Blogs

Every so often someone asks me how to get device "xxx" working. Obviously the 1st stage to this is to finding the right device driver. Sometimes this can be hard to track down - one thing to look for is the hardare ID from device manager. The ID is made up of the bus type, vendor, major and minor ids. You can do a search for the vendor ID on the internet and once you have that, try their site for a device driver. This is sometimes a long winded process, but normally yields results. One alternative that I spotted today to this was the Microsoft Technet site for drivers . This site has both Microsoft controlled and non-affiliated sites that can help with the device driver searching. When Vista comes along, searching for device drivers will be an even bigger goal of the Update function that ships in the box. ttfn David

I was having a look at the site on OMPL shaing (mine is up there) and I noticed that my blog had been shared by a few people, so I looked around and came across this from Javier an MVP. This post from Javier is entitled "Create easier-to-remember URLs for OWA, RWW and even Sharepoint" and it made me realise how great an this idea is. Just to add to this, I have a 3rd tool to add, which is ISAPI Rewrite, which I use for this site. From Javier's site: If you are running SBS you must know by now that you need to type http://something.yourdomain.com/exchange or /remote to access OWA or RWW from the internet. One issue that I often encounter is that users forget those URLs are (specially if the are technologically-impaired J ). So, what about giving your users simpler URLs? Like http://webmail.yourdomain.com for OWA and/or http://remote.yourdomain.com for RWW It is all so simple, go read his blog entry for more. As I said, he gives two ways to do this, my 3rd is to use ISAPI_rewrite to have lots more control. For this...

I went to the press launch for the UK Design IT competition at the Kinetica Museum of Art and Technology in London and saw some amazing things. However, the purpose of the evening was to share the successes of last years competition and ensure people were aware of this years. If you want to see one of the most curious mechanical pieces of art, have a look at this movie (filmed with a strobe light on) - http://uksbsguy.com/images/kinetica.mov Details are on the site at http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6084193 DesignIT Competition: An Innovative Way to Make a Difference If you dedicate time to a charity, this competition is a great opportunity for you to help even more. We are asking you to send us a system design that will improve the IT infrastructure of a charity of your choice. If you don't have a particular charity in mind, don't worry, as we have asked the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), Leonard Cheshire and Global Action Plan to supply us with details of problems that require...

Hello, I wanted to move my blog to an easier URL, and I have done so - the new URLs are: RSS - http://uksbsguy.com/blogs/doverton/rss.aspx WEB - http://uksbsguy.com/blogs/doverton/default.aspx Atom - http://uksbsguy.com/blogs/doverton/atom.aspx However when looking at the logs for the site, lots of people were trying to access via the old entries, so I have put in place a simple re-direction piece of software that re-writes the URL from the old to the new without yopu having to know. Once the new URLs take over in popularity I will remove this software. Obviously I would like you to change your Favourites and Reader software as soon as possible. For those who are interested, the re-direction software can be found at http://www.isapirewrite.com/ and the 1 line I had to put into their httpd.ini file was: RewriteRule (.*)david_overton_blog_more_technical(.*) $1doverton$2 Not exactly difficult to manage and that changes the longer name to the shorter one whereever it is found. ttfn David

I saw Susanne's post on Vista ready hardware over at http://www.uksmbgirl.co.uk/blog/archives/106 and decided it was worth chipping in a few thoughts of my own. Many PCs will run Vista and while this has been discussed until people were blue in the face, much mis-information has also been published about it, so I thought I would give you the "David's unofficial guide to Hardware" To start with Microsoft has published both minimums and recommended minimums for hardware, with the later being a 1GHz or above machine with 1GB of memory. As has always been the case, power users may well require more. I am writing this on a 2GHz laptop with 1GB of memory and I consider myself a power user (my index engine reports 91,941 documents indexed - so I consider myself a power user :-) ) Does my laptop sometimes run slow - yes, but it is due to that PowerUser status and not enough RAM. My XP machine was a 3GHz Centrino with 2GB of RAM and I will upgrade the RAM on this at some time. One other way I speed the machine up - turn...

At the PTS-TV site, we now have 5 sessions for your downloading and feedback pleasure. Go there ( http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/blog/pts-tv/ ) watch or download and then pump back questions. ttfn David

This is just a quick note to say welcome to Ian Watkins who is the London Partner Group lead and also a recent SBSC member. Ian is now also blogging on the web site. His blog can be found at http://uksbsguy.com/blogs/ianwatkins/default.aspx or the RSS feed at http://uksbsguy.com/blogs/ianwatkins/rss.aspx . Ian joins Susanne with her blog at http://uksbsguy.com/blogs/susanne_dansey/default.aspx or the RSS feed at http://uksbsguy.com/blogs/susanne_dansey/rss.aspx . Look out for more soon. ttfn David

Let customers have their say Do any of your customers hold strong opinions on Microsoft? We'd like to know how small businesses think we could communicate more effectively with them. Over the coming year we will be reviewing all our communication channels, ranging from bCentral, our small business portal, to our literature and advertising. Participants will be able to choose the level of involvement they prefer, whether it's just an email to us, or taking part in a full usability study of our web site. To register an interest in this programme please email Dan Stone or telephone 0118 9093911. ttfn David

Yes! The Soccer World Cup started yesterday! The Windows Client team contributes to this awesome event with the super cool Football Scoreboard. T his gadget enables you to track the teams and results in real-time. Don’t miss out on any important goal! The useful applet is part of the Value of Genuine initiative driving up compliance. It only runs if the user has a genuine Windows installed. Spread the word, let friends and family know about this great tool! Have a great World Cup experience with Windows Genuine Advantage! The applets can be found on: German download French download English download

New security features in Internet Explorer 7 (Beta 2) http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=4979991 Learn about the new security features in the browser's latest version that help better protect your PC and personal information Microsoft Threat Analysis and Modelling Tool, Version 2.0, RC1 http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=5049706 The free Microsoft Threat Analysis and Modelling tool allows nonsecurity subject matter experts to enter already-known information, including business requirements and application architecture, to produce a feature-rich threat model. Along with automatically identifying threats, the tool can produce valuable security artefacts such as data control, component access control, and subject-object matrices as well as data flows and focused reports. Reduce Your Risk: 10 Security Rules to Live By http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=5049703 When you manage security you must strive to reduce unacceptable risk while keeping the impact on workflow of the organization and total cost of ownership of the infrastructure...

Hello there, while looking at what Microsoft is doing in the UK as a responsible member of the community I noticed the following entry with Susanne in the picture. It turns out that Susanne has helped us with the information. Her story can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/uk/citizenship/stories/susanne.mspx , and it mentions her site http://www.sbsbpi.co.uk and of course her blog can be found at http://uksbsguy.com/blogs/susanne_dansey/default.aspx on this site. Finally, if you want to know more about Microsoft and the UK community, go have a look at http://www.microsoft.com/uk/citizenship/default.mspx ttfn David

I obviously work closely with small business partners and a thread at the SBSBPI.co.uk website got me thinking. The question that was asked is why is Windows XP, which has always been a great product, suddenly a "bad" product, so much so that people need to buy a new operating system, Windows Vista . To answer this, lets look at a few things - is Windows XP bad - nope, it is an excellent operating system, but it has a design that was delivered 5 years ago, with a major security overhaul with XP SP2. SP2 was a good security fix, but it still left the onus on the user to understand the risks they were taking. From a user interface point of view, people have got used the XP interface - well, except for you die hard folks who only use the classic interface, get with the program - use a mouse and the non-classic control panel - you know you can do it!! Windows XP is then supplemented by Defender, 3rd party anti-virus products, anti-spam, filters, toolbars, search and other powertoys to lift it to a "desirable"...

I have been asked by a few people how to share feedback with the Office team around problems they are having with the latest Office Beta. The answer is to post an entry onto the community site http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx and then follow up on there to resolve it, or have it rolled up for Microsoft to look at. That is it, simple ;-) ttfn David