Windows Experience Blog : BitLocker

Windows 7 Activities at Gartner Symposium

Brandon LeBlanc — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:49:48 GMT

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2009, the industry's largest and most important annual gathering of CIOs and their senior IT leaders is taking place this week in Orlando, Florida.

During this year’s event, which will focus on how business technology can help customers return to growth by balancing cost optimization and risk mitigation, Microsoft will be helping customers to understand how they can realize the benefits of Windows 7 through the following activities and sessions:

Windows 7 Early Adopter Customer Panel: Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 12:30PM - 1:30PM ET (Moderated by Michael A. Silver - Gartner)

A panel of Windows 7 early adopters will discuss Windows 7 planning, deployment tips and rollout plans. During the panel, attendees will share their experience on planning for a successful deployment and the immediate results they received deploying Windows 7. Featured Gartner Research VP & Distinguished Analyst Michael Silver will facilitate the panel discussion. Please visit Gartner.com for a replay of this webcast on October 22nd.

Windows 7 Unplugged-- Tips From Microsoft's CIO Office: Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 2:00Pm - 2:20PM ET (Rick Merrifield - Microsoft)

In this interactive session, the Chief Architect in Microsoft’s IT department will share insider tips on how to plan, pilot and rollout Windows 7. Learn how your organization can benefit from applying the Windows Optimized Desktop to increase end user productivity, enhance security and reduce costs by automating IT management.

Windows Optimized Desktop-- Windows 7 and Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack: Wednesday, October 21st 3:30PM -4:30pm ET (Gavriella Schuster - Microsoft)

The Windows Optimized Desktop is designed to help with today’s imminent IT challenges while ensuring your future success. Come learn how Microsoft Windows 7 and the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack 2009 R2 together provide better user productivity, stronger data protection, security and PC management and automation improvements that can help you save costs and improve IT efficiency.

Mastermind Keynote with Stephen Elop, President, Microsoft Business Division Thursday, October 22nd 11:00am - 11:45am (Moderated by Neil MacDonald and Brian Gammage - Gartner)

Gartner analysts Neil MacDonald and Brian Gammage will moderate an interview with Stephen on a variety of topics top of mind for Symposium attendees. As president of the Microsoft Business Division, Stephen oversees the Information Worker, Microsoft Business Solutions and Unified Communications Groups here at Microsoft and is a member of the company's senior leadership team that sets overall strategy and direction for the company.

Windows 7 Hand On Labs— Monday, October 19th- Thursday, October 22nd Various times (Various presenters)

30 minute, proctor led, interactive sessions where attendees can experience the following features of Windows 7: Windows 7 UI features, Internet Explorer 8 & Web Slices, Problem Steps Recorder, Med-V (using Internet Explorer to launch a Med-V web site), and using BitLocker which will include a 1GB key drive to activate BitLocker as a giveaway, with pre-loaded content including the current product guide and the Microsoft Optimized Desktop datasheet.

Lenovo Announces New T-Series ThinkPad Laptop – The T400s

Brandon LeBlanc — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:14:09 GMT

Lenovo announced today a new T-Series ThinkPad Laptop called the T400s. Lenovo’s T-Series laptops cater to business customers looking for a powerful and thin laptop. Lenovo put a lot of effort in designing this laptop to be light, durable, robust, and powerful – key elements to a great business laptop for the mobile worker. I’ve had the chance to play with a T400s here in my office for the last few days and it has been a great experience so far.

The T400s will ship with the following specs:

Choices of Intel 2.53 GHz Core2Duo processors and graphics
Choices of up to 128GB SSD or 250GB hard drive storage
9.5 mm slim DVD burner or Blu-Ray player
Ethernet (Gigabit) & WiFi
Optional WiMAX, WWAN, Bluetooth and Ultra-wideband Connectivity
34mm Express Card slot or 5-in-1 multimedia card reader
Almost 6 hours of battery life
Display Port and VGA connectors (Supports 2 External Monitors!)
Energy Star 5.0 Compliant
2 Built-in USB Ports
1 Built-in eSATA/USB Combo Port (Total of 3 USB Ports)
Fingerprint Reader
TPM 1.2

As you can see, with these specs the T400s is quite powerful. It also can come jam-packed with network connectivity options (including support for Mobile Broadband) helping keep you connected no matter where you go. Because security is super important to the Mobile Worker – the T400s comes with a Fingerprint Reader and TPM 1.2. With TPM 1.2, BitLocker can be used in both Windows Vista and Windows 7 to secure the laptop. You also get your choice of storage. My T400s had a 250GB hard drive.

The design of the T400s is pretty slick. The T400s uses Lenovo’s “Top Cover Roll Cage”, which they first introduced with the X300, in the construction of its frame. This roll cage is made out of reinforced monocoque carbon fiber which is the same stuff they use on airplanes and super-fast cars. This keeps the T400s pretty light. It weighs in at just under 4lbs (with a 6 cell battery) which is about 20% less than its T400 predecessor. A non-SSD hard drive may also add some weight to the laptop as well as they tend to be a little bit heavier. But Lenovo gives you the choice to choose (as mentioned above).

This is a pretty thin laptop, measuring in at 0.83 inches (yes, I measured!). Part of the ability to keep this laptop so thin is that Lenovo uses a very thin 14.1 inch LED screen.

For the T400s, Lenovo tweaked the keyboard a bit. The keys are much closer to each other – likely to prevent gunk from getting underneath. The Delete and ESC keys are also larger.

The touchpad is now flush with the palm rest and is textured to help people feel its location.

I also discovered that the T400s has an “always on” USB port in the back. This means that if the system is in sleep/standby or hibernate mode you can still plugin devices like MP3 players or mobile phones and have them charge off the laptop’s battery.

Another very interesting aspect of this laptop is how Lenovo optimized it for VoIP. Many businesses are utilizing VoIP for their communications. This laptop can essentially serve as your communication hub when you’re out-and-about. Lenovo added a new toggle switch at the top of the keyboard so that you can easily increase and decrease your system volume – putting the user in more control of their audio. I’m told this will become a standard for all Lenovo laptops going forward. The speaker volume has been amped up to be more than 2x greater than audio levels see on the T400. And the speakers themselves have been moved to the sides instead of on the palm rest area seen on the X300 series laptops.

Lenovo put 2 digital microphones in for better recording. The dual microphones are expected to cut down the amount of ambient noise picked up during your VoIP calls and improve clarity with sound. And of course you can have audio without video. The T400s comes with built in 2.0 megapixel webcam that can shoot video up to 30fps. The webcam also has “Lower Light Capture Capability” to capture decent video is very low-lit conditions.

Lenovo puts Windows Vista Business or Windows Vista Ultimate on their business laptops. The T400s I have came with Windows Vista Business.

However I decided to put Windows 7 (the Windows 7 RC) on it. Instead of upgrading from Windows Vista, I did a clean install. Windows 7 picked up most of the drivers with updates to many of them available for me on Windows Update. I had everything up and running very quickly.

With Windows 7 and the T400s, I am able to secure the laptop with a variety of features from Windows 7. Windows 7 has BitLocker (which we introduced with Windows Vista). Using TPM, I was able to encrypt the hard drive of the laptop to ensure if the laptop ever gets lost so that no one can get the data off the hard drive.

Windows 7 has a new biometric framework and in combination with UPEK’s biometric software – I was able to quickly enroll fingerprints for a further enhanced security. UPEK takes advantage of Windows 7’s biometric enhancements. This process was incredibly easy. As mentioned above, the T400s can come with built in Mobile Broadband. Windows 7 brings enhancements that take advantage of Mobile Broadband making it easy to connect and stay connected.

I had fun playing with this laptop. Special thanks to Lenovo for the opportunity!

The Lenovo ThinkPad T400s will become available at www.lenovo.com starting at $1,599.

Talking About Windows

Brandon LeBlanc — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:24:28 GMT

I get the extreme pleasure of exclusively revealing a new Microsoft community website on Windows today specifically designed for IT Professionals: Talking About Windows.

Talking About Windows is a new website that offers a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Windows 7 from the Microsoft engineers who helped build product as well as showcasing real IT Professionals talking candidly about their implementations and experiences in considering a more modern OS. This is done through a series of videos hosted within the Talking About Windows Website.

Through Talking About Windows, IT Professionals can listen as our engineers discuss why certain product decisions and feature trade-offs were made in Windows 7 from the likes of Mark Russinovich – a Technical Fellow here at Microsoft (and founder of Windows Sysinternals) - as well as Jon DeVaan, Senior Vice President for the Windows Core Operating System. A great line-up of videos with the people behind Windows 7 can be found at Talking About Windows to with more on the way!

I thought it would be neat to also showcase a special viral video for Talking About Windows I think you will enjoy (feel free to embed on your site!):

Talking About Windows – BitLocker to Go

Talking About Windows also features videos of IT Professionals offering real-world commentary on their Windows deployment and adoption experiences as well.

If you’re an IT Professional, you can also take part in conversations on the Talking About Windows website via the comments section for each video. After all – it’s about “talking about Windows” right? If you then want deeper information I recommend you visit probably one of the single best resources on the web for IT Professionals on Windows – the Springboard Series on TechNet.

In combination with Talking About Windows and the Springboard Series – IT Professionals have a great deal of resources to help them consider their options and learn more about Windows 7!

By the way Stephen Rose, who sits down the hall from me and is our community manager for IT Professionals, helps you to navigate the site when you get there.

Experiencing Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Beta

Brandon LeBlanc — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:41:00 GMT

Today Microsoft is releasing the Beta of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 which was announced by Nick White few weeks ago. I'd like to take the opportunity to share my very own experiences with Windows Vista SP1 Beta running on several PCs of my own.

I decided to test SP1 on a variety of hardware which allows me to test a variety of scenarios:

Desktop PC (Custom-made) running Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit.
Laptop (HP tx1000) running Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit.

The most common way the user will get SP1 will be through Windows Update. That is how I installed SP1 on the HP tx1000. Before getting to the SP1, a series of 3 prerequisites had to be installed first (It was 3 for me since I'm running Windows Vista Ultimate, but users who aren't running Ultimate or Enterprise will only have 2 to install since BitLocker is not included in the other Windows Vista SKUs). I talked to Product Manager David Zipkin who explained what these prerequisites are for. The first prerequisite includes updates to the servicing stack. The second prerequisite is an update for BitLocker-capable PCs (Windows Vista Enterprise and Windows Vista Ultimate) to ensure proper servicing of Bitlocker. And the third and final prerequisite includes some updates to Windows, necessary to install and uninstall the service pack.

With me being a power user, I went into the Windows Update control panel to install the service pack and prerequisites manually but most users have Windows Update configured to automatically install updates and so the prerequisites-like other updates-will automatically install, typically overnight.

Once the prerequisites are installed, you will then be able to proceed with updating to SP1 via Windows Update. David told me that Microsoft also intends to release some of these prerequisite updates ahead of the service pack, as part of normal monthly updates, so you shouldn't see all these when you install the Service Pack.

When SP1 shows up in Windows Update, it does so as an "important update" and gives a size range from 51MB - 679.6MB. For me, the download of the service pack through Windows Update occurred relatively fast so I assume the size of SP1 is more on the lower end rather than the high. While SP1 is installing, I was able to continue working without any issue. Once SP1 finishes installing, Windows Update alerted me it must restart to finish the installation, allowing me to finish up my work to restart my PC.

On my Desktop PC, I decided to give the standalone installer for SP1 a try. The standalone installer is the version of SP1 offered as a single downloadable file in x86 and x64 flavors. Since I am running at 64-bit on my desktop PC, I chose the x64 standalone installer for SP1.The standalone installer is mainly used by IT administrators in a corporate network environment to roll out via SMS or other 3rd party management tools. In the case of Windows Vista SP1, the size of the standalone installer is noticeably larger than previous Service Packs in part due to the fact it accommodates for the 36 basic languages supported Windows Vista and all Windows Vista SKUs. This should make it easier for IT administrators to roll SP1 out to PCs running different languages on different SKU's on their network. 1 file does it all. My experience installing SP1 with the standalone installer versus installing SP1 through Windows Update was pretty much the same, except the standalone installer also took care of installing the prerequisite packages for me.

With Windows Vista SP1, there have been several improvements to my user experience I think are worth sharing. The first thing I noticed after installing SP1 was the logon experience when logging into Windows Vista. In entering my password, and logging into my account, I noticed improvements to responsiveness that weren't there before. On my desktop PC (which is joined to a domain) the improvements to the logon experience are even more noticeable. The delay between pressing CTRL-ALT-DELETE and getting the password prompt is pretty much gone.

After logging in to my PC - visually I saw no changes to the desktop shell. However, I did take notice to some minor tweaks to the UI in a few areas after some digging around. For example, the Search option has been removed from the Start menu. More on this later...

There is also a new option in Windows Vista's Disk Defragmenter allowing you to choose which volumes you would like to defragment. On my desktop PC, I have two drives. With the changes noted here - I was able to choose specifically to defragment my second harddrive. This worked great.

And in the BitLocker Control Panel - users of Windows Vista Enterprise and Ultimate are now able to choose which drives to encrypt. Previously, the user was able to only choose the drive that contains Windows Vista (the boot partition).

Outside these minor tweaks to specific areas of UI - I didn't see much new in the way of UI in SP1.

I've also taken notice to improvements in overall responsiveness of my PCs. Improvements were also noticeable in resuming from Hibernation or Sleep on both my desktop PC and laptop running SP1. I discovered copying files from one directory to another is a bit faster. And on my laptop - battery life seems to be improved since running SP1. I have also noticed that transferring files to my shares on my Windows Home Server are a bit faster than they were previously without SP1. Overall performance in accessing my mapped network shares is improved as well. I store quite a bit of data on my Windows Home Server so this was a huge plus for me. These are just some of the performance improvements I've seen running SP1 so far.

Back in June, I wrote about my experience running a dual-monitor setup with Windows Vista. Several readers commented on issues about connecting an external monitor up to a laptop running Windows Vista. SP1 includes improved reliability in connecting an external monitor to a laptop. Users can expect a better experience connecting an external monitor to their laptops as I've had a much better experience myself.

My wireless network experience is improved on my laptop. Prior to SP1, I had been experiencing issues in losing connectivity on my wireless home network and having to repair the connection (especially after resuming from Sleep or Hibernation). Since SP1, I've not had to repair my connection once.

After upgrading to SP1 on my two PCs, I've had no issues with any of my applications. On my HP tx1000, the VeriSoft Fingerprint software and HP Pavilion Webcam both continue to work great. Certified for Windows Vista apps Trend Micro AntiVirus 2007 and CorelDraw X3 also continue to work great as well. All of the new Windows Live betas released a few weeks ago (including the new Windows Live installer) work as advertised. Even the Windows Home Server Connector Console continues to work great.

Microsoft has recently published a KB article outlining changes to Windows Vista's desktop search in SP1 but I'd like to elaborate a little bit based on my own experience with the changes. Windows Vista SP1 allows the user to change their default desktop search provider from the built-in Windows Desktop Search that ships with Windows Vista to another 3rd party desktop search provider. As noted above, the Search option has been removed from the right side of the Start menu. Users will also notice "See all results" has disappeared when doing a search via the Start menu. Instead, you will see "Search Everywhere". Search Everywhere will launch whatever is the user's default desktop search program. In Windows Explorer, users will also see a "Search Everywhere" option in the toolbar as well.

These are just some personal notes on experiences I've had so far. Moving forward with SP1, expect to hear more on my experiences in the coming months. Microsoft is continuing to improve the user experience with Windows Vista both by SP1 and updates from Windows Update. Several months ago I wrote about how much I love Windows Update. Windows Update continues to offer updates to the user experience. Microsoft continues to pump device driver updates out to users through Windows Update as well. For me, it is exciting to see Microsoft continuing to utilize the potential Windows Update has in improving the Windows Vista user experience and SP1 is just one part in that plan.