Silicon Shecky

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.