Just wondering, do we pay for the upgrade or what? Or does it depend on our package etc.

Thanks

Well, if the Windows 2000 to Windows 2003 migration is anything to go by, I would be sure that you would need to request an OS Reload to upgrade to the new Vista when it is made available. It means that your primary drive would be wipe and loaded with the new OS. You will need to backup your data so that you can restore them when you get your server back. I believe the OS Reload would cost you $25.

Personally, I wouldn't be in a hurry to upgrade because any new product or in this case, a new OS would most probably not have stand the test of time and may be buggy for actual deployment. You might want to wait out at least 6 months or so for any issues to be ironed out before using it on a production server.

Not to mention SP1 R2 release of 2003 will be a vast improvement over the current release. Vista for the most part, won't take a good foothold for a while not to mention the requirements to run it rule out a number of existing machines.

Windows 2003 is a great OS, I certainly won't bother to upgrade my existing servers because they just "work"

Windows 2003 is the best o/s I've seen from windows yet.

I'll install vista on one of my machines at home for a few months before I use it in production.

Is anyone here in the vista beta program currently testing the OS that has any feedback about it ?

I'm in it but I don't have and words to describe my opinions about it...just yet.

I can say its pretty slick as a desktop OS, and from the write-ups about the OS's intention, it sounds like a HUGE step forward for Microsoft.

There's a beta testers review I found at http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winvis...ta_beta1_01.asp

I applied for the beta in the last week but since I'm not a technet subscriber I don't have my hands on it. I was an XP beta tester. I can get a fairly good idea of what it's about from reading the above review though anyhow.

Nice link ted, doesnt look good though reading there review.

I wasn't aware Vista was coming with a server part to it. I thought it was all desktop stuff. Unless IIS gets another big overhaul or they bundle in some better mail server software, I won't make much sense to upgrade except for e-peen.

That beta test review is a bit dated (July 2005) who knows for sure what the current beta looks like. I'm sure they have already corrected many bugs but it does give you some idea.

The server version code name "longhorn" is supposed to come out at some point. From what I thought I heard "longhorn" was vista's early name during testing.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversyst...horn/beta1.mspx

I don't see any reason to move away from Win 2003 server myself so far.

Yep - IIS7, watch this vid! It made me drool anyway

http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=109430

$25 for OS reload? Cool. Yeah, I will wait a few months after its out. I was just curious and couldnt wait to know.

Finally .htaccess in IIS

IISPassword uses .htaccess, works very nicely in IIS6 and is also free

I also did not hear about them coming out with a "Vista" version for server. I thought it was going to be 2008 before the next Server OS?
Personally, 2003 has been absolutly great and R2 made it even better.

> IISPassword uses .htaccess, works very nicely in IIS6 and is also free Wink

Specifically I guess I really meant I need the equivalent of MOD_REWRITE (which happens to be accessed through .htaccess files in apache)

Troxo's site is down at the moment but I don't think they do that.. DO they?

That and the ability to set file permissions through an ubiquitious program like FTP are really the only times I ever hit my head with IIS. Other than that I prefer it as a web server.

I've been keeping up with this as I also have been in the beta program, there are currently 12 vista releases (that I'm aware of), some of which do include the server utilities as mentioned bofore (IIS7), I have yet to get a good feel from vista, and will probably (like most) wait until more development is done for it before using it on a required system.

Currently the only thing I can say about it is from my home release version, and that is, it doesn't support my graphics card (nativly) and when I use the XP Driver (which works) it blue screens every so often... That and it isn't compatable with my video games ^^

Anyway, here is a microsoft article that was released covering some of the different releases:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2...ProductsPR.mspx

Edit: Mis-type there are 12 releases, 6 versions (32 and 64bit for each). Please keep in mind this product is still beta, and my XP Beta had the same issue until the official launch, which seemed to fix the issue....

Here's a few things you might want to read about Vista. Who knows how much of the info is correct, but I'm not going to be in any rush for Vista.

Mini-Microsoft Blog

Inq story on Vista

Vista Revolt

Channel 9 Forum on MSDN

C|NET

Microsoft Watch

-- David