Category Archives: microsoft

licensing, microsoft, office 365, tech

New Outlook confusion as connection to Exchange Online or Business Basic mailboxes blocked “due to the license provided by your work or school”

What Microsoft gives with one hand, it removes with the other; or so it seemed for users of paid Exchange Online accounts when the company said that “for years, Windows has offered the Mail and Calendar apps for all to use. Now Windows is bringing innovative features and configurations of the Microsoft Outlook app and Outlook.com to all consumers using Windows – at no extra cost, with more to come”.

That post in September 2023 does not mention a significant difference that was introduced with this new Outlook. It is all to do with licensing. Historically, Outlook was always the email client for Exchange, and this is now true for Exchange Online, the email component of Microsoft 365. Microsoft’s various 365 plans for business are differentiated in part by whether or not users purchase a subscription to the desktop Office applications. Presuming though that the user had some sort of license for Outlook, whether from a 365 plan, or from a standalone purchase of Office, they could add their Exchange Online email account to Outlook, even if that particular account was part of a plan that did not include desktop Outlook.

Some executive at Microsoft must have thought about this and decided that with Outlook becoming free for everyone, this would not do. Therefore a special check was added to Outlook: if an account is a business account that does not come with a desktop license for Outlook, block it. The consequence was that users upgrading or trying to add such an account saw the message:

“This account is not supported in Outlook for Windows due to the license provided by your work or school. Try to login with another account or go to Outlook on the web.”

The official solution was to upgrade those accounts to one that includes desktop Outlook. That means at least Microsoft 365 Business Standard at $12.50 per month. By contract, Microsoft 365 Business Basic is $6.00 per month and Exchange Online Plan 1 just $4.00 per month.

Just occasionally Microsoft makes arbitrary and shockingly bad decisons and this was one of them. What was wrong with it? A few things:

  • Administrators of 365 business tenancies were given no warning of the change
  • Exchange Online is supposedly still an email server. Email is an internet standard – though there are already standards issues with Exchange Online such as the requirement for OAuth authentication and SMTP disabled by default. See Mozilla’s support note for Thunderbird, for example. However, Exchange Online accounts still worked with other mail clients such as Apple Mail and eM Client; only Outlook now added this licensing requirement.
  • The new Outlook connected OK to free accounts such as Microsoft’s Outlook.com and to other email services. It was bewildering that a Microsoft email client would connect fine to other services both free and paid, but not to Microsoft’s own paid email service.
  • The description of the Exchange Online service states that “Integration with Outlook means they’ll enjoy a rich, familiar email experience with offline access.” This functionality was removed, meaning a significant downgrade of the service without notification or price reduction.
  • Some organisations have large numbers of Exchange Online accounts – expecting them suddenly to change all the plans to another costing triple the amount, to retain functionality they had before, is not reasonable.
Image from Exchange Online product description showing how it highlights Outlook integration as one of its features
The product description for Exchange Online highlights Outlook integration as one of its features

Users did the only thing they can do in these circumstances and made a public fuss. This long and confusing thread was the result, with comments such as:

The takeaway is: You can no longer add a mail account in the new Outlook if said mail account doesn’t come with its OWN Outlook (apps) license. This is ridiculous beyond understanding. Unacceptable to the point that if they don’t fix this, I’ll cancel BOTH Exchange licenses and move over to Google Business with my domains.

There was also a well reasoned post in Microsoft Feedback observing, among other things, that “At no point is Business Basic singled out as a web-only product in any of the Microsoft Terms or Licensing documents.” 

The somewhat good news is that Microsoft has backtracked, a bit. This month, over 4 months after the problem appeared, the company posted its statement on “How licensing works for work and school accounts in the new Outlook for Windows.” The company now says that there will be a “capability change in the new Outlook for Windows”, rolled out from the start of this month, following which a licensed version of Outlook will work with Exchange Online, Business Basic and similar accounts, provided that an account with a desktop license is set as the primary account. This includes consumer accounts:

“If you have a Business Standard account (which includes a license for desktop apps) added as your primary account, that license will apply, and you can now add any secondary email accounts regardless of licensing status (e.g. Business Basic). This also applies to personal accounts with a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family, as these plans include the license rights to the Microsoft 365 applications for desktop. Once one of these accounts is set as the primary account, you can add Business Basic, E1 or similar accounts as secondary accounts.”

This is a substantial improvement and removes most but not all of the sting of these changes.

microsoft, tech, Uncategorized, windows, windows 7

What is an operating system for? A friend’s Windows 11 rant shows disconnect between vendors and users

What is an operating system? The traditional definition is something like, the system software that manages computer hardware and provides services for applications.

This definition does not describe what you get though when you install an “operating system” such as macOS, Windows, Android or ChromeOS – or more likely, receive hardware with it pre-installed. What you get is an operating system (OS) plus a ton of stuff that can only be described as applications. In practice, the reach of what we call an operating system has extended over the years. Even in the early days, an OS would come with utilities, including a command line, a command line editor, perhaps a C compiler, file management tools and so on. Then there was a change when pre-installed graphical user interfaces arrived. Windows came with Notepad, Calculator, Write and Paint.

What is a commercial operating system today? We can add to the traditional definition at least the following:

  • A vehicle for advertising
  • A means of lock-in
  • A vehicle for data collection

On Windows, advertising is everything from the pre-installed trials, to the nagging to upgrade OneDrive, to the mysterious appearance of Candy Crush on the Start menu.

The lock-in comes via the ecosystem. Apple is worse than Windows for this in that more of its applications work only on Apple operating systems. On Windows though Microsoft hardly has to bother since a huge legacy of Windows-only applications keeps users from changing, especially in business.

Data collection is via near-enforced login and telemetry. An Apple ID is not required for macOS but it is strongly encouraged and necessary for the App Store. A Microsoft or Entra ID account is not required to use Windows, but the setup points you strongly in that direction.

Is any of this good for the user? A friend is disappointed with Windows 11 – mainly because it is less familiar than Windows 10. His central points are that Microsoft makes irritating changes that disrespect the learning users have invested in Windows, and has left behind the notion of the operating system as a blank canvas waiting for applications to make it useful.

Personally I put up with Windows 11; it is not that different, though there are a few things that I particularly dislike:

  • The taskbar icons in the centre. I routinely move them to the left. Settings – Personalisation – Taskbar – Taskbar behaviors – Taskbar alignment, no registry editing required. This single change makes Windows 11 feel much more familiar, and it is better since left-aligned icons are easier to target.
  • The Start menu. This was great in Windows 95 and improved up until Windows 7. Windows 8 replaced it for … reasons. Windows 10 reinvented it but badly. I have trained myself always to click All apps as a second step after clicking Start. Click on a letter for the letter menu, select a letter, start the app. It works reliably, unlike Search which is a usability disaster when what you want is to start an application.
  • The File Explorer. You right click a file, and instead of a single menu of options, there are three sets of options, one in a row of icons, one in a mysterious subset of options, and one under Show more options. A poor user interface for a common task.

There are other things, of course. I always turn off the distracting Widgets on the taskbar. I always show as many of the “additional System tray icons” as I can, with the exception of consumer Teams. I always open Edge, reflect on the cheap ugly mess that is the default home page, and set about disabling it.

These annoyances are mainly design errors by Microsoft rather than an a direct consequence of the changing role of the operating system; yet they would be impossible without that change.

Imagine for a moment if Windows were optimised for installing and running applications. Oddly, Windows 8 (which most hated for more or less the same reasons my friend cites for disliking Windows 11) did have that vision. Install from the Store, with clean setup and easy removal. Run full-screen with no distractions. Before you say it, yes there were issues, the UI was not good enough, the apps were not there, we missed multiple overlapping windows, and more. There was a good concept in there though.

microsoft, tech, windows

Windows 11 rant: “I replaced Win 11 with Win 10. It was like walking back into my house”

A friend purchased a Windows 11 laptop and this was his reaction, slightly edited. It caused me some reflection on what is an operating system, which I have posted separately. I also note: Windows 10 goes out of support in October 2025.

“I recently bought a Win 11 laptop. I was stunned. I must apologise for what follows, but it actually made me quite angry to realise that the Chief Product Manager at Microsoft clearly has NO understanding of ‘opportunity costs’, thus wasting millions of our ‘person-hours’ worldwide.

“For many years I worked in health research, where we realised a decade or two ago that something doesn’t just have to give better results to be worth implementing. It’s got to be SUFFICIENTLY better to offset the cost of implementing the change. If you start something new that ‘works better’ but in doing so, fail to consider the additional costs involved in everyone changing how they do things, professional and patient, to not just know but understand how & why the new thing is better it is very easy to end up with everything working worse than before. NEW must be > (OLD + Opportunity Costs). Ideally a lot greater, if you want to bring people with you. This isn’t rocket science, not anymore.

“I get that most IT correspondents are professionals used to having to plough through new Operating Manuals (pdf, sure) every two years, but out here in Userland I am far too busy doing interesting stuff with my computer & applications. Over a few years I learnt where the main knobs & levers of Win 10 are. And haven’t thought about it since. So, for Microsoft to carelessly move everything, just because they believe the new setup will be quicker/easier/more efficient for me is not only staggeringly rude, but stupid.

“Consider: It probably only took me a few hundred hours of use of Win 10 to learn where all the OS stuff was to the point where it was automatic. Since then the OS stuff has usually required no conscious input at all, like riding a bike. Some things might not be easy to find, but once you know, you know. Then along comes Win 11, and all this stuff is a pain in the arse again, nothing is where it used to be. So I don’t CARE if, in theory, the new arrangements are easier to use ONCE YOU KNOW THEM, my point is, why should I, and (hundreds of) millions of other Windows users, have to re-learn all that sh*t?

“IT’S JUST AN OPERATING SYSTEM! (Can someone at Microsoft put up posters?)

“I’m not interested in it! It’s the environment in which the things I AM interested in – applications – video editors, DAWs, office apps etc.- live. Don’t f*ck with it. How would you feel if suddenly you had to learn to speak & walk again, just because someone thought they knew a better way to do these things?

“And consider the hundreds of hundreds of millions of person hours you are WASTING, as we have to re-learn where things are? Double-click when before we had to single click. Settings moved somewhere completely different. Even where on the screen to look: Does Microsoft not employ a single behavioural psychologist who could tell them how much time (and attention) is wasted when you move something that was always bottom left to top middle?

“And then, the final straw: I found that most of these maddening ‘I’m bored, let’s change grass from to green to blue’ ‘improvements’ can be reversed, just by editing the registry. It was only on my fifth edit, I realised what was going on. The old ways of doing things, that I’d invested serious time in learning about to the point where they were automatic, were STILL THERE! It’s just that someone Microsoft couldn’t even raise their eyes from Tiktok (or whatever was distracting them), to add a few lines of code, to make the previous ways of operating, accessible via a menu. Remember them? You put the user in charge? Of their own computer? The very thought…

“At that point I realised that Microsoft’s institutional memory had, ironically, forgotten why Bill Gates got so rich in the first place. Let’s recall – IBM agreed to let him licence rather than sell his OS for their new, pathetically under-powered ‘Personal Computer’, because they thought it would be a small market. I mean, who would want to use a desktop PC , when they could use a terminal to access a mainframe with a brain the size of a planet (sorry, Doug)? History tells us they then discovered, too late, that the Mk.1 Human Being prefers under-powered personal computers over high-powered mainframes, for the same reason we all prefer living in small chaotic houses to living in large, well-organised institutions.

“So I replaced Win 11 with Win 10. It was like walking back into my house. Subsequently, in a typical working day I no longer had to expend any further conscious thought on operating the Operating System – because I learnt how to do that years ago. And then got back to the interesting stuff.”

azure, microsoft, tech, Uncategorized

A mild case of Azure bill shock: is this the most over-priced service on Microsoft’s cloud?

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I have been experimenting with accessing Azure storage from remote PCs and tried out the option to use SFTP which was introduced last year. It works though there are limitations, like no support for SSH commands after connecting, no resume support for uploads, and no support for Azure AD authentication – this last is a bit of an issue since fine-grained permissions can only be done with local users, specific to the blob storage.

I actually thought I had turned this off after my experiment but I did not. So I had SFTP enabled on a test storage account, doing nothing. I spotted it of course when I got a large (for my usage) bill. Simply having SFTP enabled on a storage account costs around $220 per month.

To be fair to Microsoft, the cost is documented and there is a notice in the portal, in the details for the storage account, that enabling SFTP incurs a charge, though it does not say how much.

The cost for enabling SFTP

The price is remarkable though, especially given that it seems that the SFTP support is a bit of a hack. Perhaps Microsoft actually runs up a dedicated VM for this in the background, who knows?

“The cost is astronomical considering the service, it’s like $7.20 a day to use and roughly $220 a Month. It’s WAY cheaper to use a VM. This service is like 3x too much,” said a comment from another sufferer.

My advice is not to do this. My further advice is to track closely the actual spend on any new services you run up since is it the only reliable way to avoid this kind of problem.

azure, microsoft, software development, tech

Microsoft to remove Azure “Basic” IP number and load balancer in favour of pricier options

Microsoft is removing some features from Azure which were called “Basic,” in favour of alternatives which have more features but are also more expensive.

A load balancer is a network component which balances traffic to virtual machines. The Basic load balancer is free but has a few limitations, such as no compatibility with availability zones, support for only 300 instances, no SLA (Service Level Agreement), and no support for NAT Gateway. Microsoft has emailed customers saying:

On 30 September 2025, Azure Basic Load Balancer will be retired. You can continue to use your existing Basic Load Balancers until then, but you’ll no longer be able to deploy new ones after 31 March 2025.

The Standard load balancer routes to availability zones, supports up to 5000 instances, is secure by default, and has a 99.9% SLA, but it costs $0.025 per hour, or around $18 per month, for up to 5 rules.

A Basic public IP number costs  $0.0036 per hour or about $2.60 per month. It is a perfectly good IP number but does not support zone resiliency. A standard public IP number costs $0.005 per hour or about $3.60 per month, and does support zone resiliency. A similar email has been sent to users, with the same dates.

Although these extra charges will not make much of a ripple in enterprise accounts, they can be noticeable, for example if you are an individual developing an application and trying to keep within a strict budget.

apple, microsoft, professional, tech, Uncategorized, windows

Using an M1 Mac after a lifetime of mainly Windows

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So I got an M1 MacBook Pro back in April and it is time for a quick brain dump on my experience. I am not travelling as much as I did pre-lockdown, so although I got the Mac as a replacement for an ancient Windows laptop it gets used at home too. My usual desktop PC is a few years old but a decent spec gaming PC withCore i7-7700 3.6 GHz, 16GB RAM and Nvidia RTX 2060 GPU. I have been happy with it; but I do find myself thinking “why not just use the MacBook” when needing to fire up a computer, a subconscious preference that bears examination. Most of my work is writing, web browsing and coding.

I do not particularly prefer the macOS UI to that of Windows. It is more consistent because Apple managed iOS vs macOS sensibly whereas Microsoft made a hash of Windows desktop vs Windows CE vs Windows Phone vs Windows 8 and has now settled on a thing called WinUI but scratch the surface of Windows and you still find UI that has not changed for decades.

I digress though. I do not mind the Windows UI, I am used to it. What I do mind though is annoyances like the always-broken Windows search, and the way certain actions cause lengthy pauses that make me wonder what my PC is doing. In my case, sorting a large directory in Windows Explorer takes an age. Another little issue is that creating a new folder works fine, but renaming it causes a long pause. There also seem to be some focus issues. I create a new folder, I rename it and press Enter. Eventually it renames, but half the time the focus mysteriously switches to a different folder.

I realise that these problems do not occur with a new install of Windows and that I could pop out and buy a Surface laptop and it would be fine. For a bit. Windows, it seems to me, still suffers from the cruft problem beautifully described by Verity Stob 20 years ago. I do not think Macs are completely immune (I had a Mac Mini where I upgraded the OS once too often and it crawled) but does seem to me more resistant.

There is another thing that I like about the MacBook. You close the lid and it sleeps. You open the lid minutes, hours or days later, and it wakes. This has never worked well for me on Windows, though it is meant to do the same. I can believe that it is hard to implement, but when it works it is a huge benefit.

There is also the unwanted advertising that has crept into the Windows UI especially since Windows 11. Working on the MacBook I do notice its absence; I can better focus on what I want to do.

From a developer perspective, the performance of the M1 Pro is a delight. I work mostly in Visual Studio Code on both platforms; even on Windows I have come to prefer VS Code for most types of work. There is also the fact that Unix-like operating systems have won in server and web applications, so there is less friction there.

Launchpad: reminiscent of the Windows 8 Start screen?

Microsoft came up with a great application launcher in the Windows 95 Start menu – and improved it until it reached its peak in Windows 7. I also like the Windows 8 full-screen version. Windows 10 and 11 are not so good though. You get inadvertent web searches, as well as the problem of apps that you search for not appearing for strange reasons. The Mac Launchpad, which reminds me of the Windows 8 full-screen Start menu, seems to work well. You type what you want and all the matches appear.

What do I miss when not using Windows? It is mainly a matter of working out new ways to do certain tasks. I do miss Hyper-V and WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) though I have had success with UTM for running both Windows and Ubuntu on the Mac. The integration of WSL with the desktop OS is great though. Microsoft Office still works best on Windows though not to the extent of a few years back. There is no Paint or Notepad, and favourites like Notepad++ do not run natively, but Preview works for cropping images and alternatives to Windows utilities exist.

Sometimes you are pushed towards the command line which is not a bad thing. No WinSCP for example, so use scp instead, and do some helper scripts for common tasks. You end up saving time. (I realise you can script WinSCP as well). And no need for Putty; just type ssh or script the command line you need.

I do expect though to use Windows less in future, and for me that is a big change.

microsoft, tech

Microsoft moves towards UDP in place of TCP for Azure Virtual Desktop, claims lower latency and higher reliability

Microsoft has announced the public preview of Azure Virtual Desktop RDP Shortpath for public networks – a bit of a mouthful, but what this really means is a switch towards UDP as the first choice transport for remote desktop sessions on the Azure cloud.

“Long running TCP sessions are problematic” said Senior Program Manager Denis Gundarev. “UDP is more tolerant to the temporary network interruptions caused by wireless interference or by changes in dynamic routing.”

UDP in itself is not enough; for example, UDP “does not care about each individual packet’s packet order or delivery. It does not have built-in congestion or rate control,” explains Gundarev. The implementation for RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) uses a thing called URCP (Universal Rate Control Protocol) which Microsoft developed back in 2013, for real-time communications.

AVD already supported UDP for private networks, but many users do not have a private connection to Azure like ExpressRoute, hence the introduction of the public network version. Microsoft says that the benefits include lower latency, better network utilization, and high tolerance to packet loss.

Implementing the preview is done by setting a registry key on the AVD session host, so this can be done experimentally for just a few hosts in order to try out the feature. That said, it will not always be possible. “RDP Shortpath may fail if you use double NAT setups,” said Gundarev. Users should not notice as the old TCP-based connection will be used automatically instead.

microsoft, tech

Microsoft’s “new commerce experience” for 365 services: not just price increases

Microsoft stated in August that it is increasing prices for Microsoft 365 (formerly known as Office 365), the increase being around 20%, from March 1 2022. The company argues that prices have not changed substantially for ten years – perhaps contentious since it has introduced premium plans that are more expensive – and that “this updated pricing reflects the increased value we have delivered to our customers over the past 10 years.”

There has been inflation of around 2% per annum since 2011 and there have been need features, so a price increase is not unreasonable. However there are some other changes in the pipeline that are more difficult. This is the thing called the New Commerce Experience that impacts both customers and resellers. Finding out what has really changed is not that easy but if you dig through the fluff about “agility” and “alignment” and “streamlining”, there are some standout changes:

  • Customers that want the flexibility to reduce seat count will pay 20% more. Until now, it has been possible to reduce seat count without penalty, even though Microsoft presents its pricing as for an “annual term.” With NCE, customers can either pay by the month with premium prices but the ability to reduce seat count with a month’s notice, or pay less but commit to seats for one or three years. During that period, seat count can be increased but not decreased.

    Reasonable? The problem perhaps is that it means giving up one of the benefits of cloud, which is elasticity. Or at least, you can still have elasticity but it is going to cost more. We have also seen this with reserved instance pricing on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform: the price comes down substantially if you commit to paying for one year or more.

  • There will be no cancellation allowed after the first 72 hours of a term, as explained here. This may impact partners more than customers. Scenario: partner sells 1,000 seats of Microsoft 365 for a 3-year term to some company. Three months into the term, the company goes bust. Partners are saying that this leaves them on the hook for the remaining cost. Here, for example, Australian distributor Dicker Data states that “If a customer (who has the agreement with Microsoft) no longer want or can finish the payment of the contract (bankruptcy for example), the partner will incur the costs of paying the remainder of the contract to Microsoft.”

One hopes that such matters are negotiable, but it is a significant risk especially in these unpredictable times of pandemic and climate change.

microsoft, tech

Exchange emails stuck in queue because “message deferred by categorizer agent”- Happy New Year admins!

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The first day of a new year is a great moment to relax and prepare for what is ahead – but spare a thought for Microsoft Exchange administrators who may have woken up to seized up installations of their on-premises email servers. I was among those affected, but only on my tiny system. Messages were stuck in the submission queue, suspiciously since midnight or thereabouts (somehow a message sneaked through timed 12.14 am) and the last error reported by the queue viewer was “Messages deferred by categorizer agent.”

As usual I went down a number of rabbit holes. Restart the Exchange Transport service. Reboot the server. Delete the first message not to be delivered in case it was corrupt and somehow clogging up the queue. Check for certificate issues.

It was none of these. Here is the guilty party in the event viewer:

image

The FIPS-FS Microsoft Scan Engine failed to load, with the error can’t convert “2201010001” too long.

The impact was that the malware filter could not check the message, hence the error from the categorizer agent.

The solution is to run the Exchange Shell on the server and navigate to the Scripts directory where Exchange is installed, for example C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Scripts. Here you will find a script called Disable-AntimalwareScanning.ps1.

& $env:ExchangeInstallPath\Scripts\Disable-AntimalwareScanning.ps1

should work. Run it, restart the  Exchange Transport service, and email will start to flow.

Once the problem is patched, there is a companion script called Enable-AntimalwareScanning which restores it. Though I am not sure of the value of the Exchange malware filter since Microsoft considers that even on-premises installations should use the Microsoft 365 services for spam and malware scanning, and the on-premises protection features are not kept up to date, meaning that a third-party or open source spam and malware filter is a necessity anyway, unless you go the Office 365 route.

Another reason not to run Exchange on-premises – but Microsoft still says that hybrid systems using Azure Active Directory Connect should do so in order to manage mailboxes.

Note: the maximum value for a 32-bit signed integer is 2,147,483,647. Yesterday which was perhaps represented as 2,112,310,001 would have fitted within that whereas today 2,202,020,001 did not. Dates and times are awkward for programmers.

Update: Microsoft  has an official fix here. Thanks to Erik in the comments for the link.

microsoft, tech

Microsoft posts another strong set of results, does not know how to invest its profits

Microsoft has announced its quarterly financial statements, reporting revenue of $33.1 billion, up 14% on the same period last year (though fractionally down on the previous quarter).

It does not know how to invest the money it is making. It returned $7.9 billion to shareholders via dividends and buybacks.

What’s notable? The fastest-growing business is Azure, with revenue up by 59%, followed by Dynamics 365 up by 41%.

Office 365 commercial revenue up by 25%, Dynamics 365 up by 41%.

Microsoft notes that it is achieving “higher average revenue per user” on Office 365, indicating some success in adding premium features.

LinkedIn is performing well, revenue up by 25%.

Xbox hardware revenue is down by 34%, but gaming revenue overall down by only 7%. The next hope for gaming will be when the next generation of Xbox appears, Project “Scarlett”, expected this time next year.

In Windows. business revenue is up in both “commercial revenue” (Microsoft 365 and other license sales) and OEM Pro revenue (PCs with Windows 10 Pro installed). However consumer Windows is down 7%. Microsoft says “pressure in the entry level category”, but my guess is that home PCs are just not being replaced and that Chromebooks and iPads are eating into laptop sales.

Quarter ending Sept 30th 2019 vs quarter ending Sept 30th 2018, $millions

Segment Revenue Change Operating income Change
Productivity and Business Processes 11077 +1306 4782 +901
Intelligent Cloud 10845 +2278 3889 +958
More Personal Computing 11133 +387 4015 +872

The segments break down as:

Productivity and Business Processes: Office, Office 365, Dynamics 365 and on-premises Dynamics, LinkedIn

Intelligent Cloud: Server products, Azure cloud services

More Personal Computing: Consumer including Windows, Xbox; Bing search; Surface hardware