All posts by Mike Webb

Microsoft Outlook Password Prompt Disappearing – Microsoft 365 Mailbox

Cloud Computing, IT Advice

One of the problems we are seeing quite often is Microsoft 365 email clients failing to connect to the Outlook servers which a message appearing with Password Required, but the box either appears and quickly disappears, or doesn’t accept any password put into it.

Wiping the profile and starting again doesn’t fix the issue either, so wasting the time of doing that (which can be a long and slow process if you have a large mailbox to download again) will greatly increase your downtime, when there is actually a quick solutions.

The issue is down to the way Outlook is authenticating with the servers, and is a particular issue with Outlook 2019 and Outlook 2021 which it looks like the systems is getting somewhat confused with Azure AD (when there is no Azure AD client).

A bit of background..

We have quite a diverse range of clients here at Midlands-IT.support, and with that diversity comes different investment in their IT systems.  Most of our customers use Microsoft Office Home and Business retail products, as they will use the software for the life of their device and then upgrade to the latest version when they get a new machine.

Almost all of our customers use Microsoft 365 for their email, as it a cost effective business email system with very little downtime and at £3 per mailbox per month represents good value, but the additional £6.80 per month to add Office / SharePoint and OneDrive which very few of them use means that they save around £350 buying Home and Business over the life of the device.

The fix…

Open Registry Editor and Navigate to HKEY_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Identity

Right Mouse Click and select New – DWORD(32-bit Value)

Rename the new entry to DisableADALatopWAMOverride

Open the DisableADALatopWAMOverride key and change the value data to 1, click OK

Right Mouse Click and select New – DWORD(32-bit Value)

Rename the new entry to DisableAADWAM, open the key and change the value data to 1, click OK

Right Mouse Click and select New – DWORD(32-bit Value)

Rename the new entry to EnableADAL, open the key and change the value data to 1, click OK

Once you have created the 3 new DWORD keys, reboot the machine and after opening Outlook after reboot you should receive a password prompt which will then accept the password and connect.

 

Windows Server Essentials 2016 Certificate Renewal Fails

IT Advice

For those supporting Windows Server Essentials 2016 (as the loss of functionality in future verseions is a poor show from Microsoft) and your hitting errors trying to renew the certifcate, the issue is that the patches released in April 2022 stopped the Windows Server Essentials Dashboard communicating due to the dashboard using TLS 1.1 and the patch restricting it to TLS 1.2

If you get an error such as “the domain name was not setup for your server. wait a few minutes and run the wizard again” repeatedly, do the following (out of hours as it needs a reboot).

Open Powershell in Admin Mode (the final command is a reboot)

Copy and paste the following lines into Powershell to push the dashboard to use TLS 1.2

New-ItemProperty -Path “HKLM:\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v2.0.50727” -Name “SystemDefaultTlsVersions” -Value 1 -PropertyType DWORD -Force

New-ItemProperty -Path “HKLM:\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v2.0.50727” -Name “SchUseStrongCrypto” -Value 1 -PropertyType DWORD -Force

New-ItemProperty -Path “HKLM:\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v4.0.30319” -Name “SystemDefaultTlsVersions” -Value 1 -PropertyType DWORD -Force

New-ItemProperty -Path “HKLM:\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v4.0.30319” -Name “SchUseStrongCrypto” -Value 1 -PropertyType DWORD -Force

New-ItemProperty -Path “HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v2.0.50727” -Name “SystemDefaultTlsVersions” -Value 1 -PropertyType DWORD -Force

New-ItemProperty -Path “HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v2.0.50727” -Name “SchUseStrongCrypto” -Value 1 -PropertyType DWORD -Force

New-ItemProperty -Path “HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v4.0.30319” -Name “SystemDefaultTlsVersions” -Value 1 -PropertyType DWORD -Force

New-ItemProperty -Path “HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v4.0.30319” -Name “SchUseStrongCrypto” -Value 1 -PropertyType DWORD -Force

Restart-Computer –Force

Once rebooted, works a treat.

Microsoft Office Retail v Subscription. What should you buy?

IT Advice, , ,

Microsoft Office Retail v Office Subscription what should you buy?

With the advent of cloud computing, Microsoft have developed their business model to encourage customers to look at either a purely cloud based subscription or a hybrid model of retail and subscription products to ensure recurring revenue.

For many customers a purely cloud based infrastructure isn’t a cost-effective solution as they rely on specialist software which needs to be installed on a server which doesn’t need to be particularly powerful but needs a 1Gb ethernet connection to allow the smooth running of the program for clients.

This could be moved to a cloud server, but with the server cost with Microsoft Server Essentials (which is designed for companies with 25 users or less) being around £2000 with a 5 year onsite warranty for the hardware, then it’s a no brainer to go for a physical server rather than incur the costs of renting a piece of cloud which could be around £35 per user per month.  For one of my customers with 10 staff, £2000 rather than £21,000 over 5 years isn’t even worth contemplating going cloud based for their server.  The server should be good for around 7 years so over the life of it potentially they are saving £27,000 by investing £2000.

When it comes to Office, it just depends on how you are going to use the software as to whether a retail product is cheaper for you than a subscription.

There are 2 different versions of the retail product, Microsoft Office Home and Business and Microsoft Office Professional. They retail at £249.99 and £419.99 respectively.

Office Home and Business 2021 come with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote, whereas Office Professional also includes Publisher and Access for the additional £170.  They can be used on a single PC and the product has to be redeemed via Office.com using the supplied Activation Code., so you have to use an email address to register the product.  There is one caveat on registration, and that is that you cannot use an email address which is registered with Microsoft 365, so if you use Exchange Online or Microsoft 365 Business Basics, you can’t register the software using your emails address.  You can however setup a new email address with Outlook.com to register it and still use it for your business.

I setup a local account on my client machines and register the software on the machine using that account, then the user just signs in as themselves so they can use the software, but access company resources such as SharePoint and OneDrive without having to use the Outlook.com account I’ve used to register the software.

It’s a very strange situation to have to be in to use a Microsoft retail business product, but they are desperately trying to force businesses down the route of subscription rather than retail for the reasons I’ll show you soon.

Microsoft 365 Business subscriptions for Office are available as a bundled product, or as a separate Office subscription just to get the Apps.  I don’t recommend anyone to just get Microsoft 365 aps for Business which is £9.48 per month, but allows you to install on 5 PC’s, 5 tablets and 5 phones per user.   Great if you have 5 of each device, but at most you’ll have a phone, a tablet and maybe a laptop and a PC. You can’t let someone else use your subscription either, so installing it on 5 machines for different users with a single subscription is illegal use of the software, you need a £9.48 subscription per user per month.

The bundled Office products are Microsoft 365 Business Standard which is £11.28 per month, but includes 1TB of OneDrive disk space, Exchange Online with a 50GB mailbox, SharePoint and Teams as well as Office Apps for Business for 5 devices, and Microsoft 365 Business Premium which is £18.12 per user per month and includes some additional products like Advanced Security and Device Management functions. With the subscription you receive the latest versions of Office, and when a new release comes out, you can upgrade at no additional cost so provides futureproofing for those that need the new functionality provided by new releases.

Microsoft announced that they would be removing the ability for Office 2013 and early versions of Office 2016 to connect to Microsoft 365 from 1st November 2021.  As of late December 2021, we are starting to see the impact of these restrictions on Outlook 2013 where Out of Office isn’t available through the desktop App, but it can be changed using Exchange online (so there is a workaround), but I have been recommending my customers to upgrade since January 2021, but I’ve advised them to wait until Office Home and Business 2021 was released to make the most of the product.

Now I’ll demonstrate why I’ve been predominantly installing Office Home and Business rather than sign customers up to an Office subscription (even though I’m a Microsoft Cloud Partner and have been since 2012)

Client A purchased a new machine in January 2014 which was provided with Office Home and Business 2013 for an additional cost of £229.99. They have a Microsoft 365 Business Basic subscription which gives them email and 1TB of OneDrive space per user, plus SharePoint which they utilize as a business for file sharing and costs them £4.56 per user per month.

The don’t use Access, or Publisher.  They don’t use any advanced features or connect to SQL databases so have no requirement to keep updating the software nor are there any future plans to do so.

Their outlay for the user for Office for 8 years which has provided every bit of functionality they have needed has been £229.99.

If they had been on an Office subscription the additional cost per user would be £6.72 per month to get Office on their single device (as they only have one device to use). Add that up over the period their machine has been in use and the cost to provide office for them via subscription would have been £645.12 so £415.13 more expensive than buying Office Home and Business.  That business had 3 machines replaced around the same time, so have saved £1245.39 by using a retail product rather than a subscription.

I am in the process of replacing those 3 PC’s and actually going on a higher spec device which should have a working life of 5 – 7 years (although should last longer if needed).  The machines will be provided with Office Home and Business 2021 which will meet all their business needs for the systems they use until around 2029, so over a 15 year period, their outlay for Office for a single user will be £479.98.  If Microsoft does not increase the price for subscriptions, it would cost them £1209.60 to provide the same functionality and a whole lot more they don’t need.

For 3 users that represents a saving of £2188.86 over 15 years.  Given they have 15 staff, they will pay around £11,000 less over 15 years using the retail version of Office compared to subscription.

For businesses who only provide a single device per user, retail will always work out cheaper than subscription unless you need to be running the latest version of Office rather than a “live” supported version.

I do however have customers who have Office as a subscription rather than using retail versions simply because they use multiple devices.  I’ve just migrated one of my customers over to a subscription because they have a laptop, tablet and 2 PC’s.  They have been added at different times over the years and when they added an additional PC it made no sense to install Office Home and Business 2019 which was the latest release, when we needed to upgrade a laptop and PC so they were all running the same version.  Moving them to subscription has cost them £6.72 extra per month, but as they only intend to trade for the next 3 – 5 years, it makes more sense than having an initial outlay of £749.97 to get all the devices to the same version (and a new version of Office would have been released 5 months later).

A ruling by the EU meant that retail versions of Office could be moved from one machine to another or even sold as second hand software, so the death of a machine no longer means the death of the software installed on the device, however you can only have the software installed on a single device if you buy retail versions.

Printing PDF files Windows 10

IT Advice, Midlands-IT.support, Technology, ,

For those of you that regularly get PDF files that you need to print, there is a slight issue with Windows 10 that means your PDF files are opened by default with Edge (the new Windows Internet Browser).  Unfortunately there is one slight problem here…. Edge doesn’t like printing PDF files.

We’ve also just found that Windows 10 default app for images, aptly named Photos also doesn’t like printing images, so we’ve added the fix for that too.

The way to fix this is by not using Edge to view PDF files, after all it’s a web browser so it’s designed to view web pages.  Instead you can use either of the most popular PDF Readers around which are Adobe Acrobat DC or our preferred reader, which is Nitro Reader v5 which you can get here

Once you have one installed, then the process is pretty simple to change your system to open PDF files using a PDF reader.

Click on Start and then Settings.  The Settings Window appears

midlands-it-support-settingsClick on System and this Window appears.

midlands-it-support-systemClick on Default apps near the bottom of the windows and the following Window appears.

midlands-it-support-file-typeScroll down to the bottom of the page again and click on Choose default applications by file type, this Windows then appears

midlands-it-support-changeThe files are listed in alphabetical order, so you need to scroll quite for down the list to find .pdf.  Once you’ve located it, Microsoft Edge will most probably be displayed.  Click on that bit and a drop down list of the programs that you can use will appear.  For this example I’ve got Nitro Reader 3.  Just click on your preferred Reader (Acrobat or Nitro for example) so it displays in the box.

For images, search in the list for the following file types: jpe, jpg and jpeg.  Once you find them (and they are all together), change the Application to Windows Photo Viewer (which is the same one Windows 7 uses). The images will then print.

Once it does that.  Just close the windows and try opening and printing again.  It will work now.

How to spot counterfeit Microsoft Office 2013 Product Key Cards (PKC)

IT Advice, Midlands-IT.support, Technology,

There is a huge increase in counterfeit Microsoft Office software being sold on the internet.  Many websites such as Amazon and ebay are enabling the sales, although this is through the way their business models work, rather than on purpose.
We have made a number of test purchases through Amazon UK to see if the offers of cheap Microsoft Office are too good to be true…and the answer quite simply is YES.

Of 5 purchases we made of cheap Microsoft Office Professional 2013 and Microsoft Home and Business 2013, every one of them was a counterfeit product.

On first glance the products that arrived appear to be genuine.  The boxes look just like you would expect and are sealed as new product should be, but that’s where it ends.

On closer inspection of the top of the box where the label and certificate of authenticity are located, on fake products these are printed labels which do not change colour when you move the box, and the strip does not contain the word Microsoft (it should also not be smooth). Below is an example of a fake versus real certificate of authenticity

Fake-and-genuine-office-label

The box at the top is counterfeit. Note that the strip across is a single colour, rather than dual colours, it does not contain the word Microsoft, and the certificate of authenticity label is brown and does not change colour when the box is moved around.

Inside the box you should not have a DVD. PKC means “Product Key Card” so it does not require any media.  If the package you receive does contain media, it is highly likely that it is counterfeit.

Below is an image of a real product card versus a counterfeit key card

Fake-versus-real-Office_PKC

On the left is a fake Product Key Card, on the right is a genuine card.

Genuine cards will direct you to http://www.office.com/setup to redeem your purchase.  This is the only place you can redeem a product key.  You will be instructed to setup an account and download the software directly from Microsoft.  In the event of a machine failure, or you want to move the license to a new machine, all you need is the details of the login account you created at Office.com, and you can move the license.

If you are directed to any location other than www.office.com, you have purchased counterfeit software.

If you have already installed the product and you aren’t sure whether you’ve installed a counterfeit version, there is a really easy way of telling whether it’s real or not and that’s by checking the version you have installed.

Open any of the Office programs (Office Home and Business only comes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook.  If you have more than that, you’ve probably got a counterfeit version).  Click on File and Account.  The following screen will appear with your Office version

Volume-Licensed_Office

If the product installed is either Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013 or Microsoft Office Standard 2013 then you have counterfeit software installed.  These are volume licensed products and are only available to purchase through selected Microsoft Partners who only sell to businesses.

If the product is Microsoft Office Home and Business 2013 or Microsoft Professional 2013, then you have the retail boxed product and is probably genuine.

If you think that you have purchased a counterfeit copy of Office you can report it here

If you are looking to purchase Microsoft Office 2013, make sure you purchase it from a reputable reseller of the product.  Any company showing the Microsoft Partner logo will be able to provide you with authentic licenses.  You can also purchase from established technology companies such as Comet / PC World, or from Amazon (make sure you are buying from Amazon itself and it doesn’t say “Fulfilled by Amazon” which means they are just delivering it, they are not selling it to you).

If you have any questions, you can contact us

Why Windows Server 2012 Essential is Essential for small business

IT Advice, Midlands-IT.support, Technology,

As a IT company, we supply mainly to small businesses with 1 to 20 employees.  Our preferred solution for companies of this size was Windows Small Business Server which provided everything a small business needed, with scope for up to 75 users all via a single piece of server hardware.

Great server solution at a reasonable price, but on-premises email can be a pain, especially with limited connection speed (mainly due to BT not providing fibre to cabinets which predominately host businesses) and the fact that many people think email is a filing system (it’s not…honest).

Microsoft to their credit looked at the way small businesses actually want to work and changed their small business solutions to cater for small businesses that actually wanted a hybrid solution of on-premises and cloud based services so literally they could work anywhere.  Let me introduce Windows Server 2012 Essentials R2 which is aimed at businesses of up to 25 users.

midlands-it-support-2012-1
Windows Server 2012 R2 is the latest incarnation of Microsoft’s server software, boasting the metro look and feel of Windows 8 (Don’t worry, it’s not nearly as awful!) to provide a simple, easy to use server package that is just as powerful as Microsoft’s earlier iterations. With innate integration to the also simple to use Office 365 package Microsoft are truly bridging the gap between end user and IT Professional as well as providing a smoother learning curve for those entering the IT industry.

midlands-it-support-2012-2

The Essentials Dashboard is your launching pad for everything you will want and need from Windows Server 2012 R2, its simple and straightforward design will make even technophobes appear to be IT Gurus, from here you can add new users, add server shares, manage permissions and check your backups, as well as a whole host of other tasks, to show just how simple Windows Server 2012 R2 can be we will go through the three step task of creating a new user and assigning shares to them.

While on the dashboard home page select ‘Add user accounts’ you will then be presented with the below screen, from here it is as simple as filling out the new users name and account name and desired password. Under the level of access drop box you can choose whether the user will be a normal user or an administrator capable of accessing the Windows Server 2012 R2 dashboard.midlands-it-support-2012-3

Once you have filled out the users details click next, you can then decide the users level of access to the shares that have been set up on the server, you can choose from Read/Write which will allow them to edit and add files, Read only which will allow them just to open and read files or No access which will make the folder hidden from the user.midlands-it-support-2012-4

On the next screen you will be able to decide whether the user has access to VPN and whether they can access certain resources from the web and for administrators whether they can access the Server Dashboard from the web, when you click Create account the user will be created, this simple three step process takes about a minute to complete and is simple and easy to understand.midlands-it-support-2012-5

In addition to this, if you want to add a new device to your network you can simply type http://YourServerName/connect into the address bar, sign in using an administrator account and the device will be added to the network, a process that used to be a short ordeal is now as easy as logging on in the morning.

midlands-it-support-2012-6

Back on the dashboard, if you click on the Users tab you can see and manage all of your users, from deactivating or deleting their accounts, changing passwords or changing the access levels that users have to shares, VPN or web access.

midlands-it-support-2012-7
Next on the Dashboards tabs is Devices, on this screen you can see all the computers, laptops and tablets connected to your server, from here you can remote onto the devices and control them from the server, set up specific backups and remove them from the server.

midlands-it-support-2012-8 Next on our tour of the dashboard is the Storage tab. This tab allows you to view the different shares that have been set up on the server, change the levels of permissions for users and of course add new shares, adding new shares is just as easy as adding new users. You can also view the individual hard drives connected to the server.

midlands-it-support-2012-9
midlands-it-support-2012-10 Back on the home screen we are going to look at the Health Monitoring of Windows Server 2012 R2, your server will constantly monitor its own health and provide feedback to let you know if there are any issues you may need to take a look at, when clicking on a warning or error you will be presented with ways that may fix the presented issue, sometimes these can be done automatically, other times there will be a guide to help you, other times it will link you to the relevant web page for the error code. These tools help to ensure your server is running optimally and efficiently.
midlands-it-support-2012-11One of the greatest aspects of Windows Server 2012 R2 is its ability to integrate itself with Office 365 for email and single sign on, by clicking Services on the home page you can choose the Microsoft Office 365 integration wizard which will help you through the incredibly simple integration system for Office 365.

midlands-it-support-2012-12
midlands-it-support-2012-13midlands-it-support-2012-14To integrate all you need to do is sign in with an administrator account on your Office 365 subscription and the wizard will automatically pull across any relevant information and link it to your server, you can then link the accounts of your Office 365 users to your Windows Server 2012 R2 users. Linking the users will allow you to have Single Sign-On (SSO) access to your server account and your Office 365 account within minutes.

Windows Server 2012 R2 is not all about its Dashboard, there are other improved features, such as the ability to error check disks that are in use.
midlands-it-support-2012-15

We can tell that Windows Server 2012 R2 was based on the Windows 8 metro theme by simply looking at the start menu, which takes on the form of the full screen tiled start menu that Windows 8 has been slated for. There is however the option to Right Click the start button and get a number of useful options from anywhere on screen.

midlands-it-support-2012-16midlands-it-support-2012-17

Choosing the Administrative tools from the start menu will bring up a screen that should look familiar to any seasoned Server Admin, while Windows Server 2012 R2 does boast a simplified user interface and tools, there are still tools that Admins will feel comfortable with and provide that very specific level of control that Admins like.

midlands-it-support-2012-18The server dashboard which should also be familiar has received a facelift and a lick of paint, although it is functionally no different to previous iterations of the Manager while also providing access to the above tools straight from the Server Manager.

midlands-it-support-2012-19
midlands-it-support-2012-20
Windows Server 2012 R2 has received many upgrades both aesthetically and technically as well as simplifying its use for users and administrators. Despite this it is still a powerful tool to manage your network and is the flagship for Microsoft’s server software, for good reason too.

Windows 10 is it worth upgrading?

IT Advice, Midlands-IT.support, Technology, , ,

 

midlands-it-support-win10

What is Windows 10?

Windows 10 is the latest release of Microsoft’s popular operating system. For most people it will be a free upgrade on their current Windows 7 or 8 machine. This begs multiple questions such as, what are the new features? How does it feel? Major differences? Does it work for business? And most importantly is it worth it?

I we have installed Windows 10 on several machines now, and most have gone according to plan, although Samsung Laptops using Phoenix BIOS do not upgrade at all due its inability to perform a reboot during installation, otherwise the upgrades went smoothly. All applications we’ve tested are also working.

New Features

After the disappointment that was Windows 8, Microsoft seems to have upped their game and released an OS with what people actually wanted. First of all we have the return for the start button. As a business user, this is possibly the most important feature of the new Operating System, as there should be no requirement to retrain the workforce. For the most part it is very similar to Windows 7, so for most operations it has a very familiar look and feel, just with tiles should you have been unfortunate enough to have Windows 8. There are some options to customise the look of things if you dislike it, but they were available in Windows 7.

For starters, the Start Button now utilises both Left and Right Mouse Buttons. Left is for that familiar Windows Start Menu, and Right is for the Windows 8.1 administrative menu. As an Administrator, this saves a few clicks, so gets a thumbs up from us. You also have the Search Bar incorporated into the Task Bar now, so finding emails, documents or performing a web search can be performed without even having to open a program.

midlands-it-support-win10-start  midlands-it-support-win10-alt-start

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next new feature is the “settings” window. This is a new version of the control panel which has similar but different options. Some things can only be configured through settings and some only through control panel. For example windows update has now been removed from control panel and is in the update and security options in settings. The weird part about this is that some settings options take you to control panel anyway. Personally I would rather have one menu with all the configuration options rather than two that try to do the same thing. However the fact that both are available for use allows for all options to be explored.

midlands-it-support-win10-settings

Another new feature is the voice command feature known as Cortana. Cortana allows you to speak to your computer rather than click or type to get it to perform actions. This could be to surf the web or open and close files or programs. We’ve had a play with it on a laptop without a microphone and find it difficult to use. Open Microsoft Word results in a web search for Microsoft Works. A microphone and spending a while “training” the program will iron out the issues though. We also found that unless we’re in the US, we have to download the language packs and a couple of other bits to make it work. From a user perspective this feature isn’t something that would get me to buy the product. It’s not brilliant on the Windows Phone and it’s more of a gimmick than additional functionality as every action can be performed through simple clicking and typing. Voice recognition software is also known to be buggy and not very reliable so using this in an office may lead to lots of frustration and angry shouting. We also found that if you didn’t tell it to stop listening a whole world of web pages opened up from background noise it tried to decipher into a request.

Edge is Microsoft’s new browser that is available with windows 10. It comes with a new modern design and is said to support Chrome and Firefox extensions in later versions. It also comes with new features such as Web Note which allows you to make custom notes on a web page, highlight important information, or draw simple diagrams. We tested it on some Small Business Server Remote Web Workplace (both 2008 and 2011) and found the functionality was so much better than either IE 10 or IE 11. It’s quick too, so Edge gets a thumbs up too especially when compared to IE 11 which we were having to run in compatibility mode for quite a few website who had decided that they wouldn’t upgrade to support something that was going to die anyway.

midlands-it-support-win10-edge

Overall windows 10 looks good, has a great feel to it and seems to run smoothly with no problems.

Why is Windows 10 free?

Well it’s not entirely free. For users on Vista or XP, there will be retail versions coming out so you can upgrade. Prices are expected to be around £80 for Home and £125 for Professional. Not sure why anyone would upgrade hardware that is at least 6 years old and virtually worthless when economics would say to buy new hardware with the Operating System included.

Now you may be asking why Microsoft are not charging for the software and will be making a huge loss by making zero revenue by giving it away. Well that’s not entirely the case. The upgrade to Windows 10 offer is free for the 1st year it is out and only for Windows 7 / 8 Home or Professional installations. Business customers with Windows 7 / 8 / 8.1 Enterprise versions are not entitled to an upgrade, neither are Windows 7 / 8 / 8.1 Volume license customers unless they have Software Assurance. This means that if you have Windows 7 or 8 Home or Professional version and don’t upgrade before 28th July 2016, it won’t be free (although that is to be seen).

The main reasons why Microsoft are giving it away are quite simple and, it’s all down to economics. Microsoft aim to have around 1 billion Windows 10 devices within 2 – 3 years. That means 1 billion devices which have accounts on the Windows Store App. If you want to buy something, generally it will be purchased via the App Store. Developers will pay to have their Apps included, after all there is a market place which has 1 billion devices as potential customers. Microsoft will also take a cut of every purchase.

It will also mean that your PC, Laptop, Smartphone, XBOX One and Tablet can all run on Windows 10, and you can synchronise content between them. We’ve tested it on a Windows Phone and a Windows 10 Laptop and the Sync for Music via One Drive / Groove Music / Xbox Music / Nokia Music App works very well. Microsoft will have a music app where you can buy music from, plus games for your Xbox or PC too. They are creating their own marketplace, and will have 1 billion customers.

It seems that most companies are changing their revenue stream away from outright purchase to subscription revenue, and Microsoft are no different, especially given the success they have made of Office 365 which had 80 million subscribers for Exchange Online back in February and continues to attract additional customers on a daily basis. This is just the next progression in their plan, and it looks like a pretty good plan.

Does Windows 10 work for business?

The main reason Windows 8 failed was because for some unknown reason, Microsoft moved away from what they were good at, i.e. producing an operating systems for desktop PC’s and laptops, and tried to grab a piece of the Smartphone market that was dominated by Apple and Android devices. Whoever conceived the idea that people wanted their PC to look like their phone was clearly on a different planet to business users.

Windows has proven to be popular because the difference between Windows 3.11 and Windows 7 in terms of use isn’t that great. To open a program, you train someone to click on the start button, find the program in “Programs” and left click to open it. To close you click on the cross at the top right. It’s worked for 20 years, so bringing out something that doesn’t even have a start button, or menu’s was never going to work if a company has to retrain it workforce on how to use the system. Even switching a machine off became an issue because you had to go to the top right hand corner to get a menu, click power before the menu disappeared and then hopefully get to shut it down. That was of course if you got to use it without Windows telling you that upgrades were being installed and you’d have to reboot…now.

However, it appears that Microsoft are not too big not to listen to their customers, and Windows 10 will work for Business. Companies like Dell, HP and Lenovo suffered sales drops when Windows 8 came out and they tried to force it on customers, so on the business side, the big boys gave you an option to buy Windows 7 PC’s but with a Windows 8 license, so you could upgrade if they ever fixed it.

With the return to the Start Button, the desktop and a few additional items, Windows 10 will be very popular with business. It’s not something we will recommend to our customers for the next 3 to 6 months as we like to wait for the first wave of service packs and hackers to have a good go at breaking it before we roll something out. However, I believe Microsoft have launched an OS for the next 5 years at least, and we’ll start a rolling program to upgrade our client base while it’s still free. This is of course if they update server software to work with it properly too (which may be some time yet).

There are also reports that Windows 10 will disable counterfeit or illegal software installed on a machine.  This may impact on small businesses who have “borrowed” or use software they got from a company they used to work for but no longer have any affiliation to (and yes this is very common I’m afraid).  Personally I’m a big fan of this, as selling illegal software isn’t business, it’s fraud.  Likewise taking software from somewhere you used to work is theft, it might not seem like a crime, but Office Professional is around £400 to buy outright, and someone has paid for it… When companies spend billions of dollars developing products to make life easier for all don’t reap the rewards of their hard work, yet a criminal selling the products for a fraction of its true value pockets a small fortune and walks away, that’s not right. However, if Microsoft do implement this, the system should only be able to disable counterfeit Microsoft software, and I’d would hope that they would ensure a link to purchase legitimate software is generated as part of the process.  The cost of MS Office has never been so low, especially given the new subscription model for Office 365 (around £65 per year for up to 5 machines with Office 365 Home).  It also means you will always be up to date if you have a subscription, so no need to hoard CD / DVD’s and remember license keys, you just log into you Office account and away you go.

So… Is it worth upgrading to Windows 10?

Following some more in-depth testing of Windows 10 and how it interacts with servers, our current recommendation is no.  If you’re using small business server products such as Windows Server Essentials 2012, then you lose some functionality (which is due to be released in October 2015), and if you add a new device, you lose your profile as it connects the machine to the domain without transferring your desktop, documents etc. as it does with Windows 7.  It begs the question whether the roll out should have been early 2016 when they could actually spend the time ensuring it works with business networks, as I can’t see much beyond home users getting any benefit from it at the minute.

For home users, it is mostly situational, but we would say if you have Windows 8, or 8.1 then upgrade now as Windows 10 is a definite improvement and we can’t recommend it enough when compared to Windows 8. If you have Windows 7, I’d wait for Service Pack 1, as you’re probably happy with the operating system you have and the upgrade isn’t something that will bring you much in terms of additional functionality or usability.

Windows Phone will eventually become Windows 10, although timescales haven’t been released for when they plan to release it, although given the way they have rolled out the desktop version, it could be anytime between now and eternity.

Ultimately, Windows 10 will be around and have support until 2025. Windows 7 will be removed from support by Microsoft in January 2020, so you can plan for 5 years with Windows 7, or 10 years with Windows 10.

 

JWCS Achieves Microsoft Silver Partner Status

Cloud Computing, JWCS, Midlands-IT.support, Technology

JWCS_Microsoft_Silver_PartnerJWCS are proud to announce that they have achieved Microsoft Silver Partner Status as a  Small and Midmarket Cloud Solutions Provider.

Having met the qualifying criteria which includes a number of independently verified customer references, training criteria and meeting Microsoft sales targets, the company has successfully achieve Silver Partner status as of July 2015.

We have been using Microsoft Cloud Services in-house since 2010, and following an extended period of evaluation and training, we offered the service to our customers in 2012, after ensuring that we could fully support the services for our clients.  We are not simply a reseller of the products, we provide full service management including data migration from on-premises to cloud.

Microsoft Cloud Services uses the same software as on-premises solutions such as SharePoint 2013, Exchange 2013, Skype for Business (formerly Lync) and Active Directory, so the only main difference is the interface from which you administer the system.  With over 20 years of supporting Microsoft systems, we are well placed to provide both Cloud and on-premises solutions for small and medium sized businesses.

We can also provide hybrid systems such as Microsoft Server 2012 Foundation and Server 2012 Essentials so you can have on-premises file storage including remote access, yet utilise Cloud based services such as email and offsite backup.

If you would like further information, please contact us

Why Flash Player is blocked in Firefox and Chrome

IT Advice, Technology

You might have noticed that when browsing the internet, the world has suddenly sped up as pages load a lot quicker and there is little or no changing content spread around your home page.  Why?  Well Mozilla (the makers or Firefox) and Google have finally had enough of the security flaws in Adobe Flash Player and disabled Flash player by default in both Firefox and Google Chrome.

The latest version of Adobe Flash Player (currently versions 18.0.0.203) has been found to contain a number of security flaws which can be exploited to such a degree that it can be used to download and execute malicious software on a machine.

The bugs came to light after an Italian Security firm called Hacking Team were hacked (how surreal is that), and around 400GB of data which contains software flaws and vulnerabilities for a wide assortment of programs was published on the internet.

As soon as this information became public, hackers started to manipulate the flaws in the software to create malicious code that unsuspecting internet users could access, hence the unprecedented step taken to disable Flash Player all together.

So what do you do if your favourite games use Flash Player (Angry Birds for example), well as long as you’re careful you should be OK. A box will appear asking if you want to enable Flash Player. It will look something like this

adobe_blocked

If it’s a site that you recognise, such as your favourite game, you can click on Activate Adobe Flash.  A box will appear at the top left corner of the screen, select Allow Now (better to authorise each time you use it rather than give it access at all times) and away you go.  It’s much better to be safe than sorry when there are going to be some pretty nasty malware programs packed into Flash player over the next few days and weeks.

If you like to explore the internet, and click on links in Facebook and Twitter, my advise is to stay clear of anything that involves Flash.  It is really easy to put an attractive picture and a comment such as “You’ll never believe what she did next….” to try and entice you to open the post.  If it takes you to a site that looks suspect, or is too good to be true, it usually is.  The easiest ways to find malware, viruses and suspect programs is to use the word “Free” in a search.  I’d probably avoid trying to get free music, movies and games for the next few month too.  Use Spotify or YouTube if you want to listen to music, just avoid anything that appears to have copyrighted material for free.  Personally I’d rather pay the artist or creator, as at least they have an income to be able to take the time to create some more.

The internet will forever be full of brilliant and innovative things to make life better, more fun and informative.  It is also a breeding ground for faceless criminals who would happily steal the clothes off the back of a dying nun.  Be safe.

To cloud or not to cloud that is the question

Cloud Computing, IT Advice, Technology

midlands-it_cloud_computingFor those that have been bombarded by the marketing people and still don’t have a clue what they are on about, Cloud Computing is basically being provided with services such as E-mail, CRM systems, SharePoint and File Storage, Instant Messaging, Virtual PC’s or even online backup storage without having to buy the hardware…you just share someone else’s.  This means that for the good providers you get a small chunk of some really good hardware with first rate support, for others…well you should be able to guess.  It’s the old adage of you get what you pay for!

The concept of Cloud computing is about as old as the internet, if you’ve ever had a home broadband connection, or used dial up with your modem to access your emails in Outlook Express, then you’ll be familiar with downloading your emails which are stored in your own little mailbox out on the internet.  That’s essentially where it started, but with the improvement in internet connectivity speed, and the greatly reducing price to provide high speed access, then there are a lot of companies jumping on the bandwagon by setting up with a couple of servers in a cheap Data Centre and calling it Cloud Computing.

However there are some real big players out there in the market, Microsoft for example have their Office365 offering which is a ridiculously cost effective means for any small business to start off. Buy a domain name, link it to Office365 and pay £2.50 a month for 50GB of email storage.  Increase that to £9.40 a month and you get Office Small Business on up to 5 devices, 50GB mailbox, Online Conferencing, Instant Messaging, 1TB of online storage per user, 10GB SharePoint for collaboration and a few other bits. That means to setup a small business, you could buy a cheap £300 laptop, buy a £6.50 domain name and be up and running with the latest version of Office and Exchange for £9.40 a month.

Extend this to 5 staff members and your annual costs (excluding internet connectivity and hardware) are a mere £564.00.  To buy Office Home and Business 2013 for 5 staff would be £950.00 alone without email provision and all the rest of the products that come with the Office 365 Small Business Premium subscription

Compare that to the cost of a server with SBS 2011 which needs a lot of RAM and some IT support to put it in (I don’t care if Microsoft think it’s the easiest server to install, as trust me, as soon as you want something that doesn’t require Next Next Next, such as allowing someone to send as a distribution list, or adding an SSL certificate that doesn’t use remote” in the web-address, the world stops being simple)

Your server is going to set you back the best part of £5000 with someone coming in and installing it and setting it up as you require.  Then you need the office licenses which will be about £950 for 5 users, then you need the anti-spam / server anti-virus for another £150 and some backup hardware which will be about another £250 to ensure an offsite copy.  Add some IT support hours if there is a problem which will be about £1000 per annum and a small business has got a lot of work to do just to try and pay for their upfront costs.

That gives you the setup cost for 5 users for the first year of £7350 plus their hardware and the domain name….that’s a HUGE difference.

Don’t need 5 members of staff, just reduce the licensing, want to add more staff, just increase the licensing.  See it’s flexible too. You only pay for what you use.  That’s the joy of Cloud computing.

So to cloud or not to cloud, that is the question.

If you already have hardware and licensing, then it makes no sense to make wholesale changes unless you’re experiencing problems.  It seems a bit silly to throw away hundreds if not thousands of pounds of licensing and hardware just because you’re not part of the in-crowd that are using internet based services already. If you want an off-premises solution for core services such as email,  which not only provides a robust solution for issues such as powercuts or loss of internet connectivity to your server, then look at Exchange Online. We have a number of clients using it rather than an on-premises solution which they are licensed for, because they can access email anywhere on any device and aren’t reliant on a single point of failure.

If you’re just starting out, it makes no sense to go any other way but by using cloud services (if you want to go even cheaper…check out Google’s offerings, but don’t expect the functionality…..). The return on investment is clear, big business infrastructure, low up front costs, professionally managed systems with limited or no end user maintenance required.  Al you need is a competent Cloud Partner to make sure what your looking to achieve is possible within your budget, and it’s scalable so you can expand without having to change plans or platforms.

Cloud computing has some huge benefits, it’s a way that small business systems can match those of larger businesses, without having to invest thousands of pounds to do so.  Stick to the bigger brands, as they buy hardware at a fraction of the cost that smaller operators pay, so you can guarantee that it’s resilient, robust and won’t go down for days on end.  It also means buying a small chunk of a bigger operation usually works out cheaper in the long run, and the service offering generally improve very rapidly to keep you custom.

If you have any questions about Cloud Computing, please don’t hesitate in contacting us