Outlook 2007 interface is very different from older versions, and it looks intimidating for both novice and advanced users.  The biggest thing to remember is that all the same features from 2003 and previous versions are still there… they’re just hidden.  Not sure why Microsoft made the 2007 version so drastically different from the previous version, but unless the user is very computer savvy, a user’s manual may be the best way to find all the old and new features of Outlook 2007.  On the bright side, Outlook is significantly improved in functionality and features.

Here are a few tips on being able to use some of my favorite new organizational tools.

Staying Organized: The new Outlook ‘To Do’ bar is on the right side of your Outlook screen. If you use a large display, there is plenty of room for the ‘To Do’ bar to sit there as you work.  If you’re using a small screen, clicking the double chevron indicator in the top right corner will collapse it, but it stays handy so you can access it with a single click.  If you don’t want to see it at all (which will NOT help you stay organized), go to ‘View’ from the menu bar and select ‘To-Do’ bar, then select ‘Off’… no more ‘To Do’ bar on the Outlook screen.

The ‘To Do’ bar gives you the tools you need to organize your day all in one place. It contains mini calendars, a list of upcoming appointments and tasks awaiting completion.  In previous versions you’d have to switch back and forth from calendar to mail to tasks.

Task List: Outlook ‘Task List’ is right in front of you, so it’s easy to use. To add a new task, click in the ‘Type a New Task’ box, type the task description and it will be added as a task to be performed today. To configure more detail about the task, double-click to open the task dialog and make your changes.

Using Email Flags: An email message needing attention, but not right away, may appear.  A message can be flagged for later attention by using the ‘Flag Status’ indicator to the right of the email in the Inbox panel.  A single click of ‘Flag Status’ automatically adds the message to your ‘To Do’ list for later attention.  I love this feature! I receive a boatload of email daily, and it’s fast and easy to zip through them to find important emails.

If you’d like to see a reminder, right click the ‘Flag’ to add a reminder for that task. You’re sure to find the integration between follow up items and the task list invaluable in ensuring that everything, that needs to be attended to, is marked and is visible and easy to track.

Color Categories: This may not be for everyone, but if you want certain emails to standout, you will love this function.  If you want to have all email from your boss or a specific vendor easily seen in your sea of email, this will do it.  Color categories can be assigned to messages, contacts, appointments, tasks and so on.

To color code an existing message in your Inbox, right-click it, point to ‘Categorize’ and click a color category.  If there is an open message on the ‘Message’ tab in the ‘Options’ group, click ‘Categorize’ and click a color category. Colors associated with a category can be changed at any time, and new color categories can be created.  To make things even easier, a ‘Categorized Mail’ search folder has been added to ‘Search Folders’ in the Navigation Pane and provides a view of all your categorized mail items.

When I see a message, a task, and a calendar item all flagged with the same color, I know that they all relate to the same subject or project. This is awesome!

These are my personal favorite tools. I use them to keep myself organized using Outlook 2007.  I bet you can use them to help organize your work day using Outlook 2007, too. Enjoy!

One of the benefits of being a client of Steinhoff Consulting (DedicatedIT) is that we occasionally do more for you than just provide IT services.

Earlier this week, we handed out nearly 12 tickets to our clients for the Honda Classic. I just had another bunch dropped on my desk. I have tickets for each of the following days:

• 2 - Tuesday, March 3, 2009
• 3 – Wednesday, March 4, 2009
• 1 – Thursday, March 5, 2009
• 1 – Friday, March 6, 2009
• 2 – Sunday, March 8, 2009

If you want some of the tickets, please be the first to leave a comment in the form below with the day that you would like to attend and the quantity. Please don’t be greedy.

And, in a shameless plug for our new website (that isn’t completed yet), the first person who leaves me a comment somewhere else on our DedicatedIT Blog gets two coupons for complimentary greens fees at Atlantis Country Club. The comment must be relevant to the page on which it was posted to be valid.

Happy Golfing!

AntiVirus 2009 Virus Getting Harder to Clean

I’ve just completed the cleanup of another client’s computer that was attacked by one of the latest insidious Trojan/Scareware versions of AntiVirus 2009. This is the fourth client who has had this attack in the last few weeks. Each of these users is a remote user on a home PC, and each instance seems to be getting more and more difficult to get rid of. (I guess that this just proves that the bad guys are committed to their craft. They are working hard to stay ahead of the good guys.) This time it took me a good 3 hours to completely eradicate the virus.

Social Hacking at its Best

The first question I was asked each time was, “How did this happen?” These clients were simply surfing the web and checking out their favorite web sites when, suddenly there is this frightening Pop-Up message… “Warning! Spyware detected on your computer!”

The majority of computer users are scared silly (which is the objective, of course), and they immediately succumb to the temptation to click on the button provided, hoping that this will stop whatever has taken over their session.

This is when the real trouble begins. The message is fake, and they aren’t really infected… yet. Once they click on the message, however, a Pandora’s Box will open and all sorts of really nasty stuff is released into all sorts of nooks and crannies within their system.

Don’t Give them Money!

To make matters worse, by clicking the ad, a “registration” screen presents itself . Once victims click on that, they are taken to a web site where the crooks try to sell an anti-spyware solution. This “solution” does nothing, and potentialy can do even more damage to the computer. If average PC users have gotten this far, they are at the point where they whip out their credit cards and pay the fee (anywhere from $29.95 to maybe $69.95) for the proposed, but useless, “solution”.

Even worse is the fact that thieves, who set up this type of scam, now have access to the user’s credit card or banking information. There is the potential for the scammers to empty bank accounts or max out the credit cards. Even worse,  they can use the information for full identity theft scams.

Keep an Eye Out for These Scams

The only defense against these scams are knowledge, research and being aware that these scams exist. Following, is a short list of some of the worst of these scams:
•    AntiVirus 2008/2009/2010:  These look like anti-virus ads,  but will completely infect a system and hijack your browser.
•    AntiVirus Plus:  This one looks like a Microsoft Security Center page to make the user think that this is an update or Microsoft generated/approved piece of software.
•    AntispywareXP 2009 or XPAntispyware 2009:  This one continually generates false alerts and scan results that will overload your system and slow it down. The effect worsens very quickly as it digs deeper into your system.
•    WinDefender 2009:  This program looks like a legitimate spyware program and will always find malware on the system. Unfortunately, everything it finds is bogus and is merely an attempt to frighten the victim enough to get him to buy the software.
•    AntiVirus Sentry:  This virus often downloads itself without any click by the user.
•    Security 2009 and ProAntispyware 2009:  These packages even advertise themselves on the web as a legitimate applications.
•    RapidAntiVirus:  This package is one of the most overtly malicious. When it runs on your system, it identifies legitimate system files as malware convincing the user to remove the files, which results in a complete crash of your PC.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is this. Cleanup has taken hours of my time and caused lost productivity for my clients. In addition, they have had to pay for the hours, or have had the time deducted from their available support hours, for something very avoidable. Be careful where you surf and what you click.

While much of this information comes from personal experience working to cleanup client computers, some of it has been culled from research on the web, including Computer World and Download.com.

Because we are a Citrix partner, we get to sit in on pre-release conference calls for all of the latest technology coming out. Today’s conference call was about the new release of Citrix’s VDI solution: XenDesktop 3 with HDX.

You could tell that the gentleman hosting the seminar was really excited about this release just by the tone of his voice. Here’s what I gathered as the most important things that you’ll see in XenDesktop 3:

Greatly Reduced Server Requirements

Citrix claims that 1000 concurrent users can be hosted from just 25 highly-equiped servers. This is a 50% reduction in server hardware to host the same number of users. I’m sure that this is because the base platform has moved over to the XenServer 5 codebase, which significantly improved the performance of XenApp servers when virtualized.  If you are currently running XenDesktop, moving to the latest edition will really make the green folks in your organization happy.

The Best User Experience

High Definition User Experience (HDX) is the buzzword/acronym that Citrix is using to convey that they are the dominate force for delivering desktops over any type of connection to any type of device. Citrix XenDesktop is currently able to stream multimedia to low-bandwidth clients with connections “just above a standard modem”.  Next on their roadmap is to be able to deliver 3D rendering and fully-functional CAD.

Also, with XenDesktop 3, is the ability to use a wide range of plug-and-play USB devices like iPods, smart cards and PDAs. While they said that some web cams and will work, they don’t officially support it, yet.

Profile Management was added to XenDesktop 3. They never mentioned it in the conference, but my guess is that this is what they are doing with the Citrix User Profile Manager technology that they aquired from Sepago.

Fully-functioning multimedia across WAN links + plug-and-play USB devices + centralized profile management makes XenDesktop WAY better than any other VDI solution on the market. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, VMware.

An Application Delivery System - not just VDI

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is getting more attention than server virtualization. In fact, according to Google Trends, people search for “VDI” more often than “server virtualization” by a factor of 100. However, Citrix’s solution is much more than justVDI; it’s an end-to-end application delivery platform.  Citrix’s solution encompasses application packaging and delivery, profile management, desktop virtualization and delivery, desktop streaming to standard PCs, application performance monitoring and WAN acceleration.  

One other thing to note is that a single operating system base image can be used for both the VDI-based server delivered desktops as well as the standard PCs that have their operating system streamed to them across the LAN.

Is it Time to Deploy in your Environment?

There are many reasons to deploy Citrix XenDesktop in your environment. The most important one is Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

On-going support costs will be reduced. I guarantee it. When there is a single base operating system image, a single application image, real-time profile assembly and it is controlled and delivered centrally, high-level support tickets to your senior team will stop. Most support calls will be resolved by saying “have you rebooted, yet?”

There will be little need to refresh your workstations every two to three years, because much of the horsepower will come from the data center. And, when a PC does need to be replaced, it can be replaced with thin client, which in-turn, has its own very compelling TCO story to tell.

If you are considering a large-scale workstation refresh in the near future, you are a perfect candidate for this solution.

What to know more? Contact one of DedicatedIT’s Solution Experts today.

Telephone: 561-491-5750

Email: sales@DedicatedIT.com

Or for immediate help, Chat with a Solutions Expert

Working with printers via RDP or Citrix is not always easy.  ThinPrint has saved us a lot of headaches over the years.  Today, I had one installation that was different than ones I have worked on in the past.  It was ThinPrint Application Engine on a Windows 2008 Server.  No matter what I did, the local printers wouldn’t show up on my RDP session.  Turns out you must have the RDP connection on the Terminal Server named RDP-TCP.  If you change it… you will break it.

Happy Printing.

Please let us know via comment below if this article helped you.

On December 17th 2008, I sent this message to all of Steinhoff Consulting’s (DedicatedIT’s parent company) contacts:

Steinhoff Consulting is moving
Please update all addresses in your system(s) to:
Steinhoff Consulting, Inc.
620 Wilmot St.
West Palm Beach, FL 33405

Why are you moving?
Steinhoff Consulting has always believed in providing excellent services to you with as little impact to our Earth as possible – even before being green was cool.

Besides recycling and running nearly a paperless office, Steinhoff Consulting was one of the first IT consulting companies to begin supporting our clients via remote access. Not only did this directly benefit you by not having to wait for a tech to arrive on site to have your issue tended to, it indirectly helped you by reducing carbon emissions and conserving gas.

Our lease was up and that prompted us to sit down and calculate the amount of miles our employees drive to work each day, and it was mind-numbing: 94,738 miles each year to be exact. While some of us have more efficient cars than others, this amounted to nearly 4,712 gallons of gas each year.

As a company we decided to take another bold step in our efforts to be as green as we can be: stop commuting to work. We will be in a trial phase for 90 days while we test our customer service levels and the ability for our team to continually advance their technical expertise. Likely, this will not directly affect you in any way. Indirectly, however, we’ll be reducing carbon emissions, conserving fuel and pushing remote group collaboration technology to its limits with the hope of helping your company communicate better as a result.

What makes your move so easy?
We use the technology that we offer to you:
• Datacenter – Our equipment is in a datacenter on the Internet backbone – not in our office.
• Centralized storage from NetApp – it’s so fast, reliable and feature-packed, it’s scary.
• HP servers virtualized by Citrix XenServer – what used to take eight physical servers, takes three; and they are more reliable
• Applications delivered by Citrix XenApp – Our applications come from our datacenter and are delivered anywhere in the world over the Internet
• Voice over IP (VoIP) – Our dial tone comes from our datacenter and is delivered anywhere in the world over the Internet. I can take my phone with me anywhere.
• MS Exchange and Office Communication Server – Our team can communicate (in pairs or in groups) instantly and easily.

Moving soon? We can help! Give us a call.

I had a pretty good idea of what we were in for technology-wise, because we have been using much of the technology listed in that email since our company’s inception in 2002. What I was not sure of was how customer service was going to be impacted, what our clients and prospects would think about a company being run completely remotely and if our employees would still put in a hard-day’s work.

To quote Donald Rumsfeld:

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.

Over the next few months, I’ll be writing about these “known knowns”, “known unknowns” and the “unknown unknowns” and how our business has changed because of them.

Have you been considering a remote office? Are you in a remote office already? Are you in a remote office and considering a “real” office?

I’d love to hear about your thoughts and experiences.