Mike Southby

It’s been over a year now since Windows 7 RTM came to market, a year which unusually for a newly released Microsoft OS has been in the main, trouble free.  The transition for many business users from Windows XP to Windows 7 has been easier than with previous incarnations, certainly surprisingly simple considering there is a decade separating the two operating systems which let’s face it in the ever changing world of IT, is a huge gap.

Overall Windows 7 has been a massive boost for Microsoft generally with the latest figures telling us that more than 150 million licences have already been either installed or at least sold.  So what does this tell us (apart from the size of Microsoft’s bank balance)?  Well, importantly it means that Windows 7 has now effectively overtaken the installed user base of Windows Vista during its first year of sale which let’s face it is huge for Microsoft although for us; not at all surprising given that Vista is far from perfect (or even good actually).

I was an early adopter of Windows 7 and moved my primary machine to Windows 7 Ultimate prior to the official release (I was fortunate enough to be given an official copy by Microsoft prior to the public release date) and was genuinely surprised by the ease of installation compared to prior versions; things like driver installation and compatibility checks are now fully managed by the system.  Owing to Vista being – well – actually quite rubbish, I didn’t transition via Vista and came from using Windows XP on my machines.   Windows 7 is definitely the most stable and robust all round operating system I have used to date for my day to day use, both at home and work.

It’s not all great though, on my T61p battery life is not as good as it used to be and there are a few other areas which have been made unduly complicated compared to Windows XP.  But of course Windows 7 is designed appeal to all, including consumers who demand the fluid, GUI improvements and work arounds which I would historically have done manually via the command line; that’s not to say that this can’t still be done, in fact with PowerShell this is even more powerful than ever.  Let’s not forget that we are still in the infancy of the OS though, with SP1 under development and due to be released soon I am sure some of these annoyances will be addressed making the OS even better.

Of course in the meantime, now manufacturers have more experience of Windows 7 too, updating the BIOS to the latest version will undoubtedly help with any hardware issues such as the increased battery drain, and updating drivers will iron out any system glitches, although they are few and far between.

For sure though, Windows 7 is Microsoft’s most polished operating system to date (although I do still remember Windows 2000 fondly; it just worked!) and it’s safe to assume there will have been some questions raised in the Microsoft hierarchy as to why Vista wasn’t anywhere near as successful.  I’m sure some eye brows were raised.

I look forward to testing Windows 8 at an early stage – I believe the public release date is tentatively set sometime during 2012 – when it becomes available on TechNet, it is most likely to follow in the ilk of Windows 7 and will be Microsoft’s most ambitious project to date, really making full use of cloud and mobile computing whilst fighting off the ever nearer threat from Apple, Linux and most recently Google.

Microsoft finally seems to be heading in the right direction again.

If you are using your iPhone with Exchange 2007 you’ll notice that Exchange now forces a remote policy which requires you to have a passcode on your device (of course this also applies to other mobile devices and not just the iPhone).  I’m sure for some this is not an issue but for those users who do not need this security feature enabled and/or simply do not want to have to enter a passcode every time, there is of course a way to disable the feature.

Firstly, you’ll need to have administrative rights to the Exchange 2007 server, so if you do and you’re able to either access the box locally or remotely via RDP, read on.

Assuming you are now sat looking at the desktop on your server, do the following (I have based this guide on a standard installation of Small Business Server 2008, but of course still applies to a stand-alone build of Exchange 2007, just follow the same steps):

• Click through Start>All Programs>Microsoft Exchange Server 2007>Exchange Management Console
• You’ll be greeted with a Windows needs your permission to continue dialogue box, select Continue
• Once in the console, expand Organization Configuration and highlight Client Access
• There should only be one policy active, which is the Windows SBS Mobile Mailbox Policy <servername>, right click this and select Properties
• Click on the Password tab
• Next uncheck the Require password checkbox and hit Apply then OK
• You can now close all of the open windows

You should now find that the forced passcode is no longer required.

If you found this guide useful, please leave a comment below.  Remember you can also subscribe to any future posts via email by clicking here.

For some time now I have been using Google Apps as my main mail provider, I’d been a long time Microsoft Exchange user until I made the switch from Windows Mobile devices to Android.  It made sense to change my mail provision so that I could use Android in the manner it was designed i.e. with  Google Mail, Contacts, Calendar and Tasks.

Generally, I have been happy with the service (especially when you consider the Standard Edition is free and isn’t a noticeably inferior product to the Premium Edition) although I do acknowledge it has a few quirks, not to mention horrendous support from Google should you require assistance.  Of course aside from push email support via my Android handset, the Google Apps service also includes plain and simple IMAP support; it’s here that I encountered one of the quirks.

Ever since configuring the account on my machine, whenever sending an email using Outlook two copies of the mail appear shortly after in my Gmail sent items folder (although only one copy is actually sent to the recipient).  Now this may not seem such a big deal but it has a couple of issues; firstly over time it will fill up my quota a lot quicker, perhaps not a major issue for most people but if let’s say you are sending a 1Mb file attachment, you’re going to be using 2Mb of space.  Secondly, perhaps more importantly is that when you use the Gmail web client instead of Outlook, it’s going to really mess up your conversation thread as there will be 2 copies which can be a little confusing.

So how do you solve getting two copies of sent mails while using IMAP in Outlook?

It’s important first to understand why the two copies appear and not just accept that they do.  When you send an email through Outlook, Outlook saves a copy of the sent mail and transmits it to the server (in this case smtp.gmail.com).  When the email is sent from the server to its destination, Google save another copy of the sent mail automatically which is then of course – as you’re using an IMAP connection – synced back to your machine hence the two copies.

Of course Google should be smart enough to know that the mail is being sent from a dedicated client such as Outlook and check to see if a copy has already been saved before saving it again, but alas not.  So the solution is to change where Outlook saves its local copy of the sent mail; it’s not an ideal situation but it does stop your Gmail folder from becoming full of duplicates!

To make the change, go to Tools>Account Settings>Email and select the email account in question and then Change.  This will open a window titled Change Email Account.  Click the More Settings option at the bottom.

Click the Folders tab which will enable you to choose where to store a copy of all outgoing messages (remembering that Google is going to automatically store one for you in your Gmail sent items) and change the default choice to Save sent mail in the Outlook Sent Items Folder, this will save the duplicated copy in a local unused folder instead which of course can be cleaned up when required; or you can also choose not to have Outlook save a copy of sent mail at all (again remembering that Google will automatically place a copy in your sent items).

After the requirement of the European Commission for Microsoft to offer a choice of browsers to its users (See Article), I noticed that Windows Update has today downloaded a small update which finally gives me the choice (not that I or anyone else of course could not have already manually changed browsers beforehand) as to which browser I prefer to use with Windows 7.

The update in question is KB976002 – Microsoft Browser Choice Screen Update for EEA Users of Windows 7.

Once downloaded and applied, the update adds an icon to your desktop (appropriately named Browser Choice) which when clicked, opens up Internet Explorer and continues to offer you a selection of alternative browsers for you to take a look at or download (the download links and appropriate links to the relevant vendor sites for information are included for convenience).  The current options are:

• Internet Explorer
• Mozilla Firefox
• Google Chrome
• Safari
• Opera
• Sleipnir
• Avant
• K-Meleon
• GreenBrowser
• FlashPeak
• Flock
• Maxthon

By clicking the Browser Choice icon and running through the options, you’ll notice that Internet Explorer is automatically unpinned from the taskbar but that it is not uninstalled (of course Internet Explorer forms an integral part of the OS and can never be fully uninstalled), although it is possible to further remove all reference to it by un-checking the Internet Explorer option by going to Control Panel > Programs and Features > Turn Windows features on or off.

I think the inclusion of this choice is a step in the right direction but I would have liked to have seen it taken a step further.  It would have been great to have seen an option to not only choose additional browsers, but the ability to define your default browser and remove reference to Internet Explorer (if that’s what you choose to do of course) all in one place.

Personally I still use Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.6 and Google Chrome 4 so this update has not changed anything for me but I am sure that it will have an impact on the browser trends within Europe over the coming years as more and more people come to realise that they have a choice; perhaps then Microsoft will start developing further releases of Internet Explorer to the same set of standards as other vendors in the hope that its popularity increases once again.

Discuss.