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Most folks know about the May12th Launch event that Microsoft will be streaming “Live from New York!”.  We’ll be carrying the event live at our monthly MNSPUG meeting which just happened to coincide with it.  We’ll also be having a panel discussion about SharePoint 2007 and 2010 beforehand…

What doesn’t seem to be getting as much press are the IT Pro and Developer events that are also happening around the country.  Check out the following link and dig in a bit:

http://www.microsoft.com/business/2010events/ 

We’ll be having a local event in Minneapolis (Bloomington actually) on May 27th – so take a look at the agenda and see if you like to attend with us! 

In case you missed it from all the other news, media, networking sites, the SharePoint and Office 2010 final bits (non-Beta) are available on MSDN and TechNet. 

Have fun rebuilding!    

I picked up an interesting tidbit this evening about the 64-bit and 32-bit versions of Office 2010 (which by the way announced RTM ‘status’ today – congrats to the product teams!):  Functionality between the two bit-level versions is NOT the same. 

By default, I would expect the 64-bit version of Office 2010 to be the latest and greatest.  It IS the latest, but it’s only the greatest if you have some specific needs and don’t need some of the features that DON’T work – features that many people will miss. 

This article gets into the details you need:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee681792(office.14).aspx

Specifically take a look at the ‘Advantages’ and ‘Disadvantages’ sections. 

Some highlights: 

• As you would expect, the 64-bit version allows use of additional memory, which translates into larger Excel 2010 workbooks and big Project 2010 projects.
• As you (at least I) wouldn’t expect – some features like the Edit in Datasheet view DON’T work with Office 64-bit installed.  The details and reasoning can be found in the article but they’re related to ActiveX controls and COM add-ins… 

So, get to know the details before you purchase or plan to deploy Office 2010. 

Facts, rumors and stuff.  Here are the facts:

• You cannot use SharePoint Designer (SPD) 2010 to manage SharePoint 2007 sites.
• You can’t use SharePoint Designer (SPD) 2007 to access SharePoint 2010 sites. 

So, if you have to maintain both 2007 and 2010 SharePoint environments you need to have both versions of SPD installed somewhere.  Most administrators would probably prefer that they be readily available on the same machine.  

Reportedly, you could only have both versions installed if they were the same bit-level versions – specifically 32-bit since there isn’t a 64-bit version of SPD 2007.

Something I wasn’t aware of until now was that it wasn’t just SPD that in conflict – it’s any office client.  If you intend to install both versions of SPD on the same OS, ALL of your Office client apps will need to be 32-bit (Paul Stork).

-> Something else new that I learned was that you CAN have both versions of SPD installed with 64-bit SPD (all Office) 2010 and 32-bit SPD 2007 as long as SPD 2007 is installed after the 64-bit 2010 clients have been installed (Clayton Cobb). 
(Updated 4/16) – While this is technically possible right now, it is an officially unsupported scenario (see the last statement in the second long paragraph of the article): 
http://blogs.technet.com/office2010/archive/2010/02/23/understanding-64-bit-office.aspx
Thanks to Woody for pointing this out

This information is based on running pre-RTM versions of the 2010 Office clients and therefore should be tested again with the RTM bits when they are available.

It should also be noted that some folks have the opinion that the 2007 clients should not be installed side-by-side with the 2010 clients. (Mike Walsh)  Thankfully with the ease of being able to run Windows XP Mode on Windows 7, one scenario for circumventing this is to install the latest and greatest 2010 bits on the host OS, and then SPD 2007 on the Windows XP mode.  Hopefully there is a scenario that fits your individual or organization’s needs.    

NOTE: Information in this post is based on a TechNet forum thread with the names of the folks providing information tagged with the information they provided…  Thanks guys!

Post:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepoint2010general/thread/75697656-6578-48e1-93be-4e335629554f

Microsoft announced the RTM and launch dates for SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 products yesterday.  We’ve been hearing ‘June’ since last fall and heard unofficial rumblings about April as late as last week – but April is what it turned out to be.  Good stuff!! 

RTM – April 2010

Launch Date: May 12th, 2010
Register for the launch event HERE

Here’s the official post on the SharePoint Team blog from Arpan Shah – Director, SharePoint.

Now we just need to keep an eye on MSDN and TechNet for when the bits arrive in April. 

One of the things I’m doing to dig into the SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 bits is build a Windows Server 2008 R2 build and installing everything on it.  Over the course of this build, I’ve come across a few things that others might find useful.

First of all, I’m doing this on my laptop (another server soon too, but for now, the laptop).  I’ve currently got a Dell Latitude D820 with 4 GB of RAM – though not all the RAM is fully used due to hardware constraints.  In order to keep my normal work environment available, I’m using a second hard drive in the CD (modular) drive bay using a hard drive caddy. 

So #1 that I ran into today was trying to use PowerPoint 2010 to work on a slide deck.  For the life of me I couldn’t get the file to open.  I don’t know if this is only a Server 2008 R2 feature, but the file was blocked – I couldn’t open it in PowerPoint.  PowerPoint just sat there and spun until I cancelled it.  If you right-click on the file name (once it’s saved locally) and select Properties, you’ll see a Security blurb at the bottom of the General tab.  By clicking the Unblock button, you’ll be able to open the file as you normally would. 

Oh, I suppose this is #1.5.  Not sure what the deal here is, but when I save something from a SharePoint site down to my local machine, it’s changing the file name by filling in the blanks with underscores.  I’ll take a peek at this one later – it’s not stopping me from getting my work done. 

#2 Was trying to Run OneNote to take notes, etc while running through things.  Ran into “OneNote cannot start because the Desktop Experience feature is not installed.  Install it in the Windows Control Panel > Programs and Features > Turn Windows features on or off.”  That pretty much says what you need to figure it out. 

So open the Control Panel.  Under Programs there is a ‘Turn Windows features on or off’.  This opens the Server Manager.  Scroll down to the Features area and select Add Features.  Select Desktop Experience.  This will require you to also install Ink and Handwriting – go for it.  Run through the install wizard for these and you should be good to go.  This does require a reboot. 

Note: Using the extra drive caddy, or at least different drive partitions for the separate OSs allows me to have a OneNote file that I can open up and use on either machine/OS.  I can take my notes and capture screen shots in OneNote while working in Server 2008 and then access those notes just as easily on my Windows 7 machine.