Blog of a Long Distance Worker Tech

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Tag Archives: Outlook

Google Apps for Domains Problems for the Enterprise and Business

Google Apps for DomainsIn my business we are a heavy Google Apps for Domains user with several domains setup, some business and some free. I moved across from hosted Exchange a few years ago and everything has been pretty great until the last few weeks which caused me to question whether Google Apps for Domains was suited to Business in general.

The start of my problem was the in my use of Google Sync for Outlook, a tool that gives almost native desktop integration for the Google mail features. This has worked great and I noticed no problems until about three weeks ago I noticed that my laptop was sucking battery and ran hot all the time that Outlook was open. A little investigation found that the Sync of Notes was always running and syncing despite the fact that I don’t use the Notes feature of Outlook or Google at all (I prefer Evernote). Further checks found that I had a significant amount of Notes that I discovered was actually all of my .txt files that I had stored in Google Docs/Drive (I use Google Drive desktop sync and Insync to sync my main files, something I had added a load of files to about three weeks previously). The penny dropped, that because Google Apps Sync for Outlook syncs all ‘notes’ found in Google Docs to Outlook, all of the many text files (many GB by the way) that I sync were between machines and the cloud using Insync were also being synchronised into my Google Mail and because there were many GBs, it was taking a very long time and killing my laptops in the meantime.

I had to stop the synchronisation of Notes and contacted Google Apps Enterprise support for help (because I could not find anything online about how to do it). Their response was sort of expected and not expected… Google Notes sync is beta and the disabling of the sync was not supported. The last point is the killer for me, and what led me to think that Google has a big problem. They activated without my control a Beta feature (Notes Sync) but don’t provide a single way for me (a Live user) to disable a Beta feature, at least they don’t support it! Not Enterprise friendly and that has to change Google.

Anyway, they did provide some ‘unsupported’ registry settings to disable it in the end, so fine I used the settings but unfortunately it did not work – in fact the modifications were supposed to allow me to disable the sync of one or all features of Google Sync for Outlook but NONE of the changes did anything. I contacted Google again but their response was that they could not provide support on the unsupported registry modifications and I was ON MY OWN! Not friendly at all, they effectively hung me out to dry to a problem caused by their enforcement of the use of a Beta feature AND providing a fix that simply did nothing. Google, you have a problem right there in the use of your services with the Enterprise and you need to fix it right now. Don’t deploy Beta features without the ability to enable/disable them, and don’t leave businesses high and dry without a resolution caused by your own ineptitude otherwise you will LOSE to everyone else. I had to consider stepping back from Google Apps for Domains, back to a traditional hosted Exchange solution before I found the fix (we also considered stepping back from Google Docs/Drive as a smaller step).

Anyway, for those who need the fix I hunted over several nights through multiple Google Groups looking for a solution and finally found it, but that was no thanks to Google. For those who are looking to be able to enable or disable individual syncs in Google Sync for Outlook you need to modify the follow the instructions:

1. Go to http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?answer=1041455 , go to Enable/Disable Import Options.

2. Follow Step 1 to Create the “SyncFlagsEnabled” value with DWORD value set to 1.

3. Skip Step 2 because it is redundant to what you want to do

4. Follow Step 3 for each of the services you wish to control (NotesSync in my instance) but add the following to the registry key for the service:
registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Apps Sync\NotesSync

Modify HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Apps Sync\TasksSync by adding the following DWORD Values: 
DWORD Value: UploadEnabled 
Modify the DWORD Value as follows: 
Set the Value data = 0 

DWORD Value: DownloadEnabled 
Modify the DWORD Value as follows: 
Set the Value data = 0

All I then had to do was remove the almost 3GB of notes from my Notes folder and then compact my PST to get everything back to where it needs to be, and then go an provide a registry import for these settings to provide to all of my users so that they don’t have the same problem of the laptop whizzing about synchronising a whole load of nothing, using processor and bandwidth a plenty. All I need to do now is watch Google for the next Enterprise mess up with Google Sync for Outlook.

Spambayes – Spam filtering

Anti-Virus The news of the shutdown of a major spam source in the US gives you some warm feelings about the constant stream of poorly targeted rubbish in your inbox, but the rate at which you will see them will grow again soon enough. So as a small business or independent consultant/freelancer what do you do about it?

One thing you can do is use an email client with built-in Bayesian filters for spam such as Thunderbird, but what happens if you are using Microsoft Outlook or Windows Mail? Outlook has a basic tool for filtering spam but frankly it is just a simple blacklist mechanism and not worth actuating it for what it does and I recommend not activating it.

Well what you can do is use Spambayes, a slowly/quietly developing solution which is a simple Bayesian spam filter implementation primarily for Outlook, which is open source and therefore freely available. I have used this for going on four years and it is very effective even from the start without any learning. Once it has learned up on the steady stream that you highlight, it operates very well with few (if any) false positives and it comes to the point that you forget that you have it implemented for the amount of Spam that you actually see.

One thing though, periodically (about once a year), the constant anti-spam filter methods of the spammers does have an effect, so you do have to reset the rulebase but this is so easy that it is not a problem at all. Highly recommended, and you can download it here.

Netbooks and the Long Distance Worker

Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal has taken a look at several Netbooks and has posted a summary video as follows:

Walt pushes his review from the perspective that Netbooks are some sort of halfway house between Smartphones and standard Laptops. This may have once been the case when dealing with the little 7” EeePC 701 and it seems that much of his perspective comes from the review of that little device back in January 2008. I purchased the EeePC 701 and used it as a web/email device and did find the small screen, lack of storage and slightly limited performance a problem but the 2nd generation EeePC 90x, Acer and MSI Wind products have resolved those issues.

Earlier in the year, I moved over my primary laptop to being the Advent 4211, an OEM branded MSI Wind U100. This has sufficient performance (Intel Atom 1.6GHz), storage (80GB HD) and screen size (10” 1024×600) for my needs, which are largely email (Outlook), Office applications, Project planning, Blogging, IPTV Video playback and messaging – all in fact except playing games. The only issue that arose was one of battery life where for cost and supply reasons, the battery was limited to being a 2200mAh one which provided a little over 2 hours of use. This however was solved by adding the 4400mAh 6 cell battery which cost less than £50, although I would have much preferred it to have been included from the start. This provides over 4 hours of use and is certainly the most long running laptop that I have ever owned.

This is all in addition to having a Windows Mobile 6.0 Smartphone which allows on the go email (I use the HTC S710 Vox) but in no way replaces having a full PC. Even if I had the famed Apple iPhone, I would not see that replacing the Netbook as my workhorse device as it simply does not have the power, keyboard, and application capability of a full OS based device. All the same, interesting view and I look forward to the 3rd Generation Netbooks that are now becoming available that make use of onboard 3/3.5G communication devices.