Thinkpad Yoga (Tent Mode)

Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga Review

Posted by & filed under Hardware.

I received the new Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga last week, and after spending the entire week using it as my main machine, I’m ready to let you know how it went. In the review, I use T420/T430 generically to denote references to previous generations also including X and W series.

The ThinkPad Yoga is the 12.5″ business-class brother of the Lenovo Yoga 11 and 13 models introduced last year. It fits into the ThinkPad lineup replacing the X220t/X230t series of tablets. The X230t will be Lenovo’s last X series tablet.

Read more »

Exchange 2003 and Authenticated User Relay Spam

Posted by & filed under Exchange Server.

Exchange 2003 is a good target for spammers since it is very widely used (still) and has a history of installations with less than ideal security.

In addition to the typical email-turned-spam server scenarios (open relay, security holes, NDRs), authenticated relays are next on the list. This happens when the security credentials of a user are compromised on his or her computer or phone and the credentials are then sent back “home” (to the bot, person, wherever).

What happens next? A bunch of drone authenticated users start sending spam. You may find out after your ISP sends you an email, or your users complain their email isn’t getting through because you’ve been placed on a spam blacklist.

Read more »

Configure Exchange 2013 to send external email

Posted by & filed under Exchange Server.

So you’ve just installed Exchange 2013 and you can’t send emails to other domains? No problem. Similar to Exchange 2010 (instructions found here), Exchange 2013 is installed without a default send connector enabled. In order to send emails to other Exchange servers or external domains, you’ll need to set it up. Follow the steps below to setup a send connector that will enable email to be sent to all external domains.

Read more »

MySQL Connection Response Slow on Windows 2008 / 2012

Posted by & filed under Internet Information Server, MySQL, PHP, Windows / Server.

One of the reasons why a PHP / MySQL combo seems so “slow” with regards to response times when moving from Windows 2003 (IIS6) to Windows 7/2008 (IIS7) / 2012 (IIS8), is the way many scripts connect to MySQL and having IPv6 enabled by default.

Many server installations leave WordPress or other PHP script installs to default to “localhost” when connecting to MySQL. Windows 7, 2008, 2012 have an issue with resolving localhost when IPv6 is enabled. With iishacks.com, the initial response time from MySQL goes from 600ms (using localhost) down to 70ms (using 127.0.0.1).

If your issue is initial response time, but MySQL seems to function well otherwise, your connection string may be at fault. Instead of disabling IPv6, try changing “localhost” to “127.0.0.1″  in your scripts and see if the response times improve.

Fixing an SSD Freezing on Windows 7

Posted by & filed under Hardware, Windows / Server.

I recently installed a new Intel 520 series SSD in my Thinkpad W520. I didn’t notice any issues for the first few weeks until I started running 2 virtual machines at once. There was a stuttering (or freezing) every 60-90 seconds for about 10 seconds.

Taking a look at Perfmon, I found the Disk Queue to be very high – during the freezing the Max Queue was up over 3500. There is a relationship between current and average queue explained here, but a good rule of thumb is that a length of 2 per disk is reasonable. Any more than that for an extended period and there is a disk bottleneck.

Read more »