Alexander’s Blog

Apple is offering it’s browser for Windows platform for the first time. The Safari 3.0.2 for Windows is in beta. The download is about 8.0MB. The default option downloads Safari with QuickTime so if you only want Safari then make sure you change the option.

The plug-ins for Safari for Windows are available here. The plug-ins include Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Reader, QuickTime, Java, Real Player, and Windows Media Player. Although these are being referred to as “plug-ins”, these are actually complete applications. If you already have any of the above applications installed, there is no need for you to download and install the plug-ins. The Help menu contains an option to view all the installed plug-ins.

Apple claims that Safari is the fastest browser on any platform. Based on my tests on the Windows platform, I completely agree with Apple. I tested the new beta and compared it to Mozilla’s Firefox and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. I discovered that it completely blows away both Firefox and Internet Explorer when it comes to speed. I found that compared to Firefox it was at least 2-3 times faster when accessing various Web sites on the Internet. Internet Explorer 7.0 was the slowest of the three, even though it is built into the Windows Vista operating system.

I also ran some tests to check out the QuickTime plug-ins. I observed the following times when starting a 44 second QuickTime video in a Web browser. For example, when I click on the hyperlink that contains a QuickTime video, Firefox makes the video available for playing right away and continues to download it in the background, while some browsers (such as Internet Explorer) take time first to download the entire video in the background then they make it available for viewing. This test is by no means a scientific test but it is a good indicator of what to expect.

Mozilla Firefox = 2 secs
Safari on Macintosh = 2 secs
Safari for Windows on Vista = 2 secs
Internet Explorer 6 on XP = 19 secs
Internet Explorer 7 on Vista = 32 secs

You can reset Safari which allows you to clear history, empty the cache, clear the downloads window, remove all cookies, remove all Web icons, remove saved names and passwords, remove AutoFill form text, clear recent Web searches, and close all Safari windows. You can selectively select only the items in this list that you want.

Another security feature is the ability to turn Private Browsing on or off. When private browsing is turned on Safari won’t save your browsing history, clear your downloads window, and Safari won’t save AutoFill and won’t add searches to the pop-menu in the Google search box. You can go back and forth to the pages that you have visited while the Safari browser is open but will clear everything after you close the browser.

As I mentioned earlier, on the Help menu you can check the installed plug-ins. This opens up a nice HTML formatted page that shows all the plug-ins that are installed in great detail.

Snap-back is a cool feature that allows you to mark a certain page (CTRL-ALT-K) and then later switch (or snap-back) to that page quickly by using CTRL-ALT-P combination.

One problem that I have run into has to do with setting my default browser. I have verified that Internet Explorer is not my default browser and I’ve configured Firefox not to verify that it is the default browser. Firefox was my default browser and now when I configure Safari to become the default browser, it switches back to Internet Explorer as the default browser in Safari’s configuration. I am not sure if it is a beta issue or Vista just can’t stand the fact that someone will make Safari their default browser. I haven’t done enough research at this time.

Here are some of the bugs that I have found so far in Safari. I am not able to minimize or maximize the Safari window like any other Windows program by right-clicking it in the taskbar. The only option available is Move. Also, I am not able to click Safari in the taskbar to minimize it as I usually minimize applications on taskbar (I am forced to use the minimize icon in the top right-hand side) but I can click Safari in the taskbar to maximize it. Hopefully, this will be fixed. Another bug I discovered is that when I maximize Safari by single-clicking, it never wants to go into a full-screen window, even if the window was maximized before. All other applications remember the size of the previous window and will automatically size it to the size that you have configured. One workaround that I use is to make my Safari window as close to full-screen as possible, that way when I click it, it goes back into a window that is close to the maximum size.

I am not able to edit WordPress blogs using Safari. I can do some things but it is not very WordPress-friendly. I haven’t spent much time so far to figure out whether the problem is with Safari or WordPress. However, both Firefox and IE work just fine with WordPress.

So far what I have seen in one day, I am pretty impressed with the speed. However, I do realize that Safari for Windows is still in beta and I may find some problems with it as I use it for a while. One thing’s for sure, there is no way Safari can possibly have more issues and cause more problems than Internet Explorer 7. For now I have switched to Safari as my default browser so I can test drive the beta. Firefox has several features that I like and I am not ready to give up Firefox as my primary browser quite yet. I guess you can say I am just adventuring out to Safari for exploration purposes.

Microsoft Exchange 2007 has several nice features and enhancements over its predecessors. However, if Microsoft TechNet forums and Exchange newsgroups are any indication, Exchange 2007 is a living nightmare for Exchange Administrators. Most features that should have been a breeze in the GUI in Exchange 2003, have been yanked out and replaced by cryptic commands that administrators must manually type in a DOS-like shell called Exchange Management Shell (EMS). And that is the good news. The bad news is that the help file is not very helpful. To put it bluntly, it is pathetic. There are few good, real-life examples and it lacks step-by-step instructions in the areas where it is really needed.

Although the Exchange Management Console is much easier and the developers should be commended for that, it’s the lack of basic simple tasks in the GUI that are very time consuming and causing headaches for the administrators. Exchange 2007 administration is definitely not geared towards small to medium-size companies with a few hundred to thousands of users, it is meant for large enterprises.

It seems like Exchange 2007 was developed by people with the UNIX background. They replaced the nice GUI that Microsoft is famous for with the old DOS-like command prompt. They didn’t realize that one of the the reasons why Microsoft’s products are popular all over the world is because of the ease of use and their GUI interfaces. If administrators only wanted reliability and dependability in products, they would be using open source products and would rather use Linux instead of spending money to buy Exchange 2007.

* Want to configure POP3 in Exchange 2007? Sorry, no easy way to get it to work. You have to configure it in EMS manually. Do not waste time looking for information in the Help File. Search for answers on one of the Exchange forums or newsgroups.

* Want to send mail to the Internet? Oops…..Exchange developers didn’t realize that the reason you install Exchange is to send mail to the Internet. You have to manually configure send connectors or else your Exchange server can only be used to send mail internally.

* Want to configure recipient and sender content filtering? You can do this, sort of, but you need to manually type each address in the EMS. Oh, by the way, you are limited to only 100 entries, as explained in the help file. There is no simple way to add a whitelist or exceptions list by importing from Exchange 2003. Someone at Microsoft wrote a tool to import the lists but the tool doesn’t quite work as written.

This is only scratching the surface. The newsgroups and forums are full of major issues with Exchange 2007 and administrators are not too happy because Microsoft rushed out the product before it was quite ready and admits that they left out holes in the GUI because they didn’t have time to complete by RTM. Microsoft is working on ways to address these problems and seems like they plan to come up with some solutions in Service Pack1 which is targeted for the second half of 2007.

According to Microsoft, here’s a partial list of what you will find in Exchange 2007 SP1 as posted on Microsoft Exchange Team Blog:

Standby Continuous Replication (SCR)

Such a great feature obviously needed its own name!

With Exchange 2007, we introduced Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR) for replication of data between 2 servers within a cluster. With SCR, data can be replicated on a per-storage group basis to standby servers or clusters. The SCR target, whether a single mailbox server or a cluster, can be placed inside the primary datacenter or in a remote location, ready to be manually activated if the primary server or datacenter fails.

OWA

SP1 will fill in the feature holes that we just didn’t have time to complete by RTM:

Exchange Management Console

SP1 will fill in the GUI holes that we just didn’t have time to complete by RTM, including:

Web Services

New web service coverage will include:

* Public folder access
* Delegate management
* Folder permission management

IPv6

On Longhorn Server, we will support Exchange 2007 on native IPv6 networks.

Move Mailbox

This vital tool administrator tool has been beefed up to include import and export to a .pst.

Here are some of the upcoming instructor-led courses for Windows Server 2008.
First Look courses and hands-on labs

Skills transitioning courses

Additional Windows Server 2008 courses will be released over the following months. Click here for more details.

Microsoft’s Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) is a useful tool to manage Group Policies in Active Directory. However, unfortunately GPMC does not run on certain 64-bit Windows operating system, such as Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP. GPMC only runs on:

1. 32-bit Windows Server 2003
2. 32-bit Windows XP Professional with SP1 or later and .NET Framework

Microsoft has not updated GPMC in almost 3 years. The current download for GPMC was published in June 2004. If you have a pure 64-bit Windows Server 2003 environment, you might want to consider installing GPMC on a 32-bit Windows XP Professional.

According to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) press release last week, FBI has identified more than one million potential victims of botnet cyber crime. This was a result of “Operation Bot Roast” in which FBI worked with several industry partners.

“The majority of victims are not even aware that their computer has been compromised or their personal information exploited,” said FBI Assistant Director for the Cyber Division James Finch. “An attacker gains control by infecting the computer with a virus or other malicious code and the computer continues to operate normally. Citizens can protect themselves from botnets and the associated schemes by practicing strong computer security habits to reduce the risk that your computer will be compromised.”

FBI has warned people that it will never contact individuals online to gather any personal information so do not give out any personal information either online or via e-mails.

The entire press release is available here.