Very interesting post by Kevin Reeuwijk here. I have been dabbling with Windows Server 2008 RTM and Exchange 2007 SP1 lately and had a single server install of Exchange on a rusty old dell laptop just for POC purposes. However, I did not run into the same issues with Outlook Anywhere that Kevin did, because I had disabled IPv6 right in the very beginning since I was trying to enhance the performance of my install on an ancient dell machine.

In other news, my Dell laptop finally managed to stop working. The NIC would misbehave and give itself a 169.XXX.XXX.XXX IP address for no reason. This led me to finally pony up the cash and sign-up for a hosted exchange account with Sherweb. So far the experience has been pretty good except for the initial setup when my domain's MX records had been configured correctly and propagated within the DNS and yet Sherweb's SMTP would refuse to accept my incoming emails with a 550 error. A quick call with tech-support resolved it in seconds ! Kudos to Sherweb !

Long Zheng over at istartedsomething.com has an excellent post about Windows ME, outlining some of the innovative features that shipped with it. He reminds us that, although we never spare Windows ME from all the ridicule, we never acknowledged the new features that shipped with it. Read the whole article here.

Amongst other news, Microsoft officially shipped SP1 for Windows Vista today. Please launch the Windows Update utility from within Windows to download and install Service Pack 1.

Update

• Download the x86 version of SP1 here
• Download the x64 version of SP1 here

Its the season of giving and Microsoft is also doing its share. What with releasing not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 service packs for the 4 flagship products !

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 RC
[Download]

Windows XP Service Pack 3 RC
[Download]

Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1
[Download]

Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 1
[Download]

Apart from the service packs, also available is the Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate 1

Windows Server 2008 RC1 Enterprise
[Download]

I am sure this is one of the best times for beta testers and other geeks alike ! Merry Christmas !!!

Out of all the Microsoft products, I am the biggest fan of Exchange Server. Exchange is a messaging and collaborative technology, developed by Microsoft and its latest incarnation, Microsoft Exchange 2007, works beautifully with the entire range of Office Suite. Microsoft Exchange also features the "Direct Push" technology, wherein email and other items are synced in real time on Windows Mobile devices. In other words, Exchange is a truly unique product and there are practically no direct competitors to it in the market.

Exchange is mostly targetted at corporate environments, however, its feature set is best suited for any average user, due to the seamless integration between the client and the server portions, intuitive UI and support for various kinds of access (desktop client, web, mobile). There are various other reasons, and I will let this amazing blog post do the explanation. Since it is practically impossible for a home user to run an Exchange server environment due to hardware, bandwidth and licensing cost constraints, a whole bunch of companies offer, what is known as "Hosted Exchange" environment. I personally run an Exchange server on a virtualised environment, mainly for test and learning purposes, however, I am looking into switching to a hosted environment. There are many players out there, but I am looking at Sherweb's single-user friendly offer. If I do end up trying them out, I will put up a future blog post detailing my experiences.

A screenshot from last evening's CSI:

My trust in Dell laptops just received a significant boost after reading the following story.

Medium rare laptop
http://www.luckywhitegirl.com/2005/11/medium_rare_ele.html

For a $600 device, I should be able to have my own custom ringtones on my iPhone. Apparently Steve Jobs and his minions dont think so. I remember back in the days I had a Nokia 5110i and I could have my own custom ringtones in that too. This is about 6-7 years ago. So some people figured out how to put their custom ringtone in their iPhone...turns out you have to get the phone in a bootloader like stage and then push the files in. I'd say thats really backwards. Anyhow, those interested can check out the full process here.

Thank goodness for Windows Mobile. I love my QTEK 8300.

Have you ever navigated to a folder full of video files in Windows Vista and you got the nasty error below ? Well, here is a solution to make this error go away.

It is believed that this error is caused by an incompatibility with Windows Vista from an outdated version of Nero burning software so update to the latest version of Nero (7.10.1.0), which was released on 5th July. If however, you wish to stick with your current version of Nero:

1. Navigate to "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Ahead\DSFilter"
2. Rename NeVideo.ax and NeVideoHD.ax to something like NeVideo.old and NeVideoHD.old . This will break Nero Showtime, but thats a minor inconvenience.

Good luck !

Came across this very touching piece through Scoble's post. Quite a gripping story about real people. Just made me realize (yet again) how lucky I am to be safe, secure and to be amidst my loved ones. God bless these guys in the video.

Ok, this is the mother of all dog fooding ever. Microsoft.com is running 100% on Windows Server 2008 Beta 3. Thats a very bold statement from Microsoft, proving the reliability and robustness of Windows Server 2008. For more statistics and numbers, check out Anna Liu's blog posting.