Posts tagged "Microsoft"

Microsoft Security Essentials Upgrade

I’ve been using Avast for my anti-virus program for the past few years on the various notebooks and desktops that I use. When I bought the Latitude D620, I decided to load it up with Microsoft Security Essentials, the free successor to Windows OneCare. OneCare never had a good reputation and you actually had to pay for it.

I’ve been using it for a few weeks now and it’s really performed well, working in the background, and updating itself effortlessly. It even fired off a couple of warnings on a couple of admin tools I had on a USB stick when I plugged it on.

So today, I get a pop up telling me to upgrade. These days, I’m a lot more suspicious and decided to check the Microsoft forums to see if there was talk of an upgrade, and there was.

Also, when I brought the program up, there were notifications (see the picture) to upgrade. After upgrading, I had to go through the usual restart. Over all, the process was painless and shouldn’t cause even the least experienced user any problems.

At this point, I have to say that Microsoft has done something right, and after some more testing, I may deploy this to some of my other computers.

Passed Microsoft 70-290!

Took the Microsoft 70-290 “Managing and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003Environment” certification test this last weekend. Passed it with no problem. This was my first test using Prometric, which handles all of Microsoft’s certification exams now. I had formerly used Pearson Vue. My experiences had always been good with my certification exams at Pearson Vue and I was concerned that Prometric might not be as good.

My fears were unfounded as the equipment and staff were all top notch. It was good to see that Microsoft is adding questions to the tests that are not part of the score. Maybe MS will eventually put the brain dumpers out of business, or at least prevent them from making as much money and diluting the certifications that honest people work hard to get.

If you want more info on how brain dumpers and “hired gunmen” hurt the quality of the certifications that honest people work hard to achieve, seehttp://www.certguard.com