Copy and Paste – Since the introduction of the iPhone by Apple, many users felt that the lack of a Copy/Paste feature was a huge inconvenience (Including Myself). No More! The new 3.0 Update has added Copy and Paste features you have all been waiting for. To use these features, you have to double-tap on a word and you are presented with a Copy/Cut Dialog that allows you to expand your selection and choose to copy. Then when you need to paste, you double-tap an area that you want to paste the text and choose paste. This is a great feature for those of us that do a lot of mobile emailing and texting.

Horizontally Oriented Keyboard – While this may not seem like a big deal, having the ability to type easier with both thumbs makes writing emails and text messages (and basically anything) much easier. To use this, when composing an email/text, turn the iPhone on it’s side – Viola!

Voice Memos – While there are a lot of free apps in the App Store to accomplish recordings, Apple has decided to build this feature in to the standard set of Apps on the iPhone. This is useful for those of us that are forgetful in our old age or who would like to record meeting notes (Or Blackmail someone Ha HA). I find this particularly useful when driving and trying to write down information.

Spotlight Search – One of the features that has been added that I find most useful is the new Spotlight Search. This makes it easy to find any type of information on your iPhone from one handy location. Simply start typing your query and the results will be displayed on the screen. This is great as I store a TON of information on my phone and have over 500 contacts. To use this, when at the home screen, slide to the left and you will see a search bar, you can also hit your home button when on your home screen to take you there.

Tethering – This is a cool feature that allows you to tether your iPhone to your laptop and use it as a 3G modem when on the road. From past experience, if you wanted to accomplish Internet Sharing using your iPhone and a laptop, your iPhone had to be jailbroken and you had to install a Proxy and set up an AdHoc (Peer-to-Peer) wireless network, setting your browsers proxy settings to the IP address of the iPhone. What a Pain!. As with the MMS feature (Mentioned below) AT&T will not support this feature at launch of the new 3.0 Software (and probably never will so that they can sell more of their Air Cards).

MMS – Ahh, the long awaited (and apparently we must wait longer) MMS messaging support. One of the biggest drawbacks that I found when I first purchased my iPhone was the inability to send/receive(easily) MMS messages. Apparently this new feature will be built into the new update but it is not yet supported by AT&T until late this summer (so I have heard). I cannot wait!

Improved Calendar – I am not sure how this will apply to users that do not have their iPhone connected to a Microsoft Exchange environment but mine is so – This feature Rocks. You now have the ability to use Free/Busy as well as send invitations to colleagues from the calendar app. This is a great improvement for those of us with Exchange and Busy corporate schedules.

Recent Calls – The recent calls list now includes a bit more information such as if the caller/called number was mobile, home or work as well as if it was outbound or inbound. This is pretty useful.

Camera Preview – The camera now has a small “blank spot” where the camera roll button used to be in the lower left of the screen. This is now a preview of the last photo taken. Check it out, take a picture and it appears in the blank spot.

Mail Folders to Push – Once again, another improvement for those using Exchange. You can now select what mail folders (Folders other than Inbox) to push to the phone automatically. This is a great feature, better than having to look in each folder individually to see if messages have arrived.

Improved iTunes – With the new update, you now have a more robust iTunes application in which you can redeem Promotional Codes as well as purchase music (and other media) directly from the iPhone with no need to use iTunes. This is handy when you are at a party and want to purchase an Album or download a Movie or other media.

All in all, the new update has a lot of great new features. I am a bit disappointed that the MMS and Tethering do not work but I hope to see MMS available by the end of the summer (Tethering may never happen with AT&T). I am also surprised that Apple is not including the Voice Dial Features and Video Camera to users updating to 3.0 (as opposed to purchasing the 3G s). I guess there will still be a need to Jailbreak your device if you had your heart set on these features and do not have the scratch to buy the new model.

As usual with the iPhone, it is (and always has been) a great phone – It is just a bit better now.

Accelerators: These allow you to complete tasks (Such as Spell Checks, Mapping, Translations etc). There are endless numbers of accelerators that you can add to IE 8 – Social Networking, Search, Translations, Maps and On and On. You can find the gallery of Accelerators here: http://ieaddons.com/en/. Some seem very useful, others not so much - Most of which are entertaining and will contribute to your Internet time wasting by adding direct interaction with sites like Face Book and others.

Enhanced Navigation Features: IE 8 has added a few new features to navigation. One that I find to be pretty cool as a techie is the Compatibility View feature. Since IE8 is a new release, some sites may not display properly within the browser. That is where Compatibility View comes in. You can find this feature next to the “refresh” button on the address bar. This is similar to the “User Agent String Utility” accept now these features are built right into the browser – No need to install a second application.

Speaking of the Address bar, there are a few enhancements here as well. For example, if you cannot remember a site that you visited a few days/weeks/months (depending on your history settings and browsing habits) IE 8 Will search across all aspects of your history and suggest sites. This is especially useful when doing research online.

Tab Grouping is also a helpful feature. When you click a link that opens another tab, the 2 related tabs (having the link in common) are color coded to each other. They are also opened next to each other as opposed to at the end of the tabs as with IE 7.

Increased Performance: Now IE starts quicker and loads pages faster. I am somewhat skeptical of this as I think it also depends on how many add-ons and plug-ins and other features that you have installed/enabled. I guess results will vary from user to user. I can say that it definitely loads faster for me but I have very few add-ins enabled and virtually no plug-ins installed.

InPrivate Browsing: Browse the web without saving history Cookies etc. This is useful when using a public computer or a friends PC. No form or password data (or any other data) is maintained on the computer after it is entered into the sites that you visit. This is also useful for the paranoid and those trying to “Cover their Tracks”.

Web Slices: Keep track of changes to your favorite sites. This is basically like a favorites system. For example, if you wanted to keep track of what is going on on MSNBC, you would see a green “Web Slice” icon in the upper right corner of the browser. By clicking the Web Slice icon, you add this site to the web slice favorites bar so that you can keep up with that “Slice” of the web.

Smart Screen Filter: Websites that have been deemed unsafe can be screened using this feature. You can also submit a site to the list of questionable sites. This does not seem very useful to me personally but may be useful for parents etc. You can enable this feature by clicking on the “Safety” drop down on the Right side of the browser window and choosing “InPrivate Filtering”.

All in All, my experience with Internet Explorer 8 so far Has been a good one. I will have to use it for a few more days before I am sure that I like it though and I will definitely have to thoroughly test it before deploying it to any of my clients. As with any new browser, it will take some time to learn all of the new features and test as many sites as possible for compatibility and functionality. I will also be testing the Web Slice features as I have always HATED the favorites system.

Jason (Digitalkid)
www.954network.com

After purchasing and downloading Sophos, I read the instructions for installation and first time configuration and began the installation. The first thing that I noticed is that this immediately integrates with Active Directory, asking you for User/Group credentials during the installation. Immediately, this is better than the process used by Symantec to get AD integration working. After the installation had completed, I opened the management page for the new software. By default, depending on how you install the application, there are no Catalog’s (update servers) defined. After browsing around the console (and before deploying to the clients), I decided to configure the update catalog’s. This is done in the Sophos EM Library Console. I am not going to go into too much detail here as it is out of the scope of this review but, I will say that the configuration was easy and to the point.

Sophos, like most other Enterprise solutions is Policy based. Once I had everything mentioned above configured, I decided to create some policies to apply to the computers. I started by creating various containers (Or Groups) and then creating policies that I planned to apply to these containers. I decided to take a very restrictive approach to the endpoints and a less restrictive approach to the managers. I also set all of the policies to detect only and not act upon items discovered to start with. This ensures I did not disable any functionality off the bat.

After configuring the policies, I deployed the Endpoint and the firewall (Leaving the firewall on Log but allow all traffic). The discovery of all computers was like night and day compared to Symantec’s discovery process as mentioned in my Symantec Review. The installation went very smoothly and removed any previously installed Symantec software. I then instructed each user to re-start their computers. As well as having the capability to deploy the client manually, there is also a feature that allows future computers to automatically have the installation start upon joining the domain, which is easily configured by Syncing the group is sophos with the OU that contains the computer accounts in Active Directory. I set my Sync interval to 60 Minutes.

In comparison to the Symantec installation, this installation went a lot easier and did not at all slow down the network or interrupt production (Aside from the required reboot). Within an hour of starting I was able to fully manage all clients anti-virus, firewall and application/device control centrally from the server. This product is great and I would definitely recommend it in the future. Installation was a breeze, Active Directory Integration is simple and straight forward and the client is lightweight and does not slow down the machines. Another great feature is the email alert for clients that are out of date or not conforming to the policies.

Jason (Digitalkid)
www.954network.com

After purchasing and downloading Symantec’s product, I began reading all of the manuals (Like a good I.T. Guy) and eventually started deploying the product. Up until this point, I was convinced that I would be in for an overnight-er but surprisingly it was relatively easy to install. I used the SQL approach as the database engine as apposed to the built in database option as I had heard horror stories about this configuration. Servers running out of resources (Mainly Disk Space), shares being inaccessible and servers having to be re-booted daily or more.  Once I had the management console installed, I decided not to install the client on the server due to, you guessed it – more horror stories. Instead, I left Symantec Enterprise 10.0 on the server and upgraded all client machines with the built-in upgrade push available from the management console. All in all it went smooth.

After a few days of playing around with the management console and the client, I noticed a few major issues including a great deal of communications between the Management Console (Server) and the Endpoints (Clients) so I began to investigate. After sniffing packets and reading (and a few cups of coffee) I determined that the traffic was being caused by the server “Pushing” communications as well as the constant checks for updates. To alleviate this, I set all clients to “Pull” updates every “X” hours, I also deleted the default update policy and created a new one that dictated that the server should only check Live Update for new content every 2 hours between 6:00 P.M. and 6:00 A.M. daily. This drastically reduced the amount of network traffic.

So, after sorting out the network saturation issue mentioned above, I was faced with the large consumption of resources that the Management Console was putting on the server. This was a relatively easy issue to resolve. I simply limited the amount of memory that the SQL server was allowed to consume to 256 MB and wrote a small batch script that restarts the Symantec Services each day at 6:30 A.M. and 5:30 P.M. as to not interfere with the update schedule. Once I had observed this configuration for a few days, I was satisfied with the results and so far all has been operational with a relatively low impact on the server.

Along with the Anti-Virus, Anti-Spy-ware and network protection features included in this product, there is also the capability to disable removable storage devices such as Flash Drives. This particular client was very interested in this feature as they are in a highly sensitive industry. That being said, I created a policy for select clients that prohibits the use of removable media devices and I must say, it works well.

Some of the things that I have noticed to be annoying is the new interface of the client as well as the Management Console. Symantec has switched from an MMC format as seen in earlier versions of their Corporate Anti-Virus to a web/java based interface. This thing is CLUNKY. Descovery of unmanaged clients usually takes longer than the login timeout so it never completes and the reporting functionality is sub-par. I do, however like the Active Directory integration features as well as the informational dashboard.

This configuration was put in place about 6 months ago now and I have not seen any major bumps in the road. The system seems to work well and is doing what it is supposed to with regards to protecting the client machines against harmful applications. All in all, after discovering a happy medium and wrangling this application into working properly, it is a decent solution. It provides a cost effective way to efficiently manage endpoint antivirus and security despite it’s early (Glaring) flaws, although I do not think that I will be recommending it to any future clients given the time and effort it took to get the thing working in the first place. I hear that there is an MR3 release, which I will be deploying at a new client (They had already purchased the license before my time). Hopefully the new version will not be such a pain to get working.

Jason (Digitalkid)
www.954network.com

As a first time iPhone user, I was very impressed with many aspects of the phone. Firstly the design is unlike any other phone that I have ever had. It is sleek, thin and comparable in weight to many other smart phones on the market. It is also very simple and only has 5 buttons (Power, Volume Up/Down, Silent and Home), after that all interaction with the device is either done with the touch screen or through the built in accelerometer. On that note, the touch screen is the best I have ever used. It responds very well to all input unlike most Windows Mobile Devices that have touch screens. Another thing that I particularly like is the integration of most applications with each other. For instance, you can map an address with the Maps app directly from the information stored in a contact. Equally impressive is the fact that a fully functional iPod (As well as iTunes) is built right in and you can download all sorts of neat applications through the AppStore although WiFi is recommended or required for both. While all of the afore mentioned are very cool and interesting from the standpoint of entertainment, what improvements to productivity have been added? Great question, read on.

The reason I am a first time iPhone user is because I live in a Windows and Linux based world and could never shell out the type of money required to be an iPhone user without the option of configuring my corporate (Exchange) email account on the device. Well, Apple has added this functionality to the new iPhone and I am now reading my corporate email with ease. As well as reading my corporate email with ease, I am also sending my corporate email with ease. The keyboard/touch screen and auto spell check features on the iPhone make typing on the go a breeze. Another great feature is the ability to natively read PDF, Word and Excel documents on the phone.

After all of the praise given (And deserved) above, there are a few small issues that I have found with the iPhone. Although not major issues, they are still annoying. One such issue is the iPhones tendency to lock up for a few seconds when trying to type in the search field in contacts (UPDATE – V2.1 pretty much resolved this). The device also seems to hang up a little in general when switching applications quickly. Another small annoyance is the lack of options that are available. One such option is the ability to change the background of the home screen, which is a drab black. I have also heard a lot of complaints regarding 3G reception although I did not see that as I had already fully patched the device before experiencing the problem. Speaking of updates, there have already been 2 (Maybe 3) since the phones introduction. The battery life is also a bit shaky. If you want to save battery life, make sure you disable WiFi and Location awareness when not is use and also use the fetch feature for corporate email instead of push technology.

All in All, this device is superior to any other smart phone that I have had in the past.

Jason (Digitalkid)
www.954network.com