Vista and Office 2007 installed

Well I finally gave in and installed Vista Beta 2 and Office 2007 Beta 2 on a newly upgraded machine and try to start to use it as my primary machine.

Right away Trend Micro's anti virus client won't work. It does say that it's fixed in Release Candidate 1. Also, ISA 2004 firewall client displays that is has known problems although I haven't seen any problems in accessing either the Internet or my production SBS 2003 server.

I've actually got use to the integrated search feature of Vista pretty quick and must say I enjoy it immensely. It's definitely something to get use to but I can just type pai and get MS Paint quicker than finding it in the plethora of application folders. You can even type in \\server\sharename and go right to your server's share. I do miss the quick shortcut to the run shortcut as a system administrator it seems will use this all the time but putting it on the Windows Menu is a quick fix.

Vista has a new performance rating system as well. My newly upgraded Athlon 64 3 GHz with 1.5 GB RAM and a 64 MB Video card had a system rating of 2. Wow I thought it would be better than that. And one of the sole reasons? My RAM has a rating of 4. 1.5 GB gives you that? There won't be a lot of Vista upgrades with those numbers that's for sure. New computers will have to be bought.

I must admit I'm getting settled into Office 2007 real nice. I like the way it flows with the way you work. As I get used to it I'm sure it'll even come faster.

Overall I enjoy the interface so far and the video upgrades. Change is always hard though.

SBS R2 Bits recalled

OK so who's got quality control on the SBS product? :) CRN is reporting on the recall of SBS 2003 R2. Remember this is the second consecutive release with a bug or bad code in it. The Sharepoint snafu in the original SBS 2003 certainly gave a black eye to the SBS team as well. I know that SBS includes so many of the products that I can't even begin to imagine how hard it is to document and test all the code but on a major release such as this it needs to be tested and retested before it's put out there.

Sometimes it's hard to fight the dogmas that non SBS techies have. This doesn't help on the technical front again. Let's hope the Microsoft PR machine can overcome this one.

Remotely Enable Remote Desktop

Thought I'd just point you over to the WindowsDevCenter.com -- Windows Server Hacks: Remotely Enable Remote Desktop article. We recently reinstalled a station that had a problem doing the connectcomputer in SBS. As a result Terminal Services wasn't enabled on the machine properly and now we needed to do some quick remote support. This was a great little article to help us do just that to enable Remote Desktop to work just fine.

Hope it helps you out!

Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 is now free

Well this only makes sense after Virual Server was released for free but Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 is now at SP1 and is released for free. Download and use it now. For small businesses that want to test new technology there is really no better way than this, unless of course you're in the VMWare camp. Just remember that any Vista betas won't be supported until Virtual PC 2007.

In Boston. Microsoft Small Business Symposium awaits

Made it to Boston for the very first time. Had a nice time walking around Little Italy watching crazy Italians celebrate their victory in the World Cup. Regular Americans were walking around wondering what the heck it was all about. One lady I heard even said, "I think it's a Jewish holiday". Oh well, one of these days Americans might get soccer or football.

But that's not the reason for me being here. I'm here to attend the Microsoft Small Business Symposium as part of the worldwide partner conference. Hope to hear some business worthy items and as well the official release of SBS 2003 R2.

Funny when you're walking down the street in a town you've never been in before and someone shouts your name. Shout out to Dean Calvert of Australia who I saw this afternoon. Hopefully he turned some tea into the harbor like he wanted. :) The power of SBS and SMB is pretty big as evidenced by that fact.

SBS 2003 R2 Technology Upgrade Program Site Live

Courtesy of Mike Iem our SBS User Group liason with Microsoft:

New - Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2: Technology Upgrade Program
The site is now live! The program provides eligible customers with a copy of the Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 Upgrade Media Kit if they purchase Windows Small Business Server 2003 with SP1 (Standard or Premium Edition) preinstalled on a new server from an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) or System Builder during the eligibility period (see dates below). This page provides further details about this program.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/sbs/r2/upgrade.mspx And on that page, you’ll find this link, which takes you to the ordering site: https://upgradeweb.moduslink.com/

Want CRM Mobile? Then don't get a Treo 700W

Perusing the Microsoft CRM newsgroup and found this powerful quote from a support team member regarding the Treo 700W and CRM Mobile. Now go figure how the hottest selling Windows device won't work too well with CRM mobile! Thanks Shawn for clearing up some confusion.

My name is Shawn Dieken. I am a member of the Microsoft CRM support team
and would like to provide some clarity on this thread.
The Treo 700w only has 32MB of RAM and the minimum requirement for CRM
Mobile is 64MB RAM. That is why you will get "Out of memory" errors when
you try sync the device. There is just not enough RAM to have .Net
Framework 2.0, SQL CE, SQL CE Replication and CRM Mobile running at the
same time. It does not mean that there is not enough memory storage (ROM
ie: NAND) to store the data. It just does not have enough RAM to run all
those programs at once.
The confusion all starts with the marketing of these mobile devices. OEM's
advertise them as having 128MB of memory with only a little disclaimer that
this is "shared" memory. This means that this is not RAM. This is ROM;
specifically: NOR and NAND. Only a few OEM's actually post the amount of
RAM that they have on their devices and those are usually only the ones
that have at least 64MB of RAM. The other ones try and hide this fact.
Here is one example of the PPC-6700 where Brighthand does a good job
explaining this: http://www.bargainpda.com/default.asp?newsID=2746
Here is a great blog that describes the different types of memory:
http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2005/08/19/453784.aspx
Also, the Treo 700w only has a 240x240 display and the minimum requirement
for CRM Mobile is 240x320. The Treo may still work, but some forms may not
render correctly.
Bottom Line: The Treo 700w does not meet the minimum requirements and
would not be a recommended device for CRM Mobile.
I hope this helps to clear this up a little. It can be very confusing and
several OEM's do not help the matter.
Cameron: The XV6700 does have 64MB RAM and should work with CRM mobile.
Make sure that you are only installing the CRM Mobile databases on the SD
card and that the rest of the applications are running on the device.
Please refer to the CRM Mobile IG in the \Documentation folder of the CRM
Mobile download for details. If you run into any issues, please post a new
thread and we can assist further.
Thanks!
Shawn Dieken
Microsoft CRM Support