Stories by J. Peter Bruzzese

From Metro Start to reduced hardware requirements, here is a look at the best new features Windows 8 users will love

From Windows Server 8 to Office 15, Microsoft is overhauling its IT portfolio. Here's what to expect

You might imagine that the best place to go for improving your Microsoft server-side experience is to the mothership itself. In many cases, you would be right. But the truth is there are a meaningful number of open source tools that go above and beyond what Microsoft has to offer in support of Windows Server, Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint. Many of these alternatives provide -- for free -- more powerful capabilities than what you'd get with third-party retail products.

Microsoft offers support for its products for five years and extended support for another five years. That time will soon be up for Windows 2000 (desktop and server) and Windows XP SP2: July 13 is the last day that extended support will be available.

Windows 7 is right around the corner. The official release date is Oct. 22, but some PC makers will ship it before then.

It's always shocking when a stalwart of any industry topples. It makes people pause and lay blame in a variety of directions. Some may be slightly confused that GM is not going out of business, as the taxpayers are going to now have a 60 percent stake in the company. However, many different brands we have known for years (Saturn, Pontiac, Saab, and others) will be cut loose.

Hyper-V lives! Is Microsoft ready to prove it has what it takes in the virtualization arena? As I mentioned last week, Sun is on board: Read this quote from Sun's Senior Director of xVM, Vijay Sarathy. However, the company challenged Microsoft to answer some serious questions about its virtualization technology -- such as how Hyper-V can compete with the open source Xen-based alternatives and whether a Windows-only virtualization technology can hack it in today's increasingly heterogeneous datacenters.

Many admins don't know it, but SharePoint has two distinct faces: one quite costly, the other free. The pricey version is Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, or MOSS for short. The free one is called Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), currently at Version 3.0.