X111.com

Training’s over, and most of it was quite interesting, particularly the Exchange 2003 stuff. I have to admit there’s quite a bit of functionality hidden away in there, but I still wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole for my personal mail server. It’s just too damn wobbly and some of the more interesting features (RPC over http for example) feel like they were last minute afterthoughts that were added in the most clunky way possible. Does it work; yes. Would anyone with half a brain implement a feature that requires poking in the registry and making obscure keys that bind/open over a dozen ports in a production environment; hell no.

So after about 9 or 10 courses I’m done for the year, and I must say it’s been educational indeed. I learned a lot about Linux’ weaknesses I didn’t know and a lot about Windows’ strengths I was unfamiliar with, leaving me more in the middle when it comes to ‘taking sides’. I’ve always preferred to look for the right tool for the job instead of playing OS wars. But some of the stereotypes are just too true, when you look at the stuff we did during all the Novell Suse CLP trainings almost everything always worked and at the end of each course all servers were still running silky smooth. In contrast during some of the MCSA courses we all failed to get something working and we were lucky if half the machines were still running as intended by the end of the course… that does say something.