technical solutions and commentary

Microsoft has released the Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 file formats. You can install this on your computer running Office 2000, XP, and 2003 and create/open/edit/save the new Office 2007 formats (aka EMCA Open XML formats).

If you are planning to phase in Office 2007 into your business, I would recommend that you install this onto your PC’s which are running pre-Office 2007 applications before or during the time you are going to start rolling in Office 2007. You can get more informaiton on the software pack from the Office Web Site or you can download it directly from Microsoft Downloads. You can deploy the software pack using Active Directory to push the software to PC’s or you can use SMS or a similar remote software deployment/management tool.  

MDOP is a suite of applications which Software Assurance customers can add-on to their agreements. MDOP consists of 4 primary solutions:

• SoftGrid Application Virtualization
• Asset Inventory Service
• Advanced Group Policy Management
• Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset

 More information:

• Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack Datasheet- link to the pdf.
• Watch a Microsoft Webcast on MDOP and SoftGrid.
• Here is a TCO Whitepaper for MDOP as well.

A freeware utility from Log.in Consultants provides a simple method for administrations to easily sequence customized MSI application installations. This utility is an add-in for the Native SoftGrid Sequencer. According to Log.in Consultants, it is most beneficial when using automated software distribution software such as Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003. If you want to virtualize applications which are typically manually installed, you don’t need this add-in utility.

You can get the applicaiton here.
Disclaimer: I have not had the chance to personally use this utility, so I cannot recommend using it.

More information of SoftGrid application sequencing is in MS KB932137.

The Pandora Project creates smart music play lists based upon what music you tell it you like. There is a huge library of music and it’s all free streams. Thanks to Daniel Mackey, a developer & blogger, for writing an application that allows the use of Pandora without having to keep a full blown web browser window open. This is an application I have been wanting, since the time I discovered Pandora. Try out Pandora and the Application from Dan.

If you are running Windows Vita and have applications which rely on Java RE, you should consider updating to Java Runtime Engine 6. This resolves some issues with Windows Aero and other application compatability issues. You can download the 32-bit version direclty here. This verison installs on Window Vista, XP, 2003, etc.

In Outlook 2007 you have the ability to quickly preview office documents (Word, Excel, etc) in the message window. Unfortunately out of the box you could not preview PDF documents, even if you have Adobe Reader installed. When you do try to preview a PDF you get the message “This file cannot be previewed becaue there is no previewer installed for it.”

Good news. Tim Heuer has been working with Foxit to create a Free Previewer for Outlook 2007. It was just released at the end of February. You can access the previewer from Tim’s blog at http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2007/02/27/14001.aspx.

Right now this view only works on Vista & Outlook 2007, but they are working on a Windows XP & Outlook 2007 version. This is a great job of extending the Office 2007 platform!

If you are experience printing issues on Citrix Presentation Server (PS) 4.0, install the following hotfixes.

• Hotfix Rollup “PE400W2K3R02.0.1″
  http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX109307
• Post-R02 Hotfix “PSE400R02W2K3001″
  http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX110941
• Post-R02 Hotfix “PSE400R02W2K3028″
  http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX111432

The Rollup addresses a total of 258 issues resolved on a Presentation Server 4.0 machine, including many printing issues. The post-R02 hot fixes above address additional printing/printer issues experienced in a PS 4.0 environment. The links to the patches above are for the 32-bit version.

As a best practice, someone in the IT group should be assigned to monitor the all vendors of deployed technology, including the Citrix Support web site for any new hotfixes. Any Citrix hotfix labeled as “Critical” by Citrix should be tested and applied ASAP.

• Updates can be monitored manually at http://support.citrix.com/hotfixes.jsp for all Citrix Products.
• An e-mail alert service is available for Citrix products, which you can sign up for through the MyCitrix portal at https://secureportal.citrix.com/MyCitrix/Register/UserLanguage.aspx

It should also be noted that Citrix Systems is discontinuing technical support June 30, 2007 and maintenance (hotfixes) for the Citrix MetaFrame XP Presentation Server product line Dec 31, 2006. Anyone delivering applications through Citrix XP should test and migrate to the more current supported versions of Presentation Server (3.0 & 4.0) as soon as possible.

Citrix Research Engineer, Jeff Muir, introduces PortICA on his blog in this post Introducing PortICA (ICA server on XP). In the post he states “…For the first time, it will be possible to host ICA on Windows XP. This makes it possible to use existing ICA clients and infrastructure to access Windows XP desktops.”

It sounds like PortICA is similar to users being able to remotely access an XP desktop using RDP. I work with several IT departments that use Presentation Server and also provide users remote access to their office desktops using VPN over the internet and an RDP client. In this regard PortICA could simplify this scenario since using the ICA client will work on about any platform/OS, including a web based version.

If users can use the Citrix Access Gateway or Web Interface w/ Secure Gateway and be provided the icon at login to a dedicated XP desktop (either a full PC fat client or a blade running XP) There would be value in PortICA. It would be easier than providing each user the name or dedicated IP address of their desktop for the RDP client.

Also interesting would be using PortICA along with Citrix EdgeSight for remote monitoring and control of users desktops. There are other solutions on the marketing for this inclusing built-in remote assistance RDP, VNC, SMS, LanDesk, etc. If a company is making the investment in EdgeSight, it may be a good add-on product to it. 

You can stream your own music collection over the internet. Heres the basic steps:

• Download free software from SlimDevices.com
• Install Slim Server on the PC the you have your music collection on
• Configure security to the web interface and stream
• Let the software index your music
• Open up port 9000 to the internet
• Open up the web console from you remote computer
• Build or open a play list for the IP address you are connecting from
• Point your media player to the URL of the stream

You can have mutliple playlists and music streams delivering music to multiple remote devices too. The playlist and stream is configured per remote ip address.

Here are some OpenSource NAS/SAN software pacakages that let you turn standard hardware into a NAS/SAN type device. These should work great in lab environments for testing software integration with NAS/SAN services. I have not used these in production, and do not recommend it.

• Openfiler allows you to build a NAS and/or SAN appliance, using standard hardware in less than 10 minutes. OpenFiler combines Apache, Samba, LVM2, ext3, Linux NFS and iSCSI Enterprise Target into a small, easy to manage with a web-based management interface.

• FreeNAS supports CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, RSYNC protocols, local user authentication, software RAID (0,1,5) with a web based configuration interface.