Best posts made by Carnival Boy

Anyone done it?

Or anyone sneakily upgraded for free by pretending to need "Assistive Technologies" which means Microsoft will still allow you to upgrade for free?

@scottalanmiller said in Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10:

They have a lot of interest still in phasing out Windows 7.

You'd think, but I'm told that there's no upgrade pricing and I would have to pay full price which is $250. That seems a bit excessive. I was expecting it to be half that.

That first one on your list at $130 looks like OEM. We currently pay a lot more for licences in the UK because 51% of our idiot population opted to screw up our economy leave the EU, so our currency is now nearly worthless.

I had a boss with a terrible memory. He genuinely didn't seem to remember what we agreed, so I had to get it all written down. Once we were in a meeting and he said "whose stupid idea was this?", to which I replied, "er..it was yours". To which he immediately said "Was it? Oh well, sounds like the kind of stupid idea I'd come up with".

It worked out ok for me, as I soon realised I could simply make things up and claim he'd previously agreed to them and he'd be none the wiser.

Because we're awesome and people just like to hang out with us

@guyinpv said in Homeworking:

Don't think "how do I know how many hours he works"; think "is he getting work done that satisfies employment."
In other words, is he getting satisfactory work done in reasonable time, versus trying to time track which is only a measurement of time, not work. You might even consider going salaried since time-tracking makes less sense with a remote worker. Unless their job is heavily based on particular hours "doing stuff".

Good luck!

We're all salaried here. Agree with focusing on how much work is being done rather than how many hours are being worked though. Most companies are focused on measuring hours worked - partly because it's easier to measure than work achieved, especially in IT where it's not like you can count the number of widgets a worker has produced in a week as you can with a factory line. I just need to figure out some KPIs.

@Joel said in Backing up Office 365 mailboxes:

I was going to look at GFI Mail Essentials and see if that does the trick.

This is what we use. I wouldn't recommend it. But I think you either need a third-party archiving service like GFI or the legal hold options on O365, neither of which is particularly low-cost, I believe.

Erm..I haven't done the maths :), but you've got the cost of maintaining the dispensers, employing someone to fill them, disposing of the used ones, ordering new ones.

I always shoot video in portrait mode and yes, it does drive me nuts when I realise. Clearly I'm a girl!

The blog post says
"Starting today, Microsoft Teams is available in preview in 181 countries and in 18 languages to commercial customers with Office 365 Enterprise or Business plans"

but here https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/Microsoft-teams/setup it says you need one of the following plans:
Office 365 Midsize Business
Office 365 Enterprise E1, E3, or E5
Office 365 Education
Office 365 Developer

There is no mention of Office 365 Business there. Which is what I have. So it doesn't look like I can get it. Also, as far as I'm aware, "Midsize Business" no longer exists, so why are they listing that? Bar stewards.

I really don't know why I continue to bother with Microsoft. The hoops you have to jump through is ridiculous. Even if I could get Teams up and running, they'll likely just kill it in a couple of years anyway, or at least remove it from my O365 subscription and try and force me to upgrade to an E3 account, so what's the point?

There are so many really great project management tools out there right now that I think you just have to look at which ones best meet your specific needs. Many of them are free for a limited number of users, or offer free trials, so you can easily take them for a test drive. I tried several before settling on Trello, but everyone's requirements are different, so it's hard to recommend a specific solution.

I'd just make sure you go for a well established and popular solution. There's no point picking a cool solution only to find that it shuts down six months after you start using it (along with all your data if it is cloud based).

Really, I'm just happy to be alive in a post-Microsoft-Project world.

OK, I'll get an ER-X. Thanks for the advice.

I disagree, but let's not get bogged down in specific numbers, it was a long time ago and costs are very different between the US and Europe.

Does anyone else on ML work for an SMB and employ internal IT staff or am I the only one? I'd like some support

@JaredBusch said in Email query:

I'm on the road in posing

I'm now picturing you getting photographed for Victoria's Secret on a highway somewhere.

@guyinpv said in Suggestion for decent, free, ticketing with simple needs?:

I already have an account on Freshdesk which is an actual ticketing system, but I have it set up more for public support at our ecommerce, not internal tickets.

Can you not just create another Freshdesk site and use that?
So have:
https://mysite1.freshdesk.com (public)
https://mysite2.freshdesk.com (internal)

Since Windows 10 doesn't include an XP mode, is it possible, on a new PC that includes a Windows 10 OEM licence with Windows 7 downgrade rights, to install Windows 10 and then install Windows 7 as a virtual machine under Windows 10? And then use XP mode within the Windows 7 virtual machine.

Or to put it another way, does the OEM licence allow you to install both Windows 10 and Windows 7 on the same machine (one as a virtual machine), or can you only install one or the other.

Failing that, what are the alternatives for licencing a Windows 7 or XP VM on a Windows 10 PC?

I've never understood Windows licencing.

@scottalanmiller said in XP Mode on Windows 10:

How can we eliminate a need for Windows XP?

Get someone to rewrite the 20 year old bespoke programs we use. But that's more of a long term objective.

Can you still buy Windows 7 or XP licences?

OK, I'll return to this thread in 15 years time and remind you all I was right.

Screw Wikipedia, there's only one way to determine the correct pronunciation - next time I see her, I'm going to ask the Queen how she pronounces it.

@Dashrender said in WTF I AM DOING WRONG (VPN edition) ?:

As for VPN - If you really need traditional VPN, Find out if your current router/firewall can do it. If not, replace it with a EdgeRouter.

I'm considering switcing to either ZeroTier or using my EdgeRouter to replace our current VPN which is getting a bit flakey on Windows 10 (Hamachi). What are the relative merits of both? Is there an obvious choice on which to choose? We have about 30 remote users needing to connect to our LAN. If the EdgeRouter, would you install OpenVPN or something else?