I was at Technet Live last thursday. Microsoft introduced Windows 7, Server 2008 R2 and, a day later, Exchange 2010.

Steve Balmer's keynote was impressive, shame there were a bunch of journalists asking really stupid questions.

After a good lunch I spend the afternoon with:

Brandon Hoff telling us about all the new features in Exchange 2010. I found the 90% reduction in IOPS very impressive. I failed to be baffled about the option to move user mailboxes during the day, something I already had in Lotus Notes 4 in the mid-1990s.

Next up was Don Schmid and Martin Vliem about security, identity and things like that. Very technical, I was dozing off due to the big lunch and lack of coffee.
I did remember an excellent quote from Don, "cloud is the new outsourcing"

Last up, Martin Sih on system center. A rather weak speaker compared ot the rest and extra handicapped by a lack of the internet connection he needed to do his demo. Apparantly System Center allows the Schiphol group to manage a varied server collection.

All in all a nice day, shame about the distinct lack of goodies, all we got was a t-shirt (xl the largest, how many sysadmins do you know that wear an XL?!) and a Windows 7 ultimate DVD.

After events like this the hangover always sets in. You realize that the change that you actually get your hands on a 2008 server running exchange 2010 is very slim. It's a reason I don't attend events all that much anymore, you see all sorts of nice goodies that you'll never work with. Same goes for booth babes, nice to look at but that's all.