Steve's TS2 Insider

Q: (from Eric)

Virtual PC from Microsoft:

- MS not letting the mouse scroll wheel software work in VPC? – very bad.

- MS not providing USB connectivity in VPC? – very bad.

Can you get this corrected?

A:

Regarding the mouse issue, have to applied the Virtual Machine Additions? These are effectively the drivers necessary for the virtualized OS to talk properly to the virtual machine environment. They are found under the Action menu and should be applied after you have booted your virtual OS. Remember you need to save the image after applying the Additions.

Regarding the missing USB connectivity – very bad indeed. This is a common complaint about our Virtual PC software and I don’t know when they will be added. Please remember, however, the host OS translates the USB devices like the mouse and external hard drives into a form that can be consumed by the virtual machine. But I understand, there are other devices you would like to expose to the virtual machine that you can’t do so without direct USB support.

You can provide your feedback directly by going to www.microsoft.com/VirtualPC and using the “Contact Us” link at the bottom of the page. Then click on the “Send Questions” link.

https://support.microsoft.com/contactus2/emailcontact.aspx?scid=sw;en;1214&WS=mscom&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.microsoft.com%2fwindows%2fproducts%2fwinfamily%2fvirtualpc%2fdefault.mspx

Your direct feedback is always more powerful than my feedback. Make sure to make it painful to Microsoft; are look looking to use the competition’s product because we don’t have USB support?

Q: (from Jessica)

First and foremost, I would like to thank you for coming out to Valparaiso, IN to present Microsoft Vista and Office 2007.  I really enjoyed listening to you and having the opportunity to ask questions.  I was one of those that received the Launch Microsoft Office 2007 CD!  I was trilled about this because I had a brand new laptop sitting at work with no Microsoft Office pre-loaded.

Needless to say, I installed Office 2007 on the new laptop.  However, I sent an email to a co-worker who said he was unable to open the attachment (in Word 2007).  I was under the impression that there would be no problems with documents in 2003 and 2007, but my trial run proved differently.  If I send out documents in Office 2007, will others be able to open them without an update or would they have to update their Office versions prior to being able to open these documents?  Is there an update that is already available for these computers?

Thank you for your help!

A:

You are almost there… There are two approaches when using the 2007 Office in a mixed environment with Office 97 thru Office 2003:

1) The 2007 Office can save any file, with ALL of it’s features, in the Office 97-2003 compatible file format. This is perfect if you are sending document outside of your organization where you don’t know what version of Office the recipient might be using.

2) The other technique is to install the free Office Compatibility Pack on the other computer. This will allow an existing version of Office 2000, 2002, or 2003 to read and write the new 2007 Office file format. This is a great solution inside an organization where you have control of the software on the desktops.

Q: (from Robert)

Can the “Fantastic 40” be used on Office Live?

Are the “Fantastic 40” already pre-installed in a demo environment VPC?

A:

Of the three tiers of Office Live: Basic, Essentials, and Premium only Essentials and Premium support SharePoint services. The SharePoint services already have derivatives of several of the Application Templates installed but the Fantastic 40 do not work properly on Office Live because of differences in the back-end architecture.

Yes. They are part of the MOSS image (version 19a) that is included on Volume 8 of the Technology Demonstration Toolkit in the ActionPack.

Q: (from Romy)

Quick question: Enterprise CAL Suite is only available in EA agreements correct?

I have a client who is interested however they only have 150 users so he does not qualify… how does he go about purchasing the ENT CAL suite?

A:

You are correct. The Enterprise CAL Suite is only available under the Enterprise Agreement or the Enterprise Subscription Agreement.

I found that listed in the Licensing Handbook found at: https://partner.microsoft.com/licensinghandbook/

Q: (from Dan)

Can anyone tell me if there’s been any progress on including the “anytime upgrade” bits in the Action Pack?  I just got off the phone with a partner who was trying to upgrade a customer’s computer and was a little annoyed that he would need to wait for us to ship him an upgrade disc in order to finish the installation…

A:

The partner can’t use ActionPack bits at a customer site anyway – that would be counter to the license agreement. I doubt if the Anytime Upgrade bits will appear in the ActionPack because the partners only get Windows Vista Business. If they buy the Anytime Upgrade to Windows Vista Ultimate ($139) they would have an opportunity to see how the bits work.

Q: (from Dan)

I have a partner on the phone (ok… he was on the phone – I’m not making him wait while I type this) that has the following scenario:

Woman bought an XP laptop.  Upgraded it to Windows Vista Home Premium.  Now, she needs to connect it to the domain at work.  So, he got online and started the Anytime Upgrade process – he bought a product key from Amazon for the upgrade.  Now, the Vista install is telling him to insert the Anytime Upgrade Disc, which he doesn’t have (since he just bought the key from Amazon). 

I checked this site and read the FAQ about the AUD.  I see it is possible that the OEM could pre-install all the required Vista files on the laptop.  (Obviously, since this was an XP machine, that didn’t happen here.)  My question is:  How would an OEM go about doing this?  I ask because this partner does build/sell custom PCs, so there should be a way for them to get these upgrade items on the machine, right?  Is this something he can access quickly?  The problem here is that this woman needs to get her Vista machine upgraded NOW.  He doesn’t want to order an Upgrade Disc from MSFT if he doesn’t have to.  He was looking (unsuccessfully) for one locally.  Does he have any other options here?

A:

Did the partner try using the Vista Home Premium disk? If it is logo’d with Windows Anytime Upgrade, it will have the Vista Ultimate bits on it. Otherwise, he needed to spend the $5 to get an Anytime Upgrade disk when he bought the key – The Amazon site has the details.

Q: (from Mary)

We want to offer a basic "What's New in Office 2007?" in November and touch on Word, Excel, and PowerPoint because that seems to be where the most interest is. Who do I ask about a book that would cover the basics?

A:

My first recommendation is to go with a reference chosen by your class leader. Regarding some references to start examining:

Microsoft 2007 Office Step by Step - Microsoft Press

Using Microsoft 2007 Office - Que

2007 Office Inside Out - Microsoft Press

But there are literally 100's of references out there. For training, I like the ones that focus on a task and how to accomplish it rather than just list features and how to use them.

(addendum)

Now that I have interacted with hundreds of new 2007 Office users, I would focus on understanding that almost EVERYTHING is exposed on the ribbon. Getting an experienced Office user to look at the ribbon will save them the grief of hunting for features under non-existent menus or right-click properties.

Q: (from John)

at the Alexandria, Va TS2 event a few weeks ago I recall (perhaps incorrectly) your answer of "No" to my question of whether or not Forefront Security for Sharepoint, supports WSS as well as MOSS. As the following post to the SANS alumni discussion list indicates, the www page at the  Microsoft www site whose url is:
http://www.microsoft.com/forefront/serversecurity/sharepoint/overview.mspx
seems to indicate that Forefront Security for Sharepoint DOES support WSS as well as MOSS. Can you please clarify this?

A:

You are correct, Forefront for SharePoint does cover both WSS3 & MOSS2007:

“Through deep integration with Office SharePoint 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Forefront Security for SharePoint helps protect your collaboration environment…”

from

http://www.microsoft.com/forefront/serversecurity/sharepoint/overview.mspx

I vaguely remember the question, but honestly don’t remember why I would have answered that it didn’t cover WSS unless I was thinking about the requirement of SQL (Forefront needs it, WSS doesn’t).

Q: (from Nancy)

Sorry to bug you.......Is the file name for the presentation yesterday: FY08Q1 TS2 Presentation Deck.pptx.zip? If so, I can't use it because it is all XML format( Office 2007)  and I am running Office 2003.....can you send a regular .ppt version of the presentation?

A:

You will need to download and install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats

Q: (from Jim)

You mentioned that a school in Virginia taped your Office 2007 presentation a few weeks ago and that the video was available?  I’d love to get the link – I need something to grab my staff’s attention before we set them down for training.

A:

http://atc.mediasite.com/atc/catalog/

This content is a derivative of Chris Capossela who’s video can be found at www.microsoft.com/office

Q: (from Charles)

We have a client that is migrating from a lotus notes environment to Exchange 2007 and want a configuration sanity check on the new environment.

The recommendation is for a cluster with Exchange 2007 Enterprise.

Do you know of any “local” (Columbia, MD) Exchange 2007 “experts”, preferably from Microsoft, that could meet with the client, the Notes Admin, us, etc and make recommendations on their configuration?

A:

We do have a formal service called Technical Service Consulting (https://partner.microsoft.com/us/40029756)

Or it was recommended that you engage with another partner that specializes in Exchange through the IAMCP, ASCII, or similar organization.

Q: (from Michael)

On Thursday September 20, 2007 I attended the seminar up in Scranton and it triggered, well lets just say a lot of brain activity. Ill get directly to the point. I am the owner of an IT business that sells Managed services to small business’ and the Brake/Fix service to my surrounding community. One of my current contracts are very interested in moving from the 10 computer setup as a workgroup towards actually investing in a server environment for the added security and well yes you already know all the benefits. This is the first time I am actually preparing a full proposal outside what I may have done as a school project in college.  I ended up selecting a dell 2900 PowerEdge server and getting the licensing & cals through them as well. My question is as a partner of Microsoft would I benefit more or shall I say, would my contract and I benefit more by purchasing the software and licensing through a distributer of Microsoft?

A:

It does depend on how you’ve requested to purchase the software from Dell. Potentially the cheapest way to purchase software for a customer is through a volume licensing agreement like Open Business or Open Value. Dell can sell Open Business or Open Value to your customer, but you would not receive any value. If you worked through a distributor like Ingram, D&H, or TechData, you can also sell the Open Business or Open Value, but then you have the opportunity to markup the software along with your services.

To find out more about our volume licensing programs, go to www.microsoft.com/licensing

Q: (from Jim)

Thanks for a great TS2 presentation last Thursday in Ronkonkoma.  I took a lot away from your presentation and am working toward implementing some of the concepts into our upcoming sales initiatives. 

Can you supply a link to more information about the disruptive events presentation that you mentioned?  I haven’t been able to find much about it.

A:

The “Disruptive Events” session was hosted by John Warrillow and can be found at: https://partner.microsoft.com/global/program/40029567

Q: (from John)

I need Excel Web Services and I am currently using WSS 3.0 We don’t need Sharepoint Enterprise for 90% of the people in our Active Directory. The question was: Can I just purchase CALs for the Management staff and of course purchase the server license for Sharepoint Enterprise?

If I do that will I be maintaining to separate sharepoint sites or one with WSS 3.0 capabilities for 80% of the users and Enterprise capabilities for the rest?

A:

My understanding is that they could purchase the following:

                MOSS 2007

                MOSS 2007 Standard CAL (for the Management staff)

                MOSS 2007 Enterprise CAL (for the Management staff)

This would give the management staff access to the full suite of MOSS features including Excel Web Services. They shouldn’t have to be separate SharePoint sites since MOSS is based on WSS, but none of the enhanced functionality would be available to the non-management users.

Q: (from Phoummala)

I have a question regarding licensing for exchange. I have a client that currently has Exchange 2003, and they want to purchase another Exchange 2003 server. Since it’s no longer available, they must purchase exchange 2007, and downgrade to exchange 2003. They currently have user cals for exchange 2003, when they purchase the exchange 2007 and downgrade to 2003, will they need to purchase exchange 2007 cals as well, even though they will be using 2003 version? Can they use their existing cals? Thank you!

A:

If they needed to purchase new CALs, they would need to purchase the 2007 CALs and “downgrade” them. But if their current CAL count is adequate, then the 2003 CALs will work fine.

You will also need to remember, if they do choose to upgrade to 2007 in the future:

· The new server software can be moved back up to 2007

· The existing server would need to be upgraded

· The existing CALs would need to be upgraded