An announcement has been made on the next release of SBS. Split into two versions there will be SBS 7 as a continuation of the excellent product we have now, and a new version currently codenamed Aurora.
The new version will be limited to 25 users, and is designed to fit in with cloud services such as hosted Exchange.
More info here: http://www.microsoft.com/sbs/en/us/beta.aspx
I haven’t written about Windows 7 for a while, so time I caught up.
We went live with Windows 7 as soon as we could. As Microsoft Partners we had access to it with the first release for Volume Licence customers. The release for OEM licences (the ones you get preinstalled on PCs when you buy them) is the 22nd (Thursday).
To put it simply, it is an excellent OS. No doubt there will be applications out there that are not compatible, but we haven’t found any yet. Everything we run has ran perfectly. It has coped with all our hardware, from the newest to oldest, with no driver issues.
Of the new features the one I’ve used most is the XP Compatibility mode. This allows you to run a fully licenced (on Windows 7 Enterprise) Windows XP virtual machine. You can then load any older applications directly onto this virtual machine, and then drag them to your desktop, so you can use older applications transparantly on your Windows 7 PC. As I’ve said, I don’t have any old applications that haven’t worked – but I have used it to run a seperate IE7 browser, useful when you are trying to log on to a website as two different people at once.
I’ve also started using Bitlocker to Go to encrypt USB Thumb drives. I’ve lost more of these than I own, and never put anything sensitive on them, but now I needn’t worry, the contents are encrypted and no one can get on them.
As someone who never understood why people didn’t upgrade in their droves to the superiour Vista from XP, I’m hoping that people will get the bug on Windows 7. It behaves itself, looks pretty, and most importantly works. Of course it is a bit different from XP, so if you are still on that you will have a bit of a learning curve – but it isn’t that steep.
We will have a stand at the Bishop’s Stortford Means Business Show (http://www.bsmb.co.uk/) on the 21st and the Stansted Business Show (http://www.b2bessex.com/) on the 6th November, so if you want a look at Windows 7 come along and have a peak.
We have just lauched a micro-site with details of our LiveBackup backup and business continuity system.
If you are still using tape or disk based backup then you need to look at this. The LiveBackup system acts as an onsite backup library, backup virtual server as well as a staging platform for internet based off site or USB disk syncd backups.
It is as bullet proof a backup system we’ve seen for SMBs.
Have a look at www.shadowfaxlivebackup.com for more info.
(p.s. I just managed to overwrite a file I was working on. No problem, our LiveBackup had a copy from 15 minutes ago that I could recover.)
Don’t get me wrong, I do take a laptop away with me, and do understand the need for the small business owner to keep in touch whilst away, but some people can’t seem to drag themselves away from work!
So for those that absolutely can’t switch off from the office here are some tips for successfully working on holiday.
First of all preparation. Check what Internet access you will be able to get. If you are using a 3G card then check the providers coverage map. If they don’t have coverage it might be worth getting a Pay as You Go card from another provider. They are very inexpensive now, and will save having to drive around trying to find a signal (I have a contract on T-Mobile and a PAYGO on 3 just in case).
- http://www.three.co.uk/_standalone/Coverage_checker_mbb
- http://maps.vodafone.co.uk/coverageviewer/web/default.aspx
- http://www.webmap.o2.co.uk/
- http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/services/coverage/street-check/
- http://web.orange.co.uk/coverage/
Remember that if you want to get on the Internet then it is the 3G coverage that you probably want.
Check Roaming charges. If you are going abroad check roaming charges. These are coming down for voice and text, but data is still high.
Take data with you. Just because the brochure says Internet Access available don’t rely on it. If there are a few files that you know you will need to work on then take them with you. That way you can still do a bit of Off-Line working. And take it securely, encrypt it if you can.
Prepare in advance. Remember that if you cannot connect from home the week before, then the chance of being able to do it from the Seycelles is next to none.
Schedule your day. More for your family’s sanity, I find it best to schedule the work you are going to do as part of the day, so you don’t miss out on the fun, and they don’t have to sit and watch you plugging away at a Blackberry for the whole day.
Enjoy yourself. No point going on holiday if you sit in front of the laptop all day long. Enjoy the downtime and deal with any problems when you get back.
Yesterday I went to visit a client on a small estate whose broadband has been playing up intermittently. BT have been extending the dealine for fixing the line fault, and it is now obvious that it is going to be a long term problem. The client is very dependent on their internet connection to access their accounts software that is hosted in the cloud So I had a chat with one of their neighbours – another of our clients – and set up a wireless bridge using two Linksys access points between their networks. The link is the WAN side of both their firewalls, so their networks aren’t talking to each other. It just means that my client can now use their neighbours internet connection whilst theirs is flaky. It is working very well, they now have a stable route out to the internet. My generous client is also safe in the knowledge that should they have a problem with their internet, a backup solution is already there for them.
So I had a chat with one of their neighbours – another of our clients – and set up a wireless bridge using two Linksys access points between their networks. The link is the WAN side of both their firewalls, so their networks aren’t talking to each other. It just means that my client can now use their neighbours internet connection whilst theirs is flaky.
It is working very well, they now have a stable route out to the internet.
My generous client is also safe in the knowledge that should they have a problem with their internet, a backup solution is already there for them.
When configuring your e-mail software (e.g. Outlook or Outlook Express) you always need to specify the name or IP address of the SMTP server for outgoing e-mail. This name or address is normally provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP).
Note, that it is perfectly possible to have one ISP just for Internet access and another service provider to host your e-mail. However, many ISPs include e-mail as part of their Internet access package.
To collect e-mail you have a choice of POP3 or SMTP. However, you can only use SMTP with software that is SMTP aware such as Microsoft Exchange. Outlook and Outlook Express cannot on their own receive e-mail using SMTP.
With SMTP you need to have a static IP address on the computer that is running your e-mail software. Whoever is hosting your e-mail domain name will attempt to deliver e-mail to your e-mail server as and when e-mail arrives and regardless of who the e-mail is addressed to. Your e-mail software is responsible for organising which e-mails go into which inboxes. If your e-mail server is off then your e-mail service provider will store the e-mail for you until your e-mail server can be contacted again.
The main advantages of using SMTP to receive e-mail are that e-mails arrive more or less immediately at your server and that you do not have to set up individual mailboxes with your e-mail server provider.
With POP3 you need to set up an account, with your e-mail service provider, for each e-mail address that you wish to use called a mailbox. When e-mail is sent to your domain the e-mail will be stored in the appropriate POP3 mailbox until you collect it. Your e-mail software has to actively connect to the your e-mail service provider’s server to check if there is any e-mail and then download it. This must be done separately for each mailbox. Most e-mail clients can be configured to automatically check for new e-mail every few minutes.
E-mail service providers use a variety of charging schemes for SMTP and POP3 Mail. Some charge to provide SMTP mail, others charge for each POP3 mailbox. Some ISPs include a specific number of POP3 mailboxes for free as part of a package.
In general, businesses that use an e-mail server such as Exchange should use SMTP for incoming e-mail.
One of the reasons we love our Live Backup BDR (Backup and Disaster Recovery) service is that we know that our clients data is off site.
We got called to a company yesterday. Their office had been burnt to the ground by an electrical fire.
Their backups were in a fire proof safe in the office. Fire proof safes aren’t as fireproof as you might think. All their data was burnt to a crisp.
We set them up with a loan PC and a router with a 3G connection to get them back on-line (all the phone lines had been burnt out), which is something. But they have lost all of their data. They seem a resilient enough lot that I hope they will survive, and fortunately no-one was hurt in the fire, but it is going to be a stressful time for them to get back up to speed.
If you are still backing up with tape or disk, are they going off-site? Is the member of staff in charge doing it?
Time to check!
I’ve been using it today. Better than Google? No.
But not to worry, apparently Microsoft are no longer trying to beat Google at the search engine game. They now have their sites firmly set on Yahoo! instead. Yahoo! only has about twice the market share of searches that Microsoft’s engines have.
So if you are using Yahoo! as your default search engine take a look at http://www.bing.com/. If you are using Google, have a look by all means, but don’t expect to be blown away.
Many reasons why, but we had an example of one yesterday. An employee who was allowed to use their MacBook was leaving a client company, and we were asked to log on and remove all their data from the machine (they are particularly sensitive to data loss). In this case the employee was leaving through voluntary redundancy, and was completely compliant.
However if the employee had left under a cloud there would have been a bit of a sticky situation. The client company may well have owned the data on the Laptop, but would have no rights to seize it or remove it. I’ve no idea what the legal consequences would have been, but the simple solution is to supply all your employees IT. That way if someone leaves you simply remove it from them.
This service allows you to rapidly provision hosted servers. Mostly this is aimed at the big boys. The idea is that if you know that your web site for example is going to have a huge spike in activity, the EC2 cloud has tools that allow you to provision and boot extra servers on demand to cope with the rush. Once the rush is over you decommission them, and you only pay for them whilst they are running, for a minimum of 1 hour.
The sort of development that would go into scripting web services to do that kind of thing automatically is not small.
So what is the benefit to smaller companies? Best thing I can see is for playing. If you need to test a new service or piece of software then you can rapidly provision a new server out on the Internet, do your testing and then kill it off. As prices start at $0.135 for European hosting for short term rents it is probably cheaper than buying an in house server for testing (keep in mind electricity, air con, space, licensing etc).
I need to demo hosted Sharepoint for a client soon, and I’ll definitely consider spinning up an EC2 server to install and run it on for the duration.