Windows 7 Testing

So I have been testing the Windows 7 Release Candidate all summer on my primary computer. I can't say enough good about it. It's stable, sleek, and has some great new functionality. The majority of our applications are SAAS's and most everything else looks like it will be compatible with Win7. We look forward to the release of their final product and you can rest assured that I will be purchasing an upgrade.

This statement might date me, but, remember the days of Windows 98? I worked a helpdesk and this was a very typical conversation.

Me: Hello?
Caller: My program isn't working.
Me: Reboot your computer.
Caller: I just did like TWO HOURS ago.
Me: I know that it hasn't been a long time since you last rebooted but let's try it just in case.
Caller: (while computer reboots) How come I have to reboot my computer at least 3 times a day?
Me: I know it is frustrating and we will upgrade to Windows 2000 as soon as our software is configured to work with it.
Caller: My computer is back up and that fixed it. Thanks so much for your help. You are smartest and the nicest computer guy ever. You are destined to be super successful or work at a church.

OK it wasn't exactly like that but you get the idea. Check out the picture to the right. The first number for the Up time is in days. I know that it is small but it does say 28. I've been running my computer for 28 days and it is still killing it. I don't have memory leaks and my applications aren't slowing down. Instead of rebooting because of problem I now reboot because of updates. Well done Microsoft. One down and a few more major issues to go.

MacCrossings

At various roundtables and the MinistryTech conferences we discussed Macs heavily. When talking about supporting Macs in a MS environment we never discussed if we would allow Macs on the network, it was always a what are you doing. Well my internal answer to that was, "If they leave me alone, I'll leave them alone." I'm realizing that may not be. Jason Lee has documented the integration of Mac hardware into an Active Directory domain. It is my starting point and we are moving to a more Mac-friendly environment.

Despite what the commercials depict, PC's and Macs generally do the same thing. If we can allow people to to the same work on a platform they are comfortable and knowledgeable with, why not?

Management tools are getting better and the line between the two worlds is becoming less and less prominent. Lately, I've been using a couple of Macs (MacBook, and MacMini). I've come to the conclusion they really are cool. Don't tell anyone I said this, I'll emphatically deny it. I don't see myself using one anytime in the distant future but for commodity computers their UI is sleek and simple, it's easy to learn, the OS is stable, and the hardware is designed specifically to work together.

Am I being blinded by pretty hardware and marketing hype?

The Shack

This is an interview of the author of The Shack on the Today Show today. He as some real bold things to say about religion and Christ. It is worth watching. I haven't read the book personally but I hear that it is changing people's lives.

Baskin Robins vs Linux

There are many flavors of Linux out there in various forms. Some have cool names some have cool branding. I started out with RedHat. Then I moved to their Fedora distro. Now I am using Ubuntu and now they are my go-to-guys for two major revisions. I use ubuntu because there is a plethora of detailed of instructions sets for step-by-step instructions with screen shots and complete command line examples. I'm a gumby when it comes to Linux and I know that. It's been nice; all I need to do is add ubuntu and a description of what I want to accomplish in a search bar and I'll find newbie instructions so I can do what I want.

Linux is a great tool (OpenSource, Yeah!) since it can run on outdated hardware and there are no licensing fees associated with it. Some people use it to run everything from testing to full production.

I know why I chose Ubuntu but it makes me wonder why people choose their specific flavor of Linux. Am I missing out on some great gem or going about Linux entirely the wrong way?

OpenOffice

Ever since I was exposed to OpenOffice in 2003 I've been keeping an eye on it. My interest was initially sparked by an article that indicated the City of Houston was moving away from MS Office to a hosted product called SimDesk. That got me looking around and I came across OO. I've used sporadically on  personal level but haven't thought much about moving our organization to it until now. We have a volunteer that is a trainer and he is willing to help get our church offices converted. I plan to meet with him and iron out some of the logistics but needless to say I'm very interested. I've said it before but I'll say it again, Non-profit pricing models are great but OpenSource pricing is hard to beat. This is really possible especially since the OpenSource applications have gotten so good in the recent years.

I'm interested if any other organizations have scrapped MS Office for an openSource package like OpenOffice.

As a follow up the City of Houston is no longer using StarOffice as far as I can tell.

OS imaging and Cloning computers

Until recently when we get new computers from our manufacturer we just use the default load that comes on them. We then have to patch each computer and load the necessary software. Up until recently that has worked fine for us. Granted, it does take us quite a while to deploy new systems. Our last batch of computers had some sort of issue with the image that was loaded to all of the computers and they would lock up frequently. The worst part is that we didn't notice this common issue with the computers until most of them were deployed. I am not fast and furious looking into imaging products so we can clone our default image with all necessary software and patches. I figure I can take a deployment process form 4 hours to less than 1. In come cases if the computer doesn't have any additional software we can bring the configuration time to about 15 minutes which is a serious improvement of 4 hours.

In the past I used the Symantec Ghost product but licensing on it is a little tricky and it has been several years but all I can remember is creating boot disk after boot disk. So, I am looking into some other cloning packages.

I tried to go the free route and use Clonezilla. I am sure it works great but not being super Linux savvy I had massive amounts of trouble. After several days I was able to pull an image but was never able to successfully push an image. Frustrating. My PXE boot would hang during the Linux boot process. I can only guess that my hardware wasn't compatible with the PXE boot image of Linux.

My struggles led me to a vendor called Acronis. I had used one of their products (True Image) so we could backup a production server to an image and restore it to dissimilar hardware. That is kind of what we are trying to do but only on Desktops and Laptops. Browsing around on their site I am persuing their Snap Deploy product It has some wonderful features that I'm very excited about, but it is a little pricey for me.

If I've overlooked some great products I'd sure love to try some others before I go and buy Snap Deploy.

Where's all of the traffic?

I was doing my weekly breeze through of my google analytics and when I came across the blog listing I noticed it had completely flatlined which reminded me that I hadn't posted anything in a while. The truth is, we've been busy. Mostly because we are looking for a network administrator to manage our IT infrastructure, we are replacing the brains in our PBX Thursday, and I'm getting ready to go to camp with the 5th and 6th graders from the church. Sad to say but the blog has been a little neglected and I apologize for that. So, please accept my apology.