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Windows 8, Visual Studio 2012 are here

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Aug 172012

It’s been a massive week for Microsoft. We are really in full swing when it comes to the largest release cycle in Microsoft’s history.

It all began on Wednesday at 10 AM PST (Pacific) which is an appallingly wee-hours 3 AM AEST (Australian East). Insomnia had gripped me, so with a glance at the clock, I decided to stumble online. Just on the release time, my machine decided that it had to reboot owing to a security patch.

By the time the damned thing rebooted it was too late – MSDN/TechNet were being pummelled by eager subscribers all intent on downloading the RTM ISOs. I simply couldn’t get launch an Akamai download.

In the end I had to wait until yesterday afternoon, when the queue had died down. There is quite a lot to digest, including the dark horse, Team Foundation Server 2012. Word on the grapevine is that Windows Server 2012 will also go RTM shortly as well.

There are quite a number of considerations confronting the subscriber – platform (x86 or x64), locale (US or UK English?), license (Retail, VL, MSDN) and flavour (Win 8 or Win 8 Enterprise, Visual Studio Ultimate/Professional or Premium?). As one friend put it to me: “What’s the difference?”

For a good look at the differences, here are some helpful links:

Compare Flavours of Windows 8

Compare Editions of Visual Studio 2012

Noting that Windows 8 Enterprise has the features of Windows Pro but has extra support for large organizations.

There are also quite a few additional installation packages to compliment Visual Studio 2012 including the Test Agents (which I’ve mentioned in previous articles to do with establishing load testing), Intellitrace Collector, Remote Tools and the ever handy TFS Everywhere.

Once Windows Server 2012 joins the fray, we will have a very busy period indeed. Much to write about, so little time. You’ll also hear from me (with no undue level of verbosity) as I blog live from Microsoft Australia’s annual tech-fest, TechEd 2012 which is on the Gold Coast this year.

Enjoy the new releases and check back here for more, as I begin my long journey diving into the latest tech.

Awaiting Windows 8/VS 2012 and TechEd 2012

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Aug 152012

So the official word was that the newly minted Windows 8 RTM build and Visual Studio 2012 would hit MSDN at some point on the 15th of August (possibly sometime in the US time zone). As of writing, still nothing has been published on MSDN Downloads.

So to briefly divert your attention – I’ll be officially attending TechEd 2012 on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia between September 11th and 14th. This will be my fourth TechEd (2006-08, 12) and my second on the Gold Coast. I gave a presentation at my last TechEd (in 2008) on SQL Server Compact Edition and the Entity Framework.

This year I am not presenting (sadly) however I am very keen to get up to speed with all the latest releases from Microsoft – and there are plenty. This is an excellent year to attend, as we are witness to one of the biggest release cycles in Microsoft’s history.

We’ll see sessions covering:

Windows 8,
Windows Phone 8,
SQL Server 2012,
Visual Studio 2012,
Forefront Identity Manager 2012 R2
BizTalk Server 2010 and/or BizTalk Azure,
Windows Azure,
SQL Azure,
Office 2013,
SharePoint 2013,
System Center, Hyper-V and Windows Server 2012..
and much more!

That’s a pretty amazing range of products and subject matter to cover. This could be one of the most exciting TechEd conferences in recent memory. If there was ever a time to attend, the time would be now. Here’s the preliminary schedule (which is mostly useful if you’ve never attended before). You can check out the complete session listings here.

If you’re planning on (or are confirmed) to be at TechEd Australia 2012 and would like to catch up – shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment. In the meantime, I’ll go back to waiting for Windows 8 to become available..

Dates for Windows 8 and More

News, Technology, Visual Studio, Windows 2 Responses »

Aug 022012

As reported across the globe, Windows 8 has officially gone RTM as of August 1st. The official release date schedule shows when you might expect to get your hands on the new version:

August 15th: Developers will be able to download the final version of Windows 8 via your MSDN subscriptions.
August 15th: IT professionals testing Windows 8 in organizations will be able to access the final version of Windows 8 through your TechNet subscriptions.
August 16th: Customers with existing Microsoft Software Assurance for Windows will be able to download Windows 8 Enterprise edition through the Volume License Service Center (VLSC), allowing you to test, pilot and begin adopting Windows 8 Enterprise within your organization.
August 16th: Microsoft Partner Network members will have access to Windows 8.
August 20th: Microsoft Action Pack Providers (MAPS) receive access to Windows 8.
September 1st: Volume License customers without Software Assurance will be able to purchase Windows 8 through Microsoft Volume License Resellers.
From 1st January 2013 onwards: Trial editions expire.

With general availability from October 26th. Coinciding with the August 15th date is also the release of Visual Studio 2012 RTM which includes the next version of the .NET Framework (4.5) and presumably sometime after that we might also get the Windows Phone 8 SDK.

Expiry Dates

There’s some conjecture about when the Release Preview and Consumer Preview versions will expire. Here’s an accepted answer from SuperUser:

To get the expiry date of Windows 8 consumer preview, you should run winver either from the search function in the source menu, or simply run the command from "run"

This will open the "About Windows" window, which will show the version and expiry date of the Windows CP install. Source

Summary

It’s going to be a very interesting month ahead, and once the RTM copies have shipped, check back here at Sanders Technology (or dzone.com) for more details on both Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012.

Alternatively, there’s plenty of documentation and reviews of the pre-release builds; so there’s never a bad time for some professional development!

Now we’ll just have to wait for the first service pack… just kidding.

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