Binaryspiral

I think Microsoft may have finally created an OS that can replace Windows XP. Of course I’m only speaking about my personal experiences with the latest incarnate of Windows, but it’s all pretty positive.

Same spec’ed laptop as the Windows 7 Beta review I posted a while back. Running its native Vista 64bit installation, I decided to try the upgrade path instead of a clean install. The worst result is an unstable install that I would nuke and do a fresh 7 install.

The upgrade took damn near 2.5 hours, mostly thrashing the hard drive moving files around. The installer was detailed enough to give me a percentage of completion on each task plus an overall progress bar – but never an estimated time (that has never been correct in the history of any Microsoft progress bar anyway).

After the upgrade – everything worked. The laptop was still a member of the domain, fingerprint scanner, graphics driver, network adapters, bluetooth… heck even iTunes and Outlook 2007 was working.

I’m fairly impressed and it seems to be catching on around the office – two others have upgraded or installed a VM to see the buzz. I think we made the right choice to skip Vista on the desktops and wait for 7 to bake in the Microsoft oven long enough to be a worthy replacement.

The college recently purchased a new Sophos Email Security appliance model. It was very easy to setup and I’m looking forward to having PureMessage filtering our spam and crapmail attacks, it’ll be a good thing.

The Active Directory integration is not a polished as their Web Security appliances’ are. We have two WS1000 appliances, also from Sophos. Both hooked right into AD and pulled down both students and staff accounts without issue. Even indicated what sub-domains it found during the process. Top notch, no brainer installation.

The problem I’m writing about is the ES4000 appliance’s inability to detect our second domain in the same forest as the domain our service account is in. First off, it couldn’t even automatically detect settings using the same service account using the “Detect Settings…” feature. An undocumented bug was documented on experts-exchange.com with the workaround being you have to use an account with Schema Admin privileges in the domain’s original Users OU. Once detected, you could move the user and modify the DN used to authenticate.

Okay, that one was fixed. But I still couldn’t sync both staff and students – even if I pointed the Base DN to the top domain or left it blank.

I opened a case with Sophos and went through first level support. After 48 hours (plus a weekend) of remote support they kicked me to second tier.

Second tier connected remotely and continue the troubleshooting. After an hour or so they found a workaround and had me test it. Success.

Fix: Replace the Base DN for users/groups with a single space. Done and now it works. I’m not much of an LDAP junkie, but I would consider that a bug.

Anyway, it works for me and I hope it helps someone else out there scratching their head wondering why the eff their ES4000 is not working.

Side note: All in all, Sophos support is pretty good I just wish they would read my entire email before firing back the first canned response that essentially was exactly what I had already done. For anyone absolutely buried with this product, I can highly recommend leveraging their consulting services. Well worth the small price to get it done right the first time.

Now to be perfectly fair, I’m not going to blame all of my issues on BlackBerry or their Enterprise Server. I will however, consider their method of message relay and integration with our environment quite a hack and their support staff a challenge to work with, especially late at night.

That being said… here’s my problem and what I’ve found that fixes it – I hope it may help you.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Silicon Valley’s Next Big Innovation: Pay Cuts.

Cutting 5% pay or lay folks off… HP made the right choice.

Also an interesting quote from the story:

MIT economist Martin Weitzman suggested in the 1980s that instituting pay cuts instead of layoffs could make recessions shorter and less painful. By setting base salaries lower and making pay more variable with a business’s financial results, companies could avoid cutting jobs and increase workers’ rewards in good times. HP is trying exactly that, with a change to its bonus plans that could make up for the pay cuts if times do well.

I’d take a job where my sallary was more flexible but rewarded when the company was doing great – I’d also be willing to accept a pay cut to help retain the quality people I work with. It makes so much sense… far too simple to be implemented by anyone.

Today’s economy is really bad. Companies and the people that make them run are having a tough time staying afloat… these are things I understand. With that being said, I am tired of hearing from every sales rep in a two hundred mile radius looking to score a sale on something using an economical sob story or strong arm sales tactics promising me to save me more money.

If I don’t – I must be a total idiot. Haven’t you noticed the economy!? Why don’t you want to replace your stuff with our cheaper stuff so you save more money?

Here’s an email I received this morning… verbatim except for proper nouns have been included exactly as I got it.

Hey Jason:

This is (sales person x)  from (CompanyX). I left you a voice message earlier but figured this

Would be a less intrusive route to take.

I’ve attached a new promo we have running for 3 FREE month’s of PRI service.

Also, we have many new products your are probably not aware of yet.

Allot has changed in the last couple of years with our company.

I have worked with all the (A Local Company) buildings in (my city). I Also have delivered (another local company) Corp. Ethernet handoff

To their doorstep with an MPLS Network system.

We now have Data P2P’s for under $300.00 as well as up to 45MB circuits available.

If given the opportunity… I’m 99.999% sure I can save Blackhawk a significant amount

Of money as well as upgrade the services. (Given I was a Graphic Designer for 10 years…)

Please let me know if Wednesday or Thursday around 10:00am would work for you next week.

I will look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

So I listen to the voice mail waiting for me, it’s almost as challenging to listen to as reading this email. I also deleted the cold call from an IBM sales rep, and someone else trying to sell me something I already have.

My day was already busy as hell and I have way too much going on to coddle a graphic artist that should have had a copy writer editing her emails… so my reply was short and polite.

Hello [sales rep's first name],

Thank you for the email follow up to your voice mail message.

However, we are not interested in changing our telecommunication services providers.

Best regards,
[my standard signature]

But that wasn’t the last I’d hear from her. At 5:00pm tonight, my Blackberry buzzes with the following reply:

Jason:

Im just asking for an opportunity to show you that you have options.

With the economy the way it is… Your telling me your not at all interested

In looking at cutting you costs?

There’s a part of me that is pissed off that sales person x would use the economy to sell me CLEC services. 2,000 people in my town just lost their job and now I have to be the bad guy by not buying her wares.

There’s another part of me that feels sorry for this person. Maybe this is a last job of desperation to make ends meet. If I don’t meet with X, they’ll lose their job.

I haven’t decided if or how I can reply to this without sounding like a complete jerk or going off on a rant.