IPEXPO 2011 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

We were at the IPEXPO yesterday to meet with some partners, friends and business associates. As is always the case with these events – you get out what you put in and we made an effort to get to as many of the seminars as possible while touching base with people before and after.

It has reaped some rewards for us already so to anyone who is unsure – IPEXPO continues to a be a valuable networking event and once you’re done you can always pop over the Ski show next door afterwards and get kitted out for the slopes.

The Full Circle has been an long term HP partner and ProLiant server evangelist since the early 90’s and days of the Compaq Systempro. In 1994 Reuben Cook, Founder and CTO of The Full Circle lead a £.25M project to refresh the server messaging infrastructure of the then SmithKline Beecham (now Glaxo) using Compaq rack-mounted ProLiant servers (codenamed ‘Armada’ – no, not the opal laptops!).  The project was under Compaq NDA at the time and so early it was installed and commissioned before Compaq‟s official UK release date for the ProLiant – think back to 1600’s and 1.6” drives!

Today we continue to recommend and deploy ProLiant servers as first and only choice.  We have grown to become a trusted partner that participates in vendor supported early adopter programmes for new technologies e.g. when HP developed the C3000 blade enclosure known as the ‘Shorty’ – see HP case-study post we deployed an HP & AMD funded box.

Anyway, less of us and more about the ISS Technical Exchange! – for this event HP are bringing a large section of their Houston design engineers to London for a technology exchange. In a nutshell, this is where the HP guys that make the technology come to disclose how they see the future trending and tell you, in confidence, what they are engineering to address it. In some cases, they will fly in product prototypes for a ‘hands-on’ appraisal.

Event Objectives

The objective of this is for HP to open an interpersonal customer dialog to collect your impressions of the industry direction, their approach, plus the technological innovations they will be releasing. Most importantly they really want your input. They want to validate what they are seeing is consistent with your view plus see how we they can reshape or tailor their products to better meet your needs.

The structure is a large opening session that breaks into subject matter subgroups where you select from a range of technologies in tight workgroup sessions. The objective of this is to enable you to choose the key technologies that are of interest and be able to interact more closely in smaller groups.

The technologies that are likely to be discussed will range from server and blade futures, virtualization futures, workload management, firmware deployment advances, hardware management, power management, network technology futures, storage technology, disk i/o or SSD futures, even down to point product details like iLO 4 demos. You can take it a wide and deep range of technologies are being set up. The lay-up is a full day of sessions and there will be plenty of variety. However it is highly interpersonal and informal; so if you exhaust your key areas of interest you are free to depart any time that suits you.

The session will provide you with a unique IT planning view, but more importantly, the direct engagement to shape the future products HP will make for you hence I though you would like me to register you. Of course as you can imagine, the HP data will be highly sensitive and require an event specific confidentially agreement (CDA) signed to enter.

Agenda

(and this maybe all we’ll be able to talk about… see CDA!)

BBC News – Majestic shuttle in unique station image

NASA on Tuesday July 7th released the first-ever image of a space shuttle docked at the International Space Station.

The image, which shows the space shuttle Endeavour docked at the ISS, was taken from the Soyuz TMA-20 after it left the station on May 23. Expedition 27 crew member Paolo Nespoli snapped the shot from an altitude of approximately 200 miles as he and Russian cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev and NASA astronaut Cady Coleman headed back to Earth – a rare, indeed unique image as safety protocols don’t usually allow more than one vehicle to be in transit with the ISS at close proximity.

The image is very 2001: A Space Odyssey and just shows how far forwards Arthur C Clarke & Stanley Kubrick were thinking in 1968!

Will be my new desktop background for a while, the widescreen source is at http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/557328main_1969_946-710.jpg

We recently installed a new HP Pro 3120 SSF Series machine that ships with Windows 7 Pro and Office 2010.  The name Pro is a little over-egged as they are actually low-end machines as a replacement the DX24xx range.  The SSF or Space Saver Form is quite correct as its basically a half depth Micro Tower – think back to the Compaq Evo SSF but not nearly as well made.

Now, I’ve always been a fan of HP for their reliability, build quality, and typically a huge fan of their normally excellent Value Added Software – am thinking ProLiant servers, Insight Manager, SmartStart, etc.  However the shipped build on this machine which is aimed at the business market has got me thinking what the guys at HP have been smoking!  maybe too close to their colleagues at Apple!

The Out Of the Box Experience (OOBE) this machine is great, it covers the HP setup routine, registration, updates configuration, and what appears to be a McAfee opt-out.

However, upon booting into Windows for the 1st time its soon apparent that there is a truly massive  clean-up / bloatware removal task needed if being used in a standardised business build, starting with:
- HP Games (18 of them)
- McAfee Browser Protection Service
- McAfee Firewall Protection Service
- McAfee Virus and Spyware Protection Service

the McAfee stuff was a real sneaky one, especially as I quite clearly chose NOT to use McAfee.

Additionally we are removing:

HP Advisor – a 93MB toolbar with links to eBay, McAfee, Huddle, Biz Solutions (actually Solutions and Offers for your business AKA marketing guff!)
Device Access Manager for HP ProtectTools
Drive Encryption for HP ProtectTools
File Sanitizer for HP ProtectTools

SBS 2011 is the latest version of Microsoft’s on-premises small-business bundle, built around 64-bit version of Windows Server 2008 R2 core. SBS 2011 will include Exchange 2010 SP1, SharePoint 2010 Foundation and Windows Server Update Services 3.0. Microsoft will make available for an additional fee an add-on with SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition for Small Business. Microsoft is touting as SBS 7′s biggest new feature its support for Office Web Apps, as a result of the inclusion of SharePoint 2010 in the bundle.

In addition to the new names, the Official SBS Blog also revealed the ERP (Estimated Retail Pricing) of the new offerings as well as pricing for the Premium Add-on – I’ll let you get that specific info from the official blog.  It also revealed that SBS 2011 Standard should be available in December 2010 and that the Essentials will be available in the H1-CY2011 time frame.  There are also links on the official blog page for datasheets on both servers, as well as a brochure with info on the SMB server family, AND a link to where you can download the previews if you’d like to get started evaluating one or both of them right away. 

I’d like to point out that one of the key new features in the SBS 2011 Standard Edition is the update to SharePoint 2010 Foundation which brings Office Web Apps (OWA) into the picture.  Of course, Essentials customers will likely leverage the BPOS/Office 365 applications which also include SharePoint, so they’ll have access to OWA as well.  This will be a key opportunity for our partners to bring collaboration to new customers, who have yet to experience the business impact that a collaboration solution can have, as well as extend and enhance the SharePoint platform for existing SBS/Server customers.

Small Business Server 7 Overview Interview: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/small-business-server-7-overview-interview.aspx?query=1 Bjorn Levidow, Group Program Manager for SBS, tells us about some of the new enhancements in the next version

1. Backup, Backup, Snapshot, and Backup!
2. Install pre-reqs:
1. Windows PowerShell 2.0 and WinRM 2.0 for Windows Server 2008 x64
2. Microsoft Baseline Configuration Analyzer 2.0 (MBCA 2.0)
3. Install and run the Migration Preparation Tool to check the schema and scan the source server for problems..
   
   

   and if you do find an issue, correct it..
   
   ..we’ll be needing Exchange SP3 then!

   
   which may take a while… ours was 1hr 45mins!

4. Review the Migration Guide
   

5. Create an answer file

Inframon, headed by Gordon McKenna and Sean Roberts are old friends of ‘The Circle’ since we attended their System Center Train the Trainer workshop in November 2008.  Since then we’ve kept in touch at various events & launches, and when they are hosting they always deliver a cracking event.

Indeed, a fair summary as I wrote to some colleagues only a few weeks ago..

Coming up on the 5th November is Inframon’s War on Cost which is basically a 1-day systems management focussed preview of TechEd Europe which starts the following week in Berlin.
A whole bunch of senior Redmond folk come over the week before TechEd to present at this event, hit the town for a few beers (limited for me am afraid this year), stay the weekend in London before going on to Berlin for yet more & possibly better beer!
 
So, click on http://www.waroncost.com/ to register – I’ll absolutely guarantee you, if you have an interest/responsibility in managing a Microsoft estate then you will get a load of value from this event.

The official agenda is below, and if I made notes I’ve added them in-line with the agenda:

Event Schedule

Inframon, the UK’s leading specialist in the Microsoft System Center suite present "War On Cost 2010", a very exclusive event which will be taking place in the Cabinet War Rooms in the heart of London, an historic underground complex that housed a British government command centre throughout the Second World War.

The aim of this event is to give you valuable information on how you can help your organisation drive down the cost of managing your Windows and Non-Windows based infrastructure using the Microsoft System Center Suite of products.

Featuring two dynamic tracks aimed at both Business and Technical decision makers, to give you the knowledge you need to make a difference in your organisation.

09:00 – 09:30 INFRAMON KEYNOTE

Introductory keynote from Gordon McKenna, CEO at Inframon setting the scene for our theme "The War on Cost"

Unfortunately I missed the start of Gordon’s keynote as I was unable to enter the Cabinet War Rooms due to an ‘entry lockdown’ whilst waiting for the PM to arrive and enter the building… okay I was slightly late in the first place… but no, not a Churchill impersonator, but Mr David Cameron, the UK Prime Minister!
‘Dave’ as he’s known to his mates was at the war rooms for an interview with ITV – maybe related to the recent UK Government spending cuts and the UK’s War on Cost…?

David Cameron speaking about The War On Cost..?

I eventually got in the building to then wander around the maze that was the cabinet war rooms and haunt of another famous conservative PM.. a certain Sir Winston Churchill!  to eventually find the Inframon team, Gordon, Sean and the guys in a War on Cost bunker that looked like it certainly did cost!  great venue!

Gordon McKenna ..it was this BIG!!!

Partners (allies) in the battle of the war on cost…
ComTrade – MPs for Citrix & Seibel
Silect Software – MP Studio, CP Studio, ConfigWise
Flexera – Win7 migration application challenges (packaging & sequencing)
Savision – Live Maps & Vital Signs for System Center (extends SCOM with mapping and real-time performance dashboards)
BridgeWays – helps you convert from VMware… Also free Hyper-V MP @….
Odyssey Software -

prize draw for an Windows Phone 7 device, the HTC HD 7 – went to European Market Oct 21st, won’t be in the US till Nov 8th!  and they are as rare as rocking horse sh1t in the UK with one distributor saying to me on Friday 5th Oct “Unfortunately we are not likely to be able to supply the HD7 as all three of the new HTC devices are going to be network exclusives.”

ROOM 1: 09:30 -10:30 MICROSOFT KEYNOTE – RYAN OHARA: DATACENTER TO THE CLOUD

Join us in the main auditorium for a first keynote from Microsoft’s Senior Director of System Center Product Marketing, Ryan O’Hara who will be giving us an insight on how Microsoft’s Datacenter and Cloud strategy can help you in the battle your organisation faces around reducing the cost of managing your IT infrastructure whilst trying to increase efficiency. Learn also how System Center can be a key business enabler in both on-premise and off-premise scenarios.

Ryan O’Hara & Justin Buffington (AKA The Professor)

Google, Salesforce, Amazon – don’t provide services that can run in your Data Center / stand up within your service offering

Ryan reckons that MS is the only single vendor that provided the widest reach of cloud based services to provide ‘IT as a service’

Self Service Portal for VMM – version being shown today along with VMM vNext. Capability for business process owners (application owners) to request and provision new data center services through a web portal.

VMM 2012 CTP demo
Moving from a server centric model to a service model – detaching the application from the O/S.

Create Cloud Wizard! what’s your job? I’m a cloud creator!

Demo of service maps – Opalis 6.3 available at the end of the month to all data Center management suite registered customers… & partners?

Acquisition of AVIcode allows 360 degree monitoring in delivering IT as a service. Black box & White box monitoring… Wazzthat then?

OpsMgr watcher nodes running outside your environment

SCOM2012 / OM10 – now with dashboards and can manage network infrastructure (at last! )

ROOM 1: 10:50 -11:50 MICROSOFTKEYNOTE – ANDREW CONWAY: DESKTOP AND SECURITY CONVERGENCE

With end users increasingly mobile, consumerization impacting IT,  and security and compliance needs converging on the business you are likely considering options for desktop virtualization, endpoint protection, cloud management and application delivery. IT has an opportunity to simplify their investments, tools and processes in order to be ever more responsive to the changing face of their customer.  In this session, we’ll focus on effective solutions that will help you in the War on Cost – we’ll do this and take a forward look at upcoming System Center and Forefront technologies

ROOM 2: 10:50 -11:50 BREAKOUT – SEAN ROBERTSSIMON SKINNER INFRAMON: MICROSOFT PRIVATE CLOUD STORY

Join Sean Roberts and Simon Skinner of Inframon for a walk through Microsoft’s new private cloud story. Learn how to build your own, internal private cloud solution with Microsoft Hyper-V, System Center Virtual Machine Manager and the new Self Service Portal 3.0. See how you can drive more efficient use of your IT infrstructure using batch processing and chargeback reporting putting you back in control of your costs.

Sean Roberts & Simon Skinner …how many MVP’s needed to… don’t ask!

ROOM 1: 11:50 – 12:50 BREAKOUT – JUSTIN INCARNATODANIEL SAVAGE MICROSOFT: OPERATIONS MANAGER R2 AND V.NEXT

This session will cover updates to Operation Manager 2007 since the release of R2, including the latest new features included in R2 CU3. We will also go over the next major release of Operations Manager including the vision and product demonstrations. This will be a demo packed session with plenty of time to interact and ask questions

OpsMgr Sizing
OpsMgr sizing helper to address the unknown around sizing – ‘ask 5 MS engineers an OpsMgr sizing question and you’ll likely get 5 different answers…’

target environments:

Use in conjunction with the OpsMgr design guide, an introduction is at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb735403.aspx

OpsMgr R2 Core MP updates

Cumulative Updates 3 (CU3) for OpsMgr 2007 R2

Get it from the download Center at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9f1e1154-52ae-42df-aeea-b3ee83247e6a&displaylang=en

The KB article describing the fixes, changes, and instructions is at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2251525

The high-level fixes are:

CU4 should be out at the end of Jan’11 – plan is to have quarterly updates

There is a great post at http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2010/10/04/opsmgr-2007-r2-cu3-rollup-hotfix-ships-and-my-experience-installing-it.aspx which covers in-depth on CU3 and its deployment – essential reading!

OpsMgr v.Next 2012, Daniel Savage, Senior PM Operations Manager

Support for network device monitoring

Support for Java EE (J2E) Web Service Monitoring – server level, not currently site/app level

Release roadmap – Public Beta in Q2 CY11, RC Q3 CY11, RTM Q4 CY11

ROOM 2: 11:50 – 12:20 BREAKOUT – ODYSSEY SOFTWARE: ATTACK THE COSTS AND COMPLEXITY OF MANAGING MOBILE DEVICES IN YOUR ENTERPRISE WITH ATHENA TM DEVICE MANAGEMENT EXTENSIONS FOR SYSTEM CENTER CONFIGURATION MANAGER 2007

In this session we will demonstrate how to dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of managing deployments of Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7, Windows CE, BlackBerry, iPhone/iPad, Android and Symbian devices through comprehensive, centralized management of these devices utilizing Odyssey Software’s AthenaTM device management extensions for System Center Configuration Manager 2007.

ROOM 2: 12:20 – 12:50 BREAKOUT – BRIDGEWAYS SOFTWARE: HETEREOGENEOUS MANAGEMENT WITH OPERATIONS MANAGER 2007

Learn how you can extend your Operations Manager 2007 platform beyond the Windows stack with Bridgewys cross-platform extensions and connectors, allowing you to manage platforms such as VMWare and Oracle from the same familiar console as the rest of your devices allowing you to consolidate your management tools, driving down your infrastructure costs,

12:50 – 13:50 LUNCH

Join us for lunch in our partner pavillion, where you can network with other delegates and meet our ISV partners and speakers

ROOM1: 13:50 – 14:50 BREAKOUT – JEFF WETTLAUFER MICROSOFT: SYSTEM CENTER CONFIGURATION MANAGER V.NEXT HIGHLIGHTS

The next generation of the world’s leading systems management technology is now in Beta!  As we enter a new era of work styles, with people working in new ways from new locations on new devices, the System Center flagship product is evolving.  In this session we present a demo rich technical highlight of the next release of ConfigMgr.  We will focus on our continued vision of User Centric client management, highlight new improvements to core capability, infrastructure simplification and more. 

ROOM 2: 13:50 – 14:50 BREAKOUT – SEAN CHRISTENSEN MICROSOFT: SERVICE MANAGER THE BETTER TOGETHER STORY

Breakout two, takes us on a journey into the world of IT service management with one of the newest members of the System Center family, Service Manager. Learn how you can pull together your IT resources with industry standard best practices, bringing disciplines like incident and problem and change and release management to your organisation allowing you to drive more efficient working processes across your organisation.

ROOM 1: 15:10 – 16:10 BREAKOUT – JASON BUFFINGTON MICROSOFT: INTELLIGENT DATACENTER APPLICATION PROTECTION

This session will focus on leveraging Data Protection Manager’s protection and recovery capabilities in large datacenters.  We will look at how Data Protection Manager protects and recovers critical application workloads such as SQL, Exchange and SharePoint – as well as virtual machines within Hyper-V.  The session is full of demonstrations, including the new self-service restore capability for database administrators.  We will also look at combining on-premise and off-premise protection using both Data Protection Manager’s built-in replication mechanisms as well as cloud-based Data Protection Manager-partner repositories.

One stat to take away… up to 60% of corporate data does not reside in the datacenter… Yikes!!!

therefore backing up the client machines, with policies to not backup the junk, movies, music, etc.

ROOM 2: 15:10 – 16:10 BREAKOUT – ADAM HALLGREG CHARMAN MICROSOFT: DATACENTER IT PROCESS AUTOMATION

In one of the final sessions of the day we bring you the one solution that will probably give you the biggest set of tools in fighting the War on Cost. Microsoft’s newest addition to the System Center suite is Opalis, a robust and multi functional IT orchestration toolkit that can help drive incredible efficiencies in your organisation by automating many of your time consuming, day to day IT processes. This is not a session to be missed.

16:10 – 16:30 CLOSING KEYNOTE

Proceedings end with a closing keynote from Inframon CEO Gordon McKenna.

16:30 – 17:00 TOUR OF VENUE

Finally you are invited to take a tour of this very historic venue.

www.google.com/enterprise

Google & PaaS

From 1999 to present & using the world for RAID!

Google is the 4th largest hardware manufacturer… sell more servers than Dell but only internally!

www.google.com/appstatus

http://goo.gl/EEyc

http

Earlier this week we attended a major Microsoft Cloud event with the big man & boss Steve Ballmer (http://blog.thefullcircle.com/2010/10/05/ms-pbb-transitioning-to-the-cloud) and caught up with some great Microsoft supporters of ‘The Circle’ and general good blokes; Stuart Leddy (Core Infrastructure Marketing Lead, Server & Tools Business Group) and Gareth Hall (used to look after all things SBS & EBS for Microsoft UK and now heading off to a stint in Redmond – Good luck Gareth!).  FYI we had previously worked closely with Stuart on the Hyper-V R2 EAP back in 2009.

Stuart told us about a program for the much rumoured successor to SBS 2008, hopefully with a release in early 2011 and would we be interested…?  We still support and develop small business, indeed are one ourselves so jumped at the opportunity with a resounding Yes!

It didn’t take us long (like that day) to come up with three customer nominations who we think would be ideal, but at this stage we can’t reveal their names but can say they are:

1) A small but dominant South London Estate Agency who we supplied their existing HP SBS2003 server over 5-years ago and is still running strong!, but the customer acknowledges the need to upgrade to support the expansion of their business to 3-sites, from c.15 to c.20 staff.
The customer came to us through word-of-mouth / friends, has been a long term capability development from very low IT integration to now total – online, mobile, process & Line of Business

2) A fast growing, fun and funky UK based party & giftware designer & manufacturer who had an aging Dell SBS2003 server that we ‘rescued’ back in 2006 but had recently supplied a new HP server in anticipation of SBS7 (or rather SBS2008 R2) and is running Hyper-V Server. We are in progress with a P2V of their existing Dell SBS2003 server and also plan to virtualize the new server.

3) A London based but globally working drug discovery / life science company that we have provided managed IT services for since 2006 when we built a complete greenfield solution based on SBS2003 growing with heavy SharePoint use for their genuinely global workforce.
We put in a new HP server only a few weeks ago, again running Hyper-V to support P2V of existing HP ProLiant ML350 SBS2003 server which we originally supplied and upgraded along the way.

Anyway, we’ll keep you posted over the coming months on how we progress, and more importantly how we find the new server products in development – can’t wait to get those ISOs

But first to cut to the chase..  As I mentioned to a colleague only today – the Vail refresh ROCKS!!, it needs Silverlight 4 for the integrated media controls to make video, music, photos, etc. super sexy and prompts to install if you haven’t got it – Silverlight’s awesome also!

Microsoft Windows Home Sever codenamed Vail – TP refresh install

So it is R2 after all (I always thought it would be but quite a lot of folks who should know better referred to it as Windows Server 2008 – fundamentally different than Windows Server 2008 R2!)

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A lovely Vail splash screen, configure a few tasks:

Shutdown with 28 updates later..

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I’ve built several systems for various friends and family over the years, but when our main home media center based on a Shuttle SG36M died due to a PSU failure (also took out the motherboard – a bummer!), it was time to be looking for a new machine (the brightside to the failure I guess! )

As a long time listener of Ian Dixon’s podcast at http://thedigitallifestyle.com I’d heard of Tranquil (http://www.tranquilpc.co.uk) who are based in Manchester. Tranquil produce fanless pieces of highend exotica covering Media Centers, Home Servers, and powerful new Intel i5 based PC’s…

Now Tranquil don’t produce ‘cheap’ kit and fortunately I’m a believer in ‘buy cheap, buy twice’ so £459 + VAT later I’d ordered the ixL i5 Power PC with an Intel i5-650 (and a CD/DVD optical drive).

I got my order in late on Tuesday, and this morning a very nice looking box arrived..

..with a complimentary Boost bar! – how they knew my hangover needed a sugar fix I don’t know, but the experience certainly started great!

Over the weekend I’m looking forward to getting a couple of gigs of 1066Mhz RAM, a Corsair 128GB SSD, and my Hauppauge dual DVB-T in there and seeing how she flys with some test builds.. likely Win7 32-bit and Windows Server 2008 R2 (for testing as a Hyper-V platform plus 64-bit driver support), but first work and clients to see…

Returning at the weekend for my first test built I grabbed a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit) which installed painlessly enough, but did list the following as needy of drivers:

Display adapter driver – http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3144&DwnldID=19099&lang=eng
Ethernet (network) driver – http://downloadcenter.intel.com/download.aspx?url=/19059/a08/PROWin32.exe&DwnldId=19059&lang=eng
PCI Serial Port -
PCI Simple Communications Controller (read IR RX) -

With no documentation or driver media in the box, if you’ve ordered anything but a pre-built system you will need to go and find driver support from the web, however as the sytem is based on a current Intel desktop motherboard, the Intel® Desktop Board DH57JG, this is a fairly trivial task.

A visit to http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/motherboards/dh57jg/dh57jg-overview.htm will get you covered with 32 & 64-bit drivers for Windows 7, Vista, XP Pro, plus 32-bit for XP Home, and even Windows XP Media Center Edition (one day I might restore an image of XPMCE as I still have the Compaq D510 SSF PC I used in the first builds back in 2002-3!).

Going for the lazy option I grabbed the network driver first so I could let Windows Update do its worst on the rest – 35 updates later, inc. Intel HD Graphics (Intel listed 15.17.4.2119 as , Microsoft Update provided 8.15.10.2119 – the last digits being significant, the same) and a restart resulted in still needing the PCI Serial Port & Communications Controller (likely the same driver)

At the same time, I’d recommend:

http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/highlights/dsktpboards/dh57jg - which includes a link to Automatically detect and update drivers and software
http://www.intel.com/support/detect.htm (the really lazy option – but it works really well, after I’d been struggling getting the audio outputs to work, bar SPDIF)

http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/software/dolby/index.htm

Chipset: Intel® Chipset Device Software for Intel® Desktop Boards – http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=10884&lang=eng
(this one may also address the PCI Simple Communications Controller / IR reciever, but I’m having no luck just yet…)

Intel® Desktop Utilities for 4 & 5 Series Desktop Boards – http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18934&lang=eng

Intel® HD Graphics Driver for Windows* Vista and Windows* 7 15.17.7.2141 – http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3144&DwnldID=19099&lang=eng

Audio: Realtek* ALC Audio Driver - http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=19018

I mentioned performance updates coming soon, on Windows 7 32-bit with the above drivers the Performance Information and Tools (Windows Experience Index) gave a rating of 4.8, comprised of:

Processor: 6.9
Memory: 5.5
Graphics: 4.8
Gaming graphics: 5.3
Primary hard disk: 5.9

Thermal performance and other hardware monitors curtousy of the Intel Hardware Monitor application: