The Vista Dilemma
I was amused to read “10 Reasons to Deploy
Windows Vista” and “10 Reasons Not to
Deploy Windows Vista” (November 2008,
InstantDoc IDs 99986 and 99988). Perhaps
the articles’ titles should have been “10
Reasons to Deploy Vista at Home” and “10
Reasons Not to Deploy Vista at Work.” At my
business, I have five vertical applications that
are key to my operations, and none of them
is certified to run on Vista. If I were to ask the
folks at Microsoft, they would tell me that I
can run Vista. However, if I ever ran into any
problems, you can be sure that they
wouldn’t support my implementation.
To tell you the truth, if my applications
didn’t require Windows, I’d
run Linux and dump Windows.
—Gregory A. Randis
iPhone Frustration
Congratulations on a spot-on iPhone
3G article (“iPhone 3G: Still Not Quite
Ready for Enterprise Email,” December
2008, InstantDoc ID 100479). As
a former Windows Mobile user and
current iPhone user, I constantly ask
myself when my iPhone pet peeves
will force me to revert to a less
polished but more work-oriented
phone. Adding to my frustration is
Apple’s refusal to acknowledge or
provide a roadmap for enterprise customers.
—Rene Garcia
GPO Problems
I enjoyed Darren Mar-Elia’s “Securing Windows
Desktops Using Group Policy” (November
2008, InstantDoc ID 100264). I’m using
Group Policy to create an Internet Explorer
(IE) security policy for my users. I add my
users to this Limited Internet group, and they
get a policy that locks down their Internet
access. I create a false rating and block out a list of sites; users can access only the listed
sites. I have a logon script that populates
the policy with permitted sites and enables
the registry key switch to turn on the filter.
Lately, my solution has stopped working or
works only sporadically. I also notice that
depending on the domain controller (DC)
that users log on to, they get an older version
that doesn’t seem to replicate properly. Do
you know any way to make this policy more
efficient? Or do you know a better way to
accomplish my goal?
—Michael La Bara
Thanks for your letter. I assume you’re using the Content Rating feature in the IE Maintenance policy to control allowed or disallowed sites. If you are, I’m not sure I follow what you mean by creating a false rating. In the past, I’ve simply accessed the Content Advisor’s General tab, in which I can configure the policy so that the user can see sites with no ratings (as Figure 1 shows). Then, I simply set my allow and disallow list.
—Darren Mar-Elia
