Hotmail

Oh no!!!!! The e-mail server is down!!!!!! The end of your life!!!!!!

Try gmail. Less buggy, better presentation. Less Microsoft market presentation.

Yeah, I did. Love that penetration! Especially market penetration. Wet, sweaty, sloppy market penetration.

Actually kay, Outlook and Thunderbird are far superior for managing multiple email accounts; especially Thunderbird (because it’s not Microsoft), because they provide a non-internet reliant system, because the emails are stored locally on your computer, as opposed to the servers, and they can be configured to download the info as quickly or sporadically as you want. It increases your productivity, as you’re not reliant on somebody else. As long as your computer is working, you have access to the emails that were just recently downloaded onto your computer.

Pretty simple stuff, right? I’m sure that I’m just preaching to the choir though, as you would already know this since you’re in IT.

By the way, how’s that Windows NT 2003 edition treating ya?

PK— anytime. Just gotta flex that geek knowledge sometimes, ya know?

kay, I’d be more concerned about data integrity. See, the problem with cloud computing is that even the best 128 bit encryption can be cracked, so as far as your clients are concerned, they should be knocking down your door if you’re storing sensitive data online. There’s no substitute for a good server and a firewall, and you have a server, you can use a email client, because storage isn’t an issue! Less reliance on Microsoft’s crap e-mail servers (anybody who has the slightest bit of knowledge of computers knows they’ve never been called “world class”) and better data integrity. Good for your clients, better for you. Failing that, any small business person that doesn’t work from a networked CPU should have a external hard drive, because a good external only costs about $200 for a terabyte, which could be used to back up data, store customer data, if properly partitioned, and kept in a fireproof cabinet of some sort. I doubt any business would need more than 500 GB alone for basic customer info/sales records. I won’t even go into how most companies that rely on a mobile workforce use VPNs now to eliminate the issue regarding data integrity on local machines.

My advice to a client that has to sync their Outlook again is to deal with it; it’s not that hard, it just requires some patience. Sure it’s a pain in the ass to re-enter the info and usually it can be a complicated process to get network and calendar permissions up and running, but that’s when you remote in and do it for them. Most businesses run Windows-based systems (networked and not), I’d hazard a guess that at least 90% of non-networked small businesses use some form of Windows XP Pro or Vista Small Business. So, Remote Access isn’t a problem. Anyone who is running any version before XP deserves what they get, because Microsoft ended support a long time ago for those versions (not to mention too, if your pre-XP machine fails, without a recovery disc, you might as well buy a new machine). If you do IT support exclusively by phone to any Windows based machine, you might as well be an over educated guy from India to me, because that’s all they do and that’s provided free to me when I buy my business computer (my Dell Latitude certainly does), so why should I pay you? That said, I might as well use Linux and avoid the whole damn issue.

kay, where should I start?

The bank’s internet banking systems have been cracked, and info stolen. You just don’t hear about it; see they like to keep that stuff quiet-like ya know?

Yes, the Corporate Microsoft servers are better than your average server. But to access those, you need to be running either an unlimited license Enterprise version of Windows or Windows NT. Hotmail/Live is well known in the community as not being the best.

You fail to realize that integrity is also security. Because you’re cheap, you’re risking information security.

Of course VPNs aren’t new, but I’m telling you what is now becoming a business standard. Geez, I can download a VPN for myself to my personal machine, and I have so I can watch Hulu without any “we can’t play this video because you’re in Canada BS”. I don’t need a Cisco expert on hand to know how it works, as it’s a pretty simple program. Login, wait for connection, go online. When I used a VPN for business purposes from a laptop, it was encrypted, and was only active long enough to back up my work to my public and private drives at the office. No security risk there.

A small business would probably use less than 500 GB on spreadsheets, customer files, etc. In my example, I was using a terabyte, so that would leave approx. 450 GB left to account for formatted space. If a small business needs more than that, well, you buy a new one. Data storage is cheap now. Also, no large company like a bank would store customer data online, or with some small time IT company like yours that relies on Hotmail for cloud computing, especially in this day in age where a $500 desktop can be used as a data storage server.

Yes, I am a bit of an expert, and apparently I know your job better than you do. But hey, these are just musings from someone who spent 4 years doing light (e.g.: networking, POS issues), local IT work for a retailer on top of my other duties. Everything is different in the kay world.

Ruby, you must be talking about the iMaxiPad. It’s not available as yet, but as far as the unit itself is concerned, if you’ve ever used an iPod Touch or an iPhone, it’s basically those two same products, with a bigger screen, and no Flash support, because Apple hates Flash, because people like Flash to run multimedia stuff because it’s more user-friendly than Quicktime. But Steve Jobs needs a new turtleneck, so he’s gotta sell another useless toy.