I'm a UC Blog

So today I thought I would venture down to InfoSecurity 2009 at Earl’s Court and see what the security vendors were touting this year, initially I noticed two things….

1. The show was bigger than ever before, usually it takes place in Olympia (a smaller venue located nearby). This is really encouraging given the state of the economy, perhaps people buy security in any climate?
2. The major bombshell, no Microsoft! A real pity (they’ve been there every other year), I know times are hard but surely pushing more general awareness in the MS security space wouldn’t hurt?

A couple of interesting finds include:

1. Hitachi have stepped up biometric security a notch with “fingervein” scanning technology, essentially replacing finger print scanning with imaging of the internal finger vein structure (which I am told is more unique and more difficult to breach).
2. A number of data disposal companies, let’s face it, how do you know when your data is destroyed? You shred the hard drive to pieces!
3. Last but not least, a DeLorean with no flux capacitor, not sure why it was there, but I liked it!

Stephen Rose “Sr Community Manager for Windows Client”, just annouced a new IT Pro site for Windows 7.

Check out his article here.

There has been quite a bit of buzz around a Windows 7 feature called “Windows XP mode”, essentially the addition of Virtual PC for 7 including a Windows XP SP3 license. This feature could really help a number of businesses who have not yet widely deployed Vista and still run a handful of older applications (I can familiarise with this!)

Head over to the TechNet Ireland IT Pro Blog for an excellent post!

Whilst some of you may be aware Windows 7 includes ISO burning functionality (at long last!), I thought i’d recommend an excellent alternative to those still using Vista or XP. Check out ImgBurn, (free) not only will it let you write ISOs but you can create them too.

Burning ISOs in Windows 7.

As we all know by now one of the issues with Vista (when in its infancy) was mainstream driver support. With Windows 7 this seems to be a thing of the past, a good example is Virtualisation, I remember that Virtualising Vista was almost impossible with the early betas. However as you can see below not only does Windows 7 Virtualise extremely well, it even runs in VMware Fusion on a Mac – tools installed too!

With a public release of Windows7 RC due out on May 5th more and more information is appearing on various Microsoft fansites. Earlier in the week the following was found on the MSPP website:

“We are pleased to announce that Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) is available. Windows 7 RC is the prerelease version of Windows 7. Since this is not the final release, your PC will gather and send information to Microsoft engineers to help them check the fixes and changes made based on testing of Windows 7 Beta.
Test-drive Windows 7 RC today to see for yourself—and to show your colleagues and customers—how Windows 7 delivers improved management, security, reliability, and performance.�
Download Windows 7 RC
Partners: If you have a subscription to MSDN or TechNet, you can download Windows 7 RC now. Otherwise, you can download Windows 7 RC starting May 5, 2009.”

Yesterday the folks over a Neowin announced that the RC code had been completed and the build number is 7100.

“7100.0.winmain_win7rc.090421-1700 was compiled on Tuesday and has reportedly been handed out to OEM partners and TAP gold customers.”

Either way we shall all have the release candidate in our hands soon!