feature: Seven steps to netbook marital bliss with Windows 7

More than fifty million netbooks have been sold since the phenomenon's beginnings in late 2007, and of those, only a small fraction run Windows 7. With cheap licenses available in family packs and academic discounts, and XP installs increasingly decrepit, ugly, and vulnerable to malware, lots of Windows 7 upgrades are going to happen. However, a quick install from a USB DVD-ROM or thumb drive won't let users get the most out of a netbook. As with the Hindu Saptapadi wedding vows, there are seven steps to optimizing your netbook for maximum Windows 7 performance.

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feature: Lockdown: creating a secure domain policy in Windows

The recent Google hack has brought security to the top of every IT admin's mind, if it wasn't there already. But securing a network is a huge investment of time and money, to the point that many best practices are out-of-reach for many small and medium businesses. Nonetheless, there is hope. Windows shops can get a good, cheap head-start on security by simply ensuring that their domain security policy is solid. In this article, Ars shows you how to create a group policy that will secure Active Directory (AD) according to current best practices, while keeping it open enough to ensure that operational headaches remain at a minimum.

Note: For reference, all policy settings discussed in this article can be found under Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security Settings in the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc)

feature: Windows 7’s XP Mode: what it is, how it works, who it’s for

The bespoke line-of-business application is a common feature of the corporate world, and a thing that has been instrumental in cementing Windows as the corporate desktop OS standard. These applications—I've worked on a few myself—are typically crummy affairs. The foundation of such applications is typically some combination of Visual Basic 6 and obsolete versions of Access and Excel. On top of this mound of [redacted], these apps usually contain one or more third-party components to draw graphs or something, from vendors that have long since gone out of business.

This time, it’s different: Windows Server 2008 R2 in-depth

Let's say you're the sort of IT person whose days, evenings, and weekends are consumed by running around from point to point, trying to keep your company's or clients' computers running. Chances are very good you're still using XP on the desktop and Server 2003 in the closet, because you're used to it, you're comfortable with it, your users understand it, and nobody's paying you to be disruptive. Plus, you're busy! So when you hear the name "Windows Server 2008 R2," what's your first thought? You're likely to believe that it's little more than a warmed-over service pack for Windows Server 2008, which is the server version of the much-maligned Windows Vista. That alone is enough of a condemnation to keep plenty of people away, even before we get to the learning curve.

But when you start to take a closer look, you realize that something much bigger is going on here than the name suggests. This "R2" moniker has gained favor in Redmond in the last few years as a way of saying, "It's the same software, honest! We've nailed on some bits to the side." It's supposed to appeal to IT departments that are allergic to disruptive changes. Maybe it's supposed to appeal to the inner Star Wars fan and make you think it's an adorable sidekick that can solve difficult problems with a simple tool. Windows Server 2003 R2 certainly fit that description—the kernel, core operating system and feature set of Server 2003 were 100 percent retained for 2003 R2, and some useful tools were added on. Server 2008 R2, on the other hand, is a much different story. It has a revised kernel, it has a new user interface, and it isn't a drop-in upgrade for that entry-level server you bought six years ago. But it presents some new and genuinely interesting ways of solving a lot of the day-to-day issues, big and small, that the busy IT person deals with.

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