Vol. 12, #28 - Jul 23, 2007 - Issue #634 iPhone And Exchange; The Gritty Nitties Editor's Corner Vista SP1 Beta Around The Corner? HP Marketing Gets It Finally Upcoming Double-Take Seminars/Webinars New SunPoll: Your Personal Business Communications? Quotes Of The Week Admin Toolbox Admin Tools We Think You Shouldn't Be Without Tech Briefing How To Make WinXP Last For The Next Seven Years Sprint And Clearwire Team Up Building WiMax Network Incident Management Made Easier With Microsoft Service Desk Tip: Utilities To Help With Disk Partitioning Issues Windows Vista Guide for Resellers How To Use AD To Identify And Track Virtual Machines All-in-One Guide: Password Security Vault Exchange Public Folder Restore And Recovery FAQs Windows Server News Microsoft Hotfixes Can Now Be Requested And Obtained Online iPhone And Exchange; The Gritty Nitties Microsoft Wraps Up Work On Windows Home Server Utility Cracks Microsoft DRM Detecting Changes To Group Policy With The Security Log WServer Third Party News Disaster Recovery and Virtualization White Paper Comparing Ninja Against ForeFront Antigen? WServerNews FAVE Links This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff. WServerNews - Product of the Week BOOK: Windows Vista Administration PDF Battle Royale: Ninja vs Barracuda vs GFI Many of you are trying to get rid of old, first- or second generation 'AV for Exchange' products, and look for alternatives. We decided to make your life a little easier and come up with some solid product comparisons, that really focus on the important features. You can find the first two fresh PDFs in a new section called Product Comparisons on the Ninja page. More are forthcoming in the next few weeks. These comparisons show you clearly that Ninja is a third-generation product and its benefits over older code. Check them out at: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Product-Comparisons Editor's Corner Vista SP1 Beta Around The Corner? Earlier this week there were rumors that SP1 would be available imminently, but during their quarterly earnings conference call with analysts, Redmond said that there will be an SP1 "this year", trying to quell that rumor. What will probably happen is that a few hundred selected organizations will get their hands on an early version, and that a large beta will follow in a few months. Microsoft is under pressure to release SP1 from two sides. First, many system admins do not touch Vista until they see SP1, so there is a strong economic incentive for Redmond to get it out. Second, they agreed with the DoJ that SP1 will include changes to Vista's search tools, prompted by complaints from Google. HP Marketing Gets It Finally HP used to be known as a pretty dull company marketing-wise. No more. They are doing well in the consumer market and are king of the hill for the second quarter worldwide market share with 18-19%, and Dell second with 15-16% share. Dell is still #1 in the U.S. with 28-30% but HP is hot on its heels with a 25-26% share. Global PC shipments are up 12 percent. In the enterprise space, they are doing well too, and that is what this item is about. HP produced a video about Disaster Recovery that is the best piece of marketing I have seen coming out of HP since, well, forever! Note the OS that recovered the fastest. This was sent to me by subscriber Bill Thomas and he told me the HP engineers that he talked to about it said that an error was made by the people that created the scenario and they can reduce the recovery time by 50%. Enjoy: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-HP-Disaster-Recovery Microsoft ended with a solid quarter, with the overall demand environment being positive. Revenue and adjusted earning per share were largely in line with estimates, and they have raised their expectations for 2008 a bit. It shows that when your name is Microsoft you can eat a $1.06 billion Xbox charge and still put a healthy 7.3% earnings increase on the table. Upcoming Double-Take Seminars/Webinars We'd like to invite you to attend the following seminars/webinars we are hosting: Seminar: "Recovery Made Easy for Exchange, SQL, and other Critical Applications" - Join Sunbelt and Double-Take Software as we discuss strategies for implementing high availability, remote availability and offsite disaster recovery solutions for SQL, Exchange and other mission critical applications using Double-Take. You will also hear about Double-Take's NEW solutions that power your keys to recoverability. Hosted at Microsoft in Atlanta, GA on Tuesday, August 28th. Register here: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Double-Take-Seminar Webinar: "How Can Double-Take Software's Award Winning Products Help Your Company" - Join Sunbelt and Double-Take Software as we discuss how Double-Take can help with your company's business continuity and recovery needs. Wednesday, August 8th 9:00 PST http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Double-Take-Webinar New SunPoll: Your Personal Business Communications? There are lots of new ways to stay in touch these days. For your business communications, which do YOU prefer? Social Networking Texting The good 'ol phone Instant Messaging E-mail Vote here: http://www.sunbelt-software.com/ Quotes Of The Week "Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way". -- Malek's Law "Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see." -- Mark Twain And thanks for being a WServerNews subscriber. Hope you enjoy this issue of WServerNews! Warm regards, Stu  |   Email me: feedback@wservernews.com Admin Toolbox Admin Tools We Think You Shouldn't Be Without Create custom boot sector manually with Boot Build that allows you to do this by offering a blank template for a boot sector. http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Boot-Builder Reclaim up to 80% of your Exchange Store with ExchangeCompress. Download your trial copy today. http://www.wservernews.com/070723-ExchangeCompress Must Have Freeware-Web Active Directory. Try Self Service Password. Download now! http://www.wservernews.com/070723-NameScape Get the new blow-by-blow feature comparison PDFs between Ninja, Barracuda and GFI and then compare the competitive upgrade pricing: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Ninja-Comparisons Tech Briefing How To Make WinXP Last For The Next Seven Years Vista, schmista. If you're not interested in switching, just follow our tips for optimizing and maintaining your Windows XP setup -- and yes, even getting some of Vista's security and interface improvements in XP. Excellent article in ComputerWorld!: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Windows-XP Sprint And Clearwire Team Up Building WiMax Network These two outfits are going to jointly build the first nationwide WiMax network, and at the end of 2008 will reach 100 million customers. They will cooperate on the WiMax network and expect to offer service to a wide variety of users. The network will be marketed under a common brand and it will compete with and compliment existing broadband services. The deal "will fundamentally change the communications landscape in this country," said Ben Wolff, Clearwire CEO. "By working together, a nationwide network becomes possible." Incident Management Made Easier With Microsoft Service Desk In this tip, expert Stuart Galup gives the skinny on Microsoft's help desk software, called Service Desk, and explains why help desk software and automated incident management can make your life a lot easier. (registration required) http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Incident-Management Tip: Utilities To Help With Disk Partitioning Issues Since disk partitioning is one of those storage-related issues where there seem to be more exceptions than actual rules, it helps to have as much information at your disposal on the topic of disk partitioning as possible. In this tip, find out about a set of command-line utilities - what they are and how they work - that you can use for partition work. Learn about the most basic and all-encompassing of these utilities which scans a disk and can reconstruct missing partition information, along with additional utilities that help recover specific kinds of files or a given word or phrase. (registration required) http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Disk-Partitioning-Issues Windows Vista Guide for Resellers This SearchSystemsChannel.com Windows Vista Reseller Guide offers guidance from authoritative sources on Windows Vista and is designed to help VARs, systems integrators and consultants approach and deliver successful Windows Vista solutions. Learn about everything from Vista basics to deployment issues. (registration required) http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Vista-Guide How To Use AD To Identify And Track Virtual Machines As your server room becomes increasingly diverse with both physical and virtual machines, how do you tell the difference between the two? Check out this tip on identifying virtual machines with Active Directory as instructed by virtualization expert Chris Wolf. http://www.wservernews.com/070723-AD-Virtual-Machines All-in-One Guide: Password Security Vault Passwords are a tried and true way to control access to Windows networks, individual machines, Web applications and virtually anything else that a network admin needs to be concerned with. In this all-in-one guide, learn how to crack passwords to test security, prevent BIOS password hacks and recover forgotten passwords. http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Password-Security-Vault Exchange Public Folder Restore And Recovery FAQs When you've lost Exchange public folder data what should you do? Refer to this collection of frequently asked questions for some quick technical advice. Whether you need to recover deleted public folder data or subfolders or restore public folders after a server crash, you'll find help here. http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Exchange-Public-Folders Windows Server News Microsoft Hotfixes Can Now Be Requested And Obtained Online The KB article below is dated March 30, 2007, but I only read about it in the NTSYSADMIN list this week. They say you'll get a download link to the hotfix within 8 hours. Sorry if you already knew, but if you did not this is very, very useful information. It's nice not having to call PSS for hotfixes. Here is the KB item: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Microsoft-Hotfixes To subscribe to the sunbelt-sponsored NTSYSADMIN list: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-NTSYSADMIN iPhone And Exchange; The Gritty Nitties Paul Robichaux wrote an article on his blog about hooking up the iPhone to Exchange. Paul is an existing Exchange MVP and Exchange Editor for WindowsITPro Magazine. he started out with: "Two weeks ago, I wrote a column about the release of Apple's iPhone and what it might mean for Microsoft Exchange Server admins ("The iPhone and Exchange," July 5, 2007, InstantDoc ID 96485). The column was somewhat in the same vein as a vegetarian teaching people how to grill steak, because I hadn't used an iPhone yet. I got one the day after submitting that column and have been using it heavily since then. Now I'm ready to spill the beans on how it really works with Exchange. He summarized it on his blog, and also compares to Windows Mobile: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-iPhone-Exchange Microsoft Wraps Up Work On Windows Home Server ComputerWorld reported that the move to RTM (release to manufacturing) means that Microsoft has wrapped up WHS and handed it off to its internal distribution teams and hardware ... July 16, 2007 (ComputerWorld) -- Microsoft Corp. today released Windows Home Server (WHS) to manufacturing, the final milestone for software that will power several turnkey home servers that OEMs will put on the market in late September and early October. http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Windows-Home-Server Utility Cracks Microsoft DRM The digital rights management on Windows Media Player has been cracked again by a utility that first appeared almost a year ago. FairUse4WM first appeared in August 2006 on the Doom9 encoding forum, as a tool to strip the DRM from music files designed to play in Windows Media Player. ZDNet in the UK broke the story: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-DRM-Crack Detecting Changes To Group Policy With The Security Log Randy F. Smith from ultimatewindowssecurity sent this useful one: "I hope you can join me for my next training webinar on the Windows Security Log. Nowhere is change control more important than with Active Directory's group policy objects. A single mistake in editing a group policy object can make hundreds or even thousands of systems unavailable in a matter of minutes. Can you track group policy modifications in your domain and identify who is changing what? You can with the Windows security log. In this webinar I will show you how to configure Windows auditing and Active Directory to record all changes group policy modifications to the security log. I'll show you how to avoid overwhelming your domain controllers with too many security events and more importantly how to recognize and interpret the cryptic security log events that alert you to group policy changes." Link here: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Group-Policies WServer Third Party News Disaster Recovery and Virtualization White Paper Virtualization with VMware allows you to do maintenance without bringing down any applications, so you can deliver more performance to your employees, partners and customers with less cost and greater simplicity. With Double-Take you can leverage virtualization to provide effective disaster recovery on your VMware platform. Read this 2-page white-paper PDF that explains how it works: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-DT-VMware Comparing Ninja Against ForeFront Antigen? We made your life easy. Here is a PDF with a detailed comparison of key features that really show Antigen's age, and Ninja's third-gen benefits for an admin. With Ninja Email Security you can protect your users against spam, viruses, malicious attachments, phishing, and more, IN HALF THE ADMIN TIME. Read this PDF where we compare Ninja and Antigen features: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Compare-Ninja-Antigen WServerNews FAVE Links This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff. Officials confirm that all online data has been lost after the Internet went down and was forced to restart. Unfortunately, the government had forgotten to make a backup... Funny video from The Onion: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Internet-Crash What happens when you make a Google query. Very interesting short backgrounder. Amazing what they do with cheap hardware: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Google-Query ThinkGeek has a whole bunch of very funny T-shirts for System Admins: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-ThinkGeek Google's revenues were up, but it profits were down and the stock price dropped 7%. Reason? Staff expenses. This video shows how the Googleplex looks inside, and why the staff expenses are so high! http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Googleplex Microsoft's Terminal Server Sizing Guide [3.2 MB Doc] is very useful to determine server size. It's at the very end of this WinHEC page: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Terminal-Server-Sizing-Guide FBI's Secret Spyware Tracks Down Teen Who Made Bomb Threats: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-FBI-Spyware 10 Things IT People Secretly Think ...That May Or May Not Be True: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-IT-People What engineers really mean then they say things like "Trivial, Unfeasible, Non-Trivial, Hard, and Very Hard". A little gem: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Engineers And another IE crash in an airport sent in by a subscriber! http://www.wservernews.com/070723-IE-Crash This aircraft runs on sunlight, and thus can fly as long as the sun shines (which of course it always does above the clouds during the day): http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Solar-Aircraft NASA's Phoenix Mars mission is designed to be inventive, but relatively low- cost in furthering Mars exploration. Phoenix is headed for liftoff in Aug 2007: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Mars-Phoenix Now THIS is the weirdest email client ever, called '3D Mailbox'. See the trailer: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-3DMailbox "A UFO stole my car!" Funny TV commercial from Argentina: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Car-Insurance OK, check this one out after you have woken up and had a cuppa hot jolt: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Job-Nearly-Done WServerNews - Product of the Week BOOK: Windows Vista Administration Tony and Toby Velte have done it again! They came out with a really good book about Vista Admin. I have it sitting here on my desk. I also wrote the foreword as they sent me an early version. This is 'The Vista Manual That Microsoft Never Wrote'. You have to get a copy of this book, and you will NOT regret it. "This in-depth implementation guide teaches network administrators how to effectively deploy and manage Microsoft Windows Vista within an enterprise environment. You will learn how to efficiently and effectively use the all-new features such as Windows Defender, Network Access Protection, Windows Service Hardening, and AD." More at Amazon: http://www.wservernews.com/070723-Vista-Administration