Category: microsoft

Microsoft Security Essentials is now available in the UK (29th of Sep)

Posted on by primaryt

Quick link to download – http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/ OR http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/?mkt=en-us

Overview

Security Essentials will replace your paid anti virus software. This is GREAT news for the computer industry. Why? Because by having antivirus companies charge to solve a problem put the relationship of cash and virus’ in bed with each other.

This meant that people were paying for virus’ to be written and then people were getting paid to reverse engineer these virus’. Now the virus writers are up against a whole OS and a company that has more profit than many companies have GDP.
Quick review
Download is painless and easy, once verification is completed the software downloads its own updates and begins scanning your computer. Very few clicks are required. The whole process takes about 1 minute of your time then your scan will take as much time as it needs to complete the job.
The proof will be in the pudding, by Microsoft releasing this they have really taken on a big challenge. It shows that microsoft are as willing as ever to provide what the huddled masses need.
And for education?
The impact on education is questionable. This AV client is not an enterprise product and not centrally monitored or managed so it is unlikely it will replace other AV client/server solutions.
How cool would it be if you could assign a workstation to an organization using SAML or a federated log on and get update/virus status and/or push out software?
If centralized management or some sort of auditing/reporting became available then it would replace the enterprise products at a saving of £500 on average per school (deployment costs taken into account), that’s about £8,000,000 (£8 million) across the whole of England! Nice!
And to Microsoft..
Microsoft, if you are listening… Think about some sort of central monitoring,reporting, updating system that works with a federated login such as shibboleth or something, please!
UPDATE – I just came to give a link to this and it appears that microsoft has removed the product.. No idea what’s going on there.. I get a 404 – We are sorry, the page you……
Here is the link for when they put it back online! http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/
It appears that the UK site may be down.. You can always use the US link..

Review of Microsoft Family Safety Usage

Posted on by primaryt

This is an extension of my review of Microsoft Family Safety, in Part 1 you may remember I decided Family Safety’s installation process is too complication for the average parent therefore I pretty much gave it a big fat FAIL.

I felt I should review the entire product or at least try to understand its positives and negatives. I’m not going to write about what it does, go read Microsoft’s site for that.

I’m not sure that a google search for “girl” should be blocked.. but oh well, I will ask in person to get it opened..

The ask in person process works quite well, would be nice if it auto refreshed the “This page is blocked” once a parent has approved a site..

Interesting that if I goto images I get the images I want but if I click next to goto page 2 I have to re-request access.

I could of allowed all of google.co.uk but that’s not what I want.

Also interesting I could get to photobucket from that site.. So far its a big fat fail, however ads are getting blocked which is nice..

So it doesn’t filter content as I expect, lets see if I can get to some sites I want to get to..

I can get to most educational sites, that’s nice.. http://primarygamesarena.com and http://primaryschoolict.com worked, I’m guessing that’s because I have basic mode.

To summarize, Microsoft Family Safety is a resource heavy monster that restricts your child’s usage however it does show a certain sense of responsibility taken by you as a parent. You can use it however you want, it is fully customizable.

Do NOT make the mistake of thinking Microsoft Family Safety is the only thing you need to do. Speaking to your child is the key ingredient to all of this, they will not always have a filtered environment so teach them about responsibility internet usage.

Microsoft SESP Licensing – The reality

Posted on by primaryt

I read through all the Becta and Microsoft schpeil on their new licensing model (SESP) and how it is the best thing since sliced bread for education so I wanted to put it through its paces.

The first Edular I worked with refused point blank to quote me on SESP as it wasn’t in their system etc. They knew nothing about SESP – even its existence was a shock to them.

I went back to my MS licensing contact at Microsoft via Twitter and asked him if he had a recommendation on another Edular to try.. I also recommended he managed communication and training better with future education licensing models, he agreed.

The second Edular admitted they knew nothing but said they would investigate. A few days later after hearing nothing I rang them back to ask for an update, they sent me through a Select quote but not a SESP one so I emailed and rang back requesting SESP, 4 days later, still no quote….. On the 5th day I vented my frustration online and a third Edular (I didn’t know so many existed…) got in touch via twitter saying they can help and dropped me through ane email asking what I was looking for so I sent them an email with my requirements.

On the 7th day I was told by the Edular they were having some problems getting the actual pricing from Microsoft.

12 days later I still didn’t have a quote so I wrote a few tweets online which were picked up by some Microsoft people who then scurried away to ask the licensing team why Edulars couldn’t provide a quote.

14 days later I eventually have a price, thanks to Richard from Bechtle for all their hard work in helping me obtain these prices.

One of the things that’s different between Select and SESP if that you need to know the total amount of devices, amount of pupils and teachers inside of the school – as far as I’m aware with select licensing you just need machine count.

Lets compare the old vs the new pricing model

I have requested 2 pricing structures: Select & SESP.

For this experiment I’m supplying the Edular with machine and pupil counts for an average size 2 form entry Primary School in Bradford (480 pupils – 28 staff members) and requested the following licensing:

  • 2x server 2k8 standard licenses
  • 30x office 2k7 standard
  • 90x XP desktop cals

Basically in this model it works out at 5 pupils to 1 device. At this point in the article I think we should consider the value of this licensing prior to reading on to find out the actual costs..

Please take a few moments to think to yourself what you would pay for these licenses…

If you are like me you will want to pay about £30 per office license, £100 per server and £1 per CAL so a total of £1190. You will also take into consideration that in 3/5 years time your school may need to spend this level of money again to relicense newer versions.

With the SESP licensing you must annually renew each license.

The pricing I recieved was (rounded up/down):

£50 per standard server license

£13 per Office Enterprice license

£1.15 per CAL

So my total costs were:

£100 on servers per year

£390 on office per year

£103.5 on desktop cals

Total annual cost of a school licensing model (excluding any oem licenses) is £593.50.

These licenses include software assurance which is basically spin for receive the latest version free.

To summarize

Over a 5 year period schools under a SESP agreement will be paying £3,000 on licensing where as before they were paying between £1200-£1600.

Hopefully someone has made an error on pricing and I can update this article…

UPDATE: 06/12/2010  this article was never updated because MS sat on it and didn’t do jack ish.  They now have a new licensing model out.

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Review of Microsoft Family Safety Installation

Posted on by primaryt
Today im reviewing Microsoft Family Safety with a consideration on e-Safety for parents

“With Family Safety, you decide how your kids experience the Internet. You can limit searches, block or allow websites, decide who your kids can communicate with when they’re using Windows Live Messenger, Hotmail, or Spaces and monitor what websites they’re visiting…”

In this review I will be installing the package and looking at what this really means in real life.

The product is easily downloadable from http://download.live.com/familysafety

Once you have downloaded and run the package you get this installer screen:

I was shocked to see Photo Gallery, Toolbar, Writer, some outlook and some Live Add ins bundled. Also SQL Server CE 3.1 is required and some of my applications will be updated.
For me this is bloatware already. I want an application that does what it sais in the blurb so I am going to remove all of the additional programs except from Family Safety (However you may want some of this functionality).
With everything else removed the install is a quite large 109 MB. I hope this disk space usage is justified.
I needed to close MSN messenger to proceed and the install process took 8 minutes to complete on a machine with with an Intel Core2 6600 & 2 GB ram.
Once install is complete you are presented with this screen:
I have already set my search provider to google safe search and my home page to Primary School Safe Search so I don’t want to do that. I also don’t want to help improve Windows Live, not right now.
Now for a restart… Microsoft never seemed to learn that this is the most frustrating thing about most of their products for IT professionals however parents might not mind this restart as much.
After the restart I was prompted to “Sign Up” to Windows live but I already have windows live so I clicked Close. Nothing has been placed on my desktop or start menu and Windows Live Messenger has not opened as it usualy does. Very bad first impression.
I had to browse to Start – Windows Live – Family Safety, here I tried to sign in as a parent using my hotmail/live username/password. I was given an Error That I have not yet ereviews the Windows Live Terms of Use. No link was provided. I logged into my hotmail to look for the Live Terms of Use.. I clicked More then Family Safety and then clicked “I accept”.
Then I clicked Sign in again, now im in. Already im convinced this is too complicated for parents.
I am going to leave it here for today, it has been 30 minutes so far and the install is done but the configuration isn’t.
In my opinion most parents would simply not go through this entire process as it is too complicated.
Part 2 of this post will review configuration. Expect it in a few days.