Outside the box

A few months back, I begin beta testing Office 2007. Overall, I like it very much. There is an option in Outlook 2007 to add “instant search”. It seemed like a good idea, so I chose to install it. I didn’t know that this actually installs Windows Desktop Search. I had previously decided that I did not like this program and removed it. (As an aside, Google’s product is similar and better in my experience). After a few days, I decided to remove the Windows search program. Apparently, Microsoft likes to scare users into keeping their products installed (I know, who would have guessed?!?!) When I proceeded to uninstall the software, I was prompted with a LAUNDRY LIST of software that “may not function” once Windows Desktop Search was removed. It was comical because much of this software was created before Windows Desktop Search even existed! I thought this was so ludicrous that I captured it for posterity. Enjoy!

For those of you (us, I suppose) who care, it’s been a busy few days at Microsoft. They have put out a number of MAJOR releases in the past 7-10 days. Both Vista and Office 2007 were released to manufacturing.

For the admins of the world, they also released PowerShell. I don’t know much about PowerShell yet but a spokesperson from Microsoft indicated it would bring Unix-like scripting to the Windows command shell. Funny reference for an MS person but it speaks volumes nonetheless. If PowerShell really delivers on this promise, it will revolutionize Windows administration. I am also encouraged by the fact that Windows Server “Longhorn” will ship with a version/option to remove the GUI and be commandline driven. Without all of the useless bells and whistles, Microsoft might actually deliver on their security promises.

If all of that wasn’t enough, MS has created virtual hard drives for its Virtual Server product. This is similar to what is available to the community (and from the community) on VMWare’s product line. These are basically pre-made images ready to run of popular servers from MS. At this point, it includes: Windows 2003 R2, Exchange Server 2007, SQL Server 2005, and 2006 ISA Server. Read more about it on a neat MS blog I stumbled upon:

http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2006/11/06/Faster-Setup-of-Eval-Software.aspx

Bye for now!

I have resisted the urge to have a blog for a few months now… I thought at first that it was silly. After all, who cares what I think? And would I really have anything to say? However, I have read a lot of blogs over the past year and find them to be interesting overall. Although, some people really do not have anything to say but who am I to judge? Anyway, I do have a lot of opinions and occasionally might have something useful to pass along. So, here goes!

What should you expect from this blog? That’s a good question. At the moment, I cannot say for sure.. I’m sure I’ll write about technology (I’m a computer guy) and New Orleans (my hometown) and who knows what else!

Any of you who know me in real life or have run into me on message boards and newsgroups may be wondering why I registered jonathanroberts.eu and not something in the US realm. Well, I couldn’t register jonathanroberts.com (though I have been trying for years!) since a clothing store (in Baton Rouge of all places) has it. Go check them out — oh wait, they still don’t have a site up… When the EU registry came online a few months ago, I decided to snap up jonathanroberts.eu before someone else did (I hear this is a common name in parts of the UK). So there you have it. It isn’t a great story of my European travels or anything cool like that. Sorry.

Stay tuned… I may have something good to share tomorrow!