I came across this Freeware CD/DVD burning app a few weeks ago and I must admit it's a high class piece of software. Nero Express has been my choice of burning software for some time but the bloatness that comes with it was starting to annoy me...all I want is something that will burn optical media and copy media either to another disk or preferably to an ISO image.

InfraRecorder checks all of those requirements without all of the extra crap that comes with Nero. The current version is 0.50 with 0.60 due out by the end of late 2009.
I encourage you to check this great app out and ditch your current burning software...you'll get a nice little burning affect when your using Vista aswell.

Official site is here.

I've setup a new blog about my going on's with that at sometimes beast called Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 called Port Twenty Five. Hopefuly I'll be able to share some of my insights and tips from working with this product on a daily basis. I'm also going to try and include a regular update of the Exchange Management Shell commands, not only as a personal reference to me but also as an easy spot to find the common commands.

Port Twenty Five can be promoted with this chicklet

The excellent password vault app Keepass has progressed from 2.07 beta to 2.08. This is a fantastic app for storing all of your passwords in the one secure place. Keepass uses the tried and tested security algorithms AES and Twofish to secure your password database where you can use a SHA256 encrypted masterpassword and also a keyfile to unlock it...as the Keepass site mentions not even quantum computers wont help you much in hacking the database.
There is also a very strong community base behind Keepass creating plugins and improving the source code...oh did I mention that Keepass is completely FREE!!...
Download the latest release from .

It's been acouple of months since the last post as I've been busy migrating mailboxes at work from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007....overall pretty successful project, but a lot of out of hours work required.
I don't pretend to be an Exchange guru, but I thought I would share some tips and tricks:

Eazy Tip 1: When you put in a new CAS box ensure to remove the self-signed cert that comes with it and replace it with your organisation's trusted cert for OWA. The powershell command is Remove-ExchangeCertificate and Import-ExchangeCertificate.

Eazy Tip 2: After telling Exchange about the new cert set the InternalURL for AutoDiscovery to prevent certificate errors being produced by Outlook 2007 when it launches. The powershell command is Set-ClientAccessServer -AutoDiscoverServiceInternalUri, there are acouple of other commands to set but that one is key.

Eazy Tip 3: You need to be at a min patch level of Exchange SP1 to be able to export mailboxes to PST files, but you can't do that from an actual Exchange server. So this tip is have an XP machine with all of the Exchange pre-reqs installed and the 32 bit version of the Exchange Management Tools plus Outlook handy during your migration so you can dump mailboxes into PST files. I created a script to do this here.

Eazy Tip 4: All outlook clients should be Outlook 2007, this will save you so much time and effort. Outlook 2007 makes use of the autodiscovery service running on your CAS boxes to find where the user's mailbox is located, no more going around to the user's PC and manually configuring their client....joy....

Eazy Tip 5: Finally go and get on courses 5047, 5049 and 5050 and get the basic knowledge on how to work with the Exchange servers. It's the best email / comms solution by far and by having that basic knowledge of how to use them will go a long way when you're planning and carrying out a migration.

Here are some great online Exchange resources:

• MSExchange.org
• Exchange Team Blog
• Technet

I came across portable apps...that is apps that run directly from a USB drive, a few years ago. But at the time the selection of apps was limited. Acouple of days ago I revisited the Portable Apps site and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the selection of apps has increased and now includes some really handy apps.


The selection of apps now range from:

• 7-zip
• Notepad++
• WinSCP
• Toucan

A number of these apps and a few more are now happily living of my USB HDD, check out the Portable Apps site here I'm sure you'll find something useful to whack on your USB stick.

"Microsoft has confirmed its new Windows 7 operating system will be generally available on October 22, well ahead of its original schedule and in time for the holiday shopping season."
Read the full iTnews article here

Can't wait for the RTM, the RC so far is proving to be an excellent OS, light years ahead of Vista. It ponders the mind to think how MS can get Windows XP right, then Vista so wrong and now Windows 7 so right. But when you think about it, if we didn't have Vista, we wouldn't have the joy that is Windows 7. I'll be happy to part with my hard earned dollars for a copy.

Well I thought it was about time to do a Rig upgrade and get fairly up to date with hardware that will last me another 2-3 years. So the specs of the new rig are:

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0Ghz, 1333Mhz
• Mobo: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3P
• RAM: 4GB of Kingston HyperX 1066 DDR2
• GFX: XFX GeForce 9800GT 512MB DDR3 600Mhz
• Sound: Crative X-Fi Xtreme Audio
• Storage: 2 x 160GB and 1 x 750GB HDD's
• Case: Coolermaster CM-690 with Side Window
• PSU: Corsair HX-620 Modular PSU

I also got some Zalman Green LED Fans and green SATA and IDE cables to top things off.
I've got some pics of the build here in my Gallery