One of the problems I have working on many different computers and constantly rebuilding even my main workstation for whatever beta build of Windows happens to be available, is having a "stable" environment for some of the little things that make my life work better. One of the ways we do that in the office is to run Windows Small Business Server 2008 Premium Edition. We used the SBS second Server license to virtualize the main SBS server and also a virtual Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition running the Terminal Server Role. As we said nearly a year ago, TS RemoteApps is seriously cool. In fact, the more we use it, the more we love it. TS RemoteApps is the single biggest new feature in Windows Server 2008 (and thus SBS 2008.) In my opinion, it's even cooler than Hyper-V, and that's saying a lot.
But all that is really just background. I use TS RemoteApps to run many of my main productivity applications, including Outlook 2007, Word 2003 and Windows Mail. I even run OneNote 2007 over TS RemoteApps from some computers, though I usually load and run it locally on my main workstation. But I also use TS RemoteApps for more important applications - namely, running iTunes and connecting to my iPod Nano! That way, I don't run into activation issues when I'm continually rebuilding machines - both iTunes and my Audible account run off the Terminal Server, making life much easier.
Ah, that's nice, but how do you connect to your iPod? After all, Hyper-V doesn't support USB devices. You're right - Hyper-V, like every other Microsoft virtualization product, doesn't support USB. And that's a real nuisance! But then, along comes FabulaTech with their USB over Network product. As we described earlier, FabulaTech has a real winner here. We have been using it for several months, now, and couldn't live without it. Not only does it handle our SBS backup drives, which we'd expect, but it works great with our iPod as well. So now we have a nearly perfect solution - our iPod connects to iTunes running as a TS RemoteApp, in a Hyper-V child partition, available transparently to any machine on my network.
Charlie.
I ran across an excellent article on Windows memory use today. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3602/sponsored_feature_ram_vram_and_.php This article covers both the limitations of 32-bit Windows memory models, and the ways to get your applications to work well in x64 Windows. Written primarily for game developers, it's still an excellent read for those who have struggled with understanding why their Windows XP or Vista can't use all of their 4 GB of RAM. Or why they can't have all 8 GB used by Vista 32-bit.
Charlie.
As I was rebuilding my main workstation again (life running pre-beta OS's is always fun), I was very much appreciating the simplicity of Windows Home Server. I have my main workstation set up as an 80 GB OS drive (C:) and data drives of D: and E:. Whenever I install a new build on the computer, I add it to my Windows Home Server list of computers and never think about backups again. If I do something ill-advised (aka, stupid) and blow up the install? Simple, put in the recovery CD, boot from it, and in under 35 minutes I am back to yesterday's state. Completely. WHS has just replaced my munged partition with a known good image and I have nothing else to do but use it. This set it and forget it simplicity is simply awesome. A friend of mine, Kevin Beares, just had his wife's computer "owned" by the latest Facebook Trojan. He was able to completely recover her system in under an hour (laptop drives are slower!) and be certain that there wasn't any trace of the trojan on her machine. Another user saved by WHS.
I've said this before, in various places. Windows Home Server is simply the best backup program on the market today. Full stop. I like some of it's other features, but I can get them from other places and in other ways. I run Windows Small Business Server (SBS) at home, so I don't need the remote access features. And since I have a server here, I keep most of my documents on that main server, not on WHS. But WHS is the first line of backup for that SBS box, and the backup for all the workstations on my network. And it's saved me several times already when I've had hardware or other failures.
Charlie.