Software Update Management and other October unfinished business

Looks like the November 2007 of TechNet Magazine issue got going online before I finished telling you about the October issue, so let's be sure to give the remaining articles and columns their due...

Software Updates Management Tools

The next release of SMS will be called System Center Configuration Manager 2007. Catalogs and scan engines are a thing of the past. Configuration Manager instead uses state messages to determine and enforce compliance on each client.

In this article, Steve Rachui explains how Configuration Manager uses Software Update Points and Configuration Items to simplify system configuration management while making distribution easier and more scalable.

In The Columns...

For October's installment of SQL Q&A we have answers to accounts and login logging, defragmenting a database, and creating better passwords.

In our Hey, Scripting Guy! column, the Microsoft Scripting Guys wax rhapsodic on Groucho Marx, Karl Marx, and the basics of creating a simple animation with Silverlight.

And finally, in our October Windows Confidential column, Raymond Chen explains why Dr. Watson shuts down Windows if you ask him to take a memory dump of the Winlogon process.

There! Now we're all caught up. At least with October. I'll bring you more of the November issue starting tomorrow.

Enjoy!