Silicon Shecky

So I’ve been working on a project at the office which is more annoying than anything I’ve ever done. I am going through licensing and see what we have, where we need to update, and what is what. The problem is twofold. First, the prior people never kept good documentation, so finding the actually pieces of paper with the licenses on them, or going to eOpen to check on what we have is nigh impossible. Heck, no one even knows what the eOpen username and password are for our licenses. This is a pain mostly because you need to create a Windows Live ID to use eOpen, and every time I try to do it with an actual e-mail address for the company itself, it fails, thereby forcing me to have to create a Hotmail account.

Second, there is no good piece of software to give you an accurate count of licenses installed. I know there is the license logging service on the servers, but it is not always accurate, I have to check it on each server individually, and to top it all off, it won’t show Exchange 2007 licenses, which I did find paperwork for.

Now if companies like Microsoft want people to stay in compliance with licensing, why don’t they make it easier to do an internal audit, so we can find where we are deficient, and then go through the process of ordering what is needed? Am I crazy to be asking for something like that, or is it just a matter of them wanting us to be out of compliance without knowing, so that we can get in trouble? I think that would be called entrapment in the legal field, but I could be wrong.

Monday morning, another work week starting, and a bunch of thoughts and questions about Microsoft for you all.

First off, how does Microsoft determine when it is going to release new software? SBS 2008, which has Exchange 2007 built in it, just came out in November, and now Exchange 2010 is in beta. How fast do they expect people to change? Figuring that it take a while for companies to even consider switching to the newest software, and then the testing and learning curve for it, maybe there is a method to the fast turn around on the next gen software.

Second, and even more annoying to me, is the links inside of the Microsoft Event Logs.   You click on the link, it asks you if you want to send the information, and then 80-90 percent of the time you get a message back saying there is no information from Microsoft on this Event ID. Why the heck do they even offer us a link when most of the time it does nothing but make us bang our heads? Yes there are great ways of finding out about the Event IDs through Google, but the links inside of the event logs are supposed to make our search much easier, and more official.

So, am I way off base on these thoughts? Am I just another looney IT guy who wants more from his vendors than they give, or do you feel the same way?

Another Patch Tuesday happened this week, and this time 6 of the patches are for security holes which have exploits out in the wild, including the Office holes that I complained about last month. There are a total of 8 patches out this month and while that is good, you might want to check on the other updates this month due to end of mainstream support for XP, Office 2003, and Exchange 2003. All three will continue to get security updates for a few years, but all of them will no longer get new features, or non-critical updates.

Also, released today was the Beta for Exchange 2010. I know, most of you are just starting to use Exchange 2007, but if you have a test environment for this new version of Exchange, I would suggest using it and report on bugs to Microsoft so we can get a less buggy release of it.

Finally, SP2 for Office 2007 is on the horizon, and it will give Office native ODF file support. This means that if something is saved in Open Office’s normal formats, Office 2007 should be able to just open it.

Sorry that this blog has been a bit spotty this week. Work has been really busy, and I’ve been learning about some new initiatives and offerings that we are doing at the office. Let see if I can get some time to do some more posts, even if its just the evenings.