Microsoft

Hi, this is a little off topic, but for those of you who like to play with betas, Windows Live Messenger is available, along with other products at http://ideas.live.com - worth a look in for sure. Lots of new features, but the ones I like the most are: Cheap calls to land lines from my PC send an IM to someone offline and they get it when the log back in IM while appearing offline :-) ttfn David

I was asked this in the forums, but I felt it was important enough to write about it both here and in the forum. Patch Management should be a key part of what you do. Patching is like car servicing - it can sometimes be put off a little bit, but failure to keep the oil and water up todate and without a regular service, things go horribly wrong. You MUST tell your customers this so they can choose how to pay you for this service. (they can always just call you in when things go wrong, but it will take longer and cost them more). Obviously patching is just one tool in yout kitbag for keeping systems secure - local and perimeter firewalls and anti-spyware and anti-virus software is also needed, as is good password and administrator policy. The best person to talk about patching is the now famous Susan Bradly, who is a SBS MVP and known as a Diva. Before I point you off to some of her blogs on it, I thought I would answer some questions often asked in this area: 1) How do you decide whether to patch or hold off? You...

Every so often I get a mail telling me how MS Support was poor in one way or another. Recently I have been getting the other type of e-mail - how GOOD Microsoft support is. Yesterday, Paul sent me this e-mail: David i found your email address on the sbsbpi.co.uk website, i thought it appropriate to drop you a mail asking you to pass on praise to the relevant people for the technical support i received from Microsoft today. the problem was quite complicated and both support representatives who dealt with it seemed knowledgeable, thorough and also easy to get on with on, all the essential requirements for a telephone support engineer, lots of bad things are said about the support available from Microsoft but today i experienced something very different, please pass on my thanks to the SBS support team. How nice it is to get these, but also in the forums, someone posted this: http://uksbsguy.com/forums/thread/401.aspx I have used Microsoft support a bunch of times over my entire career and a few times since I have...

I have just seen an article in which the conversations from CTS (16 shows on Vista and Office 2007 in 2 days) have been misrepresented. Since I was the Vista presenter, I feel the need to set the record straight, 1 st off, the site where this is all being so heavily debated: http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2006/5/15/3974 http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=75041 http://lifestyle.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=5570 (article) To clarify Vista and Office 2007 are coming, as per the PR announcements at the same time – there is no new delay . At CTS we were speculating when in January the launch might happen. The only timeline shifts were those already mentioned in the MARCH press release - http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/mar06/03-21WindowsVistaDeliveryPR.mspx There were several interesting highlights from that article which were either not accurate or misunderstood. Whether that is the joy of journalism or my mistake we will never know. Vista will ship for Volume License customers...

So, learn more about Office 2007 - a great set of tools for small businesses - I will blog why once the beta is launched - soon!! ttfn David Microsoft Office System Developers Conference http://www.microsoft.com/uk/business/devcon/ Microsoft Office System Developers Conference is the best opportunity for you to learn more about all the new solution technologies and capabilities in the Microsoft Office System 2007 wave of programmes and servers. At this two-day conference, members of the Microsoft product development and management teams will drill into the latest Office System 2007 innovations to show how developer extensibility will allow you to build powerful custom solutions. You will learn the latest techniques for creating applications around business intelligence, enterprise content management, collaboration, and more! You will also have the opportunity to meet and network with developers and architects on the Microsoft product teams and other customers and partners from the UK and Ireland. Key benefits...

One of the benefits of SBSC membership is the regular livemeetings with Microsoft and the ability to ask us questions. On Monday we have one for SBS 2003 R2. For more info on these go to http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/sbsc - you need to have passed the exams to see the exclusive content. ttfn David

We got the message - we need to come to more places and have a more blended technical and business session. This will last 2hours plus some MS funded food and it is at no charge to you!! The slides are written as are 40+ mins of David Overton Stylie demos and interaction. This is a use it or lose it situation - go to the site - http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/training/ignite/default.aspx - and book on the closest place and come along. give us your feedback, tell us what changes you want and next time it will be event better. While the event is billed as a non-technical event, there will be plenty of technology in view, on show and available for questions. As a snippet, the demos should show all this - and in such a short period of time - woo-hoo!!! If this is not to taste, reply in the comments!!: Collaborative Business How can I share information with my colleagues and partners - WSS Sites - Hosted Sharepoint - Office shared working documents How can I ensure only the right people see the documents - WSS...

The PTS-TV videos have been updated and this time it is two takes (I can never do things in one take) about Windows Vista and how it delivers simple value to small businesses. The videos of the team, including mine can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/blog/pts-tv/ and the rss feed so you can keep up to date is found at http://blogs.msdn.com/ptstv/rss.aspx . Should you be super keen and desire only to watch the video, they are streamed from the following URLs (downloadable versions are available from the site above) http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/blog/pts-tv_daveoverton1.wvx http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/blog/pts-tv_daveoverton2.wvx Vista is currently available for partners who have Technet or MSDN today and will be available for everyone as a community technology preview later this month. For more Vista information go to http://www.windowsvista.com ttfn David

A Technet Plus subscription includes two free support calls to Microsoft - that makes the kit cheaper than the calls themselves - and then you get a bucket full of disks to try our software - including BETA software, which to date you have not seen in the action pack. OK, so Vista and Office betas will ship in the action pack, but if you want to see any others, or download them more frequently - get the Technet Plus pack. Info on the UK Technet Page can be found on http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/default.aspx . P.S. There are many ways to get a discount on the initial purchase too, so ask me to send you a piece of advertising and you can get 20% off (it sells for <£400) or talk to the people at www.sbsbpi.co.uk and they can help you get even more off. ttfn David

This is a great tool that you can easily get your customers to run themselves if things are looking a bit poor on their system. Simply go to http://safety.live.com and asn them to run a full scan, or a protection, clean-up or tune up scan. Note, it can take quite a time. ttfn David

Guys, this is hard to do, but we have had problems with the machine running the VPCs for the Ignite Tour this week (which means Scotland). The result is that we would not be able to show any demos. While this is very undesirable, we have taken the decision to postpone them until we can get the hardware sorted and the people back in Scotland. Any thoughts, please feel free to leave comments, otherwise we will see you soon. We should have the issues resolved for the other dates published so far ttfn David

I love Windows Vista. One thing that opele complain about is the security prompts that come up when you run an administrative task. There are two things to say here. Firstly, this peaks while you are setting up the machine - adding applications and drivers etc, so give it a week before you pass judgement on it. Second, this is being improved. We have a great team who take all the feedback on this and they are looking how to simplify this for the RC1 and final product. If you want to find out more, pop along to http://blogs.msdn.com/uac/archive/2006/06/01/613098.aspx to see what the UAC (User Account Control) team have to say. ttfn David