Scalix Blackberry Enterprise Server Beta

Scalix is on a roll lately! Have just released Scalix 11.4.4 & ActiveSync 1.0, today they announced a beta of Scalix Connect for Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES). Much like Zarafa & Zimbra's BES integration, you can use the Microsoft Exchange version of BES and the BES server won't realize it isn't talking to Exchange. While this makes setuping up BES a little more tricky, it allows a Scalix/BES setup to provide the same level of functionality as Exchange.

http://www.scalix.com/about/news/pressrelease69.php
"Scalix Connect for Blackberry Enterprise Server provides push email, wireless contact, calendar and task synchronization, meeting scheduling, and remote address book/Global Address List lookup. Scalix now offers a full suite of mobility solutions for its Small Business, Enterprise, and Hosting editions: Scalix ActiveSync, Scalix Connect for Blackberry (beta), and Scalix Mobile Web Client. Together they enable Scalix users to communicate via all popular mobile devices without the need for client side installs."

Forum announcement from Florian (Program Management Director)
"It's almost fully functional as well, email, calendar, contacts, tasks - all are there. The missing bits are support for RIM's latest BES version, V5, so you'll have to stick with V4.1 for the time being, and if you run multiple Scalix servers, you'll have to have a separate BES for each of them. Both restrictions will be lifted in the final 1.0 release, this is currently planned for mid/late Q3, and I think we're on track for that."

Scalix Connect for BES Beta 1 Release Notes

I'm famous!

http://www.scalix.com/about/news/pressrelease68.php

“Of all the solutions we tested, only Scalix met all our needs,” said Scalix ActiveSync beta tester Bill Baird, Director of Technology at Phoenix Marketing International. “We looked for an email/calendaring solution that would run on Linux, embrace open standards, have an active online community and offer the following features: Outlook integration including stable offline cache, rich webmail, public folders with mail delivery, and mobile device support. The only missing piece was built-in ActiveSync support – our Windows Mobile and Symbian users had to use IMAP and manually check for new email or set a scheduled sync. I quickly found during the Scalix ActiveSync beta tests how great it is to have push email for these devices!”

Scalix 11.4.4 & Scalix Activesync Released

From early testing, it appears that they have done some optimizations with the Outlook Connector Smartcache (Bug 19785). From the time I click the Outlook icon until my mailbox is synchronized, it was an average of 20 seconds faster than with 11.4.3. (3 tests with each version, averages: 11.4.3: 52 seconds, 11.4.4: 31 seconds)

Windows Desktop Search is not supported for Outlook and appears to work well. (still no Google Desktop support in sight)

The release also marks the release of Scalix Activesync. I'm still waiting to hear back from my sales rep about a new license key, but once I'm up and running I will post about my experience.

11.4.4 Release Notes

Scalix/Xandros websites down...new release today?

Haven't been able to reach scalix.com, xandros.com or the scalix forums of the past half hour...could this be like how the Apple Store is offline during new product annoucements? Come on 11.4.4 & Activesync, I need you in my life!!

Update: Sites are back up, no new release :-(
Update2: Release Candidate is ready, just waiting for QA to sign off - link

RHEL 5.4 to get XFS?

It appears so! I have been wary of using anything other than the stock kernel, so this is great news for those of use looking to move away from ext3.

http://dag.wieers.com/blog/red-hat-backported-io-accounting-to-rhel5

Scalix Activesync Beta 1

...has been released finally.

http://www.scalix.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=57084#57084

Increasing performance for OpenVPN on WinXP

We use OpenVPN for all of our remote clients. While our pings times have been normal, I just noticed that our throughput was suffering on a lot of system (300-400KB/sec on a 10MB link). After much troubleshooting and searching, I came across this page. After adjusting the TcpWindowSize, Tcp1323Opts & SackOpts on WinXP clients...I was able to boost my performance to an acceptable level. During testing, I was able to max out around 1.5MB/sec. If you save the following text to a file, give it a .reg extension, run it & reboot. You may see similar improvements...

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters]
"Tcp1323Opts"=dword:00000001
"TcpWindowSize"=dword:0003ebc0
"SackOpts"=dword:00000001

Make your Windows Mobile phone a WiFi access point

I occasionally have the need to tether my laptop to my mobile phone to access the internet, but not often enough the justify the $45/month that Sprint wants to charge me. Because my Palm Treo 800 has WiFI built-in, I'm able to get around this restriction with WMWiFIRouter. I'm currently using the trial version, but plan to purchse the full version (20 euro, approx $26.50). I would highly recommend for any WinMo users that want to use their device as a WiFi access point.

Full list of features is here.

http://www.wmwifirouter.com/

Scalix 11.4.3

Scalix 11.4.3 is out! No new features, but numerous bug fixes. I will be upgrading our server tonight and will post if I have any issues. Already upgraded some Outlook users without problems.

We were not able to upgrade any of our Outlook users from 11.4.1, because they would often have email disappear from their inbox. We have been waiting for to be fixed since the release of 11.4.2. (Bug 15024 [Defect] Email missing when smartcache enabled)

They also may have fixed the issue where the Smartcache Manager continues to run even when Outlook closes, causing issues on the next Outlook start. (Bug 18671 [Defect] SXCACHEMGR.EXE sometimes doesn't shut down)

Release Notes: http://downloads.scalix.com/.community/11.4.3/RELEASE_NOTES.html

I'm expecting the Activesync beta to be released any day now...I hope!

Sprint Airave Follow-Up

I posted last month about setting up my Sprint Airave and wanted to write again about my experiences. For those of you just tuning in, the Airave is a Femtocell device that acts as a mini cell tower and communicates with Sprint over a broadband connection.

Since setting it up, I have had a very good experience and have a very happy Wife. My only issue was that a few calls lost the Airave signal as I walked towards the edge of my coverage. Since my regular tower signal is a bit sketchy, when I failed over to the real tower it dropped the call. Once I re-initiated the call closer to the Airave, things were all good. This isn't really an issue with the Airave and more with my local coverage, but thought I should note this.

It appears AT&T is following suit and may offer their own femtocell in the near future: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090107-femtocells-from-att-for-home.html