Keynote Address

The Keynote Address - Techmentor

The Keynote Address for TECHMentor '07 was by Mark Minasi. He is described as a "veteran Windows pundit and best-selling author, and popular technology columnist..." Minasi's speech was about LONGHORN (Microsoft Server 2007). It's not yet available, but he spoke about how it will work with Vista and it's many new features. He wasn't 100% impressed with Longhorn, but did have some good things to say, including the ability to set password expiration for different groups, or Active Directories (AD). (i.e. - make password expire every 6 months, but make senior employee's password expire every 10 months.) He also said there are new features inside msconfig (this allows different processes at startup to start/stop and it can be put in various orders, depending on what you want). He also spoke proudly of Vista and Longhorn's use of WDS (Windows Deployment Services). Yes, the keynote address was more about the upcoming new Microsoft LONGHORN server, but I found it quite interesting and exciting - just to know what the features are, how they will be put together, how it works, and what is good/bad about the new server structure. From the talk, it looks like Microsoft is making it easier to manage servers and more user-friendly, less time-consuming, depending on how large your network may be. All in all, he thought that "NT 4.0 Server is the apex of domain structures." After the talk, we mingled about and Minasi told me he is not an employee of Microsoft, but he critiques everything from Office 2007 to Vista to Longhorn and everything in between. He was a very well-spoken guest and I look forward to hearing more of his talks in the future.