Microsoft has announced the release to manufacturing of Microsoft SQL Server 2008, the new version of the company’s acclaimed data management and business intelligence platform.

Microsoft has announced November 12th 2008 as the official launch date for Windows Small Business Server 2008 and Windows Essential Business Server 2008.

Hyper-V, a key feature of Windows Server 2008, has now released to manufacturing (RTM) and is available for deployment into production environments. A beta of Hyper-V was included with Windows Server 2008 which can now be upgraded free to the final release version.

As of June the 30^th, large PC makers such as Dell will no longer be able to sell Windows XP-based PCs, at least on mainstream notebooks and desktops. Retailers will also have only until their current supply is exhausted to sell boxed copies of the operating system. Find out how in what ways the operating system will live on.

Today, you can now download Service Pack 3 for Windows XP via Windows Update.

Microsoft will not support SQL Server 2000 after April 8th 2008.