I am certainly looking forward to seeing lots of folks at the Tech Community Evening Launch for Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange 2007 next week in Croke Park! As you probably know by now, there are so many new features in the launch products that there is absolutely no way we could cover them all in the 2 hour events on Dec 5th. Therefore, we decided to skip a lot of the marketing overview, and just concentrate on giving a more thorough overview of the capabilities for developers and IT Pros.

There will be two technical keynote addresses: first of all, Rob will be highlighting the most exciting features for developers in the new platform. Then our guest expert speaker, Rafal Lukawiecki, will be giving an overview of the new security features in Vista (especially crafted for techies). In addition, folks will have the option to get hands-on with the new products in the demo area.

So - if you are coming along on the evening of the 5th and haven't yet seen what's new in the three launch products, I would recommend you first take a look at the following feature overview: http://www.seewindowsvista.com/ 

The site contains a number of short videos to give you a good idea of the how the new features work together to improve business productivity - it includes a number of real-life examples that are pretty cool (The Northface and Razorfish ones in 'Engaging Your Customer' are some of my favourites).

Hope you have time to take a look - it will put everything we talk about on the 5th in better context.

Mind you, if you want to drill down a little deeper in advance (and have all those difficult questions ready!) - then check out the links below. There are already a lot of on-demand webcasts covering a lot of very specific topics on Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange 2007!

Developers

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Windows Vista

http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/msdnvista.mspx

Learn how Windows Vista makes it easier than ever to build applications that are more secure, reliable, and manageable. Tune in and see how you can create user-experience breakthroughs that improve usability and enable greater relevance to the work users do. In this series of free webcasts, we cover Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows CardSpace, and XAML.

2007 Microsoft Office system

http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/officedeveloperlive.mspx

Learn how to design and write smart client applications, access the Microsoft .NET framework, debug, write managed code, and design Excel and Word-based user interfaces directly from the .NET 2005 IDE using Visual Basic or C#.

IT Professionals

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Windows Vista

http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/technetvista.mspx

Get the tools and information you need to prepare for Windows Vista, Microsoft’s new desktop operating system.  These free webcasts will introduce you to key Windows Vista product features and explore deployment, security, management, and productivity.  Live webcasts also include a question and answer session. View one webcast, view a few, or view them all – the information will help you prepare for Windows Vista.

2007 Microsoft Office system

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/office/default.mspx

The Microsoft Office System TechCenter is designed to help connect you with Office desktop and server resources from Microsoft and the broader Office community