News

Green IT - sometimes your suppliers just won't help!

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...

USB Over Remote Desktop

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

SPAM - why do they bother?

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 sildenafil 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! 

Nokia Intellisync Wireless Email Administration

Wireless Email Support Intellisync

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!

Windows 7 - First look

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!

Small Business Server Backup

We have taken over support a few new customers recently and they all have had a third party backup software installed on their Small Business Servers.  I have no idea why other IT companies do this! 

SBS comes with a built in backup manager which is perfectly fine for most situations.  It also works well with external hard drives, managing the rotation of disks and providing a simple interface on the status of failed or completed backups.    We try to keep all our SBS boxes a free from 3rd party software as possible, this makes them run faster and with much higher reliability. 

So my advice is, if you own SBS2003, don't waste your money on 3rd party backup software, it will cause more problems than it fixes!

Input or Output device ???

I have just read quite an intersting article on the BBC website, regarding computer hackers logging our keyboard inputs !!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7681534.stm

How scary a thought is that,not only do we have to be on gaurd with details we enter on the internet it now seems we have to be careful what we enter at all.

I guess the next step is for people to hack our thoughts !!!

The new Apple MacBook Pro

Apple

Now I have never really been a "fan" of Apple Macs, and up until recently this was due basically to ignorance and lack of exposure to them.

Things have changed!

Since the iPod and iPhone revolution, Macs are are finally getting the attention they deserve. With friends and relatives making the decision to give a Mac a go, it has made me even more aware of just how good they are.

To build up my knowledge, I have spent some time reviewing the tutorials on http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/ . I recommend you visit these no nonsense, straight forward talking tutorials.

Wow! Why did I not do it earlier! I had never appreciated how simple and powerful the Mac system is. The desktop is intuitive and the features such as Time Machine, Spotlight, Expose, Coverflow View....

Now I am not a true convert, as I have yet to get my own Mac, but one day soon I may well take the plunge!

Think about IT

Think Green - how can we all be more efficient with the technology we use? There are three main areas, where we could all work harder:

Selection - looking for products that are "green"

Utilisation - keeping waste to a minimum by switching those screens off.

Disposal - recycling your kit where possible.

We have created a small flyer to help pass on the message, just right mouse click it and save the picture as a file.

Think about IT

Next Gen Broadband

BT have picked their pilot sites for trials of their next generation broadband.  Residents in Muswell Hill (London) and Whitchurch (South Wales) will have their exchanges upgraded and fibre run to the BT street cabinets.  Once the upgrades are complete speeds of upto 40Mbps should be acheivable over the final stretch of copper.   It appears one of the problems predicted for the trails is that there isn't any content available online yet to really push connections to the limit.

In other trials,  BT are running fibre to the home which should be capable of 100Mbps and Virgin are upgrading their cable network to be capable of 50Mbps.

Happy days ahead...

Announced: Microsoft Windows version 7 and it's called...

...Windows 7.

Well, they can't all be winners.

More news here: http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/10/13/introducing-windows-7.aspx

 

 

ps. It's a fairly shaky choice of names anyway, since it's not the 7th release of Windows. But I'll let these guys do the nit-picking: http://www.aeroxp.org/2008/10/introducing-windows-7/

Bad Situation...

Hmmm here is a interesting problem I came across today... 

One of our customers has a client database that is hosted on their web developers server.  They have been trying to contact the Devlopers for some time, but not had any luck...  The customer then decided to pop round to the office and see what was going on.  When they got there the business was being shutdown, with the guys who ran the company about to walk out the door.  

A quick conversation took place and it was found the Developers had gone out of business, sold the remains of the company and were now working for a new owner.

The question was asked, where is our database that was hosted on your server?  At this point they were referred to the new owner who stated that it was on a hosted server that had been shutdown by Fasthosts, due to upaid bills by the previous owners! 

They were told that to get a copy / backup of the database it would take 2 days labour at £750.00 +VAT per day to find it in the old company office server. 

Cal me stupid, but last time I checked it only takes 2 minutes to search for a file in windows.  Also the developers were still working for the new owners and would have known exactly where the backup data was stored.  This is blackmail - they are holding the customer to ransom over their data. 

I think we can take a few lessons from this story:

  • Always own the relationship with the hosting company for your website - never let your web guys host it on their own server.  If you fall out or they go bust you can change the password and they are locked out of the account
  • Always ensure backups of your vital data are kept on your own servers 
  • be careful of Developers having too much control of your data...it's yours not theirs - make sure it's in the contract that they have to give it back if you fall out.
  • Be wary of smaller business as they often go down - if you do use them, ensure you keep control of your data.

Microsoft Patch Tuesday exploit.

It seems that an attempt has been made by certain individuals to exploit Microsoft's patch Tuesday.

Hoaxers have sent an email infected with a trojan virus, disguised as a windows security update notification.

It asks the recipient of the email to run the attached windows update !!

If you receive this email please do not open the attachment,as it most certainly isn't from Microsoft.

Microsoft never send out security updates as email attachments,that's the the whole purpose of the windows updates website.

Here is a link with more information regarding this.

http://www.itpro.co.uk/607113/hackers-spam-fake-microsoft-security-update 

Fake email alert.

Blackberry Storm...

 

Well it looks pretty good to me!  It seems Blackberry are chasing the iPhone with there first touch screen device.  I would certainly consider one, as long as it beats the iPhone battery life issues.  All the reviews I have read on it are pretty positive, I'll post agian when I've got my hands on one!

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/RIM-Microsoft-Buyout,news-29387.html

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/10/08/storm_official/

Do you Ubuntu?

After hearing and reading so much about Ubuntu, currently the flavour of the month in the world of Linux, I've decided to take the plunge.  We not exactly I, more like the whole family.

The opportunity has come about as I'm setting up a PC in the house for Darrelle and children to use.  So after 15 minutes of downloading the latest version "Hardy Heron" from the Ubuntu website http://www.ubuntu.com/ and burning it to CD I am ready to go.

Simply putting the CD into the drive and booting up the PC allows me to run the whole operating system without actually installing a thing.   Simple as that.  Of course, this means that any customisation made will be lost the first time I reboot. It is time to install it properly.

The installation is very straight forward and without event.  What is nice is that all the questions are asked right at the start so you don't have to sit by in case it needs prompting later on during the install.

With the installation complete, the moment of truth beckons.  Will it actually work?  The answer is, yes it does!! Well almost, the installer hasn't recognised my wireless network card.  Now here is a problem.  Installing the driver isn't as simple as chucking in a CD and following the prompts.  I've had to do a fair amount of googling, phoned a friend and got friendly with a tool called ndiswrapper and the linux command prompt.  15 minutes later and I'm there.

With all that sorted using Ubuntu is a breeze.  During installation I selected the Gnome desktop which is great to use.  Unlike Windows you get a choice of desktop, so if you’re not happy with Gnome you could try out another such as KDE.

So what has come with Ubuntu?  Firefox for browsing the internet, Pidgin for Instant Messaging, OpenOffice for all your document, spreadsheet, database and presentation needs, Evolution for email (Even works with Exchange 2003), Brasero for burning disks, Transmission for bitTrorrent, Gimp image editor and a mixture of media players and much more.  All this for free.

Now it's time to test a few things out.  Can I play music cds? Yes.  Can I play DVD? Hmmm, not quite, the framerate is either very slow or the colours not right.  No matter how I adjust the available settings nothing seems to fix this.  I’m not too worried though as the primary use or the PC will be web browsing, email and playing music.

Impression so far?  Great!!.  Installation is easy, the desktop looks great, there is a great range of bundled applications and it is free.  Best of all it is childs play to use, just ask the kids.