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Patches and Beta

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Another Patch Tuesday happened this week, and this time 6 of the patches are for security holes which have exploits out in the wild, including the Office holes that I complained about last month. There are a total of 8 patches out this month and while that is good, you might want to check on the other updates this month due to end of mainstream support for XP, Office 2003, and Exchange 2003. All three will continue to get security updates for a few years, but all of them will no longer get new features, or non-critical updates.

Also, released today was the Beta for Exchange 2010. I know, most of you are just starting to use Exchange 2007, but if you have a test environment for this new version of Exchange, I would suggest using it and report on bugs to Microsoft so we can get a less buggy release of it.

Finally, SP2 for Office 2007 is on the horizon, and it will give Office native ODF file support. This means that if something is saved in Open Office’s normal formats, Office 2007 should be able to just open it.

Sorry that this blog has been a bit spotty this week. Work has been really busy, and I’ve been learning about some new initiatives and offerings that we are doing at the office. Let see if I can get some time to do some more posts, even if its just the evenings.

More on XP and other End of Cycles software

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So, while mainstream support is ending for Windows XP, it seems that Microsoft is going to continue to allow downgrades by manufacturers until sometime next year. Yeah, this is both good and bad, especially considering that warranty support ends on Tuesday, April 14. Are the PC makers going to do warranty support for XP still is the big question. I would love to say yes, but who knows.

Also on the XP front, You will be able to downgrade from the upcoming Windows 7 to XP.  This does by companies some time to upgrade, but how long?

Tuesday, April 14 also marks the end of mainstream support for Office 2003. Same rules apply as with XP.

Now on July 14 of this year Office 2000 is dead to Microsoft. No more security updates, no support, nothing. Same thing happens to Windows 200 on July 13, 2010. Time to start planning accordingly, especially for Office 2000. Make sure you try to get your clients off of it before then for a smooth transition.

April 1st: What will happen?

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So by now I’m sure most of you have heard of Cornficker and its variants. Yeah that nasty little annoying worm which reaches out to special servers to get instructions for what to do with itself.  The annoying beasty that is causing an uproar similar to the whole Y2K bug. The worm that is unstoppable!

Wait at minute. Unstoppable? Last I saw there was a patch put out by Microsoft back in October which closed the hole Cornficker uses up. What do you mean, “Patches? We don’t need no stinking patches!” Well in this case you might be right.

The problem with Cornficker is really 2 fold. First if you didn’t make sure your machine was patched in a timely fashion, you left yourself open to it. Second if you got hit by it, patching after the fact does nothing to stop it.

We technicians have a role in all of this too. We need to make sure to let not only our clients, but family and friends know when there is a critical patch from Microsoft that must be applied. Yeah that means checking out what patches Microsoft is releasing every month. It is a responsibility that we have to do though, less we have to clean up the messes left behind.

Yeah, its a little preachy of me, but really, its the way we must do things. Oh and as far as Cornficker goes, will the internet melt down? Doubtful. If you have an infected machine, just don’t power it on tomorrow. The virus won’t contact its servers, which will have moved by April 2nd to try and stay ahead of the law. Then try to remove the damn thing.