Windows Server 2012 Editions–Licensing Overview

Cut right from Microsoft’s site:

Licensing Overview

Windows Server 2012 delivers a dramatically simplified licensing experience. Shaped by feedback from customers and partners, the new Windows Server licensing approach will help make choosing the right Windows Server easier while delivering the following benefits.

Simple

It’s easier than ever to determine the right Windows Server edition for you. Choose from just four editions of Windows Server 2012, based on the size of your organization and your requirements for virtualization and cloud computing.

Economical

All editions of Windows Server 2012 deliver excellent economics and ROI for your business. For example, Datacenter edition with unlimited virtualization rights provides the benefits of cloud-level scale with predictable, lower costs. Standard edition now offers all of the same enterprise-class features as Datacenter and is differentiated only by virtualization rights.

Cloud-optimized

Businesses today are rapidly adopting a hybrid approach across private and public cloud computing. Windows Server 2012 offers the right edition for you, no matter where you are on your path to the cloud; Datacenter edition for highly virtualized cloud environments, Standard edition for lightly virtualized environments progressing toward cloud, or Essentials edition for an ideal cloud-connected first server.

New Microsoft Logo conforming to Metro Style Look

Microsoft is changing its corporate logo for the first time in 25 years. Microsoft is making many changes to incorporate the new Windows 9 Style in all of its product logos.

For the first time in its history, Microsoft has a graphical symbol as part of its logo. Four colored squares sit to the left of the company name written in its Segoe typeface. Segoe is the font family of choice for Metro applications.

The new logo is extremely simple. The old logo had some nuance, with the way the 's' takes a notch out of the 'o'. This is now gone, though the connection between the 'f' and 't' is retained.

The design of the newest logo, or specifically its symbol part, is more than a little surprising. Earlier in the year, Microsoft revealed a new Windows logo. Office 2013 also has a new logo. Both of these logos share some design cues, in particular, the use of a perspective effect on their symbols.

                 

The difference in styles between the Windows 8 and Office logos and the new Corporate logos jumps right out at me. Though both are rather simplistic the Corporate logo has more color and doesn’t position the graphic in same show of depth that the other two logos do. Also strange is the use of colors. The company says that the squares are intended to express the company's diverse portfolio of products. The new logo is already being used on the microsoft.com site and three of the company's stores. It will be rolled out more widely over the coming months.

Bitcoin-funded debit/credit cards are on their way, expect them in 6-8 weeks

Honestly, I haven’t run into Bitcoin except to clear it off of servers as a form of Malware. According to TweakTown, Charlie Shrem, BitInstant co-founder revealed in an IRC chat that his company is 6 to 8 weeks away from launching a Bitcoin-funded international debit/credit card. Stating that it will be issued by two unnamed major banks, one international and the other domestic.

The Bitcoin-funded card will act like any normal debit or credit card account, and should be accepted wherever MasterCard is accepted, which is virtually anywhere. The first 1,000 Bitcoin debit/credit cards will be issued for free, but after the first 1,000, the cards will set you back around $10 per card.

Shrem also revealed that each card will sport a QR code on the front that can be scanned to complete transactions that are under $1,000 and a printed address on the rear featuring the user's Bitcoin Address. Future Bitcoin-funded card owners should expect to pay a 1% fee to fund the card, and a $1.50 ATM withdrawal fee.

Amazon launches Glacier archiving service

An interesting choice for a name for this product it takes on a couple of the characteristics of a Glacier. This new Amazon service is meant to provide an inexpensive method for archive storage of your data. Priced at $0.01 per GB / month, you are also charged for both upload and retrieval requests. “Glacier is designed with the expectation that retrievals are infrequent and unusual, and data will be stored for extended periods of time. You can retrieve up to 5% of your average monthly storage (pro-rated daily) for free each month. If you choose to retrieve more than this amount of data in a month, you are charged a retrieval fee starting at $0.01 per gigabyte. Learn more. In addition, there is a pro-rated charge of $0.03 per gigabyte for items deleted prior to 90 days. Learn more.”

There doesn’t seem to be a cost for transferring data into your data store or for the first GB that you transfer out. However, look at the table below for rates for greater than 1GB out bound.

Take a look at the Amazon Glacier FAQs page here.

Pros: Cheap storage for lots of data

Cons: Slow retrieval rates

Don’t consider this service for anything but long term archival storage. I don’t think this is cost effective for home users but for off site archival storage for commercial entities this could be a great solution.