Do you care about Vista?

With Vista, what do you get? Some new features, a new environment, new deployment tools, and so on… you know the story. The complaints fly, the developers groan, the desktop deployment teams drag their feet… and in the end, we all beat the dead-horse of change in IT.

Is this news to anyone? People are complaining about Vista as though they’ve never seen a platform change. Let me just stop here and ask… are there really that many new people employed in this profession? Do people actually not remember any of the past upgrade cycles? Surely you remember XP, 2000, NT, or DOS 6.2 (dblspace anyone?).

The cutting edge doesn’t come without pain-points.

Look… I’ve got a descent laptop – 3GB of RAM, some fairly fast Core 2 Duo CPU, nice graphics card, recently re-loaded OS with some up-to-date drivers. Even still… the thing’s not blazingly fast. And it won’t be. A year from now, with newer and faster hardware? Maybe… 2 years? Probably. That’s life. That’s what being on the cutting-edge is like. Are there some misses? Maybe. Will they be fixed? Some will. It is what is.

So do you care about Vista?

Me - as a user? Not really. It’s fine, and it works adequately. Just like my OpenSUSE workstations, my Virtual Server 2005 R2 boxes, and my VMware servers. Each has a place – be it client driven, or solution driven. But frankly – they’re all tools. If my USB-to-Serial adapter on my Vista box doesn’t have a driver, and my Linux box sitting next to is has a serial port… guess what? I’ll be using minicom to configure that switch until I fix the driver issue. If my client is partial to Virtual Server over VMware – guess what? In goes Virtual Server. I can’t say that the desktop is all that exciting. It works – and I work with more Windows boxes than Linux, or Mac boxes.

Vista is neat. Is it Porsche, or a Ferrari neat? No… it’s new $200 OS neat. Keep it in perspective.

Reloading Vista: Apps, tools, and utilities of interest

After dozens of installs/uninstalls, playing with beta apps, and in general just thoroughly abusing Vista on my laptop for the past 6 months, it’s come time to reload the machine. By and large the issues are of my own doing, so by no means is this a “Vista problem”.

So why am I telling you this?

I’ve spent the past few days finding all of the apps that aren’t part of my base-image, and thought it would be something light to post. So without further delay, listed below is my list of apps and tools (with comments when relevant) that I had to track down for this load. You’ll notice that many of these are open source, though some obviously are not. I’m sure I’ve missed a few things – if you see anything that should be here, let me know.

ThinkVantage System Update - Beats tracking down every driver individually. Though you’ll need to grab the appropriate driver for the wireless chip set (preferably first), if you’ve got a T60.
Visual Studio 2005, IIS 7, SQL Server 2005
Symantec Antivirus 10.2
Office 2007 Professional, Visio 2007.
Quickbooks 2007
Camtasia Studio – Great tool for creating webcasts and training materials.
Virtual PC 2007, Windows XP, Windows 2003, SBS 2003 guest machines
Knoppix – Not actually installed. Just haven’t grabbed a recent ISO.
Netstumbler – Doesn't hurt to have on hand.
Sysinternals Tools – Microsoft bought these guys somewhat recently. I use ProcessExplorer mostly, but a great suite a command line tools.
MBSA – For update scanning.
del.icio.us web-browser extensions for managing del.icio.us booksmarks and tags.
Deamon Tools – for mounting ISO images. I know Microsoft released an unsupported tool that does the same, but I’ve been using this for a couple of years and like it. Just make certain to uncheck the Search tools on install to avoid adware.
7Zip – Unzip tool with a GUI. It’s free, it works - and is similar to WinZip.
Adobe Acrobat Reader - Read PDFs.
KeePass Password Safe - Open Source tool for managing account information and passwords to web-sites and other resources.
GreatNews RSS reader – I used to use RSS Bandit, but Vista compatibility was a bit slow in coming so I switched. As I have more feeds that I can read daily, I’ve started using the NewsWatch feature almost exclusively for finding content of interest.
VMRCPlus – Great console GUI tool for managing Virtual Server 2005 R2 machines without having to bounce through the web-based interface. Which, as an aside, who thinks it was a good idea to release Virtual Server 2005 and have the only management tools be the web-console? I mean, maybe, just maybe if it was AJAX-based, but even still… anyway, VMRCPlus solves that problem, and has apparently been floating around internally at Microsoft for some time.
AngryIP Scanner – quickly probe subnets for hosts. I use it frequently – note that SAV 10.2 detects it has a security threat.
ISO Recorder – Burn ISO images.
2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS – Save As PDF from Office 2007 apps. No need for
PDF Creator – In case you don’t have Office 2007 and want to create PDF’s without Acrobat Professional.
Google Earth, or Microsoft Virtual Earth – Either, or, or both.
AD-COIT – My inventory script for scanning networks.
Citrix ICA Client – ICA client.
FileZilla – FTP client of choice.
JRE - Java runtime environment
TightVNC – One of many VNC clients
WinPcap – I don’t always install this on my main machine – but , it’s a packet capture library, and a requirement if you’re going to be using Wireshark.
WireShark – Previously known as Etheral - packet sniffing tool.
Paint.NET – You need some tools for manipulating graphics. I used to use The GIMP, but have been following PAINT.NET since the first beta a couple of years back. I like it, it works for me.
PowerShell – Think BASH for Windows kinda. If you haven’t heard of it yet, get familiar with it. Its how were managing Exchange 2007.
FireFox - An after thought.

Vista: T60 Video Drivers

Just to follow-up quickly on my last post; I've installed all of the new Lenovo T60 Vista driver updates. The video drivers were certainly worth the effort - being able to rotate the external 21" display is a nice touch. As is the 3D and video tuning center. Otherwise though, still no upates for Bluethooth, or the fingerprint scanner (wondering if anyone actually uses this).

Vista: Lenovo T60 Driver Updates

I looks like Lenovo just released some Vista driver updates for their ThinkPad T60, and T60P laptops. I've had Vista on my main machine now for about a month - most stuff seems to be working, minus little things like Bluetooth and the fingerprint scanner. I don't see an update for those yet - but I'll let you know if I see any other notable improvements from the new driver set.

Netadmin: Outlook Servername Autofill

Well, I haven't found an answer to exactly how Outlook 2007 queries for the mailbox servername, but I did find that that you can use an Exchange Profile Creator tool to "autoconfigure" the servername in earlier versions of Outlook - it's a bit of a hack, but appears to get the job done.

Back to Outlook 2007... Since I couldn't find any code or a KB article on how it works, I'll take a stab at it... During setup Outlook already knows the username and domain name that the workstation is joined to. From there, the client can query the GC, get a list of Exchange servers, and then query the list of mailboxes on each for the one that houses the mailbox that client needs access to. But that might take a while, and the during Outlook's setup it autofilled instantly. So maybe there's an attribute in Active Directory that we could use use an LDAP query to grab the server name from for the individual user account. That would certainly be a lot quicker than my first thought. If I have a chance to dig a bit deeper, I'll let you know what I find.

Netadmin: Windows Vista RTM hands-on

I downloaded and installed the RTM of Windows Vista and Office 2007 from the MSDN subscription site over the holiday weekend. While I've been checking out the betas off and on, I'm excited to get my hands on the RTM products. I'm in the process of bouncing between my XP laptop and my Vista box over RDP as I get some tools installed, and familiarizing myself with the Aero interface. Interesting stuff so far...

• Eventvwr - like many things - is new and improved. It has a very SBSAdminConsole feel to it and really appears to improve on the old tool.
• Outlook 2007 auto detects the name of the server that your mailbox is hosted on. I found some more details on this here... Outlook uses domain credentials to query for mailbox info in AD.... will need to follow-up to figure out exactly how this works.
• What? No ISO mounting utils... (Surprised me a bit - I thought I heard somewhere that we'd get this - maybe it was Longhorn). Anyway, latest version of Daemon tools seems to get the job done still.
• The sidebar and gadgets are neat.
• Need to register your admin pack?

I'll let you know if I hit any snags.

Vista: New Twists in VLK Management

Mark has a good post on what's new in VLK management under volume activation 2.0 (VA 2.0) for Windows Vista. If you check the FAQ, you probably won't find anything too unexpected. Depending on your environment there's going to be a few options here... for disconnected environments - or environments that don't have internet access on an on-going basis (manufacturing?), it looks like MAK and MAK independent activation will be the common model. For more traditional and/or corporate IT departmens (and SBSers alike), MAK plus MAK Proxy activation, or likely KMS activation (for managed environments with more than 25 machines) are going to be the common approach.

The short of it - read the FAQ. If you thought TS-licensing was inconvenient, then I don't imagine you'll be a fan of VA 2.0. On the other hand, after VA 1.0 we all should have seen the writing on the walls. VA 2.0 is just the next evolution of the service. Besides, if you're competing on price in the SMB segment, won't it be nice to know that the company your in competition with is going to be playing by the same licensing rules as you? Yeah, I thought so.

Vista: Pitching Vista? CRN gives Partners 10 reasons. But you only need 1!

CRN published an article on the Top 10 Reasons Partners Should Pitch Vista - it’s a good read, and something partners who haven’t had much exposure to Vista should definitely check out. But you know your average SMB customer isn’t going to listen beyond one or two reasons. So you’ve got to capture their attention right from the start.

“Save money through Managed Services”.

What does that have to do with Vista?

It has everything to do with the release of Vista. Partners – you should be actively evaluating Vista before it’s released, and should have a plan for how to incorporate it into your Managed services model. No managed services model? Well now is the time, and Vista is the perfect opportunity to start transitioning to Managed Services. Also, be sure to check out my business justification for Vista post.

Oh, and besides the Top 10 that CRN published, check out the comprehensive Vista site for IT Pro’s, as well as the Channel 9 Vista videos if you’re interested in more technical detail.

Vista: SMB Business Justification

So I’ll start with the “How do I justify Vista to the SMB market?” question. Why? Well, as I said before, it’s probably the more difficult of the two. And that said, for smaller customers, the answer is almost too simple.

They won’t have a choice.

So now you’re saying, Whoa… wait a second … what do you mean they won’t have a choice? Well, if you’ve worked with SMB customers you already know the answer. When Dell (or fill in the name of your low-cost workstation provider) stops selling systems with Windows XP, the SMB customers are just going to start replacing their systems with whatever is available at the time their workstations fail.

And that’s going to be Vista.

Okay so they’re not going to have a choice. I get it. But this isn’t a business justification for SMB customers to move to Vista.

Oh but it is. And if you’re a certified partner, it means it’s time to sit down with your whole team and come up with a new approach to selling to these smaller SMB customers. You see, these guys (small SMB) have always been the tough nuts to crack. Often times they have the highest expectations, the smallest budget, and are the slowest to pay. They’re also why certified partners tend to move up the chain to medium-sized businesses as soon as practical. But that said, smaller SMB tend to like fixed costs.

And that’s your opportunity. A fixed-cost managed services model.

Go back and take a look at some of what I’ve written about the managed services model. Because if you haven’t done much with managed services Vista can be your hook into this model. Now you’re going to have to invest some time into testing LOB-apps, and building an effective cost model, but if you can do this, you’re really going to be able to show value. Go out and find some cost models for older platforms… Windows 98/ME/2000/XP, better yet, create them based on your existing customer base. Now take your Vista testing effort, and create fixed-cost IT models where customers who standardize on a given platform (XP, or Vista), can benefit from a lower-cost model based on standardization.

I know what you’re thinking… this is a rehash of what corporate IT has been selling for years. It’s the managed-services/standardization mantra. And it’s typically been the hardest to articulate to SMB customers. Only now, with the falling costs of hardware, better remote support tools, and some good cost models, you can start to articulate this vision to your most difficult customers.

Get them on a supportable platform, and you can show real value. And while you're at it, start putting those Windows Vista betas though the paces. Figure out what's going to sell Vista like RDP sold XP to your existing customers. Then you'll be selling not just cost models, and chrome, but the whole package.

Vista: The geek-factor and beyond

In pursuing the Vista feature-set, I was struck be two things. The first was that from a technical (read geek) perspective, I’m really excited about this release. I’m pumped about the WIM imaging format and how it’s going to dramatically simplify our current internal image revision library. I’m always looking for improved security features - service hardening, limited application permissions etc... , the concept of virtual folders has potential (think KDE digiKam, or scripting the creation of symbolic links), and of course the new UI . Other neat technical features include… quicker startup, self-tuning, and auto diagnostics & correction, and much more.

All of these things are great from a technical perspective.

Now what’s the business justification? Because after I get done with the chrome, and the wow-factor, and the Linux, OSX, etc. comparisons, I'm going to be looking at how this adds-value from a business perspective. I need to be able to answer questions like, "How do I justify this to our enterprise customers?" And probably a more difficult question, "How do I justify this to the SMB market that we serve?"

Exepect follow-up posts covering these questions and more.