Spam Email Problems

We have been seeing huge amounts of spam messages coming through email servers over the last couple of months. This news article describes the 1700% increase in spam during the month of July, the worst ever. Unfortunately, August is actually looking worse.

What does this mean. First, you will probably see patches of time where you will see an increase in spam messages hitting your inbox. Next, email performance will be slow as the spam and virus filters must process this huge increase in traffic. In addition, you will probably have issues sending or receiving messages to or from certain Domains as the IT people there try to mitigate the flood of spam messages.

We use 3 different email hosts and all 3 are seeing these issues. Hopefully, the sources of this increased junk will be located and shutdown as soon as possible. In the meantime, just be aware of the issue and be patient.

CCH ProFx Vista Compatibility

CCH has posted this document which describes its roadmap for Vista compatibility for its products. It looks like by the end of 2007 its products should be compatible with Vista and Office 2007. Note that Vista Home versions will not be supported. The document describes several Office 2007 issues that you should be aware of.

I would suggest that accounting firms do not attempt a Vista or Office 2007 migration until after the upcoming tax season. Tax season is not the best time to see if something will work or not!

Windows Vista Modem Driver Update

When I first installed Windows Vista on my workstation I found that my modem did not work. I checked the vendor website and found that there were no Vista drivers available for it. No problem, I can just get another modem. At least that was what I thought. I searched everywhere for a Windows Vista compatible modem. No luck. I have been living without a modem since then.

Over the weekend I spent some time revisiting the modem situation as I really need to send faxes from my workstation and I still connect to a couple of Clients via good old fashion dial up believe it or not. I was pleased to find that the situation is much better. US Robotics, Zoom, and Hawking Technologies have updated most of their current modem lines with Vista drivers. And they even work! Although I noticed a couple of interesting things when using the Vista dialer.

So the Vista modem situation is much better than it was a few months ago. For those of you using PCAnywhere, you must use version 12 or higher for Vista.