I am running Windows 7 for a while now on my HP 2730p tablet and it is working great. I had some issues with the display driver in the beginning but an update to the driver that came with Windows Update fixed that.

One of the new features of Windows 7 is Federated Search. Federated Search supports the connection of external sources to Windows using the OpenSearch protocol. You can initiate the search from within Windows Explorer and view the results (including previews) in Windows Explorer as well. The screenshot below shows an example of a SharePoint site search (click to enlarge):

The only thing I had to do was to create an .OSDX file and double click it. The contents of the .OSDX file is below (for MOSS 2007):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/" xmlns:ms-ose="http://schemas.microsoft.com/opensearchext/2009/">
<ShortName>Xylos Intranet</ShortName>
<Description>Search the Xylos Intranet.</Description>
<Url type="application/rss+xml" template="https://<sharepoint fqdn>/searchcenter/_layouts/srchrss.aspx?k={searchTerms}&amp;start={startIndex}"/>
<Url type="text/html" template="https://<sharepoint fqdn>/searchcenter/Pages/Results.aspx?k={searchTerms}"/>
<ms-ose:ResultsProcessing format="application/rss+xml">
<ms-ose:LinkIsFilePath>-1</ms-ose:LinkIsFilePath>
</ms-ose:ResultsProcessing>
</OpenSearchDescription>

When you save the above as a file with the extension .osdx and double click it, a couple of things will happen:

1. You will be asked if you want to add this search connection to Windows.
2. When you answer yes to the question above, a Search Connector file is created in your profile’s Searches folder. The file will have an extension of .searchConnector-ms.
3. In addition to the Search Connector file, a link to the Search Connector will be made in Windows Explorer’s favorites. If you don’t see that link, just use Windows key-E and drag the .searchConnector-ms file to the Favorites section.

This really is a great feature of Windows 7 and it makes the search experience on our Intranet so much better.

During delivery of BPOS courses to Microsoft partners, I often get questions about supported e-mail clients. Sadly, I always had to say that only Outlook 2007 was supported and that Outlook 2003 was not. That will change however. From June, Microsoft will support Outlook 2003. This was announced on the Microsoft Online Services Team Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/msonline/archive/2009/05/22/exchange-online-adds-support-for-outlook-2003.aspx.

There are some caveats though:

1. No free/busy lookup
2. No offline address book

The reason for the above limitations is clear. Microsoft uses Exchange Server 2007 SP1 for the service without support for older clients like Outlook 2003. Those older clients use public folders for free/busy lookup and offline address books. Public folders are not available at all in Exchange Online Standard.