Unified Comm

Nothing more needs to be said, really.

http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/default.mspx

English release notes can be read here:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/d/c/8dc5a8ca-e75e-47c0-b655-e0f82b90780d/relnotes.htm

That is a bit of a bummer but it was a beta exam and I *almost* passed but that is also like saying you are *almost* pregnant. It was free so I can't complain, although I wish I could find some free exam codes because I figured out where I went wrong on the exam. I didn't look at the changes between Office Live Communications Server 2003 and 2005 enough and flip-flipped the 'Access Proxy' and 'Proxy' portions.

It is no longer in beta. I never got the change to install the reporting agent in the beta, but from the sounds of it, it looks pretty cool.

http://www.vamsoft.com/orfee_changelog.asp

I'm waiting for the next beta build to drop to get my feet really wet in Exchange 2007 but it is going to be one of the first products to really exploit/use PowerShell for administration. Once again, I prefer command line prompts over GUI interfaces so this makes me a happy camper.

More details here:
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/06/29/428183.aspx

Ideally I want a mobile device like a Motorola Q or something else that is Windows Mobile 5.0 based, so I can do e-mail from anywhere and take phone calls. Trying to type out SMS or e-mail messages on a normal digits-only cellphone just seems campy to me, even though I still love my Motorola v710. I've got a good analog connections whenever I'm in the middle of nowhere with old towers and I still have good digital support for the other areas.

Grand Rapids still is without a decent EVDO presence from Verizon and the Sprint EVDO coverage is well south of my house, so it is pointless at the moment to try to get the E815 and/or a PCMCIA card and/or PCI card for EVDO speeds.

Thankfully 1xRTT is perfectly fine for most Exchange operations with ActiveSync / Push.

Anyway, here is the link to the contest info:
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/06/29/428183.aspx

In general I don't like web based front end programs for programs like this, but thankfully going from 4.6 to 5.03 on a client's machine brought on a welcome change. It looks like 5.x is more .NET based and less klunky-web based. It also seems to fix a lot of issues I had with the older versions, which ultimately led me to recommend other software/hardware when needed. It isn't a CPU hog like the 4.x versions tended to be on a fairly loaded server.

I also was able to log into a Symantec Hardware firewall recently and it looks like they are running a very modified version of Red Hat 7.1 and/or an early version of RH EE. You can pull up lists of RPM packages installed, compile programs with GCC, which I am tempted to do to get 'real' SNMP support and otherwise use it like a full blown Linux box for the most part.

I don't know, I guess I just like being able to SSH into network appliances and keep an eye on them from a familiar bash prompt.