It's Geek!

This just in: The Windows 8 client consumer preview (aka, beta build 8250) is officially available here:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/iso

Also, the Windows 8 Server beta is also available on TechNet if you are a subscriber. Even if you are not a subscriber, you’ll also want to check out What’s New In Windows Server “8″.

Once you’ve installed the Windows 8 preview you will probably want to install the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) that is compatible with Windows 8.

If you’re evaluating Windows 8 client or server for your business, you probably will also want to check out the Windows 8 Consumer Preview Product Guide for Business.

Here’s Steven Sinofsky’s blog post on the Windows 8 preview system requirements and the official announcement from the Building Windows 8 team.

If you’re interested in writing some new apps to take advantage of Windows 8 and Metro, try the new Visual Studio 11 beta.

If anyone missed the announcements or demos from the Build conference 2 weeks ago, there were a lot of new Windows 8 Server features announced, especially for Hyper-V. Some of them will be industry firsts. Here’s a few:

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So by now I think that everybody has probably seen that there are developer previews of Windows 8 available for client and server OS versions. If you haven’t but are interested in checking it out, you can download the client preview here, or if you have an MSDN subscription you can get the server preview here. Keep in mind that the client preview also is available with Visual Studio 11 Preview installed as well, to help you get started writing Windows 8 and Metro-style applications. Once you have the .ISO file of your choice, below are the steps to follow to create a bootable flash drive that can install the Developer preview.

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If you have been paying attention to any of the major tech or virtualization blogs this summer you have probably seen an article or ten stating that Windows 8 (the next version of Windows) would include Hyper-V 3.0 (the next version of Hyper-V). This shouldn’t be much of a surprise for those of us who work in the virtualization space, since Microsoft has released an updated version of Hyper-V every time it has released an updated version of Windows server. But the interesting point about Hyper-V 3.0 is that it is being included in the Windows 8 client as well of the server. What does that mean for Windows users and administrators? Let’s start with the simplest scenario and work our way up from there.

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If you are testing the Windows 8 Developers Preview but aren’t a fan of the Metro UI, or perhaps you just need to disable it for a bit, here’s how you do it:

Open Regedit
Navigate to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RPEnable
Change the value from 1 to 0

To re-enable Metro just change it back.

Last week at Worldwide Partner Conference Jeff Woolsey demoed two of the new features that will be available in the next version of Hyper-V that will be shipping with Windows Server 8. According to Jeff these are only two of the “hundreds of new features coming in Windows Server 8″.

The first demo

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What are the 2011 Scripting Games? The Scripting Games are the premier learning event of the year for IT pros and others who want to master Windows PowerShell. You can learn about it by clicking the badge above.

This year

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Erika Cravens has announced on the Microsoft Learning Blog that they are currently running a promotion where you can get a free subscription to TechNet for passing one of the Microsoft Virtualization exams. The exams in question are:

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Hopefully by now everyone has had a chance to look at what is available in Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7. If not, you can find lots of good information about it here and the downloadable installers here. And now on to day two of Dynamic Memory: the user interfaces.

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In case you haven’t heard yet, Windows 2008 R2 SP1 has hit RTM and will be available for download tomorrow, February 22nd. The one feature in SP1 that I am the most excited about is Hyper-V’s new Dynamic Memory feature. What is Dynamic Memory? In short, it’s a great new way

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