Windows Vista, A Killer OS

Yup, I mean in. Windows Vista, A killer OS (Operating system). It really
will kills (you).

You can see windows Vista requirements at
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/systemrequirements.mspx

You see know, why I says Windows Vista: A Killer OS. It will kill your
budget and wallet. If you have any plan to use one, you can say good bye to
your old computer. Simple upgrading the memory simply not enough, this
beast will require new processor and new graphic card too.

The rules is simple. If you wan to use it, buy a brand new computer with
the latest hardware and huge amount of memory. Event the home basic
edition require minimum of 512MB of memory, that just for the OS! If you
need to run applications like MS Outlook 2007, that you need at least 1GB
of memory. That minimum configuration. The 'Wow' starts now - that's True!.

These are just a few words about vista that I got from mailing list that I
join. These people mostly computer consultant with years of expertise. I
think I listens for what they says.

• I'm running Outlook 2007 on a dual Xeon 3.06Ghz (not HT either) with 4G of RAM and it still drags.
  

• I just tried Vista with the latest MS Office. It ran quite well. Of course, you have to have a system with the nuts to handle it. This was on a Dell with an Intel dual-core (3.8 Ghz I believe) system. Tons of memory. I would never use it on an outdated single core system with 512memory.
  

• I find Outlook 2007 to be MUCH slower than 2003. I'm am not impressedby Vista or Office 2007 so far.
  

• Yeah, and what will be the requirement in the next version on windows, a supercomputer, and that's just for basics :P
  

• Quad processor, 4 GB ram, 2GB will be used upon successful bootup. In order to have the cool graphics as MacOS XII, you will need an SLI-2x4 4 - GPU video card that costs twice as much as the motherboard and processor chip.
  

• I used Vista for a week on a laptop that was purchased within the last six months and branded as "Vista Ready!" It ran like crap, the driver support for the touchpad was abysmal, and it lived in virtual memory. I'll run XP until I can't anymore. After that, FreeBSD on the desktop is looking more and more attractive.
  

• I don't object to Microsoft taking advantage of the power of newer machines, but I do find it rather annoying in the case of Vista that the *requirements* for the OS are so high. I've seen nothing in Vista that justifies using so much machine for just the OS. I do need to run a Vista box so that I can be familiar with the thing when my clients call with questions about it.
  

• Currently I'm running Vista Ultimate on a Core 2 Extreme X6800 with 2G of very nice RAM and an X1950XTX graphics card. I have a very fast array of 3G SATA drives, and Vista does look pretty and it's quite snappy. But... The same box feels faster with XP SP2.

Sure they are also some good words about Microsoft Vista, but hey... I'm
not gonna quote them. :)

I'm not yet running Windows Vista, but for the prices of the OS and the
price for the new hardware, I think I never will.

I'm not prepare to buy a new computer, and I think many people are like me,
have a tight budget. I think I will stick with my old notebook powered by
Pentium III 733 Mhz with 512 MB, running dual boot nicely with Windows XP
Home edition and with Open Suse 10.1.

I still belive linux is the future (and now Lotus Notes runs under linux
too)

Another parody about Windows Vista

Another parody about Windows Vista. This one from linux fan. The 'original' is from apple fan. I think the original 'joke' about Windows Vista is in http://uselessinfoandpics.blogspot.com/2007/02/apple-making-fun-of-microsoft.html

Review on How Lotus Domino 7 blocking SPAM

Lotus Domino 7 is already release almost a year ago, but I still using
Lotus Domino 6.54FP1 as my Domino server, and client mostly Notes client
6.53. I don't see any thing necessary for me to upgrade it immediately.
Maybe for me is better to wait until version 7 get older enough and stable
enough. But that my personal opinion.

But still, I'm very interested with version 7, because soon or later I WILL
upgraded my current servers and clients to version 7. Before I do, I need
to start to do some reading about version 7.

I download IBM Red Book called Security Consideration in Lotus Notes and
Domino 7: Making Great Security to Implement, very interesting guide. For
me, security and stability is number one.

Because mostly I interested with SPAM, I quickly jumped to Chapter 8, where
it discuss about Spam control using Domino 7 and go directly to section 8.5
Blocking Spam. Skip the others.

New Features:

DNS Whitelist (DNSWL)
It works similar with DNS Black List, but instead of rejecting the email,
DNSWL make sure that the emails will be accepted. I believe DNSWL take
precedence again DNSBL. So if emails it listed in DNSWL, Domino should not
make any necessary query on DNSBL server.
I'm not sure if this feature is already becoming the standard in MTA. I
think there are not so many MTA that already have this feature installed.
I know that there is hack for sendmail to enable this feature, but not
built in.

Private Whitelist Filters
With Private Whitelist Filters you can specify witch host (or IP address)
that should listed as friendly. So emails from these hosts should be
accepted. You can also use an asterisk in this filters, so *.yahoo.com
should works. Private Whitelist filter take precedence over Private
Blacklist Filters

Private Blacklist Filters
This the opposite of Private Whitelist Filters. Emails from these hosts
should be rejected or at least tagged for further processing.

For supporting these new features, Domino also have new conditions and
action in Server Rules and Mail Rules. But this conditions and actions
should be available as soon as domino start using DNSBL.

New conditions:
Blacklist tag
Whitelist tag

New Action:
Stop Processing further rules.

This new conditions and action make us easy to handle spam, before this we
have to create agents to check is the message is tagged or not.

Simple new mail rules should be:
When Blacklist tag contains sbl.spamhaus.org then move to folder
($JunkMail)

Summary:
With these new features in Domino 7, and promises that IBM will start using
the bayesian spam filter (where many other MTA already using this long long
time ago) I think Domino going to go to the right direction for war against
spam.
But this current features still not enough, at least for me.
Big problem is there is no scoring method the way that spamassassin use.
Where the higher the score, the higher the possibilities for the email for
being spam. With scoring method we can define spam as low spam emails and
high spam emails. Where for low spam emails I usually still relay the
emails but to the junk folder so later the user still able to review the
email in case of false positive, and for high spam emails will be deleted
in the server.

I think I still keep my third party anti spam (MailScanner).