Alan Feldman

:Winner, Again

Alan Feldman — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 17:56:00 +0000

From the Colligo Reader User Satisfaction Survey...

"CONGRATULATIONS TO ALAN FELDMAN – I am pleased to announce the winner to the Samsung MP3 player. Alan Feldman is President of Virtual October, Inc. - a firm based in York, PA that specializes in server maintenance, installation, and support for small businesses."

:Paperless Office Dreams

Alan Feldman — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 14:33:00 +0000

The paper-less office was just a pipedream years ago. The promise was to lower the use of paper and printing needs. What was supposed to do this...The basic computer. In fact it did just the opposite. Printing documents, emails, and everything has become so easy that no one even thinks about it anymore...The truth is the paper, toner, printers and filing cabinets are costing your company over $5,000 annually. That number is probobly a really low figure. Our new free paper audit will show you how we can re-coup that for you, guaranteed.

:Dude, You're Dell Is On Fire

Alan Feldman — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 12:29:00 +0000

Despite being threatened by Dell that I wouldn't see my Dell laptops replacement battery until hell freezes over, it arrived the other day. About a week is all it took. I was preparing to make alternate plans if I didn't see it soon. I stuffed the explosive battery back in the mail, and sent it postal mail back to china. The poor mail person. Little did they know they would have to handle 4 million defective batteries that are anticipated to explode at any moment.

:Earthlink Spam?

Alan Feldman — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 18:36:00 +0000

Well you might think that Earthlink is only worth as much as spam. But Earthlink is now listed on spam blacklists. If you use smtp.earthlink.net to send mail for your home or office, you might be surprised to see that some of the mail is now coming back as "not delivered" because the sending server is "know for sending spam".
After about an hour phone call to Earthlink technical support, I was able to somehow decypher what the foreign tech support staff was trying to say. Instead of using smtp.earthlink.net, we are now to use smthauth.earthlink.net as our outbound mail server. And to top that off we need to authenticate with our earthlink email account and password and use connect to them only on port 587.

New outbound mail server: smtpauth.earthlink.net
New outbound mail server port: 587
Authenticate with your earthlink username and password.

Talk about a mess for a small office. And a mess for anyone not using earthlink.net as their email address anyway. My clients office just uses them for the DSL line. Earthlink makes us use their mail servers because they are afraid we will send spam. What a crock!
For my client, that meant digging through ancient documentation to find out firstly what their earthlink.net email address even is. Since no one used it before, no really knew. I found an ancient piece of handwritten notes stuffed in a drawer near the server that finally did the trick.
I also had to change the ports that their internal Exchange server was using to send mail. Instead of the default port 25, I had to change it deep in the Exchange server settings to the new port, 587. Not only the port, but I had to change Exchange 2003 to authenticate to send mail with the new settings. I actually added this is two locations in Exchange before my test emails worked.

Try these links if you need to change your settings in Outlook or Outlook Express.

:Patch Management

Alan Feldman — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 17:54:00 +0000

Patches and updates to Microsoft Windows PC's in a network environment used to be laxed and "as needed". I remember the philosophy only 10 years ago with NT machines that you stayed exactly 1 Service Pack behind Microsoft.
Today patches are still coming out as fast as they ever did. But installing them to a network of computers is difficult, even for networks with as few as 5 PC's. "If you leave the updates up to the end users," Says Alan Feldman, President of Virtual October, Inc. ,"you're asking for more headaches."
With new software tools running on your network, now there is a way to only approve those patches and updates that you are sure work. Now keeping your server and network computers up to date has never been easier.

:BlackBerry Sync

Alan Feldman — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 20:05:00 +0000

BlackBerry calendar and contact sync used to only be for the big guys. Now There is a FREE single user edition of BlackBerry Enterprise Server! Additional users can be added for $99 each up to 15 users. It will run on Small Business Server 2003. I just completed my first implementation and am ready to deploy on a regular basis. If you are interested in learning more, please feel free to contact me.

:SBS 2003 Client Application Deployment

Alan Feldman — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 15:10:00 +0000

I was searching high and low to figure out if Small Business Server 2003 could deploy client applicatoins to Windows 2000 Professional. I know it works for XP Professional. I think I finally figured out that it does. It does not deploy for Windows 98 or Windows ME.

The Set Up Client Applications Wizard only works with client computers running Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional and Microsoft Windows XP Professional. If you have a client computer running a different operating system, you must connect to the share manually from the client computer.

:Service Pack 2006

Alan Feldman — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 20:03:00 +0000

Numerous vendors have now posted service packs, including Trend Micro and Microsoft. Trend Micro has SP1 available for it's Client Server Messaging Security Suite for SMB. Microsoft has SP2 for Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and SP2 for Windows Sharepoint Services. Contact Virtual October to have your updates completed.

:Microsoft's Focus

Alan Feldman — Thu, 04 May 2006 13:20:00 +0000

Despite being evacuated from the facility for a fire in an electrical room, the recent TS2 event sponsored by Microsoft was a great learning experience. Highlights of the event included the entire presentation runninng on Windows Vista Beta, Microsoft's new Windows platform launching in early 2007. Despite earlier claims that everyone would have to upgrade all of thier hardware to partake, Vista will ship in 32bit versions taking advantage of todays most recent PC and laptop purchases.
The 2007 Office (not Office 2007 - huh?) has drastic menu changes, but very intuitive, better use of screen space, faster formatting, and a new document standard based on xml that allows anyone to view a document without having to have that version of Office. In fact you don't even need Office at all since it is an Internet enabled format. Despite the late relase date, you can still make Office 2003 pay for itself in less than 8 hours of your time (that's how much simpler it is to use) and I can even show you a way to get a FREE UPGRADE to 2007 Office when it comes out.
R2 version of Small Business Server 2003 is mostly full of the latest Service Packs for the first version. However the Premium version does include SQL 2005. The new branch office support allows the setup of a "Virtual Server" that synchronized shared data, so no matter what office you are in, you see the exact same things. Seamless failover is included so users stay connected even when the local server or Internet connection drops.
Many more topics and demo's where discussed. I didn't win any books or CD's, but all in all it was a great event.

:Good Bye Windows 98, ME

Alan Feldman — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 12:51:00 +0000

In what is bound to go down with some screaming and yellling, Microsoft has announced that it will stop support of Windows 98 and Windows ME in July of this year. Support documents will still be available online though. Microsoft is planning a 2007 release of their latest Windows desktop software called Microsoft Vista.

:Windows XP Paging file missing

Alan Feldman — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 15:57:00 +0000

Virtual October is on the case of the "Missing Windows XP Paging File". The paging file is a swap file, or virtual memory file that Windows uses in addition to your RAM installed in your computer. Without a page file, Windows is sluggish and slow.

Even after I reset the Virtual Memory in Control Panel, System, Advanced Tab, Performance, Settings and rebooted there is still no pagefile.sys. I did this multiple times so I was sure I wasn't losing my touch.

Norton Antivirus was installed, that could be it. I was upgrading to Trend Micro Client Security anyway. So I removed Symantec Norton AV, installed the Trend Micro CS client and rebooted. No change.

Then I found a Microsoft article about the issue. Which directed me to a site about Intel's Application Accelorator. I downloaded and prepared myself to be let down again, but after the reboot, it worked. Pagefile.sys intact and working. Performance is much better now.

:DELL laptop fuzzy display fix

Alan Feldman — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 15:47:00 +0000

For some reason Dell is shipping their laptops with a "low resolution" setting in Internet Explorer (IE). When you browse the Internet, all the pictures are blurry, fuzzy and really quite nasty looking. After ton's of research, I finally found the fix and ran it on quite a few laptops already. It does work, but you need to edit the registry. I strongly suggest making a backup of the registry first and then making the change, just in case.

You just need to change one registry setting located at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main

Change "UseHR" to dword:00000000. It is probobly set to 1 right now.

Reboot and everything is clear!

:Microsoft Certified Small Business Specialist

Alan Feldman — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 18:40:00 +0000

I passed the MS Certified Small Business Specialist test today. I had already take the sales test. More info soon on the logo and the benefits.

:Cancer Benefit Golf Tournament in York

Alan Feldman — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 21:41:00 +0000

The 15th annual Peter A. LaCesa memorial golf tournament will be held on May 20th at Briarwood Golf Course in York Pennsylvania. The benefit has donated almost $120,000 to the York unit of the American Cancer Society and the York Cancer Center Patient Fund. Virtual October is proud to be a sponsor of the event. Please see their website for more information, to register, or to sponsor the event. www.palgolf.org

:Outlook limits

Alan Feldman — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 20:17:00 +0000

Here is a new one for you. Not only do you have the limits imposed by an Exchange server for your Outlook 2003 settings, but you also have a local registry setting that imposes limits on Outlook's local .pst and .ost file sizes. Only fix, keep your inbox trimmed down.