New Kerio Connect Mail v8 = excitement!

Here, at Max - We are excited!

You may recall we wrote Microsoft Office Update 14.2.0 Outlook Mac - Problems with Databases and breaks Kerio Compatibility in April of this year!

What I didn't do was tell you that 7.3.3 did indeed fix the issue and quickly. Since that time there have been many great new releases of Kerio Connect all the up to and including v7.4.3.

What we have now is Kerio Connect v8 - a fantastic timing and fortunate numbering system as it supports Windows 8!

We're going to do some testing in-house this week, so stay tuned for some more information and a first look at Kerio Connect 8!

As you know, Kerio has worked fantastically as an Apple or VM-based exchange-like mail server. If you would like more information, please contact us, and we'd be happy to get back in touch.

Here at Max Computing, we like to use more than just Kerio Control. We use Kerio Control to keep up secure and Kerio Operator as a VoIP solution to keep us connected.

If you've been thinking of a cloud-based email server, liked Connect, but didn't want to keep it on-site and maintained, talk to us about the new Kerio Connect Cloud options.

Find out What's New in Kerio Connect 8 | Kerio

What is Kerio Connect?


More than a Mail Server. Your Exchange alternative.

Kerio Connect is the award-winning, leading alternative to Microsoft Exchange for businesses and organizations that prefer a simple approach to IT. Kerio Connect mail server brings business-class email, shared calendars, and contact management to most email clients, web browsers and mobile devices at a fraction of the cost and IT overhead.

With integrated anti-virus, powerful anti-spam, built-in archiving, automated backup and an easy Web Administration interface, Kerio Connect gives businesses everything they need for secure email and messaging in one low cost package.

Deployment options for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, VMware and Parallels, and public and private cloud hosted options, allows Kerio Connect to fit in virtually any customer environment.

Microsoft Office Update 14.2.0 Outlook Mac - Problems with Databases and breaks Kerio Compatibility

For our clients with Kerio Mail Server - NEWSFLASH
Important Technical Advisory - Microsoft Update of Office 2011 for Mac Triggers Syncing Errors with Kerio Connect

Hello,

On April 12, Microsoft updated Office for Mac 2011 to version 14.2.0 (also labeled as Service Pack 2). This update affects Outlook 2011 on the Mac and it is not yet supported by Kerio Connect. We strongly recommend that Kerio Connect customers do not install this update yet.

If you already have installed the update, you'll need to remove Microsoft Office directory from the Applications folder and re-install Microsoft Office for Mac from original installation media.

Currently, our development team is working on a solution that we are testing. As soon as it is stable, we'll release Kerio Connect 7.3.3 to solve the issue.

If you have further questions, please contact Kerio Tech Support. Thank you for your understanding and patience.

Best,
Kerio Technologies

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We have also observed problems generally with the Office 2011 update, namely with Outlook.

Upon upgrading the database, some users have had corruptions with a range of symptoms.

Microsoft have not pulled their 14.2.0 software update from the automatic checker until this is resolved. It is still available for manual download.

They have released the following statement:

Office for Mac 2011 SP2 Database Upgrade Workaround

by Office for Mac Team on April 17th, 2012 in Help & Support, Office for Mac 2011, Performance

The Office 2011 SP2 release improves database resiliency and detects inconsistencies that went unnoticed prior to this release; however some users have experienced issues related to corrupted databases after the latest updates. We have support and workarounds available for you in the following situations:

Before installing Office 2011 SP2, use the following article to rebuild your database in 14.1.4 to ensure that your database is in a good state for the upgrade to safely apply:Rebuild the Outlook for Mac 2011 database to resolve problems

If you’ve already installed Office 2011 SP2, and you receive the message ‘Please upgrade the Office database,’ please check out the following article for the workaround:Outlook 2011 start error: “Please upgrade the Office database”

We apologize to users who were affected by this issue. Users who successfully updated report very noticeable improvements including performance and a host of other fixes.

A Guide to Controlling Email on all of your devices (POP Vs IMAP and Exchange)

A recurring theme nowadays when speaking with friends and clients, something we all have and one of the topics that is least talked about improving with our friends over a coffee, (are we too embarrassed?) is ..

EMAIL - and our inability to control it.

The biggest things that have happened around email in the past 10 years are the way we access it, the volumes we receive and how many devices we access the same account with. This, on top of having multiple email accounts (work, home, spam) provide us with a complex beast to tame.

A background on how email technologies have evolved starts with *shudder* POP email.

POP technology was used when the internet was billed per time and email was used mainly corporately on the single machine you sat at. No other devices or users were present. You logged onto the internet, downloaded your email and it deleted off the email server, ready to fill again with email you received from co-workers, friends and family.

Whilst POP email worked well for a long time, the technology is focussed around 1 device. Once multiple devices access or send email, there is nothing linking that email back to a central place to be able to search, sort or file. In a sense, once the account is created on each and every new device, it is its own identity. It downloads its own copies and becomes estranged from any other device doing the same thing on the same account ID. Sent mail from your iPhone, is not accessible on your Mac, or webmail.

Most ISPs (iiNet, BigPond, TPG etc) give you POP email accounts. They are free, and when you change your ISP you usually need to change your email address. Your email is not backed up on the mail server. It is now only stored on the device it was received on. Make sure if you use this, you have a machine/user data backup.

IMAP is the next step in the evolution of email. It allows you to cache or duplicate the mail server storage of your inbox and folder structure on each and every device you connected your email address to. GREAT! Now the mail you send to your friends are on the server in the sent mail folder, and the items you archived are in their corresponding folders - at work, at home, on the web. No more deleting emails you have already deleted on another device.

This means you need a mailbox storage limit equivalent to how much email you need to keep hold of. Most web-host providers include POP/IMAP support.

Inherently, the data on your computer is a copy of what is on the mail server. Depending on the mail host, you may still need to ensure a local user data backup is in place to feel secure in your data. What is fantastic about IMAP (and Exchange) is that if you need to work on another machine due to loss, failure etc - reconfiguring a new machine will re-download the contents of the mail server account.

Apple mail has had outstanding IMAP support and the integration with Google mail via IMAP has been fantastic. Sadly Outlook on the PC and IMAP integration is poorly executed with Mozilla's Firefox a better solution. Outlook and Microsoft have focussed their efforts on Exchange, the next style of email system.

Exchange technology is best known for its server-based email, contacts and calendaring. Microsoft Exchange, Kerio Mail, The Rain Cloud all use this style of connection to give fully functional and powerful productivity - all harmoniously in sync.

Data can be set to PUSH on mobile devices, meaning when changes are detected on the server from any device/user, connected instances of the account are then TOLD to update, rather than requiring to periodically check for new info (Pull).

Just like IMAP, the data is stored centrally on a mail server, whose larger data storage is generally a part of a backup profile. Multiple accounts can access and synchronise data. Sharing calendaring and contacts amongst co-workers, family etc is possible.

Summary:

• Don't use POP (unless you absolutely have to)
• Use synchronous email technology (IMAP & Exchange) such as Gmail (Google) that give server-based email solutions.
• Try to avoid ISP email accounts as your primary account - they are almost always POP.
• Don't use POP :)

If you are deleting the same SPAM email or annoying chain email from your "friends" on all the devices you check your email on, then now is the time to do something about it.

Call or email Max Computing Services to get your email in order. Take back those lost minutes deleting email and start enjoying the extra time spent with friends and family.

www.maxcomputing.com.au

Backup, Archive & Storage - What to do with your data.

Is your data safe from a computer crash?

Hi, after a short break from writing in the blog whilst ushering in my second baby boy into the world whilst juggling the needs of my clients, I wanted to talk about DATA. Whether you call it day-ta or dar-ta, it's important STUFF!

Think about it - before when taking photos, you used to keep the rolls of film, or maybe the negatives in a packet. Now, we have digital files to keep our memories from fading. These files are inherently not seen with the eye uless looked for. They don't take up a drawer-full, nor if we had little or many would the computer look any different. So there they are - on a harddrive inside your computer.

What happens when the harddrive FAILS? 

The first thing I ask my clients when they call, telling me their computer is not starting up, or they see a folder with a question mark icon on it on the mac, is "Have you got a recent backup of your files?" Mostly and sadly, the answer is no, for those that are calling me for the 1st time as they previously hadn't had it impressed on them, the importance of a backup.

What is a backup?

It's a copy of your data; your photos, videos, emails, bookmarks, system or whatever.

The following is NOT a backup.

Moving your data from your computer to make space and placing it on a USB/External Harddrive or DVD.

The reason this is not a backup is because you still only have the information in one place. Therefore you have just placed your entire trust in the technology that it is now on, rather than giving you that safety blanket of having it in two places.

Full System backups such as what is done in Apple's Time Machine is a fantastic way to ensure you have all your files and system backed up. Again if you have been following my blog so far - this means a COPY of your data. If you fill up and need the space in your internal drive, either expand the internal drive space or delete the items you no longer need. If you need them, you could ARCHIVE them.

To me, archiving is taking them away from current use. But the important thing here is, to duplicate the archive. DVDs are good for this. 8GB on a dual layer disc - run the "burn" procedure twice and you have - a backed up archive. Then it is safe to delete from the main machine (after checking the files on the DVD!).

Ok, now what happens if my house burns down (heaven forbid), my computer and the backup are both gone!? That is true, and leads me to talk about off-site backup. This is important! 

There are two types of off-site backup. 

1. Archival, and usually performed on rotation.
2. Ongoing - usually performed to an internet storage solution and real-time/live.

So how can you implement this? 

Have two external backup drives, and rotate them when you feel you need to. If via the internet, find an external hosted storage solution for your backup needs. One such product that can do your o-site backups, as well as internet off-site backups, is CRASHPLAN.

I hope that in writing this article you have been prompted to think about your data. Where it is, the redundancy (copies) that you might have in times of failure to protect you from data loss and given you ways to take action.

If you need help - please feel free to contact me via my website www.maxcomputing.com.au

10.6.6 Snow Leopard Update - App Store and Epson V700 Issue

After a wonderful break over the festive season, I came back to a bumper 1st week. Client HDD failures and weird things happening. An eventful thing within the Apple sphere happened this week - the release of 10.6.6 and along with it, the long awaited Mac App Store. (and some updates to iWork [still version '09])
The Mac App Store is like the iPhone/iPod App store found in iTunes in that it tries to deliver filtered content (checked by Apple) to your Mac OS X machine. This comes as an easy to navigate iTunes store style approach. Helpful and categorised. It is also the first time that the iLife apps are available for download and upgrade for a SINGLE app. iPhoto 11 for example can be paid for and downloaded. Not only do they download, they install and place themselves on the dock for easy reference.
There are thoughts about how this downloading of apps so easily for consumers will effect the boxed retailers. Society has been moving from physical to digital for a long time now so I guess this was going to happen sooner or later. But will we want to download multiple GBs for a game? Maybe not, perhaps a DVD will still be the best at the moment. However a time will come when streaming GB files over the internet will happen, cheaply and effectively. Then who will want to front up to a store to receive poor customer service?

On another note, I updated my iMac to 10.6.6 and connectivity to my Epson V700 Photo scanner corrupted. These are the steps I did to improve the situation:

1. Downloaded the current (2009) driver from the Epson site for 10.6. I probably already ahd this, but a reinstall of a driver is a worthy way forward. No luck though.
2. I then decided to right-click (command-click) the list of printers and scanners in the Print & Fax section of System Preferences. Being brought up on Windows, I thought a restart at this point with a fresh list would be good. So I did. 
3. On restart went to the P&F section again, and my USB Scanner was listed there again. Great - good work OS X!
4. Opened Image Capture and lo and behold my scanner was now in the list again, AND Image Capture didn't crash. I was able to scan again! Yippee!

So write me a line and let me know what you think of the idea of the App Store, and if my note on the Epson helped you out. Enjoy!

Bad Bad Virus Barrier X5

I've just come from a site where Intego's VirusBarrier X5 was the sole cause of freezing a 10.6 Time Machine backup and the system with it EVERY TIME. Simply by turning off the Real-time scanning, the backups were able to proceed.

So - if you have upgraded, or about to start using Time Machine - I recommend ditching intego's virusbarrier X5 and getting the Sophos Anti-virus for mac Home edition for free - see my earlier post. I installed Sophos and lo and behold, it all works fine!

NB. Issues were found with 10.6.3 and updated 10.6.5

Mac Malware - It's Real! Beat it on the Mac with FREE SOPHOS

I thought it timely that I write about threats for the Mac. It's real - it's there and with the increasing uptake in the market share for Apple, and with cross-platform technologies on the web, things can start to get a little hairy for those not protected.
Guess what!?

SOPHOS, who have been very strong in the Enterprise market - have graciously released a home-based version for the Mac. And best of all - it's FREE!

FANTASTIC! Remember only for consumer use - no small businesses, no larger business machines. That's the rules. Play nicely and head to SOPHOS download site to get your copy.