Thoughtsofanidlemind's Blog

  • Google flogging a dead horse with Motorola pager patent

    For those who follow patent matters, the spat between Google and Microsoft revolving around whether Exchange ActiveSync infringes a Motorola pager patent dating from August 1995 has moved on to Germany, where an associated case is being heard in Mannheim. Google acquired the patent along with many others when it…

  • Thoughts on Exchange’s new cumulative update model

    Today’s announcement by Microsoft of a new approach to updates for Exchange is welcome in many respects. A new system of cumulative updates issued on a quarterly basis and applied to servers via Exchange’s B2B (build to build) installation program will be used to keep on-premises deployments updated at the…

  • Selecting a companion device for my PC

    It’s time to find a more portable device than my current laptop, an HP Envy 17 that I like very much for its design, appearance, large screen and expandability. I replaced the two 500 GB 5,400 rpm drives that came with the Envy and replaced them with 256 GB SSDs…

  • Exchange Unwashed Digest for January 2013

    January seemed to go on forever, or maybe this was just because it was mostly cold, wet, and grey in Ireland (a distressingly usual state of affairs at this time of year). Nevertheless, “Exchange Unwashed” needed to be written, so here’s the digest of the January 2013 posts. Office 365…

  • Exchange 2013 simplifies DAG management

    As I work through the process of understanding Exchange 2013 so that I can write about it for “Microsoft Exchange 2013 Inside Out”, various odd thoughts come into my mind. One of those that recently arrived was that Microsoft has dumbed down the new Exchange Administration Center (EAC) when it…

  • Bricked Nokia forces reconsideration of available options

    Infuriatingly, my Nokia Lumia 800 decided to turn itself into an expensive brick this afternoon whilst playing a podcast. No number of curses, sacred chants, or combination of button pressing could persuade the Lumia to come back to life, so it’s gone off to be fixed by Nokia, thanks to…

  • Exchange, Voicemail, and retention

    Have you ever wondered why Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2013 support the creation of an explicit default retention tag just for voicemail? Perhaps not, and certainly not if you are not interested in Unified Messaging and voicemail will never darken the mailboxes of your Exchange server or if you believe…

  • Symantec ships Enterprise Vault 10.0.3

    When I wrote about some of the problems surrounding Exchange 2013 in “Exchange Unwashed” on January 17, I noted that “The signs are that the Exchange ecosystem is incomplete or not prepared for prime time.”  Well, one of the important pieces of the Exchange ecosystem for many companies is now available…

  • New Store, new memory tuning techniques required

    One of the more interesting observations that we will soon be able to make is how well the thoroughly overhauled and rewritten Exchange 2013 Information Store functions in production environments. Of course, there’s the small matter of the rest of the deployment prerequisites to be met, such as co-existence with…

  • Exchange 2013 Alerts

    I’ve been critical about the features that have been dropped from the new browser-based Exchange Administration Center (EAC) console in Exchange 2013 when compared to its Exchange Management Console (EMC) predecessor as used by Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010.  I’ve also pointed out some areas where EAC needs refinement (or…