Windows Server 2008 Moves to RC1 Status

OK, so I am not a big Windows Server fan… and all my servers are running CentOS Linux 5.1, BUT I do use Windows Server in my “day job,” and I must admit, this one is looking pretty good. Much better than Vista turned out for the client!

Windows Server 2008 moves to RC1 status

“The second release candidate (thus the number ‘1’) for Windows Server 2008 is slated for availability this afternoon (December 5, 2007), and this version will finally include a new tool that Microsoft took an interest in back in 2005. The latest RC1 for Windows Server 2008 will finally incorporate a tool Microsoft has had in its stable by way of acquisition for well over a year: What was once sold separately as PolicyMaker Standard Edition — a tool for extending the range and function of group policy objects — will now be incorporated into Windows Server, as Group Policy Preferences. Microsoft started actively investing in productivity tools company DesktopStandard back in the spring of 2005, and acquired the company outright in October 2006. Now, Microsoft feels the time is finally ripe to deploy a radical extension to GPO functionality that DesktopStandard had created, as a built-in feature of Windows. If you’ve administered a modern Windows Server for any length of time, you know that GPOs typically set permissions and restrictions that are enforced for designated users or groups of users, or for groups of systems — resources that are identifiable and securable by way of Active Directory. They’re the rules of the network, essentially — those which let you say that users in one group have access by default to one set of printers and are closed off to another, or that certain users can’t add their own macros to Office applications.”