First, Joseph Davies (aka “The Cable Guy” on Technet) has released the entire TCP/IP Fundamentals for  Microsoft Windows in PDF format.

Click here for the ebook

More to come later today or early tomorrow…

So, without further adieu, we are proud to present you with our “ExtraOutlook” tool that allows you to launch as many Outlook instances as you want. All you have to do is configure the profiles you want, and then type: ExtraOutlook.exe “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE” (after you download it, of course).
Attendees of past Microsoft Ninjitsu classes have been using it for some time now (as all attendees get special access to the Hammer of God Member’s Site) and we’ve not heard of any catastrophic failures (you know, like having all mailbox data destroyed without any hope of recovery).

I’ve wanted this for a while now and have bugged it in Office 10 and Office 11.  I have both a personal exchange account and a work exchange account and have not liked having both.  Thusfar, I have coped by using my smartphone for my personal account (as the office does not provide me with cellphone service) and use Outlook for work email.

Click here for more information.

New Applications:

•  ”Open Data Center Network Management System” - Late last week, I got an email asking me to evaluate and comment on this new application.  I haven’t had a chance to install or look at it yet, but I wanted to throw it out to everyone until I have time to review it myself.

  This appears to be an ideal solution for documenting network data centers, racks, patch panels, routers, etc. - especially for those of us who have to maintain a frugal IT environment (like my office).

• This one isn’t new, but I just found it for the first time today.  “Royal TS“.  This is a good replacement for the “Remote Desktops” MMC applet that isn’t available (at least not easily available) on Windows Vista.  It allows you to organize your Remote Desktop sessions in a nice console list.

Exploit / Virus Warning:

• This item was more tailored for delivery on Friday, but it doesn’t hurt to reinforce the importance of making sure that your Adobe Acrobat software (either the reader or the creator) is up-to-date.  Last Friday, there was an open exploit using PDF files of the Adobe Acrobat (or Microsoft Windows, if you prefer) flaw that allowed your computer to run exploited code.   I noted two attempts of this virus emailed to my office early morning Saturday morning, but my spam/virus gateway was updated to filter it out.

More News:

• I’m posting in the Microsoft Newsgroups once again (primarily in Vista Networking, Server Networking, DFS, and DNS).  It’s about time that I got back to my “roots”.
• I had the joy of helping someone install Leopard this weekend.  It seems nice and quick, but I don’t know if I could stand using the Mac OS X user interface long enough to use it.  Also, Parallels was not working properly on the machine I saw, so that would preclude me from using it in an office situation (AutoCAD doesn’t exist in Mac OS X, nor will it ever).

That’s it for today.  Have a great week if I don’t post again this week.  I’ll try to be more active than that..  And feel free to send comments.  I’m open to criticism… 

• MS Internal use of Network Access Protection Channel 9 Video - Jeff Sigman (of the NAP team) and Brent Atkison (of MS-IT) talk about how NAP is implemented on the Microsoft network.
• Ubuntu 7.10 (GutsyGibbon) has been released, both in Desktop and Server releases. For the benefit of others at the office, we have implemented some of our public web servers on Ubuntu (although I am more a Centos or BSD dude…). Downloads are still rather slow due to the Slashdot effect.

Weekly Wishlist:

• x64 version of PageDefrag for my servers.
• A working version of Veridian on two of my AM2 systems that should support Virtualization, but are disabled due to processor stepping level.

Task List for the week:

• Installing the RTM build of Windows Home Server at home…
• Upgrade my Trixbox installation and implement OpenWingo softphones…

While there, we learned much, shared much, and everyone mutually benefited from the experience. Thank you to Wendy and Jessep for getting everything setup for us and to the presenters for sharing information with us and for listening to us for our suggestions and constructive criticism. My highlight sessions? The NAP and the PNRP/IPV6 presentations. Jeff Sigman is an “energetic presenter” and the IPV6 presentation reinforced some of the things I am currently using/deploying with Vista and Windows Server 2008. Thank you to the Windows Home Server team for the awesome reception.

While at Winstock, I started to think about communication. I’m not very good at it. I’m trying to improve on it, though. I will set that as my “Halloween” resolution (since New Years resolutions never seem to stick past January 4). So in that vein, I do want to mention that you can communicate with me via any of the following methods:

• Twitter - jeffreycentex
• AOL IM - jeffreycentex
• Yahoo IM - jeffreycentex (notice a pattern here?)
• MSN Messenger - jeffrey at jeffreyrandow dot com (you know what to correct)

I won’t always be available to talk, but I’ll try to be accommodating when possible.

Also, please pass on any suggestions, tips, or leads. Thanks for reading!

Jeffrey

A few items of interest:

• The wireless WAN problem I mentioned a few months ago has been solved using about $8 of supplies from my local Lowes store. The problem was due to the extreme heat that we have down here in Central Texas (and to tell you the truth, this has been a pretty cool year). My solution? Build a mesh shelter out of storage cubes and patio screen fabric. My problems are now gone. Of course, the point would have been made moot in another month or so, but it felt good to get it solved.
• Cisco’s TelePresence room is cool.. If you haven’t seen the TelePresence rooms in one of the local Cisco office, try to make it a point to see it in the future. This room is like a virtual conference room (which isn’t that special), but there implementation is excellent (with surround sound, similar furniture, etc).
• Sysprep and Mass Storage Drivers suck. Actually, that is being too kind. I spent over a week fighting with Sysprep and getting the 5 different type of Mass Storage devices working on a Windows XP image. Why Windows XP? Our LOB applications still do not work reliably under Windows Vista (ESRI, Bentley/Haestad Methods, and Oce Archiving).

More soon..

Site Note:

I have started locking some of the older posts due to spam problems. These spam postings never make the public side of the site, but are VERY annoying on the administrative side of the blog.

Be patient if things aren’t working - I’ll try to get them back up shortly.

UPDATE 1

OK, I have completed the base upgrades to the current versions of Wordpress and I had to reset all of the plugins. Before you freak out, please note that I have expanded the blog to support Podcast and VLogs for future use. I suck at presentations and public speaking, but there will be some future use here for things like screencasts, demos, etc.

I’m also updating information on how to contact me and keep riding me to have things stay current around here. Even with my somewhat “new” position at the office, I’m still just as swamped as ever.

Again, feel free to IM me anytime you see me online.

The R25 and M7 lines are still discontinued. And I will still no longer consider a Toshiba for a future tablet/laptop purchase. I’m looking at the Lenovo or the Fujitsu T4215 for the future. Even the new Motion shown at GottaBeMobile looks interesting.

Also note that Vista drivers apparently have been released for the Toshiba M200. I know of one person at my office who would be happy about that one.

Well, finally Vista is out for the public.  It has been a long road.  I remember a meeting at Microsoft way back in 2003 when Longhorn was first being discussed.  Much has changed in the past 4 years.  But it is finally done.  Or at least as done as it could possibly be.

Since the vast majority of searches of my site in the past few days have been some variation of Toshiba and Vista, I thought I would get a few points out of the way to answer a few questions (particularly related to Toshiba laptops and tablets):

• Public Vista Drivers are available for a select few laptops through the normal support channel (M400, for instance) available here.
• Beta Drivers are available for some other selected machines here.  This list should get shorter as the days go by as drivers are moved from the beta site to the full site.
• A Toshiba R25 Tablet PC will work fine with most of the Tecra M7 Toshiba drivers available at the Beta site.
• No official support for a Portege M200 is available.  The Mobile PC Wiki has information on what works and the available drivers for the M200.  A fellow at my office has a M200 and has had issues primarily with the Nvidia display.
• The battery life out-of-the-box with Vista and a Toshiba laptop will be pathetic.  However, you can tweak the battery situation by changing the Advanced Settings of your selected profile and tweaking the Cooling Method (under Toshiba Power Savings), Optical Drive Management (same section), Power Saving Mode (under Wireless Adapter Settings), Link State Power Management (under PCI Express), and Power Savings Mode (under Search and Indexing).  Note that you can also tweak the display and the processor states to your liking.  These settings will recover your system to about 90% of the life under XP, at least on my machine.
• Glass/Aero works on the Tecra M7/Satellite R20/25 if you have at least 1GB of RAM.  It does not work on the Satellite R10/15.  It may work on the M200 depending on what driver you are using.
• Firefox/Tablet Tip:  Install the GeckoTIP addin for tablet support.
• The three Lenovo registry patches referenced here seem to work on my machine with no ill effects (power management).
• The Satellite R25 supports Bitlocker after making the Group Policy changes to allow USB devices (no TPM).  The R15 does not seem to work for me (may be dependent on the updated BIOS that currently refuses to install on the R15 I have available).
• Key Tip:  If you upgrade to Vista and have no sound, you need to temporarily go back to XP or a Linux distribution and unmute your system volume.  Better yet, un-mute your audio BEFORE upgrading to Windows Vista.

That’s it for now.  See ya tomorrow…

• Windows XP Remote Desktop Client (Vista Optimized) - 32 bit
• Windows XP Remote Desktop Client (Vista Optimized) - 64 bit
• Win2K3 Server Remote Desktop Client - 32 bit
• Win2K3 Server Remote Desktop Client - 64 bit
• Windows XP LLTD Client