AWS

There is no direct update path from 2003 to 2008. Clean install required. The benefits of 2008 over 2003 alone make the upgrade worth while.

Welcome to the community.

Supersite This year marks a dramatic improvement to the Xbox 360 lineup, thanks to the new "S" version of the console, new "S"-styled accessories, and, of course, the exciting new Kinect motion-sensor add-on. If you've been putting off a video game console purchase, you're about to be rewarded with the best-ever set of choices ... View the full article

Supersite Dell's iPad wanna-be, the Inspiron Duo, arrived at the Thurrott household today, and while it will be some time before I can provide a thorough review of the unit, I wanted to at least show you what it looks like and provide some initial thoughts ... View the full article

Supersite 12/3/2010 3:49 PM Tech news and tidbits of the day, from around the web, including the Dell Inspiron Duo, WordPress use explosion, an unlocked Windows Phone in the US, more. ... View the full article

Windows IT Pro 12/3/2010 8:37 AM An often irreverent look at some of this week's other news, including Microsoft's renewed commitment to Silverlight, Windows Phone sales, Microsoft's not-so-secret plan to capitalize on smart phone patents, Xbox LIVE Rewards, Kinect sales, Mozilla whining, Microsoft's belated cloud certification, a possible Halo remake, and a Blackberry UI makeover. ... View the full article

And greetings to you.

Welcome Tony.

At its Silverlight Firestarter event on December 2, Microsoft officials shared the list of planned features and timing for Silverlight 5, the next version of the company’s cross-platform runtime and development platform. View the full article

Today is the third and final installment of my “Road to Office 365″ series. Today is a look ahead at what’s coming on the infrastructure, product and outreach fronts. View the full article

Supersite 12/2/2010 1:20 PM ... View the full article

Supersite 12/2/2010 7:56 AM The US Federal Trade Commission this week proposed a new plan to protect individual privacy online. Modeled on the successful "Do Not Call" registry, this new scheme, called "Do Not Track," would allow consumers to choose whether third parties can track their online browsing and buying habits ... View the full article

Welcome Nikos.

Western Digital finally gets it right with the WD TV Live Hub, a combination media hub and media streamer with excellent format compatibility, good services functionality, and a great new UI. View the full article

In part two of my three-day series on Microsoft’s road to Office 365, I look at the evolving services and support cultures that affect how Microsoft develops, delivers and maintains its growing family of hosted services. View the full article

At this year’s Professional Developers Conference, the Azure team promised to deliver a slew of new add-ons and services — in either test or final form — before the end of calendar 2010. As of this week, test versions of many of those services are available for download. View the full article

I notice the same on my home network and have given up looking for the problem. I believe it has something to do with the way my network is setup at home or the way I have my Windows 7 boxes connections setup. The reason I think this is copying to my remote servers is fast as my internet connection allows. How is it when you using ftp to transfer files to the server? If you have do you get the same results?

Supersite 12/1/2010 4:20 PM After 12 years of manually updating my site like a 1990's throwback, we've finally moved the SuperSite for Windows to a modern content management system (CMS). I'm excited by this for obvious reasons, but the real work is still ahead. Here's what's available now. ... View the full article

Supersite 12/1/2010 3:03 PM Western Digital finally gets it right with the WD TV Live Hub, a combination media hub and media streamer with excellent format compatibility, good services functionality, and a great new UI. ... View the full article

Supersite 12/1/2010 9:36 AM Good morning. Already December. Sigh. Speaking of which, the SuperSite switchover to a new content management system is happening late today. Pray for me. No, seriously. -- People continue to misunderstand my stance on Apple's iPad, which I feel is deeply flawed in its current form. (The device, not my stance. Ahem.) But it's worth discussing, which is why I keep bringing it up. I mean, Apple is on to something here, right? And I've been preaching simplicity and the need for a from-scratch platform for years. So the iPad is, to me, tantalizingly close. And worth criticizing. Anyway, given my recent article, How Apple Can Fix the iPad in 2011, I was interested to see some discussion around whether the iPad 2 would get a "retina display," as used on the current-gen iPhone and iPod touch. Such a display, however, would require a resolution of 2560 x 1920, which is typically only found on 30-inch PC/Mac displays. So that ain't gonna happen. Still, it's reasonable to expect more pixels. And there's no reason why the retina display brand couldn't be used on any high DPI display it doesn't have to be exactly 300 DPI. -- Firefox will ship a Beta 8 version of Firefox 4 next week, leading me to wonder whether this company will ever ship the thing. Good thing they basically only make one product. I can't imagine how long they'd take if they had a few more. -- Pingdom examines mobile OS usage across the world. -- I almost forgot to mention: I received a WD TV Live Hub, which seeks to right the wrongs of the ill-conceived WD TV Live Plus, which I reviewed recently. I'll review this new box soon as well, but my initial reaction is mostly positive: The UI is more polished, and the media hub and streaming capabilities appear solid. It's still lacking wireless, which is crazy, and there are no cables of any kind in the box, which is cheap. Also, the services selection is somewhat better than before but nothing like with Boxee or even Roku. It's close. Very close. ... View the full article

Supersite 12/1/2010 9:25 AM I wrote in WinInfo this morning that HP has dropped its Windows Home Server product line, which is like kicking someone when they're down, given the recent bad news about Drive Extender. Ed Bott has weighed in on the situation as well, and like me, he calls out Microsoft for publicly masking the reasons for discontinuing Drive Extender. (Which is odd, because Microsoft told me, point blank, the real reasons over a month ago and made no attempts to cover it up.) But Ed also offers some advice about fixing Home Server: First, optimize the basic Windows Home Server product as a single-drive product, with 1 to 3TB of storage intended for backups and light file sharing in a home setting. Next, bring back the first-generation Drive Extender code and whip it into shape as an optional add-on for enthusiasts who want to build multi-disk boxes. Make it available only for Vail and block its installation on the small-business servers. Give every Home Server installation a dedicated 50 or 100 GB of SkyDrive storage and use it as a free cloud-based backup service to help overcome the loss of data duplication in Drive Extender. I asked Microsoft in October why it simply didn't make Drive Extender a Vail-only option. But I think it's a matter of resources. It only made sense to spend a lot of time and money on something like that if it was going to be broadly deployed. And what happens if/when this technology causes some customer data loss? Could Microsoft seriously tell them it was their fault because, after all, they're the ones that demanded it be put back? So assuming DE isn't coming back--because it isn't--we still need a solution that mirrors the central function of Drive Extender: Local, cross-disk data redundancy. And the only thing I've seen that comes close is Drobo's product line. These products would work well with Vail, of course. Imagine a Drobo device (or series of products) based on WHS. That would make us all forget HP pretty quickly, especially if it was priced right. And that could happen: A very low-end four-bay Drobo can be had on Amazon right now for about $350. Just a thought. ... View the full article

Windows IT Pro 12/1/2010 8:05 AM HP this week revealed that it will discontinue its well-regarded MediaSmart Server line, which runs Windows Home Server (WHS). The news comes on the heels of a Microsoft announcement about the removal of a key data storage feature from the next WHS version ... View the full article

Windows IT Pro 12/1/2010 8:04 AM Microsoft this week touted Net Applications and Forrester data that shows, for the first time, that business use of the aging and insecure Internet Explorer (IE) 6 web browser is finally on a steep decline. Meanwhile, business usage of the more modern and safe IE 8 browser is on a similar upward trend ... View the full article

Email was designed as an electronic replacement for snail mail, but being replaced itself because email is too slow and too formal for the coming generation. Get ready for it: Email is dead. View the full article

I’m kicking off a three-part series on the road to Office 365. Today, I’m looking at the early history of the products and people that put the cogs in motion for Microsoft’s software-as-a-service play. View the full article