Both Vista and Server 2008 have earned a reputation for high uptime once the device driver situation is (as they say in England) "well sorted." In my experience, the few blue screens of death that I have seen, outside the Virtual PC/Virtual Server environment (which seems to increase BSOD frequency by at least an order of magnitude), have occurred on systems where one or more drivers are either (a) buggy or (2) not updated for the operating system.

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A big part of most of our lives is tied up in the minutiae of hardware and software details, and it seems useful to step back occasionally and think about whether what we do, day in and day out, has value beyond helping us make a living and take care of loved ones.

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As was the case with Server 2003 R2, which included a surprisingly large number of interesting updates and features, Server 2008 R2 promises to be equally worthy of our attention. Microsoft bundles the improvements into web apps, virtualization, power management, scalability, and synergy with Windows 7. However, the first thing that must be said is that this operating system is 64-bit ONLY.

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You may recall that when Server 2008 was released, it was already at the Service Pack 1 version. This indicated that Microsoft was serious about aligning the Longhorn operating systems, because Vista SP1 was released at about the same time. Now, we're coming up on Service Pack 2, which is presently in beta, and due for release in the "first half" of 2009. So, what's in SP2, and how excited should we be about it?

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Here's one more holiday-related entry, this time for those of you who enjoy listening to music while troubleshooting obscure event log messages. Or for those of you who *know* someone who enjoys music from electronic sources. You may be using a portable player, phone, laptop, or desktop, but whatever the device, the chances are you're using a set of mass-market earbuds or "PC headphones". Some of these devices sound great, but that's like saying that some politicians are honest.

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If, like me, you have been looking for a good deal on a new machine, whether for yourself or someone else, I thought it might be timely to pass along a few tips in the spirit of the season. If you like Dells, you may want to know about www.dell.com/outlet. This is a location where you can pick up scratch-n-dent and refurbished systems at considerable discounts, but with the usual warranty (typically a year). I have found that prices are similar to what you'll find on eBay, but the warranty coverage is a valuable advantage.

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In Microspeak, a "federated" search is one that leverages another search engine. For example, a Vista user could access a Windows 2008 machine with Windows Search 4.0 and leverage the search index on the 2008 box. In Search Server 2008 Express, you can set up your searches to leverage a search engine on the Internet - within limits.

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Next on the agenda was to open the Search Center page so that users could, well, use it. From the admin page, click "Site Actions," "Site Settings," "People and Groups," "New," and "Add Users." (This last option is misnamed, because you can add users and groups here.) At this point, you can browse the directory, create a list of users and groups manually, or click a checkbox to add all authenticated users.

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This week it's back to discussing Microsoft Search Server Express 2008. First I'll spend a little time discussing some of the configuring options that I didn't mention when we looked at the initial installation and crawl configuration. I was somewhat eager to test out the product, so I didn't want it crawling content at a super low priority.

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Remember how Vista took 45 seconds to find three files? Well, folks, Agent Ransack needed only 11 seconds on the exact same computer to perform the same search. Check that: a better search. Because Agent Ransack found eight files, not three! It caught five files that Vista didn’t catch: GHOSTSCRIPT.DLL, LMHOSTS.SAM (two instances), and APPHOSTSVC.DLL (also two instances). So what’s going on here? Why didn’t Vista catch these other five files?

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So about 45 seconds on my system after initiating my search for files containing the string "hosts," Vista found three files: HOSTS in the usual location (C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc), a backup copy of HOSTS in c:\windows\winsxs\backup, and the file (get ready) X86_MICROSOFT-WINDOWS-W..NFRASTRUCTURE-OTHER_31BF3856AD364E35_6.0.6000.16386_NONE_024E4071FA6FEA95_HOSTS_D78DF635, in c:\windows\winsxs. Now it's time to perform a little experiment.

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We've spent a fair amount of time recently taking a look at Microsoft search software, both "enterprise" and "desktop." It seemed like a good idea to take a breather from our analysis of Search Server 2008, an enterprise search tool, and share with you why the subject of desktop search has become particularly important as organizations roll out Windows Vista.

Say you have a need to find all the files on your C: drive that contain the string "hosts" in the filename. Sounds simple, but in Vista, the process is actually ludicrously complex.

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Crawling in Search Server 2008 Express is the process of building the index based on a highly specific set of criteria and parameters. When creating a new content source, you can tell the program the starting location (URLs) of the content you want to crawl; the type of content to crawl (SharePoint sites, Web sites, file shares, or Exchange public folders); whether to perform a full or incremental crawl (incremental just crawls content that has changed since the previous crawl); and when to perform the crawl procedure.

But that's not all.

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I went with the default choice and left the box checked, clicking the Close button... and the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard appeared. So I guess that was its real name. Microsoft Quality Control continues to underwhelm. If you don't care about the small stuff, how can you inspire trust with the big stuff?

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After last week's philosophical postings on IT and the economic crisis, it's time to get back to tech stuff - specifically, Windows search technologies.

So after performing a "sidegrade" to fix the Windows Update and Windows Installer glitches on my much-abused Server 2008 test machine, I went back to installing Search Server 2008 Express (readers may recall that this is the least expensive way to get a taste of Microsoft's "enterprise" search capabilities).

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It's amazing to think that the financial bailout (if you want to call it that, and it seems an increasingly and sadly accurate term) of $700 billion dollars is about  seven times the size of the US software industry. SEVEN TIMES. Gone in the blink of an eye.

What that says to me is that the money people, and the politicians whom they lobby, have way too much say in what happens in our world.

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Another interesting detour that my brain took last week: to what degree, if any, was computer technology involved in the causes of the financial meltdown? I don't necessarily buy the simplistic arguments that it was all due to corporate greed, or consumer over-reaching, or even a lack of suitable oversight. I think part of the crash can be attributed to how easily we can confuse data with meaning.

Many of us deal every day with various forms of data: words, numbers, graphs, charts. The systems we have developed for manipulating data have become remarkably complex.

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So, the stock market has tanked, may tank further, and the gurus (not that they're always right by any means) seem to feel that the US is looking at a two-year recession, if not longer. Feeling a bit philosophical, I started wondering how much the financial meltdown will impact infotech.

The net effect seems blurry at this time, partly because companies put money into IT if they perceive that it will improve productivity, and you can argue that improving productivity is just as important in lean times as in prosperous ones.

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As many of you know, when you come to the end of your rope on a given system, you can try "upgrading" the operating system to... itself! I've done this on a few occasions and, while not especially convenient, it does sometimes work.

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...and if you recognize THAT message, then maybe you can identify with this story. I was doing database development for a collection agency (hey, it was paying work, and as collection agents go, granted that it would not be my profession of choice, they were nice, professional guys) and the agency was using Mac Pluses.

What does this have to do with the price of tea in China? You'll see in a moment, because it's an example of how the computer industry doesn't take error messages seriously.

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