ODF coming to Office 2007

Microsoft has recently announced that they will be including full integration for the Open Document Format (ODF) in Office 2007 as part of the SP2 release, expected in early 2009.  This is an interesting move by Microsoft, away from previous plans to only include converters for the competing document format.  It also seems that they are planning on including native support for XPS and PDF documents in the service pack, which is interesting because they had to pull the PDF support out of the product back in June 2006 because of complaints from Adobe.  I can’t imagine that Adobe isn’t going to complain again, so we’ll just have to see how that goes.

I haven’t seen a ton of adoption of the ODF format, so I’m not sure that this is really a big deal, but it is nice to see Microsoft at least pretending to play nice with the others these days.

XP SP3 notes beginning to trickle out

Now that XP SP3 has been out for a couple weeks, some details are starting to trickle out regarding some of the bumps in the road associated with the deployment.

The first issue is related to AMD-powered HP desktops that are running the HP image of Windows XP. Like many of us, HP uses a single image across all their hardware, both AMD and Intel PCs. The image loads a driver for Intel power management, which is fine right up until SP3 is installed on an AMD-powered PC and the system reboots. At that point the system tries to use Intel codes on the AMD motherboard and things do not end well. Disabling the driver in advance of the SP3 install will solve the issue, but not knowing that in advance is a recipe for a very unhappy upgrade.

Another issue is related to a change in the Internet Explorer security zones. Of course, the effect has absolutely nothing to do with Internet browsing and everything to do with copying files from a network location to a local PC. The issue is similar to the effect of running menu links from a shared network location, where a security prompt would come up if the network location isn't in your trusted sites list. There are some steps for a workaround, and they can be managed via GPOs, but it is annoying.

There are some other fun improvements that XP SP3 offers, including for Microsoft's implementation of Network Access Protection, so it is definitely worth installing. But, like everything else, make sure to test it well before deploying to users.

Vista SP1 versus Windows 7

Steven Richardson has a rather interesting post over on his Legal Technology Blog about the upcoming Vista SP1 and the further down the line Windows 7, and what the next steps look like. One of the big questions he raises is whether SP1's impending release is enough to make Vista a slam dunk for companies to implement. What is so significant about SP1?

People wait until SP1 to make sure that the OS has the bugs worked out, but that is one of the many, many pieces that have to fall into place for something as major as an OS upgrade to work out. In the case of Vista SP1 the SP isn't going to make any of the legacy programs work on Vista, it isn't going to solve/change the training issue, it isn't going to address the security model and it is barely going to address the performance issues.

Putting Vista into play as part of the hardware replacement cycle is where it is at, assuming you can operate in the split environment that long (or your replacement cycle is an "all at once" approach). But for many smaller companies (like law firms), running two platforms for an extended coexistence window isn't a viable solution; the support levels won't be where they need to be.

For organizations of a significant size Vista should've been in testing for at least 6 months now; for everyone else it is time to get moving. Even if you don't deploy for another 12 months, knowing where you are headed and starting the testing now will actually make this seemingly impossible project rather feasible.

On updates and upgrades

Exchange Server 2007 SP 1 has been available for less than 48 hours, and I got to do the install on our network this morning. Piece of cake. The process is well documented within the setup executable, including links out to TechNet instructions for the more detailed processes, like upgrading an SCC cluster. The new features seem to be working well at first blush, including Public Folder access in OWA. SCR testing will have to wait until the week starts up and I have some time to build the extra server and play with it more.

Also on the update & upgrades front this week, in a surprise to almost no one, Open Text delayed the DM 5.2 release, again. This time the warning from them was actually rather dire:

Final internal testing, as well as testing conducted by our Preview customers, uncovered critical issues which mandate the halt of the release at this time. Some of the events we consider critical are any that cause data loss and/or corruption and use cases that produce unacceptable performance metrics. An example of a data loss event we encountered during the final testing for this release occurred with our capture of email thread data. Tests indicated that Outlook mail message ID’s and parent message ID’s were not being captured properly in our database. Therefore, while the email and/or attachment was captured successfully, all metadata was not. Under our quality assurance guidelines this constitutes data loss and mandates that we hold back the release until a fix is implemented, user acceptance tested, and regression tested. An example of unacceptable performance metrics was experienced, with Preview customer testing of this release, around the interval of time taken to present end users certain aspects of the newly designed Save User Interface. Again, as this test was not successful it warranted implementing the required fix and following up with subsequent user acceptance testing, and regression testing.

I'm glad to see them actually performing QA and holding back on releases rather than just pushing it out like Hummingbird used to, though it is a bit strange to me that there are still issues with email data loss since that was one of the very early DM5 problems that we encountered and they did fix it at one point.

So get out there and upgrade your Exchange 2007 servers, and don't hold your breath on the DM 5.2 release; the new estimated date is December 2007.

Exchange 2007 SP1 Release Date Announced

True to their word, Microsoft will be releasing Exchange 2007 SP1 in the month of November. November 30, 2007 is the date, according to this week's TechNet Flash email newsletter. They even included a link to the download, though it returns a 404 error right now. I'm sure it'll be up and running on Friday. Expect to see more information on the Exchange 2007 TechNet page at some point.

The list of updates in SP1 is rather long, with the most significant bits being features that the SP is adding that probably should've been in the RTM release, like access to Public Folders via the new OWA and a Public Folder management GUI. Also in the offing is the highly touted Standby Continuous Replication (SCR). SCR is Microsoft's answer to application-based remote replication, allowing geographically dispersed nodes for disaster recovery.

A lot of people have very high hopes for this service pack (even more than Vista SP1). Here's hoping that Microsoft can deliver on the promises they made.

Microsoft Announces a Bunch of Release Dates

Microsoft made another round of announcements regarding the release of a whole bunch of their upcoming products:

• For starters - and not so surprisingly - Windows Server 2008 looks like it is going to slip. They haven't renamed is Windows Server 2009 yet, but it won't RTM until first quarter '08 at some point, which means a probable actual release in May or later.
• And then there is Vista SP1, the much anticipated update that is supposed to solve all the problems in the RTM release. It is expected to be in beta in the next couple weeks and then released to the public around Q1 2008.
• Finally, there is XP SP 3, which is also expected to be released in the first half of 2008. This won't extend the mainstream support past April '09, but with extended support available through 2014, and the stability of SP2 and expected stability and improvements of SP3, folks shying away from Vista will have quite a bit of time to let the bugs filter out application compatibility work itself out.

Oh, and not announced today, but actually released into WSUS and other update channels recently was yet another DST patch. Why they couldn't include the necessary updates in the patch that they released at the beginning of the year is beyond me. It isn't like DST moved again. Yet here we are, rolling out another patch to solve the problem. Yuck. At least this one shouldn't be quite as disruptive.

Happy Patching!

More (Good) News on Vista SP1

Yet another story out about SP1 for Vista. This one bills itself as a whitepaper, which I'm not buying, but it does discuss a lot of interesting details about the update, both from a functional and technical perspective.

A few key benefits to point out from the article:

• Improved reliability with external monitors on laptops
• Improved compatibility with printer drivers
• A whole host of file-system access improvements, including fixing the issue where Windows hangs for 30 seconds when you click File Open while not connected to your domain
• Better battery life (which is good, because I'm at about 50% of what I was getting in XP)
• Faster access to file shares

The service pack is expected to be released in a few different formats. There will be the "slim" version that will be a relatively small initial download that will then collect additional components from the Internet. And there will be the Network Admin version that will have everything included for all languages/versions of the processor architecture (i.e. i386 or AMD64). The slim version is expected to be ~50 MB for most systems, while the admin version will weigh in at at a very heavy 1GB. Either way, you'll need to be plugged in (for laptops) and have Internet connectivity to roll it out. Oh, and 7GB of free space on your system drive. Finally, the admin version will require administrative credentials on the local machine to deploy. Presumably this won't be an issue for WSUS and other patch deployment solutions that run as service accounts on the workstations, but it is something to keep an eye out for.

Also, the SP is still not expected to have any dramatic changes to the OS, save for making it actually work a bit better. I'm certainly looking forward to the Service Pack, as Vista could use a little help under the hood on the performance front.

Vista service pack coming soon. Real soon.

Microsoft expects to have a beta of service pack 1 for Vista out in the next week or so, with the actual release of the SP around September. There have been a lot of stories of late about folks buying Vista (since Microsoft makes it pretty hard to buy anything else), but installing XP, and Microsoft has high hopes that SP1 will help "solve" that problem. They're also hopeful that SP1 being available will generate a push for retailers, hence the effort to get it out prior to the holiday season, something that they failed with on the RTM version.

On the plus side, there aren't too many new features that are being added in the service pack, so the chances of it breaking things are pretty low. The main new feature is API access to Windows Desktop Search, following on a lawsuit from Google. That may be useful, but I'll settle for a consistent ability to suspend and resume without taking 15 minutes and/or crashing my laptop. A guy can dream.

Time to start planning for Vista SP1

Maybe we should get Vista deployed first, but that's a different problem.

Microsoft has started putting out feelers to members of their Technology Adoption Program to measure interest in participating in the beta testing of Vista SP1. They are looking for rapid adoption and heavy testing, with an expectation that the SP will be released in the second half of 2007. Releasing a service pack that quickly means one of a few things:

• The software just isn't finished yet, so the SP is a way to finalize the code without delaying the release
• No one adopts before SP1 is released anyways, so they're just going to release the SP right away and hope no one notices that things still aren't all running smoothly
• They really, really, really don't want to spend any more time developing XP SP3 (it has already slipped 1+ year)

Or maybe there's another reason. Based on the past few months with XP, there have been ~20 critical hotfixes that are OS specific. If they bundle all those for Vista is that really enough to justify calling it a Service Pack? I think Microsoft is trying to pull a fast one to encourage adoption.

-Updated: I just my copy of the TAP email indicating the target date of 2nd half CY07, so this looks to be a pretty reliable target.