Positive spin for a minute
Not lets go a bit more positive. Its an update to a wonderful collection of tools for Windows Live users. Messenger, mail, blog postings, and other such fun things. What fun things does it include?

Messenger
Stay in touch with the people you care about most from your PC, phone, or the web. Share photos and videos as you chat, and see the latest updates from your friends. Learn more

Photo Gallery
Get great tools for organizing, touching up, and sharing your photos and videos. Create stunning panoramas, movies, and slide shows, and publish them online. Learn more

Movie Maker
Turn your photos and videos into polished movies that are easy to share. Add special effects, transitions, sound, and captions to help tell your story in style. Learn more

Windows Live Mesh
Keep photos and documents in sync between your computers, and on SkyDrive. Connect remotely to all of the files and programs on your PCs. Learn more
Also included in Windows Live Essentials

Writer
Blog like a pro, adding photos, videos, maps, and more.

Family Safety
Parental controls to help parents keep their children safe online.

Mail
Manage multiple email accounts, calendars, and your contacts, even when you’re offline.

Messenger Companion
See and comment on links your friends have shared as you visit websites in Internet Explorer.

Bing Bar
Get search results from Bing without leaving the website you’re on.

Outlook Connector Pack
Includes Microsoft Outlook Hotmail Connector and Outlook Social Connector Provider for Messenger.

Microsoft Silverlight
Access rich, interactive websites using the Silverlight browser plug-in.

Put down that glass of Redmond Brand Kool-Aid
Now lets go back to the reality view and see what these components really are for the typical user:

Messenger - Its IM, you probably have it and use it and keep it updated, or you don’t use it.

Photo Gallery - You use that program that came with Office, or you use something else like Picaso

Movie Maker - You never use this, and if you need it, you use a real program like Adobe Premiere Elements. But really, so few people do this. And those that do what real stuff not freeware to do it.

Windows Live Mesh – Do you use SkyDrive? Like most people, the answer is no. Should you? The answer is you and everyone else needs to backup frequently. Find the right tool that works for you and stick with it.

Writer – You blog software made this tool obsolete two years ago

Family Safety – Um, thats an awful lot to try and get us to swallow. Is this an IM and picture tool or a parental control package? Talk about lack of focus

Mail – You use Outlook, so this is a waste. If you don’t use Outlook you have some other tool, or use a browser. Did you really want to learn another tool again? Let alone have it snuck up on you as number 6 in a list? And is this really essential?

Messenger Companion – Another feature that is dead before it ever launched. I mean this is all the buzz. They have a movie coming out about this. Its called Web Graffitti, the product invented over and over again that 100,000,000 people don’t use.

Bing Bar – Who uses BING? And do we really need another toolbar in our browser? Thats all this is – a toolbar forced on you inside another package. When most people do these we call it malware or spyware.

Outlook Connector Pack – Um, so for this to work you have to have Outlook, so why is this in the same Live 2011 as Mail? Hello, some focus people. And why isn’t this an update for I don’t know, Outlook or Office?

Microsoft Silverlight – This gets forced on you every time you visit a Microsoft.com website. And other places on the web like, um……

Do you need this update? No way. If you need one of the components, use it often, then go for it. But better yet, try and download and do a custom install and don’t install the components you don’t need. There is an option for that, right?

Two big changes, one a senior person and the other a senior position. Is this cutting from the top down? Is Microsoft brining inot the market the changes it has been doing from the bottom up?

And why no major move in the market price? Thats the real judge of how beneficial something is. Of how much impact a decision has. Or how much impact that individual, that position, or Ray Ozzie as Chief Software Architect actually had. The market adjusted whe n he was added, and promoted. It adjusted during press releases and product ships and slips.

But this picture is awesome. Is it an omen? Or just a funny joke put up AFTER?

When I press the On/Off button, the Scroll Lock and Num Lock LEDs briefly illuminate, then turn off.  The Power LED (looks like a “Z” rotated 45 deg ccw) illuminates, and remains illuminated if I don’t do anything.  From this point on, nothing happens. There is no spin up or activity from the fan.

Connect the AC adapter and the AC power LED turns on. And of course the AC power LED turns off if I disconnect it. The Battery power LED turns on if the battery is in place, and turns off if the battery is removed. Either way the laptop gets power, the sequence is the same.

The symptoms are I try and turn on my laptop computer, a Lenovo Thinkpad T61p, and it won’t start. I hit the power button and get nothing. No beeps, error codes, POST, BIOS, nada. Nothing on the LCD screen. The LCD isn’t blank or black, it is just off. No initial flash of any kind on the display. It just doesn’t attempt to boot up.

Now comes the Lenovo will not boot frequent fix ritual:

1. Take out the battery
2. Hit the power button 10 times in a row
3. On the 10th time, hold the power button down for 30 seconds
4. Put the battery back in and start it up!

When that fails, you repeat it a few more times while on hold for a technician to order a new motherboard. All in hopes of an immediate fix.

Now News America Marketing will tell you all sorts of reasons they need you to install all of these components and applications to get their coupons to print on your printer. Such as they want to protect their advertisers and sponsors from you printing way too many coupons. What about the millions of coupons that get printed and stuffed into inserts and never get redeemed? What about that value of only $0.001 printed on the bottom? Isn’t this why people don’t counterfit pennies? It isn’t worth the risks, time, trouble and most important, it itsn’t worth it in terms of the money gained?

Now one most important thing News America Marketing will not tell you is how to UNINSTALL their piece of spyware, adware or malware. Call it what you want, but if you can’t get it 100% off of your computer in every way shape or form with a reasonable effort, something is not right.

This product is categorized as “adware” because it is “software that brings targeted ads to your computer, after you provide initial consent for this task.” Finding it on your computer means that your computer is infected with Adware and crucial data could be endangered or even lost.

A few concerns about this – what level of IIS is in this private plug-in? Can it provide security or does it just dish out a directory for full public content review? I prefer to keep my html and code as secure as I can. Since I am not a black ha guru, I look for the web server and the web applications I run to provide me with a level of security. AND more importantly, security updates.

Taking the hugly popular WordPress to an IIS server requires a few items. Can WordPress run on a Windows Home Server? If so, which versions?

Is there a blog software that runs on Windows Home Server? And hopefully not Community Server. A someone who wasted a lot fo time with CS in its early versions, I have a bad impression on their ability to implement features. They implemented a lot of hype and vaporware controls with nothing under the hood. Just ask any CS admin who needed to bulk delete posts using the UI.

As I continue to look for more information, I will post an update.

Microsoft Windows Home Server looks very cool for the home use of backing up video and audio files and home computers. But will it do any good for a family that has a website hosted externally already? Can Windows Home Server replace a GoDaddy hosted UNIX or Windows webserver account and save the family those recurring monthly costs?

Ask any questions, and look here for more details to be added covering each section to help you study, prepare, pass this certification, and more importantly, be successful in your career with Windows 7.

Is Microsoft AD enterprise ready?

This is a question that usually comes out from IT staff more concerned with religion then technology, cost savings and ROI. A better question is “My reuirements are A, B and C. Can Microsoft Active Directory meet the requirements for my business?” Unless you are talking requirements, you are probably in a religous discussion. Just like politics and offensive content, religion should be kept out of the workplace and especially out of IT discussions.

Do you spell requirements with an W or an N?

How do you spell requirements in your organization? With a W or an N? Is it a Want or is it a Need? I want to know your Needs and meet them as a consultant. As an employee I want to know what your Needs are and meet them. As a CIO, IT Director or manager, I want to know why my internal customers Needs are and meet them. None of us can handle someones Wants if we cannot meet your Needs. And if we meet your Needs

Do you have AD deployed today?

Then why do you have any other directories? Why are you running servers, paying for licensing, operating costs in the data center and taking up staff resource hours on duplicate technology? Can they be collapsed into using AD? If not, why do you continue to use them? Is the cost of supporting these additional directories enough to fund the effort to move towards a single directory and SIngle Sign On (SSO)?

Eliminate duplicate directories to reduce your IT costs

SUN, Novell, LDAP, LDAPS, RADIUS, and a list of other directories can all be collapsed into a single environment for your organization to work within for streamlined security, management, troubleshooting, and support costs. Why do you need to pay someone to be the Novell NDS expert when you have 5 people on the team that are AD experts? Start to take a hard look at what your people are doing in support time and also in end user complexity. A single directory makes all of that cheaper and easier.

End user training costs with multiple directories includes multiple passwords, password synchronization, what to do when your passwords are not synched up properly, and why your password can only be letters and 7 characters in length because of system omega that we have been using for the past 3 decades.

How do you reduce your IT costs today? By eliminating your duplicate costs for directory technology, reallocating staff resources, reporvisioning assets and achieving hard dollar savings on licensing and maintenance support contracts.

How do I deploy MS08-068 to my organization?

If this is an issue for your organization, you need to step back and fix a major problem outside of this patch. Applying patches, security updates and hotfixes should be a general reactive task that your IT department can do without any major concerns. Are you using Microsoft Systems Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007, Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS), or Microsoft Windows Software Update Services (WSUS)? If not, how are you applying patches and hotfixes to your organization? Logon scripts alone? Or even worse, manual updates?

This update has some critical fixes in it, and that is a problem. The script kiddies are hard at work writing copycat spam emails, bogus downloads, and free office worker web based games so your employees without knowing it are going to be downloaded Trojans and viruses to target these exploits. It is a race to get to the door first. You to close it, them to sneak in through it. Don’t put your organization, or your career at risk. Make patching a business priority and one that just happens all the time without major concerns. The more severe the alert, the faster it happens.

What is your patch management SLA?

Do you have Service Level Agreements for the application owners of Microsoft Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003 and Server 2008? How soon after a Critical, Important or Advisory update comes out do you have to apply these hotfixes? Are you the application owner? That was is the timeline you have given your own team to roll out these patches and hotfixes?

Is your IT organization vulnerable to MS08-068?

Are there users who VPN in, work from home, or travel with laptops? Are they getting updated quickly? These users have access to the Internet without the benefit of your corporate firewalls. Patch them right away. Now what about the user on the road, how long can they go unpatched before they no longer are given access back onto the corporate network? Do you have a defense perimeter to quarantine out of date laptops from getting to corporate resources?

If you were looking for specific details on MS08-068, as the CIO, IT Director or manager, let me give you all the details you need to know and what you need to ask your team today:

• How many notices did Microsoft release?
• For each of them, are we impacted?
• For each that we are impacted, what is the level of the alert?
• What is the SLA for us to get the update out at that level?
• When will be get the update out?
• Does that meet or exceed the SLA?
• When will we notify our customers that we are going to be pushing this update?
• Do we need to do a change control request (CCR)?
• Do we need to do an expedited change control request (ECCR)?
• And finally, when the deadline is due, ask “Are we good?

These updates happen all of the time. It is how Microsoft and every other software developer keeps their software up to date, fixes things and adds new features and benefits. If your organization is in crisis today, fix the root problem and make your organization more efficient at handling patch updates.