Berlin’s IFA is the world’s largest consumer electronics exhibition. Bigger than CES, bigger than CeBIT and this year it’s where the Windows Home Server roadshow kicks into gear. (To Charlie’s comment re: German football, at this point I should confess that I was at Wembley last week to see the Germans beat England 2-1. Gutted is not the word. But having been at the World Cup over in Germany last summer, I can say it’s a brilliant country in which to watch football. Watch out though for the Weissbier, it’s lethal :-))

Microsoft today offered a press preview of several of the new Windows Home Server systems hitting the market later this year, and I’m delighted to say, we had a couple of friends of the site there who have provided some great photos of the new hardware.

Whilst we were expecting to see the Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleo Home Server and HP MediaSmart systems on display, along with a debut showing of Medion’s Home Server, I was surprised to see a couple of new partners show off their systems at the event.

The photos you’re about to see have come from Sebastian Kuback from winfuture.de – they have a full photo gallery, as well as videos from the event which are well worth checking out. You can brush up on your German whilst you’re there too (hint: Google Translate is your friend). Thanks to Sebastian for sending these images over for us.

Article continues here: http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/2007/08/30/whs-rocks-berlin-new-partners-new-systems-new-pics/

The first service pack for Windows Vista is slated for release to manufacturing in the first quarter of 2008. The announcement was made via Microsoft’s Windows Window Vista Blog by Nick White, a product manager at Microsoft. We got a chance to sit down with White to talk about SP1 (see interview below).

On the blog post, White made it a point to mention this service pack is quite different from other service packs offered for previous versions of Windows. Microsoft is taking full advantage of Windows Update to send improvements to Windows Vista customers rather than relying on one big service pack. That being said, the message for Windows Vista SP1 is don’t expect new features, but some components do gain new functionality.

So, the biggest question is what will be in Windows Vista SP1? The first is quality improvements (security, reliability, and performance) including all previously released updates. Next, SP1 will include additional support for hardware and standards including an Extensible Firmware Interface (ESO) and an Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT). Probably, the biggest group to benefit from Windows Vista SP1 is administrators.

Benefits of SP1 for administrators include the ability to use BitLocker Drive Encryption to encrypt extra local volumes besides just the C drive. Disk DeFragmenter has been enhanced to allow administrators the ability to control which volume the program defragments. The Network Diagnostics tool has been expanded to help diagnose common file sharing problems and issues associated with printing to local printers from a Windows Terminal Services session. If you manage Group Policy, tools are being updated in SP1 to simplify policy management.

A beta of Windows Vista SP1 will be available “in the next few weeks,” but only a small group of testers will be able to get their hands on it. Following the beta, a pre-release of SP1 will be available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers.

Read more from the Window Vista Blog and the Windows Vista SP1 white paper.

As you might expect, we had some questions for Nick White specifically around what the true benefits of this service pack are. Read our interview below and then check out my opinion.

Interview and rest of article here: http://www.geek.com/windows-vista-sp1-what-it-means-to-you