint and sized to fit the slide.  A graphics object that’s 1024×768 and is 1.1MB in size might be resized to 160×120 in a slide but it remains 1.1MB within the file.

PPTminimizer resizes the 1.1MB graphics object so that it might take only 100k but still look the same on the slide.

PPTminimizer was always very flexible.  It allowed people to:

• Compress graphics at different compression levels (for example, high compression is great for sending people “drafts” of Powerpoints over email, whereas “standard” is better for archival once the document is completed.
• Automatically compress PPTs (or at least ask you if you want to) every time you send an email in Outlook with a PPT attached to it.
• Right-mouse click any Powerpoint file and compress it.  (It makes a 2nd copy of the file and appends the word, “Optimized” to the file name)

At the end of the day, you were always able to send Powerpoints over email without filling someone’s mailbox.  Compression ratios are usually around 50%-95%… i.e. a 10MB Powerpoint drops down to as little as <1MB in size.

ENTER FILE MINIMIZER OFFICE 5.0
Well, they finally went and extended that PPT functionality to .DOC and .XLS files.  Files that are part of the rest of the Office family of products can now have embedded objects shrunk just like PPTs.

In addition to shrinking graphics files down to sizes that are more appropriate for the fidelity that is necessary within the document, FILEminimizer also “flattens” OLE objects.  If you have an Excel table embedded within a Word .DOC, FILEminimizer can convert the Excel table into a graphics object, greatly reducing the size of the object.

And like PPTminimizer, it will intercept every message you mail with Outlook that contains an Office attachment in it… but now it will compress every .DOC, .XLS, and .PPT (or .DOCX, .XLSX, or PPTX) you have attached to the mail and batch process these documents all at once.

At $45, this is a very worthwhile investment if you send and receive Office documents over the mail or store many documents on server shares.

Besides announcing a release date of April 28th, the Office Sustained Engineering folks published a write up that described the new general fixes in Service Pack 2.

—————–

We’ll start with updates that pertain to multiple products, highlight fixes to the individual desktop applications, and then discuss fixes to the server products.

Changes that impact desktop applications

• Service Pack 2 adds the ability to open, edit and save documents in version 1.1 of the OpenDocument Format for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. These applications now let users save, open, and edit files as OpenDocument Text (*.odt), OpenDocument Spreadsheet (*.ods), and OpenDocument Presentations (*.odp).
• The 2007 Microsoft Office Service Pack 2 is the first service pack to support uninstall of client updates through the Microsoft Service Pack Uninstall Tool for the 2007 Microsoft Office Suite as well as via Windows Installer command line. The Service Pack Uninstall Tool will be available as a separate download.
• The Microsoft Save As PDF or XPS add-in has been built into Office applications in SP2. Users no longer have to download and install the add-in separately.
• When many graphic objects are present performance has been improved.
• In many scenarios, expect increased print fidelity of graphical objects.
• Improved interoperability using standard DrawingML markup to describe the visual properties of the SmartArt graphic. 

The 2007 Office Suite SP2 has been tested and is supported for Internet Explorer 8. Windows Vista SP2, Windows Server 2008 SP2, Windows 7 and Windows Server R2 will all be supported upon their release.

Access

• The ability to export reports to Excel has been added.
• Fixes for issues with the import data wizards, report printing and previewing, macros, Excel integration, and date filters.
  Updates to Access Developer Extensions are now included in SP2.

Excel

• The charting mechanism has improved robustness and targeted performance improvements.
• A chart object model has been added to Word and PowerPoint.
• Improved printing of graphical content, especially on PCL printers.

Groove

• Improved form tools.
• Synchronization reliability has been improved.

InfoPath

• Increased compatibility between InfoPath forms and other Microsoft products, such as Groove and Outlook.

OneNote

• SharePoint synchronization has been improved which helps reduce the load on SharePoint servers and produce fewer errors.

Outlook

• Performance in startup, shutdown, view rendering, and folder switch has been improved.
• Calendar updates, search, and RSS are more reliable.
• The object model has been improved.

PowerPoint

• Resaving of files is faster. Several printer-specific problems have been fixed.
• The Microsoft Office Excel Chart Object Model has been more fully integrated.

Project

• The scheduling engine, Active Cache, and Gantt charts all have improvements.
• There is additional reliability with earlier versions of the .mpp format.

Publisher

• Fixes have been made in the following areas: print preview, compatibility with Internet Explorer 8, e-mail on Windows Vista, and saving to the Content library. 

Visio

• Improved compatibility with other Microsoft products in several key scenarios, such as inserting Visio drawings as linked objects in PowerPoint or Word, exporting reports to Excel, and saving drawings as Web pages for browsing in Internet Explorer 8.

Word

• Fidelity of PDF and XPS output has been enhanced compared to the output created through the use of the download. 
• Better integration of the Microsoft Office Excel Chart Object Model.

Changes that impact the server products

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server SP2 include fixes and enhancements designed to improve performance, availability, and stability in your server farms. SP2 provides the groundwork for future major releases of SharePoint Products and Technologies.

• An STSADM command line that scans your server farm to establish whether it is ready for upgrade to the next version of SharePoint and provides feedback and best practice recommendations on your current environment.
• SP2 offers support for a broader range of Web browsers.
• Substantial improvements to Forms-based authentication.

Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Server R2 will be supported on their release.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

• The performance and stability of content deployment and variations feature has been improved.
• A new tool has been added to the STSADM command-line utility that enables a SharePoint administrator to scan sites that use the variations feature for errors.

Excel Services

• SP2 makes it easier to configure Excel Web Access Web Parts on new sites.
• Several rendering, calculation, and security issues have been resolved.
• Some display issues have been addressed.
• Improved compatibility with Mozilla Firefox browsers.

Groove Server

• Improved  synchronization reliability.
• Groove Server 2007 Manager will install and run with SQL 2008.
• Groove’s LDAP connectivity and auto-activation functionality have been improved.
• Error reporting in the Groove Relay Server has improved significantly.
• Groove Relay Server has improved robustness.

Forms Server

• Memory requirements and the page load times for large browser-rendered forms have been reduced.
• Browser rendering of various controls, such as the ‘cannot be blank’ asterisk and the rich text field has been improved.

Project Server

• Better memory management in the queue service.
• Performance to certain database table indexes is improved.
• Resource plans, build team, cost resources, and the server scheduling engine have improved.

Search Server

• Improvements to the reliability and stability of very large corpus crawls.
• Backup-restore has been improved.
• A new command has been introduced to the stsadm.exe tool that lets a SharePoint Administrator to tune the Query processor multiplier parameter.
• Improved accuracy in searches involving numbers.

http://blogs.technet.com/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2009/04/16/service-pack-2-for-the-2007-microsoft-office-system-due-to-ship-april-28th.aspx

Check this deal out for $138:

1. Xbox 360 Pro (Refurbished)
2. 20GB Hard Drive
3. 1 Wireless Controller
4. 1 Xbox Live Headset
5. 1 Ethernet cable
6. Component HD cable
7. HDMI port
8. FREE Shipping

…and it comes with the “Red-ring-of-death” resistance “Falcon” chipset design.  In case you don’t know what that is, the Falcon chipset has:

• Cooler, less power consuming CPU (65nm instead of 90nm from the original “Xenon” Xbox 360 design)
• Cooler, less power consuming GPU (80nm instead of 90nm from the original “Xenon” Xbox 360 design)
• Cooler, less power consuming RAM (80nm eDRAM instead of 90nm from the original “Xenon” Xbox 360 design)
• Improved, larger, heat sinks and cooling ducts
• Power utilization of 175W (instead of 205W from the original “Xenon” Xbox 360 design)

The only “better” units you’ll find are the “Jasper” chipsets that are shipping (since Sept 2008) in the NEW Xbox 360 Pro with 60GB hard drives.  These of course are sold new at $299 and nowhere near the price of $138.

The trick is that this unit is normally $149 on eBay, but with Live Cashback on eBay with 8% Live Cashback available on it if you BuyItNow using PayPal.  (Search for “Xbox 360 HDMI 20GB” from http://search.live.com/cashback and click on the eBay sponsored site on the right that says “get 8% off eBay BuyItNow purchases”)

Here’s a direct link to the eBay store selling the units:

• Xbox 360 w/ 20GB hard drive and HDMI port on Refurbed unit:  $149 with Free Shipping
  http://cgi.ebay.com/Microsoft-Xbox-360-20GB-Hard-Drive-HDMI_W0QQitemZ180348090410QQcmdZViewItemQQptZVideo_Games?hash=item180348090410&_trksid=p4295.c0.m299&_trkparms=240%3A1309

In case it wasn’t clear, based on the confusion created by some folks in the media, Windows 7’s Release Candidate is not available on either MSDN or Technet Plus yet.

(BTW:  All it would have taken to check one’s sources, would be to find one of the millions of Technet Plus or MSDN subscribers to see whether or not the RC had posted.  As you can see below, it hasn’t.  The only posted as a of Friday was the public Beta.)

For customers researching or currently operating SharePoint Server 2007, we have collated these links to highlight some of the online content available which you might find useful. If there is anything in particular you’d like to hear about, please let me know.

MOSS 2007 White papers on Microsoft.com

• Deploying and Supporting Enterprise Search with SharePoint Server 2007
  This white paper covers the topics of how Microsoft IT implemented enterprise search within the company’s intranet using SharePoint Server 2007.
• Good, better, best: Office and SharePoint Products and Technologies
  This white paper describes how different versions of Microsoft Office programs work together with the 2003 and 2007 versions of SharePoint Products and Technologies. The focus of this paper is on the integration features of the Office 2003 Editions versions the 2007 Office Suites with the 2007 SharePoint Products and Technologies.
• Information architecture in Office SharePoint Server
  This paper is intended to represent the process that a medium to large organization might undergo when deploying Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in a practical scenario. Included are typical approach, implementation, and governance techniques that might occur when planning, customizing, and deploying an Office SharePoint Server 2007 installation

Technical guidance from TechNet

• Planning and architecture for Office SharePoint Server 2007
• Design and build sites for Office SharePoint Server 2007
• Operations for Office SharePoint Server 2007
• Technical reference for Office SharePoint Server 2007

TechNet Webcasts

• Configuring performance options for Sharepoint Server Farms
• Capacity Planning for Sharepoint Server Farms
• Backing up, restoring, high availability, and disaster recovery for Office SharePoint Server server farms

TechNet Virtual Labs

• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Installation and Configuration (for IT Pros)
• Enterprise Search Overview (for IT Pros)
• Forefront Security for SharePoint Server (for IT Pros)

Customer Case Studies

• Hawaiian Airlines (Portals, ECM, Processes and Forms)
• MTV Networks International (Collaboration, Portals)
• TV Guide (Enterprise Search)

Website Portals

• SharePoint Server Home at Microsoft.com
• SharePoint Server at TechNet (IT Pro resources)
• SharePoint Server at MSDN (Developer Resources)

SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is now available at the following URL :

DOWNLOAD:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=66ab3dbb-bf3e-4f46-9559-ccc6a4f9dc19

You can use these packages to upgrade any SQL Server 2008 edition.

SQL Server 2008 SP1 is primarily a roll-up of previous cumulative updates, quick fix engineering updates and minor fixes made in response to requests reported through the SQL Server community. While there are no new features in this service pack, customers running SQL Server 2008 should download and install SP1 to take advantage of the fixes which increase supportability and stability of SQL Server 2008.

With this service pack, Microsoft has made investments to ease deployment and make management of service packs more efficient. Key improvements in SP1 include Slipstream, Service Pack Uninstall and Report Builder 2.0 click-once deployment.

• Slipstream allows administrators to install SQL Server 2008 and Service Pack 1 in a single instance. This decreases the total time for an installation, including a fewer number of reboots thereby increasing productivity and deployment availability.
• Service Pack Uninstall allows administrators to uninstall the service pack separately from the database release.  This feature also improves DBA productivity, reduces the cost of deployment and improves overall supportability
• Report Builder 2.0 Click Once improves the existing SQL Server end-user report authoring application by easing deployment to business users

For more information about SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1, please review the Release Notes : http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147331

BLOG REVIEW:
http://blogs.technet.com/dataplatforminsider/archive/2009/04/07/service-pack-1-for-sql-server-2008-available-today.aspx

What is Expression Media 2?

Expression Media 2 is software that allows you to catalog, then organize, annotate, share, present, publish and protect your work.  It handles over a hundred file types that include not only still image files but also video, music, graphics, fonts, Excel sheets and more!  This can help you keep control of all the pieces of a project or job. 

The great thing about Expression Media for me is that it allows me to go back into my library of digital photos and find photos of a time or place very quickly.  I can find a date range or I can type in a place name that I know I added to my files.  It takes out the pain of sorting through images from various trips to the same location when you know you want the image from the time you were there in 2005. 

Another nice thing is it is available to use on both PC and Mac and the experience is the same. 

More about Expression Media 2 here:
http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/expressionmedia2/default.aspx

What’s new in Service Pack 2?

A full list of fixes is available in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article here.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962902

A couple things that were fixed which are worth highlighting are:

• Importing a number of large images is very slow
• Original file paths are used instead of new file paths when copying items to a new catalog.
• Moving hierarchical keywords may incorrectly apply flat keywords to images
• HTML gallery links show question marks when viewed in Mozilla Firefox browsers

Service Pack 2 for Expression Media is available for download here:

• For Windows
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=52f05135-13b0-4f40-a9ff-77229822b0e3
• For  Mac
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=bb6aa4e5-1101-4116-9513-030679a14b77

If you are using Expression Media make sure to have SP1 installed first before installing SP2.  Enjoy!

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 helps you achieve new levels of reliability and performance by delivering features that help to simplify your administration, protect your communications, and delight your users by meeting their demands for greater business mobility.

MORE INFO: 
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/2010/default.aspx

DOWNLOAD:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=1898ed2c-2f88-48ac-824e-d3d20fad77d7#Overview

—————-

What’s New in Exchange Server 2010 Beta?

New Rights-Protected E-Mail Functionality with Active Directory RMS

• Transport rules to apply AD RMS protection to messages based on conditions
• Persistent protection of attachments in rights-protected messages
• Support for AD RMS templates
• An Internet confidential AD RMS template for protection over the Internet
• AD RMS protection for Unified Messaging voice mail messages

New Transport and Routing Functionality

• Cross-premises mail routing  – An organization can choose to outsource some of their mailboxes to a hosted solution while maintaining their on-premises deployment. Exchange 2010 allows routing of messages between the on-premises and hosted mailboxes.
• Enhanced disclaimers – Exchange 2010 lets you add disclaimers that can include hyperlinks, images, and HTML-formatted text. You can also insert Active Directory attributes that are substituted for the sender’s attributes when a disclaimer rule is triggered.
• Transport rules integration with AD RMS – Exchange 2010 gives you the ability to create rules that require AD RMS protection based on keywords or patterns.
• Moderated Transport – Exchange 2010 provides an approval workflow for sending messages to recipients. When you configure a recipient for moderation, all messages sent to that recipient must go through an approval process.
• Shadow redundancy – Messages that are submitted to an Exchange 2010 Hub Transport server are stored in the transport database until the next hop reports successful delivery of the message. If the next hop doesn’t report successful delivery and it fails, the message is resubmitted for delivery.
• Transport dumpster truncation based on log copy status – When messages that are in the dumpster are replicated to all mailbox databases, they’re removed from the dumpster.
• Latency SLA management – Exchange 2010 Transport lets you measure service levels delivered relative to your service level agreement (SLA) goals. Exchange 2010 gives you the ability to measure latencies for each hop, as well as end-to-end latency.
• Transport database improvements – Performance improvements in the Transport database result in reduced database I/O per second (IOPS) per message, which increases message throughput.

New Permissions Functionality

In Exchange 2010, Role Based Access Control (RBAC) has replaced the permissions model that was used in Exchange 2007. RBAC lets you define extremely broad or extremely precise roles and assignments based on the roles of your administrators and users, and the tasks they perform. Access to the cmdlets and parameters required to perform a task is granted by assigning the related RBAC management role to a user or universal security group. If you want to grant an administrator or user the ability to perform tasks in Exchange 2010, you must either add the administrator or user to a universal security group that already has been assigned a specific RBAC role, or you must assign the role directly to the administrator or user.

New High Availability Functionality

Exchange 2010 combines the key availability and resilience features of cluster continuous replication (CCR) and standby continuous replication (SCR) into a single high availability solution that handles both on-site data replication and off-site data replication. Mailbox servers can be defined as part of a Database Availability Group to provide automatic recovery at the individual mailbox database level instead of at the server level. Each mailbox database can have up to 16 copies.

The following features in Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1) no longer exist in Exchange 2010:

• Local continuous replication (LCR)
• Single copy clusters (SCC)

New Messaging Policy and Compliance Features

• Exchange 2010 compliance features make retention independent of users’ mailbox management and filing habits, and these features ensure retention policies are applied continuously
• interface for applying retention policies
• Auto tagging for retention policies
• Mailbox search features for cross-mailbox search with Advanced Query Syntax (AQS) support
• New transport rules predicates and actions

New Outlook Web Access Features

• Favorites in the Navigation Pane
• Search folders
• Message filtering
• The ability to set categories in the message list
• Options in the Web management interface for Outlook Web Access
• A side-by-side view for calendars
• Multi-client language support
• The ability to attach messages to messages
• Expanded right-click capabilities
• Integration with Office Communicator, including presence, chat, and a contact list
• Conversation view
• The ability to send and receive text (SMS) messages from Outlook Web Access
• Outlook Web Access mailbox policies

New Unified Messaging Features

• Personal auto attendants (call answering rules)
• Additional language support including in Outlook Voice Access and Voice Mail Preview
• Enhancements to name lookup from caller ID
• Voice Mail Preview
• Messaging Waiting Indicator
• Missed call and voice mail notifications using text messaging (SMS)
• Protected Voice Mail
• Built-in Unified Messaging administrative roles

Web Management Interface

• Text messaging (SMS) integration
• Voice messaging integration
• Mailbox Search
• Distribution list creation and management
• Moderation and approval for distribution list submission

New Exchange Core Store Functionality

• Storage groups are deprecated
• Mailbox databases are no longer connected to the server object
• Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) has many improvements for high availability, performance, and database mobility
• The Store schema has been flattened

New Administration Functionality in the Exchange Management Console

The core EMC refers to new functionality that affects how you use the Exchange Management Console that includes:

• Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP)
• Organizational Health
• Community and Resources
• Command logging
• Property dialog command exposure

New Administration Functionality in the Exchange Management Shell

• Remote administration – With the new Shell, you can connect to remote Exchange 2010 servers across the network with only Windows PowerShell V2 CTP3 and Windows Remote Management 2.0 CTP installed.
• Administrator audit logging – Actions that result in the modification of Exchange organization configuration and other object properties in the Exchange Management Console, the Web management interface, and the Shell can now be logged for later review.

FAQ

• What is the release schedule for Exchange 2010? 
  That information will be published very soon – stay tuned!
• How long does the beta last?
  This time-limited, free beta version of Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 will end 360 days after installation.
• Can I upgrade from Exchange 2003 directly to Exchange Server 2010?
  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998604(EXCHG.140).aspx
• Where can I find more about Exchange Server 2010?
  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124558(EXCHG.140).aspx
• Is there a forum where I can ask questions?
  Yes – http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/exchange2010/threads