The UltraTech Zone

Microsoft has announced that it will be supporting more file formats in its Office suite in the first half of 2009, and the response from the European Union was one of skepticism. Microsoft intends to increase PDF support natively in Office, as well as add the Open Document Format (ODF), as a part of Service Pack 2 for Office 2007.  The ...

Microsoft has announced that it will be supporting more file formats in its Office suite in the first half of 2009 , and the response from the European Union was one of skepticism. Microsoft intends to increase PDF support natively in Office , as well...(read more)

As reported by ComputerWorld, the latest Service Pack for Windows XP, SP3, is finally available via the MSDN and TechNet download sites. This is only for the 32-bit version of XP, btw.  Users of XP x64 will need to wait for Service Pack 3 for Windows Server 2003 in order to get an update, as the 64-bit version of XP (non-Itanium version) is ...

I just finished reading an article on Windows Vista from InfoWorld, and it makes several really good points. Windows Vista brings a lot to the table that gets de-emphasized by the masses.  It's funny that when Microsoft releases a product that is primarily a refinement of the previous version (XP vs 2000), there are complaints about having ...

ComputerWorld has a very interesting article this week that talks about how immature Oracle's patch management program for customers is, compare to Microsoft's. As the following quote indicates, there are things that vendors should be doing to provide their Enterprise and SMB customers with the necessary tools and information to keep their ...

If you're a 64-bit Vista user, that is...  It looks as though the users of Vista x64 can obtain Service Pack 1 via Windows Update. I've already started down the MSDN path for obtaining the Service Pack, but that has presented its own set of issues.  (TechNet is also another option for obtaining the Service Pack for x86 or x64 ...

If you're a 64-bit Vista user, that is...  It looks as though the users of Vista x64 can obtain Service Pack 1 via Windows Update . I've already started down the MSDN path for obtaining the Service Pack , but that has presented its own set of issues. ...(read more)

The month of February should see the release of both Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, according to reports published by ComputerWorld, and I'm looking forward to them both. I have only performed a few brief tests of Windows 2008 so far, but I expect to change that over the next few weeks, once I bring my new virtual ...

Finally, Service Pack 1 for Exchange 2007 has been released.  All 854MB of it. And not a moment too soon. I need to see if the Public Folder functionality (really, the Public Folder GUI) is finally available.

One of the things that annoys me about Microsoft (and this is true, to some extent, of any large company) is that there are too many times where it seems that one hand is not talking to the other.  Sometimes, it seems like one hand doesn't even know that there's another hand. Some of the most recent examples of this silliness are as ...

Lately, I've been so busy with processes and procedures and policies, that I haven't had a chance to play with the upcoming version of Windows Server 2008.  I have had an opportunity to read a number of reports, including the one from eWeek, and it seems that the reports are favorable, especially where the new virtualization features are ...

Some days it seems like Microsoft still has a lot to learn about being a team player on a global stage where customers and regulators are interested in open standards and interoperability. They recently got spanked with both the ISO and the IEC while lobbying to get their OpenXML document format established as a global, open standard.  In ...

Some days it seems like Microsoft still has a lot to learn about being a team player on a global stage where customers and regulators are interested in open standards and interoperability. They recently got spanked with both the ISO and the IEC while...(read more)

In today's story of immense irony, we find a vendor taking time to bash another vendor for a security flaw, only to have diligent 3rd parties point out that the flaw exists for the bashing vendor as well. What a waste of time.  If folks would focus more on the issues they need to address, and less on showmanship and one-up-manship, they ...

So, I sort of completed the migration to Exchange 2007 that I had decided to do this weekend.  Sort of. The mailbox moves were flawless.  Total time for this part of the migration was about 15 minutes, with my mailbox being the longest at 6 minutes.  Unfortunately for me, that was just the tip of the iceberg.  I have a ton of ...