Thanks to everyone who took part in my survey! The results were quite interesting. This information is important for me because it helps me to improve 4sysops. Some of you submitted comments about my blog; I am publishing them without names at the end of this article.

Most of your comments were quite positive, which surprised me a little. I think this is due to the fact that only those of you who really like my blog were willing to spend some time answering all the questions. If you didn’t take part in the survey, you still have the chance to tell me your opinion of my blog in the comments section below. Critical responses are welcome too! So, if you think that I am a Microsoft fanboy, just go ahead and say it! But do me favor: watch your language. This is a family program. If you don’t want to comment publicly, you can use my contact form.

I am also very much interested to know what kind of articles you would like to read on 4sysops. In the survey, I gave several options. 80% of you want to read more reviews about administration tools. I guess my sponsors like to hear that. The diagram below displays the other responses. Long-term readers might have noticed that I have discussed admin tools more frequently as of late. If you know of a great free admin utility, you can use this form. If you have any other suggestions, please leave a comment on this post.

Those of you who took part in the survey will remember that you had the chance to win one of two products from GFI. At this point, I want to thank GFI, who sponsored this survey. To draw the winners, I used the random integer generator at Random.org. The two winners are:

Edwin from Washington, USA. He is an MCSE 2003 working at the state helpdesk serving over 160 clinics. He won a license for GFI EventsManager.

Brian from Colorado, USA. He is a system administrator supporting roughly 35 servers and 90 desktops with locations in Colorado and California. He won a license for GFI MailEssentials.

Okay, here are the comments submitted in the survey. I copied them as they have been submitted.

It is one of the best written blogs on IT tools and networking informaiton.

I would like less biased information and include other operating system options.

Discussion of admin tools is probably my favorite feature.

Some great content, I really liked the Vista x64 series of articles.

You are doing a great job.

Hmm, no options in the survey for my situation where I never actually visit the site unless you make me – that is, make me jump out of my RSS reader Like you did with this survey.

Keep up the good work. How about an article comparing Windows NT4 with Vista? ))

I consult on Microsoft management products and have a general infrastructure background. I read the RSS feed and just like to keep up to date with what is going on at an infrastructure level.”

Using RSS, I read this blog regularly. I really enjoy the articles and the perspective you have on MS and Windows technologies.

I really like you site, it has proven to be a great and informative source of information for me. It has given me information I can then give to my boss about decisions we should make. I would like it if the chat were back, I tried for months to find a time when you were on but never was successful.

I like your straightforwardness and that you have your own view of things – even though I dont always agree. I like to be challenged

i like the tech articles, the tools.

4sysops offers information on many of the underlying technical aspects of windows systems administration in one place – for many things, I am not reduced to digging through the labyrinth of MS technical documents to find something relevant. I find the reviews to be pertinent, and nicely objective. I am a systems administrator for a small company, with several Windows and *NIX servers and desktops.

The site is one of my favorites. It only has the things i find relevent and no fluff! Great site.

I love the fact that all your reviews are relevant and interesting to me and my job function. Its nice to read a review that does not feel like it has a lot of marketing in it because of Sponsors.

I, myself, am a Windows Administrator for a ~150 person engineering firm, that is soon to merge with another company, which add a combined total of ~400-500 employees.

Objective view of 4sysops

This is a great resource. Most of what you write about is relevant to what I do.

Despite the clear pro-MS bias, the tool evaluations and recommendations are clearly valuable. I’m director of IT for a mid-size MSO health provider, managing ~600 desktops and ~35 servers over 40 locations in Southern California. WinXP desktop, 2k3 and Linux (CentOS) servers. Vista not on the roadmap at all.

I come to 4sysops to find posts about things that can make my life easier. I’m looking for information on tools that I wouldn’t hear about anywhere else. On the news side, most of the sites I visits eventually pick up the same news stories; so I’d really like to find a site like this that could tell me what no-one else is talking about.

I found this site about 18 months ago. I religiously go to the site daily. I have found many useful tools and articles via this site. Thank you.

More reviews on tech tools/software would be great… Comparisons vs. linux equivilents, etc…. Less personal info like your distaste for CLI’s.

I work as a project engineer for a medium sized hospital. i manage much of the systems and network infrastructure. i am a fairly new reader of 4sysops and so far i really like what i have been able to learn and the information you provide. thanks for putting so much work into your site and offerings.

Some of the articles are missing “step by step” instructions. sometimes it’s nice to have next to the product review a case study and instructions how to implement that product.

Just discovered the site, and after reading it for a bit, added the RSS feed. It’s a great site that I look forward to reading more of.

I am an MCSE 2003 and work at the state helpdesk serving over 160 clinics. I also am a computer nerd by hobbie as well.

I generally only follow the RSS feed, but its always good. Well, other than the Vista fanboy stuff. I’m a field systems engineer for a consulting company, and do alittle bit of everything except programming.

I love the site, especially the product reviews on admin tools and windows tips.

You’re doing a great job. I like things the way they are today. Thanks.

Unbaised informations are rarely seen this days on that kind of “blog” tech sites. Refreshing.

I’d greatly apprecite it if you’d post more of your everyday experiences, scripts you use on a daily basis.

The interface could use an overhaul; it feels a little like it was made with Frontpage. Also the relatively large sidebar on the left makes it feel like half the page is being used for navigation.

I like that you cover the tools which are really helpful to the sysadmins, that your feed gives me the full length post and you don’t talk only about new and hot technologies, but give the credit to the things that are still around us in the real production environment.

I really like the site as it is. I enjoy the types of information currently offered and have benefited from reading user comments as well. I am the senior system admin for a 500 person firm in the US. We run a mostly Windows shop and so appreciate your balanced views of Microsoft and news relating to Windows admins.

I think the top free admin tools are really great, I would like to see some linux/unix and windows integration information, as we are all getting multi OS platforms in all of our datacenters.

Change the logo! It looks like something out of a computer textbook from the 90s. Otherwise I like the pace and quality of the news on here.

I like the fact you are always at the front edge of news about Windows related technologies. I’m a ‘desktop architect’ but i work on group policy, automation, and windows security related technologies.

I am a Microsoft Technical Architect, currently developing Disaster Recovery infrastructure. 4sysops has become my No. 1 RSS read along with bink.nu. Great content, and always relevant. Keep up the good work.

I started reading your blog because I was a sys admin for college, a very Microsoft-centric college. A lot of what you talked about was stuff that I was already exploring, or stuff I would soon need to explore. It was a very good, and relevant read for me.
Now I’m at the director level, with the sys admins working for me. It’s still a good and relevant read. I check the RSS feed every day to see what the topic is, and usually about 3 days a week it’s something that relates directly to my job or my interests.
I know you get a lot of complaints about being a Microsoft cheerleader. Knowing how the campus agreements are structured, I understand why you often pick a Microsoft product over a competitor….it’s usually cheaper, and if not cheaper, certainly easier. That said, I do think you tend to defend Microsoft a lot more than they deserve, but as I said, I understand why too. Anyway, I like your blog.

I like to read more reviews about commercial admin toold for MS server products like Windows Server (and AD, TS,…), Exchange, SQL Svr

Hi, I am system administrator from mid-sized finnish consulting company.You have one of the best blogs in the Internet, keep up the good work.

Every time I visit 4sysops I find something new and cool that I didn’t know before. I love to read about new Windows system admin tools, Vista/XP compability and such, Server 2008, and cool utilities (especially the free ones!). I find so much useful stuff that I actually shy away from visiting (or reading posts in my blog reader where I prefer to read them) sometimes because I know I’m going to have more information that I’m interested in to sort through than I have spare time most of the time! Sometimes ignorance is…less to do

Hi, I am the Information Systems Manager for a small company in Logan, Utah USA. I am a one man IT department so I do EVERYTHING for my company when it comes to IT. I have been known to do things outside the scope of IT also. I really enjoy the free admin tools emphasis of your website. The way I first found your site was while googleing for a tool to find disk usage on a system that was out of space on the C: drive. I found what I was looking for on your site. I have been frequenting your site since then.

I found your site while looking for something else. I am a Network Admin for the County of Kern, California. We are in the position I read about earlier where we have many in house programs that are not compatible with Vista. It will take us several years to get all our programs completely re-written to be compatible. We have no plans for Vista for some time though we have paid for the licensing. We are actually looking at droping Microsoft completely because they are too unpredictable. Linux is looking better to me as time passes. Now that I have found your site I will look around to see what I can put to use. Thanks, Jim

I am a second years student of business and information technologys in germany (fh deggendorf) and I just love your blog … with every post of you I get more and more deeper into the adminworld! Thanks a lot for teaching me that much!

“Hi! I specialize in providing IT services to small business owners. I would really like to see see more news and stories on tools and howtos that revolve around the 10-200 person company. Thank You very much.

The navigation is a bit unfriendly

First visit and very impressed. I am an IT Consultant managing c. 10 SME networks (5-100 users each) plus lots of training (MCT) for larger organisations

I like the free admin tools that you point out, very useful. Network Administrator for UK based telecoms service provider.