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In this video I want to talk about the relationship between Windows Server 2008 and Vista. Now, I fully understand that when I mention the word Vista that a lot of you guys start breaking out in hives and start trembling and running a fever and all sorts of things because the challenges that people have encountered with Vista are well documented, they're all over the place, David Letterman's done jokes about it and so forth, but you need to understand something here. And again, I'm not here to take up for Microsoft, I'm not here to deflect criticism or anything, but you need to understand that Vista and Windows Server 2008 really are new and unique products in a lot of ways. Now let's talk about Microsoft's perfect world. Admittedly, Microsoft's perfect world, your network is going to be filled within the next few months is going to be filled with nothing but servers running Windows Server 2008 and all of your clients will be Vista clients. OKay? That's not going to happen in 99.9 percent of the installations out there. However, what you do need to understand as much as possible is educate yourself as to the advantages of putting these two together, okay? Now in the real world, you have various servers out there. Hopefully you have mostly Windows servers in place, that usually is the case, but it's not always. And, you have various clients. Now Microsoft's going to strongly suggest that you upgrade as many of your servers to 2008 as possible and that you upgrade as many of your clients to Vista as soon as possible. And yes, there are some challenges with Vista out there, and I don't want to act like they don't exist but at the same time, we understand that there are some real advantages to upgrading these things. Now, Vista is as the service pack has come out on it, you're going to see a lot of those problems go away that came out with the original version and so forth. But let's talk about some terminology you're going to hear. First of all, you are going to hear Microsoft and some of their use the term enlightened client. And enlightened client is a client that fully exploits the server platform. Vista is the enlightened client in Windows Server 2008. Now be careful, when you read the marketing stuff and all the cool new features and tools in Windows Server 2008, anything that touches the client side is going to be fully supported in Vista, somewhat less supported in XP and the farther we go back you're going to lose more and more really quickly. A gifted child is a client that has a little less functionality than an enlightened client. Okay? An enlightened client would be Vista on a Server 2008 platform, and a gifted child would be the latest service pack and enhanced version of XP, okay? So that's some terminology that you're going to see out there, okay? So yes, I am saying that as soon as possible you need to get to a Vista Windows Server 2008 environment. Now, one thing that's going to have to happen in the very near future is, we've about run the wheels off hanging on to applications that were written in the DOS world or that have been around, you know, written in VB6 and so on. Security and innovation and the way we're using our networks and disconnected databases and so forth are simply going to almost demand that we upgrade at least into the early 2000's. So anyway, with that little bit of information and I know that's tough, let's move on. The other things that you're going to see out there, the terms, are Downlevel clients, and this is, they're supported, but not many features are going to work, and we're going back to Windows 2000, even Windows 95 and all those kinds of things. Those are simply called Downlevel clients and basically it means don't count on a whole lot here, okay. So are there any advantages to Windows 2008 Server Vista? Absolutely. Again, the Microsoft marketing term is better together, and it really is true. First of all, they're built on the same core, the operating system is the same. Same kernel and so forth, a lot of the same functionalities. First of all, the two of them together share features that are not available on other clients. Network access protection and some of the other things are not going to be as easily supported. One of the other things, and this is really cool, you will be able to do a single update and service pack model for both of these. When Microsoft releases updates and service packs, the same one will go on the server and the client, this is huge. One of the things Microsoft's very concerned about is the amount of time and effort that their administrators are having to spend service packing and patching operating systems, okay, so now same will go on both. The new TCP/IP stack has been enhanced, on both the server and on Vista. This is going to get you a faster, better, more secure communication. And now this one's going to shock you okay, if you're standing up, I don't know how you can be standing up if you're watching this video, but if you are, sit down, okay? Server message blocks, SMB is basically the protocol that's referred to as Windows NETworking, it's how when we connect to the server and pull a file down off the server, we're using SMB or server message blocks, it was rewritten in Server 2008 and Vista, it's now at version 2.0. Under certain circumstances, it's up to 4000 times faster than the old server message blocks, and that's not a misprint, in certain situations, up to 4000 times faster. So do you gain something by having the Vista and Server 2008 together? Absolutely. So you will have to start to deal with some of the incompatibility issues with Vista and maybe some of your [unintelligible] and start to work through those and again, Microsoft is going to be helping you a lot in the near future with more service packs and adjustments to Vista. So anyway, Windows Server 2008 and Vista, they really are better together.