On a lighter note

someone has finally has got their hands on the ASUS Eee PC!

Notebook review have given their opinion and it still looks pretty promising

The price risen slighlty but they have that Asus are hoping to start shipping by the end of August

Looking forward to seeing them in the flesh!

SBS EMEA Chat after-thoughts

The Technet SBS Chat finished about 30 minutes ago

As i thought may happen it was mainly centered around people who wanted to know about Cougar and not about SBS2003 support as it was originally billed!

The chat transcript will be available here soon

Most of the Cougar stuff is available elsewhere on the internet

I asked if there were any plans to allow an upgrade to companyweb instead of the side-by-side install we have to do now, “no current plans”

I also asked if Response Point is going to appear in the UK, “At the moment this is a US only product. Since it is produced by a number of hardware vendors I think it will be a long time, or not at all. Don’t worry, you will have plenty of options for VoIP from Microsoft over the coming period”

The only thing i found a little strange was that lots of people care enough about SBS and their business to put 45-minutes aside to login to a chat session, but ask questions on things that are readily available elsewhere such as the Cougar information. (I was going to post some examples…but thats not fair)

But i guess this is to be expected when we’re all waiting for some more information on new products

I’m really glad it’s Friday as i appear to be in a grouchy mood

A different kind of community

Last night i went to a seminar on Health and Safety, Employment Law and advice for startups to turn ideas into a viable business

The reason for going was three fold

First of all, since we’re having a growth spurt and actually giving people jobs it makes sense to make sure we’re doing it right

Second, it was also billed as a networking event so thought that would be useful as well

Third, it was two miles down the road from the office

All in all it was pretty useful but i’m sure your wondering what this has anything to do with what i usually post here (though i wasn’t best pleased with £3.65 a pint when it was my round!)

The event was organised by the “Business Startup Community”

It’s an online based community that wants to bring together companies (with a focus on startups) so that they can help grow their businesses by sharing ideas, forging partnerships and relationships and doing business with each other……sound familiar?

I meant a very nice lady called Katie who runs the show and chatted briefly about communities and the event in general

Side Note: At what point do we stop being a “startup”? We’ve being running for a couple of years now but at what stage do we decide we’re established?

The one thing i do like about this particular online community is it’s single point of contact

If your new to the SBSC thing (which i still am!) where do you go to find out what it’s all about?

Obviously when you start digging you find lots of resources (you know which people i’m talking about right? :-p )  but they are all very distributed and if your new to it you can miss lots of useful information

Just as an example, here in the UK we have two SBSC PAL’s

Vijay and Gareth

When i first read Vijay’s post on becoming PAL one of my first thoughts was “Who is Gareth Brown?”

That is in no way meant as a slight on Gareth, it’s my responsibility to know who these people are but that was the first time i’d heard the name (and his lovely shiny new website wont let me send him an email!)

Now you might say “Andy you should go meet these people, attend user groups, go to events”

I’d love to, really!

But actually finding events hasn’t been something i’ve been able to do easily. My local user group is currently taking a summer break and i can’t seem to find anything else going on (granted WPC probably influenced some of that!)

So what’s my point! (do i ever have one!? ) or am i just whining?

SMBNation has a lovely calendar of events (the mother of all calendars i believe) but very US focused

Is there any similar sort of resource for the UK? Would one be of use?

Comments would be good please…If there was enough demand for something i’d be willing to set something up

Install Netmeeting on Vista

We have used Netmeeting (Remote Desktop Sharing) in some support situations in the past but it’s no longer installed with Vista

I found this hotfix that allows you to install Netmeeting 3.02 on a Vista PC

However, What you can’t do is setup Remote Desktop Sharing on that Vista PC. You can still connect to older versions of Netmeeting (e.g XP) though

Microsoft have replaced Netmeeting with Windows Meeting Space but with Remote Desktop and Remote Assistance (which is amazing with SBS!) still being my preferred remote support options this isn’t something i’m too worried about

Just a reminder

All being well i’ll be logging onto this at lunch time

Join Microsoft Experts for an Online Chat! Small Business Server 2003 Chat (EMEA Community)

Join the Small Business Server team for questions and general discussion on SBS2003. Bring your comments and concerns on the product and discuss them with the team.

Friday, July 13, 2007 12:00 – 12:45 P.M. British Summer Time (UTC + 1 hour)

7:00 – 7:45 A.M. Eastern Time

11:00 – 11:45 GMT 

Join the chat room on the day of the chat:

TechNet: www.microsoft.com/technet/community/chats/chatroom.aspx

UK computer history gets new home

Just having a look on the BBC to website to find the National Muesum of Computing is moving to Bletchley Park

So if your into computer and codes they is only one place to go this summer (fun for all the family!:-))

I do have a bit of a softspot for any codes/cipher related

The Code Book by Simon Singh is an excellent read

I’m actually in Bletchley this weekend (coincidence!) visiting friends so it’s probably a little early for me to go take a look as my inner geek is dying to have a nose around 

Sorry for being random! I just thought i was interesting

PST Files Unsupported on LAN

We recently did some data reorganising at one of client sites

The idea was to make the folder structure reflect the current organision (some departments had been merged, made redundant,etc), setup new permissions and setup new network drives for easy access

One of the users reported that he didn’t want drive X: to disappear as his Outlook PST wouldn’t work

!!!!

We all know that PSTs on your file servers are bad but users always ask “why?” so i thought i’d see if i could come up with some official reference to point him at

First up, the official line is in the guise of a Microsoft KB article

PSTs stored on the LAN (or WAN) have been officially unsupported since Exchange 4

I also found an entry on the Enterprise Platforms Support Windows Server Performance team blog (or Ask the the performance team which is easier!) which shows off a so real world information which you don’t always get with a KB article and goes into a bit details as to why PST have such an impact on performance

After speaking to the client he wanted to use PST files so that he could archive any old messages to keep them away from his Mailbox (storage limits in place) but still have access to them on a daily basis

He is going to create the PST file on his local drive but use the Microsoft Outlook Personal Folders Backup tool (more info here so that he can get them covered by the file server backup. I haven’t used the tool before so if there is anything weird or wonderful i’ll post about it

Reset Offline File Cache

About a year ago we did a fileserver migration as the hardware is about to die on the existing server

Everything went well and we got the data across with shares and permissions as they were previously

However, we were told after the event that several users used the offline files feature in XP for when they worked away from the office.

Our move to the new server played havoc with it and even after i found some nice commands to “repoint” the offline files database to a new location (details here) it was still cranky so we thought it best to just started again

However just deleting the offline copies of the files isn’t always enough.

I had a similar issue occur today so thought i’d post about what i did

If offline files is doing weird things you can completely reset the cache

1. In Folder Options, on the Offline Files tab, press CTRL+SHIFT, and then click Delete Files. The following message appears:
The Offline Files cache on the local computer will be re-initialized. Any changes that have not been synchronized with computers on the network will be lost. Any files or folders made available offline will no longer be available offline. A computer restart is required.

Do you wish to re-initialize the cache?
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2. Click Yes two times to restart the computer.

After you have restarted the computer you’ll have a nice clean offline files database and you can start again. Supporting KB article here

Christmas comes early in the parkes household

Earlier this week i placed an order for this

20Mb broadband from VirginMedia

When i first moved into my current home about three years ago i tried to get cable service (NTL at the time) but they weren’t operating in my area

I wanted cable as i had concerns about the distance to the exchange which i was right about. As everyone else in the country started to get two, four and eight Mb i was still stuck on my paltry 512Kb connection

Last year i gave my provider a call to enquire about getting my speed increased as i kknew my exchange had been ADSL MAX enabled. I was told it could be increased to 1Mb (whoopy) but i’d have to commit for another 12 months. Through gritted teeth i agreed

The day after i found that cable was now available in the area so called my provider to cancel the order (it hadn’t even been 24 hours)

I was told that the order would be cancelled and i wouldn’t have my contract renewed

Turns it this wasn’t the case and after many phone calls later (and being called a liar by one lady) i decided to put up with it for the twelve months (since i’d managed to negotiate a cheaper rate as well) and rethink later

So i’ve order the 20Mb which gets fitted on Tuesday which as fate would have it is also the day my contract ends!

What is really worrying though is when i called the original provider to arrange cancellation he was insistant on giving me a MAC code and spent 15 minutes telling me i wouldn’t get a faster speed with anyone else

I told him i was moving to cable but couldn’t get this through his head and gave me the MAC code anyway. Shouldn’t he know about his competitors products? Bad customer service prompted me to leave…..bad customer service when i wanted to leave!

So anyway i can’t wait till Tuesday!

Online Presence

Not entirely sure when i haven’t done this before but today i got myself a domain name

www.andyparkes.co.uk

at the moment it just redirects to here but it’ll make things easier in the long run

this also means i have an email address to go with it!

andy@andyparkes.co.uk