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.

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.