On the eve of launch

We are almost there.  Check out all the launch activities and watch the event from your own PC here.  We are running the whole event on SharePoint 2010 which is a great testament to the work we’ve done in this release.  SharePoint’s marketing site, sharepoint2010.microsoft.com has been running the beta for quite sometime and gives you an idea of all the things you can accomplish with this release.

For those who have access to MSDN and Technet downloads, Office and SharePoint 2010 are available for download as is SQL Server 2008R2.  And if you want to test drive the software download the newly available Hyper-V image here.  There are two images with the following evaluation software:

Virtual machine “a” contains the following pre-configured software:

  1. Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Evaluation Edition x64, running as an Active Directory Domain Controller for the “CONTOSO.COM” domain with DNS and WINS
  2. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition with Analysis, Notification, and Reporting Services
  3. Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007 R2
  4. Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
  5. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition
  6. Microsoft Office Web Applications
  7. Microsoft FAST Search for SharePoint 2010
  8. Microsoft Project Server 2010
  9. Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010
  10. Microsoft Visio 2010
  11. Microsoft Project 2010
  12. Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2

Virtual machine “b” contains the following pre-configured software:

  1. Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Evaluation Edition x64, joined to the “CONTOSO.COM” domain
  2. Microsoft Exchange Server 2010

In my typical config, I run image “a” with as much memory as possible, and image “b” with about 2048 MB. 

And while you are waiting for the launch event, check out the Microsoft Vision video.