Windows 7 (Windows Vienna) - coming soon to a computer near you

On October 28, 2008  Microsoft unveiled its work on Windows 7, the successor to Vista, to a crowd at its Professional Developers Conference. I will give you a tour through what I think are potentially the 6 most popular, professional IT oriented features in Windows 7.

You can get a more detailed look at Windows 7, also called Windows Vienna by clicking here - http://www.windowsvienna.com/

Here are some of the more professional IT related features that I really liked -

Federated search and enterprise search scopes

One of the big themes in Windows 7 for the corporate user is allowing easier access to information no matter where it’s located. The big push here is for a unified interface for any given search, with results brought in from a variety of locations into one convenient window. Out of the box, Windows 7 allows users to search beyond their own computers.
Some of the nice features here include one-click auto preview, the ability to search within specific “libraries” of information (libraries being a defined set of resources or locations to narrow the scope of a search) and integrated results presentation from SharePoint sites and beyond.

DirectAccess

This is one of the coolest features of Windows 7. Imagine the virtues of being connected to a VPN, access to your corporate network, file shares, intranet, seamless authentication with company resources and so on. Now imagine not having to create that expensive, giant tunnel through which these resources are accessed. That’s DirectAccess.
It requires deploying IPv6 and IPsec — no small tasks by any means, though they should be on your radar already. With DirectAccess, you can have essentially an “always managed” infrastructure, so you as the administrator can ensure that updates are distributed, that Group Policy is applied and that your known machines are trusted, anywhere, all the time.

BranchCache

BranchCache extends some of the improvements made in Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows Server 2008 by caching downloaded information from the Web and intranet sites within a branch office the first time it is requested. Since branch offices often operate on lower-speed Internet links, user productivity is improved as the day goes on because more and more files are present within the cache. In a demo, a document was downloaded over a 512Kbit/sec. connection, taking about 30 to 45 seconds. After the cache, when another user in the same site requested that information, the transfer was nearly instantaneous. BranchCache works not only with a branch office server but also on a peer-to-peer basis among Windows 7 clients in the same location.

VHD Boot

VHD Boot works with a virtualized desktop infrastructure to ensure image consistency among client computers. If you have an environment employing strong Group Policy configuration, folder redirection, roaming profiles and the like, then you can feasibly boot from a virtual image. For example, the image used by a customer support team that works remotely could be the same one used on physical PCs for those users who require access to discrete hardware.

Windows Troubleshooting Platform

The Windows Troubleshooting Platform is a new, comprehensive approach to solving end user problems via troubleshooting packs that can be applied to PCs throughout the environment. And the Windows Troubleshooting Toolkit allows you as the administrator to create your own troubleshooting packs when you identify specific problems within your own infrastructure. Also, a separate new tool called Problem Steps Recorder allows an end user to record the steps he takes leading up to a problem and then capture those steps into automatically created screen grabs, and e-mail them to an administrator or help desk representative for easier problem resolution.

Windows Powershell Integrated Scripting Environment and Powershell Remoting

Because of PowerShell’s popularity, Microsoft has introduced into Windows 7 a graphical interface for PowerShell that makes it very easy to learn the scripting language and use it in a color-coded, easy-to-read environment. Developing, debugging and running the scripts in this new environment is much easier than it was with the previous single-command-prompt method.

Also new to PowerShell is support for the WS-Management protocol that allows you to remotely run commands on client PCs. You can use this capability on a one-to-one basis, say for specific requests in response to help desk calls, or you can fan out with one-to-many remoting and run cmdlets on multiple PCs from within the Windows PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment.