Big Week at Microsoft

Microsoft has officially released the latest versions of their flagship products to manufacturing this week. This means that all of the testing is done and the products are being pressed to CD/DVD's. They will be packed in really cool boxes and shipped to retailers to place on their shelves.

Windows Vista, the next version of Windows, and Office 2007, the next version of Office will be available for retail purchase on January 30, 2007. Large corporate customers will be able to purchase the software in early December.

We have been testing both products for about a year now. During that time the products have been improving regularly. I will post more information on each of the products here over the next couple of months. We will also provide demonstrations for our Clients after January 1, 2007. Stay tuned for more info on the demos here.

Both products are substantial upgrades that will provide our Clients with a more reliable, more robust desktop working environment. They both provide a very good return on investment and will allow for a stream of new technologies to be implemented.

Be sure to subscribe to this feed so you can learn how these products will help your organization continue to move forward with technology. Don't know how to subscribe to an RSS feed? Give me a call.

Windows Defender Now Live

Microsoft has released Windows Defender as a live product. It has been in beta testing for about 2 years. Windows Defender is Microsoft's free anti-spyware product. We have been using it all the way through the beat process. The program is stable and does a pretty good job.

We will be installing Windows Defender on all new workstations purchased from us effective immediately. For Clients that are under our Site Maintenance Program, we will install the program during our next maintenance visit. We will install the program on other Client workstations when we visit them.

More information and the download file can be found here.

Yahoo Email Issues

Over the past couple of days an issue has come up with email being sent to Yahoo.com or any of its hosted domains. (ie. sbcglobal.net, etc) The result of the problem is that users sending email to Yahoo or any of its sub domains may get a message indicating the message is being temporarily deferred. The message that is bounced back will contain something like the following;

Failed Recipient: username@yahoo.com.cn
Reason: Remote host said: 451 Message temporarily deferred - 4.16.50

The Remote Host is Yahoo. There is a long,technical, and stupid reason that this is occurring. I won't get in to all the details here. Unfortunately, there is very little that we or other ISPs can do to try to resolve the issue. Our hosting group has been trying to locate someone at Yahoo that they might be able to work with, with no luck. One thing that can be done is for Yahoo (or SBC) users that are not able to receive the emails that are being sent to them to complain to Yahoo (or SBC).

The issue has to do with the method Yahoo has chosen to try to block spam. While blocking spam is a necessary evil nowadays, the method they have chosen has gone way to far and in fact is broken. Our hosting group is trying several workarounds that are helping somewhat but none of them is a permanent solution.

I wanted to let our Clients know about this problem, the cause, and what we are trying to do about it. Unfortunately, in this case we must depend on Yahoo to resolve it at their side. Note that some email will in fact get through, but a large portion is failing. We will continue to attempt to resolve this issue with Yahoo. Our Clients can feel free to contact me with questions or for an update.

Windows Vista Licensing To Be Tougher

With Windows XP and Office XP Microsoft introduced software activation as a way to thwart software pirates. The idea is that after you install the software the activation software gathers some information from the machine it has been installed on and then contacts an activation server at Microsoft to record the information. If another installation of the software with the same key is attempted the activation server will block the installation. If the software is not activated it will cease to work properly. Microsoft says it needs to do this because piracy is so prevalent. Generally I don't have a problem with software activation as long as it works and as long as it is fast. That is not always the case.

Corporations that have volume license agreements with Microsoft were not subjected to software activation. That's all about to change. Windows Vista will require software activation for volume license customers. There will be several methods available, but the bottom line is that corporate customers will have to activate. In fact the activation engine that Microsoft has developed allows for other software vendors to use the Microsoft activation engine to enable activation of their software products using the engine.

Again, I generally do not have a problem with Microsoft protecting their products. However, the process must be fast, reliable, and maintain the privacy of the user. Not all corporations will agree with me on this and Microsoft may be in for some backlash.

Toshiba Battery Recall

Toshiba has issued a recall for about 170,000 batteries. 100, 000 of those are batteries that came in laptops sold within the United States. The recall covers laptops manufactured between March and May of 2006. This recall IS NOT related to the overheating and potential fire hazard battery recall announced by Dell. The recalled batteries simply do not hold a charge.

Further details and instructions can be found here.