Office 365 Lync vs. Live Messenger for Small Business
Mark Berry January 19, 2012
I’ve used Windows Messenger for years to exchange instant messages with clients, friends, and family. The current iteration of Microsoft’s free IM client, Live Messenger, has been commercialized (displays ads) and doesn’t “feel” very business-like. Since Lync is included with Office 365, I decided to give that a try.
More...Machine Online but Programs Can’t Connect
Mark Berry December 29, 2011
I maintain a remote Windows XP Pro workstation that’s three or four years old. Today I had a strange situation: I could reach the machine using vPro and see that it was powered on, but it did not come up in LogMeIn. I eventually managed to connect to it using Remote Desktop and started diagnosing the problem.
More...Use Postini with Office 365
Mark Berry December 9, 2011
The hosted Exchange part of Office 365 has been performing pretty well once I got it configured. However, I continue to have issues with Forefront, a separate-but-integrated piece that sits in front of hosted Exchange. Compared to the Google Postini service I used previously, Forefront has given me more spam, false positives, a 3-day wait to see quarantine notices, and a separate quarantine email for each email alias. Since I still have my Postini account, I’ve decided to go back to Postini for spam and virus filtering. Here’s how I set that up.
More...SBS 2008 Attempts Multiple Simultaneous Backups
Mark Berry November 19, 2011
I first had this issue in July 2010. SBS 2008 would attempt to run two identical backups for each one that was scheduled. The duplicate backup would fail with Microsoft-Windows-Backup event 518, “Backup started at ‘[date and time]‘ failed as another backup or recovery is in progress. Please re-run backup.” But the original backup completed fine, so there was no need to re-run it.
More...Linksys SPA942 Busy Lamp Field with PiaF
Mark Berry November 15, 2011
A client has an old PBX in a Flash 1.3 installation running Asterisk 1.4.21.2. I’ve upgraded their Linksys SPA942 phones to the latest firmware, version 6.1.5(a). Can we get Busy Lamp Field (BLF) functionality to work on the empty line keys?
More...Set Up VLAN and Site-to-Site VPN with Tomato
Mark Berry November 14, 2011
I wrote recently about setting up guest wireless with the Tomato router firmware. I also needed to be able to use site-to-site OpenVPN between two routers running Tomato. I’m using a “Toastman” build that includes both VLAN and VPN functionality, but how can I use them at the same time?
More...Can’t Ping Server after Changing Router
Mark Berry November 12, 2011
After installing a new router, I was no longer able to ping my Hyper-V server. Why not? The router sits at the edge of the network—how could it affect pinging on the local LAN?
More...Get Asterisk to Use the G.729a Codec
Mark Berry November 4, 2011
I’m using Asterisk 1.8.5 under FreePBX 2.8.1.4. My endpoints (Polycom IP430 phone, SPA3102 ATA) and my ITSP all support the G.729a codec. I wanted to test audio quality using this compressed codec.
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