North East Bytes: Visual Studio 2010 and System Center

The March meeting of NEBytes is looking like a really good one with two excellent speakers making the trip up to Newcastle. For developers, we have Richard Fennell of Black Marble taking about Visual Studio 2010 and for the IT Pros, Matt McSpirit of Microsoft is coming to talk about System Center in the R2 Wave.

Richard is offering to let the audience vote on the content of his session; with so much to cover in Visual Studio 2010, he wants to make sure that his session hits the top four topics that people are interested in.

Matt's session also has a lot of ground to cover, but as a Microsoft Partner Technology Advisor, he has plenty experience to know which are the bits that are most important to the people using the technology: With more and more organisations thinking about virtualisation, there has never been a better time to investigate what the complimentary System Center management tools can bring to the table.  From deep monitoring, patching, backup, and virtual machine management, the System Center Management Suite is the most comprehensive, unified management solution in the marketplace today, for organisations big and small.  In this session, you'll learn about a number of the key technologies making up the suite, how they are licensed, and how they can help you achieve a new level of efficiency and control.

If you fancy joining us:

NB. There's a football match in Newcastle that evening, and from past experience, we know that means parking is a bit of a nightmare. You may want to check out Newcastle City Council's information on car parking before setting off.

NITKon 2010 PowerShell Day

For those closer to Norway than North East England, there's a real PowerShell treat in store for you:

The Norsk IT Konferanse 2010 (NITKon 2010) is running from 15th to 17th March in Oslo, and the 17th is going to be PowerShell Day, with Bruce Payette, Principal Developer on the PowerShell Team at Microsoft, along with PowerShell MVPs Dmitry Sotnikov, Thomas Lee and Ragnar Harper. That's a great line-up and if I wasn't already busy I'd be really temped to see if I could get there!

It seems that a problem with the servers/platform that it's hosted on meant that WITter hasn't been available for the last week, but I'm pleased to say that the team who look after that stuff now have it up and running. So if you've been trying to get to it and failing, give it another shot. If you've never heard of it before, I invite you to take a look - some of the content is specific to what we're doing in the University, but there's a lot of stuff that's relevant to anyone running Windows in an enterprise environment, and occasionally some fun stuff too.

Direct Access has been the most requested session topic recently, so I'm very pleased to have two presenters to cover it at this meeting. We're glad to welcome Dr Dan Oliver (Managing Director of Sa-V Ltd a Newcastle based Infrastructure Optimization Microsoft Partner) back to speak, and coincidentally the day after I'd confirmed Dr Dan, Conrad Sidey from Microsoft also offered to do the session. I'm happy to say that they're going to collaborate to present Direct Access together.

From speaking to people in the IT pro community, I don't think that people are as excited about Direct Access as they will be when they realise what it gives them...

While an IT pro may sell Direct Access to the management as a "better VPN", where drives can be automatically mapped at logon and all the good stuff that the user gets from logon scripts that connect to resources on the LAN, users are pretty much used to "getting by" with the VPN they're already using. Where the story is really improved by Direct Access is that laptops hooking up to various connections around the world now stay under the scope of management, the same as any other domain computer that's wired to the LAN. I'm sure I don't need to go into detail about all the benefits of that!

There are a lot of people who appear to be scared of the requirement for IPv6, and in fairness if you don't currently have any IPv6, that isn't an insignificant barrier to entry, however you don't need your whole network to be IPv6 enabled in order to use Direct Access.

And for developers, Oliver Sturm is an experienced presenter who really knows his stuff, so his session on Dynamic Consumption in C# 4.0 should be a good one.

It should be a really good event, so grab your ticket:

From 15th February, warning messages will start, saying that from 1st March Windows 7 RC will shutdown every 2 hours. You really want to be off the RC by then because you will lose any unsaved work.

If you continue to use the RC through the bi-hourly shutdowns, on 1st June 2010 the RC will cease to meet "genuine" Windows criteria and will not be able to download anything that checks whether the copy of Windows is genuine. You'll also lose your wallpaper, but by that point that's the least of your worries! ;-)

I've still got one machine running the RC - that will change this weekend!

The site is a little bit basic at the moment, but there are online forums there covering a range of Active Directory and other Windows Server topics, and knowing Mark Parris and Mark Wilson who are running the group, there'll be lots of good things to come. Even if you wouldn't find it easy to get to the group's meetings, if you work with these technologies, it may be a site you'll want to check out.

We run monthly meetings every third Wednesday of the month (except on the second Wednesday in December – to allow time for Christmas parties and shopping!) at Newcastle University.  Each meeting consists of two one hour presentations (one Developer topic and one IT Pro topic) and we have refreshments, food, giveaways and prizes.

Attendance at our meetings is completely FREE!! The venue is provided kindly by the University, our Speakers kindly provide their time for free, and we as organisers provide our time for free to organise the events.  We will provide refreshments and we also provide hot food, all we ask is if you would like to partake in the the hot food, please make a small donation towards the cost via the open contribution box at each meeting.

Our Launch Event is to be on Wednesday 20th January 2010 (from 6pm), we are delighted to have Mike Taulty visiting to cover Silverlight and James O’Neill to cover Hyper-V, and we're teaming up with the SharePoint User Group UK to bring an overview of SharePoint 2010 too! We are really looking forward to this great event and hope to see lots there to help us celebrate our launch!

Head over to NEBytes.net for more details.

Ebooks

It doesn't do any harm to do a bit of reading before diving in to PowerShell and these are great places to get some background and start learning. The first one is a great book from Sapien Press - since they're releasing a PowerShell 2.0 edition of this book, they've made the PowerShell 1.0 edition available as a free download, which is very nice of them since most of the content is still very relevant in a PowerShell 2.0 world!

Powershell TFM V1 eBook

In PowerShell TFM, Don Jones and Jeff Hicks (both PowerShell MVPs) cover a lot of ground from the basics to some pretty advanced uses of PowerShell, with plenty of examples that can make you productive right away. I was recommending the 1st edition two years ago and it's still as good today for someone starting out.

Another MVP, prolific author and all-round good guy, Dr. Tobias Weltner has also published a free ebook on his excellent site, PowerShell.com, where you will also find video tutorials and a rather good PowerShell tip of the day. You can either read the chapters online, or download the whole book as a PDF file:

Mastering PowerShell

Microsoft's TechNet Script Center has a load of resources for learning and using PowerShell (including a Getting Started Guide). Although it's not as comprehensive as the two ebooks above, you should take a look at their Windows PowerShell Owner's Manual.

I also mustn't forget the original free PowerShell ebook by Frank Koch of Microsoft Switzerland.

Cheat Sheets

Many folk will advise you to just start to use PowerShell in place of cmd.exe to gain hands-on experience (because most of the stuff you do in cmd.exe will work in a similar way), and that's a pretty decent approach, although I would suggest checking out one of the ebooks first. If you do want to dive in at the deep end and try to swim though, I'd recommend you print a PowerShell cheat sheet and pin it up somewhere near your monitor so you can quickly refer to it.

PowerShell Cheat Sheet (by Ben Pearce)

Refcardz PowerShell Cheat Sheet (by Bruce Payette)

PowerShell 2 for Dummies Cheat Sheet (by Steve Seguis)

PowerShell 1.0 Desksheet (by Mike Fourie)

And, if you have a specific requirement for using PowerShell with...

...Active Directory

Active Directory PowerShell Quick Reference (by Jonathan Medd)

...Exchange

Exchange Management Shell Quick Reference

...VMWare

PowerCLI Quick Reference Guide (by Alan Renouf)

There are two popular podcasts dedicated to PowerShell, one from the US and one from the UK. The PowerScripting Podcast, presented by Jonathan Walz and Hal Rottenberg, is nearly up to 100 episodes as I write this, so they've covered a lot of ground. Jonathan Medd and Alan Renouf have put out 14 episodes of their Get-Scripting Podcast to date.

Since both podcasts started out at a low level and are now somewhat more mature in their PowerShell coverage, I'd suggest listening to a recent episode of each and then going back to earlier episodes and working forward.

If you're into listening to podcasts (like I am), or if you have your first taste with these and decideyou want to try more, you'll find that other tech podcasts do cover PowerShell from time to time, like Show #190 of Scott Hanselman's excellent podcast, which is definitely worth a listen.

Join a User Group

There are a rapidly growing number of PowerShell user groups and script clubs popping up around the world. Don't worry if there isn't one close enough to you; some groups do online meetings, so you can see the presentations from anywhere, and you certainly don't have to be a proficient user to join a user group. I'm trying to maintain a list of the groups on this site.

Directory of PowerShell User Groups

What else?

That's just a few pointers for getting started with PowerShell in December 2009. You'll find loads of people blogging about PowerShell (including the PowerShell Team). There are lots of example scripts available from the TechNet Script Center, and elsewhere. If you're on Twitter, just asking a question that includes the word "PowerShell" will usually result in a response from an MVP or some other enthusiastic PowerShell user, and if you can't fit a question into 140 characters, you'll also get good responses on the official PowerShell newsgroup.

My personal favourite feature (so far - there are some things that I'm looking forward to trying in Outlook in conjunction with Exchange 2010, when we have that running) is the Backstage view in all the applications. This is the bit that you access via the "Office Button" in Office 2007, which is now accessed through a coloured "File" tab next to the ribbon's default "Home" tab.

What I particularly like about Backstage is that they've brought the live-preview that was such a good addition in Office 2007 to the Print dialogue. You no longer have to look at print settings and print preview separately as they sit side by side. When you make a change to the setting, you see it reflected in the preview immediately. It makes formatting your printouts much more straight forward and will benefit pretty much everyone who uses Office.

I've been using Office 2010 since early on in the Technical Preview stage, before the Beta, but even so I haven't come across all the tweaks in these new versions on the applications, so I was pleased to see that Microsoft Press have released a free ebook "First Look: Microsoft Office 2010". At that price it's a no-brainer to download it!

Digital Image Suitewas a photo editor, which had previously gone by the name Picture It!, along with image library management. The reason that I liked it so much was that the barrier to entry for a large number of tasks was really low, but you could add functionality for more complex operations because it supported the use of PhotoShop plugins.

Microsoft discontinued the product, stating that many of the features are available in new Microsoft titles, which is true, but many is not all. It's fair to say that Windows Live Essentials is one of the first things that I install on a fresh copy of Windows, and I like its included Windows Live Photo Gallery, but it's no Digital Image Suite.

As I was manipulating some photos to print for family members as Christmas presents, I had to hunt out my copy of Digital Image 2006 Anniversary Edition (the last release, which supported Windows Vista and fortunately continues to run on Windows 7) because Photo Gallery was just too basic for what I needed to do.

Now I'm sure that everyone, especially all my photography buddies, will tell me that I should be using PhotoShop, but it's expensive and significantly more complex than the Digital Image editor. I dare say there will come a day when I'll have to move on to something else, but until then I'll keep on with my favourite old package from 2006!

While I'm a big fan, I can understand that the Digital Image Suite may not have been a great product for Microsoft in revenue terms. Not being a market leading package, I get why it was cut. I find it harder to understand why you'd get rid of another product that was doing ok in terms of revenue and was clearly a market leader...

Microsoft Flight Simulator pre-dates even Windows and was easily the most popular consumer flight simulator. It was damn good too. I remember very clearly my first experience of Flight Sim 98 along with Microsoft's marvellous SideWinder force feedback joystick (also sadly no longer with us) - having recently spent some time flying a Cessna thanks to the RAF, I was amazed at how real the experience was. Of course that was before the graphical improvements, real-world weather and ATC in the later versions.

It's fair to say that for a bunch of years, the reason that I kept upgrading my PC hardware was to continuously be able to turn up graphic detail and milk more performance out of Flight Sim. Each new version that came out was like a gift that kept on giving (or taking, depending on how you look at it). I spent a crazy amount of time experiencing different aircraft and airports, knowing that it translated well to the real world (even though that's experience I've never taken advantage of since). I've flown helicopters and gliders too in the past, and Flight Sim did as good a job of modelling them as it did light aircraft or airliners (I'm guessing, since I've never flown one of them). Overall, I'd say that Flight Sim could well beat Elite as my most played game ever.

When the studio behind Flight Sim became a victim of Microsoft's cuts in early 2009, I know that I wasn't the only, or the most, disappointed fan of the series. Hopefully the team members, who have formed an independent studio, will be able to release a product worthy of the legacy.

You never know, it being the festive season, perhaps Microsoft will announce that they're re-launching these products, along with the other item on my Microsoft Christmas list - releasing BitLocker To Go as an update for every SKU of Windows 7 (not restricting it to Enterprise and Ultimate), because the world will be a better place if everyone can easily encrypt their USB keys!