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Feb

26

Get Batman: Arkham Asylum 75% off via Games on Demand!

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In a few previous blog posts I’ve done over the last couple months, I talked about or mentioned the awesome Games for Windows – LIVE game Batman: Arkham Asylum. In early December, we introduced Games on Demand for Games for Windows – LIVE with Batman: Arkham Asylum as one of the showcase titles. Today, Batman: Arkham Asylum officially kicks off a month of sales for game titles on Games on Demand! And these sales are going to be hot. How hot? Well, Batman: Arkham Asylum is on sale today at 75% off the regular price putting the game at only $12.49 (USD). This deal for Batman: Arkham Asylum goes to March 1st 10am PST.

batman1

To download Batman: Arkham Asylum, you need to have the latest Games for Windows – Live client installed on your PC. You can download the latest version here.

As I said above, this deal for Batman: Arkham Asylum officially kicks off a month of sweet deals on games offered through Games on Demand on Games for Windows – LIVE. At the end of each week throughout March, a new deal will hit – so keep your eyes peeled on www.gamesforwindows.com for those deals as they hit.

One more thing – the SideWinder Gaming folks will be giving away a new SideWinder X4 keyboard (or maybe 3) via their Twitter account. The SideWinder X4 isn’t out yet so this could be your change to get one before anyone else!

Feb

26

Simplify with the Volume Activation Management Tool

Category: Vista News | Leave a Comment

There’s a new Volume Activation Management Tool (VAMT) available from Microsoft to help administrators manage Multiple Activation Key (MAK) activation for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. The way MAK activation works is that the key must be installed on the end system (there are a number of ways to do this - see our latest TechNet Webcast for more details and demos) and then that system is activated with the Microsoft-hosted activation and validation services either online or over the phone. If you are activating one system with MAK, the effort required is minimal. However, if you want to MAK activate multiple systems or transition between activation methods (i.e. MAK to KMS, KMS to MAK, etc.) it gets a bit more complicated. VAMT can help with that.

VAMT uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to communicate with end-systems and provides the following features to help manage activation:

The current version of VAMT (1.2) is part of the Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows 7. Unlike previous editions, VAMT 1.2 is only available in the Windows AIK and is not published as a standalone download.

The primary difference between VAMT 1.1 and 1.2 is the added support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. If you are using an earlier version of VAMT, you’ll need to install VAMT 1.2 to manage MAK keys and activations for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. You will first need to uninstall the older version of VAMT and then install VAMT 1.2 as part of the Windows AIK. Your current inventory/key data can be saved in a Computer Information List (CIL) file (XML) and opened in the new version. No need to re-enter any keys or rebuild your computer list.

An updated version of VAMT (VAMT 2.0) is currently in beta and expected to release in the first quarter of this year. VAMT 2.0 is a managed MMC plug-in and will offer a number of new features:

Download the beta today and give it a try.

No matter the version you are using, VAMT can help with several management and tracking activities related to product activation in your environment.

Until next time!

- Jodi

Feb

25

Piloting Windows 7- Part 2 : Initial Project Planning for a Windows 7 Pilot

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Continuing the series with our guest blogger, Jeremy Chapman.

As with any IT project, the first part of planning is about building a plan. There are several things you’ll want to accomplish with a pilot and depending on your organization, the importance of each validation area will vary. I think of the pilot as trying to achieve the following key tasks

  1. Technology validation. This not only validates the desktop environment you are delivering, but also how you deliver it. This covers everything from inventorying current users’ desktops, to imaging, applications and deployment technologies.
  2. Process validation. Process validation is ultimately for ensuring that you have covered all bases for the project and implementation infrastructure, while making sure that you have the right people and resources in place for the production rollout.
  3. User validation. User validation is not about validating the user’s abilities, but instead it gauges the impacts specific to the deployment process, new desktop environment and especially application experience.

 
Once you have the project goals in mind, there are many ways to execute the pilot in minimize user disruption. The idea is to start small and gradually increase the number of pilot seats – ensuring that you have an adequate representation of users, hardware types and sites (or geographic locations). Now is the time to document a plan for rolling out the pilot. You will also want to define success criteria relatively early in the process and what should constitute sign off for each phase. This typically means the number of issues and issue severity that you are willing to live with during each phase – recognizing that things should improve as you get closer to the production deployment. The concept of severity is important here as with any testing. You can use the following as a sample guideline for classifying severity:

Your quality gates should reflect these severity levels and include some count or measure for success. These numbers should get better as you approach production deployment. Here are a couple of examples:

By now you should have project goals, a system for assigning and prioritizing issues and a few quality gates defined for sign-off when moving up phases. Now is the time when we define the high level phases for the project with timelines and who is targeted per phase. I’ll save that for Part 3 of this blog series though.

Stay tuned and thanks for reading,

Jeremy Chapman

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