As you might have heard, Internet Explorer 7 is out and has a few issues with Outlook Web Access. The S/MIME control, for example, stops working. You can download a fix for this problem here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?fa...ang=en

Still anxious and fidgety about moving towards the first ever 64-Bit version of Exchange? Get the lowdown with a detailed explanation, downloadable on Microsoft’s web site here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa...ang=en

For now, it seems as if 64-bit will become the standard operating system for servers while 32-bit Windows XP/Vista will remain the majoer operating system at least until 2010 when all software and hardware vendors catch up. Personally I would love to run my memory and I/O hungry graphics applications on 64-bit but this might take a while. My Exchange server will run faster but I am not sure how much this will really benefit clients who get good enough service these days. For larger Exchange shops, however, migration will be a very smart move worth the money.

Variable daylight saving time sucks. Here in Israel it causes problems every year. Meetings are missed, IT staff go over all their systems, and clock owners go berserk. Since Outlook appointments are relative, changing the clock affects their schedule, especially in a multi-national organization.

So, how to fix this? The Microsof Exchange posts about this issue, focusing on Brazil (I wish they would focus on Israel, but you can’t really have it all).

Read it here:

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/10/17/429210.aspx

OAB is one of the component that is getting a big boot with Exchange 2007, including the ability to use it without needing public folder (and public folder replication). The change is partially due to the long term plan of Microsoft to get rid of Public Folders and replacing them with Sharepoint as the main collaboration tool. Not to worry though, web download of OAB is only available for now with Outlook 2007 and public folders will be there at least until the next decade.

For more information:

 http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/10/16/429204.aspx

Microsoft is really careful with new software territories. Like a giant who is too strong they try not to annoy the little customers in the china shop. Like other companies, Microsoft is afraid of regulations and of course faces constant litigation.

Sometimes, Microsoft executives decide that new products should not be indirect competition with other successful products. For example, the first Windows CE devices were really expensive high end ones and for a while, not really that succesful compared with Palm’s offerings. But things moved on and suddenly Microsoft had the better product. Microsoft can afford to lose money on products, patiently waiting for the right time to strike.

DPM is such a product, favoring backup to disk drives over the ancient yet still popular tape. Now it is at version two and is still considered a really high end product though Microsoft does want to broaden the audience a bit. will things move on again and everyone will want a version of DPM instead of Arcserver and BackupExec?

Read more here:

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/10/13/429197.aspx

Microsoft has been toying for a while with various search, crawl and index mechanisms with varying degrees of success.

We already can tell that everything with Exchange 2007 is re-written or upgraded and so is the new search engine. Will it make everything go faster without killing your CPU? The Microsoft Exchange team claims so.

For more information:

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/10/11/429163.aspx

If you wondered how co-existence would work, it’s pretty much as you would expect. Management would best be made using the new Exchange 2007 console.

More information here:

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/10/09/429135.aspx

This new Vista component, replacing ActiveSync is now widely available to the public which is probably for the best as many Vista evangelists also have Windows Pocket devices.

It looks very much like Windows Media Center!

For more information and download:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/devicecenter.mspx

Microsoft has some diverse Exchange 2007 webcasts available in October. They also now maintain a separate Exchange webcast page with its own RSS feed as well.

Register here:

 http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/en-us/e...s.mspx

This months’ list:

As you recall the last release of Exchange 2007’s help file was far from being complete.

Now, much of the missing bits have been added in. It seems interesting to note that the help file looks sort of like the standard Microsoft support knowledge base and technet articles. 

Get it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa...ang=en