Vol. 12, #31 - Aug 13, 2007 - Issue #637 Thumbs Down On Vista For Admins Editor's Corner Thumbs Down On Vista For Admins Leaked Vista Hotfix Packs Now Official Quotes of the Week Admin Toolbox Admin Tools We Think You Shouldn't Be Without Tech Briefing Vista's BitLocker Encryption: All It's Cracked Up to Be? Build Your Data Center Here: The Most Energy-Efficient Locations Expert Tips: Making The Business Decision To Move To W2K8 How To Get Process Information With Windows Powershell VMware Server How-To: Clean Up Snapshot Files To Free Disk Space Windows Server News Microsoft Web Server Threatens Open Source Leader Apache PC buyers: 'Vista Capable' Machines Weren't Vista Capable Microsoft Gears Up For Nine Patches Next Week WServer Third Party News We Did Some AntiSpyware Homework For You WServerNews Fave Links This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff. WServerNews - Product of the Week BOOK: Spook Country by William Gibson. Today's Malware Looks For Profit There may be less disruption of your network, but instead malware has gotten smarter, more elusive, and is now praying on your organization's customer databases, intellectual property and other valuable assets. Do you know how many of the PCs in your network are zombies that are sending out DDoS attacks or spam and send back the keystrokes of your co-workers? The new CounterSpy Enterprise has more than a million malware traces and can help you fight back this new world of insidious code that tries to corrupt your network! Get a 30-day trial and find out what your AV product did not catch: http://www.wservernews.com/070813-CounterSpy-Enterprise Editor's Corner Thumbs Down On Vista For Admins Well, this is one of the most popular SunPolls in recent years. Redmond better listen up. A whopping 30% of responders uninstalled Vista from their Admin station because Vista does not provide the admin tools that are in WinXP! Comparing the results of Before and After Vista was released are interesting. Here are the numbers, and a lot of you sent feedback that the options -YOU- needed were not there, so we have come out with a new edition that allows for longer time periods, and also the 'never' option. The question was "Now that Vista is close, what are your plans for rolling it out?" In October, 2006 you answered with the BEFORE numbers. In August 2007, these were the AFTER ones: I'm deploying it the moment I can get my hands on it! BEFORE: 9.4% AFTER: 6.9% We'll wait 3 months BEFORE: 5.4% AFTER: 2% We're going to give it 6-12 months BEFORE: 18.4% AFTER: 14.5% We'll wait till Vista SP1 comes out BEFORE: 32.7% AFTER: 27.9% We're going for a slow-and-steady replacement process, when new machines get put in. BEFORE: 33.84% AFTER: 18.5% I took it off my admin workstation, too many small annoyances. This last question was not in the earlier Poll, so this is not an apples-to-apples comparison and the percentages are skewed, but a whopping 29.9% answered with this option. Wow. Redmond, what are you going to do about it? And now for the "Second Edition": "Now that Vista is there, what are your plans for rolling it out?" 12-24 months 24-36 months More than 36 months. Vista has almost nothing to offer. Never! (We're hoping will have a better OS by 2014 when the support for XP runs out). Vote here, at low bottom right: http://www.sunbelt-software.com/ Leaked Vista Hotfix Packs Now Official Just in case anyone missed it. MS released some updates for Vista to address performance and reliability issues. They declined to say when they will be pushed out via Windows Update. They call these fixes "performance and reliability packs", and they install a long list of bug fixes (not security related), including one fix speeds up 'wake-from-hibernation', a patch that kills the long wait to copy or move large directories, and several long awaited fixes for video drivers. One description sounded somewhat disconcerting: "The computer stops responding or restarts unexpectedly when you play video games or perform desktop operations." All these patches are new and do not replace existing ones. Here are the KB links: http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Vista-Hotfix-1 http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Vista-Hotfix-2 Quotes of the Week Three Fave Quotes Of The Week: "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." -- David Thoreau "The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other." -- Ronald Reagan "Everything takes longer and costs more." -- Jerry Pournelle Thank you 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 Wireshark, reincarnation of Ethereal, sniffs a wide variety of networks, has been ported to 32-bit Windows (and Vista), supports many types of networks: http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Wireshark You may not know this, but the Community Edition is actually free, so download rDirectory and webify your Active Directory. http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Active-Directory The Sunbelt Personal Firewall has a Limited Time Special where the price is cut 50% and it now only costs $10.00. This is a no-brainer: http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Sunbelt-Personal-Firewall New Radmin V3 is a complete, secure and lightning fast Remote Control tool designed by and for system admins. Supports Vista - Try it out! http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Radmin-V3 Free Spiceworks IT Desktop. Designed, tested and used by 100,000 IT pros in 185 countries. Spiceworks has the everyday IT features you need: http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Spiceworks Tech Briefing Vista's BitLocker Encryption: All It's Cracked Up to Be? The BitLocker encryption built into higher-end versions of Vista goes a long way toward locking out intruders at the boot-drive level, but it's neither 100% hassle-free nor 100% secure. ComputerWorld has some good skinny on this! http://www.wservernews.com/070813-BitLocker Build Your Data Center Here: The Most Energy-Efficient Locations ComputerWorld has a good story. It's almost a no-brainer that bucolic Quincy, Wash., would be a more environmentally friendly site for data centers than, say, New York is. But according to a new study, Chicago beats all 20 of the other locations that were looked at -- even Quincy -- in terms of a data center's carbon output. On the other hand, going by the cost of electricity alone, Westport, Pa., and Quincy come out on top. But cities such as Miami and Atlanta have it all over the likes of San Jose and Boston. Here's the graph: http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Data-Centers Expert Tips: Making The Business Decision To Move To W2K8 With Windows Vista already on the shelf and Windows Server 2008 ready for release in February 2008, one thing is on every IT manager's mind - migration. Make your best business case by reading this two-part tip series, to learn all about the product support lifecycle and features that can save time and money. (registration required) http://www.wservernews.com/070813-W2K8 How To Get Process Information With Windows Powershell This Scripting School column explains how to use PowerShell's get-process cmdlet to retrieve information about the processes on your computer and how to kill the unnecessary ones. http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Windows-Powershell VMware Server How-To: Clean Up Snapshot Files To Free Disk Space Cleaning up disk-space hungry snapshots on the VMware Server isn't nearly as straightforward as you'd think and requires a bit of creativity. This tip will offer some ideas for removing a snapshot chain in VMware Server in order to reclaim lost disk space. http://www.wservernews.com/070813-VMware-Server Windows Server News Microsoft Web Server Threatens Open Source Leader Apache Windows improved its web server market share by 1.4% to 34.2%, while Apache slipped by 1.7% to 48.4%. Microsoft's recent gains raise the prospect that Windows may soon challenge Apache's leadership position. Here are the graphs: http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Web-Servers PC buyers: 'Vista Capable' Machines Weren't Vista Capable The Register reported: "How misleading was Microsoft's "Windows Vista Capable" campaign? Misleading enough for a judge to approve a federal trial. On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that two PC buyers, Dianne Kelley and Kenneth Hansen, can proceed with a lawsuit that accuses Microsoft of deliberately deceiving the public with the "Window Vista Capable" stickers it slapped on Windows XP machines in the run-up to Vista's January debut, InformationWeek reports. Microsoft had asked for a dismissal, but US District Judge Marsha Pechman of Seattle is happy to oversee an October trial. http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Vista-Capable Microsoft Gears Up For Nine Patches Next Week Microsoft plans to release nine patches in its monthly security update next Tuesday, aiming to fix flaws in Windows, Office, Internet Explorer and Virtual PC. ComputerWorld had the best summary: http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Patch-Tuesday WServer Third Party News We Did Some AntiSpyware Homework For You You definitely need to have TOP quality antimalware protection. But which product to choose? Well, we compared the leading products with CounterSpy Enterprise: CounterSpy Enterprise / SymantecAV Product Comparison PDF format, 491,721 bytes, Aug 3, 2007 CounterSpy Enterprise / McAfee Product Comparison PDF format, 462,885 bytes, Jul 23, 2007 CounterSpy Enterprise / Webroot Spy Sweeper Product Comparison PDF format, 740,903 bytes, Jul 18, 2007 CounterSpy Enterprise / Trend Product Comparison PDF format, 527,109 bytes, Jul 6, 2007 These are fresh PDFs and show you the critical features you gotta have. http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Product-Comparisons WServerNews Fave Links This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff. Re the hovercraft/flying boat link in the last faves, this is a type of craft known as a WIG, WISE or Ekranoplane, which uses the ground effect of the air under the wing to get extra lift at low thrust levels. The Russians built a massive one in the 60's known to the West as the Caspian Sea Monster, there's a video clip of it and some early experiments here on YouTube: http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Ekranoplane Amazing Magic Trick! Master Magician Kevin James performing on America's Got Talent: http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Magician You'll like this one. The ending is good. Title: Zune Balmer. http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Zune-Balmer The Strange Maps site has quickly become VERY popular. And with good reason: http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Strange-Maps How a fake word from The Simpsons ended up in a perfectly 'cromulent' string theory paper: http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Simpsons What else you can do with wax crayons... carve them? http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Wax-Crayons Jessica the Hippo has made herself a member of this South African family. Since she broke a couch and a bed, she is now restricted to only going into the kitchen: http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Pet-Hippo A car insurance company in South Africa insures female drivers only, since they are a better insurance risk: http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Car-Insurance Blogger Outed: Forbes Editor Is 'Fake Steve Jobs'. The (riot) blog is at: http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Fake-Steve Chris Pirillo has a 50 minute rant about he "upgraded" back to XP from Vista. It's quite funny actually, Chris is an 'uebergeek'. http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Pirillo This is a quick and easy way to make a wi-fi range extender for pennies and double the range of your wireless router. Seems to work: http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Wi-fi-Extender Helios, a pilotless solar powered airplane developed by NASA, holds the sustained flight world record above 96,000 feet. Some nice new footage: http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Helios WServerNews - Product of the Week BOOK: Spook Country by William Gibson. I preordered it and it arrived this week. Started and only have been able to get to page 40, but this again is a classic Gibson. He said about it: "It's a book in which shadowy and mysterious characters are using New York's smallest crime family, a sort of boutique operation of smugglers and so-called illegal facilitators, to get something into North America. And you have to hang around to the end of the book to find out what they're doing. So I guess it's a caper novel in that regard." Warmly Recommended! http://www.wservernews.com/070813-Spook-Country