Thoughtsofanidlemind's Blog

  • Microsoft’s Messaging Records Management strategy still evolving

    New blog post on WindowsITPro.com. Basically sine comments about the evolution of MRM since Exchange 2007 and how the strategy changed in Exchange 2010 (with MRM 2.0) and Exchange 2010 SP1 (changes to the UI and how the Managed Folder Assistant works). Plus a reference to an EHLO post today…

  • Microsoft releases Service Pack 1 for Office Filter Pack 2010

    New blog entry posted on WindowsITPro.com – ramblings about the update that Microsoft has released for the Office Filter Pack 2010 and its importance to Exchange 2010 as a whole. The IFilters in the pack can obviously be used with other products… find out what the situation is by clicking…

  • The plight of the mother bat

    One of the joys of a house in the country is the wildlife that occasionally make an appearance. Bats are common visitors as they roost under the eaves of the house and behind doors. I haven’t quite worked out what species of bat visit us but suspect that they are…

  • A move to WindowsITPro.com

    I’ve been associated with Windows IT Pro Magazine for many years – certainly as far back as 1997 and perhaps beforehand. My memory isn’t too good at this point and many articles have flowed under the bridge since. In any case, Penton Technology is the current owner of the magazine…

  • G-Mailman video from Microsoft

    In my post about the positioning and marketing wars between Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps, I discussed the fact that the battle between Microsoft and Google is likely to be a tad dirty at times. I therefore wasn’t surprised in the least to see Mary Jo Foley blog about…

  • An interesting ZDNet comparison between Google Apps and Office 365

    The guest commentary by Louis Naugès posted on ZDNet (July 25, 2011) that compares Google Apps and Office 365 poses some interesting questions that deserve attention. Louis is the co-founder and chief cloud evangelist of international Google Apps integrator Revevol and is an admitted Google partisan. Although some of his points are debatable or just…

  • Useful Visio stencil for Exchange 2010 SP1

    Microsoft has made an updated Microsoft Office Visio stencil for Exchange 2010 SP1 available for download. As you can see from the screen capture, a wide variety of shapes is available in the stencil including some for Windows components (Active Directory, Certificate Server, domains, etc.), people, and other parts of the…

  • Avoiding outdated addresses during a migration to the cloud

    One of my current projects is to help a large multinational move from Exchange 2007 to a dedicated instance of Microsoft BPOS running Exchange 2010. BPOS is having some woes of its own with yet another outage causing disruption to customers around the world. Let’s hope that Office 365 provides…

  • Microsoft embarrassed by Exchange 2010 SP1 RU4

    On July 13, Microsoft took the decision to withdraw Exchange 2010 SP1 RU4 (the fourth roll-up update for SP1). As you’re aware, a roll-up update (RU) is a regular release of the patches and other fixes that Microsoft has accumulated for a version of Exchange. RU4 was released on June 22, 2011…

  • Do PSTs contain anything of value?

    In musing about the news of the PST Capture tool that Microsoft plans to release soon, I started to consider the question of whether tools like this can actually find and recover any useful information. The worry of executives and lawyers is that PSTs contain all manner of corporate secrets and…