Taking a break from software...
While I am in the midst of a rather complex network upgrade project (W2k to W2k3) that has already taken about a month, I figured I might as well make some comments about it.
Exchange 2003 still irks me with its lack of support for HTTP Mail Connectors (Hotmail) and “Catch-All” accounts. Equally, I don’t like that NDR’s are still tied directly to recipient policies, making it that much harder to work with them. On the mobile end, Exchange 2003 really makes it easy for administrators to setup and deploy mobile solutions.
Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server seem to be just fine together for almost all of the backwards compatibility stuff we needed to do in the forest, with the exception of a 2000 RRAS/ISA Server having some problems with LDAP access to a 2003 DC.
Windows XP SP1 still has that annoying setting that causes havoc with group policies and several other things.
2003 RRAS has some useful new criteria to check for would-be connections. Somewhat related, it seemed like setting up IPSec/L2TP connections was a lot friendlier then it used to be.
The new Group Policy tools make managing GPOs a billion times more efficient then it used to be, although I would still like to see support added for binary registry values. Specifically, I would like support for client power settings.
.NET Pre-Installed on 2003… hope this is a trend that continues ;)
The new default security levels are certainly encouraging, not to mention administrative friendly.
AD Schemas could still be easier to work with.
IIS 6 has set a positive new direction for future IIS versions.
And finally, there is no better music to listen to when setting up networks then Motown ;)