Microsoft have just made available a new series of Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) documents. The IPD documents are essentially the new version of the Windows Server System Reference Architecture:

The default behaviour of the SoftGrid Application Virtualisation 4.5 client is to not allow applications to be streamed from a file, i.e. streaming an application from a local OSD file rather than from the server. If you attempt to load from a local package, you may see an error similar to this:

If you’ve ever added regsitry entries to your SoftGrid OSD file, you may receive an error like this, even though the entries are completely valid:

Here’s a couple of new Group Policy white papers released to the Microsoft Download Centre. They detail some great Group Policy additions coming with Windows Server 2008 and the Microsoft Desktop Optimisation Pack. The Advanced Group Policy Management tool came out of what was DesktopStandard GPOVault and Group Policy Preferences is what used to be PolicyMaker.

If you’ve attempted to launch Windows Explorer as a component of your SoftGrid sequenced applications, you may find that you are not able to view folders within the SoftGrid protected environment (i.e. inside the bubble). When you attempt to view a folder that lies within the bubble or your SoftGrid drive letter, you will receive an ‘Access Denied’ error. The reason for this is that the Explorer process is not running within the bubble and thus you won’t have access to those folder locations.

Here’s a list of components developed for Windows Vista or during the same development time frame and included in Windows Vista, that have also been made available for installation on Windows XP:

Microsoft Deployment looks to have made it’s way to version 1.0 and is available on Microsoft’s Download Centre. There’s no real confirmation that this is the RTM/RTW release but it’s just been posted so I can only assume.

I’ve just updated my Java Runtime Environment install script for Sun Java 6 Update 3. Apart from supporting the latest JRE update, this version of the script fixes some registry changes that I hadn’t got quite right previously. If you’ve not seen this script before here’s a breakdown of what it does:

Looking to write to CD or DVD media via a script? Did you know that Windows includes an API to do just that? Version 2.0 of this API that is included in Windows Vista has also been made available for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003: Image Mastering API v2.0

Any review of a touch screen digital audio player or phone is going to inevitably compare to the iPhone/iPod touch, but touch interfaces are the way forward because they just make sense. So here’s my quick and dirty review of the Samsung P2 which turned up this morning.