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October 2005 - Posts

Upcoming webcasts

Posted Monday, October 31, 2005 7:41 PM by Jeanie Decker
There are two webcasts planned for November that should be of interest to DPM customers (and those still considering whether DPM is right for their business). Microsoft Webcast: Protect Critical Data While Lowering IT Costs with Microsoft System Center Read More...
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Some criticism of technical documentation

Posted Sunday, October 30, 2005 6:15 PM by Jeanie Decker
Selena Sol at extropia replies to the question, "What would you want to see in software manuals/technical writing to further disassemble the mystery?" with a thoughtful discussion of what is needed in documentation, "putting the writer back into technical Read More...
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Repurposing words

Posted Saturday, October 29, 2005 9:59 PM by Jeanie Decker
Esquivalience —n. the willful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities Only, there's no such word . The fabricated esquivalience was included in the recently published second edition of the New Oxford American Dictionary as a copyright protection Read More...
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New Microsoft certification plans announced

Posted Tuesday, October 25, 2005 7:55 PM by Jeanie Decker
Here I am, partway through the exams for the MCSA, and we announce "a new generation of Microsoft certifications" . I click frantically through the FAQ , trying to find out if my efforts have been wasted. Then, a sigh of relief -- I'm not wasting my time Read More...
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DPM Exec Chat transcript posted

Posted Tuesday, October 25, 2005 12:34 PM by Jeanie Decker
The transcript from the executive chat session, System Center Data Protection Manager Revealed (Oct 13, 05), is now available online . A few features of the next version of DPM are mentioned: support for SQL, Exchange, and clustering. We've had a lot Read More...
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Is DPM right for you?

Posted Monday, October 24, 2005 3:38 PM by Jeanie Decker
Here are two ways to evaluate DPM... View Christopher Whyte's on-demand webcast, Introduction to Data Protection Manager . Download the evaluation edition of DPM and try it for yourself. By the way, if you already tried the beta edition of DPM, you may Read More...
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Do you use scripting for system administration?

Posted Sunday, October 23, 2005 8:40 PM by Jeanie Decker
If not, it can be worth learning . As a system administrator once told me, "If you have to do it more than once, run a script." The Scripting Guys at Microsoft provide great advice and resources for scripting, including the upcoming Scripting Week 3 , Read More...
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One way writers can embarrass themselves

Posted Friday, October 21, 2005 8:20 PM by Jeanie Decker
Documentation typically goes through numerous passes, between writers and technical experts and editors and peer reviewers. And those passes can accumulate a lot of revision marks and comments. All part of the work process. But let's suppose your product Read More...
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"Why can't I install DPM on a...."

Posted Thursday, October 20, 2005 2:06 PM by Jeanie Decker
There's an old song (70s) with a chorus of "Things get a little easier once you understand." (Okay, I'm dating myself by admitting I remember when the song came out, and it's a really bad song, but the thought fits here.) Things can be easier...to accept, Read More...
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The story behind Chapter 1

Posted Tuesday, October 18, 2005 8:46 PM by Jeanie Decker
When I joined the DPM group, I started off digging through the specs to learn about the product and I discovered a wonderful document called "Master Scenarios". What this document did was tell the story of a fictional customer and DPM. Read More...
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Cool tool: Process Explorer

Posted Monday, October 17, 2005 3:59 PM by Jeanie Decker
A really common annoyance (for me) is trying to rename, move, or delete a file, only to be told that I can't because "something" is using it, but the error doesn't tell me which "something" it is and most of the time I can't figure it out. I'll open Task Read More...
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The identity of Help

Posted Wednesday, October 12, 2005 3:14 PM by Jeanie Decker
Today, I'm thinking about product Help, DPM's in particular. Mostly I'm thinking about the questions I want to find answers for next week (because I'm taking the rest of this week off). For instance, what was our guideline in DPM 2006 for deciding what Read More...
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"I don't read instructions..."

Posted Tuesday, October 11, 2005 7:01 PM by Jeanie Decker
Yesterday, while I was watching a usability session, the participant mentioned that he prefers to open up a new tool and just poke around, rather than reading the documentation. I can empathize with that approach -- I do it myself sometimes. "Explorer" Read More...
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Executive chat: "System Center Data Protection Manager Revealed"

Posted Monday, October 10, 2005 11:01 AM by Jeanie Decker
Please join our execs for a live chat on DPM on Thursday, October 13th, at 10:00 A.M. (Pacific). See more details at: http://www.microsoft.com/communities/chats/default.mspx#05_1013_TN_EC Join.... Bob Muglia - Senior Vice President of Windows Server Division Read More...
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Why XP's System Restore rocks

Posted Saturday, October 08, 2005 12:11 PM by Jeanie Decker
Before yesterday, I'd only used System Restore a few times: when I was trying out a lot of changes and wanted to be sure I undid them all, and once when I hit something in Internet Explorer that made it look funky and got tired of trying to troubleshoot Read More...
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Talking to tomorrow

Posted Thursday, October 06, 2005 9:10 PM by Jeanie Decker
One of the most interesting aspects of working on the next version of DPM is that we -- the writers -- are here in Redmond, and the product team (a great group of developers and PMs) is at IDC in Hyderabad . That's a 13.5 hour time difference. Except Read More...
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Kicking off another set

Posted Wednesday, October 05, 2005 2:48 PM by Jeanie Decker
Now that DPM 2006 has been released, it's time to do it all again. We had our content kickoff this morning for version 2 of DPM. To me, this is the anything is possible stage, when we can air our most grandiose visions. "And the user chooses a scenario Read More...
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ASR* and DPM

Posted Tuesday, October 04, 2005 11:47 AM by Jeanie Decker
*ASR = Automated system recovery In our documentation, we recommend, "To ease recovery in the event of system partition failure, install DPM to a partition that is separate from the system partition." We also recommend that you create an ASR set to back Read More...
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The next Office interface

Posted Monday, October 03, 2005 12:08 PM by Jeanie Decker
I must confess that I am not an early adopter of software upgrades. I like a high degree of comfort with the applications I use frequently; I want to open it and do whatever I feel like doing without needing to figure out how. And most of the time the Read More...
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