that brings me to now, my last post here on the Win7TechED.info blog.  So I’d like to take a moment to say thankyou and wrap up:

• Thankyou to everyone at TechED who came and said g’day and shared ideas
• Thankyou to everyone who shared inspiration and passion
• Thankyou to those who have found a new passion to go forth and build on top of Win 7
• For those who want to build your own Windows 7 Arcade machine!!  …The Slide deck on “how to build your own Windows 7 arcade Machine” is up my live spaces  (my CLI311 deck is on commnet)
• and thankyou to everyone who was a good sport and participated in the 200+ Windows-7-Media-Center-netbook-sea-of-blue at CLI311!

Again, a very special thankyou to Will at Computer Alliance (my local, and awesome Win7 OEM, here in Brisbane).  Will very kindly supplied the KICK ASS Windows 7 Media Center, that you all saw on stage.  Thankyou Will, it knocked the socks off every demo I threw at it!   For those who asked about my hardware, Will is your man.

Wrapping up, thank you to all at Microsoft Australia for not only the netbooks, but for for the amazing Customer experience (yes, capital ‘C’) that is TechED.  Thankyou for the face-to-face and opportunity to network, meet amazing people and peers.  Thankyou for investing in all of us; the Windows 7 Community, so we can take Win7 and build on ideas, and build technology, the likes the world has never seen before!

.,.and lastly, of course, thank you for reading.  It has been my pleasure and honour.  I’m looking forward to meeting you all again, wherever that may be!

…it sounds so easy when I say it like that; but in reality they were imaged 100 at a time per zone, 5 zones in total, each zone driven by their own deployment server.

And not a moment too soon.  The rain has settled in here at (normally sunny QLD), but it should be all good for next week.

Lastly, I guess be prepared for “wow”.  If you haven’t already check out the gossip on techedbackstage.net  Anyway, next week *is* TechED; we will be there, and we will be making history as it happens. 

I’m looking really looking forward to being a part of, and shaping the community experience, where we were the First TechED in the world to do what we’re doing.

Phwaaar, is an understatement.  See you next week at TechED, where changing the world, is definitely on the cards.

Safe travels everybody!

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse

Because, I mean really, who uses a mouse to play a Windows7 powered Arcade Machine?    …or the multi touch enabled Media Center   …or your very own Netbook with a wireless XBOX 360 controller on the side.  =)

Yup, I’m nearly locked and loaded, a few more tweaks to the demos again, and all the bits and pieces get put back into the freshly painted Arcade Machine. 

Then I’ll freight them (and me) down to the Gold Coast for TechED, for my session:  CLI 311, Windows 7 After Hours — Everything Microsoft put in there for you and not  the company

I can’t wait.  The Win7 client track will be awesome this year.   I’ll ping the other Win7 Client session guys, and see if they want to do a shameless session plug here as well.

See you at TechED!!

jeffa36Come on Netbook Image capture for #auteched..I want to go home..1gb captured so far in this pass..oh secret app is..drumroll..Office 2010!!

Personally, having used Office 2010 preview for a few weeks now, all I can say is PHWAAARRR!!!

Outlook 2010 and Onenote 2010 have rocked my socks off (GTD just went up a gear)  Multi Exchange support is a clear winner.

But awww shucks, don’t listen to me, just head on over to the Engineering 2010 blog, and check it all out.

   ..to which Orin Thomas (Security powerhouse and TechED speaker) responded: ”JeffA, came, saw, captured” 

I giggled like a school girl.   But in all seriousness, The TechED tickets are sold out, all our Netbooks are here in Oz; and it will probably take about 3 days to push Win7 onto all 2200+ of them.

So as we all sit here, on the eve before Win7, it’s all just a little bit too exciting. 

On a side note, rumour has it that RTM will be in Technet/MSDN in a few hours.  So start your USB keys, get your Office 2010 tech preview, all your goodies, and get ready for the Win7 Load fest.    (My 8GB USB is all ready to roll, how geek am I?)

…on a side note, does anyone find the humour in the trivia most of the Australian geek community will be installing Win7 on/near:   9/8/7 6:54:32…

Keep you posted!

So if you had thoughts of getting to TechED, now would be the time, cause yesterday Coatsy  announced there are less than 100 tickets left.

The only other supergossip, Jeff is back from TR9 in Seattle  and is “ready to rock” for the Win7 netbook deployment =)

…oh, and if you’ve wanted to turn your Netbook into an Arcade Machine, as well as push Win7 Media Centre to it’s limits, have I got a session for you (Shameless self promotion).   …more details to follow.

I shouldn’t be that surprised I guess, because Coatsy also posted yesterday that the first draft of TechED Session List (Scheduler Builder) should come on-line today.   

…but since Coatsy is in Seattle with JeffA who knows if that is “today today” or “tomorrow today”.  Why are the lads in Seattle?  Well TechReady of course, it’s where all the Microsofties go to get the latest (and NDA) goodness on upcoming products.    I see Jeff is getting the inside scoop on Win7 RTM Deployment.

Now, I’m off to see if I can track down any of the Win7 session presenters for TechED and see what goodness is in store.  Wish me luck.

And to top it all off, the first 20 HP Netbooks have arrived here in Oz!!  The lads will be using them for testing/trial & application seeding.  …and here’s a piccy of them:

You’ve gotta admit, it’s kind of exciting – and do I have a talent for understatement?

So what’s next on the list?  Apparently, provision 1,000 power points in the breakout/session rooms. Another 206 public points. 39 at exhibitors and another 1206 recharge points.

Look’s like the party is getting started!

• Jorke: has been tweaking the wireless network for us; and introduced DavidH (the Technology project Manager of tech.ed)
• Nick: has ordered our netbooks; they’ll arrive next week here in Australia (We demmand Photos Dammit!!)  …apparently the the software load is scheduled for the week before #auteched 
• Jeff has called in a favour, getting CCX drivers for the wireless and been wrapping up the Win7 image (and rebuilding his laptop)  ..I wonder if it’s a RTM build?  Time will tell 

Anyway, more importantly, It looks like the Win7 image is close to done.

A week in review with pictures is below:

Thursday 9th
Converting the captured Netbook WIM file to a VHD for broader testing #auteched
getting rid of the Vista sticker is something we are thinking about for the Netbooks at #auteched..are you not coming to Teched? 5:45 PM
First pictures of what the OOBE experience might look like for Netbooks at #auteched 5:41 PM
New pictures of the Netbook image build for #auteched..capturing using WDS. 5:11 PM
Wednesday 8th
Going to be testing this WIM2VHD Converter for converting Netbook Image to a VHD 10:42 pm
Tuesday 7th
Testing Multicast deployments for Netbooks at #auteched..mine and @nickhodge machines 9:37 pm
First custom capture image for Netbooks at #auteched being copied to my WDS 6:22 pm
Some more piccies of the testing of the “Deployment on a stick” 5:44 pm (Personally, I love this idea!!)
First pictures of the unified dev/it pro Netbook image being captured 12:18 am
Monday 6th
SYSPREP /generalize /oobe /shutdown on Netbook for #auteched..first pass at creating an image.. 12:34 am