This is not going to be a regular thing (a la Digital Bond’s weekly recap). It’s just been a busy week so I’m going to highlight a bunch of short topics.

1. Microsoft has released Windows XP SP3 to manufacturing.  It’s available to OEMs and enterprise customers on April 29^th and is scheduled to hit Automatic Updates sometime this summer.  Here is a summary of what it covers.   No word yet on what (if any) effect this latest service pack will have on OPC installations.   The folks at MatrikonOPC support tell me they are scrounging up a copy for their testing, and will let me know the results.  Stay tuned.
2. In a related story Dell will be offering Windows XP on new machines after the June 30^th deadline.  (Does anyone have Vista running on their plant floor yet?)
3. Updated OPC UA SDK Documentation is now available which includes; the PowerPoint presentations on Implementation from the last DevCon, generated help documentation from code comments, a WIP architecture document and some Viso diagrams.  These will be of help to all those people out there working on OPC UA products.
4. ConnectivityWeek 2008 – “Empowering The Energy Revolution” is happening next month, and includes the two-day IndConn, which focuses on industrial IT and automation.   This is organized in partnership with the OPC Foundation and Open O&M.   There is an impressive list of speakers and many of the IndConn topics will touch on OPC UA.
5. Last weekend was 20+ Celsius, all the snow was gone from my yard and we enjoyed a BBQ in the sun.  This week it snowed for three days straight, and we got over 30 cm of snow.  It has nothing to do with OPC, but I’m still not over it.  There must be someway to control the weather with OPC.  Maybe with a BACnet server?