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January 2004
This and past newsletters, and various articles are available on our web site. You can receive this newsletter via email.
Microsoft is severing support for several of its older products, including Windows 98 as of Dec. 16. The company says the move is necessary for it to comply with a court order relating to its dispute with Sun Microsystems over Java. Other products being dropped on include Office XP Developer and a number of Office 2000 tools and patches. The company said it will update the Java support for some of its other products by the end of the year. The list of the to-be-patched offerings include Office XP Professional, Publisher 2002, Windows NT 4.0 and Small Business Server 2000.
Separately, Microsoft announced that on January 16, 2004 MS Windows 98 and 98se
will end Extended Support Phase, that means they'll became obsolete and assisted
support will no longer be available from Microsoft, affecting about 27% of the
internet users.
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/ -
This is an interesting site in general
Microsoft is offering five (5) free client access licenses to registered SBS 2003 owners. This is in addition to the five CALs which ship natively with the SBS 2003 product. This deal goes into effect January 5, 2004 for a one month period. They are trying to make amends for a bug found in SBS 2003 Web Intranet services. Contact us for details. www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/sbs/installationissue.
It's frustrating trying to edit the Windows start-up list because the filenames themselves tell you little about the program's function. This free site lists thousands of common startup files along with full descriptions of what they do, plus links back to the vendor's web site. http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php
Quickbooks add-ons have become a major industry. You should be able to find a way to integrate QB with almost any other software you are using. One interesting product is the QB Customer Manager, which links QB data and outlook to a very basic Project / Customer Management tool. You can link otherwise unrelated data by project or Contact person. Outlook contacts/appointments/tasks, files, emails, QB invoices and other data, all can be linked. It is a good choice for small offices that want to do basic CRM tasks. There is a similar product called QB client manager for accountants.
There are another round of windows updates out, including a critical update for MDAC, which is installed on most computers. http://www.microsoft.com/security/security_bulletins
Two weeks ago, Microsoft extended the support cycle for Windows 98 and Win98 Second Edition (Win98SE) an additional 30 months to mid-2006, bringing that product family in line with the company's recent decision to move to a 7-year support cycle for its enterprise offerings. My initial reaction to the news was muted: Win98 seems like ancient history, and although I'm happy to see that the company will address any pressing security concerns for the foreseeable future, obviously Microsoft isn't going to be redirecting any programming talent from Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), the next Windows Server revision, or Longhorn (the next major client release). But the company's decision a week later to provide Windows Services for UNIX (SFU) 3.5 for free got me thinking: Perhaps we should recast all of Microsoft's moves in light of the threat from Linux. Is the software giant extending Win98 support to prevent Linux from making any desktop inroads?
Tim Torian
Torian, Group, Inc.