tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41489017844833045242011-11-27T16:19:35.023-08:00Kerry Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443309193933384551noreply@blogger.comBlogger191100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4148901784483304524.post-87955283373128538192010-01-26T23:23:00.000-08:002010-01-26T23:23:28.508-08:00

I've moved this blog to www.kdbsystems.ca I want to blog about more than Windows Vista. I've copied the posts and comments to the new location.

Kerry Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443309193933384551noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4148901784483304524.post-60591081178952813512009-12-06T15:20:00.001-08:002009-12-06T15:29:08.041-08:00

I recently migrated a customer from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008. I've done a few of these. There is no in place upgrade as SBS 2003 is 32 bit and SBS 2008 is 64 bit. Because of this I've recommended to my customers to stay with 2003 until they replace their existing hardware. The migration is easiest if you're moving to new hardware at the same time. This time I decided to give the Swing method from

Kerry Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443309193933384551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4148901784483304524.post-84644973076974026722009-10-22T14:44:00.001-07:002009-10-22T14:46:48.937-07:00

I usually don't recommend everyone immediately upgrade to a new version of anything. I'm firmly in the wait for others to find the bugs camp. I like to run the latest myself but for paying customers if it ain't broke why fix it. I don't recommend they upgrade until version 1.1 or possibly with a hardware change. I'm changing this position for Windows 7. It's not that different from Vista. Vista's

Kerry Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443309193933384551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4148901784483304524.post-78154995610119527512009-10-21T08:56:00.001-07:002009-10-21T08:57:50.712-07:00

A while back I wrote a blog post comparing computer security to walking in the rain. This morning it was raining pretty hard during my morning walk. It wasn't raining quite as hard as when I wrote the previous post but west coasters know what "raining pretty hard" means. For the rest of you, it was raining as hard as you'll probably ever experience unless you live in a rain forest. For some

Kerry Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443309193933384551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4148901784483304524.post-22567366375255594172009-10-19T10:11:00.001-07:002009-10-20T12:53:40.434-07:00

IPv6 is coming. We'll all have to learn how to deal with it. With this in mind I've set out to educate myself about IPv6. I learn better by doing than by reading. I like to read enough that I have a very basic understanding of the subject then play. After playing with it I generally find I need to do some more reading or possibly even take some courses. With IPv6 I'm at the playing stage. I

Kerry Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443309193933384551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4148901784483304524.post-84690048264998366392009-10-14T06:51:00.000-07:002009-10-14T07:11:25.852-07:00

Well the experiment to only run Linux while on a road trip was a partial failure. I had to boot into Windows to get some work done that involved email and Exchange. I can't seem to wean myself from Exchange. I thought I had Evolution working but it keeps locking up on me. I've always had problems with Evolution but I had high hopes for the current version and Fedora 11. It works flawlessly while

Kerry Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443309193933384551noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4148901784483304524.post-28238207156107538112009-10-13T10:18:00.001-07:002009-10-14T06:50:41.683-07:00

I'm leaving this morning for a three day trip to Ottawa for a CIRA board meeting. I depend on my Blackberry and my laptop to run my business while I'm on the road. I'm going to do an experiment this trip. I'm going to run Fedora 11 exclusively on my laptop. I've always had a multi-boot setup on the laptop of Windows Desktop, Windows Server, and Linux. The current setup is Windows 7 Ultimate,

Kerry Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443309193933384551noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4148901784483304524.post-90637453158963316322009-08-13T13:10:00.001-07:002009-08-13T13:20:56.902-07:00

Last night I was on my deck watching the Perseid meteor shower. I started wondering what our ancestors must have thought about events like this. I was thinking that they must have had all sorts of weird superstitious beliefs about omens and such. Laying there watching the sky gave me lots of time to think. The more I thought about it I started wondering what someone several thousand years in the

Kerry Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443309193933384551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4148901784483304524.post-63812000979568124852009-07-07T20:48:00.001-07:002009-07-14T17:51:30.968-07:00

Windows 7 is about to hit the RTM milestone any day now. I've been playing with it since the public beta release last fall. I like it. As soon as it hits RTM I plan to install it in on both my laptop and desktop. I'll only run Vista in virtual machines for testing. That said I can't believe all the hyperbole about Windows 7. Yes, it has some nice new features but come on people it's really not

Kerry Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443309193933384551noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4148901784483304524.post-17777596641974477782009-03-02T22:53:00.000-08:002009-03-02T23:31:33.468-08:00

I'm at the 2009 Microsoft MVP Summit. Around 2000 MVP's descend on Microsoft's Redmond Campus for four days of sessions with various product teams. The sessions include a lot of two way feedback, which can be brutal from both sides. It's a lot of fun. Today I went to several security sessions. I got to hear Steve Riley talk and then answer questions from an audience that included Jesper Johansson

Kerry Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443309193933384551noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4148901784483304524.post-15849661769277004282009-02-02T12:55:00.000-08:002009-02-02T14:59:17.515-08:00

With the public beta of Windows 7 in full swing many people are talking about performance and comparing different versions of Windows. I see many posts in forums and on newsgroups exclaiming Windows 7 boots x seconds faster than Vista. They carefully measure how long XP, Vista, and Windows 7 take to boot or shutdown. Others measure how much RAM each OS uses when at idle. Some people run benchmark

Kerry Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443309193933384551noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4148901784483304524.post-29561975778505210992008-11-04T18:55:00.000-08:002008-11-04T18:59:11.275-08:00

Except in very specific circumstances anyone installing Vista should be installing a 64 bit version. The day of 32 bit Windows is over. Once you’ve used a computer that can use lots of RAM you won’t want to use one that doesn’t have lots of RAM. The OS is really irrelevant here. Running a 64 bit OS with 8GB or more is just a better experience. This is true for every current OS I’ve tried. All

Kerry Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443309193933384551noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4148901784483304524.post-71637338260904443252008-09-15T10:14:00.000-07:002008-09-22T20:09:45.994-07:00

Microsoft has a new version of Small Business Server which will be launched on November 12. It’s called Small Business Server 2008. I was in the beta testing program for this and I’m quite excited about it. Similar to 2003 there are two editions, Standard and Premium. Standard includes: Server 2008 64 bit, Exchange 2007 Standard Edition, SharePoint Services 3.0, WSUS 3.0, and all the standard SBS

Kerry Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443309193933384551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4148901784483304524.post-77944046223201241172008-08-24T09:24:00.000-07:002008-08-28T10:59:23.459-07:00

This morning I was out walking in the rain trying to come up with a good idea for a blog post. I've been thinking a lot about computer security lately. As I was walking I realised that walking in the rain was a good analogy to use when thinking about computer security. I have to deal with a very wet climate. I enjoy spending time outdoors. Sometimes I have things I have to get done that require

Kerry Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443309193933384551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4148901784483304524.post-60993613363490177432008-08-21T12:48:00.000-07:002008-08-21T12:51:55.858-07:00

Here's the official announcement:http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2008/08/21/sbs-2008-released-to-manufacturing.aspxI was part of the beta program from quite early on. It's a great product. I'll blog some more about it later. For now -Congratulations to the SBS Team at Microsoft.

Kerry Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443309193933384551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4148901784483304524.post-53061460755828903472008-08-12T13:22:00.000-07:002008-08-12T13:35:28.441-07:00

I've been asked to help judge a contest to find the best Vista blog or website. You can find the details of the contest here. I was very flattered to be asked to help judge the contest. Get your entries in. There's some great prizes. I look forward to seeing everyone's entries.

Kerry Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443309193933384551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4148901784483304524.post-23723805005902282222008-07-21T15:47:00.000-07:002008-07-21T15:59:11.839-07:00

Many times hardware problems may be the actual cause of a problem that is blamed on the OS. It's very easy to blame an OS. It's fashionable to blame Microsoft and particularly Vista when something goes wrong. Many times it's not the OS but an application or driver. That's a subject for another post. Today I'm going to talk about another problem that is often mistakenly blamed on a flaky OS –

Kerry Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443309193933384551noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4148901784483304524.post-67341859592017516492008-07-15T15:54:00.000-07:002008-07-15T16:02:52.265-07:00

Vista seems to have polarised many IT professionals. Many IT Pros are avid haters of Vista. They constantly blog about how bad it is. They very seldom give concrete examples of why it is bad. When they do give examples they are often links to other blogs written by people who hate Vista. These blogs are also often short of real examples. I say to all of these people - get a life! It's an OS. If

Kerry Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443309193933384551noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4148901784483304524.post-12195564431967874132008-07-15T15:42:00.001-07:002008-07-15T15:47:19.472-07:00

Welcome to my blog. This is a continuation of the blog I started a couple of years ago which can be found here. I finally decided it was too much work updating the old blog which was just text uploaded into a web page.The blog is mostly about Windows Vista and related issues but occasionally I'll comment on other things that take my fancy.Welcome, and please feel free to comment whether good or

Kerry Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443309193933384551noreply@blogger.com2