Silicon Shecky

I figure what a decent way to start off the week with some links to some tips, tricks, and news.

First off is the news that Microsoft’s Free E-book Offer is back. Starting this Wednesday, April 15 and going through April 22, you can download 2 books from Microsoft Press, completely free. The more interesting one to myself is the Windows 2008 Small Business Administrator’s Companion.

Keeping on the Windows 2008 track Microsoft’s Technet Blogs have decided that this months weekly tip series is on Windows Server 2008. Week 1 and Week 2 have been posted and I have to admit, this is some real good information. Some of it seems quite simple, but as I’ve said before, how many times have you stupidly overlooked like the simple? I know I do quite often.

Finally it seems that the economy has hit the SMB Summit this year. Susan Bradley has more information at her blog, or you can just go to the SMBTN Blog. I say go and check out Susan’s blog anyways as she always has interesting posts with some good information.

And that is it for this Monday morning. More to come during the week, as I get to delve into the idea of 1:1 computing for schools.

I tend to read a number of blogs, especially tech ones, and some I love to read. The SBS Diva is one of my favorites. This MVP has some great insights on the Microsoft Small Business platform, and usually is fun to read. Of course there are moments which make me go Hmmmm… when reading her posts.

She made a very elequent post about change as it relates to SBS 2008 compared to SBS 2003, and how we have to sometimes bite the bullet. Yes, a lot of the changes in SBS 2008 we asked for. The Vista interface, Needing to run everything in elevated mode, and some other items like that we did not ask for.

Yes change happens, but do we not still have a right to complain about what we don’t like? I would say we do, cause without those gripes, how would the next version become any better?

Also, if you read the post, make note of her thoughts on Microsoft’s backup system. Personally, I will not use it outside of maybe a test environment, mostly because I’ve found in the past that it never quite works as easy as it should. For me it is more along the lines of having been burned by Microsoft Backup one too many times.

Anywho, I do recommend checking her blog out, as she updates it frequently, and it has a lot of good information. Plus, if you can get into commenting on it, it can create some really good discussions.