I've been using Vista for a while now. I have it on my laptop, a machine at work, and a machine I built for it at home.

For a long time now we've been listening to the MS guys we work with talk about how great the OS is. They talk about how much the core OS is improved from memory management to the cache manager. Of course these are kernel people so we never talked about the GUI.

My vote? Thumbs up, I'm a fan.

We've been participating in the Online Crash Analysis (OCA) program at MS for a while now. This is an extremely valuable program for us. When a user is prompted to send crash data to MS, this is where it goes. Basically what happens is that a mini-dump is transferred to MS, an automated "!analyze" (windbg command) is done, the system determines a likely person to blame, and the mini-dump is made available to that company. Vince, who runs the program, claims that they have the world's largest MS SQL database that holds all of this information.

MS doesn't keep any information around that could be used to identify a machine or user. I know this because we were looking at some particular crashes with the OCA team and trying to determine if it was the same system or not.

MS provides a nice web interface for accessing this data. We can view the data by crash type, version, etc. We can also download any mini-dumps that we want to analyze. Most of the time Mike can figure out what we did wrong by looking at these. We have been able to find and fix many issues that were never reported by any customer.

By focusing on these we have been able to make SVS super stable in a relatively short time.

So when you are prompted to send data to MS, say "yes".

We had a couple of great MF events in Orlando and in Vienna. Interest in SVS is very high. Also this time we had some of our SVS partners there, AppStream, Scense, and Fujitsu Siemens.

AppStream has a very cool product that is used to quickly and reliably do software delivery using file streaming. They have added SVS support so now they can easily stream SVS virtual software packages. Besides streaming they have some big value around license management.

Scense is coming out with a new user-based software delivery system. They have also integrated complete control of the SVS system into this product. Another big thing they have done is allow SVS to be used in a Citrix environment.

One of the more interesting new things that I saw being done with SVS was presented by Fujitsu Siemens. They are offering a service where they will pre-load new machines with specified applications in SVS format. There were two reasons that they gave for this. The first was that install times for the applications was much faster using SVS. The second was that they wanted to give the customer the ability to safely "turn off" applications on their systems without reinstalling the whole OS.

Every six months we visit the Microsoft campus for the plugfest. The next one is next week. This is a free conference that MS puts on where they host developers of File Systems and File System Filter Drivers. This is a chance for us to interop test with all the major players like MS, Symantec, Mcafee, CA, IBM, etc. MS also provides some great presentations on current and future technologies.

It is always a good time for us to network with MS devs. It is always helpful to be able to fire off an email to the dev of a project at MS.

This event is a "Vista only" event. Kind of makes sense since Vista is pretty much done at this point.

The MS Office team invited us up to do some testing in their lab with SVS and 2007. We're pretty excited about this. We arranged to do it the same week as the plugfest, so there will be quite a few of us in Redmond for the week.

Eric has put together a great introduction to SVS. In just 12 minutes you will basically understand what SVS is all about.

It is available from the Juice.

I have two new positions on the SVS development team. The developers that fill these positions will primarily be working on the user-mode components of SVS: DLL, Service, API, command-line, WMI, etc. One of the positions will also have the responsibility of being the dev team lead. This will involve creating engineering documentation, project planning, and coordinating with product management, the support team, and the API team.

We need some people who have solid development skills. C and C++ are the languages currently used for these components.

We have a great existing team. We are working on software that will, over the next few years, have a major impact on the computing industry.

Software Engineer and Development Team Lead
http://jobs.altiris.com/altirisjobs/default.aspx?ID=450

Software Engineer
http://jobs.altiris.com/altirisjobs/default.aspx?ID=448

Wise Package Studio 7 is now shipping. WPS is an extremely powerful tool for software packaging. Now it is the premiere way to package applications in the SVS VSA format. It also includes 50 SVS client licenses.

WINDOWS IT MEDIA NAMES “BEST OF MMS 2006” WINNERS

Configuresoft’s Enterprise Configuration Manager won the Overall Best of MMS 2006 award, and Altiris’ Software Virtualization Solution won the Best New Product award. Argent Software’s Guardian, DesktopStandard Corporation’s PolicyMaker Application, and Softricity’s Virtualization Platform all received Runner Up awards. Other finalists were Quest Software’s Vintela Authentication Services, Centrify’s DirectControl, eXc Software’s MOM and SMS eXctender Event Provider for non-Windows, NetPro’s ChangeAuditor, and Iconclude’s Repair System.

Winners were announced on April 26 at the Windows IT Pro and SQL Server Magazine booth #525 during the exposition at 7:00 p.m. These top Management products will gain industry recognition from the prestigious award and be deemed as an industry leader.

Winners of the “Best of Microsoft Management Summit Awards 2006” will be published in the July issues of Windows It Pro and SQL Server Magazine.

We are pleased to announce the availability of the first beta release of Wise Package Studio 7.0. You can register for the WPS 7.0 beta through the Altiris Beta Portal at http://beta.altiris.com.

Wise Package Studio 7.0 release contains several new features, including extensive support for the Altiris Software Virtualization Solution. You can now use Wise Package Studio to create, edit, and manage virtual software archive (.VSA) packages which enable applications to run in a virtual environment when used in conjunction with the Altiris Software Virtualization Solution.

Read the full announcement here

The ManageFusion keynote was on Tuesday morning. We showed three things: User-based activation, IE virtualization, and SVS on a Stick!

Jeremy, Scott, and I will be at MF next week. We have a couple of new SVS things that we'll be showing in the keynote on Day One. I asked Dwain if he wanted to hand out "Depends" under-garments as we may have some attendees lose bladder control during the demo ;)

For those who won't be there, I'll post details and possibly a link to some video footage after the show.

Here is something I've been wanting to try for a while but haven't had time yet.

http://steves.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2006/3/29/1847880.html

SVS 2.0 is now released and available. It is not perfect, but it is really good. It has been four years in the making (and a few more than that in the dreaming).

My son Spencer, a couple of friends, and I decided that it would be fun to bring up a website where we would make available free products in VSA format for download. I've been so close to the code and bugs of SVS that I hadn't had the experience recently of just using the product the way other people would. It was a real pleasure to just download a ton of apps and package them up. I got thrilled all over again. (You can see our site at www.svsdownloads.com).

It has been very exciting to see the momentum building behind this technology. Externally the press and customers have been very excited by the new possibilities. Internally (to Altiris) virtualization is allowing other product teams to think of totally new ways of doing things that will bring just as revolutionary a change to their stuff as SVS is bringing to application management.

It has been a pleasure creating this. I hope that SVS somehow makes your computing life easier, better, safer, faster, and cheaper. I'm looking forward to using it myself.

Heard the one about the patent clerk who resigned saying that everything that could possibly be invented had already been invented? Supposedly this happened in the 1800s. Well apparently this story is just another one of those myths.

Until now!

--Altiris shakes up Windows configuration management--
"Every once in a while a product comes along that fundamentally alters your perception of what is possible with IT."

http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/03/02/75882_10TCaltiris_1.html