That’s right…we’ve reached another important product milestone!  The highly anticipated Windows Home Server Release Candidate is available today.  The product team has been logging long hours and doing heroic work to finalize this new and improved build.   

The community has been chomping at the bit for RC.  And while with Beta 2 and CTP we accepted applicants into the beta program in stages, we’ll make the RC software available to all 100,000+ beta program applicants asap, as well as all new sign ups. 

Source: Bink.nu

From Bink.nu

That’s right, pictoral evidence concludes the long lost wait for the name of Windows Server “Longhorn”. As discovered on the Microsoft France website, here we have, the logo for Windows Server 2008.

Source: http://zacks.spaces.live.com

One of the leads in the user interface and design of Windows Home Server has a blog. Kynan Antos who works at Microsoft on the Windows Home Server project has posted a few designs he made of what the Home Server Console would look like - very interesting indeed. You can see from the different images how they’ve evolved and how the final view looks. In chronological order - from left to right - all the way through to the current.

Source: antosdesign

We have reason to believe that the next version of Windows Server will be named Windows Server 2007 according to an article on the MSDN Library where it mentions the abovenamed a few times.

Check the article here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb332338.aspx

Update: Bink.nu has also reported this.

You’ve probably heard already by now that Beta 3 of Windows Server “Longhorn” has been released and is ready to be shown off to the world, and to save you navigating half of Microsoft’s website, you can just click the links below.

We have no idea when, or indeed if these links will die, so hurry up and download them now before it’s too late. We recommend using Free Download Manager as it’ll resume your download quite nicely if you get disconnected. Read more at www.microsoft.com/getbeta3.

Links at source

It’s hard to believe, but I’ve just ordered 3 copies of it on disk. You need to be a Microsoft Partner, and that’s a 15 minute signup job and it’s free to sign up to.

1. Go here and sign-up for your Microsoft Parter account (if you don’t already have one).
   Note: make sure your address is correct, as this is where all your free stuff gets sent to.
2. Go here and sign-in with your Windows Live ID.
3. Select the third drop down box and select “Small Business Server (SBS)”
4. Below where it says “Windows SBS 2003 R2, Evaluation Software”, select your quantity (and feel free to be greedy :)
5. Click on “Proceed with order” and carry on with the wizard!

No need to thank me, I’m just good at being bloody sneaky.

Well I hope you should be. If you are interested in joining the ‘Centro’ Beta please go to http://connect.microsoft.com, click on Invitations, sign in with your Windows Live ID (Passport ID) and enter the following invite ID: EXTR-GHBC-JCJM.  You will be asked to take a short survey.  Once you complete the survey look for an email from msftconn@microsoft.com. If you don’t already trust this address, please add it to your trusted email addresses.

It’s as simple as that - check out Windows Server Centro on Connect here: https://connect.microsoft.com/centro

I wasn’t far off - it’s been released this evening! Download ahoy!

Windows Server 2003 SP2 (32-bit x86)
Windows Server 2003 SP2 for x64 Editions
Windows Server 2003 SP2 for Itanium-based Systems

Unconfirmed reports over the networks from Microsoft say that Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (the latest installment for the Windows Server System) has actually been released. We can’t confirm this as there is no official word from Microsoft.

We’re aware that Bink (in all his glory) has posted on this item - he states that there is still some work to go. But we are almost 100% sure that there is something big going on, and it’s got to do with the SP2 release. Some employees have said it’s released, some have said it’s up on the web already, there’s some confusion going on especially with the SP2 related knowledge base articles up on Microsoft Support.

Whatever’s going on, we’ll try and be the first to break it.