IB: InfoBulletin
March 2001
Co-Operative Systems
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1. Microsoft rebuilds its Office and desktop - the new XP versions
What is it ?
Microsoft recently announced Windows XP and Office XP (previously code-named "Whistler" and "Office 10"). In this context, "XP" denotes "experiences that redefine the relationship between people, software, and the Internet". This most significant update to the Windows interface since Windows 95 will offer voice, video and application sharing via the Internet. Depending on your point of view, the closer integration with the Internet is either Microsoft's move towards becoming an application service provider (ASP) in line with its ".NET" project (the competition to Sun's Jxta project) or their realisation that we, the customers, aren't going to carry on paying for upgrades to our operating systems year on year. This links in with their proposal for a new yearly licensing 'subscription' service and compulsory registration for the Office suite.
New Office XP bits
A new Document Imaging applet is used to scan images and view faxes and includes a basic Optical Character Recognition (OCR) engine, which can be upgraded.
Adding diagrams with formatted text (eg, an Organisation Chart) into any document is much easier with the new Diagramming tool.
Task management and scheduling is accomplished with Share Point and includes team-working facilities.
Benefits
- Network administrators can customise elements of Office XP to be installed on users' PCs via an enhanced Custom Installation Wizard and also after installation via a new Custom Maintenance Wizard.
- More common code means shared facilities (such as Search and clipboard toolbar) are available across the suite - via new modeless Task Panes - and are less intrusive than Wizards and dialogue boxes.
- Save on Crash: Excel and Publisher have the same document recovery options as Word to make them more fault tolerant in the event of a crash. A repair facility for corrupted documents is included.
- When errors occur, new friendlier dialogues offer options to send error reports to your IT department or direct to Microsoft. This automated reporting gives Microsoft's developers more data about internal application errors - suddenly everyone is a guinea pig for the next version!
- Straight to email: 'Save As Web Page' has been improved upon by saving as a new MHTML format that uses the MIME (Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extension) encapsulation of standard email clients. This gives you an Office document in a browsable form, without having a separate folder containing the graphics.
- The Office Assistant (read: 'annoying paper clip') is hidden by default (hurray!).
Drawbacks
- A full local installation consumes up to ¼GB of hard disc space.
- Microsoft is intending to require compulsory registration to root out pirated copies. Without registration, the Office XP applications will run a maximum of 50 times, while throwing up 'nag screens' on launch to get you to register. It's more hassle for users and/or administrators but you can register with Microsoft by phone or over the Internet.
- Until now, you bought an unlimited licence for MS Office software (and you thought the software was all yours!). Office XP licences come in the form of a new subscription for a year, which you then renew through your local reseller or via the Internet. Without a renewal, the Edit and Save functions in Office applications will be disabled.
- Menus, toolbars and status bars are 'flatter' making readability worse but giving a faster rendering time.
- The Access database has a new file format (incompatible with Access 97 or Access 2000), though it can open and use previous formats. Other applications have the same file formats as Office 2000 and Office 97.
- Microsoft has developed its own fairly basic speech recognition engine (instead of using the previous one by world leaders Lernout and Hauspie) which currently only works in American English, Chinese or Japanese.
Hardware requirements
Pentium/90 or higher, 32MB of RAM (64MB for Windows 2000 or NT), Windows 98, 2000 or NT 4 with Service Pack 6 (SP-6). Up to 258MB free disc space.
Summary
The emphasis of Office XP is on more user-friendliness and usability - both Microsoft fortés - and collaborative working, with advanced features for annotation and reviewing changes. New facilities for network administrators will improve deployment and reliability and organisation team-working will benefit from Share Point, but the jury is out on the major change in the way licensing will be implemented.
Windows XP desktop
XP follows in the footsteps of Windows 2000 (also based on NT, rather than DOS). NT systems have certainly proved themselves more stable platforms than the consumer offerings like '95 and '98.
Another operating system aimed at consumers, XP uses step-by-step guides for taking you through first time processes, eg viewing pictures, managing audio files, etc. Context-sensitive options make for more intuitive operations, rather than navigating through menu for commands and common tasks are shown on the left. The desktop has a new look with less clutter.
A kind of peer-to-peer arrangement allows one XP user to access another XP user's system over the Internet. While this brings system diagnostic benefits, users may have concerns about security, although this sharing feature uses encrypted signals and multiple permissions to grant access.
Release dates
Office XP: Summer 2001
Windows XP: second half of 2001
Contacts
http://microsoft.com/windows/windowsxp/
http://www.microsoft.com/DirectAccess/Products/xp.asp
Microsoft UK: 0870 60 10 100
[Acknowledgements: Simon Jones, Matt Whipp, Geoff Einon]
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2. Should you rely on email for important deliveries ?
Case study - pictures down a pipe
For one organisation, a recent publicity stunt involved finding a celebrity and handing over a placard to officials while photographing the event - not only for posterity - but in this case to transfer the digital photographs to press desks by the afternoon. A relatively routine task?
The camera was hurried back to base and the pictures extracted on to a PC, cropped and edited. The picture files were attached to an email and sent.
However, reports were soon coming back from press desks that what they were receiving was only the text part of the message - or nothing at all.
After attempts over several hours, alternative dialup systems were tried with limited success. A least one publisher had to go ahead without the pictures to meet their deadlines.
Diagnosis
Several things went wrong:
- Picture editors didn't have a clear idea of the size of the files they were dealing with (in the region of 10MB) and the likely impact on the outgoing Internet connection.
- Half way through the afternoon, the ISP's mail servers collapsed, severing the outgoing email connection.
- When messaging failures started to happen, the general reaction was to "send it again".
Post mortem
- Know what size and type of files you are handling. It's boring stuff, but will help you to gauge any problems when machines go slow or seize up. Even if the email transmission had worked, the large attachments would have slugged the organisation's outgoing ISDN2e connection for about half an hour, compromising other users (10MBytes divided by 64Kbits per sec = 21 minutes, at max. ISDN speed). Email is still bad at handling attachments over 1-2MB (about a floppy disc's worth).
- You can't avoid the ISP's mail server failures, can you? No, but when you bear in mind this was Valentine's Day, it was likely half the online UK population was sending a picture to their loved ones, so there was good chance that at least some mail servers were going to break under the strain.
- Some simple tests can check whether your email system is functioning, especially if you have set up a Webmail account. These are often free and an invaluable diagnostic tool. You should know how to get your internal email system to send mail instantly if it normally batches and sends at regular intervals. Sending something again and again usually compounds the original problems (especially for the groaning ISP!).
Alternatives for next time
Even if your ISP has temporary mail problems (SMTP and POP3 protocols), the other services they provide you with may still be up and running (eg, FTP, HTTP protocols). Several good alternatives exist :
- FTP
Use a File Transfer Protocol utility to copy your large files up to a temporary part of your Web space. Your 'recipients' can then copy them down (with an FTP tool or a browser) once you have alerted them. When the transaction is complete you can use your FTP utility again to delete the files and free up the space. Many ISPs offer free Web space capacities of around 25MB.
- Webmail
Use a browser-based mail client (which relies largely on HTTP) to send your attachments. Be aware though that many Webmail providers are starting to impose restrictions (eg 1MB) on the size of attachments you can send through their systems.
- Bike it
Probably the best solution is the good old-fashioned bike courier carrying a CD or some floppies with compressed files. Weigh up your priorities: if it's an important deadline, then it's worth spending some money on. Don't 'high-tech' it for the sake of convenience or cost if those aren't important factors.
- Get a bigger pipe
If your organisation is going to start handling and transmitting a lot of pictures and graphics, upgrade the Internet bandwidth to 128Kbps ISDN, 512 Kbps ADSL (shared) or one of the leased line tariffs (usually in chunks of 64K up to 2MBps).
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3. Cut IT support costs with hot desking
What is it ?
So called 'hot-desking' is simply the idea of sharing space, but taken a bit further: furniture, computers and office equipment and space all become commodity items and can be used by anyone - it's like staff with no fixed abode.
With rising London Office costs and technologies facilitating home/mobile working, hot-desking can bring reduced property costs and a more flexible office. Dynamic offices adopting this strategy typically have a growing number of mobile workers with some form of portable computing (palmtops or laptops) which they can plug into any docking station if they drop into an office, giving them instant connection to the internal network and data.
Computer and e-Business company ICL aims to shift 35% of its staff to a hot-desking model by next year from a situation where 95% of its 20,000 employees had their own desk.
On a smaller scale, even just encouraging people to use another PC to work around problems will help engender the idea that they aren't tied to one spot for all their computing needs. This can make it easier to prioritise which IT problems to fix in which order.
Benefits
Greater flexibility: people can work in the office, from home or on the move. They make better use of their time which can then accommodate other skills like people networking. Office overheads could be reduced.
Drawbacks
The office network needs to be absolutely reliable otherwise time is wasted when staff drop in to collect or deliver data. Get the internal culture right: training may be necessary for some people, especially in terms of scheduling their own time.
Contacts
ICL's plans http://www.icl.com/news/press/jan01/08jan2001b.htm
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4. How to prevent virus hoaxes from spreading
What is a virus hoax ?
Hoaxes usually come in the form of email messages purporting to be a warning of a destructive virus. The messages - often liberally punctuated with exclamation marks and capitals - spell out doom and gloom if the recipient takes no action and urge them that the best form of action they can take is to forward the whole message on to friends and colleagues to spread the supposed warning. The dead giveaway is a line something like "SEND THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!" in a message supposedly originating from somewhere like IBM or Microsoft.
Drawbacks
The hoaxes are usually just simple text messages bearing no inherent harmful payload, but the costliest effect this has is that a lot people spend a lot of time reading a lot of rubbish. The second effect this has is to clog up server discs with circulating emails, at worst bringing your mail server to a grinding halt.
Debunking a hoax
If you are responsible for IT matters, it only takes a couple of minutes to check out the possibility of a hoax by trawling the reputable hoax lists at any of these sites :
Even simply typing a few keywords (eg "Join the crew") from the alert into a Web search engine will show numerous results confirming it as a hoax.
If it is a hoax, you can inform your local users with reliable information, preferably quoting a source where they can read it for themselves.
How to stop it happening in future
Basically, the long-term solutions are about educating your local computer users. That is ...
- Trust your virus protection measures, which are taken care of technically (as long as you maintain the updates!).
- Don't forward virus alerts at all (bogus or otherwise). Contact your local IT support immediately or alternatively contact us here - we can easily check out hoaxes for you.
- The safest of all possible measures when presented with an alert (bogus or otherwise) is simply to delete it.
- It is the responsibility of the IT support person to remain informed and post updates if necessary. They may also inform the original sender to prevent your organisation receiving panic alerts in future (a template helps avoid a lot of re-typing here).
It's a good idea to post this sort of reference information on a noticeboard or public folder so that people can refer to it again later. Thus, users can verify reports for themselves if they feel competent, rather than forwarding even more hoax messages in blind panic.
To emphasise the point, you may want to consider implementing a policy on
virus hoaxes based on the above points.
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5. Redundancy Replaces Reliability - the new 'Three Rs'
The old paradigm
You use a service because it's reliable. You wait for a communication because you know it will come through eventually - it always does.
The new paradigm
You use a service, but you can't trust its reliability, so you employ one or two 'redundant' services to switch in as alternatives.
Current examples
- You use the phone and fax to check whether emails and post have been sent.
- The fileserver is not 100% fault tolerant so you back up the data regularly on to tape.
- The train service is less reliable but you can still take a bus, bike or car.
Increasingly common IT examples
- Your organisation's Internet access is mostly reliable, but devastating for you if it disappears for any length of time.
Bolster your greater dependence on the Internet with a second ISP subscription. It's possible to configure most routers to give up trying their primary connection after a preset amount of time and to dial an alternative connection.
- You have a leased line (flat rate fee) to another site. Your organisation depends on this to keep the 2 sites in daily touch.
Implement an ISDN line as a redundant backup. You'll pay call charges but it only cuts in during leased line failures.
- Store personal portable data on an Internet 'drive' or in your free Web space so you can get to it anywhere there is Internet access
Back it up on removable media (floppy, CD) just in case you find yourself in an 'Internet desert'.
- The UK's basic telephone network may become less reliable. Cable alternatives and fibre networks may start to look attractive.
The battle between BT versus Oftel plus numerous telecoms and service providers continues to play itself out in the run up to July 2001. In the summer, BT will be forced relinquish control of its copper wires (known in the industry as "unbundling the local loop") and handover to bidding telecoms to run their own equipment and signals through this vast - and until now, fairly reliable - network. After July, expect a period of reduced reliability - even if it's temporary - while new telecoms get to grips with handling their portion of the network.
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6. Carnivore - eating mail near you
What it does
" Carnivore" is an American system that captures Internet packets going through an Internet service provider's (ISP) network. The FBI uses Carnivore to capture only email to or from someone under investigation by installing and configuring the device at an ISP's network. Their officials say that court orders restrict which e-mails they can see.
How it works
Who knows?
Advocates of personal privacy say that only the FBI knows how Carnivore works since ISPs are not allowed access to the system. They argue that the FBI should hand over control of Carnivore equipment ISPs so they can comply with court orders.
Analysing millions of e-mail messages a second, it scans all the incoming and outgoing e-mail of those under surveillance. The FBI recently acknowledged Carnivore's existence in discussions with telecommunications experts.
A double-edged sword for ISPs
Under current legislation, ISPs are liable (a civil offence) if they reveal information or e-mails regarding their subscribers to the government without a warrant or court order. However, if they refuse to comply with government's surveillance requirements, they are also in conflict with the law. ISPs find themselves "damned if they do and damned if they don't".
In the UK, this would be the equivalent of trying to comply with two conflicting pieces legislation (discussed here before) - the Human Rights Act (HRA) and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Act.
The American Civil Liberties Union are calling on Congress to 'put a leash on Carnivore' - a technology which is the equivalent of allowing government agents to "rip open Post Office mailbags and scan every piece of mail in search of one specific letter whose address they already know". (Barry Steinhardt, ACLU).
Contacts
The full details of Carnivore are in this 4.5MB PDF file!
[Acknowledgements: Kevin Anderson, BBC, CNN, Associated Press]
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7. Avoiding the pitfalls of mailmerge
A recent mailmerge headache threw up some valuable lessons.
What's the scenario ?
It's 4pm, you've got 600 labels to print from a spreadsheet and get the resulting letters or packs into the post. The two problems that continue to stump you are :
- Only parts of the address appear on the labels.
- The whole address always appears one line below (or one line above) where it should, ie the text is not 'in sync'.
The fixes
- You need to format the columns of the spreadsheet before you merge, otherwise it simply attempts to merge what you see on the screen - the whole of each column may not be visible at the time. In MS Excel 2000, you do this by highlighting all the columns you want (click the column header once and drag), then pulling down :
Format | Column | Autofit selection
- The second fix is simply to use the right physical labels that match your label specification (in your word processor)! It's amazing how often people will pick up a set of labels that "look about the right size" and yet not all manufacturers make them exactly the same. You can of course design a custom label specification to fit cheap unbranded labels that you found in the stationery cupboard, but not if it's an hour before your postal deadline! In MS Word, you find the mail merge tool under :
Tools | Mailmerge | Create | Mailing Labels
Labels and custom label design is under :
Tools | Mailmerge | Setup | New Labels
Lessons to learn
- If you mailmerge infrequently (say, less than 4 times a year), make sure you document the process step by step, even if it's only for you to refresh your memory.
- If you manipulate the data each time round - for instance, to mail some groups of contacts but not others - you should probably be using a database rather than a spreadsheet. The latter is great at moving around small blocks of data, but won't sort and filter the whole content in a logical way that suits mailouts. If you have a bunch of separate spreadsheets called "press", "government", "members", etc that you use for mailouts, it's high time you put all that into a database to make it easier and faster to manage.
Longer-term solutions
Using a fax mail merge saves you time and postal costs.
Using an email merge saves you time, paper and phone or letter costs.
Again a database utility (eg MS Access) helps you "mix 'n' match" your mailouts. So your recipients get an email if they have email, a fax if they have that and a letter if they have neither of the last two.
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8. Web cam Comic Relief - 'a new look to support'
For Comic Relief "Pants to Poverty" day on Friday 16th March, watch out for a parade of pants for charriddy!
Our staff will be wearing pants 'on the outside' in shifts during the day.
This will be a "webcast" not to be missed on Friday 16th 10am GMT onwards.
(as some have already said, "Comic but no Relief"!)
Then make a donation to ComicRelief here.
Get your ££££ ready now!
Catch it all at http://www.coopsys.co.uk/webcam
"Pants of the Month" competition
We will be giving an M&S knicker voucher for anyone correctly identifying three wearers of pants!
(this competition not open to employees, friends and family!)
Email us with your guess at team@coopsys.co.uk
(sorry - only one go each).
Visit ComicRelief at http://www.comicrelief.com
Make a donation by calling 08457 910 910 or directly here http://www.comicrelief.com/donate/main.shtml
[As a footnote to last month's Web cam article, the web cam was a bit of fun actually, so it has not always been switched on - as some of you have pointed out. Talk about Big Brother - can I leave the house now?]
Phil Anthony
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Contact details
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Support: 020 7793 7877 support@coopsys.co.uk
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E&OE
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