Just thought I would share with you a nice pic of 6 shiney new Mac Pros & 2 Imacs that were being tested prior to installation last week.
We recently refurbished our workshop adding 3 TFT wall mounted monitors all connected to KVM monitor/ keyboard switches.
As Regular clients will know, we preinstall all RAM and expansion cards, then put each Mac through a comprehensive looped diagnostic to ensure our engineers are not met with faulty machines during the installation process.
following up on my 99.7% of all messages are now spam post, Kerio Technologies have announced a major update to their popular Mailserver product.
New features include:
- support for Global Address Lists (GALS) which will sync with your Microsoft Active Directory, or Apple Open directory infrastructure.
- Microsoft Entourage 2004/2008 auto configuration
- Private events in Apple iCal
- Spam Filter improvements
- Updated Mcafee anti virus engine
- Over the air push syncronisation to blackberry devices without the need for middleware
- IMAP migration tool, taking the pain out of migrating from older IMAP email servers.
This product just seems to get better and better. feel free to contact us, one of Kerio specialists will be happy to answer any questions on how our Kerio Mailserver solutions can provide you with a stable, secure platform that can handle all your email, contacts and calendaring needs.
Apple have released the long awaited 10.5.7 update. This s more than likely going to be the last major update before the realease of Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) later this summer.
Highlights in this update are:
- Improves performance of video playback and cursor movements for recent Macs with NVIDIA graphics.
- Improves Finder search results for network volumes that may not support Spotlight searching
- Includes several improvements to Directory Service and Client Management.
for a full list of updates visit: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3397
Direct Downloads:
10.5.7 update ( Requires 10.5.6) here
10.5.7. combo update (updates any 10.5.x) here
Parallels annouced today an update to their excellent Parallels Desktop Software. This software enables you to run multiple virtual machines on your Intel powered Mac. This has been great for training or lab testing environments, previously we’d have several machines, such as a Mac OS X Server, a Windows 2003 Server Windows XP/ Vista client and Mac OS Client all setup. Now we just need to deploy a single machine with that can run all these Operating systems simultaneously. & using the Template deployment ro snapshotting feature its easy to reset for the next class, or revert back to a previous system state when somethings gone wrong.
Parallels also has a Server product meaning you can run multiple Server OS’s on a single Mac OS based computer, this is really useful when there is a windows server requirment within a Mac environment.
Group Logic announces the release of ExtremeZ-IP 6.0 an AFP server for Windows Servers.
Extreme-Z IP is a high performance AFP Fileserver that bridges the gap that Windows native SFM (Services for Macintosh) and Mac OS X’s native SMB/ CIFS client and create.
the 3 massive selling points for me are:
for a full SFM comparison click here
for SMB/ CIFS please click here
Also please note the SFM has been removed from Windows Server 2008.
Mach One have been recommending Extreme-Z IP for many years & have always found it a very reliable product with excellent technical support. Extreme-Z IP is easy to install and configure and is a product we have used time and again when consulting on Macintosh integrating with Microsoft Active Directory, Network Home Directories and managed client environments. Please do contact us if you would like any advice or help on the above we can be emailed here
just seen this article on the BBC website which reports a Microsoft claim that 97% off all messages sent of the net are spam.
To combat this ever present problem we have been installing, configuring, supporting and fine tuning the excellent Kerio MailServer for a number of years now.
Kerio MailServer offers A combination of content-based SpamAssassin and sender-based anti-spam tools that significantly reduces the amount of unwanted email. Kerio MailServer also support dual antivirus scanning providing you with comprehensive protection against malicious emails. for a full list of features click here
Kerio is a genuine competitor to Microsoft Exchange. Not only does the server run on the Mac OS Platform it also features groupware features such as shared calendars, contacts and mailboxes.
Mobile devices are very well catered for with push email, contacts and calendars direct to your iPhone, Blackberry or other smartphone.
Data robotics have announced a new product the Drobo Pro, an upgraded version of the popular Drobo II.
Aside from the additional capacity the 8 bay pro version boasts over the original 4 bay version the Drobo Pro now also offers an iSCSI interface along with Dual Disk Redundancy support. Both versions feature Firewire 800 & USB 2 interfaces.
Drobo‘s use BeyondRAID™ technology, unlike traditional RAID arrays you can mix an match your hard disk sizes, instantly expand the size of your volume by simply inserting new Hard disks.
we’re a big fan of the Drobo at Mach One, its simple Drobo Dashboard software & design mean you don’t need any IT skills to administer these products, in fact you don’t even need a screwdriver to install or remove the drives.
With SATA hard disks being as cheap as they are, the Drobo range offers a very cost effective storeage solution & with the iSCSI and DroboShare options many of our clients are ditching the traditional CD/ DVD archive for this near line solution.
As predicted, Apple has updated its Xserve range with the Nehalem processor. This brings the range upto date with the recent new Mac Pro Range.
Aside from a considerable increase in performance, Apple have also engineered this new Xserve to be far less power hungry, meaning its better for the environment and will potentially cut your hosting bills too. This can be further enhanced by the optional 128GB Solid State Hard disk as a boot drive. This drive only consumes around 1 Watt of power where as the traditional SATA drive consumes 12-18 Watts. it also does not take up one of the 3 SATA drive bays meaning you can have upto 3TB of dedicated storage.
The new Xserve is available in Quad and 8 core models with either 6 (quad core) or 12 (8 core) RAM slots and options of 2.26GHz, 2.66GHz or 2.93GHz processor speeds
On interesting thing I’ve picked up on the tech specs page is the quote:
System supports up to 32GB in Mac OS X Server v10.5
Presumably 32Gb is a limit on 10.5, maybe snow leopard, 10.6 will offer full support for upto 48Gb RAM.
Popular font management app Suitcase Fusion 2 has just been updated. Previous versions were only compatible with Mac OS 10.5 Leopard. Fusion 2 13.1 is now compatible with Mac OS 10.4 Tiger
Click here for a direct download
We’ve just sent out our April News letter featuring the new United Digital Hyperstar PCIe RAIDs.
click here to view