One of the tools I cannot work without is Outlook.  Over the years I’ve tried everything from Thunderbird with Sunbird to some really weird products like Chandler and Omea, that never really found the sweet spot that Outlook hits.  I wanted to be free of the Exchange lock, which while powerful, is a real pain to share outside of the corporate environment (share a view of your calendar with friends and family?  Not a chance…)

Naturally then, Outlook is one of the driving reasons behind maintaining a VM/Boot Camp partition for day-to-day work (obviously, the anchor is Visual Studio/.NET).  I looked at Entourage from Office 2004, but was not entirely impressed it–I have grown dependent on RPC/HTTP (can’t stand the thought of VPN any longer just to check email), and that’s flat out not supported by Entourage (not in any of the versions I tried, at least).

So I have high hopes for Office 2008 due out this Jan 15.  I’m hoping for closer feature parity between Entourage and Outlook 2007 (where will I find something like ClearContext?), especially with respect to RPC/HTTP.  And finally, I’m hoping it shows up on MSDN–does anyone know if it will?

In the first post, I mentioned that in order for me to keep OSX on the new MacBook (which I want to do), I had to be able to work through six different tasks without too much trouble, or I’d have to switch to using Vista on the laptop.

The first three tasks were easy to work through. The fourth proved to be very disappointing: being able to remote into the laptop using something like Microsoft’s mstsc.exe (terminal services client) to work on the laptop from the comfort of my desktop, and the 3 large flat screens.

I’ve got a wired gigabit network in my house: each room has 3 drops, and I make good use of that network. So imagine my surprise as I went through VNC client after client, along with three different servers, trying to get a decent remote desktop view of the MacBook. I tried:

• The built-in Remote Desktop service with a handful of Windows VNC clients–absolute rubbish. I’ve had faster screen redraws through RDP over a 56k modem.
• Vine Server: after reading reviews, I had high hopes for this VNC server (server is free, client is not). I used several different VNC clients on my Vista machine, and each one was a failure. The experience in mstsc.exe is nearly indistinguishable from being at the console (especially over the gigabit network), but on VNC it’s like a bad dream. I’m sure there are ways to configure both client and server, and I tried dragging down the visuals to the lowest possible setting: so the screen looked ugly and it was still slow.
• RealVNC: supposedly the best of them, and not free (for a single license, $50 US). A demo license showed nothing different than Vine or the built in service.

And what a disappointment! Dragging windows around is just about the most painful thing I’ve ever seen–so scratch one against keeping OSX on the laptop. There’s no way I could work on my laptop from my desktop.

Now, for the workaround: since I use VMWare, I just start all the VM’s I usually use (all Windows Server 2003 instances), then RDP into them from my desktop. In reality, I don’t need access to the OSX desktop, I just need access to what’s running there: and in my case, that is 2-3 Windows 2003 Server VM’s.

There’s hope yet. Unfortunately, some of the VM’s run VPN software that disables all local routes for security, and that means RDP is out the window. In that case, I’ll simply migrate the VM to another machine on the network when I bring the laptop home.

I’ll keep looking for a VNC option for OS X, but I doubt I’ll find anything half as good as Remote Desktop in Windows.

#5 (backups) and #6 (applications) up next.

Autonomy IDOL with a bunch of fetches (especially the file system fetch/connector with a pair of security services each) can amount to a painful deployment when it comes to configuring the Windows Services.

When everything is installed, you can turn to sc.exe (part of the OS in Windows Server 2003, used to be in the Resource Kit) to help automate the credentials change:

sc.exe config "Service Name" obj= "DOMAIN\User" password= "password"

Note that the space after the equals is important.  You can also set the startup type with:

sc.exe config "Service Name" start= auto

A bunch of these in a script can help immensely with deployments.  Run sc.exe by itself on the command-line to see a number of other powerful options (including controlling remote services).

I still get a lot of feedback about the Mozy vs. Carbonite posts. I thought I would write up a quick review of how I backup the data that my household produces. Basically, I break down my data into 3 groups:

Must have it no matter what
Must have it even if the house burns down
If the house burns down, I’ve got bigger issues

These are “rings” of data–and yes, that means some data (level 1 data) gets backed up 3 different ways. For the first set of data, I use Mozy (free for 2G or less). I have just under 2G of this kind of data–the absolutely-must-have-no-matter-what-happens type of data. I’ve considered burning some of this data to a DVD and putting it in a safe deposit box at my bank, but I’d probably forget it was there. Mozy encrypts it, stores it in the cloud and does a great job of being fire-and-forget. You literally turn it on, then forget its there. And recovery is great–I’ve had to recover twice now, and while it is a bit slow (at least for large recovery sets, since I lost my entire drive), it works like a champ. For the second set, I use FolderShare (free). While not strictly a backup (the data is just replicated to every machine that I install FolderShare on–that includes deletes, and those happen immediately!), this meets the requirement of being safe even if the house burns down (I’ve got machines in other locations). I put everything in FolderShare, and promptly forget that it’s doing its job. For the final set–that’s everything else–I use a 2TB RAID-5 NAS at our house. With a gigabit network throughout the house, a full backup on weekends takes less than 4 hours. For the backup software, I use the indispensable SyncBackSE. I bought a license several years ago (I think it was $25 at the time–it’s not much more now), and their licensing allows you to use it on 5 computers. I have my eye on Windows Home Server, but I think I’ll wait until the fracas settles. My wife would kill me if I lost her photos. Kill me dead. How safe is your data?

I bought my first Mac laptop the moment they started showing up with Intel chips.  I bought it for my wife, considering all the photo/movie work she does. Within a week, she was positive: she hated it. Nothing worked the way she expected, and while I oohed and aahed over it (wow, look–I can do everything from the command-line again!), she found it unusable. It quickly made its way to wherever MacBooks go when Windows users find they can’t use them.

Fast-forward to the end of this year, I’m in the market for a new laptop. My intention was to replace my Dell M90, a beast of a laptop that I use as a desktop replacement on the road. While at home, it sits on a shelf grinding away, hosting a couple of VM’s that I work on from my desktop, using RDP (with 5120 pixels of screen real-estate across my desk, staring at a laptop screen is criminal). I had high expectations for that machine, and was sorely disappointed at both the performance and the fact that Dell’s name was on this: I don’t know when Dell’s laptop quality dropped, but that’s the last Dell I buy for performance reasons.

Having seen Scott’s post about switching to a Mac (and the ad, and the PC World article), I thought I might try the Mac again–this time for myself. I’m comfortable with the OS (I wouldn’t consider myself an expert user though), it’s really the hardware I was after, and intrigued about the possibilities I might find on the other side of the silly 3G limit in Vista/x86 (I don’t pretend to fully understand why: Jeff Atwood has a good description here). So, with a 2.6GHz 4Gb MacBook Pro in hand (with the 7200 RPM drive), I started exploring.

For this laptop to work for me–to be worth the pain of dealing with something that I haven’t yet mastered–I had several objectives:

1. The laptop should support my job: .NET development
2. I should be able to use the MS Office tools I use on a regular basis: Outlook 2007, OneNote 2007, Groove, Visio, PowerPoint
3. I should be able to remote desktop into Window servers
4. I should be able to remote desktop into the laptop while not travelling, so I can work comfortably from my desktop.
5. I should be able to back up easily using my three rings of defense:
   1. Mozy for critical data (accounting data, personal documents, etc)
   2. FolderShare for (a) + high importance data (photos, etc)
   3. A 2TB RAID-5 NAS for (a) + (b) + everything else
6. I should be able to use a host of applications that I use on a daily basis: KeePass, QuickBooks and so on.

Of course, the easy answer is to simply use BootCamp and install Vista: but what a waste! OSX is such a beautiful OS, I really wanted to keep it (and all the tools, applications and utilities it comes with, or that are only available for the Mac), and figure out a way to achieve those objectives in OSX.

I use VMWare everywhere and for everything. I decided rather than using Parallels, I’d use VMWare Fusion. I downloaded it, installed, and copied over one of the current VMs I’m working on–it started flawlessly. I was shocked at how easy that was; everything worked perfectly. From start to finish, it was about 10 minutes, and I was working on a Windows 2003 VM with SQL Server, MOSS, Visual Studio and all the accoutrements installed. Objective #1 achieved.

A side note here: I do absolutely no development directly on my Vista laptop. Instead, I do all development in a VM on that laptop. I keep a VM for each client, and when I’m done, I archive the VM. I don’t need the host laptop to run Visual Studio. However, I do run all the MS Office applications on the host.

So there’s the kicker for Objective #2–I have an old copy of MS Office for the Mac (that I bought for the first laptop). Having seen the light of Office 2007, there’s no chance I’m going backwards. And really, any alternative that doesn’t work with Exchange is right out. I need Outlook 2007, so I hit my first roadblock. I can work around it by installing Office in the VM, but really–why? That’s information that spans VMs (spans clients). So I’ve got to think about that one a little bit more.

Objective #3 was easily solved with the Remote Desktop Connection from Microsoft. I am running the RDC 2.0 Beta–connecting to windows machines without a hitch.

Objective #4 proved to be an absolute disappointment–let me tell you, the current state of remote desktop connectivity in the Windows world is light-years ahead of everyone else. I’m used to watching video over RDP–in the MS world, RDP is almost indistinguishable from being at the console. What I saw available for the Mac (VNC, Screen Sharing, etc.) was absolute rubbish. More on #4, #5 and #6 next.

I use multiple Exchange servers (personal, work, etc.) As anyone who has tried knows, this is a particularly unforgiving and unhelpful scenario–Outlook won’t allow you to create more than one Exchange account per profile, and I’ve tried everything. Multiple profiles of course simply don’t cut it. So what’s a person to do when they have their work Exchange/Outlook setup, and their personal Exchange/Outlook setup?

I had high hopes when I installed Office Beta 2. Sure enough, there was the promise of Office Online and published calendars:

I tried out the “Publish My Calendar” link, which takes you to register first, then on to publishing specifics (details, how many days, who can see it), which takes you to the Office Online site, displaying your calendar. A cool option, but I use my Google Calendar pretty heavily, and I don’t intend to switch soon. But see that little “Subscribe to Internet Calendar” in the middle? I thought I’d take a look at that. Turns out it’s a webcals:// (yes, webcals) link to an ICS for my calendar. I grabbed the URL, replaced webcals:// with http:// and plugged it into my Google Calendar.

Presto.

9 days later, and Carbonite is finally finished. There is a pleasant little green lock in my system tray letting me know all is well:

Carbonite backed up 10,179 files in more 31,494MB over a period of 9 days. A bit too slow for my preferences, but I’ll watch how it does over the beta period. Now that the data is up there, keeping up with the small changes and additions should be relatively quick…right?

I must say though, for peace of mind mixed with instant gratification–and less than 2GB of data–Mozy (the little orange “m” in my tray) is the way to go. A couple of hours, and 2G of data were backed up somewhere other than right here.

I love online calendars. For making sure that the family (all over the US and outside) can plan, that my wife can plan around my commitments, and I around hers–it’s the best. I played around with getting a hosted MS Exchange account (from 1and1.com)–it works great, especially with the JasJar, but it just doesn’t meet that shared calendar thing that you get with Airset, or 30boxes.com, or…now Google.

So I set up my Google calendar, added iCal subscriptions to my 30boxes.com and backpackit.com calendars/events, added a US Holidays list, and stood back to look. It’s a bit buggy (it took several tries over an hour to add the iCal’s, I got various errors in various shapes and sizes), but it sure looks nice–in a simple way.

I’ve been using Outlook 12 for a bit, and I have grown used to the side-by-side calendars–my main calendar, and my iCal imports. But this Google approach–all the calendars on the same view, using colors to indicate the different sources, is really handy.

I get a bunch of “Failed to load details for calendars” it seems on every refresh (or I’d have a screen-shot to paste here)–so there’s still work to do. But here it is, my email, my contacts and my calendar.