As some might have noticed, an Internet Explorer vulnerability has hit the news recently of a flaw which allows an attacker to remotely execute code on your machine ( and not in a nice way! ). Microsoft has now released a fix for this which can be downloaded manually below. Just to note , if you already have a support and server contract with us , you won’t need to worry , as this will all be automatic due to Windows Software Updates Services running on your server.

We know how important a reliable internet connection is for us and our customers , which is why we use a multiple award winning ISP such as Zen. However we are always looking for the latest and greatest to provide to our customers. Our latest venture is the use of Wireless Broadband to grantee your internet connection. With the help of a  Vigor 2820 Series ADSL Router Firewall to provide you with your secure office Wireless Network, Point to Point Office VPN’s, Home VPN’s and Dual Internet Connections it can also failover to a 3G Card! This provides you with up to 3 Points of Failure bringing SLA’s near to 100%!

However we won’t stop there, a 3G card can provide around 1.8Mpbs. Sometimes this isn’t enough even for the last point of failure. This is why we have gone with a new technology called WiMAX. WiMAX is perfect for business’ who need that extra redundancy in their networks without the hassle of an extra line. Providing another internet line sometimes isn’t enough as usually this line is run from a telephone box near your office and has exactly the same bottlenecks and redundancy issues as your existing internet line. If the cable gets cut by a trusty BT employer, or who knows someone , helps themself to some equipment at the exchange then both lines are gone for up to a day! WiMAX delivers SDSL qualities matching your internet connections speed to up to 10MBs (Full Duplex both ways)!! and keeping your existing ADSLs SLAs! We are pleased to announce this technology is available in the Great London area at the moment , and we are looking to expand further when more masts are up!

Lastly we are pushing a campaign to get people out of their offices to work! There is no excuse now, with remote web workplace , VPN’s and Email via a browser all you need is an internet connection, a laptop and a cup of your favorite hot beverage to be back in the office!. With the cheap and easy setup of a 3G dongle at only £5 a month on your laptop or on your desktop if you so wish , you’ll never know you’ve left! If you don’t want to shell out that extra money a month duing this crunch, no problem just use your phone as a 3G Modem and leave it in your pocket while your laptop connects to it over bluetooth.

IT news site The Register has a story about Hewlett-Packard’s ludicrous packaging habits. I’ve actually had first-hand experience of this. I once ordered 26 licences for some of HP’s software tools (each licence was a single sheet of A4 paper with the licence code on it). Each licence was individually packed in an envelope. Each envelope was individually packed in a cardbox box, with foam packaging to protect the delicate contents. These cardboard boxes were then packed into larger cardboard boxes with more foam packaging and finally the whole lot was strapped to 2 full-size shipping pallets and delivered to me. All that, for 26 sheets of A4 paper.

HP also emailed me the licence codes.

(HP aren’t alone in doing this. Dell are also notorious for shipping out tiny, non-delicate items in massive packaging.)

Green IT can be done. But not all your suppliers will play along…

We have been looking hard into Terminal Services recently with the strong opion that things will be moving into the “cloud” very soon. The need for standalone high spec machines on your desktop is reducing, with the maintenance of software and hardware compared with a thin simple client with a basic Remote Desktop Client installed connecting you to a heavily managed and redundant virtual desktop.
Key Features you would want from a solution like this to provide for you are the following

• Email
• File Storage
• Creation and Editing of Word , Excel and Power point files
• Messaging through voice or chat
• Web Browsing
• Printing

Microsoft has already provided a solution for this , Terminal Services which runs on it’s own on a separate box does exactly the above. Given Small Business Server 2008 provides enhanced printer support for clients and a smother user experience we where still looking for something to beat it.The other main player in this remote world is xen Desktop as shown here provided some nice examples , however only came with one small benefit which was the smother web performance. Given Xen Desktop is backed by Citrix theres a heafty price increase for the ability to have a faster rate of 40ms

USB Drives can be mapped in Remote Desktop with ease , microsoft just hide it away!

Open Remote Desktop Connection ( Programs , Accessories )

Select the options button , Local Resources tab , More Button , and then Tick Drives

Not only can you access your existing drive letters , but anything else you plug in will be mapped automatically

Click for Enlarged Thumbnail

I read an interesting article today on spammers and the success rates for junk email.

Apparently the hit rate for spam is one in every 12.5 million emails sent!  

Not a great return you would think but when you are sending Billions of emails every day, you can actually make yourself very rich very quickly.  To do this the researcher took control of a Bot Net (a group of PC’s that have been taken over by spammers) and ran a trial sending out messages.  They also created Pharmacy site so any dumb individuals who took up the offer could pay for the product.

While running their spam campaigns the researchers sent about 469 million junk e-mail messages. The majority of these were for the dodgy pharmacy campaign.

After 26 days and almost 400 million email messages, 30 sales resulted.

 However when you scale this up to billions of emails sent every day you can see the sales figures will increase rapidly. 

We have been dealing with this junk email problem for some time for customers and have tried a number of solutions.  We started with GFI Antispam and then moved to Kaspersky Antispam but found them a pain to administer and not very accurate.  They also slowed down servers and created havoc with internet connections as so much traffic was being sent to the servers. 

We also had issues with the blacklisting of IP addresses and reverse DNS lookup.  Eventually we found a service new from Microsoft called Exchange Hosted Services, it’s basically the same service offered by Messagelabs but for considerably less and without the onerous contract terms (they always want 3 years!).   

This has been a god send, we don’t get any problems with the service, it’s quick to setup, never goes wrong and is hosted offsite so we have no relay or Internet performance issues.  It’s also cheap at £2 per user per month with no contract! 

With Nokia Releasing the Free Application “Mail for Exchange” you can now have any of these devices as an Active Sync Mobile , Syncing your Contacts , Mail , Calendar and Notes Wireless’ via your Phone with an existing Small Business or just Plain Windows 2003/8 Server!

Supported Mobiles

N95 8GB ,N95,N93i,N93,N92,N91,N90,N81,N80,N77,N76,N73,N72,N71,N70,N-Gage ,QD,N-age

E90,E70,E65,E62,E61i,E61,E60,E51,E50,9500,9300i,9300,9210i,9210,8800,7710,7650

7600,7370,7360,7270,7260,7250i,7250,7210,7200,6822,6820,6810,6800,6681,6680,6670

6650,6630,6610i,6610,6600,6310i,6280,6270,6260,6230i,6230,6220,6170,6111,6101,6100

6060,6030,6021,5140i,5140,5100,3660,3650,3300,3250,3230,3220,3200,3120,3100,2652

Grab a copy here and if you need any help you know where to find us!

This comes just in the nick of time as Nokia has abandoned its Business Mobility Solution Intellisync ( Compeition for the Blackberry Enterprise Server) it seems , so no need for the headache of managing a Non Supported Intellisync Server , Just use the tools and software you already have to save money this Credit Crunch!

The Register has a first-look review of the new Windows 7 operating system. It looks quite promising. It’s more evolutionary than revolutionary, so it’s probably closer to a second version of Vista than a completely new OS. This is a good thing - Vista is basically a sound operating system that is badly let down by a few stupid design decisions and a dauntingly high minimum hardware requirement.

Among the new and improved features in Windows 7:

• Better power management and resource usage - so it will run faster and longer than Vista on the same hardware.
• All new Windows taskbar.
• Revisions to User Account Control - it can now be adjusted as to how intrusive it is (this is my number 1 annoyance with Windows Vista!)
• The Sidebar has been scrapped, and the gadgets can now be placed on the desktop itself.
• Bitlocker data encryption has been extended to cover USB drives and external media (the government should be pleased to hear this…)

This looks like it might just be the version of Windows that Vista should have been!

The word is that Windows Version 7 is to be release in time for Christmas.  Christmas 2009 that is.  The official line has always been three years after Vista which would mean early 2010.  But there are now reports that PC manufacturers have been told to get ready for the holiday season next year.  After a little research, the “Holiday Season” is the six weeks between thanks giving and New Year.

If normal time scales apply the beta version should be out fairly early next year.  Lets hope Windows 2007 is to Vista what XP was to 2000.  A big step forward in functunality, stability and compatibility.

For a couple of months we’ve been the happy home to one Ubuntu PC but at the weekend this came to an end.  Despite the quick load times, easy to use interface, and good range of features there is one thing it couldn’t do.  Run Windows designed software.

The crutch of the problem was that my good wife brought home a new piece of driver training software to install on the PC and immediatly found she couldn’t.

So Ubuntu is now a distant memory and XP has been restored.  The problem for Ubuntu and other Linux and  BSD operating systems for home use is that so many third party applications are only developed for the Windows environment and I really can’t see there being a switch in balance anytime soon.

The furture will be the OS independent applications as we were promised some 10/12years ago.  Perhaps in another 10years time they will be the standard.

Well we have finally done it, after much deliberation we have upgraded the office server to SBS 2008.  We have always recommend waiting a while, with new software releases, but decided we should take the plunge and see what happens.  Actually the whole thing went pretty smoothly, we bought a fast 64 bit server from Dell and found the install to be painless.  The wizards are much improved in this new SBS release and it seems to be bug free…  The new remote web workplace is much better, with large buttons to access all the usual services.  Exchange 2007 has a nice webmail interface and runs very fast.

The backup wizard only has support for external hard drives, which is something we have been recommending for a while now.  If you want tape you will need to buy 3rd party software.  Interestingly the server also comes bundled with a years free antivirus from Microsoft.  We have often had issues with AV installed on SBS, so if this is reliable, we may well end up recomending it to all our customers.

The server has been installed for 2 months, it has been rock solid so far.  Not a single fault.  So fingers crossed this could be the best Version of SBS ever!

Small Business Server 2008 - Microsoft bug free release, could it be true!