E-mails are what turn the world around, we are all using this amazing type of communication that enables us to reach anyone anywhere. Instead of sending it in the regular post, closing our letters in an envelope and sending it with the postman to be delivered by the post services, and of course reach the destination in a couple of days. We are using e-mails, which we write a letter and send it electronically using the Internet in one click, and it reaches the destination in a matter of minutes (seconds).

This technology when it started a long while back was the goal of any serious company that wanted to become the solely used e-mail tool by everyone. This means that they wanted everyone to use their e-mail system and not the competition. At the beginning, there were some basic web e-mail account systems, which the most used was the Yahoo mail, with it’s Yahoo messenger which connected between e-mail accounts and an online chat tool that enabled everyone connected (that had a Yahoo e-mail account) to just talk online with each other (you could see when the connected friend was online)
and you could interact with him to start an online chat.

Microsoft created their Hotmail e-mail accounts, and the MSN messenger, to participate in the fight for the crowd, trying to produce tools that everyone will prefer over the competitors. I can honestly say that I didn’t like Hotmail very much and preferred the Yahoo e-mail tool better, but that was just me, and at those historic time.

Since then Google has created its Gmail e-mail online tool, and we have to admit, that they have managed to pull many users to connect to their free e-mail system, due to a better and convenient system. The facts are that Gmail has become a more usable online e-mail system, and Google which has started with their amazing and leading search engine (mostly used by everyone), had a BIG BITE in the online e-mail market against Microsoft and Yahoo which lost many users, which left them for the better system.

Microsoft still improved its e-mail system (Yahoo does as well) and its online chat system the MSN messenger, which gets updated from time to time.

Microsoft has also included the Hotmail account as a validation login to other of Microsoft systems, like their Volume License system – for tracking a company bought licenses, and track what licenses they have, and every purchased open license went to those lists.

Summarizing we can see that Microsoft Hotmail e-mail system has been the base for Microsoft’s other services, which they have chosen to include in tracking all of Microsoft services under one user/password login of the Hotmail system, and for their, they do deserve some credit.

You can choose to check their Hotmail mailing system and see maybe it fits you. I have to say, that since Gmail has started, I almost never go into my Hotmail e-mail account. But that is just me 🙂 I guess it is always a matter of taste.
The benefit of it all that there are alternatives which we can choose from, and all we need to do, is check things and decide which online e-mail tool we prefer to work with.

Microsoft multimedia issues have started when the market wanted to start listening to music and watch movies on computers. The need to make the internet more interesting using sound, picture and videos have begun, when we got bored with those static pages of information.

People started to need more out of their computers, they were playing games on their PC’s listening to the game sounds and connecting better sound speakers to their computers and using their computers as media centers, to listen to music, watch movies, etc…

Microsoft has thought of all of that when they started and their new operating systems included some basic tools, for listening to music and sounds, and watch movies. At first, the quality was quite poor, but as computer’s equipment progressed, as sound cards have become more advanced and sound speakers had better quality, and included subwoofers, the demand for a more advanced and better quality software multimedia solutions have increased.

Microsoft rose to the challenge,
and developed their “Media Player” software, which in time got updated and better for playing any of the multimedia types of files. Microsoft learned to use the new “Codec” techniques that have been developed and included all of the suitable plug-ins to increase the support that the media player needed to be able to produce the most effective and the best quality they could deliver to give us the quality we needed.

• Media player Codec Pack

Since Microsoft has ruled most of the end user’s computers as the leading operating system, the media player was part of their system and was the default player for those type of needs. There is some competition out there to the Microsoft’s player, some of them even I prefer better, than the media player, like the “KMP player” for movie watching, or the XBMC multimedia center for listening to music, but I have to say that Microsoft was a pioneer in that area, and for that, they have my respect.

What are the drivers? why do we need them? Well, the basic explanation is that the operating system needs to be able to recognize the devices you are plugging into the computer. The Idea is that in order to work properly with the devices that have been plugged in, the operating system needs to know what it is, how to work the device, and how to enable you to use it by giving you the tools to access and operate it properly.

The explanation is nice, but let’s give an example:
When you plug a printer to the computer, the computer needs to know it is a printer, so it will know that when you press the PRINT order, it will show you that you have a printer, and will know how to process your order, and direct the order into the device, and print your paper. The negotiator between the operating system and the device is called a “DRIVER“, or a “Device Driver“.

The driver contains the information that the operating system needs, to recognize the device and know how to use it, what it qualifications and abilities so you will be able to utilize them efficiently. Each operating system needs its own suitable driver, that is why

drivers are so important, without the proper driver you will not be able to operate the device you have connected to your computer.

Operating systems are getting smarter and more efficient, they will have a huge data bank of default known device drivers, already included as the operating

the system gets updated with common drivers, which are mostly being used (like Intel CPU‘s, sound cards, video cards, LAN network cards, etc…) so when you will install the operating system, most of the devices will be automatically recognized and operational.

• What happens when you need a driver and it is not automatically recognized?
  

Well, then the procedures are as follows:

1. You should get the driver installation disk for your devices, as you buy them – this means that when you buy a new computer, you should get a disk for all of the device drivers of the motherboard (for all of the devices that comes on-board the motherboard. Any additional devices – like a separate graphic card, needs to come with its own driver installation disk.
2. When you attach a device, and you don’t have a disk, you should know the device’s vendor (the company that developed/created the device). Then you go to its website and seek downloads, where hopefully the drivers are as well, and you can download the proper driver from there..
3. When you buy a laptop – usually all of the device drivers will be at the vendor’s website. Like, Dell Laptops, you can go to dell.com and at the bottom you
   can see “drivers & downloads”, you will just need to choose your laptop model, and you are all set..
4. Sometimes you are originally buying your computer with a certain operating system, like Windows XP. Now you want to install Windows 7, and you have initially got drivers with the computer that suits Windows XP, so all you need to do, is follow the same stages as instructed on section 3 of this post (Buying a laptop) 🙂 go to the vendor’s website, into its “drivers & downloads” and choose a different operating system (Windows 7) and download the proper drivers.

Even though I mentioned drivers for windows, since it is the most common operating system still, there are drivers for all of the different types of operating systems, like MAC (Macintosh), Linux, etc… The procedures of finding a suitable driver are the same for all of the operating system types.

What is the virtual machine/virtual server, and why has this issue became such a needed and common solution for organizations?

The virtual machine provides a tool that can run different applications, operating systems on the same machine as if it was a physical computer. The idea is that you can install either a full VMware server (virtual server), that is designated to run different operating systems simultaneously. This means you can install several servers on one hardware machine, and they all will work fine as if they were all different physical servers.

This shows that on one hardware physical computer, we can run different servers and services, and save the cost of buying other hardware machines. This solution enables many different advantages which are not just cost-effective but more flexible and for different purposes that benefit organizations.

Virtual services for QA purposes: Usually QA (Quality assurance) department, needs to simulate a certain environment to enable the testing as close to the real environment where the application/device will be running. When you know a client has a specific network environment, or a specific server that he needs our application to run upon, we will need to do testing of our development on that environment.

The simplicity of it all is that without buying a specific hardware, installing the environment of the client on that hardware and then do out testing. We can just install the environment on a virtual server, do our testing, play around with it (since it is a server (we installed) for the testing purposes and it is not a real server that serves others) and when we are done, we can shutdown this environment we built, and clear the space for our next QA project.

Virtual servers for support: When we need to give a client support, and we stumble upon a situation where we can’t reach a solution since the client is using an environment that we do not have on our system and we want to simulate exactly the environment the client has, so we could see the same problems he encounters. We can build such an environment easy, simply by creating the virtual system the client uses, install all of the applications he is using, and then our system, to test and see what he stumble upon, and find a solution locally on our system.

Again when we are done, we can just remove that server, and clear space for a new server to be installed. This is the flexibility the virtual environment enables us to use.

Virtual servers for multiple organization services: The virtual server can run multiple servers at the same time on the same machine. There are servers organization uses, that do not need many resources to run, like a monitoring server, or a DNS server, or a DHCP server, etc…

Those servers, without the virtual environment, will have to be installed separately on different hardware machine, so for each of the server I mentioned Monitoring server, DNS and DHCP servers, we will be keeping 3 different hardware computers, and on each one, we will install a different server.

You can understand that we are keeping 3 hardware servers, for applications that probably will not even use all of the hardware PC/Server resources it will be installed on, and we will be wasting valuable resources, and of course, it occupies more space on our server room (3 servers take more space than one).

Virtual servers enable us to reduce cost, be more efficient, configure the exact resources and image requires for proper function and be more efficient by maximizing the use of one hardware server, with multiple solutions on one machine.

Virtual server as a reliable backup system: When we install instances/images (each instance represents a different server on a virtual machine), we can define a schedule that will save the instance snapshot or a full exported file of the whole instance.

This enables to restore into a previous snapshot, in case we caused damage to the server, or restore the image fully, in case it is malfunctioning and we can’t use it anymore, so we restore from the last exported image (which is a stored file of the whole operating system with everything on it), a process that can take around 30 minutes maybe less, depends on the size of the server and how much was installed. This saves the whole re-installation process from scratch, and re-deploy of all the necessary applications, and their configuration to make them run, as the original server

did.

Anyone who uses NORTON GHOST to keep a whole computer image backup knows how simple it makes the restore operating and of course saves time and the headache of needing to re-install re-configure everything from scratch.

These are the most important benefits of using a virtual server, and I would have to say that you will need at least one virtual server on an organization just to enable a flexible environment for IT to use, in case a quick server needs to be deployed for a very urgent project.

• Microsoft Virtual Server
• Windows 7 – Virtual PC
• VMware server

Microsoft servers have been a great addition to the business world, and many companies have used them to improve their business control and efficiency. The Microsoft server world was built on the main servers, which were the Server 2003 replaced by the Server 2008 version, with the Microsoft exchange server for using e-mails and the Microsoft SQL server, for Database use.

Those main servers have built the base for a whole organizational network infrastructure where all of the company’s employees could get their whole services out of the same Microsoft environment and developers could use the Microsoft Visual Studio (which is now at version 2010) to develop applications for the same Microsoft network environment.

The Microsoft server 2008 includes more technologies to enable IT, professionals, to increase reliability, stability and flexibility for their servers infrastructure and enable the control needed for managing the organization’s needs. This system includes Virtualization tools, enhanced management and great integration with the Windows 7 operating system (as it is the OS system designated for the client computers on the network, replacing the Windows XP and Windows Vista versions).

This version is also cost-benefit and provides a more efficient data center. The IIS (Internet information system) is more advanced at version 7.5, better updates system, Hyper-V platforms, and window PowerShell version 2.0 to enable better control for customers, increasing efficiency and availability pushing performance to the front line of businesses today.

Summarizing the Microsoft Server 2008 platform is saying it is the most efficient and solid server system by Microsoft, more reliable, stronger, and efficient. Businesses that were using the previous version, should upgrade and get more efficient ways to conduct their business.

The SQL Server by Microsoft is one of the best-enhanced databases out there. This Microsoft SQL server now at version 2008, is stronger and more efficient than it predecessors. The database delivers the same reliability and flexibility needed by programmers/developers and much more. Microsoft developers have grown to love the flexibility this database enables, to create whatever is needed by their programs.

The Microsoft SQL Server has proved that it can contain a large amount of data, and process it with an efficiency that is so required by large organizations. Large companies, with even 1000’s of employees require efficiency, and performance for their applications. Since most of the programs who compute and store a large amount of data need to perform quickly and efficiently the Microsoft SQL server delivers that requirement, and Microsoft keeps updating and improving this great database system.

The Microsoft Exchange server system, is one of the most common ones, for large enterprises. This is a communication system that is cost-effective and flexible. Which can deal with the enormous amount of communication and data being transferred by large organizations? This system is one of the best in the market (again for large companies), it might not fit smaller companies who wants to save on spending a large amount of expense on a mail server.

For large organizations, this is the system to have. It grew much since it began, and got more reliable, more efficient and its performance got better.
Like any system developed there are always things you might find irritating, but in global, this system has improved greatly, and when used by a professional who got to know all of its techniques, and organization can soundly sleep knowing the system works, and the communication will be received and delivered on time.

Summarizing the Microsoft main servers systems, we have to acknowledge that Microsoft has proved that their system is the best as a whole package, and they keep improving them, to enable large organizations to feel at home and trust that the systems will deliver when it counts.

The Microsoft commerce server was designed to simplify and assist e-commerce (Electronic Commerce) solutions, which include buying and selling of products or services using electronic systems, over the internet or over a computer network. Since there are many businesses that conduct their businesses online as the Internet became a huge platform for reaching almost everyone, a good simple effective e-commerce solution became needed.

The target audience of such systems are either clients or businesses, so a solution that knows how to address those market transactions and enable the control, management, transaction tracking and administration was needed by the market, and the Microsoft commerce server provided the solution for that need.

What is the Microsoft commerce server? well, it is part of the Share-point package by Microsoft, which includes web parts that provide a WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) for business people and web designers.

The tools included in a commerce server are Orders & inventory, Catalog, Marketing, Profile, Other components that assist the system.

Orders & Inventory: This system enables order tracking and can also open to connect to other inventory tracking systems, so you will be able to collect all of the Inventory changes and be updated at all times. The system can update you on low inventory according to the definition of minimal quantities and enable stock updates on time. The system also uses Microsoft SQL Server analytics to create proper reports and product sales statistics.

Catalog: Company that wants to sell products, usually creates a catalog of products to show the customers, so they can have a list of products to choose from. The Microsoft commerce server enables the creation of catalogs, divided into categories and a connection to other products that are being tracked by a commerce server. The system uses a configurable meta-data system that enables the server to address any transaction scenario that might occur.

Marketing: The hardest thing to do in sales, in my opinion, is the marketing part of the sale. How to reach the customers, how to appeal to their needs, and convince them to purchase your products, why should they purchase your products? The Microsoft commerce server enables the one of the most important tool needed by marketing people, which is to track the marketing tasks and it is using a promotion management tool for web marketing management that tracks online advertising and the commerce server manager can control all of the marketing ads and set the rules that set the proper conditions needed from each ad.

Profile: The profile system of the Microsoft commerce server enable shopper tracking, and tailor website designs and purposes according to shopper needs and the proper promotion presentation that fit the individual shopper.

Other components: The other components are tools included in the background and assist the commerce server to become what it is. The Microsoft commerce server includes data warehouse analytic, which creates reports, based on the Microsoft SQL server analytics module. It also includes CSS (Commerce server staging) system, which automates the deployment of dynamic active content across websites and some say the performance of the CSS feature is one of the best in the market today. The Biz-talk adapters also are included in this commerce server which integrates with the Microsoft BizTalk for organizational data manipulation.

Summarizing this article: When you consider including a full e-commerce system, you might want to check the Microsoft commerce server. Check it out it might be the solution you where looking for.

Game consoles have been produced for quite some time. We used to use simple primitive (I say primitive since in comparison to today, console video games have improved much since then, in measures we can’t even grasp) TV consoles, like ATARI, SEGA and more, it started during the 1970’s. You can find some info here at this website that I discovered, on historic video game console, so see for yourself.

The Xbox has been competing against the Sony’s PS2 (Sony PlayStation 2 – which is one of the most common being used out there), Nintendo GameCube, WII and Sega. Microsoft chose to get into the TV video game consoles, since it also was developing Microsoft computer games and wanted a piece of those comfortable living room family gaming system.

The Xbox Live, enable online gaming between Xbox users, where you could use the internet connection to join forces and play the games together. When the Xbox was revealed to developers on the year 2000, its technology amazed many.

Microsoft Xbox Live – This unit was launched in November 2002, and was designated for subscribers to play against other Xbox subscribers worldwide using online connection. There was a huge amount of subscribers at first, around Quarter of a Million and at the year 2009 it reached over 20 million subscribers. The online gaming worked only with broadband internet connection. The Xbox live support has been discontinued since April 2010 and old units instead of being repaired will be replaced by the Xbox 360.

Microsoft Xbox 360 – “List of games suitable for the Xbox 360” – This video game console had a larger storage capacity, audio and video capabilities over the old Xbox and was a very usable console by many. This Xbox unit was supporting old Xbox games and had a DVD player unit.

You can find additional Xbox information on those websites:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox
2. http://www.xbox.com/en-US/
3. http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live
4. http://www.microsoft.com/xbox/
5. http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/gaming/productdetails.aspx?pid=091

You can find a list of the top 10 best Xbox Games at this link as an example of what type of quality games are out there for Microsoft Xbox: http://xbox.ign.com/articles/506/506934p1.html

Microsoft has been developing programs for us to use with their Windows operating systems, as we started working on their graphical operating systems. Windows operating systems have been curving away for graphical programs, as the Windows operating systems became common and more users preferred their operating systems.

Microsoft has developed many programs, applications and utilities for us to use, and somewhere available free with their Windows operating systems and somewhere available for purchase. I will go over some of them, reminding us what Microsoft offers us. I will divide their applications to groups:

• Internet applications
• Office applications
• Graphic applications
• Utility applications
• General applications
• Development applications
• System applications
• Business applications
• Entertainment applications

Internet applications:

Live Messenger – Microsoft has developed the known messenger which started as MSN Messenger, and now it is called Live Messenger, which is a chat messenger that let you add your friends, talk to them with or without video or type your chats on the joined message screen. The messenger has also been developed for the MAC (Macintosh) – users.

Microsoft Silverlight – This is a Microsoft web application framework that is like the “Adobe Flash” which includes multimedia, graphics, and animations all in one environment.

Microsoft Agent – This is a technology that was developed for speech recognition purposes. It included animated characters, text-to-speech engines creating an agent that represents a human or a cartoon figure.

Live Mesh – This application by Microsoft, was designed for synchronization purposes. It enabled to share and synchronize files and folders across devices. It created a web shared folder (up to 5GB), which was available to all other devices using a FeedSync engine, which will update any change automatically to the devices which are connected to it.

Bing – (Search engine) – Bing is Microsoft try to beat the Google search engine. Even though the Bing search engine was forced on to Microsoft applications and browsers, it still doesn’t lead the internet search engines.

Windows Mail – This e-mail application was designed to replace the old “Outlook Express” and it was started on the Windows Vista operating system. This application supported the more advanced protocol IPv6, Messages where stored on different files instead of one database file, the user’s profile was not defined using the registry (which enabled to completely copy the whole account elsewhere), stronger junk-mail and phishing engines have been added.

Live Writer – This application was created for Blog publishing. It enabled photo and map publishing functionality and with a new API which enabled more rich designed customizations.

Office applications:

Microsoft Office – The Microsoft Office suite application was one of its huge steps, with a long line of office applications. This office suite was one of the most successful applications out there, and almost everyone is using it at home or at the office. The success of these applications made Microsoft produce a suitable version for the MAC (Macintosh) operating systems called Office 2008, which enabled Mac users to enjoy the great office suite by Microsoft even when MAC was the competitor of the Windows OS. The Office 2008 also enabled users who wanted to move from the Microsoft Windows environment to the MAC OS to be able to use the Office suite they were already used to work with.

Microsoft Works – This suite was a smaller version of the Microsoft original office suite. It included fewer features and was less expensive. It included the Microsoft WORD, Microsoft EXCEL spreadsheet, and a database. This version enabled students to be able to afford and use those basic applications that they needed for their studies.

Microsoft Communication Server – This application was created to enable a communication infrastructure for enterprise connection tools, which included instant messaging, peer-to-peer, file transfers, user communication using a presence service, voice and video calling, PSTN and SIP trunking.

Graphic applications:

Microsoft Expression Studio – This suite of tools was designed for creating web applications and designs using media formats of any kind. The package included the Microsoft expression Web, Blend, Design, Media, and Encoder.

Utility applications:

Most of these utilities are built-in on your Windows operating system and have become essential tools that we got used to considering as obvious, and they are:
Microsoft Security Essentials – This application is a new free Anti-Virus program for your licensed Windows operating system by Microsoft. So far it seems quite good and stable.

Microsoft Calculator – This is just a computerized calculation application that adds, subtracts, multiply and divides any mathematical exercise you might need to perform. It is simple but effective when you just need to calculate something while you work on the Windows operating system.

Microsoft Paint – This application enables some basic photographic drawing and photo manipulation. You can save your work in JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP file formats.

Microsoft Reader – This application was designed for e-book reading. It was included in Windows CE and Pocket PC and although many e-books are now PDFs, there are still e-books are in “.LIT” (literature) file format which suits the Microsoft reader.

Microsoft Notepad – This is just a text editor, which is mostly used for copy/paste purposes to preserve a simple text design for web applications, or just write something that you want to design later. A more advanced notepad that programmers are using is the notepad++, which includes more advanced features.

Microsoft Defender – The defender is an anti-spyware application to keep spyware from spreading on your Windows operating system. It comes as default on Vista and Windows 7 operating systems and you could download it free for Windows XP and Windows server 2003.

Microsoft Chart (Graph) – This application enabled charts and graphs to be combined into the Microsoft Excel & Access applications.

Microsoft SteadyState – This application is a tool that replaced the shared computer toolkit which is for administrators to better control shared computers, by using hard-disk protection and more advanced user management.

General applications:

Microsoft MapPoint – This application by Microsoft enabled users to integrate, view, edit maps. This was an application for business use, to chart maps to fit the organization’s map design, of branches or any other information intended to be placed on a map, like a free map designer.

Windows Media Player – This used to be one of the most used video/music player application. Today there are more likable video/music players like the KMP player which is my favorite, but it is still a usable application that comes built-in the Windows operating systems.

Windows Movie Maker – This application enabled edit, creation, and design of movies.

Windows Virtual PC – This is Microsoft virtual attempt in competition with VMWARE. This virtualization application is available on the Windows 7 operating systems.

Worldwide Telescope – This application by Microsoft was designed for those outer space lovers who love to look at stars. This application creates a virtual space view as if you were looking through a telescope.

Development Environments:

Visual FoxPro – This is an object-oriented and procedural programming language for developers and was suitable for COM-based programming. The 2.6 version was suitable for MAC, DOS, Windows and Unix operating systems.

Microsoft Visual Studio – This is one of the most successful and most common applications for developers. This is an IDE which been used to create the console, GUI, web applications, websites,  web services, and many more designated uses. The Microsoft visual studio included a code editor, a debugger, designer and included products like Visual C++/C#, Visual Basic, Visual Web Developer.

System applications:

The system applications included the Command.COM and the Windows PowerShell.

Business applications:

For the business side, Microsoft developed Server-side applications, which have become the Pillars of the Windows business network environment which included: Windows Server System, Microsoft Small Business Financials, Microsoft Commerce Server, Microsoft BizTalk Server, Microsoft Forecaster, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Virtual Server, Microsoft CRM

Entertainment applications:

Microsoft also has designed fun entertaining games like Age of Empires series, Freelancer, Halo series, Microsoft Flight Simulator series, Midtown Madness series, Rise of Nations.

The “Microsoft Visual Studio” is an IDE software development package. This package can be used to develop GUI applications, any windows form of programs, internet websites & applications, and web services for any of Microsoft’s platforms. This package creates a complete development environment that includes the code editor (placing your commands there), debugger, compiler etc…

Visual studio supports these programming languages: Visual C/C++, Visual Basic (VB), VB.net, C#, F# (from Visual Studio 2010). When you want support to other languages you will need to install the language services separately and it will support: M, Python, Ruby, XML, HTML, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript etc…

For old programmers who started at the beginning with C, Pascal, COBOL, Assembler etc… the Microsoft Visual Studio is a real treat since everything
you need is built in one place, all of the tools you need are there, and you can see your results immediately, and you can see your debug errors while you compile on the same environment your working on. Old programmers had to do everything separately, and had to work harder to identify the error lines, in visual studio you can debug step by step and track the variables while you debug, see the variable change during the debug session, and better find your bugs and problems.

The visual studio versions where:

* Visual Studio 97

* Visual Studio 6.0 (1998)

* Visual Studio .NET (2002)

* Visual Studio .NET 2003

* Visual Studio 2005

* Visual Studio 2008

* Now, we have the Visual Studio 2010.

Additional information about Visual Studio:

• MSDN.microsoft.com
• MSDN Forum

Microsoft has many tools out there like its server operating systems, client operating systems, business applications, and development tools. Microsoft has given us a wide range of solutions for

the business world, so to master them you need to learn their many options and possibilities.

The Microsoft certificates are divided to major categories:

1.    IT Professionals

• MCTS, MCITP, MCDST, MCSA, MCDBA, MCSE

2.    Developers

• MCPD, MCAD, MCSD

3.    Advanced Certificates

• Microsoft Certified Master, Microsoft Certified Architect

4.    Home and Office

• MCAS, MOS

5.    Trainer

• MCT, MCLC

There are a series of exams for each certificate title, which you have to pass in order to become Microsoft certified and get the achievement certificate that proves you have learned the tool, and are familiar with all aspects of it. Those certificates are considered at some businesses as a must for specific positions since they are thorough and very comprehensive of all of the capabilities the Microsoft tools have, and there are many of them.

When someone wants to specialize in a specific area or just expand his knowledge in the Microsoft tool of his choice, it is recommended to take one of those courses or study from the Microsoft professional books that prepare you for the exams and pass those exams. These certifications will enable you to get the job you might want, change you to get a more professional point of view when working with the Microsoft tool.

Microsoft has many professional teaching schools that teach those professional Microsoft lessons according to the certificate needed and they teach you how to pass those Microsoft exams to gain the Microsoft certificate you need. Make sure that the certificates given by the teaching school are really the Microsoft authentic certificates, so the certificate will be legit and accepted by the organizations which might need you to show you are certified by Microsoft.

The Microsoft exchange server , is a mail server, which organizations uses to enable the company to use e-mails across their network and of course send and receive e-mails outside with other clients, other organizations.

The exchange server includes filtering mechanisms (blocking e-mail flooding, sender’s address, connection filtering using DNS RBL lists (Which is a list of banned blacklisted domains), use a mail domain (so the organization will be using a unique mail server that is their own) , also the Microsoft exchange server included features like: 16 TB (Tera-Byte) of database size (to hold all of the e-mails), Scripting language to maintain the exchange server, 64 Bit performance and scalability, including a more user friendly GUI, calendaring including calendar sharing (between employees) so you can see who is available/busy at the time you want to set the meeting, and enable you to set the meeting when everyone are available), It has a web access (so you can manage it from outside/within the organization.

You would be able to set the configuration of the mail users, in groups and set who can use what, what can the user do with his mailbox, where is it stored, how large his
capacity is etc… like the Microsoft Active-Directory, the Microsoft exchange server had good user configuration and maintenance capabilities, so you could configure and maintain the Microsoft exchange server. The Microsoft exchange server also includes anti-spam, anti-virus protection, clustering for performance.

The Microsoft Exchange system, requires licensing, which is not the same as the Microsoft CAL licenses, the Exchange licenses are for defining how many users can be used on the Microsoft Exchange system, how many mail boxes can you use.

Microsoft Exchange server can be used from mobiles as well as regular mail clients, the mechanism called Active-Sync that was added to the exchange server 2003, enabled mobile connection.

The main advantage of the Microsoft exchange server is the sharing of calendars which is very important for large scaled companies, for setting meetings, and tracking who is available when.
Enjoy.

What can we say about Microsoft that no one heard before, there is almost no one who works with computer and never heard about Microsoft and their operating system series. The operating systems of Microsoft have changed the way we were using computers, from a nongraphic user interface to a graphic interface, using a keyboard and a mouse to be able to do so many things with ease, than the way we have done before using a nongraphic interface, where every action was a series of commands, which of course where only working on a nongraphic way.

The graphic interface of the Microsoft operating systems enabled us to see what we are doing (not just numbers and lines in a report kind of a way) and be able to use the internet, write documents, and change fonts, sizes of texts, insert photos, and pictures into the document, etc…

The operating systems were starting with the Windows 3.11 version which was the beginning of Microsoft Windows graphic interface was real progress from the way we have conducted our work with computers and started the developments of better and improved windows operating systems by Microsoft.

Microsoft Windows Desktops:

Microsoft Windows 3.0 – 3.1 – Started in March 1992 – it was a 16-bit operating system and different versions of it where being issued between 1992-1994 until it was replaced by Windows 95. This operating system was the basic change of the way the home user and businesses were using computers. There were new tools and technological ways of using our computers.

Microsoft Windows 95 – Released on August 1995 – It was a larger enhancement of the previous windows 3.1 operating system. It contained more color – This operating system was the most popular at those times, and it was replaced by Windows 98 – which enhanced and fixed issues that were collected on the Windows 95 operating system. This operating system was a better fit with the business orientation of the Windows NT (network server operating system).

Microsoft Windows 98 – Release on May 15th, 1998 – This operating system supported 16bit & 32bit work. This operating system was the first to use the new “Windows Driver Model” (WDM), hardware manufacturers where developing drivers to enable these common operating systems to use their hardware devices.
Microsoft Windows 2000 – Released on February 17, 2000, this operating system was designated for the client computers for a business environment, as a desktop operating system. This operating system was serving as a client for Windows NT and was a very solid stable operating system. It was replaced by the successful Windows XP.

Microsoft Windows XP – Released on October 25th, 2001, This is one of the most used windows operating system ever, most users have moved to this operating system that was stable and very user-friendly.  When Vista got out, many people who received the Vista operating system requested to downgrade to the Windows XP operating system, since it was much better and fit almost any platform of computers, even weak ones.

Microsoft Windows Vista – Released on July 22nd, 2005, This I have to say wasn’t a very good operating system that was developed by Microsoft. This operating system forced you to increase your computer’s performance, you had to have at least 2GB RAM to work properly. This operating system was heavy and its performance was not as her previous versions.  The graphic and the ability to use more than 3GB RAM were some of the OS’s improvements from her predecessors (previous operating systems).

Microsoft Windows Servers:

Windows NT server – Release in July 1993 – This operating system was the first server like an operating system that could serve many clients, and use its resources to share resources, operations, and other server type software that could serve multiple users.

Windows 2000 server – Released on February 17th, 2000 – This server operating system was more advanced from its predecessor the Windows NT. This version was a more advanced server which included datacenter server, supported 64bit version, this version included the MMC (Microsoft Management Console) that enabled more control over the server features and options. This OS issued the first “Active Directory” that enabled a centralized control interface to manage the users and security features of the server’s network.

Windows Server 2003 – Released on April 24th, 2003 – This server operating system was the more solid, stable and very useful server operating system. Most organizations have moved to it, after the windows NT and windows 2000 server has received many improvements on the server 2003 version, which made the active directory and the management features which included forests and a very organized control center to monitor and manage a large organization and made it easier for IT managers and network administrators to have better control over their network.

Windows Server 2008 – Released on February 4th, 2008 – This version of the server operating system was built upon the same code as the Vista operating system (from the desktop version). There was much more control using the command-line interface (from the DOS screen) and many other cool features that enabled a more sophisticated and easy to use network platform.

Windows Server 2012 – Released on September 4th, 2012– This version of the server operating system has no support for Itanium-based computers and has four editions. Various features were added or improved over Windows Server 2008 R2, with emphasis on cloud computing, Hyper-V support, IP addressing management role, new task manager version, new file system.

All of those operating systems by Microsoft have shaped the way we do our computer business or use our home computers, there is no other way to avoid this, Microsoft has a real place in the pages of history for giving us these Windows operating systems which shaped the way we use computers today.

There are many ways of publishing a new software. You can decide to delay the publishing until you develop the system, and run tests on tests (using a QA team), that are designed to try and catch as many defects and bugs in the system, so the development team will be able to fix the bugs, and publish the system when you are sure you have covered all of the tests and aspects that might occur and you found no more bugs and defects in the system.

You can also decide to just develop the software, then run some tests to try and find the defects and bugs, fix as much as you can until you reach the position that you have to publish the system even though you believe you haven’t covered everything, but covered most of the reasonable options that needed to be tested. Then you publish the system and you start to collect the feedback from the clients who purchased the system, and might have stumble upon problems, bugs or malfunctions in the system, then when you collect enough bug information, you produce an update that closes all of those defects. At Microsoft those update packages are called SP (service packs).

You can understand from what I described that in order to produce a product at a 100%, which means the product (system, software) is guaranteed not to have any defects or bugs, it will take a very long time for a company to conduct all of the imaginable tests to make sure there are no problems with the product, and even after a very long time, there might be a special occasion and situation at a specific kind of environment (operating system with a certain anti-virus system together) that will cause a problem that no one was thinking of testing.

That is why Microsoft is usually publishing a system that are at a stable stage, but they keep the communication channels open to collect all of the bugs and problems that clients might stumble upon to prepare a package that will include all of the fixes that where collected up to then. So they publish a free SP (service pack) to be implemented either by downloading and installing or through their automatic updates mechanism.

Microsoft also enables automatic updates for critical problems, which means that critical issues that might arise will be fixed immediately and sent to everyone using the automatic updates mechanism in order to close that critical bug. Usually it will be a security breaching feature, or a bug that prevents the clients from working properly.

Those are the Microsoft updates, and the reason why they are a part of the operating systems Microsoft is developing.

The Microsoft Office suite for the windows operating system was launched first in 1990 and started to form the way we (the windows OS (operating system) users) were using computerized office applications either for our office needs or for home use. The office suite was giving us a range of tools that enabled us to fulfill any of our needs, from writing documents, letters using the Microsoft WORD, e-mails using the Microsoft OUTLOOK,  making complicated calculations using the Microsoft EXCEL, making presentations using the easy tools of the Microsoft POWERPOINT. Those basic applications have created the source of the Microsoft office suite.

Those Microsoft Office suite tools where having easy to use ways of creating our letters, forms, presentations etc… by using special designs, many font options, special characters, you could change the way the text was presented, there where design toolbars, that eased the way we could easily change and design our documents. All of the office suite where designed almost the same, in the basics of the text format changes, while every single application had its own suitable toolbars, that was matching that specific application’s needs.

The office suites were improving as time passed, as the demand for other application tools has risen. The additional office tools where the OUTLOOK, ACCESS (A client database), Spell-checker functions for all of the office applications, PUBLISHER, ONE NOTE, INFO PATH, VISIO, PROJECT, SHARE POINT DESIGNER, those additional applications has covered better the need of the different office purposes and needs.

Microsoft has lately developed an office suite “OFFICE 2008” for the Macintosh (MAC OS X) computer and operating systems. This office suite was including the basic core programs that were on the Office 2004 for MAC that includes Entourage, Excel, Word and PowerPoint. The Office 2008 supports the new Office Open XML format, which is the default format that this suite uses as the XML formats have become a common format as our main tools have migrated to be used by a browser (Internet Browser).

We all enjoy the excellent applications of the Microsoft office suite, those tools make us more efficient, they enable us to contact each other, share their tools and information from one to the other. They are more flexible and suitable for our modern age, and for the way we share and synchronize our information with different applications and devices like hand-helds, and mobile phones. We can all enjoy those excellent tools and be more creative.

Microsoft !, what does this name say to you? Anyone who uses computers has to have heard about Microsoft, this is the company the entered the graphical operating systems, that shaped the way we work. The first famous graphical operating system was of APPLE, they have created the Macintosh as a computer for graphic designers. The Macintosh was attended to the graphic designers and it wasn’t cheap, only those who could effort it was enjoying a graphical operating system that enabled the graphic design to become reachable.

Microsoft was the one who developed a graphical operating system that will become a software for all. They have designed an operating system that was cost-effective and affordable by the common people, home users and enabled everyone to gain a graphical environment, that enabled the use of a mouse, dragging and doing operating at a move of a mouse. Before the graphical age, people where typing hundreds and thousands of lines of code to get a simple operation working. Behind the simple copy & paste, we are used to doing with the right click of the mouse, where lines of code to tell the computer where the source file is, how to make the copy, and to where to copy the file.

Since that first step into a revolution in technology, Microsoft has developed many tools, improved its operating systems making them more usable, more effective. They developed the computerized office, using their office packages, that shaped the way we do our business, writing our letters on Microsoft word, doing complicated calculations and statistical charts and diagrams using Microsoft excel, doing presentations on the Microsoft Power-Point, etc… Those software applications have shaped our computerized office tools and became the most common tools being used by computer users.