Microsoft

Coworker Elan Shudnow pointed out a glaring omission with Windows Server Backup in Server 2008 - it isn't Exchange aware. In fact, many features you might have been used to in NTBACKUP are gone with the new backup program provided with Server 2008. Even if you didn't like NTBACKUP, I have a bad feeling you will like Windows Server Backup even less.

Thankfully you can use DPM or some other type of backup software for Exchange, but those aren't free.

Update: Karl Foley has a clever workaround that involves copying NTBACKUP from an XP machine and a few other Exchange-specific DLLs to make it work under Windows 2008.

The improvements that SP1 offers include:

1. Support for Windows Server 2008.

2. New Client Servicing API: Supports client registration, filters updates by category and classification, provides applicability rule extension mechanism and obtains package metadata and reports update status for each client.

3. Improvements for local publishing: supports publishing of drivers within the enterprise by using vendor provided catalogs. API includes support for bundles and prerequisites.

4. All hotfixes: WSUS 3.0 SP1 includes all the changes and hotfixes that have been issued since the release of WSUS 3.0.

5. Support for Microsoft SQL Server 2005: WSUS 3.0 SP1 lets you use SQL Server 2005.

You can grab it here.

Originally spotted here.

The Microsoft XML Paper Specification Essentials Pack, Version 1.0 (XPS Essentials Pack) contains components that enable you to view, generate and index XPS Documents.

With the XPS Essentials Pack you can quickly begin reading and generating XPS Documents. It contains XPS Viewer EP to read XPS Documents and the Microsoft XPS Document Writer to output files to the XPS Document format.

Additionally, the XPS Essentials Pack download includes providers to enable the iPreview and iFilter capabilities found in many Windows applications. Windows shell handlers are also included to enable thumbnail views and file properties for XPS Documents.

Read more about it and download it here.

Noteworthy for Windows Desktop Search and Sharepoint users:
Because it comes with iPreview and iFilters for XPS, you can install these on your SPS 200x indexing server and the contents of the XPS documents will be searchable. Ditto for users using Windows Desktop Search or Vista's built-in search.

If you are running VMWare Workstation/Server and want working audio for your Windows Server 2008 and Vista virtual machines, you should use the drivers located here.

Unfortunately, they aren't the easiest to locate because they are no longer on Windows Update, and they seem to be well hidden on Creative's site.

Who knows how long Creative Labs will keep these online, so I would grab them and archive them as soon as possible, because they do work well for Vista and Server 2008 VMWare instances.