PST Manager

The first version of PST Manager is now released in beta – and you could be one of the lucky people to be part of that beta – just go to the page, click on the “Sign up for Beta” link and away you go.

The reason I’m telling you about this amazing piece of software is that I did the initial design and a lot of the programming of it 🙂 , so I know just how good it is.

But all modesty aside, I also know who else worked on it and I can tell you they are all damn good programmers.

So what is PST Manager and what does it do?  So let’s try a cunning marketing pitch:  “Are you plagued by PSTs?  Do you have a serious PST infestation?  Are PSTs ruining your life?”

Well, maybe not.

PSTs are those useful/annoying files that Outlook creates when it archives your emails, or when you set up a POP account, or for several other reasons.  They are helpful in many cases, but if you have a large network they can quickly get out of hand and before you know it you have several GB of important business data (i.e., emails and their attachments) scattered all over your network.

PST Manager finds those PST files, no matter where they are hiding, and lets you move them to a common location or import their contents back into Exchange or both so you can get control of them.  It also lets you turn off PST creation on the users’ workstations and … but you should go to the PST Manager page to get all the details.

Anyway, I had a blast working on it and I can tell you from personal experience that it’s a great product.  So what are you waiting for?  Quit reading and click on the link.

Virtual PC 2007 on Windows 7

I really like Windows 7.  I installed it last weekend and it’s great. Much better than Vista with a lot of handy new UI improvements and MUCH better utilization of resources.

I hit one issue today: The wonderful, fabulous, everybody-must-have, I’m-wetting-myself-over-how-great-these-are new features called “Windows Virtual PC” and “Windows XP Mode”.  I’m sure they are just as great as the hype says they are but there is one major gotcha: “Is AMD-V or Intel VT a must-have to run Windows Virtual PC?”  Answer: YES.  So if you ain’t got hardware virtualization on your PC then forget both of these features.

My laptop does not have hardware virtualization, so I thought I’d see if  Virtual PC 2007, which I still have installed, runs on Win7 and I got warnings about network drivers and although it opened up my VMs, there was no network connectivity.  Great.  So in a moment of inspiration I uninstalled it and reinstalled it and, so far, it is working fine.

So, the good news is that Virtual PC 2007 still works – if you uninstall and reinstall.  Maybe there is a better way around the issue, but that’s what I had to do to get it to work.

My final complaint is that I have not yet found anywhere on microsoft.com that says you can run Virtual PC 2007 on Windows 7.  If any MSFT people are reading this then (hint, hint) the Windows Virtual PC FAQs would be a nice place to answer the question: “I don’t have hardware virtualization on my PC, can I still use Virtual PC 2007 on Windows 7?”