OK, while Halo 3 might be the big news of the week last week, I'll save that for a minute.

To me this big news is something that's actually from a little over a week ago, but which I missed in the hectic nature of the PASS Summit conference winding down in Denver and the crazy week last week with a new site launch.

Kind of a quiet announcement during one of the keynotes last week was that SQL Server 2008 won't have a price increase from SQL Server 2005. I actually was in the press room at the Summit with a couple of the Microsoft product people and they were talking about how little fanfare that announcement received. Then they realized who I was and stopped talking before they said something that I might slip out to you 🙂

I think this is actually pretty interesting news. Not quite interesting enough for me to change my recommendation that you wait to upgrade until 2008 comes out, but still very interesting.

Pricing can have a huge impact on your upgrade decision. If there were a significant price increase, you might be tempted to upgrade sooner to SQL Server 2005 and stick with that platform. Or you might look for some Software-Assurance type of deal. In this case, you have a quick (to me) release of the next version, but it really feels like an R2 release. So I'm not sure there's any reason to change your current plans on upgrading. I still think you should wait for 2008 if you haven't already upgraded.

I'm sure that Microsoft feels it's a new version and worthy of a price increase. There are definitely new features, but I'm not sure that they're really worth a whole new version. Or a price increase.

Master Chief

OK, I can't wait anymore, so I'll give you the news. It's not database news, so skip this section if you don't care. In case you've been lost on vacation or in a cave somewhere, Halo 3 was released last week. Over a million pre-orders came in before the release and the one day take was $170 M.

Yep, that's for a game. That's better than the first weekend for most hit movies.

My son, Delaney, was so excited. I had pre-ordered the game weeks ago, but hadn't told him that. I used Amazon and was expecting it on Tuesday, but it didn't come. When he got home he asked, trying to contain his excitement, if we could go by Blockbuster before karate that night. I agreed and he held it together well, knowing that there might not be any copies there. When he found it on the shelf, he had the biggest smile on his face. I even saw a little "Halo song and dance" outside on the way to the car.

No review from me yet, you'll have to read it somewhere else. He hasn't given me a chance to get in there and try it :(. He did finish the entire game after two days, so maybe we'll get a chance over the weekend to shoot things up together.

More XP!

The date for selling XP has been extended to June 30. That's five months past the Jan 31 deadline that Microsoft had set.

Apparently this is the OS that won't die. I know Windows 95 went strong for 5-6 years, not letting 98 or ME slow it down. It wasn't until late 2000 when W2K Professional was released that some people started to move away from it. And not until XP came out did most homes change to a new OS.

That doesn't bode well for Vista if people are still asking for XP and there's enoug of a demand to get Microsoft to keep selling it. Now if they would just patch it a few more times, maybe we could skip this whole Vista thing and wait for Longhorn or whatever's next in 2010.

The Podcasting continues! Database Weekly has been invaded and I've even uploaded a first attempt at Video.

Send in some feedback and let us know what you think.

• Audio (MP3)
• Video (WMV)

Music for today's Podcast from: Everyday Jones, All You Said and Here I Am were used, alternately in the stream. No music for the video (yet). The editing to add that in has slightly escaped me to this point 🙁