Howto: Entourage 2008 for Exchange 2007 Configuration

With all of the Macs being deployed in companies all over the world there are a lot of admins scratching their head on how to integrate Macs into a Windows world. The most common request these admins will get is, “Can you configure my Mac to get my Exchange 2007 email?”. The simple answer is, Yes. Regardless of whether or not you have configured, your Macs to authenticate against your Active Directory (which you should), you can configure Entourage to sync with your Exchange 2007 Server, to allow all of your Mac users to take advantage of your existing Exchange infrastructure. Use the howto below to configure your Entourage clients.

1. Give the account setup a useful name.

2. Enter the name and email address of the User for which you are configuring Entourage.

3. Enter of username of the user, enter the FQDN of the Active Directory domain name, and the password for the user.

4. Enter the public URL of your Outlook Web Access server. If you are using SSL to secure your OWA server as you should be make sure you specify that.

5. Enter the public URL of your Outlook Web Access server, with “/public” on the end. If you are using SSL to secure your OWA server as you should be make sure you specify that. This will allow your users to access your Public Folders.

6. Enter the internal FQDN of a domain controller in your Active Directory domain. This will be used to look up users from the Global Address Book.

7. Enter the Search Base for your Active Directory domain. This usually is just the internal DNS name for your NetBIOS domain name broken out into LDAP-centric format as displayed in the example.

These instructions will allow your Mac users to make full use of your Exchange Server. The one important note, is that your LDAP settings will be inaccessible outside of your LAN, as I do not recommend opening up port 389 on your firewal to allow LDAP traffic outside your LAN. This may prevent your Macs from making Global Address Book lookups when not connected to your LAN. What you may consider instead is setting up a VPN connection on the Mac to allow this to function fully.

HowTo: Intro to VMWare Converter

I recently updated a presentation I gave a while back on how to use VMWare Converter. The presentation titled “Intro to VMWare Converter: How to Steal a Computer Without Ever Touching It” outlines how to use Converter to clone a computer over a network with ease.

The Presentation can be downloaded here

See my most recent VMWare post on how to use the Disk Mount Utility here.

Choosing A Webinar Software Package

Recently one of the companies that I work with, Off Madison Ave, decided to start a webinar series on various marketing, advertising, and interactive topics. It was my job to get the technical aspects squared away. The first and most important item on my list was choosing a software and service package that would suit our needs without being overly complicates or breaking the bank.

The first product that we started looking at was GoToWebinar. There were people on the team that was working on the webinars that were familiar with this software so it looked like we had an easy decision. GoToWebinar is a related product to GoToMeeting, both are made by Citrix.

The person that had conceived the webinar series at the company had some preliminary contact with GoToMeeting, and had been given some pricing of $350/month for the GoToWebinar Product. I called up the sales contact that we had over at GoToMeeting to get pricing and a trial account. The pricing that I received came out to be $560/month and $560 one-time setup, for a total of $7280/year, with a one-year contract. They could not explain the price difference. So after discussing price, it looked like we were going to go with the software regardless, but we wanted to try it out before committing.

This is where some of the fun begins. Simply put, this was the biggest hassle I have ever gone through to get a trial account, demo product, etc. First, I requested it, then I had to send an email to the sales contact of what the criteria that we would be evaluating it on to the sales guy, then I received a link to a webpage that I had to fill out. The Webpage was the equivalent of 3 8.5”x11” pages. It was a trial agreement, that was automatically turned into the required one-year agreement at the end of the 14 days, unless otherwise canceled prior. After agreeing, against my better judgement, to the contract I received a confirmation that they received it. A few hours later, I got an email from someone else saying my account was setup and they would be my account contact. Great, all I wanted was to try the software out.

After we got the software up and running, we quickly realized how clunky their user interface was. While I am sure that GoToWebinar is a great piece of software, and has some great features, they are trying to do too much. Performing simple tasks like switching presenters required multiple clicks. Many of the features in the software we did not need and would most likely never use. So we went back to the drawing board and decided to look at other software packages.

We looked at Webex and Yugma. When I called Webex, it took me 3 calls and 3 different people to talk to anyone that knew anything, or thought they knew something. The first 2 people simply took my contact info so that someone could contact me, ugh, just let me talk to someone that knows something, now. After the sales person finally calls me back I start getting the typical sales runaround. I explain that what we are looking to do, and how many people we are expecting to attend the webinars, but he would not give me pricing, he kept saying he needed more info. When I got fed up with the questions, and said so, he suggested that perhaps he “should be talking to the sales manager because obviously we want it for sales leads and they would be able to help him better”, well that was not going to happen because Off Madison Ave does not have a sales dept, let alone a sales manager, I was who he needed to deal with. Ultimately I never got pricing, nor did I ever get an trial of their product.

Next was Yugma. After calling Yugma’s sales line, I got to talk to someone right away that could answer my questions, give me pricing, and set me up with a trial account. Wow, if their product was as good as their people we would be in heaven. To our delight, the software was great, it was simple and functional. While it lacked the more complex features of GoToWebinar, it had everything that we needed, and even some things that we wanted that GoToWebinar did not have (or we could not find). As it turns out, the price was better too. To get all of the webinar features on Yugma, we only paid $899 for the year, a savings of over $6000 for the year.

When I called the GoToMeeting sales guy to cancel, he was just as rude as the Webex sales guy. When he asked who we went with, and I told him Yugma, he actually laughed at me, and told me I would be back.

Well, I am proud to say that we used Yugma flawlessly for our first webinar, and are very, very happy with our choice. I can also say that based on the experience that I had with both GoToMeeting and Webex, I will never consider their products for any project ever again.

Review: Logmein Rescue

This week I stumbled upon a piece of software that I soon will not be able to live without. The software is called LogMeIn Rescue. While looking for the latest version of Hamachi (another fantastic product, but could still use some more dev work) I did something I usually never do, I clicked on a banner ad. The ad was for LogMeIn Rescue, and was on the Hamachi website, knowing that LogMeIn (The company, not the product) owned Hamachi I figured I was safe. I am glad I took the chance.

After getting past my skepticism (and my initial disappointment that the technician console was Windows only) I found a Windows box that I could try it out on (in other words I installed it on one of the intern’s computers in case it screwed it all up). Luckily I needed to help someone out at the BizSandiego office, which is why I was looking for Hamachi in the first place, so I got to give it a trial run. I was quickly impressed with the speed at which it worked, there was virtually no lag! Usually, when using Hamachi to perform the same task I get terrible lag, but not with this product.

I was also impressed at how it handles each session. Within the browser window that the console runs you can have multiple tabs, each one being another session with another computer. It allows you to transfer files, reboot, etc. The one thing that disappointed me is that it required user intervention on the other end to get it going. Sometimes getting the person on the other end that caused the problem that you are trying to solve to follow directions is tremendous challenge in itself.

In all, I think the $129/month is a little steep for the casual user like myself, but for a helpdesk or support technician, this could be an invaluable tool.