Hi,

We are working on finalizing a date for the next user group and a schedule for meetings going forward. If you have a preference on what time of day we should meet, take a second and vote on this poll to make your voice heard. At this point the "morning" option from 8AM-10AM is in the lead (with only 8 people voting so far). We are also voting on the topic of the next meeting and so far "Deep Dive into S3" is in the lead.

Vote here: http://www.amazonchicago.com/polls/

At our last meeting we talked about Windows AMI's a bit, here is an email that AWS sent out today in case you missed it:

"Starting today we are removing the distinction between Amazon EC2 running Windows and Amazon EC2 running Windows with Authentication Services. With this change, Windows instances have been upgraded to enable the use of Authentication Services, like LDAP and Kerberos, at no additional charge. Additionally, if you are running any Windows with Authentication Services instances you will now be charged the same price as Windows instances, a savings of 50% on the hourly rate.

We will remove the current Windows with Authentication Services AMIs starting on October 15th. If you need a version of this AMI, please re-bundle your own copy by following instructions that can be found in our Getting Started Guide.

For more information about this change please see the Amazon EC2 release notes or visit the Amazon EC2 running Windows service page."

Best regards,

John