Vol. 14, #3 - Jan 12, 2009 - Issue #708 CES & Windows 7 Beta First Impressions This issue of WServerNews is sponsored by Editors Corner CES & Windows 7 Beta First Impressions Quotes of the Week Webinars and Seminars WEBCAST: Affordable, Enterprise Email Archiving WEBCAST: The End of AV as You Know It: A Look at VIPRE Enterprise Admin Toolbox Admin Tools We Think You Shouldn't Be Without: Tech Briefing Violating The First Principle Of Security: Easily Cracked Passwords. PodCast: New Attack Patterns Emerge In 2009 Data Breaches Rose Sharply In 2008, Study Says Redmond To Push IE8 Via Automatic Updates, Issues Blocking Tool What Are The Pros And Cons Of A Hosted Exchange Server Deployment? Free Tools And XP Piqued Admin Interest In 2008 Defragmenting Balances Performance And Security The State Of Spam: What To Expect In 2009 Windows Server News Hyper-V Servers And PerfMon: Not Your Usual Processor Counters Guide: Advanced New Features In SQL Server Management Studio WServer Thrid Party News New Versions Of VIPRE and CounterSpy Enterprise WServerNews Fave Links This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff WServerNews - Product of the Week Dude, where's my Surf control? Dude, where's my Surf control? Catch the next wave in Web filtering with iPrism. Sign up for a web demo today and get a free WIPEOUT t-shirt. You'll also be entered to win a custom St. Bernard surfboard. iPrism, the World's #1 Web Filtering Appliance. http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Web-Filtering Editors Corner CES & Windows 7 Beta First Impressions The rumors were true. Redmond released a public Win7 beta this week. They said only the first 2.5 million people will be served. And then their servers were overwhelmed and they pulled the Beta during Friday, with no announcement when it will be back. But wait, there's more. They are going to announce free (or large discount) upgrade programs from Vista to Win7. Microsoft developers, including MSDN, and TechNet subscribers, were be able to download the beta Wednesday night. Sunbelt has one now and we are looking at it, VIPRE seems to run fine. Here is the TechArp site with the Vista to Win7 upgrade specifics, (they have been right in the past with their predictions): http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Techarp Minimum recommended hardware for the Beta is an encouraging a 1-GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of available disk space and support for DX9 graphics with 128MB of memory (to enable the Aero theme) These numbers may change for the final product, they said. Could be that Win7 will even ship in time for the busy back-to-school season later this year. Here are all the keynote videos, I recommend the Democast Video "The Future of Computing with Janet Galore (07:26) Interesting: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Videos New features in Win7 are an updated interface with a redesigned task bar, simplified home networking, and a new, improved flavor of the annoying Vista User Account Control. Win7 also has better performance than Vista, and supports a touch-screen interface, but does your PC has a touch screen? Mine sure doesn't, and I doubt I'll ever want one. Quotes of the Week "You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him discover it in himself." -- Astronomer and mathematician Galileo Galilei "He who does not bellow out the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers." -- Charles Peguy (1873-1914) French poet. "We owe a lot to Thomas Edison - if it wasn't for him, we'd be watching television by candlelight." -- Milton Berle Warm regards, and thank you for being a WServerNews subscriber. No trees were killed in the sending of this message, but a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced. Please tell your friends about us. They can subscribe here: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Subscribe Hope you enjoy this issue of WServerNews! Warm regards, Stu  |   Email me: feedback@wservernews.com Automated Uninstall of Symantec AV No more 2-day SEP V11 Migration Classes! Sunbelt built VIPRE Enterprise; a completely new technology combining corporate antivirus plus an enterprise antispyware solution for total endpoint security designed by admins for admins. And that means EASY DEPLOYMENT. Save your IT budget and don't renew products from Symantec, McAfee and Trend Micro, Learn how VIPRE Enterprise takes much less resources than the competition! It's clearly time to ditch expensive, bloated, old-style AV products. Get your 30-day eval here: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-VIPRE-Enterprise Webinars and Seminars WEBCAST: Affordable, Enterprise Email Archiving Join us for a look at Sunbelt Software's Exchange email archiving and compliance solution, Sunbelt Exchange Archiver. If you need a powerful, easy to use, enterprise-class email archiving tool that automatically enables you to comply with all requirements, and allows you or your end-users to transparently retrieve any archived email, then don't miss this webinar! The webinar will explain the features and benefits of implementing a powerful email archiving solution on your Exchange Server at an affordable price. Learn how Sunbelt Exchange Archiver can help you: Improve Exchange performance Eliminate PST headaches Dramatically reduce backup times Use up to 80% smaller message store Meet compliance requirements And more When: Tuesday, January 20, 2009 2:00 PM (EST) Please register here: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Enterprise-Email-Archiving WEBCAST: The End of AV as You Know It: A Look at VIPRE Enterprise As part of its ongoing efforts to address the rapidly evolving malware landscape facing enterprises, Sunbelt Software introduces VIPRE Enterprise(tm) - a completely new solution that combines antivirus, antispyware, anti-rootkit and other technologies into a seamless, tightly-integrated product. Join Sunbelt Software on Tuesday, January 27, 2009 at 2:00pm EST for a look at VIPRE Enterprise and learn how Sunbelt started with a blank slate to design a new, next-generation antivirus and antispyware technology to deal with today's malware in the most comprehensive, highly efficient manner. The result is a clean, fast, and powerful anti-malware solution developed 'by admins for admins'. VIPRE Enterprise is designed to optimize overall performance by melding antivirus and antispyware together into one, single, powerful engine. This combination of technologies gives you high-performance software that doesn't slow down users' PCs, is low on system resources, and makes it easy for you to protect your network. Attend this webcast to learn about the following VIPRE Enterprise features: High-performance threat protection with low impact on system resources All-new technology delivers a unique single antivirus plus antispyware engine Rock solid Management Console is your "Malware Command Center" Real-time monitoring with Active Protection(tm) and advanced anti-rootkit technology Integrated, full email protection with support for Outlook and Windows Mail. When: Tuesday, January 27, 2009 2:00 PM (EST) Please register here: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-End-of-Antivirus Admin Toolbox Admin Tools We Think You Shouldn't Be Without: Dude, where's your Surf control? Catch the next wave in Web Filtering with iPrism. Sign up for a Web Demo today and get a free WIPEOUT T-shirt. Plus, you could win a custom Surfboard! http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Demo Get the world's first-ever virtual aware defragger - ESX Server, Hyper-V, more. Free PerfectDisk 10, the world's #1 defragmenter. MS-certified: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-PerfectDisk Make it easy to track user access to your Windows file servers. ScriptLogic's File System Auditor: Free Trial! http://www.wservernews.com/090112-File-System-Auditor Sick and Tired of End-users locked out of accounts? Helpdesk driven mad by password reset requests? myPassword is a great self-service AD Reset tool: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-myPassword Virtualization saves time and money. But how do you get fault tolerance for those VMs? Use Double-Take for P2V and V2V migration and replication: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Double-Take Tech Briefing Violating The First Principle Of Security: Easily Cracked Passwords. (Via Threat Level). An 18-year-old hacker with a history of celebrity pranks has admitted to Monday's hijacking of multiple high-profile Twitter accounts, including President-Elect Barack Obama's, and the official feed for Fox News. The hacker, who goes by the handle GMZ, told Threat Level on Tuesday he gained entry to Twitter's administrative control panel by pointing an automated password-guesser at a popular user's account. The user turned out to be a member of Twitter's support staff, who'd chosen the weak password "happiness." Cracking the site was easy, because Twitter allowed an unlimited number of rapid-fire log-in attempts. "I feel it's another case of administrators not putting forth effort toward one of the most obvious and overused security flaws," he wrote in an IM interview. "I'm sure they find it difficult to admit it." The hacker identified himself only as an 18-year-old student on the East Coast. He agreed to an interview with Threat Level on Tuesday after other hackers implicated him in the attack. Much more: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Twitter-Hacker PodCast: New Attack Patterns Emerge In 2009 Botnets were just the beginning. The bad guys will continue to use these to try and steal your data, but more sophisticated attacks over the application layer and targeted network attacks are on the way. Danny McPherson from Arbor Networks discusses the new ways that hackers will be trying to get into (and steal information) from your network in 2009. (10:30): http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Attack-Patterns Data Breaches Rose Sharply In 2008, Study Says More than 35 million data records were breached in 2008 in the U.S., a figure that underscores continuing difficulties in securing information, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Data-Breaches Redmond To Push IE8 Via Automatic Updates, Issues Blocking Tool Microsoft this week posted a IE8 blocker to stop IE8 from downloading and installing automatically when it is released later this year. http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Toolkit And here is the link to the FAQ about IE8: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Blocker-Toolkit What Are The Pros And Cons Of A Hosted Exchange Server Deployment? In 2008, Microsoft announced that it would offer both traditional Exchange Server licenses and cloud computing-based Exchange Server subscriptions. With more options, this raises the question of which licensing model makes more sense for your enterprise. In this tip, Exchange Server expert Brien Posey weighs the pros and cons of traditional Exchange Server deployments versus cloud computing models. (Registration Required) http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Hosted-Exchange-Server Free Tools And XP Piqued Admin Interest In 2008 Though 2009 has just begun, it's never too soon to wonder what promising technology may catch the eye of Windows administrators in the coming months. Will the sour economy put a chill on corporate spending and put off interest in virtual desktops? Will enterprises buy services? Will cloud computing take off in 2009? Only time will tell, but in the meantime, check out the top stories of 2008 from SearchWinIT.com. http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Free-Tools Defragmenting Balances Performance And Security Ever wonder where you're going to get that last bit of budget money to fund that much-needed security project? Are you struggling to get users to buy into security and to realize they're also part of the risk management equation? In this tip, SearchEnterpriseDesktop.com contributor, Kevin Beaver discusses one solution to eke the last few dollars and last bit of respect for security's place in the enterprise: defragmenting your hard drives. http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Defrag The State Of Spam: What To Expect In 2009 Spam, oh spam -- can we ever get rid of you? 2008 saw a promising blow to the endless sea of junk mail, but the relief didn't last for long. Now, spam experts say new forms of annoyances are on the way for the new year. Good article at InfoWorld: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-State-of-Spam Windows Server News Hyper-V Servers And PerfMon: Not Your Usual Processor Counters Once you've deployed a virtual environment in Hyper-V, in addition to managing, you'll want to regularly keep track of performance of your virtual machines and the "health" of the new environment. Part of this is knowing how many VMs are consuming on the virtual host. In an all-physical environment, this means looking at a few counters within PerfMon. In this tip, learn how to use PerfMon's counters in Hyper-V in order to effectively monitor the performance of your VMs. (Registration Required) http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Processor-Counters Guide: Advanced New Features In SQL Server Management Studio In part two of this series from SearchSQLServer.com, learn what's new and improved in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 2008, including a T-SQL Debugger and an enhanced Object Explorer Details window, as well as how you can use these new features for everyday tasks.(Registration Required) http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Guide WServer Thrid Party News New Versions Of VIPRE and CounterSpy Enterprise Sunbelt is pleased to announce that CSE and VIPRE Enterprise 3.1.2986 are now available. Server version 3.1.2986 ships with agent version 3.1.2434. To upgrade, simply download and run the latest installer: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-VIPREEnterprise . Here is a list of the features and fixes that were added: Server version 3.1.2986: Added support for true Windows Authentication to the Console. No longer need to type in a separate user name and password. Added Agent Version to Manual Deployment wizard screen. Fixed bug in SQL db creation script that resulted in data not being listed in reports for buffers, archives and root kits in certain use cases. After selecting Scan Archive, if the user performed another action, the Scan Archive setting would be lost. Agent version 3.1.2434: Removed the ability of the user to turn balloons on and off in the agent. Fix in XML serializer to prevent service crashes. Fix for the failed uninstall on a 64 bit machine. Fixed the bug where working with attachments generated the "need to save" dialog. Fixed the bug where the policy setting to not allow the user to control Email AV and to Turn on Email AV was not getting set properly. Fixed several memory and handle leaks in the agent service. On our VIPRE Enterprise forum, a user asked: "I just started a new job and the biggest task is virus and spyware problems. I need to get something in place that is easy to manage and keeps our computers clean. I would like to get some real world opinions on VIPRE as it relates to central management, being used on permanent road warrior computers and effectiveness in keeping spyware off computers." You can read the responses here. They are incredible and well worth reading: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Responses WServerNews Fave Links This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff Don't shout in the datacenter! Brendan Gregg from Sun Microsystems' Fishworks team makes an interesting discovery about disk latency - must see !! http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Datacenter All the hot gadgets from CES in Vegas. CNET UK put together a good list. I like this one best, the Asus SplashTop: Zero to Internet in 10 seconds, about one third down on this page: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Gadgets-of-2008 CES 2009: TriSpecs all-in-one sunglasses, headphones, Bluetooth headset http://www.wservernews.com/090112-TriSpecs First Images of the Palm Pre Smart Phone from 2009 CES at eWEEK: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Slideshow Michelin is re-inventing the wheel: The Tweel. The future of tires - airless! Looks weird but it's a good idea: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Flat-Proof Apple introduces the MacBook Wheel, a laptop without a keyboard. Onion Network News never ceases to amuse us... http://www.wservernews.com/090112-MacBook-Wheel This super smart dog was caught on tape shoplifting: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Shoplifting-Dog Dave Bradley of IBM admits that he created the Ctrl-Alt-Del keyboard sequence, but gives credit to Bill Gates of Microsoft for making it famous ;-) http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Ctrl-Alt-Del JVCs "world's largest" TV: 110-inches (and 728-pounds) $53K of HDTV: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Worlds-Largest-TV Blurred Out: 51 Things You Aren't Allowed to See on Google Maps: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Blurred-Out LG debuts wristwatch phone at CES - 3G, 7.2Mbit/sec with voice recognition, text messaging and text to speech capabilities. I wonder how they can get all that in such a small package: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Wristwatch-Phone Say Cheese: 12 Photos That Should Never Have Been Posted Online http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Photos Extraordinary French invention from the 1960s - a rocket-powered train that reached speeds of 235mph / 380kmh: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Aerotrain Guinness Book World Record holder throws playing cards 72 yards at 92 mph, slicing fruits and vegetables: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Card-Throwing Bruce Dickinson, lead singer of the British heavy metal band Iron Maiden, and also a pilot, tries to stall an Airbus A320: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Airbus Amazing 10 year old Zara Larsson sings "My Heart Will Go On" in the Swedish final of "Talent 2008". http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Zara Ten brilliantly choreographed cars in the South African dessert. Real footage, not CGI, and lots of crashes: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-Car-Ballet Used to watch 'The Prisoner' in the sixties? Here are all the episodes of that show from the 60s. Something to bookmark for later: http://www.wservernews.com/090112-AMC WServerNews - Product of the Week Dude, where's my Surf control? Catch the next wave in Web filtering with iPrism. Sign up for a web demo today and get a free WIPEOUT t-shirt. You'll also be entered to win a custom St. Bernard surfboard. iPrism, the World's #1 Web Filtering Appliance. http://www.wservernews.com/090112-POTW

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