Steve's TS2 Insider

Q: (from Nicole)

Where do I go on the website to subscribe to get the year worth of hard copies on the gear up book?  Thanks!

A:

You can find that at www.ms-gearup.com. Once you are logged in, hover over Sales on the left side and when the menu appears select Sales Tool Kit.

Q: (from Chris)

I saw your presentation recently and noticed that you started your videos without the media player from links in your PowerPoint presentation. Could you tell me how?

A:

First off, the Media Player is still being used, I just leverage a feature of PowerPoint to make the process seamless. Here are the basic steps:

1. Go to the slide where the movies should be played from
2. On the Insert ribbon, choose Movie, Movie from File and select the movie you would like to play
3. Start the movie “When clicked”
4. This will paste a full frame version of the movie on your slide, reduce it down to the size of a small button
5. On the Movie Tools Options ribbon, set the Slide Show Volume to the desired level and the Play Full Screen checkbox
6. On the Picture Tools Format ribbon, set the Change Picture to be a screen capture from the movie or a video play button

Q: (from Charles)

I have been looking for a “converter” to save my ppt into “live meeting” format.  I found an add-in that only seems to work with LM 2005 console.

Am I missing something?  The web page said the add-in would allow me to create a presentation that included the live meeting “surveys” and save in the LM format (saving time on the upload into the meeting), and it did install into office 2007, nut when I tried to use it, it complained that I did not have the 2005 console installed.

Any thoughts, links, etc. ??

A:

I just tried to do the same thing:

• I downloaded and installed the Outlook Conferencing Add-In (found under Live Meeting 2007 Resource Center)
• I then downloaded and installed the 2005 PowerPoint Add-In (found under Live Meeting 2005 Downloads and Add-Ins)

When I tried to use the Export feature in PowerPoint, I got the same error you received. Until a PowerPoint 2007 exporter is released, it appears you will have to save the document as a regular PowerPoint presentation and allow the online Live Meeting presentation upload converter. In the mean time, at least you can add the special objects into your presentation.

Q: (from Gregory)

Thanks for helping out with a great launch event in Harrisburg!  I enjoyed the day, learned a lot, and came away with some great software.

I am ready to purchase a new server, and I want to move ahead with virtualizing our company’s servers with Server 2008 and Hyper V when it is available.  I have been looking for information to help me understand where I should put my dollars when specing out the server.  Should I focus on the processors?  Dual core or quad core?  1 or 2 processors?  How much memory?  What’s the best type and configuration of hard drives to set up 2 or 3 virtual servers?  Should each virtual server have its own hard drive?  Should the system have its own drive?  Can I use SATA drives, or do I need to go with SCSI?  Is an integrated dual LAN network card sufficient, or should I look at something more high powered for the NICs.  You see what I’m getting at.

We have 2 servers presently, one is basically a domain controller, file server, DHCP and DNS server.  The other is a terminal server and Sharepoint server.  We have about 50 people logging into these servers.  We don’t run Exchange, SQL server, or any intensive loads.  I want to move both servers to virtual servers on the one new physical server, and still have room to add another virtual server or two down the road.

I don’t expect you to have answers to this, but I have been looking for guidance all over the Server 2008 pages on Microsoft’s website and have not found anything that can help me.  I don’t trust the server manufacturer salesmen to give accurate answers yet on such a new product as Server 08.  Can you direct me to some good info that can help me understand what I should be buying?

Thanks so much for any help.

A:

Just to confirm; Hyper-V, although very stable, is still in beta and is not recommended for critical production loads until it is released in about six months. With that out-of-the way, my recommendation for a first step would be to review the solution accelerator for virtualization found at: https://partner.microsoft.com/40048854?msp_id=solutionaccelerators.

Please provide any feedback you have, the team that has been collecting these accelerators is very interested.

Q: (from Matt)

I know this wasn't a part of the talk today but my company is 90% focused on the SBS 2003 product right now. It's our bread and butter product. The information about the new SBS 2008 product has been limited so far. I would love to get in contact with someone at Microsoft and get our company involved in testing of the SBS 2008 product. We'd love to hit the ground running when the product is released.

Any help you could provide would be appreciated!

A:

Sorry we didn’t get you over into the Partner Track after the IT Pro track; we spent about an hour covering the new Windows Essential Server Solutions (WESS) which includes both Small Business Server 2008 (SBS) for the 5 to 50 desktop space and Windows Essential Business Server (EBS) for the 50 to 250 desktop space.

At this time, the Betas for both of these products are full, but there may be some form of Customer Technology Preview later this year. Both products are slated for release in about six months (SBS a little sooner than EBS)

Here are links to the recent announcements on the Microsoft web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/essential/default.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/essential/sbs/default.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/essential/ebs/default.mspx

Here is a link to a webcast I recorded for the West Coast Partner Community (the first 7 minutes are silent, so skip them)

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/view?id=JT9PHF&pw=8%5CC5rx9X8