bruceb news

Previously: The Future Of Small Office Technology

It’s hard to remember how much of an impact Small Business Server had on small offices when Microsoft released the first version in 2000. Until then, nothing had been available that would let a small business run a reasonable mail system or handle security for logons and file sharing. In those days files were shared from a co-worker’s Windows 98 computer – when it went down, everyone stopped working while the system rebooted. SBS 2000 changed all that by giving small businesses an affordable way to begin logging into a true domain, using Exchange for mail, all powered by a server that wouldn’t crash. […] continued

Over the past few weeks, Microsoft has laid out the technology that will power small offices for the foreseeable future.

When these are on the market (likely within the next 3-6 months), the landscape for small businesses will be completely different than anything you have seen before. Each piece is an outgrowth of existing products and services, but each one represents a huge step forward in vision and execution.

If you are in a business with 1-25 computers, it is likely that you will be using one or more of these products, and probably sooner rather than later.

We will be choosing from six new products. […] continued

Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday has come and gone this week with a very small number of patches for Office programs and nothing at all for Windows. Most of your computers restarted Tuesday night.

You’re likely to also be seeing prompts this week to update Adobe Flash Player, the ubiquitous bit of software that runs in your browser to play YouTube videos and trillions of little applets in web pages. The prompt comes when you restart your computer or when you launch a browser for the first time.

It is a legitimate update to fix a real security issue. When you agree to install the update, you’ll see a screen that looks something like the picture above, although I’m starting to see a different color scheme – less red, more black and grey. […] continued

Previously: The Good And The Bad In Windows Live Essentials 2011

If you have Windows 7 or Vista, you might have seen the Windows Update icon down by the clock this week, alerting you to available updates. Opening Windows Update reveals an “Important Update” ready to install.

We trust Microsoft and the Automatic Updates system. We have to trust someone and Microsoft has earned our respect by using Automatic Updates conservatively to deliver security patches for Windows and Office.

This week’s “Important Update” is the Windows Live Essentials 2011 suite, which doesn’t improve our security or fix bugs.

I’ve been urging you to install updates from Microsoft when prompted by the icon in the lower right corner. […] continued

The good news is that Microsoft has released Windows Live Essentials 2011, an updated collection of free programs that are well designed and useful additions to Vista and Windows 7.

The bad news is that you almost certainly don’t want all of them, and Microsoft has released them in a way that makes it more likely that you’ll install them all by accident, with some side effects that you won’t like.

The programs included in Windows Live Essentials 2011 have been shifting for the last couple of years – programs have been added and dropped, features have appeared and disappeared, and names have changed around endlessly. […] continued

Your computer will restart tonight. Close your programs, save your open files, leave the computer running. Your computer will restart in the middle of the night. (If it doesn’t seem to have restarted, look for the update icon by the clock and see if it’s waiting for permission to install the updates or to restart.)

It’s a particularly big crop of updates this month, by some measures the most vulnerabilities ever fixed in a single Patch Tuesday release. Here’s an article summarizing the updates, and here’s the official Microsoft bulletin.

The updates affect virtually everyone – all flavors of Windows and Office, servers and workstations. […] continued

Microsoft Security Essentials is simply the best security program currently available for Windows computers. Installing MSE is on the short list of chores that I insist on doing for every computer I work on.

The license terms are being changed to permit it to be used by small businesses, although that’s not hugely significant since it has been used happily by small businesses all over the world ever since its release.

Microsoft Security Essentials was released a year ago as the free replacement for Windows Live OneCare. It is designed to provide first-class security protection against viruses and malware without calling attention to itself, and it delivers spectacularly on that promise. […] continued

or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Google Chrome

I am conservative about installing software. I don’t want programs on my computers unless I intend to use them. The first thing I do with a new computer is remove unnecessary utilities and cruddy photo programs and the like installed by the computer manufacturers. I don’t install trial versions of programs until I’ve spent time learning about the programs and deciding if I’m genuinely interested. When I stop using a program, I uninstall it. I use a lot of programs but I have very few programs on my office computer that I don’t use regularly. […] continued

This week’s installment of Annoying Checkboxes is sponsored by Microsoft, which has already brought you the annoying checkbox to install the “Bing Toolbar” – the one that has to be unchecked every single time you install an update to Java. Since Java is updated approximately once every 72 hours, you’ve probably seen that annoying checkbox frequently. (If you open Internet Explorer and have a useless “Bing Toolbar” at the top of the screen, then you missed the checkbox.)

Now I’m training myself to watch out for a new Annoying Checkbox that turns up when Microsoft Office Home and Business 2010 is set up on a new computer. […] continued

Previously:
Fear of Exchange
Moving Mail Online With Microsoft Online Services

Small businesses should strongly consider having their Outlook mailboxes hosted on Exchange Servers run by Microsoft for a small monthly fee. I’m going to recommend this to a number of my clients and I encourage anyone interested to contact me to talk it through. I’d like anyone in a business with 2-20 employees to read this carefully!

For businesses currently running Exchange in an onsite server (usually as part of Small Business Server), the move to hosted services does not significantly change the experience of using Outlook. If, however, the onsite server is getting old, moving the mail to a hosted service avoids the risk of an expensive collapse if the Exchange database is corrupted or the server goes down, and reduces the cost of upkeep – no more Exchange security updates and upgrades. […] continued