I attended the Microsoft product launch event in Atlanta yesterday.  Been traveling all day today, so just not getting a chance to type up a post about it. Overall, it was a great experience.  Got to see and learn about lots of cool new features in Window Server 2008 that I haven’t had a chance to test yet.  Also talked to several interesting vendors.  Here’s a few random thoughts:

• Freebies are always nice.  I walked away with a full copy of Windows Vista Ultimate and limited or trial versions of several other products.
• Overall, the speakers were really good.
• The exhibit hall was like way crowded in the morning.  Hard to have a serious conversation with the vendors do to the number of people present.  Got a little better later in the day.
• Network access protection is interesting - can check certain aspects of a machine, such as antivirus and firewall status and only allow access to servers if certain criteria are met.  Optionally, traffic to servers containing sensitive data can be IPSec protected.  Awesome concepts, but I have a feeling it’s going to be difficult to manage and create headaches for users and IT staff.  I might play with it a bit if I can find time.
• TS RemoteApp is really nice.  We already have a couple of servers running it and will roll it out in our production environment really soon for Shelby and EMS.
• I really, really like Terminal Server Gateway and Web Access features.  Combined with RemoteApp, it seems like the perfect solution for users to access certain apps from their home computers.  Basically, the user logs into a web site and it presented with a Windows desktop looking screen with icons for apps and servers they can click to connect to.  All the traffic gets tunneled over SSL, which makes me less concerned than opening RDP to the outside.  It can also be hidden behind an ISA server (which we already use for remote Exchange access) for additional security.  I really think this is the answer to some of my remote access woes.
• I thought the web server session was boring.
• MS has come a long way with their virtualization products.  In my opinion, it’s still not up to par with VMware though.  There’s still no live migration ability.  There’s still a host OS involved (I think about how many times I have to reboot windows servers vs how I never have to reboot ESX).  There’s no way to resize a virtual hard disk (seems really odd to me, VMware has had this for years).  Give it a couple more years, and HyperV might be the way to go.  I’m not convinced yet though.