Release News from the Microsoft Front

To complement our presentations at the last Northeast Roadshow, I wanted to let you know of a few very recent product announcements related to the content we delivered.

 

Expression 3

Coming on the heels of the Silverlight 3 and Expression 3 launch on July 10th, Microsoft just today announced the release of Expression 3.

• Expression Studio 3 is focused on the developers and designers of rich immersive applications using WPF and Silverlight.  The Studio includes Expression Blend with the very cool SketchFlow prototyping and review feature as well as Expression Design, Expression Encoder, and Expression Web.
• Expression Web 3, targets the ASP.NET and PHP developers who are building standards-based websites.  It likewise includes Expression Design 3 and Expression Encoder 3, and don’t forget the cool SuperPreview feature allowing you to do side-by-side comparison of the rendering of your website in various browsers.

 

Windows 7 RTM

[Updated with News Flash: Windows 7 has RTM’d]

Yesterday, Microsoft announced that Windows 7 RTM (Release to Manufacturing) would be available beginning on August 6th to TechNet and MSDN Subscribers.  Dates vary a bit for Partners and OEMs as well as for business customers with Software Assurance licenses.  And for consumers, we’re still on track for an October 22nd release. 

Brandon LeBlanc’s post on the Windows 7 Team Blog, lays out the various availability dates quite nicely, so I’d recommend checking that out to see when you can get your hands on the release.

Comments

• Anonymous
  July 22, 2009
  Hi Jim, knowing that the TechNet/MSDN subscribers get the RTM code on August 6th, I am not sure if the August 1st expiration date for the Beta code is a good one. I am running 2008 R2 Beta (with some VMs) in a testing machine, I am not sure if MS is forcing people to move to RC if the expire day is set just a few days before RTM? ATM a reasonable path seems to be continue running beta, remove it after RTM is released and then perform a clean installation of the new code. Can you shad some light on this? Thanks, Chris

• Anonymous
  July 23, 2009
  I don't think we expected the beta expiration to be so close to RTM, and instead that folks would have gone to RC when it was available.  I agree with your assessment though.  There's no supported upgrade path from Beta->RC or RC->RTM, so you'll need to do a clean installation anyway.  Unless you can't live without it for 6 days, I wouldn't spend the time installing RC just to clean and install RTM a week later.  

• Anonymous
  July 23, 2009
  Thanks Jim. I don't use this machine much, so it was a bit painful to remove 2008 R2 Beta (along with the testing VMs) and then install RC or RTM. Anyway, I am looking forward to the RTM code, so that the machine wont be in "beta" status anymore :-)