Search results for 'app:weblogs' matching tag 'Rants'

Dear Marketing people

bradley — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Or... to be precise...Dear Microsoft marketing people.

There is a product called Security Essentials. There is a product called Windows Server 2012 Essentials ..and now you come out with.... drum roll please...

Windows Essentials 2012 Preview:
http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows8/windows-essentials-2012-preview-143943?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Windows Essentials 2012 (the old Live stuff).

Do you go out of your way to make this stuff confusing for SEOism and other stuff or do you just naturally do this?

Search on Windows Essentials 2012 - http://www.bing.com/search?q=Windows+Essentials+2012&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox and you get both products.

Saying goodbye to SBS: It's not 1997 anymore

bradley — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 05:00:00 GMT

http://community.spiceworks.com/pages/microsoft?tab=5893

I saw this article today and it kinda made me sad. It reminded me that back in 1999 a Microsoft Gold Partner said to me "We find SBS too limiting, you'll outgrow it". That was 1999. I'm still running SBS in my business today. The Microsoft Gold Partner who said that to me is now out of business.

No trusts. Never had a need for them. FSMO roles on the DC. In the era of image based backups, I found the single DC/restore it back to be the best DR plan. 75 user max. Never outgrew that.

SBS for my firm was not then, nor is it now synonymous with limits. What I am finding however is that I'm not wanting to trade cost effective solutions with locked into cash outflow solutions. I'm trying to strike a balance to ensure that I find a solution where the consultants and resources are there, are understandable, and are talking to each other. I'm not comfortable yet with remote PowerShell, nor do I feel are the vast majority of consultant that I can afford and are willing to work on SMB solutions (no disrespect intended to anyone in the SMB consultant space, but I think I can be forgiven, and you guys can admit that the knowledge of PowerShell to manage Office 365 is still in it's infancy in this space). There are still adjustments to be made to email limits, disclaimers to be placed on email and just the odd "can you see if X person actually sent me an email" searches that while can be done in hosted platforms, are either not as well exposed or sometimes needs the odd PowerShell to dig out.

There's a reason those SBS 2003 boxes are being ridden into the grave. Economy has been horrific and Microsoft hasn't given them a compelling reason to upgrade from the solution stack they got back in 2003.

Now there is Essentials, which has some interesting traits indeed, but make no mistake, there's still wizards under the hood that if not followed means you'll have to go back and fix things up (hint - adding a user manually to the ADUC won't populate the users into the Essentials console, you'll need to use PowerShell, so don't just go adding users via ADUC for just one example).

I do not want another SBS 2011 standard. Let me say that again - we can no longer put all of the parts on the same operating system. But I would like everyone saying that they are glad SBS is dead to step back and realize that if you thought it was limiting, you didn't take the time to understand it. If you complained about how hard it was to monitor/patch/maintain and it wasn't built for small businesses to just work, and psconfig on SharePoint should have just automatically psconfig'd - as a consultant that was your job to learn how to maintain this box.

If IT truly just worked, you'd be out of a job.

And now I challenge you to grab a blog or a forum or a web site and start learning. You no longer have a finished house to sell. You have to build one. There is no longer the one sized fits all of SBS 2003 era. SBS was "dead" actually back in SBS 2008 in some respects when it no longer was a low powered server/with a firewall/all in one.

As the IT decision maker for my firm, I am now trying to ensure that I provide the right balance of a good supported solution combined with a reasonable price tag and trying to minimize the annual cash outflow that is increasing for all of these cloud services. I'm actually looking at a price increase, not a price decrease and more annual cash outflow, not less. So please forgive me when I get a bit hot and bothered under the collar when people say that things are cheaper now and my options are more flexible and affordable.

P.S. for the record SBS 2003 doesn't randomly shut down. It's 21 days after the SBS's fsmo roles get moved. And with "no clear inplace upgrade path" ever available makes it sound like the folks asking for an inplace upgrade path from a 32 bit Windows operating system to a 64 bit Windows operating system. Knock yourself trying to do that one on any Windows server.

HELLO OFFICE PEOPLE, I'M SHOUTING AT YOU

bradley — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 05:00:00 GMT

I'm turning into the crabby office lady, I tell ya.

WHO'S BRILLIANT IDEA WAS IT TO PUT THE TABS IN OFFICE VNEXT IN ALL CAPS? YOU GUYS DO REALIZE THAT'S CONSIDERED SHOUTING...RIGHT? THAT IN ONLINE COMMUNICATION IT'S ACTUALLY CONSIDERED RUDE? YOU MAY SAY THAT IT'S METRO FONT, BUT GIVEN THAT SOME PARTS OF THE INTERFACE ARE ALL CAPS whereas others have the more normal formatting, all that it ends up being is jarring.

Not to mention, in your forums where Metro font is used you don't use all caps... so I don't get with the all caps stuff? ( http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/officeitpropreview)

in other locations, metro can mean the use of all lowercase and no capitalization at all, so I don't quite understand the inconsistency going on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_caps

With the advent of the Bulletin board system, or BBS, and later the Internet, typing messages in all caps became closely identified with "shouting" or attention-seeking behavior, and is considered very rude. As a result, netiquette generally discourages the use of all caps when posting messages online. While all caps can be used as an alternative to rich-text "bolding" for a single word or phrase, to express emphasis, repeated use of all caps can be considered "shouting" or irritating

Of course I should talk, my blog title is in all caps as I did that eons ago and never changed it. So maybe Microsoft is just trying to be Diva like?

Sometimes new technology .. is just new

Anonymous — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 05:00:00 GMT

So we had Comcast Digital voice for 34 days and about 3 hours. That was the point in time when we made the decision to roll back to AT&T. Three times we had folks talking on the telelphone and the service just went completely out taking out the phone conversation and leaving us without even dial tone. The only time we had a loss of phone service on AT&T was when we had power outtages.

So we're rolling back to plain old telephone because picking up a handset and getting a dial tone and calling a number should just work. And when we've moved to a supposedly new and better service and it turns out that it's just new and not better, back we go to what just worked.

We'll keep the cable Internet because I have a DSL connection to fall back to... but phone just lost a customer.

Sometimes new technology .. is just new

bradley — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 05:00:00 GMT

We'll keep the cable Internet because I have a DSL connection to fall back to... but phone just lost a customer.

Some feedback on the Metro-ing of Knowledge base articles

Anonymous — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Gardening activities tonight - planted May Night Salvia and refreshed the Cocoa Mulch in the back rose garden.

Geek activities tonight... blogging to raise awareness over Microsoft change in KBs that slows me down and loses needed information and to hopefully get someone to understand and tweak changes they recently made to the Microsoft Knowledge base articles.

So tonight they "metro'd" the KB articles. Fine, go Metro happy. But how about not losing a key piece of info in the process of Metroing it?

Go to the sample of http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;2686509

At the top where it used to have the article ID in small letters it also would say the revision number and the date. Don't see it do you? To find it click on that "View other products" which jumps you down to the bottom of the KB article and then scroll back up a little bit.

But Susan, it's only one click and a scroll, I mean it's only a few more clicks and a few more seconds out of your life. Really what are you crabbing about?

I watch RSS feeds of KB articles and when I see one of interest I look at it. And the very second thing I look at after I read the title of the KB is the revision number and the date to determine if the KB was a brand new one or not.

See that? The key info that I look at is now buried at the bottom of the KB.

Microsoft when you get feedback when you change stuff ASK PEOPLE THAT USE THE STUFF BEFORE YOU CHANGE IT PLEASE.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qK7oI_dywroJ:support.microsoft.com/kb/2686509+ms12-034:+Description+of+the+security+update+for+CVE-2012-0181+in+Windows+XP+and+Windows+Server+2003:+May+8,+2012&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

That's a google cache of how they used to look.

See how the info used to be right up at the top at eye level?

So Microsoft, Metro all you want, but the principles of Metro design is that information is clear and easy to read. Finding the release date and revision date no longer is in the Metro manner of delivery.

Please fix it. Every second I don't have to click and scroll means I have that many more seconds to plant in my garden. Should get seeds for Mexican Sunflowers next week.

Some feedback on the Metro-ing of Knowledge base articles

bradley — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Gardening activities tonight - planted May Night Salvia and refreshed the Cocoa Mulch in the back rose garden.

So tonight they "metro'd" the KB articles. Fine, go Metro happy. But how about not losing a key piece of info in the process of Metroing it?

Go to the sample of http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;2686509

But Susan, it's only one click and a scroll, I mean it's only a few more clicks and a few more seconds out of your life. Really what are you crabbing about?

See that? The key info that I look at is now buried at the bottom of the KB.

Microsoft when you get feedback when you change stuff ASK PEOPLE THAT USE THE STUFF BEFORE YOU CHANGE IT PLEASE.

That's a google cache of how they used to look.

See how the info used to be right up at the top at eye level?

Please fix it. Every second I don't have to click and scroll means I have that many more seconds to plant in my garden. Should get seeds for Mexican Sunflowers next week.

I require assistance in setting up Active Directory Domain Services on a Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials edition

Anonymous — Thu, 24 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Dear.. person posting on oDesk with a project to "install Active Directory on SBS Essentials'

Active Directory Installation on SBS 2011 Essentials - Networking & Information Systems Jobs - oDesk:
https://www.odesk.com/jobs/~~cb9d901c17a7c6f1?source=rss

You have a domain already. It's already installed. If you paid even one penny to anyone to "install Active Directory" on SBS Essentials you paid one penny too much. Now there is a domain name wizard to park the external domain, but you already named your internal domain and that box already became a domain controller during the install process.

What confuses many is that under the group policies there are no default policies. So they think they have a box that can't support AD. Nothing could be further from the truth. It not only already is a domain controller, it HAS to be a domain controller.

So again Mr. oDesk person, if you paid one single penny to anyone who said they installed it, you paid too much.

I require assistance in setting up Active Directory Domain Services on a Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials edition

bradley — Wed, 23 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Dear.. person posting on oDesk with a project to "install Active Directory on SBS Essentials'

Active Directory Installation on SBS 2011 Essentials - Networking & Information Systems Jobs - oDesk:
https://www.odesk.com/jobs/~~cb9d901c17a7c6f1?source=rss

So again Mr. oDesk person, if you paid one single penny to anyone who said they installed it, you paid too much.

No prep items for the exam? Seriously?

bradley — Wed, 02 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

One of the exams that is required for the new Small Business competency is the 70-323 exam.

Administering Office 365:
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-323&Locale=en-us#tab3

Learning Plans and Classroom Training There is no classroom training currently available.

Microsoft E-Learning There is no Microsoft E-Learning training currently available.

Microsoft Press Books There are no Microsoft Press books currently available.

Currently there are no study materials for the exam. Seriously?

Inexcusible if so.