Certified Mail

Certified Mail: September 2004

Readers share their take on our upcoming evolution into </i>Redmond <i>magazine and other issues.

• By MCP Magazine Readers
• 09/01/2004

Redmond vs. MCP Mag
Replace MCP Mag with a far better one? (In reference to August's Chief Concerns column.) It's not broken, so don't "fix" it. Yes, I am sure many readers of MCP Mag are not certified, so what? I can pick up a magazine about airplanes and read it, but I am not a pilot. The truth is, MCP Mag is a great magazine and the name works just fine. I have subscribed to many magazines over the years and a name change usually means one thing: A major change in content and editorial direction. There are many magazines out there already reporting on the "industry," do we really need another one?

Anyway, that's my two cents, for what it is worth.

—John Kull, A+, N+, MCSE
Senior Network Administrator
Maryville, Illinois

I was rather honored to receive a free subscription to MCP Magazine when I recently became an MCP and then passed my MCAD and MCSD certifications. It was a lot of work and it was nice to feel part of a somewhat elite group.

So now you are changing the name to Redmond magazine and making it a "first class" tech mag so you can serve a wider market. OK, fine, but it won't be the same magazine anymore. It will completely bypass the original purpose of the magazine, to serve and inform the MCP community.

I wish you well with the new magazine. Please include some content for the developer community, you seem to be way top-heavy in network administration articles.

—Leo Kaminski
Portland, Oregon

My good wishes for Redmond magazine. Well, I've been receiving MCP Mag in PDF version for the past five months or so, and was wondering if I will continue receiving Redmond in PDF. Is there a fee to continue receiving it, because I'm not paying anything for MCP Mag after becoming an MCSD.

Keep going with your good work!

—S.Shanmuga Raja, MCSD
Chennai, India

Have no fear. The title of the print version of MCP Magazine is changing to Redmond magazine, and so will the PDF version. That is, you'll continue to get the same great content, but more of it, via PDF format. Also note that we're developing a new site for Redmond magazine, Redmondmag.com. Despite this, MCPmag.com will continue to cover Microsoft-related certification news and issues, plus tactical solutions for the systems administrators working in the trenches.
—Michael Domingo, Editor, MCPmag.com

Big changes at this magazine. What happened to the Em C. Pea column ("Call Me Certifiable") at the end? This column was my favorite.

—Steven Warren, MVP Windows, MCDBA, MCSE, MCSA, CCA
Winter Haven, Florida

While my column is disappearing from Redmond magazine, you should continue to find me at MCPmag.com monthly. I still want to hear your gripes and feedback on certification and technology in general, which I'll share with Fabio at the dinner table (much to his chagrin).
—Em C. Pea, Contributing Editor, MCPmag.com

True Objectivity
The August review, "A Virtual Shootout: Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 & EMC Vmware Workstation 4.5," is the first truly objective review of VM technology. The most telling to me was this quote, "But if you're a Microsoft shop, or have modest expectations, Virtual PC is a fine choice." Accurate, concise and useful—a refreshing change from the standard marketing. While this is encouraging for those of us that understand the importance of such distinctions, when it comes to VM technology, what people refuse to talk about is VMWare's ESX product. Nothing else on the market is even in the same class.

—Name withheld by request

Web Browsing Sans IE
I was pleased to see the thoughts of another Firefox fan (Don Jones' Windows Tip Sheet, "Secure, Safe, Feature-Laden Web Browsing," http://mcpmag.com/columns/tipsheet). Yes, I switched to Firefox when it was still Phoenix, then Firebird, now Firefox 0.92. I love the tabbed browsing, and the one-stop privacy controls; some great extensions and themes, too. I tried Mozilla, but it was just too bloated. Firefox is exactly what I want: a small, fast, extensible browser with a sensible set of features.

As for the next IE release, I'm basically hoping that Microsoft will emulate Firefox. Tabbed browsing would be great! Pop-up blocking would be nice, but I just use the Google Toolbar for that function. (The search features are a nifty extra; I really use it for the pop-up blocking.) Some sort of sane security features would be nice, to help me get a handle on all of the click-to-install ActiveX Spyware that has proliferated all over the Web … themes and extensions would finish the job nicely, by providing a method for the Internet community to supply whatever features the base install doesn't have.

—Rob Shaw-Fuller, MCSE, CCNA, CNA
Washington, D.C.

You'll be happy to know that the next release of IE will have both tabs and a pop-up blocker, among other enhancements. As for sane security features … I imagine something will be done, but having IE so tightly integrated with the OS means, I fear, it'll always be a security problem.
—Don Jones

I, too, have been using Firefox on both my WinXP Pro box and SUSE 9.1. I like the Windows version a bit more. Actually, I like the new Mozilla 1.7 for Linux a lot (all the features on Firefox, but a bit richer).

Opera is great, but the fact that they want to charge $37 to remove the ad banner is a big downside.

—Neal Zimmerman
Southampton, Pennsylvania

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