@shanselman pointed out an interesting blog post titled "Building a web app the Microsoft way" where the author Jeremy Baines dose a good job of giving the facts that he and his team found while developing ‘Meet with Approval’. I could not find the case study that was mentioned but that is because the case study site sucks, I will try to find it internally and find the external link.

I know that I have tainted opinion but I don't see why more people\companies\startups don't evaluate the MS stack. From all of the comments only one that I saw was accurate and that is that Windows hosting is quite abit more expensive than LAMP hosting but I think that price will be coming down with the new support we have in Windows Server 2008 for hosters. I also think that a company looking at long term success and would want to look at the cost of self hosting, there are a lot of reasons that Windows for self hosting can be more cost effective but the big one for me is support.

This may seam strange for a resource for developers but I think it's quite important for developers to understand the OS. The Windows marketing team has a lot of resources for this month about Windows Server 2008 and IIS 7 check it out!

Windows Server Division WebLog : October Marketing Waves

I was on a hunt for what Longhorn will bring and found this document titled Changes in Functionality from Windows Server 2003 with SP1 to Windows Server Code Name "Longhorn" you can get it for your offline or online pleasure.

While I am mostly interested in PowerShell and IIS7 on Longhorn you can see from all the changes that there has been a huge investment in this release. I can even see me moving to Longhorn as my desktop OS soon.

I know I have bloged about Virtual Labs in the past but now all of the .NET 3.0 labs are done including the Core Features of Windows CardSpace all of the labs are great. If you are a .NET developer this is the way to get up to speed quickly on the .NET 3.0 platform.

I would be interested to here of your experiences with the new 3.0 tools.

Is there a question? I know that even in Microsoft there is debate with the quality of search results between Live.com and Google.com well there a is a cool site that will help you decide dual search will show you a side by side results from a search. I would be interested to hear your results with this.

 

If you use the reports in Visual Studio Team System the team wants to hear from you!

Fill out the survey at http://www.zoomerang.com/recipient/survey-intro.zgi?p=WEB22632EPHHNS

I don't know how log it will be open so do it soon so you can be heard!

 

The follow up to SQL Server Mobile is now available for download, named SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition now you have a free compact embedded database for single-user client applications for all Windows platforms including tablet PCs, pocket PCs, smart phones and desktops. Yes same bits on all the devices!

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/editions/compact/default.mspx for all information http://www.microsoft.com/sql/editions/compact/downloads.mspx for download.

Have fun!

The Windows Defender team has released the fist fully supported version of Windows Defender. What is Windows Defender? From the products web site:

Windows Defender is a free program that helps protect your computer against pop-ups, slow performance, and security threats caused by spyware and other unwanted software. It features Real-Time Protection, a monitoring system that recommends actions against spyware when it's detected and minimizes interruptions and helps you stay productive. Now with 2 free support incidents for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

This is great for the consumer who some times just dose not understand how dangerous the web can be ;)

For more information see the Windows Defender product page or just Download!

I get asked a lot by my family and friends about how they should secure their computers so this is another entry on this topic with some updates from the last time I covered this.

First get router! I don’t care if you only have one computer in the house you still need this! I like the Linksys products, they’re cheap and easy to setup, get the BEFSR41 at a minimum.

Next make sure you have XP Service Pack 2 running! I know some will say it’s a pain but it is needed... no questions just get it!

Now stop running as a local administrator! This is huge pain but it is the best thing you can to protect yourself. If you don’t know what I am talking about check out nonadmin.editme.com

OK now we are set to talk about software you want to run to keep your system clean.

Go to the Microsoft Security software: Downloads and trials site:

• Install the 12-month free trial of Computer Associates Antivirus product.
• Install Windows Defender (I know it’s beta but it’s good)

Now make chose run a tool bar for Internet Explorer (MSN or Google) or better yet install the Internet Explorer 7 beta this will help stop popups and other annoying problems.

BAM!!! Your all done, now just make sure you login as admin once a week to let updates happen and be a smart user. Don’t trust the attachments that anyone sends you (no not even aunt Mable). Stop installing every application that you think will let you get free stuff (no Limewire or others).

What does the future hold? Vista! Yes I know it’s going to be an OS upgrade but by default you will run in a protected mode, even if you are logged in as an administrator.

Good luck!

Resources:

Microsoft Security at Home web site

I know I am a coder so I should not care about infrastructure stuff but I do… I have see way too many developers blamed for infrastructure so I guess it has been an issue of self preservation but if you can get your servers monitored!

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 Beta 2

OK I know beta scares a lot of people but I don’t care who you are you want to see this one!

For the announcement go here

For the software go here you will have to fill out a from but it looks painless.

The great guys at Accentient have a great resource for anyone who is using Visual Studio 2005 and Team Foundation. Check it out.

Team System Widgets

On the .Net Security Bolg Shawn Farkas blogs about doing debugging clickonce application, he talks about the gflags tool.

Debugging a Partial Trust ClickOnce Application

The next meeting of the Orange County Windows Mobile User Group on April 6th will feature Martin Smekal, the CEO of Tablet Kiosk, he will be showing the EO V7110 so if you want to see the future come on by.

The Beta 2 version of MS Application Threat Modelling tool from the Application Consulting & Engineering team.

To down-load it go here if you want more information go here.

Back to the theme of supporting family members computers, beta 2 of the Windows Defender is now in beta 2.

I have been asked of late some questions on how to do distribution of Smart Client applications with Visual Studio 2005. To use the traditional installer you will need to get to know the Windows Installer SDK with this SDK you can do anything you may want. Make sure you checkout the ClickOnce information so you can see how much it can do for you with or without the Windows Installer SDK.

Do you want to protect your home, fiends and families systems? Try Windows OneCare Live and let Microsoft know what you think.

If you are like me you get asked a lot by family about computer problems and despite what you suggest they still keep loading crap on there system and run as administrator. Well Microsoft has recently opened a site with some tools that can help, check out Windows Live Safety Center there you will find some tools that will let even family do some good maintenance on there systems. I hope this helps reduce the number or hours you spend in-front of you mother-in-law’s computer .

Interesting to see how much of  a mixed message different analysts but it is interesting what some businesses are experiencing with Linux. 

Gartner: Linux 'five years away from mainstream' use - silicon.com

One of my teammates Jason Mauer and he has been having epic tails of frustration with his laptop but in his latest post he pointed to a cool tool I did not know about called SyncToy it’s described as “provides easy and flexible copying, moving, and synchronization of files in different directories” I have yet to use it but you know I will be baking up my system tonight with it!

I have used the log parser from Microsoft in the past and always been disappointed with the level of support from Microsoft for it but today I found a cool site that has some gems The Unofficial Log Parser Support Site.

I am sorry to the 2 people that read my drivel here but I a little while I rebuilt my system and have not installed a client side bogging application yet. I had been using W.blogger and like it quite a bit but there are several new ones out and I need to reevaluate them. Any suggestions?

I did fin this interesting Microsoft has a site at http://www.microsoft.com/getthefacts that has a bunch of white papers and case studies that show what others have found as far as the Total Cost of Ownership, Security and more regarding Windows and other OSs.

I have advocated running as a standard account and not as a administrator for quite some time and have over the last year switched all my families accounts (yes I am the single Pewitt family IT department more some other time) to run as standard user and I have a admin account on each box that I can login in to. That is good for them but what about me?

For a long time I figured I know what I am doing I don't need to worry about it and seeing that I am a developer it will be to hard to run as a user. Then last week I was schooled on why every one needs to run as users!

The current project I am on is at HP and they got send some e-mails to almost all of there accounts the e-mail looked official and had an apparent extension of .txt (I can't believe I am going to admit this) it was good enough to fool me "Mr. attachment paranoid" and I double clicked it. As soon as I did I knew something was wrong I immediately unplugged from the network and checked TaskManager for process that I did not recognize, I did not see anything then I ran Autoruns from www.sysinternals.com and sure enough there in my registry was a application that should not have been there! I cleaned it from the registry and deleted the file and all was good in the world again no damage done. Over the next few days HP was hammered by this many of there systems were affected, it was so bad they announced over the 1MC (Navy term for announcement system) that attachments should not be opened. Yes you guessed it each person here is a local admin.

I had started to rebuild a new system for myself in this time and I decided to bite the bullet! I am now living the pain of being a developer running as a user and so far it's not that bad. I have found this excellent blog by Aaron Margosis that is all about living as a user on your system. Would I suggest this for everyone? Not yet but if things keep going this well I will soon.

Have fun!

Here is a good consolidation of topics that I will be using when I rebuild my laptop... That is right I am drinking the kool aid and not going to make my normal local user account part or the Administrators group I will report on my success or failure.

It's painful! It is. And on top of that, it is painful! But the following resources do help:
- Developing Software in Visual Studio .NET with Non-Administrative Privileges
- How can I run Control Panel applets as another user (one with administrative privileges)? (See the additional links at the bottom)
- Run Using a Least-Privileged Account

[Via Microsoft community blog posts]

OK I will never clam to be a infrastructure guy but I have been having to learn way too much about it. I can't believe that people can't keep up with the technology that they are supposed to be experts of. I great example is this article ISA Firewall Fairy Tales Once I read this (it's a dam long read to) I then did circles around a network "expert" on a conference call.

My IE install some how got messed up I could not get "Find" to work. IE would say that some GUID was not registered, it really sucked. I finally found this article How do I reinstall Internet Explorer 6.0 on my XP machine? up on MCSEworld this is the second problem I had that I have found the answer on that site.

At the new place I am working at for the next few months they use Netmeeting to share applications I went to install it on my Windows 2003 system and guess what... It will not install! So I figured I was SOL but I did some digging on the web and found an article that tells you how to get it running. Turns out it is on Windows 2003 it's just not made available you just have to run conf.exe that is in C:\Program Files\NetMeeting yes I felt lame when I saw that and bam! your metmeetinging!