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My changing desktop – from Novell to Microsoft

by | Mar 20, 2008 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

So what changed between running a laptop at Novell and Microsoft?

Desktop OS

Firstly my Novell laptop was primarily a Vista machine. I’ve been using Vista as my primary desktop since November 2006. It’s helped build a better ZENworks Configuration Management.

Microsoft is obviously standardised on Vista.

Collaboration

Email is the killer. I do miss a lot of the advanced features of GroupWise – particularly the email status tracking. Outlook/Exchange won’t show me the delivery/read/deleted status. GroupWise was a killer in knowing that your ‘red’ emails had been delivered and deleted without being opened.

I don’t miss GWIM at all; I still use Pidgin (formerly GAIM) as my IM client – running plugins to all of the major networks. I do really like the Unified Communications via Office Communicator and Outlook. One thing that Microsoft IT has done well is brought together IM, email, fax, voice and voice messaging into a single place.

Applications

Obviously most of the Microsoft internal sites are IE only. (Great UI, great user experience – but lots of ActiveX). I’m also running Firefox 3 Beta 4 – that’s my personal preference.

No OpenOffice – that’s a given; one thing that did surprise me was that everyone is using the newer Office 2007 doc formats; even to outside people.

Network and access

Wow. I was really impressed by the IT organisation. IPv6 on the wire; IPsec everywhere; smartcard and certificate security for wireless and remote access; Network Access Controls running with quarantine.

Certainly it’s given me some new ideas for my home network 🙂

Choosing the Blue Pill

by | Mar 15, 2008 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

Blue Pill Hand

Rumours were flying around last week – I even got a factually incorrect mention from Matt Asay on CNET which paid for this months hosting bill.

Well just to extinguish the rumours – I started with Microsoft – the Beast of Redmond, The Borg, the Monopolist – this week.

I’ll blog some time in the next day or so about my first week.

Inbetween jobs – it must be honey-dos time

by | Mar 8, 2008 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

In true geek style I’ve been using Backpack from 37signals for a while. I use it for work, planning and just keeping on top of projects. I also share it with Grania for packing lists when travelling and most importantly – the Honey-Do list.

Here’s an example:

Honey Dos

Sheer joy. Coupled to an RSS feed so your feed reader can tell you when there’s more jobs put on the list.. 😉

As well as the household tasks  I’m also spending the downtime updating the infrastructure. WordPress, Gallery2, plugins, anti-virus, patching, checking logs, cleaning logs – there’s a lot to be done.