Windows 7 is coming out. Linux has a fwe new offerings including Ubuntu 9.04, Red Hat, and Suse. Mac has Snow Leopard due out soon. Many choices, yet some work well in the enterprise, and some don’t. Why not, and how can some of these become better for the enterprise? Lets take a look.

Mac’s are probably the worst offender for not playing nice in the enterprise, especially for a SBS office. Mac’s would be a perfect fit for SBS if the software that most SBS offices use was made for Mac. Costs of Mac’s is also prohibitive for an SBS environment, not to mention the more difficult time of setup and connectivity for Mac’s to an SBS server. Mac’s just work, but that is really only true in a consumer environment. while Mac’s are great for video and audio work, Linux and Windows have gotten better at being able to handle this stuff, and could eventually chip away at Mac’s stronghold here.

Linux in the enterprise is a great hing, but it tends to be back end mostly. Yes the desktop is becoming more and more user friendly, but unfortunately one of the biggest barriers in the Linux Community. They tend to look down at non-technical people, and when someone is starting to learn, there is a lot of snark that gets received that can turn people off to Linux. Compatibility with Windows programs has gotten much better, and there is a lot of software available for Linux. Major Software vendors still are not producing their software en mass for it, but with adoption of Linux as a desktop environment, it would happen much easier than with Mac’s due to the open source nature of Linux. The other problem with Linux is the multiple versions out there and the fact that there is tweaking at times needed for each version.

Windows is the de facto champion in the enterprise. The whole small business offering, the fact that they make both front and back end with single management tools, and that most people are familiar with the OS will keep Windows in this position for a while still. Unless a killer app comes out for Linux or Mac, Windows only has to worry about the long term and not the short term. Can the others chip away at Windows domination of the enterprise? Yes, but to overtake Windows is decades still to come without a killer, must have app that is only available on Mac or Linux.

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.

Windows vista I have looked at, and for the most part, considering it the spawn of Windows ME. Vista has its good points, and Microsoft tried with it, but with a moving target, stripped down capabilities compared to what it was supposed to have, and massive delays on getting it to market, Microsoft really messed up.

It wasn’t just that older software would not run on it, but software and hardware companies didn’t buy into it. It took forever for applications to be written for it, let alone all the issues with hardware drivers Vista has had.

Well, it seems that Microsoft can learn from its mistakes. Windows 7 has been in beta for a little while now, and most people call it a big improvement from Vista. The first Release Candidate becomes public on May 5, and yes I’m going to get it. What I am looking forward to seeing how it works is the newest feature announced for Windows 7. XPM the feature is called, and if it works the way it is supposed to , well, there will be very little reason not to move to Windows 7.

The idea behind XPM is basically Windows XP sp3 running in a virtual machine, which allows legacy apps to be run normally. The kicker to XPM is the idea that it runs seamlessly in the background. Apps that require XP still get shortcuts installed to your normal Start menu and when you launch the app, it seamlessly launches in its own window, even though it is on a virtual machine, you don’t see the virtual machine running. You don’t have to start a virtual machine session first. Supposedly, it just works.

We shall find out how well it just works rather soon. This is the one thing that if it works right, could save Microsoft’s reputation.

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?

Mac Vs. Windows. The age long battle, has been fought in advertising, on store shelves, and amongst computer users for a long time now. The arguments we can all say from memorys. Windows has more software, more hardware offerings, are less expensive, are more prevalant. Mac’s are more stable, produce better graphics, are more secure. Not anymore. Mac users have officially lost the right to say more secure. They no longer can claim that they can’t be hacked, and they definitely need to start looking into anti-virus solutions.

There are tons of articles floating around the net right now about the iBotnet, the unfortuante result of installing pirated copies of  iWork09. Yes I know, not everyone installs pirated software. Not everyone even knows how to get pirated software. That is not the point.

The point being that Mac’s have been so “secure” because noone felt they were worth writing malware for. With the growing popularity and large visibility Apple has been getting lately, its no surprise that something like this has happened. Yes this one might only affect a very small ammount of people, but now that proof of concept has been delivered, and now that one piece of malware has been made and put into the wild, the real question is how long until the copy cats start?

Look at the world of Windows malware, and you will find so much of it is variants. People download the original code, and modify it, making it meaner, nastier, more eveasive, easier to distribute. Do you really think that won’t happen with Mac malware? Are you that naive?

I’m a PC user. I have my Windows machines, and my Linux boxes. I’d love to have a Mac so I can learn it inside out. I don’t see any problem with Mac except that it is too expensive for my tastes. Well, now that you really should get AV for it, and like any other real software for Mac it costs because access to the APIs are all controlled by Apple and they charge a lot for that sort of access, it will cost more, plus that OSX is built on a *nix (Unix/Linux) system, well I guess I’ll wait longer.

Welcome to the real world my Mac friends.

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.

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.

Just when you thought you could put Cornficker on the list of false alarms, like a bad penny it turns up. That is right, get ready for another media blitz about it.

As of right now, Cornficker is just communicating and transferring payloads between each other. Its also trying to contact sites such as AOL, MSN and the like. The reason on this is to double check time and date. It seems there is a May 3 kill date to stop communications this time, so to prevent you from being able to trick it, it checks on the net for date and time.

Other things now known about this nasty is that the new update is tied into the Waledac family of malware. This family is known for turning machines into bots and has a huge botnet that shoots spam all over the place. What other nasty stuff does Cornficker have in store for us, well we just shall have to wait and see.

As of now most Antivirus software should be able to remove the virus. My recommendation is to start of with the latest version of Malwarebytes to clean it off, since it is easy to download and install the latest version, plus it works real well.  Once you’ve cleaned your machine, make sure to patch Windows.

So, while mainstream support is ending for Windows XP, it seems that Microsoft is going to continue to allow downgrades by manufacturers until sometime next year. Yeah, this is both good and bad, especially considering that warranty support ends on Tuesday, April 14. Are the PC makers going to do warranty support for XP still is the big question. I would love to say yes, but who knows.

Also on the XP front, You will be able to downgrade from the upcoming Windows 7 to XP.  This does by companies some time to upgrade, but how long?

Tuesday, April 14 also marks the end of mainstream support for Office 2003. Same rules apply as with XP.

Now on July 14 of this year Office 2000 is dead to Microsoft. No more security updates, no support, nothing. Same thing happens to Windows 200 on July 13, 2010. Time to start planning accordingly, especially for Office 2000. Make sure you try to get your clients off of it before then for a smooth transition.

We all know that Windows 7 is on the horizon. We all know that Vista is a huge hunk of junk. We all love our Windows XP, which is why we are willing to pay a little more for the “downgrade” to XP that a number of manufacturers will ship, even though the machines officially count as having been sold with Vista (Microsoft loves to punch up its Vista numbers this way). Now, Windows XP is about to pass to the next stage, drawing us closer to the end of one of our favorite OS’s life.

Mainstream support for Windows XP ends on April 14, which just happens to be the next Patch Tuesday. What does this mean for everyone? Well in simple terms it means a few things:

1) No more Service Packs or feature upgrades! This of course is something that can be expected. XP can only do so much and handle so much, seeing as it is way beyond what Microsoft intended its lifespan to be.

2) No more free incident support. Yep, any support from Microsoft for XP is now fully chargeable. Make sure you know your way around google, Microsoft’s knowledge base, or know someone who is a tech that can help you.

3) No more Warranty Claims. Yep, XP is out of warranty, even if loaded on a brand new machine by the manufacturer. How does this affect the fact that Microsoft still pushes XP for Netbooks? Time will only tell if they are smart and make an exception, otherwise, make sure you get a netbook with Linux on it.

Now not everything is doom and gloom. There are still some thing that the Extended Support Phase, which is what XP is going into, does give.

1) The Microsoft knowledge base, and support site still will have all the XP information it can hold. So you still can look through all the things.

2) Security updates will still be pushed out. It is important to remember that Security Updates are different from Feature Updates. While no no features of feature bugs will be fixed, at least any Security Holes that could allow viruses, such as Cornficker to grab a hold of your machine, will still be created and pushed out, and this will continue until 20014.

So XP is not dead yet, but instead is more on life support for the next 5 years. Personally, I would have likes Microsoft to have pushed XP 64 bit more and longer instead of forcing Vista out there. The other thing is with end of mainstream support, Microsoft now can reallocate resources to other projects. Here is just hoping that Windows 7, which is in beta and has been getting decent reviews, doesn’t get screwed up and suck when released.