Accessing O365 Shared Mailboxes With Android

Microsoft's official position is that you cannot access Shared Mailboxes in an Office 365 tenancy from an Android device.  Here's how to do it by configuring a new IMAP account with the following settings:

Incoming Settings
1. Email Address = SharedMailbox@Domain.com
2. Username = O365Account@Domain.com\SharedMailbox
3. Password = Password
4. IMAP Server = outlook.office365.com
5. Security Type = SSL
6. Port = 993
7. IMAP path prefix = Optional

Outgoing Settings
1. SMTP Server = smtp.office365.com
2. Security Type = TLS
3. Port = 587
4. Require Sign In = Yes
5. Username = O365Account@Domain.com
6. Password = Password

You should be able to have this work also on iOS and Android (and maybe even Mac OSX) devices by setting an account up in a similar fashion.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Windows 7 Reaches Its First EOL Step

Windows 7, the operating system that Microsoft simply can't kill off, has reached the first major step in its End Of Life cycle - the end of mainstream support was yesterday (13 Jan, 2015).  As can be seen on Microsoft's Product Support Lifecycle page for Windows 7, this date has now been reached and we're now in the Extended Support phase.  This is just like when Voyager 1 passed out of our Solar System in August 2012 and into interstellar space.

What this means is that the product will now only receive security updates - no non-security updates will be made available for Windows 7 based products (unless you have a Premier Support Agreement for Windows 7 Enterprise, which I can guarantee no small business has).  This is not a nail in the coffin of Windows 7, but it does mean that the product is entering its final years of functionality.  Paid support is still available for Windows 7 on a per-incident basis.

On the 14th of January, 2020 we'll have another milestone - the last day of extended (security update) support.  That will be the last nail in the coffin of Windows 7 - this is what happened to Windows XP back on 8th April, 2014.

So, right now there's nothing to worry about if you're still running Windows 7 on your computers - currently computer manufacturers are still allowed to supply computers with Windows 7 pre-installed if the manufacturer still has old stock of Windows 7 licenses.  But with Windows 8 and also Windows 8.1 already out and Windows 10 on the horizon, it may be time to think about the steps needed to move up to the current/next version of Windows.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Outright theft and plagiarism

It was brought to my attention yesterday that the author (sic) Pomiraja from the http://www.AskMeBoy.com site was plagiarising my blog posts.  I'd like to thank the anonymous person who brought this to my attention.

AskMeBoy have so far, through Pomiraja's plagiarism, republished 26 of my blog posts (as of right now) as Pomiraja's own work without giving any credit to me.  To see exactly how stupid this plagiarist is, they have even left my signature on all of the posts they have stolen!

If you would like to see a list of the plagiarised posts, have a look at https://askmeboy.com/?s=outspoken+wookie or the screen captures I took below - as I said, there are 26 at this point in time.  I don't know if this will encourage the owners of the website to axe Pomiraja for this plagiarism, axe the stolen and mis-credited posts, or have the site publish a written apology.  Their contact page is broken so I could not contact them directly about this, forcing me to make this public complaint about their plagiarism.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie