One of the first things I usually do when I install a new Windows Server in a test environment, is to turn off IE Enhanced Security Configuration (IE ESC). I am talking about this little prompts that get on your nerves whenever you open a website in Internet Explorer on a Windows Server. I described how to disable IE ESC in Windows Server 2003 a while back. Since it is one of the popular articles here on 4syosps and because the procedure is different on Windows Server 2008, I decided to post a follow-up to save you from this constant security prompts.

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NETWORWORLD has a review about Niccholas Carrs’s new book where he argues that the IT department is dead. Carr is known for his provocative views. However, you often hear similar assertions about the impact of cloud computing these days. Usually, they are about the showdown between Google and Microsoft. Many think that Google can replace applications on the Windows desktop with their web-based applications. We are living in a fast moving world. So it can’t be wrong to listen to these assertions every once in a while.

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Microsoft just released a new version of their IE7 deployment paper. The document has 156 pages. So you can imagine that IE7 deployment can get tricky. However, for the experienced admin many of the things discussed in it will be quite familiar. Nevertheless, it might be a useful reference if you run into problems. The other question is if you need to deploy IE7 if you haven’t done it yet.

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Todd Bishop blogged about Steve Ballmer’s recent statements concerning the competition between Microsoft and Google. Bishop gave an assessment I’ve read so often since Microsoft’s announcement of Office Live Workspace. Typically expressions such as “online editing” or “online collaboration” are mentioned then. And they would usually say that Google does it but Microsoft does not. I never understood what they are talking about. Perhaps someone can explain it to me.

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Silverlight 1.0, Microsoft’s response to Adobe’s Flash, has been released. I’ve read a couple of articles about Silverlight and also about AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) recently. It seems to me that these new technologies have the capability to revolutionize the way we work with net based applications. In my view, they could even mean the end of traditional Web applications.

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Microsoft published a white paper which might be of interest to those who did not yet decide to deploy Internet Explorer 7. Actually, I am one of them. Some months ago, I posted an article where I recommended not deploying IE7 before 2007. Well, it is already end of March and I am still not convinced.

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Microsoft published the Internet Explorer 7 Deployment Guide, a 67 page Word document, discussing how to plan and carry out IE7 deployment. I just skimmed over the document, but it seems to me that more things have to be considered than what I thought before.

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Every year or so, I search for a new way to highlight and annotate text in Web pages. As an IT professional, I am a knowledge worker. So I don’t just read information on Web pages, I work with them. Since Web browsers only allow you to read Web pages, I often convert the more important ones to a PDF and work with them in Adobe Acrobat (the full version, not the Reader). There, I can highlight text, create annotations, and search through all my documents, annotations, and highlighted text with ease. However, this method has become obsolete since I found Diigo. Diigo is the most powerful social bookmarking service I’ve ever seen. It has many features and I will introduce some of them in this post.

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Some time ago, I wrote an article where I compared the capabilities of Firefox with Internet Explorer in a corporate environment. My conclusion was that Firefox is no rival to IE in this field. I planned to check the situation again after Firefox 2.0 and IE7 came out, but a NetworkWorld article convinced me that it is not worth the time. It seems that the situation is pretty much the same.

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The final of IE7 is available for download now. Some days ago I already recommended disabling the IE7 installation with Windows Update. Today, I installed the final and now I am even more convinced of not deploying IE7 this year.

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