Free Microsoft Press eBooks available for download

List of some of Microsoft free eBooks:

• Free
  eBook: Moving to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 (10 chapters by Patrice
  Pelland, Pascal Paré, and Ken Haines)
• Free
  eBook: Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (10 chapters by Ross Mistry
  and Stacia Misner)
• Free
  eBook: Programming Windows Phone 7 Series (DRAFT Preview) (6 chapters by
  Charles Petzold)
• Free
  eBook: Petzold’s Programming Windows Phone 7 (Special Excerpt 2) (newer than
  the eBook above; 11 chapters by Charles Petzold)
• Free
  eBook: Own Your Future: Update Your Skills with Resources and Career Ideas from
  Microsoft (8 chapters by Katherine Murray)
• Free
  eBook: Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions (Second Edition) (6
  chapters by Mitch Tulloch)
• Free
  eBook: First Look Microsoft Office 2010 (14 chapters by Katherine Murray)
• Free
  eBook: Windows 7 troubleshooting tips (short eBook by Mitch Tulloch)
• Free
  eBook: Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2 (9 chapters by Charlie Russel and
  Craig Zacker)
• Free
  eBook: Deploying Windows 7, Essential Guidance (10 chapters from the Windows
  7 Resource Kit and 6 TechNet articles)

Finally - Windows Phone 7 Is Here

I was waiting, I was waiting since long to see an upgrade to Windows Mobile. I

even tried my hands-on Windows Phone 7 Beta Tools. And now, the tools and
devices are released. I must say, the entire WP7 device family looks amazing. It
will definitely attract consumers as well as developers. Check out this video
for entire WP7 device family:

When I was doing WP7 Beta Testing, I always thought that Windows Mobile is
‘The Best’ and we really don’t need another platform, but Microsoft should
re-design the WM software to compete with iPhone and Android.
Indeed, after going through final version of developer tools and hardware,
all of it looks promising. And there can be lot of opportunities for mobile
developers (and now Silverlight Developers as well) on Windows Phone 7 platform.
If you want to kick start Windows Phone 7 Development, you need to:

• If you’ve already installed - uninstall previous (Beta/CTP) version of
  Windows Phone 7 developer tools.
• If you want to integrate Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools with existing
  Visual Studio 2010, please install any Visual
  Studio 2010 SKU first.
• Install the latest Windows Phone 7 Developer tools from here OR download the offline installer from here. This will install Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone or
  integrate with Visual Studio 2010 SKU (if you’ve installed it already)
  
  I recommend that you should not install these tools on Virtual
  Machines, rather install it on host machine itself. If required, create dual
  boot – for emulator performance reasons.
• If you want to monetize your applications by using advertisements, then
  Microsoft has released a separate SDK for it. Get more information and download
  it from here
• Right now, Windows Phone 7 Developer tools supports only C# language.
  However, the team has released a Microsoft Visual Basic CTP For Windows Phone
  Developer Tools. The RTM version (as mentioned above) is pre-requisite for this
  CTP. You can download it from here
• To build high-performance applications on top of Windows Phone 7, you must
  monitor the code and remove all bottlenecks. And as Channel9 has mentioned: "If
  you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it".
  To measure the performance of
  Windows Phone 7 applications, there is tool (called as profiler) available as a
  separate download. You can find more information about it here:

This is the very first version of this new platform. But in this first
version itself, Microsoft has feature packed these devices.
But remember, mobility is always about challenges: network bandwidth, screen
resolution, battery life, sudden interrupts for calls, text messages…. And what
not. But these challenges makes mobile development a fun.
All the best for your mobile development and lets get started.