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Microsoft Most Valued Professionals visited us on campus this week. I don't know if the MVPs liked our cafeteria food--but I know everyone (MVPs and Microsoft folks alike) came away buzzed with ideas. The goal was to share what's new while listening to people's ideas about new directions for our tools, programs, and products.

So why don't you get to do that--share ideas with Microsoft developers? You can--for three days in Los Angeles. For WinHEC 2007 in May, our developers and program managers have insisted on the maximum possible hours to dive deep into the details of the Windows hardware platform, answer your questions, and share ideas for advancing the platform.

We've taken what we learned from introducing hands-on labs at WinHEC last year and amped up the learning opportunities. Our developers are creating new self-paced labs to share the kinds of information that they present when MVPs and other developers visit the Microsoft campus. At WinHEC, you can work at your own pace, but then come back to the lab room to meet and ask questions of our developers. Check the lab topics we're creating for WinHEC.

Our developers will also lead workshops at WinHEC, to walk through specific coding, testing, and debugging activities. These are the kinds of sessions that our experts present on campus to teach best practices to other Microsoft developers.

To join in this opportunity to work closely with our developers, register for WinHEC now. If you register by Monday, March 19, you'll save $400 on your registration.

See you in Los Angeles, May 15-17!

- Annie Pearson
for the WHDC Web team

WHDC After Dark:

Want to Add Your Own Content to the WDK Documentation? Starting in March 2007, the WDK documentation on the MSDN Library features MSDN Wiki functionality. The Wiki enables you to post and edit community content on individual documentation pages. Anyone with a Microsoft Passport account or Windows Live ID can post new blocks and edit existing blocks of community content. To get started, go to http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/default.aspx. See the end of this newsletter for more about this new opportunity.

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Windows Hardware Platform Advances

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Are your computers ready for Windows Vista? Assess your entire network with the newly launched Windows Vista Hardware Assessment tool. Windows Vista Hardware Assessment makes it easier for organizations to quickly assess their PCs' hardware and device driver compatibility for Windows Vista migration. Download this new tool and assess your network today.

This simple command-line tool verifies whether your driver accurately reports microphone-array geometry information and whether the Voice Capture DMO operating in microphone-array mode processes the captured data accurately. The current version of the tool contains a minor fix to the error code reporting mechanism.

Windows Vista networking stack was rewritten from the ground up. Channel 9 interviewed Neeraj Garg, Dave Thaler, Rajesh Sundaram, Vishesh Parikh, and Dalen Abraham to highlight wireless networking, diagnostics, and architecture in the new Windows networking stack.

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Logo Program Highlights at WinHEC

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High Availability Program for Windows Server Longhorn: Learn more at WinHEC. Take the opportunity to discuss and learn the details about this new program, coinciding with the release of Windows Server Longhorn. The High Availability Program is designed to be more mainstream than the program for Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition and to meet a wide range of customer IT needs. This WinHEC session presents an overview of the planned hardware requirements and other components of the program. Microsoft technical and business staff members will be available to discuss best practices, configurations, and support for highly available Windows Server-based solutions. Get what you need at WinHEC, including Windows Logo Program details.

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Tips and Community for Windows Driver Developers

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The purpose of the MSDN Wiki is to extend and improve documentation on the MSDN Library. Community Content is not for questions; use MSDN forums or newsgroups for this purpose. The Wiki is also not designed for reporting bugs in the documentation. To report WDK documentation bugs, use the feedback link in the Windows Driver Kit version of the documentation, or send an e-mail message with the topic name in the subject line to ddksurv1@microsoft.com.

We encourage you to get involved with Community Content right away. This is a great way to show your expertise to the community. The MSDN Wiki supports browsing and editing in Internet Explorer and Firefox. Other Wikified content on MSDN includes Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, .NET Framework 2.0, and .NET 3.0 Class Library documentation.

To get started, go to http://msdnwiki.microsoft.com or see the MSDN Wiki blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/msdnwiki/. To see how content evolves, you can view version history for each content block. Check the MSDN Wiki frequently asked questions. Click here to see recent Wiki edits and to subscribe to an RSS feed of all English posts to the MSDN Wiki.

More Tips and Insights from Developers:

MVP Blog from Don Burn

Rico Mariani on Channel 9: Writing Better, Faster Code
Famous for Rico Mariani's Performance Tidbits, Rico talks about performance on Channel 9.

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Edition for

March 16, 2007

In This Issue: