Microsoft Windows Workstation 2008.R2

As discontent over Windows Vista (with or without Service Pack 1) continues to swirl, Microsoft is gearing up to launch on February 27 the "other" Windows: Windows Server 2008. Even though it is built from the same core as Vista, Windows Server is different from Vista in a number of ways, from its role-based configuration options, to its built-in hypervisor.

Guest blogger Jason Perlow (of asbestos-underwear fame) has been an advocate for Microsoft making Windows Server 2008 available as in workstation/desktop form. Like the old Windows NT and Windows 2000 Workstation products, a Windows Server 2008 Workstation would be a form factor for power users who don't need all the Vista desktop eye candy, but care more about manageability and performance.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to play with release candidate and the RTM versions of Windows 2008 Server, albeit primarily with the role of evaluating its Hyper-V virtualization capabilities. Over the course of that evaluation, I’ve become increasingly impressed with the polish, performance and manageability of the Server 2008 product, and now have come to the conclusion that this in fact, the best Windows that Microsoft has released since, well, ever.

I’ve said in the past that I believed Windows Vista was going to find difficulty being adopted in many corporations. This is due to a number of reasons, largely the new interface, compatibility issues, increased overhead with all the newer bells and whistles and accompanying higher hardware requirements. While a Vista Business version of the OS exists with lower requirements, it still has the stigma of being associated with a product that has had a less than stellar initial adoption rate.

I’ve suggested to a number of folks at Microsoft that perhaps it might be a good idea if they took the core of Windows 2008 Server and re-marketed it as Windows 2008 Workstation, simply because it seems that a large number of companies are much more likely to adopt Server before it adopts Vista, and it simplifies things from a management and administration perspective if the Server and Workstation OSes are closely aligned with each other. This has been the traditional product marketing model in which Windows NT and Windows 2000 operated in, and only changed in the last generation with Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server.