Vista: now, later or never?
Posted by Mr. IT Guy | Filed under IT in General, Microsoft, Operating System, Review
Microsoft has acknowledged that Vista’s biggest competitor is none other than Windows XP. Windows XP is the standard desktop operating system in most residential and business computers. Even after almost half a year, XP still reigns supreme as king of desktop OS. The most common question that comes with Windows Vista is “Do I need to update?”. Vista is “supposedly” more secure than any other desktop oriented Windows OS, but how much secure is it? Even if it’s more secure, do you need the extra security? I believe that if someone can understand some basic internet safety, Windows XP is a good enough platform for desktop computing. There’s also Linux as the alternative solution for the brave souls.
In business environment, where upgrades usually comes in batches, switching to Vista might require a lot of changes. A lot of software may not play nice with Vista (i.e. VPN Client Software, Anti-Virus software, Accounting Software, etc). Vista also might require some hardware upgrades. One should really ask again, what is the ROI by switching to Vista? There are some who take the middle-ground stance and upgrade as necessary. For example, some companies I know of, only get new laptops with Vista, but will not upgrade existing fleet of laptops and desktops to Vista.
My personal recommendation for home user: If you’re upgrading your computer hardware, you might as well get Windows Vista as long as other software that you’re going to use also supports it.
Tags: Linux, Microsoft, windows
Exchange Archive – Mailmeter (I)
Posted by Mr. IT Guy | Filed under Microsoft, Review
Mailmeter by Waterford Technologies is a forensic, archival and policy enforcement tool for Microsoft Exchange Server (5.5 – 2007), Lotus Domino (R6, R7 or higher) and IMail (V8, 2006 or higher). For the purpose of this evaluation, I install the Mailmeter software for Microsoft Exchange 2003 on Microsoft Windows 2000 Server. I think the software does what I expected and more, but installation was not as breeze as I’d like it to be. On the up side, their technical support team is very helpful in answering my questions. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: archive, database, email, exchange, mac, Microsoft, security, windows
Tunnel HTTP traffic through SSH
Posted by Mr. IT Guy | Filed under Featured, Linux, Microsoft, Review
I just found out an easy way to beat most web/content-filtering system (provided SSH traffic is not blocked). SSH is a good choice because it’s natively installed on most Linux and Mac system. Windows user can download a small software called Putty, which can run without being installed. SSH server also available on almost all Linux server as well as some Linux based routers. Here’s how to do it in Windows:
- Download Putty and Run
- Type in the IP of Linux box or other SSH server you have access to and make sure the port is correct too
- Under the tab “Connection –> SSH –> Tunnel” set a local source port *preferrably random number above 1024*
- Under destination choose “Dynamic” and “Auto“
- Then click open
- Open IE or Firefox and find the proxy configuartion
- Set your localhost as the SOCKS proxy server and the port is the local source port you choose on Step 3
NOTE: On Firefox choose SOCKS v5, and on IE include “localhost, 127.0.0.1″ as the addresses exempted by the proxy
That’s all needs to be done.
UPDATE:
For those who wants to use it with IM services like MSN, here’s what you need to do:
- Goto Tools -> Options -> Connection
- Click on Advanced Settings
- On SOCKS type 127.0.0.1 and click Test
Tags: encryption, Linux, mac, Microsoft, ssh, tools, windows