I have come across a few articles that talk about how Server 2008 is what Vista hoped to be.  Here is an article that a Microsoft person wrote about it:

The Way I See It : Using Windows Server 2008 as a SUPER workstation OS

Also, this article talks about some performance testing:

Windows "Workstation" 2008 - Vista Done Right?

And if you want to run Hyper-V on your laptop, you may want to see this article about how to get the Wireless to be available to the VMs:

Using Hyper-V with a Wireless Network Adapter 

or

Using Wireless with Hyper-V

To change the time zone on a computer running a Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008, run control timedate.cpl.

http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/library/47a23a74-e13c-46de-8d30-ad0afb1eaffc1033.mspx?mfr=true

In the past, I have used mstsc /console to get to "session 0" on remote machines.  With Vista and Windows Server 2008 that isn't the correct command though.  Instead it has been changed to mstsc /admin.

I am doing some research into our data center cooling requirements.  I came across this article and thought this bit was interesting:

So how much does it cost to power 100TB (raw) of storage, and how much CO₂ emissions are generated per year? That, of course, depends on the type of storage, the number and size of the disk drives, the cost per kWh of power, cooling costs and the average number of lbs of CO₂ produced per kWh.

One example is a single storage system using 750GB SATA disk drives yielding 144TB of raw storage in a single cabinet footprint, which would require less than 52,560 kWh and cost about $10,512 per year with an emissions footprint of about 39.42 CO₂ tons. To account for cooling costs, simply double the above numbers for a worst-case scenario. By comparison, a 1999 Chevrolet Tahoe generates about 7 to 10 tons of CO₂ per year, while a Lexus RX333, depending on miles driven, generates about 5-6 tons of CO₂ per year, and a 24 cubic foot refrigerator yields about 1.22 tons of CO₂ per year.

Storage Power and Cooling Issues Heat Up

 I was working with a colleague to figure out something related to connection speeds and data transfer.  I happened to find this interesting little snippet and thought it was worth reading:

Historical context^*
Once upon a time, computer professionals noticed that 2¹⁰ was very nearly equal to 1000 and started using the SI prefix "kilo" to mean 1024. That worked well enough for a decade or two because everybody who talked kilobytes knew that the term implied 1024 bytes. But, almost overnight a much more numerous "everybody" bought computers, and the trade computer professionals needed to talk to physicists and engineers and even to ordinary people, most of whom know that a kilometer is 1000 meters and a kilogram is 1000 grams.

Then data storage for gigabytes, and even terabytes, became practical, and the storage devices were not constructed on binary trees, which meant that, for many practical purposes, binary arithmetic was less convenient than decimal arithmetic. The result is that today "everybody" does not "know" what a megabyte is. When discussing computer memory, most manufacturers use megabyte to mean 2²⁰ = 1 048 576 bytes, but the manufacturers of computer storage devices usually use the term to mean 1 000 000 bytes. Some designers of local area networks have used megabit per second to mean 1 048 576 bit/s, but all telecommunications engineers use it to mean 10⁶ bit/s. And if two definitions of the megabyte are not enough, a third megabyte of 1 024 000 bytes is the megabyte used to format the familiar 90 mm (3 1/2 inch), "1.44 MB" diskette. The confusion is real, as is the potential for incompatibility in standards and in implemented systems.

Faced with this reality, the IEEE Standards Board decided that IEEE standards will use the conventional, internationally adopted, definitions of the SI prefixes. Mega will mean 1 000 000, except that the base-two definition may be used (if such usage is explicitly pointed out on a case-by-case basis) until such time that prefixes for binary multiples are adopted by an appropriate standards body. 

Return to SI prefixes

*Historical context adapted from: Bruce Barrow, "A Lesson in Megabytes," IEEE Standards Bearer, January 1997, page 5. Portions copyright © 1997 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.

Definitions of the SI units: The binary prefixes

If you are trying to free up space on your system drive you may run across a very large  log file in the system32\wbem\logs folder:

SYMPTOMS

When you use Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and you configure it to log all events on your Microsoft Windows Server 2003-based computer or Microsoft Windows XP-based computer for quick analysis and troubleshooting of problems, the file size of both the Framework.log and the Framework.lo_ files may be greater than what you configured for them.

The Framework.log file grows larger than 64 KB when you use WMI on a Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP computer

I was looking for information on how Group Policies get applied and I thought this particular paragraph explained some of the strange things we sometimes see with Group Policy behavior:

Folder Redirection and Software Installation Policies

Note that when logon optimization is on, a user may need to log on to a computer twice before folder redirection policies and software installation policies are applied. This is because application of these types of policies require the synchronous policy application. During a policy refresh (which is asynchronous), the system sets a flag that indicates that the application of folder redirection or a software installation policy is required. The flag forces synchronous application of the policy at the user's next logon.

Group Policy Processing

 I was looking for something else and came across this in the Scripting guy archives...

Set objFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile("c:\scripts\test.txt", ForReading,False,TriStateTrue)

The first two parameters probably don’t faze you much: they’re simply the full path to the file we want to open and the constant ForReading. And you’re right: this is standard operating procedure when it comes to reading text files. But what about those other two parameters, one False, the other the constant TriStateTrue?

This is where the Scripting Guys perform their magic. The optional third parameter is a Boolean parameter that, if True, creates the specified text file if the file cannot be found. Because we’re only interested in opening an existing file, we set this parameter to False (which is also the default value).

That brings us to parameter 4, our old pal TriStateTrue. If the fourth parameter passed to the OpenTextFile method is equal to -1 then the file will be opened as a Unicode file. It’s that easy. Leave the fourth parameter off and the file will be opened as ASCII; set the fourth parameter to -1 and - presto-changeo! - your file will be opened as Unicode,

Hey, Scripting Guy! How Can I Open a Text File as Unicode?