Jeff's Connected Corner

January 2007 - Posts

• Kansas City Metro Time Warner Upgrade

  If you live in the KC Metro area, and subscribe to Road Runner from Time Warner Cable, you're in for a nice surprise.  In an effort to compete with the New ATT, Time Warner has pumped up their bandwidth.  Although the new speeds aren't published on the official web site, I spoke with a Time Warner representative today after noticing the increase. Here are the new speeds, which should roll out to all KC metro area Road Runner customers very soon: Standard Road Runner: 7Mbps downstream, 512Kbps upstream Road Runner Turbo: 10Mbps downstream, 1Mbps upstream I recently upgraded to the Turbo package (blogging about it here)... and now I'm even happier with my decision. Fellow WindowsConnected blogger Aubrey had to reboot his cable modem twice to get the upgrade.  Considering we both live in different parts of the city, the metro-wide rollout is making quick progress. One more thing - my ping times seem to have gone WAY down.  Check out the SpeedTest.net screen shot for all the juicy details.  Cheers! Posted Jan 19 2007, 01:37 PM by Jeff with no comments

• BDD 2007 Released to Web

  Microsoft just released BDD 2007 to the public download site.  Prior to today, this product/guidance was only available to beta testers.  BDD stands for Business Desktop Deployment, and the 2007 release is loaded with tools and best-practice recommendations to help you deploy Vista. Hint: Technically... you can use the BDD 2007 tools to deploy XP as well.  But for the record, you should be deploying Vista ;)  If you have more than 25 PCs to deploy, you need to take a look at BDD 2007.  Here are a couple other desktop deployment resources you should check out in addition to BDD 2007: WAIK Download (WAIK = Windows Automated Installation Kit) TechNet: Desktop Deployment Center Good luck with your deployments! Posted Jan 17 2007, 05:13 PM by Jeff with 3 comment(s) Filed under: Windows Vista, Deployment

• Xbox 360 - 3 Years of Support for $53 USD

  I finally took the plunge and got an Xbox 360 back in October of 2006.  I'm not a heavy gamer, but really enjoy the system when I can find time to play.  Anyway, one of the first things I did was pony up for the 2 year extended warranty ($50 USD plus tax).  I just wasn't comfortable with the risk of losing a $400 system after the standard 90-day warranty expired. Fast forward to today.  In all the excitement and press about Microsoft's new 1-year Xbox hardware support policy, no one seems to have reported on the fate of the previous program.  Not being one to sit around and wonder, I called Microsoft Xbox support over lunch today and found out.  After about 10 minutes on the phone with Xbox Support... I had my answer: Anyone who purchased a 2-year extended warranty will receive the full benefit of that program.  In other words, my 2 years won't start ticking away until October, 2007... meaning I'm protected from any Xbox 360-related repairs until November of 2009. There isn't anything official on xbox.com regarding this point yet... so you'll just have to trust me for now (see update below).  However, the rep said we should see something posted in the near future.  My guess is that it will appear on the Xbox 'Press' page at http://www.xbox.com/en-US/press/ UPDATE: I received some snail mail today from the Xbox warranty group.  The updated expiration date for my 2-year support contract is now January 2009.  So, not only did they reset my 2-year warranty to start after the free 1-year warranty ends (as reported above)... they also gave me 3 extra months as well.  Thanks guys! Cheers, and happy gaming! Posted Jan 04 2007, 01:54 PM by Jeff with 4 comment(s) Filed under: Xbox

• Making Sense of Exchange 2007 Changes (Well, Some of Them Anyway)

  Scott Schnoll (Sr. Technical Writer on the Microsoft Exchange team) posted an excellent article on his personal blog titled "Exchange 2007: Platforms, Editions, Product Keys and Versions".  It's an informative article, and one I really wish I noticed before transitioning my home lab to the 32-bit version of Exchange 2007.  Here are the 32-bit limitations from Scott's blog: There are three things that are not available in the 32-bit version: Service Packs.  We have no existing plans to develop service packs for the 32-bit version.  Seems like there was some internal confusion on this point.  Scott has updated his post to reflect the fact that MS will indeed release service packs for the 32-bit version of Exchange 2007. Automatic Anti-spam updates from Windows Updates.  Only a licensed 64-bit version will be able to get automatic anti-spam updates from Microsoft Update. Storage groups and databases.  You can have a maximum of 5 databases per server in as many as 5 storage groups on the 32-bit version. Item 2 ended up causing me immediate pain.  You see, I spend quite a bit of time working with, troubleshooting, and blogging about WSUS.  I was really looking forward to seeing the anti-spam updates flow between WSUS and Exchange 2007.  Not so much anymore :( But hey - maybe the Exchange product group will send over a 64-bit Acer Ferrari laptop for me to continue my testing :) Posted Jan 04 2007, 01:29 PM by Jeff with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Exchange, WSUS