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3/21/2005

Storage::Exchange::Modeling Exchange 2003 Storage Design Requirements


Microsoft Storage Calculator

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c6084d20-9730-4ffc-805d-b957327604c6&displaylang=en

Storage::Exchange::SAN::Storage Design for Clustered MS Exchange


How Microsoft IT Does Storage Design

Very good discussion of storage design for Microsoft's consolidated worldwide Exchange deployment.

Webcast (requires registration):http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=2303373

3/18/2005

Outlook::Name Completion


Issues with Outlook XP/2002 name completion.
This is the kind of stuff I normally just tell people "This gets corrupt occasionally and it must be deleted and recreated." Which is the truth - that is Microsoft's official answer. In the outlook profile directory, delete the *.NK2 file and the name completion cache will start again fresh.
However there are some people that this answer cannot be given to. So I've spent a good amount of time recently messing around with OL name completion. In my travels I found that there is a utility that will actually edit this file. (If you are interested it is named Owtlook and you can google search for it's name or NK2 file and get a million hits because some guy named Randy has lurked in every news group and forum on Outlook and replied to every poor soul who has problems with Outlook name completion. Even getting into fights with people who pass along the true Microsoft answer I stated above.)
I have also found a possible bug in Outlook name completion behavior: The NK2 file is written upon closing Outlook. This doesn't appear to happen if I logout or restart my computer without first closing down Outlook. So if I have no NK2 file, open outlook and populate some addresses in the cache and restart my computer then no NK2 file is created. And if I have an NK2 file and run Outlook and add names to this cache, those entries aren't written to the NK2.
Strange......
I am running:
Outlook XP/2002 SP3 (from Office XP Professional.)
Windows XP SP2

3/14/2005

Wireless::Product::Opinion


Speaking of Wireless Bridges

I have a 802.11B wireless LAN. I tried out the NetGear ME100 wireless 802.11B bridge. I had a very bad experience with the online vendor I bought it from on Amazon and with Netgear tech support.

I own some good NetGear products and thought this purchase would be no different. After a couple hours on the phone with tech support he finally told me the product was defective and to return it to my vendor. I do. My vendor claims to test it out and it works just fine. I say "if the manufacturer's rep tells me the product is defective and to return it, the product must be defective." They ask for my support incident number. I lookup my support incident on the web and all I see there is it is under category of "possible parameter misconfiguration" and no notes at all about our telephone conversation. If that causes me to pay a 20% restocking fee or not get refund at all I will never buy another NetGear product again.

I *can* report that I drove to an actual store and bought a Linksys WET11 bridge and it was up and running 60 minutes later (including my drive home...)

I have yet to see any money back from the online vendor. And every reply e-mail I get from them is from a different e-mail domain. Good grief!

3/11/2005

Telecom::Long Distance


How can I tell who my long distance provider is?

Dial 1-700-555-4141 for LD provider for international, interstate, and intrastat interLATA calling.

Dial 1-AAA-700-4141 for LD provider for intraLATA calling to the AAA area code.
Long Distance Carrier 1010 CODES: "1010333 works for video conferencing."

AT&T & BellSouth appear to block "data" calls.

3/01/2005

MSIIS::Perl::Script::Fix Perl IIS Script Mapping



After installing ActiveState Perl script mapping still didn't work for me on WinXP.

I found this fix.