Month: May 2008

Body: Kevin Beares is the Community lead inside the Microsoft Server Group in the US.  He’s been conducting a yearly survey of the community for the past 3 years now and it’s that time of year again.  Please support the community by taking a few minutes to do the survey.  Below is the note from him.   The Windows Small Business Server 2008 WW Community Survey is live This is the third year we have published an SBS WW Community Survey to the SBS Community.  We have learned an amazing amount of information from the people who have taken the … Continue reading SBS 2008 Community Survey

Body: Finally – SBS 2008 is available for the wider public audience to download and start to test in your own environments.  Having been part of the SBS 2008 beta now for nearly 2 years, it’s interesting to see where the product has come from and where it is heading too.  At this late stage, I don’t expect to see too many changes in features between what you can get today and what will be released.  Having said that, if you want to get the jump on the competition, you NEED to be playing with this now.  Sure it is … Continue reading SBS 2008 Public Beta now available

Body: Woohooo… Today SBS 2008 went public with the beta which means I can now talk more freely about this product and what’s cool about it.  Robbie Upcroft the SBS/SBSC Product Manager here in Australia, is keen to ensure that we get some advance training on SBS and EBS and in conjunction with him, I’ll be running a morning training session on both SBS 2008 and EBS 2008 over the next few weeks in the 5 main capital cities here in Australia.  I’m looking forward to doing this so please check out Robbies blog post below and register ASAP so … Continue reading SBS 2008 & EBS 2008 Training around Australia

Body: Yes – you heard right, CEO of Scorpion Software, Dana Epp has released a free security tool to help address one of the often raised security concerns about the Remote Web Workplace in Small Business Server 2003.  By default SBS 2003 allows all users (including administrators) to remotely access their desktops inside the network.  This is via the Remote Web Workplace portal and requires the users username and password.  Administrators can also access your server via the same page.  Dana has for some time had a product called AuthAnvil which gives you two factor authentication for your SBS servers … Continue reading Free security software from Scorpion Software

Body: I didn’t know about it until today, but the New South Wales government have labelled this week as Home Based Business week and they are running a host of seminars all around the state all related to home based and small business.  Looking through the topics, it looks like they are covering some very interesting information and I wish I’d found out about it earlier so I could attend. Anyway – the link is here and I’ll be watching out for it in future. Category: Business Focus Published: 20/05/2008 6:07 PM

Body: Microsoft Australia are doing a cute viral marketing campaign which is aimed to raise awareness of it’s Office 2007 product and at the same time donate money to charity.  They have said they will donate up to $100,000 to charity based on this campaign.  Nice one Microsoft. Anyway – they way they are doing this is via viral marketing.  They’ve got some cute kids telling us all about Office 2007, what they think Microsoft is… I love that bit. Anyway – go check out their site here Category: Business Focus Published: 20/05/2008 8:24 AM

Body: In a great example of Microsoft listening to the SBSC partners and learning from their mistakes, Robbie has advised that they are marketing to our SMB customers.  http://blogs.technet.com/sbsaustralia/archive/2008/05/15/microsoft-smb-customer-profiling-a-follow-up.aspx Thank you Microsoft for letting us know about this.  It shows that you have learnt from your last experience 🙂  I look forward to hearing more about what you learn about our customers so that together we can help the customers build their business. Category: Business Focus Published: 19/05/2008 10:19 PM

Body: Now I really don’t think Microsoft know what they are in for with this announcement.  Late last night, Robbie Upcroft – the Microsoft Australia dude covering the SBSC program and the SBS/EBS product range, made the following announcement to the local SBSC yahoogroup.  I’ve known Hilton for some years now and he’s pretty much a nice guy.  Sure there are times when I wish he would just shut up, but I believe that all in all, his heart is in the right place.  Hilton is replacing Dean Calvert here in Australia as the SBSC PAL, and to be honest, … Continue reading New Small Business Specialist Partner (SBSC) Area Lead (PAL) for Australia – Hilton Travis

Body: Microsoft have today released the US pricing for Small Business Server 2008 and Essential Business Server 2008.  The official announcement is here. In addition, they have announced changes in how they will deal with Client Access Licenses (CALs) for SBS 2008 in allowing the purchase of single CAL increments, therefore making it easier for clients to stay correctly licensed. Today Microsoft announced the following prices for the Windows Essential Server Solutions family: Windows Small Business Server 2008 Standard Edition software, including five CALs, $1,089 (U.S.); additional CALs $77 each (U.S.) Windows Small Business Server 2008 Premium Edition software, including … Continue reading SBS 2008 and EBS 2008 Pricing Released

Body:   I picked up a 16G Corsair Flash Voyager when I was in the US last month from Frys.  It worked fine on my laptop but refused to work on my desktop.  Instead I got the dialog box on below requesting drivers for it.  Naturally I didn’t have drivers for it. I did some digging and found this article on their website. The Corsair website had some helpful FAQ’s that I found at this link it had the instructions below. Please try the following instructions to get your USB devices working properly in Windows Vista: 1. Go to Local … Continue reading USB Flash Drive not working on Windows Vista?