Ramblings on IT

Just a quick post today on a pet peeve of mine. I manage a lot of domain names for my clients, and I invariably get phone calls every once in a while asking about a letter someone’s received about renewing their domain.

You can ignore these. Read the ‘fine print’…

A big congratulations to IT Weapons of Brampton on their 10th anniversary. ITW is a fellow member of Heartland Technology Groups with my company and 8 others across Canada, and in the year I’ve known Ted Garner (ITW’s CEO) & some of his ‘Weapons’ (what other companies call ‘staff’), I’ve become thoroughly impressed.

So here’s to another 10 years Ted! Congrats.

See Ted’s blog post on their party.

OK, this will be my last post on this issue.

My last 2 posts talk about a 2nd key Microsoft suggested we use to stop the crashing.

Didn’t work for me. One of my clients had their Outlook profile recreated, and the problems came back, so I did what I wrote up in my Redux posts, and found I had to go back to my original fix.

Here

In my last post, you may have noticed the key referenced was for Outlook 2007 (I didn’t because I’d fixed all my workstations with the initial key deletion). When I saw that, I messaged the MS tech I was working with on the issue to ask if both 2003 and 2007 were affected, and indeed they are.

Again, the problem seems to be obscure (Microsoft doesn’t even know why it happens at this point), but here’s the ‘official’ answer for 2003:

For Outlook 2003 we just have to create the key under 11.0 instead of 12 .0 so the registry path would be

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Options\Mail

So my Rogers Business Internet service went down sometime arount 1 – 1:30 pm today, and calling Rogers support resulted in a “yes there’s an issue, and it will be back up in 3-1/2 hours. That was approximately 7 hours ago.

I called back a couple hours later and was told – about another hour, and I also inquired as to what the issue was. Cut fibre connection, just south of Kanata (near Richmond on Fallowfield Rd.).

Really not great Rogers. 1 point of failure – I understand something like 97 nodes are out in Ottawa. ONE fibre line? Ever heard of ‘redundancy’?

Talk about putting your eggs in one basket.

When’s the next price hike? Gotta keep that share price going up, right?

My last post on this topic needs some clarification. This plan is not yet on their web site, and I don’t yet have this in black & white, and will update here when I do, BUT the news is still good (I think).

This may or may not apply where Telus is the ILEC (me being in Ottawa), so YMMV.

My last post wasn’t entirely accurate, sort of. My phone was actually considered a consumer account – even though it’s now a business phone. Subsequently the CSR who ‘put’ me on the the new tether plan actually didn’t (not happy about this at all). Instead, I was put on some other unadvertised plan which included 1GB of data for $60, with NO tethering.

I figured this out the day after my last blog post & recently got my latest bill, which included $73 for the tethering I had done the previous day. I was calling in to add VPN support, as my Telus contact told me it wasn’t included & would cost an additional $5/mo. So they’re basically charging to unblock port 1723 (why am I not surprised?).

When I called to add this ‘feature’ the rep informed me tethering wasn’t included on this plan & I had been misinformed.

So I called my contact & said WTF, and after some investigation found out it only applied to business accounts (‘Business’ Email & Web 45). Apparently, the plan was introduced Dec 1, but again, YMMV depending on your region.

I’ve since taken steps with a new Telus WBS (Wireless Business Solutions) rep to have my account converted to a Business account, so I’ll then get the plan I was expecting in the first place.

So I believe it to be true, and will confirm when I see it on my next bill. So far I’ve had verbal confirmation from a Telus data specialist & the WBS sales guy who’s making it happen for me (and had lunch with today). Don’t know yet if this includes port 1723, but for an extra $5, it’s still a good deal if tethering is there.

I made the switch last weekend. Installed 64-bit Vista and reinstalled all my applications. To date, I’ve run across exactly ZERO compatibility issues, except 1, for which the vendor provided a 64-bit compatible version of their software.

All I can say at this point is that it just works better. Things are snappier. As Paul Thurrott said in a recent Windows Weekly podcast and blog post, 64-bit Vista is really a non-event as far as having issues goes.

My Dell D630 also now supports 4GB SO-DIMM’s, so I’ll be upgrading to 8GB when prices on those puppies comes down (somewhere ~$600 each – yikes!).

Lovin’ the “I’m a PC” campaign from Microsoft, BTW. Finally, Microsoft got it right.

Well. First impression is ‘huh?’.

Digging into the connotations of the ad (pardon the communications theory), we can go 1 layer deep (the only layer that matters), and the ad simply becomes one meant to introduce the persona of Bill Gates (perhaps to show people that he is, in fact, a real person).

Is this meant to drive business to partners? Not at this stage. As the internal Microsoft communiqué from Bill Veghte states, “This first set of ads . . . [are] an icebreaker to reintroduce Microsoft to viewers in a consumer context.”

Even though it’s not directed squarely at business customers (where the real $ is), the fact remains that business people are also consumers. So as B.V. suggests, it’s an ‘icebreaker’ – akin to an initial conversation with business prospects where we talk about the weather and attempt to build rapport.

Is it well done? Obviously not as sharp as the MAC vs. PC ads, but then we’re comparing 2 professional actors with Seinfeld and Bill Gates, who’s never been known for being a riveting speaker, never mind an actor.

Just as with the Mojave Experiment, Microsoft is inching into this campaign and not trumpeting the virtues of Windows vs. MAC, but by trying to make it ‘people’ focused. With Mojave, they accomplished 1 thing – it got the conversation started. This ad takes it to the masses via TV.

I think it’s a reasonable approach, but I’ll be disappointed if they don’t start getting more aggressive, and soon. There’s been too much talk about businesses waiting for Windows 7, and the sooner Microsoft dispels the Vista myths, the better. Mojave did that, but wasn’t main stream. Time to get this train moving a little faster.