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Lack of evidence…

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During my morning routine of looking at Susan Bradley’s blog, she had a post from over the weekend about an article she found blasting SBS server. Being someone who wants to see what all the hoopla is about I followed the link to the actual article, and found myself in awe.

The article is obviously written from someone who talks to his friends in the Linux community. There are lines in the article that are obvious opinions that are trying to be passed as fact. My favorite of these is, “I contend that nobody actually selects SBS based on perceived feature advantages. Businesses would much rather deploy the fuller individual components, be they operating system, mail server, database server, firewall or something else.”

Now, I will not call the line total bunk, because if you are in a larger company, then yes you are going to want individual servers. Yes if you have over 75 users you are going to want separate servers. The idea that a Small Business would not want SBS because of its advantages is a load of bunk.

As I consult for SMBs, I do recommend SBS based on its advantages. “I’ve spoken at length in the past about why I have no love for SBS . It’s a deliberately crippled product and it has artificial limitations. It lulls its administrators and users into a false sense of security with its watered-down terminal server environment, Remote Web Workplace, “David says. This is not totally true. Yes it works properly if you use the wizards, but with SBS 2008, there is plenty to do without the wizards, The simplified licensing scheme (1 license per user covers Connectivity, Exchange and even SQL on premium), lowers TCO which is very important in this economy.

Now the statement about security with RWW is an odd one. I never tout RWW as a security feature, but instead it is an alternative to VPN for those that have a desktop (XP, Vista, or Win 7) that is open to use. It only allows 1 person at a time on any given machine as it is. The advantage is that you can use any web browser to access it.

Now to get away from the Windows busting for a little bit. I know some SMBs that do use Linux, in fact they tend to use SUSE, since they can use Novell’s Groupwise product with it. It is a small faction, but it is out there. Yes Linux can use a better version of a Small Business server, but like with everything else Linux, it would need to become simple enough that a non-IT person can run it. In other words, you would need to “cripple” it.

The advantages of Microsoft’s SBS start with the simplicity of it, and yet it gives you a full on solution for e-mail, file sharing, domain structure, and security.

The advantage of David’s article is basically an advertisement and opinion piece, with lack of reliable information about the product he is bashing.

Support, How do they get away with it…

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I find the world a funny place. There is so much irony and hypocrisy in it that you can’t help but laugh if you stop to really think about it. Well, Laugh or cry.

Being an IT consultant, I support my clients. Its part of the job. Heck without giving them the best support I can, I wouldn’t have a job. So I sit back and look overall at support from different areas of the tech industry and notice that certain areas tend to be able to get away with different levels of support and still survive.

We shall start off with hardware support. Companies, not just like Dell and HP, but like BFG, Creative Labs, and the like. I find these companies relatively speaking have the best support. Even bad support from these companies is still better than the best support from some of the companies in other categories. Yeah, they might make us go through the stuff we have tried before, or make us run some super secret diagnostic program, but once you have gone through the routine, they are pretty quick about getting replacement items out to you.

Next area is the ISP. The ISP is a hit or miss on support. Having worked the help desk at one, back when most people were using dial up connections, has given me an unique insight to the world of ISP tech support. It really depends on a couple of factors, one being the person you actually get on the phone with, and how you react to them. The places that ship me out to places like India (AT&T does this), I tend to despise because they follow a script and that is that. You need to know how to navigate around these issues to get to a competent tech in the level 2 range. Other companies such as Comcast have a decent bunch or lower level techs, and at least you can understand them, but still all the ISPs have one thing in common. They are taught that they are to say it is not their fault until one of two things happen. First their managers say, “Ok, we can now say that it is an outage on our end because X amount of people in that area have complained,” or they have run out of ideas, have transferred you to the next level, and that tech has decided it is their issue. It is tough to get them to admit that it is their problem without a widespread outage.

The final area is the Software industry. This by far is the worst area overall. They will run through their script and then just dump you. The don’t listen to their customers, and if you should have a problem with install media after the next version comes out, they will tell you that you have to buy new media. In this area, the best support I’ve found had come from Microsoft of all places, but most OS companies are decent. When you get into software that tends to be more specialized, such as contact management, accounting software, and other more niche software where there are fewer and fewer players, the support gets worse and worse. How some of these companies stay in business is a case of being the only player (or at least well known player) in town.

The end result is to paraphrase Forrest Gump, “Support is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are going to get.” Being a consultant, this of course means you should be doing your research before any install or migration. As far as actual support for the software goes, I will get involved with it when the client needs me to, but I shudder when I have to call those tech lines.

Windows 7 Family Pack is done

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It seems that the whole limited time offer for the Windows 7 Family Pack was real limited. Microsoft has announced that the pack is no longer available, at least from them. Some resellers still have copies of it, and are now inflating the price for it since it is a rare item.

Why write up a blog about this, you might ask. Simple, it was a stroke of marketing genius for the family pack to come about, but not only that, its now stupid to take it away. The thought process goes like this:

1) Make Family pack available for a limited time. People will buy more Windows 7 increasing market share and adoption

2) Cut it off after X amount have been sold so we don’t loose too much in profits.

The problem is in this economy, the Family Pack was a spur to make the change over from XP or Vista in households that have more than 1 computer. Considering that more than 1 computer in a house is more the norm than the exception, why cut it off. At $149 it was a steal of a deal for those that got it. Great for the tough economic times. What Microsoft should have done though was continue the family pack at say $250 to $300 since it still would be a savings compared to purchasing the individual licenses, yet not cut into the profits the way that $149 for a 3 pack. A value still, and value is what is needed to spur on the economy.

Instead, what happens now is that adoption slows down to new PCs sold for the home. Unfortunately for Microsoft, XP still just works fine for most people, and right now most consumers would rather drive their current hardware into the ground than purchase a new PC. The money for that new PC goes towards food or clothing instead.

Windows 7 will run nicely on most current hardware from the past 3 years. Maybe you need a little more memory, or a new hard drive, but that is really about it depending on space and resources. Hard Drives and Memory are inexpensive upgrades.

Also, now you give people more of a reason to try and pirate Windows 7. They had the taste of lower cost for Windows, and once you open that box, you can’t quite close it.

Microsoft has not said that they won’t do something like the Family Pack again, but they haven’t said they would either. Guess only time will tell if doing it this way was the smart move.