Yeah, the UI is shit, though in the next server release they're adding native PowerShell over SSH, so hopefully you should never have to log in to one again.

will I need a CAL to SSH in?

..what's sad is that this is a completely legitimate question :(

I thought MS had mostly done away with CALs? I haven't been in an environment without Enterprise Software Assurance for a while, but I thought they were actively moving even their SMB customers over to SA licensing as well. No idea how far their plans got though...

By definition of how Windows Server is still licensed, yes, you will. Anyone using any resource hosted on a Windows Server system (with exception to public websites) needs a CAL.

There's been remoting in powershell since V2 the only cool thing about SSH is linux gets to join the party. And that is very cool

Have you actually tried to use Powershell remoting? When you try to do remote automation on Windows machines you land in this Bizarro world where some things work with psexec, some with remoting, and some not at all.

A working, secure protocol where things actually execute on the remote machine will be very welcome, and when we think SSH that's what we're excited about.

(The hit-and-miss nonsense I'm talking about was a script that reached out to a collection of machines, shut down a Win service, set it to "manual", deleted its log file, then set it back to auto, then started the service. It was a hodge-podge of psexec, remotable commandlets, and Powershell remoting. There may have been whiffs of WinRM in there too, but I'm trying to forget it.)

The only hassle I've had is trying to use external resources while already in a session. e.g. enter-pssession "someserver"; copy-item "\\netshare" .

In thins case you need to further enable CredSSP on your ___domain to allow passing on your auth credentials through the session to the third machine.

Any cmdlet I've seen that doesn't take a session (wmi or cim) I've just wrapped up into invoke-expression -computername "commands..."

Ps remoting lets me do great things like import module from servers to clients that I don't have remote tools installed on. e.eg. $session = new-cimInstance "domainController"; import-module activedirectory -sessions $session

We just upgraded to Office 2013 and the colors in Outlook are killing me. Microsoft basically gives you three themes which are basically some form of a light white/grey background.

I don't understand how this color scheme made it out of QA testing without someone complaining about it.

I had the same issue and ultimately fount the solution. I forced myself to use Office 2013 and avoided being exposed to earlier versions with much better contrast, in particular Office 2003.

In a few weeks of immersive experience, you will see that your body will start accepting Office 2013 and you will not notice the lack of contrast anymore.

I haven't RDPed into a server for at least a year. Do everything with WinRM and powershell remoting and DSC. All our kit is 2012 R2 core.

It does suck on a server though big time.

I've found it much easier to navigate Windows 2012, Windows 8 and Windows 10 with just the keyboard than past versions. Maybe because it has forced me to learn some of the short cuts but I also think the commands have become more powerful.