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At Microsoft's Launch Wave event in Los Angeles, all I could think during Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's keynote was that we were going to hear absolutely nothing new. But Ballmer threw me a morsel at the very end of his keynote: a slide, entitled "Innovation Rich," which Ballmer quickly popped up on screen. Essentially, it boils down many of the features that I'm sure Ballmer and crew believe make each product worth your attention and upgrade:

Windows Server 2008

  1. Hyper-V
  2. IIS 7
  3. Server Core
  4. Server Manager
  5. Network Access Protection
  6. Improved Clustering
  7. PowerShell
  8. Windows Deployment Services
  9. BitLocker
  10. Read-Only Domain Controller

Visual Studio 2008

  1. Language Integrated Query
  2. .NET 2.0, 3.0, 3.5 Targeting
  3. WPF, WCF, WF Designers
  4. JavaScript Intellisense
  5. Code Metrics
  6. Office Development
  7. Shared XAML with Expression
  8. Code Annotations
  9. Continuous Integration
  10. VSTS Web Access

SQL Server 2008

  1. Policy-Based Management
  2. Transparent Data Encryption
  3. High Performance; Scale Data Warehouse
  4. Database Mirroring
  5. Resource Governor
  6. Geospatial Data Support
  7. Data Compression
  8. Enhanced Visualization
  9. ADO.NET Entity Framework
  10. Sync Framework

Now, if only press releases were that simple.

Posted by Michael Domingo on February 27, 2008


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