Group Policy for
Everyone
Eric Rux’s “3 Tools to Manage Group
Policy” (November 2007, Instant-
Doc ID 97228) is a great article. I
didn’t find a wasted line of text. Eric
explains things so that a systems
administrator at my level—that is,
the kind who knows enough to be
dangerous—can easily follow along.
Users at higher skill levels—say,
Mark Minasi’s level—will also find
something valuable. There’s great
information here for everyone,
regardless of skill level. Keep these
articles coming!
—Tim Bolton
IT Innovator Illusion
Maybe I’m late to the party, but
it seems to me that that the Windows
IT Pro November 2007 cover
illustration should qualify for your
Ctl+Alt+Del section. If those three
gears in the IT innovator’s head
actually move, all he’ll get is metal
shavings and broken teeth. Two
interlocked gears can’t move in the
same clockwise/counter-clockwise
direction, so three interlocked gears
can’t move at all.
—Benjamin R. Wahlquist
16 Flavors of
Windows Server 2008
I read Paul Thurrott’s Web-exclusive
article “Microsoft Muddies
the Windows Server 2008 Waters”
(November 13, 2007, InstantDoc
ID 97570). As a longtime Windows
server administrator, I look forward
to the Server 2008 product. But why
is Microsoft making things so confusing
and murky lately? Honestly,
doesn’t someone at Microsoft have
common sense? No one benefits
from 16 flavors of Server 2008.
Microsoft is making better products,
but some of the company’s recent
decision-making and marketing
choices are enough to make you
scratch your head.
—COMPWIZ
Ready to Deploy
Vista?
In her online column, “Windows
Vista Deployment News: ROI Study,
MDOP, BDD, Springboard” (November
15, 2007, InstantDoc ID 97599),
Karen Forster asks, “What does
Microsoft need to do to convince
you to deploy Windows Vista?” I’m
not convinced that Microsoft has the
tools a domain administrator needs
to manage a domain from within
Windows Vista.
I think Microsoft needs to put up a virtual “Domain Administration with Vista” lab that features all the technology the company can provide. I know the Active Directory Users and Computers Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snapin isn’t up to par, as outlined in the Microsoft article “You experience installation errors and compatibility problems when you install Windows Server 2003 management tools on a Windows Vista-based computer” (support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;930056&x=13&y=13). I talk about this problem in my Scripting Pro VIP article “Using Saved Queries for Active Directory Management” (October 2007, InstantDoc ID 97087). If Microsoft were to indeed embark on this kind of lab, the company would need to make its follow-up feedback pages oriented more toward customer satisfaction than marketing.
I’m also a bit concerned about Vista compatibility with older hardware such as old HP printers, legacy scanners, and expensive plotters. People and companies won’t want to spend a lot of money on new equipment just so they can have a newer OS. —Jim Turner
Women in IT
In “Can You Hear Me Roar Now?”
(Your Savvy Assistant, October 2007,
InstantDoc ID 97461), Christan
Humphries asks whether women are
shut off in the IT community. They
aren’t shut off from my IT community.
I recently hired an assistant—
one bona fide, technical assistant,
qualified and ready to work. When I
was looking for a new employee, one
of my personal goals was to hire, yes,
a woman.
In a two-“man” shop, I understand the different kind of thinking that a woman can bring to IT processes. I acknowledge that women solve problems differently than men do. I can also see that women tend to be more compassionate to end-users. Whereas I might lose patience with a user who has forgotten “his” password for the 27th time, she thinks it’s funny and moves on. Don’t even get me started on how women approach training. I could go on and on about the benefits that women bring to the table in the IT world.
However, when considering the lack of female winners for IT Innovators (Windows IT Pro, November 2007), you need to look at the sheer numbers of men versus women in IT before you start lamenting that all the winners were men. We can’t simply ignore an innovator because we don’t have enough females on the list.
How would you feel if you were put on the list of innovators not because you were an innovator but because somebody thought they needed a “token” female on the list to appear politically correct? If you start putting one gender before another, you’re simply going back to what we had before: gender bias. —Scott Gutauckis (MALE)
