Editor's Note

  • Article

TechNet Magazine Readers Speak, We Listen

Jeff James

As many of you will recall, Microsoft and 1105 Media made the decision last November to discontinue the print edition of TechNet Magazine. While we were all sad to see the print magazine go, we were simultaneously excited about the potential of an online-only publication. We’ve taken some steps in our transition to an online-only publication, including a modest redesign of the TechNet Magazine Web site that went live a short time before this column was posted.

We also asked you, our readers, to give us feedback on what you wanted to see in an online-only TechNet Magazine. You responded in droves, filling our LinkedIn  TechNet Magazine Group with comments, sending in a flood of e-mails, and registering hundreds of votes in our TechNet Magazine online survey about what you wanted to see. The single most-requested item through all of these communication channels? Downloadable PDFs of the online TechNet Magazine articles.

So after a considerable amount of work by the Web team at Microsoft and the art, production and editing staff at 1105 Media, I’m happy to announce that—effective immediately—we’ve now made TechNet Magazine article PDFs (starting with the September 2009 issue) available for download. We’re moving toward a more fluid and responsive publishing process, so we’ll be posting PDFs for download at the end of each month. You can find them by clicking on the “Digital Downloads” tab on our homepage, or by visiting this link.

Now that issue PDFs are crossed off our to-do list, what else would you like to see us add to TechNet Magazine to make it an even better online experience for you? Feel free to visit our LinkedIn group, send us an e-mail at tnmag@microsoft.com, or drop me an e-mail directly.

On another note, Cloud Computing will continue to be our theme for the next few weeks, so I’ve gathered up some links to articles and other resources that you may find useful:

Many thanks to Mark Russinovich, Tim McMichael, Scott Schnoll, Bill Baer and Spencer Harbar for their technical input with TechNet Magazine content this month.

Jeff James is editor in chief of TechNet Magazine, and was formerly the editor in chief of Windows IT Pro magazine. He’s been writing about computers and technology since 1990. You can follow James on Twitter at Twitter.com/jeffjames3, or e-mail him at jjames@1105media.com.