bruceb news

Microsoft Office 2010 will be available to consumers on June 15. There are new features focused on increasing the integration with online file storage and collaboration – plus a major redesign of Outlook, adding everything from a ribbon bar across the top to social networking links. There are some nice new things, although I haven’t seen anything yet that strikes me as a game-changer.

Starting now, if you buy Office 2007 or buy a new computer with Office 2007, you’ll get a free upgrade to Office 2010 when it’s released. The deal requires the usual work of filling […] continued

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[Thursday January 28, 2010 – sent to MOS subscribers at 9:07pm]

Dear Customer:

Microsoft Online Services strives to provide exceptional service for all of our customers. On January 28, customers served from a North America data center may have experienced intermittent access to services included in the Business Productivity Online Suite. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you and your employees.

We are committed to communicating with our customers in an open and honest manner about service issues and the steps we’re taking to prevent recurrences.

• What happened?  
  • Monitoring alerted us

[…] continued

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There’s finally a solution to a bug that Adobe has allowed to stand unpatched for far too long. This only applies to a few of you but you’ll be glad to see it if you’ve been one of the victims.

Background: if you use Outlook 2007 to open an e-mail message with a PDF attachment, you should be able to preview the attachment directly in the Reading pane. When you click on the attachment, you’ll first see the dialog asking you to confirm that the attachment comes from a trustworthy source. (Leave the box checked for that warning […] continued

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Exchange Defender has a new tool for previewing quarantined messages.

Exchange Defender is the service used by many businesses to quarantine spam and scan incoming and outgoing mail for viruses before delivering mail to the company server. Exchange Defender sends a daily report listing all quarantined spam, as well as providing add-in software for Outlook and an online control panel for reviewing quarantined messages.

(Exchange Defender is well suited for any business running Small Business Server; almost all my clients with Microsoft Small Business Server rely on Exchange Defender. You need a partner to set it up for […] continued

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Previously:
Passwords: computer login

Each of your e-mail addresses has a separate password – a particularly important one to keep in your records. If you use Outlook or Windows Live Mail, the program may have memorized the password; I frequently talk to people who have no idea that their email account has a password because they are never prompted for it. Make sure you know the password for each e-mail address!

Most of you will have one of four different types of e-mail.

POP3 e-mail

Traditionally individuals and small businesses had POP3 e-mail accounts, most often […] continued

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Windows Search 4 is one of the most valuable services on your computer. It’s highly recommended for everyone using a Windows PC, as well as for servers in small businesses, but it is remarkably difficult to find out if it’s installed and working. I’ll give you some background, then show network administrators a trick for Windows Server 2008.

Briefly, Windows Search 4 efficiently indexes all of the data on your computer – the file names plus the full contents of every file, plus everything in your Outlook mailbox – and allows you to do searches that return results […] continued

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Microsoft Online Services has unexpectedly become more affordable and a more compelling choice for small businesses. I want all law firms and businesses with five or more employees to consider moving their mail to hosted Exchange mailboxes.

Effective immediately, the price of a hosted mailbox has been cut in half to $5/month per mailbox. Existing MOS customers will automatically get the price break starting today.

Later this month, mailboxes will be increased in size to 25Gb at no extra charge.

For a small monthly subscription fee, small businesses can get the full value of Exchange Server:

MULTIPLE

[…] continued

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Here’s an Outlook feature that was new to me – there’s a way to overlay two Outlook calendars.

It’s becoming common for people in small businesses to share Outlook calendars. It’s easy if you have an Exchange mailbox in a business with Small Business Server or a mail system run by Microsoft Online Services.

Sharing your calendar is as simple as clicking on “Share My Calendar” to generate an email message with a link that automates the process.

When you open a shared calendar, it opens side-by-side with your own calendar. The checkboxes at the left make […] continued

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If the idea of following blogs in an RSS feed reader is tempting and your life is spent in Outlook, you might want to consider combining the two.

Outlook has an RSS reader built into it. Take a look – you’ve never noticed “RSS Feeds” down below “Outbox,” have you? In fact, the first thing you saw when Outlook 2007 was started for the first time was a dialog box asking if you’d like to “combine and synchronize the lists of RSS feeds in Outlook and Internet Explorer.” For most people, of course, this is gibberish. Really, what […] continued

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Microsoft has had aggressive prices for college students for years. Today it announced that college students can buy Windows 7 Home Premium for $29.99.

It’s all part of the marketing that is ramping up for the Windows 7 launch on October 22. It’s probably not a coincidence that the deal for students was announced shortly after Apple picked the same price, $29, for the “Snow Leopard” service pack that was released with great fanfare three weeks ago. Windows 7 is getting a warm response from almost everyone who tries it; it may be a good […] continued

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