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Security Pro VIP 
[Feature]  "OEM Software": Good Deal or Theft? How do those "OEM software" guys sell software so cheaply? — Mark Minasi “Shipping Is a Feature…” Argh. Mark laments the fact that Microsoft considers shipdate to be an important feature of its Windows Hypervisor product. — Mark Minasi 10 Reasons Not to Deploy Windows Vista The decision to upgrade to Vista has to make business sense, but many companies find the costs in training and application compatibility problems outweigh any benefits Vista brings. — Alan Sugano 10 Reasons to Deploy Windows Vista The decision to upgrade your XP systems to Vista is simple when you consider features such as easier backup, a great desktop search, and vastly improved security options. — Mark Minasi 4 Ways to Help PowerShell Find External Tools Learn how to help PowerShell locate external tools, saving time and keeping you organized. — Alex K. Angelopoulos 5 Ways to Trim Your IT Budget Standardizing IT equipment is the first step toward making reduced IT budgets stretch further. — Mark Smith A Healthy Dose of Windows Server 2008 Wariness Microsoft will probably release Windows 2008 to manufacturing by October or November of this year, at the latest. And, you see, that's why I'm worried. — Mark Minasi Access Security Event Logs with PowerShell See how using Windows PowerShell with Windows Security event logs can help you guard against intrusion. — Robert Sheldon Accessing Database Data with ADO — Robert Sheldon Accessing SQL Server Data from PowerShell, Part 1 Learn how to use ADO.NET to retrieve SQL Server data through PowerShell scripts. — Robert Sheldon Accessing SQL Server Data from PowerShell, Part 2 Because PowerShell is integrated with the.NET framework, you can leverage the .NET object model within PowerShell scripts and build ADO.NET objects that retrieve SQL Server data; learn how to use ADO.NET to insert, update, and delete SQL Server data. — Robert Sheldon Am I Who I Say I Am? David Chernicoff explains the advantages of authenticating email as a way to combat spam. — David Chernicoff Are Recycle Bins Wasting a Lot of Space on Your Windows Servers? Here's a VBScript script you can use to monitor how much disk space is being consumed by the Recycle Bins stored in a server's Recycler folder and how much space is available on that server's local hard drives. — Jim Turner Attention Windows 7.0: Please Don’t Interrupt Me! Mark yearns for a more polite Windows. — Mark Minasi BitLocker and AD, Together at Last Here's what you need to know about BitLocker/AD integration. — Mark Minasi Can Slow-and-Steady Win the Wireless Race? Mark proposes a new, more user-friendly wireless standard. — Mark Minasi Cell Phone–and-PDA Combo Devices Mark Smith checks out some of the current cell phone–and-PDA combinations. Find out what product he finally chose and why. — Mark Smith Certifications: Pass or Fail? A discussion of the pros and cons of vendor-sponsored certifications. — Mark Minasi  Connect Microsoft Email Clients to Gmail Gmail is a powerful email server that supports millions of mailboxes. Use IMAP to connect Outlook or other email clients to Gmail to create the best of two worlds—well-developed email UIs in popular clients with a good (and free) email server. — Tony Redmond Countdown to XP SP2: Dealing with ICF Mark continues his evaluation of one of XP SP2's biggest features: enabling ICF by default. — Mark Minasi Countdown to XP SP2: Forced Protection Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) is nearly here. In the next four installments of his VIP column, Mark considers the pros and cons of some of the changes that SP2 will bring. — Mark Minasi Countdown to XP SP2: More than a Firewall After an in-depth discussion of Windows XP Service Pack 2's (SP2's) Windows Firewall, Mark examines some of the service pack's other interesting features. — Mark Minasi Countdown to XP SP2: Planning Ahead Mark continues his look at the forthcoming Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) Windows Firewall feature. — Mark Minasi Data Manipulation with ADO ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) let you access, filter, sort, and retrieve data from Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Access databases using VBScript and other scripting languages. Here are some of the most common uses of ADO for databases. — Robert Sheldon Deployment Blockers for Upgrading to Exchange Server 2007 Avoid the gotchas and ensure a successful upgrade. You’ll need to be clear on AD topology, and then deal with deployment issues with public folders, client software, archival and retention, fax, mobility, and coexistence with other Exchange versions. — Paul Robichaux Disaster Recovery in the Wake of Katrina Mark's thoughts turn to disaster recovery in the wake of a devastating tragedy. — Mark Minasi Disks, Spin No More What's interesting about PQI's announcement of its new hard disk? It's a solid state disk. — Mark Minasi Do Betas Make Sense Anymore? Mark suggests that betas don't make sense as testing tools anymore. — Mark Minasi DPM 2007: Protecting and Restoring Data DPM 2007 uses Microsoft VSS to provide in-depth protection to your key Microsoft application platforms. Learn about setting up recovery points and restoring data, enabling end-user restores, and performing bare-metal restores. — John Savill DPM 2007: Set It Up and Get Started Get all the information you need about what Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager is and how it works, and walkthrough the installation and setup process for DPM 2007. — John Savill Dual-Core Turions: A Nice, Cool Surprise Here's a quick look at how AMD and Intel are taking advantage of something called "nonlinear heating rates." — Mark Minasi Enhance PowerShell's Syntax Display The author’s Get-Usage script displays usage for more categories of command types than PowerShell’s Get-Command or Get-Help cmdlets. — Alex K. Angelopoulos Establishing Quotas for Exchange 2007 Mailboxes Learn the important factors to consider when setting Exchange 2007 mailbox quotas, including disk performance, database overhead, and backup-window limitations. You'll also get practical formulas to determine your maximum mailbox and database volumes. — Brien Posey Exchange 2007 Deployment Postmortem Learn from someone else's Exchange 2007 migration experiences. — Michael Dragone Exchange 2007 SP1 and OCS 2007: What You Get Exchange 2007 and OCS 2007 are complementary parts of Microsoft's UC strategy. Exchange 2007 SP1 enhances this relationship with features such as additional dial plan options, better fax handling, and Communicator access for remote workers. — Paul Robichaux Exchange 2007 SP1's Standby Continuous Replication You can add site resilience to your Exchange organization by implementing SCR with Exchange 2007 SP1. Find out the steps for setting up SCR and what you need to do to recover in the event of a failure. — Tony Redmond Exchange 2007 Transport Rules Implementing Exchange Server 2007’s new transport rules feature makes complying with regulatory requirements easier than in Exchange Server 2003 or Exchange 2000 Server. Learn how to use transport rules to add a disclaimer and apply an ethical firewall. — Tony Redmond Exchange Management with EMS: Getting Exchange Objects You can use EMS to retrieve any type of Exchange object and its properties, then use the pipelining feature to pass results to another command. Be sure your scope is correct. — Paul Robichaux Exchange Management with EMS: Setting Properties Exchange Management Shell lets you set mailbox quotas, establish maintenance cycles, and manage every aspect of your Exchange environment, and built-in safety features help you get into property manipulation without fear of breaking anything. — Paul Robichaux Exploring CAS Technology Learn the core concepts of the .NET Framework's Code Access Security (CAS) feature and how to administer it. — Jan De Clercq Feeling Sorta Blue, Ray It’s the great next-generation DVD format war: Blu-ray or HD DVD, which will win? After the past couple of weeks, I think we all know which will be victorious, and it worries me a trifle. — Mark Minasi Finding a User’s Last Logon The JScript script this article presents lets you discover exactly when a user last logged on to the domain. It also tells you which server authenticated the logon, and it doesn’t require Windows Server 2003 forest functional mode. — Bill Stewart Function Creates Multidimensional Arrays from Delimited Text Files You don’t have to write a separate routine for text-based processes to arrange data into a usable form—use this VBScript script to create a multidimensional array of the data to reference it by rows and columns like a database. — Jim Turner Future Computing in the Past Mark makes a few suggestions for fun holiday reading, IT style. — Mark Minasi Get Compliant with Exchange Server 2007 Journaling Regulatory compliance and internal audit policies force many organizations to journal email messages, voicemails, and fax messages. Exchange Server 2007 makes journaling easy by establishing managed journal rules enforced through the Hub Transport server. — Siegfried Jagott Getting Started with Exchange 2007 UM UM with Exchange Server 2007 combines email, fax, and voicemail in your Exchange Inbox. Using Exchange Management Console, you can configure the settings to get your organization unified. — J. Peter Bruzzese Getting Started: Remote Administration Learn how to install and run Microsoft terminal services tools. — Kathy Ivens Getting the Dell Express Service Code DellSerial.js can shorten the call time required when you need to work with Dell's technical support team. This script also demonstrates how JScript is sometimes easier to use than VBScript. — Bill Stewart Group Policy Made Great The Group Policy Management Console will greatly improve Group Policy but doesn't go far enough. Mark Minasi offers suggestions for improvements. — Mark Minasi Has Outlook Become Inlook? Mark turns cynical when answering the question, Why is Outlook regressing? — Mark Minasi Hawking Certification Like Light Beer Mark disusses his appalled reaction to a prurient advertisement for an MCSE boot camp. — Mark Minasi How About a Rational Vista License? How does Microsoft get away with its software licensing, given US copyright law? — Mark Minasi How to Easily View the Extended Properties of Files Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista have seven times more file properties than their predecessors. Here's how you can easily select and view the properties you're interested in seeing, no matter whether you're using the newest or an older OS. — Jim Turner How to Find Constants and Their Values Because of the COM technology behind scripting objects, scripts don’t get access to any constants’ values embedded in those objects. Here are several ways to obtain those crucial values. — Alex K. Angelopoulos How to Multi-Thread VBScript Scripts What can you do when you want to check your servers every 60 minutes but your script takes 90 minutes to run against all your computers? Try MultiThreader.vbs. This script executes a worker script in parallel processes, simulating multi-threaded behavior. — Chris Scoggins How to Preload Commands in a Command Shell Window Learn how to preload commands and change the color of the command shell window. — Dick Lewis IIS 6.0 Improvements Learn how Windows .NET Server 2003 improves the quality of IIS 6.0. — Michael Otey In Praise of Canon Printers Recently, I’ve experienced what you might call a paradigm shift. I’ve abandoned Epson and HP printers in favor of Canon printers. I didn’t make this decision lightly. In fact, you might say I didn’t make the decision at all: Epson and HP made it for me. — Mark Minasi Integrating Exchange Server 2007 and SharePoint Server Learn how to configure Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) to work with Exchange Server and Outlook Web Access (OWA) so your organization can use an intranet to easily share documents. — Brien Posey Introduction to ADO Learn about the primary ADO objects--Connection, Command, Parameter, Recordset, and Field--and follow example scripts that demonstrate how to use ADO within VBScript. — Robert Sheldon Keep Track of BlackBerry PINs the Easy Way BlackBerry PIN maintenance is a complex and arduous task. Here’s a script that automates the process of initially obtaining PIN information, then keeps that information up-to-date. — Joseph Neubauer List Locally Logged-on Users Query locally logged-on users with this handy JScript script. — Bill Stewart Making PowerShell's Out-Printer Cmdlet Easier to Use The names that Out-Printer uses to identify printers aren’t obvious and aren't directly available to you in PowerShell. Here are several ways you can obtain and make printer names available to your code with no copying and pasting and minimal typing. — Alex K. Angelopoulos Managing IP Routes Through WMI You can use WMI to remotely view and manage IP routing tables on your Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP systems. — Alain Lissoir Microsoft CRM for the .NET Environment Microsoft enters the customer relationship management (CRM) market with a product that leverages the Microsoft .NET platform. — John D. Ruley Microsoft Lowers Its Standard, To Enterprise’s Gain Is Microsoft quietly raising the price of the Windows Server OS? In fact, is the company, in effect, quadrupling the price? — Mark Minasi Microsoft's Antispyware Gambit Mark thinks Windows AntiSpyware might fail if Microsoft doesn't keep in mind three considerations: assurance of no surprise fees in the future, ease of deployment, and Group Policy integration. — Mark Minasi Moving to Windows 2003? Be Prepared to Dig Deep Mark Minasi tells you what you need to know about Windows Server 2003 and licensing. — Mark Minasi New Features Freshen OWA in Exchange Server 2007 SP1 A slew of improvements to Outlook Web Access, such as a more robust OWA Light, personal DLs, and new or improved support for WebReady Document Viewing, S/MIME, public folders, and monthly calendars, give your end users a better Outlook webmail client. — Brien Posey Nowhere Left to Grow No more COMDEX; Microsoft giving away cash ... what's going on? — Mark Minasi Palmed Off Mark laments Palm's decline in usability. — Mark Minasi Parsing Error Codes Errors happen but sometimes displayed error messages aren't the easiest format to read. ErrorParser.hta solves this problem by converting decimal, hexadecimal, and negative-number system and network error codes into standard error messages. — Bill Stewart PowerShell One-Liners for Accessing WMI Windows PowerShell can help you efficiently manage WMI objects. You can get started by learning just a few basic commands. — Robert Sheldon PowerShell One-Liners for Managing Events Quick commands let you easily work with the event logs on a local or remote system. — Robert Sheldon PowerShell One-Liners for Managing the File System Windows PowerShell offers all the commands you need to manipulate files and folders on your file system. Here are some of the common functions you might need to perform. — Robert Sheldon Reading Delimited Files Using ADO Find out how to set up ADO and Microsoft's Jet OLE DB text driver so that you can use them to read delimited files. — Bill Stewart Reflections on the PC's 25th Birthday Sure, the PC has been successful, but has it lived up to its potential? — Mark Minasi Repair Network Connections from the Command Line This RepairNetwork script offers a quick, quiet command-line alternative to a laborious GUI process. — Alex K. Angelopoulos Requiem for WinFS Learn about three enticing—but dropped—features that WinFS would have brought to the Longhorn feature list. — Mark Minasi Rest in Peace, ACS What's the hang-up with ACS? As far as Mark can see, it's an indispensable tool. Unfortunately, Microsoft has changed its release plans. — Mark Minasi Running the Small Mobile Office…Almost Keeping in sync with your small office isn't as easy as it sounds. — Mark Minasi Saving the Internet If the Internet really was a highway, maybe traveling it would be safer ... — Mark Minasi Script Inventories Remote Computers and Writes the Information to a Database If you often need inventory information about the remote computers you manage, check out Computer_Inventory.vbs. With this script, all you need to do is create an input file, run the script, then query the database that the script creates. — Readers Securing FTP Sites Using FTP Publishing Service for IIS 7.0 The FTP Publishing Service for IIS 7.0 lets you securely transfer user credentials and data using FTPS and provides improved authentication options. — Russell Smith Security and the "Booga-Booga" Factor Are security professionals providing a service or just securing their own jobs when they claim that no company can be sure its data is secure? — Mark Minasi Security-Obsessed Vista Makes Your Computer Top Secret Even the most casual observer of Windows Vista walks away with the impression that Microsoft is really attempting to secure this OS. — Mark Minasi Simplify Security Reporting Using Audit Collection Services Follow the steps to set up Audit Collection Services, a Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 reporting feature, then start using it to streamline security event-log auditing on your servers. — John Howie Simplify Your Exchange 2007 Transition Transitioning to Exchange Server 2007 need not be daunting, if you do so in an orderly way. Set a comfortable coexistence period, use ExBPA to flag potential issues, and install server roles and move mailboxes in an optimum sequence. — J. Peter Bruzzese Sometimes, Convergence Works — Mark Minasi Stomp Out Dragware? Sick of hidden autostart programs? — Mark Minasi Strategies for Migrating Public Folders to SharePoint Your public folder migration to SharePoint requires a strategy, careful planning, and the right tools. And that's just the beginning. The process for getting rid of public folders is straightforward, but it pays to work through the steps carefully. — Paul Robichaux System Inventory Mini-App SysInfo.hta is WMI "to the max." You can collect every property available in 15 WMI Win32 classes, including new Windows Vista properties, or comment out routines to get just what you need without any extraneous information. — Jim Turner Testing Exchange Server 2007 Use PowerShell commands to manage and test Exchange 2007 objects such as mailboxes, servers, and distribution groups. — Tony Redmond The (Timely) Fall of Static IP — Mark Minasi The Business Process Engine How can IT keep up with all the revolutions in computing? There are two developments in software that will meet the challenge: SOA and BMP. — Barry Briggs The Day the Cell Phones Stood Still Could this year's Cabir worm be a sign of things to come? — Mark Minasi The Great Question of Vista SP1’s Ship Date Let's not pressure Microsoft into releasing Vista SP1 as quickly as possible. Haven't we learned our lesson? — Mark Minasi The Group Policy Management Console Run—don't walk—to the Microsoft site to download the GPMC. Its many neat features include a folder-free view of GPOs and a GPO backup and restore capability. — Mark Minasi The Importance of Expert Systems When Buying Systems Mark laments the impossibility of buying a system that's expertly configured to his needs. — Mark Minasi The Magnificent Six Take a few minutes to get these 6 Microsoft downloads. — Mark Minasi The Microsoft Remedy Mark Smith plays judge for a day and proposes remedies that would have increased competition and fairness while protecting Microsoft’s right to innovate. — Mark Smith The Soul of Windows, Revisited Readers and Microsoft executives alike had plenty to say about Mark Smith's recent article regarding Microsoft's abandonment of Windows administrators. — Mark Smith The Year of the Database Worm? Don't be afraid of running a database server, even if it's MSDE. Just stay on top of the patches and be aware of where your servers are. — Mark Minasi Time for a Fourth Type of Event Log Entry Mark finds it troubling that a small AD environment's DCs are prone to worrisome and time-consuming--and ultimately innocuous--error messages. — Mark Minasi Time for a New Year’s Upgrade! Mark's New Year’s resolution is to fend off an old adversary: disk space. — Mark Minasi Top 10 Exchange Server 2007 Troubleshooting Tools Hundreds of utilities are available to troubleshoot Exchange Server problems, including database, mail flow, and performance issues. Here are my top 10 utilities to identify and solve network problems. — Brien Posey Tracking Messages in Exchange 2007 Use PowerShell commands to interrogate message tracking log data directly. — Tony Redmond Troubleshooting Exchange ActiveSync Solve mobile device synchronization problems in Exchange Server 2003 with these tips and a free Microsoft tool that you can use for problems related to Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), Always Up to Date (AUTD), and mobile messaging in general. — Brien Posey Understanding IIS 7.0 Authentication Microsoft IIS 7.0 provides more methods for limiting access to your web server, and its componentization feature lets you select only those authentication types you want to enable. — Jan De Clercq Unify UPNs! — Mark Minasi UNIX Migration Trends A recent ChangeWave Research survey reports that more and more IT managers are migrating their systems from UNIX to Windows. — Mark Smith UPHClean Provides Faster Logoffs For All Microsoft has quietly released the User Profile Hive Cleanup service. — Mark Minasi Use Group Policy to Distribute JRE With Its Automatic Update Feature Disabled JRE's automatic update feature can cause a lot of headaches for network administrators. Instead of taking aspirin after the fact, administrators can be proactive and prevent problems by following five simple steps. — Bill Stewart Use Scripts to Automate Windows Utilities Use scripts to automate and improve your control over Windows utilities, such as NTBackup and Dfscmd. — Alistair G. Lowe-Norris Using Exchange and Outlook's New Message-Classification Feature In Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, you can classify email messages and use transport rules to ensure that sensitive communications reach only their intended recipients. — William Lefkovics Using MRM to Manage Mailboxes Use managed folders to help users in your Exchange organization clean up and organize their mailboxes and retain messages that should be saved to comply with legal and security regulations. — J. Peter Bruzzese Using WMI to Monitor AD Learn how to use WMI to monitor AD group modifications. — Alain Lissoir Virtualization Delivers Exchange Disaster Recovery Virtualization technology can play a key role in an Exchange disaster recovery plan, as an IT administrator discovered when he restored an Exchange cluster using VMware Server. — Eric B. Rux Vista Migration: Things I Wish I’d Known This candid account of a Windows Vista migration can help you figure out what to expect in your own environment and how to deal with—or avoid—common mistakes. — LJ Zacker Vista RC1 Pleasantly Surprises Mark has a change of heart regarding Vista, thanks to the latest build. — Mark Minasi Vote with Computers? I’d Sooner Let Them Do My Driving — Mark Minasi We’re Not High-Tech, We’re High-Connect Mark wonders, “Why does everyone still think that computers are ‘high tech,’ particularly given how little really new stuff arrives?” — Mark Minasi What's So Great About Longhorn? In case you haven't been following the Longhorn buzz, here's what three of its most promising features will do. — Mark Minasi What’s So Great About R2? FRS! Kind of ... Mark rethinks his criticism of R2 and the value of FRS. — Mark Minasi What’s So Hard About a Service Pack? Mark laments Microsoft's refusal to release Win2K Service Pack 5 (SP5). — Mark Minasi Where's the Response to "Get a Mac"? Mark is starting to get fed up with those Mac vs. PC commercials. Why has Microsoft been so slow to respond? — Mark Minasi Whip Script Data Into Shape Two simple functions let WSH scripts export dictionary data to an XML file and read it back with no extra work. — Alex K. Angelopoulos Who Is R2’s Audience? — Mark Minasi Why Don't All Developers Sign Their Apps? Mark Minasi muses on why so many software vendors don't use digital certificates on their applications. — Mark Minasi Widescreen Wishes Widescreen displays are full of potential. Here's an idea that would make them much more attractive to networkers. Are you listening, Microsoft? — Mark Minasi Windows 2003 Gems Should you bother upgrading to Windows Server 2003? Mark points to stub zones and conditional forwarding as two reasons why you should. — Mark Minasi Windows Administrators’ Top Three Wishes Microsoft addresses long-standing requests from Windows administrators with each release of its server product--but Mark Minasi claims the company still has work to do. — Mark Minasi Windows Rights Management Services Microsoft's new Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) lets users lock down documents, email messages, and Web content like never before. — John Howie Windows Server 2008, the Ultimate Desktop OS John Savill shares a step-by-step process for making Windows Server 2008 a functional OS. — John Savill [Editorial] Software Assurance Isn't Reassuring Although SA is marketed as a two-way street, its benefits are heavily weighted in Microsoft's favor. — Michael Otey WinFS’s Intelligent File System Makes Sense Mark looks at the change-the-world part of WinFS: non-file items. — Mark Minasi [Feature] 10 Tips for a Painless Exchange 2000 Migration Migrating from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2000 doesn’t have to be a painful process. Just follow these 10 tips. — Jim McBee 10 Tips for Taking Exchange on the Road If you work remotely, you can configure server-based folders for offline use, and then either work remotely or synchronize your offline folders with the folders on the server. Here's how to work offline most effectively. — Tony Redmond 5 Things They Never Told You About the ADC Learn how to work around the Active Directory Connector's quirks as you use the ADC to synchronize the Exchange Server 5.5 Directory with Active Directory. — Kieran McCorry 5 Things You Should Know About Exchange 2007 These five points will help you design and deploy your Exchange 2007 architecture. — Paul Robichaux 6 Common Backup and Restore Mistakes Avoid these common errors to keep on top of your Exchange backup and restore operations. — Paul Robichaux 6 Reasons to Try Exchange 2000 Now Exchange 2000 Server is different from its predecessors. Here's why you need to start working with it right away. — Tony Redmond 6 Steps to Prepare Win2K for Exchange 2000 Exchange 2000 is closely integrated with Windows 2000. What do you need to do to make the integration proceed smoothly? — Dung Hoang Khac 7 Daily Checks to Keep Exchange 2000 Running Smoothly Monitor your Exchange 2000 system daily so that your workdays don’t deteriorate into an endless cycle of reacting to problems. — Joseph Neubauer 7 Things You Need to Know About SharePoint Services Are you the go-to person for all things SharePoint? If so, you would do well to heed these seven essential nuggets of SharePoint wisdom. — Randy Franklin Smith 8 Tips for the Solo Exchange Administrator Are you the sole Exchange administrator in your company? These eight tips will help you cut to the heart of the matter and maintain an effective system. — Paul Robichaux 8 Ways to Improve Your Exchange Cluster, Part 1 This is the first of two articles that describe the steps to a better Exchange cluster. — Daragh Morrissey 8 Ways to Improve Your Exchange Cluster, Part 2 In the second of two articles, learn four more areas--configuration, security, failovers, and service packs--that can influence the effectiveness of your Exchange cluster. — Daragh Morrissey A Closer Look at Exchange Best Practices Analyzer Exchange Best Practices Analyzer (ExBPA) performs its seemingly magical analysis of an Exchange organization by using a detailed, Microsoft-supplied configuration file. Learn more about this file and the latest version of ExBPA. — Kieran McCorry A Novel Approach to Synchronizing Exchange Organizations When you need only to establish mail flow and exchange address lists between Exchange Server 5.5 servers with different organization names, you can leverage Exchange Server's functionality to act like a Microsoft Mail post office. — Frank Plawetzki A Public Folder Checklist Streamline your public folder deployment with these tips for setting up the hierarchy, granting top-level permissions, assigning user permissions, and sharing folder content. — Drew McDermott A Tricky Migration to Exchange Server Migrating users from a foreign email system to Exchange requires keeping track of user information and understanding the relationship between domain SIDs, machine accounts and names, and the information in the Exchange Directory Store. — Drew McDermott A Viral Survival Checklist Email computer viruses are proliferating. Here are 13 actions you can take to protect your organization. — Evan Morris Accountable Email Add accountability and tracking to your company's email system. — Joseph Neubauer Active Directory Connector Redux Take a close look at a few ill-documented or barely publicized aspects of the ADC that nevertheless have significant importance for Exchange administrators. — Kieran McCorry ADC Filtering and Object-Matching Learn two techniques for selective directory synchronization with the ADC. — Kieran McCorry Address Rewriting in Exchange Server 2003 New address-rewriting functionality in Exchange 2003 lets you easily map your users' addresses to other addresses. — Donald Livengood Administering Exchange Server in a Cross-Platform Environment Learn basic strategies for administering cross-platform mail systems with as little trouble as possible. — Brien Posey An Exchange 2000 Disaster Recovery Learn from the author's experience as he troubleshoots a corrupt mailbox store caused by a hardware failure, then restores the database. — Daragh Morrissey An Exchange 2003 Journaling Primer If storing all your users email indefinitely is the bane of your existence, especially in these days of heavy regulatory compliance, read this article to find out more about Exchange 2003 message journaling. — Kieran McCorry Are You Listening, Lotus? Tony Redmond believes that Lotus has misinterpreted some of his comments about Exchange. Tony sets the facts straight. — Tony Redmond Automatically Create User Accounts and Mailboxes in Exchange 5.5 You can use ADSI, WSH, and the AcctMgmt class to automate the process of creating Exchange 5.5 mailboxes and user accounts in either an AD or NT domain. — Ethan Wilansky Automatically Delete User Accounts and Mailboxes in Exchange 5.5 Use ADSI and VBScript to automate the process of deleting Exchange 5.5 mailboxes and user accounts in either an AD or NT domain. — Ethan Wilansky Automatically Generate Mail Profiles As Benjamin Franklin said, "Time is money." Here's a solution that saves money by automating the time-intensive task of configuring Outlook 2003 mail profiles to reference users' mailboxes. — Joseph Neubauer Background Maintenance for Exchange Servers Exchange Server performs multiple maintenance tasks, typically at night, to keep the mail server performing well with limited downtime. — Tony Redmond Backing Up an Exchange Server Learn how a backup works, review several backup methods, and think about a strategy, and look at some helpful Exchange utilities. — Mark Ott Beef Up Security for Your Mobile-Device Fleet Now you can lock down your fleet of mobile computing devices and perform remote wipes. Get the lowdown on installing Exchange Server 2003 SP2 and configuring MSFP for Windows Mobile 5.0, and ensure better security for your mobile devices. — Randy Franklin Smith Better OWA Attachment Security OWA is a handy tool for remote users, but its attachment handling leaves networks vulnerable to malicious code and intruders. Here are some tips to reduce the risks. — Paul Robichaux BlackBerry 4.0 Tips and Tricks Dig into some tips and tricks that you can use to get a handle on your BlackBerry-related tasks. — Joseph Neubauer BlackBerry Enterprise Server 4.0 Should you upgrade to the new version of BES? The short answer is yes. — Joseph Neubauer BlackBerry Enterprise Server Day to Day If you have users who rely on BlackBerry devices, you should understand how these handheld devices work and how to monitor them and troubleshoot their problems. — Joseph Neubauer BlackBerry Enterprise Server's New Features, Part 1 New features in BES 3.6 and BES 3.5, including policies that let you secure BlackBerry devices, make upgrading to these software versions worthwhile. — Joseph Neubauer BlackBerry Enterprise Server's New Features, Part 2 BES 3.6 and BES 3.5 offer enhancements that your BlackBerry users have probably been asking for: the ability to read attachments, look up names in the GAL, synchronize more easily, surf the Web, and access corporate data. — Joseph Neubauer Blocking Client Access to Exchange Servers Discover how you can prevent your users from accessing an Exchange server while the system is running. — Tony Redmond Build an Email-Discovery Plan More than likely, your company will have to produce saved email messages in a court case or compliance investigation. Use these ideas to develop your own email-discovery plan and learn about tools that can facilitate e-discovery for Exchange admins. — David Sengupta Build an Exchange 2003 Cluster: Install Exchange on the Cluster Have you wanted to run Exchange on a cluster but haven't had the nerve to try? Here's help: Use these easy-to-understand instructions as your guide in installing Exchange Server 2003 on a Windows Server 2003 cluster. — Daragh Morrissey Build an Offline Exchange 2000 Server in 9 Steps An offline copy of your production Exchange server can be invaluable. Find out how you can use it and how to build one. — Joseph Neubauer Build Quality into an Exchange 2000 Environment By using provisioning tools and services, you can repeatedly produce the same result—properly built and configured servers and applications—throughout an Exchange 2000 environment. — Evan Morris Bulk Object-Manipulation in Exchange 2000 With Exchange 2000’s switch from the DS to AD, you need a new method for manipulating user objects in bulk. A few Win2K tools provide the answer. — Barb McDonald Calendaring: Understanding the Client Side Do you wonder why you can't always share calendar information within your group? Find out how Outlook handles appointments and what you can do to improve calendaring performance. — Siegfried Jagott Canning Spam You need to know how the new federal antispam law affects your messaging operations. To help you stay on the right side of the feds, we present the law's finer points and explain some provisions that your users should understand. — Paul Robichaux Cleaning Up Public Folders Microsoft plans to replace public folders with another repository in a future release of Exchange. Using PFDAVAdmin now will help you prepare for the transition. — Tony Redmond Closing Out Exchange Mailboxes These nine configurations and options can help you deal effectively with former employees' mailboxes. — Joseph Neubauer Command-Line Mailbox Creation Learn how you can use a script to create mailboxes in Exchange Server 5.5. — Paul Niser Comparing Windows Mobile 2003's IMAP with ActiveSync With Windows Mobile 2003, you can use IMAP or ActiveSync to access Exchange over a wireless connection. Here are some factors to consider when you’re deciding which protocol to use. — Joseph Neubauer Configuring Outlook Express Outlook Express's s | |||||||||||
