Exchange 2003 Storage Groups

In Exchange 2003 you are allowed to create 20 mailbox or public folder stores divided evenly between 4 storage groups. Indexing and circular logging can be enabled on a per storage group basis. Exchange aware backups can be run on multiple storage groups simultaneously.
Some caution should be taken when deciding to use multiple message stores. Drawbacks include: more complicated backups and loss of single instance storage.

BlackBerry 8800

RIM is making it's way towards integrating extra features in to it's once "strictly business" handhelds. The new 8800 now sports push-to-talk, a media player, GPS, and qwerty keyboard

Selecting Your Vista Version

It doesn't get much easier than this chart from Microsoft to select the correct Vista version.

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 - Released for Free

No surprise Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 is available as a free download. You still need to license each instance of a guest operating system running within Virtual PC 2007. With VMware and others offering their products for free will probably keep pressure on MS to keep most of their VM product as cheap/free. Download Virtual PC 2007 from MS

Back To School ?!

After several years of dragging my feet I have decided that I need to go back to school. Since I have an BA I am finding it hard to justify my education to my employers. Even though I'm coming up on 10 years of work experience. What remains to be seen is if I can qualify for a Masters in IT Program or (cringe to think of it) go back for a BS first.

Browser Shortcuts and Tips

Some Helpful tips that will help save time in Firefox and IE. Browser Tricks For Faster, Smarter Web Surfing.

Circle Humping USB Dogs

Not really educational - but still funny.

Gmail: Now it's for everyone

After a few years of being invite only, Gmail is now open to all comers. I've been using Gmail for over a year now and find it an extremely useful tool. Gmail can be used as an aggregate reader for several email accounts. Also, there are several productivity plug-ins available for Gmail.

Google News Bar

Google has recently released it's AJAX news bar. To see an example of the code in action check out the sidebar on this page. The news bar allows webmasters/newbies to easily add customized news searches to their page. The layout is also customizable to pretty much any size or orientation you can think of. Google AJAX Search API Page.
Sound off Would you incorporate this feature in to your blog or website?

Vista Outbound Firewall - Does it do Anything?

A recent Computerworld article calls questions the effectiveness of Vista's outbound firewall. It appears that the outbound filtering may be limited to a few Windows services. The firewall may not provide any protection against spreading malware. Full Article

VMware releases new bundle for SMBs

VMware has released a bundle targeting SMBs in particular. VMware server has been a free download since July 2006. The bundle includes 30 days of support and VMware VirtualCenter for VMware. VirtualCenter provides for centralized management, server provisioning, etc. for your business virtual server environment. Check the Full Release

Readyboost Tested

Tom's Hardware Guide has a technical breakdown and test results of Vista's readyboost feature. Full Article

Vista First Impressions

It's been a few days since I installed Vista Premium and I must say that it is starting to grow on me. At first I was a little put off that the location of some common tools have changed, but after two days everything became pretty automatic.
Good Things
Readyboost - working with a 1GB usb drive. Can't tell you for sure if it making a difference, but it does seem to help when loaded down with several apps running at one time.
Aero and Flip 3d - If you ready any tech news sites you probably have already seen a demo of both of these. It does look a lot better in person than when seen on the web.
Potential bad things
Hardware Reqs - Only fairly recent hardware will run Vista in full graphics mode without apparent lag.
There's like 5 different versions which could make it difficult for your average user to make a choice. Before purchasing make sure to browse the different versions
Application Compatibility - Have seen some reports of games not working correctly, personally everything I've loaded has worked in some capacity (Office 2007, Firefox, Money, VMware, Clamwin).