Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Update for Windows XP (KB893357)
This update to Windows XP provides support for Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2), which is the latest standards-based wireless security solution derived from the IEEE 802.11i standard.  It also contains Wireless Provisioning Services (WPS) Information Element support, which enables improvements in wireless network discoverability.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=662bb74d-e7c1-48d6-95ee-1459234f4483&displaylang=en

There’s a new video posted to StartSomethingPC.com! http://www.startsomethingpc.com/GetUpdates.aspx#entry4

"The MSN Messenger server farm handles over 70 million concurrent sessions every single day. Until recently, they were using 250 32-bit servers to manage that load. When they switched to Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition running on x64 hardware, they reduced the size of the farm to just 25 servers."
http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott/Article/ArticleID/46175/windowspaulthurrott_46175.html

That’s right:  From 250 32-bit Servers… to 25 64-bit Servers.

I suppose this is yet more commentary, which I typically don’t do but I think this is fantastic.  And remember that with just 25 64-bit servers, we still have room to GROW!  

That’s 225 fewer servers to provide electricity to.  225 fewer servers to patch.  225 fewer servers to monitor.  225 fewer servers to cool with air conditioning.  225 fewer servers to service pack.  225 servers to administer.

And it doesn’t stop there:  How about the desktop?  Think of the ability to stuff the CPU registers with huge numbers… the ability to process way more information in a single clock cycle.  The ability to operate EVERYTHING in memory and never having to go to the disk for anything.  The difference in technological ability is as dramatic as 16-bit 8086 CPUs vs 32-bit Pentium CPUs.

Anyone that says 64-bit isn’t the wave of the future for servers & desktops isn’t very visionary.  They might as well be saying, "640k should be enough for anyone."

Fellow Microsoft employee Chris Ard made a comment internally about the fact that WinXP Pro 64bit is currently only slated to be released for sale by OEM PC Manufacturers.  The only other way to get WinXP-64bit is to trade in your existing WinXPPro copy – there’s no out-and-out way to just "pick up a copy" of Windows XP Pro x64.

For a company that is supposedly trying to ‘curb’ piracy, doesn’t anyone think that this is just frickin’ lame?  Basically, this tells me that we’re not even gonna try to sell it initially.  It’ll be PirateXP-city, and anyone with a Kazaa is gonna warm up the ol’ P2P server and become mayor.  I don’t see why we don’t at least start to get boxed product ready for production in anticipation of it being on sale in a few months.

For the record, we have a deal (see previous post) that will allow anyone with the older WinXPPro (32bit) to trade it in for free for WinXPPro x64.  But what about the people that just want to buy the x64 edition for their existin Athlon x64 box or their recently purchased EM64T box?  They certainly couldn’t have gotten WXPx64 legally before their PC Purchase.

I hope I’m wrong about this.

I need to cite Eric Fleischman’s WebLog for identifying this point.  I normally don’t leech other people’s weblogs for my information being that I get enough good stuff on my own but this one is just too good to not re-post:

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"Today we put out a page (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/upgrade) which talks about upgrading to the x64 Windows. Here’s the best part:

The Windows XP Professional x64 Edition Technology Advancement Program enables customers who have purchased Windows XP Professional (32-bit) to exchange it for Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. You will need to have an x64 processor (the AMD Athlon 64, AMD Opteron, Intel Pentium 4 with EM64T, or Intel Xeon with EM64T) to run the new software.

Woo hoo! Go get your x64 Windows ASAP if you’ve got the hardware. 🙂
Note the date! It says you need to do this by July 31, 2005. So get ordering!"
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http://blogs.technet.com/efleis/archive/2005/04/25/404133.aspx

 

MSN Messenger 7.0 released. 

It comes with "nudges" and "animated winks".  It will also change your display picture depending on what emoticons you use.  Most importantly, it will notify you when the blog of a MSN Messenger user has been updated.

I haven’t seen much fanfare over this.  But then again, I might have just been honeymooning during the time at which this was released and the hullabaloo was raised.  This is truly a cool release.

DOWNLOAD:  http://messenger.msn.com/Download/