Kicking and Screaming I am Bloggin

Folks who know me know I have been a Symantec AV guy for a long time, note I did not say a Norton AV, I said Symantec, there is a huge difference in the products. I know they’re made by the same company, but one is made for the consumer market and has to run on it’s own and one is built for the commercial market where there is actually someone in charge of IT and capable (we hope) of maintaining the network. When Symantec released Endpoint, I was annoyed that they stopped selling the standalone Symantec Antivirus program. Why do AV vendors think we want everything bundled? However after using it for a while, I was able to figure out how to disable all the extra stuff it does. One of the problems with the original release is it stops shares from working on SBS, but there is a fix for this READ ABOUT IT HERE. Beleive it or not this was not the biggest problem, the original release (at least on SBS) had a database that just kept growing. The default install goes to %program files% on the system drive, I found this out when my server stopped cold because it ran out of room. So if you are running a build ealier than 11.0.1000.1375 run don’t walk to the download center and get a newer build. Don’t wait until your server crashes. The newer build is much more well behaved. The database that killed my server was 12+ GB (it grew that big in 10 days) the new buld has been running a couple of weeks now and it is maintaining at a nice reasonable size of 115 Mb.  If you are installing SEP (Symantec EndPoint) on SBS make sure to READ THIS FIRST.

Ever wish someone would write a manual describing how to partner with Microsoft and actually make some money in the process? Would you really read it if they did?

Well your wish has just been answered, sprinkle some fairy dust over your keyboard and CLICK_HERE, now to see if you bother to read it. The ball is in your court, as they say.

That’s right, due to popular demand Eric is holding the second ever Small Business Show.

Keeep the date and time one January 24th at 11:00am pst

I’ll be there will you?

So like me did you think the earth had opened up and swallowed Gavin, well He just came back into the world of Electrons bouncing around the Planet

Welcome Home Gavin we expect great things, or at least a few airplane jokes :>)

 It has long be said the Necessity is the mother of invertion, but I offer that in the IT world it is more often than not Frustration that drives us. You don’t think so? Hop of over to the FunCave and see what a Truck full Of Ninjas is all about, maybe even offer yourself up as a sacrafice to the beta gods :>)

And speaking of the FunCave and Chris;
Chris is chairing the planning committee for the first electronics recycling event ever held in West Alabama. The public collection of E-Cycling Day isn’t due to happen until January 24.

As of last Friday, thanks to large equipment pledges from a couple of local businesses which have already been picked up…E-Cycling Day has already collected 27,000+ pounds of electronic equipment!

They’re estimating they will collect 200,000+ pounds of equipment by the end of this event.
 

E-Cycling Day has started to garner a TON of attention, but they (the planning committee) would like it to receive more attention even farther out than our state.

Specifically, they’d like E-Cycling Day to get some “airplay” hither and yon, as we would like to be able to share our model with folks or organizations interested in forming an e-cycling event in their area.

Here is the link to the official event website at
www.tuscaloosachamber.com/ecycle.

Here are links to a couple of the Funcave write-ups about E-Cycling Day:

http://www.chrisrue.com/funcave/2007/12/where-have-i-been-and-what-have-i-been-doing.html

http://www.chrisrue.com/funcave/2007/12/mo-media.html

http://www.chrisrue.com/funcave/2008/01/27000-pounds-and-what-do-you-get.html

Well if you didn’t attend one of Eric Ligman’s live-meetings (like I suggested you should) on the new subscription licensing model, you missed yet another Big Announcement that could make you a bunch of money. I don’t know why he is giving you another chance at both of them, but hop on over to THIS POST and read about it before he changes his mind :>)

Ok Gang here is your chance to see all three of us in one place and sit in on some great presentations. Also a great chance to get some of your lingering questions answered.

OK Kathy just ran in to tell me there is no time listed, the meeting is from 2:00pm to 6:00pm, and now I know I have at least one reader, you can meet her tomorrow also :>)

Here is the invitation once again from our host Michael Pope,
{ please note after we sent out the first batch of these we heard from Mark that it should not be called a regional meeting, so I have renamed it the Big Meeting :>) }

The January meeting is one that you will definitely want to attend and bring as many other consultants as you know. This will be a DON’T MISS EVENT!!! This will be a joint meeting with both the Triad SBS User Group and the Charlotte SBS User Group so there will be lots of opportunity for networking with your peers! It will be held at the local Microsoft office . In addition to having Mark Crall in from Charlotte to discuss some upcoming changes to the SBSC program along with some other juicy tidbits of information, we will also have two other presentations. The two top dogs of Autotask will be present at the meeting. Bob Godgart, founder and CEO of Autotask, and Bob Vogel, Chief Marketing Officer, will be on-hand to discuss the Managed Services landscape, their products and any other questions you want to throw at them. And if all of that wasn’t enough, we will also have Elliot Curtis direct from Microsoft’s main campus in Redmond to discuss SPLA licensing for us. There has been a number of you interested in this particular licensing program and he will be here to help you understand it. We also may be able to get him to discuss the newest licensing scheme available here in the USA - Open Value Subscription! There are similarities at face value between it and on-site SPLA so it would be good to learn more about these programs. I look forward to seeing all of you there! Thanks! 

Michael

RTP Computer Services, Inc.
105 West NC Highway 54
Suite 265
Durham, NC 27713

You may have noticed if you recently installed Office 2003 SP3 that some files will no longer open. No you are not imagining it and your users are not going crazy. It was actually an intentional move by Microsoft to close up yet more security holes in older code. What you say you have to be able to read those files, fear not David LeBlanc comes to the rescue with his very nicely done explanintion of the problem, the risks and the workarounds.  As much as I hate when new software breaks old files, I have to aplaud Microsoft this time for going back and fixing Office 2003, when they are clearly moving ahead with Office 2007 which has recently released it’s own SP which means 2003’s days are numbered based on the software life-cycle.

No Microsoft is not going to be direct billing your clients under the new model if you choose to use it. Do you really think that they want to generate that much extra paperwork. Eric explians this very clearly in his RECENT POST. So relax, climb back off the conclusion you just jumped to and enjoy your weekend.

Hi Gang,

 As we welcome in 2008 rest assured it will be a very big year for SMB with many changes and many product releases to look forward to or to dread depending on your perspective. Remember change is not always a bad thing, if there were not new technologies coming to the market, what would you have to sell? If your clients didn’t need you to learn this stuff and teach it to them where would you be? So my advice is stay abreast of the upcoming technologies and how they can be implemented to streamline the business process of your clients.

Also remember to keep that positive attitude, when you walk in the door (or talk to them on the phone), they will certainly key off of you, if you are grumpy and talking about how you don’t like this change or that new technology, you will get that same attitude mirrored back to you. Walk in with a simile like you just won the lottery and showoff that new whizzbang whatever it is you want to sell that day.

This is the begining of a new year, time to make some great new habits and lose the old bad ones.
And the first of these new changes has just been published by our friend Eric Ligman, just hop on over to his blog and register for this important web training so you understand the newly offered licensing model and if it is a good fit for your clients. It may be a way to consolidate those mixed up licenses into one nice package.

Time is always hard to come by and manage, let me point you to some helpful tips to get you started and put a simle in your attitude.

As the Ferengi would say “Have a Profitable 2008″