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Russell Smith, the Editorial Director at Petri IT Knowledgebase, has over two decades of hands-on experience in IT, in both small business settings and government IT infrastructure projects.
Russell started writing for Windows IT Pro Magazine in the early 2000s. Since then, he has contributed insights to various IT publications, including Petri and CDW. His authoritative voice has resonated across industry blogs, where he dissects complex topics into an ‘easy read’.
Russell has authored over a thousand articles, each a testament to his depth of knowledge. His expertise doesn’t stop there: he wrote a book on Privilege Management and co-authored another for Microsoft’s MOAC series. Moreover, Russell’s commitment to education shines through in the courses he crafted for Pluralsight.
He is also presenter on his own YouTube channel, This Week in IT, and the current presenter of Petri Dish.

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024
Patch Tuesday in November 2021 sees Microsoft release patches to address 55 CVEs, including fixes for 6 zero-day bugs. There are updates for products including Windows, Windows Server, Office, Exchange Server, Active Directory, Microsoft Dynamics, Hyper-V, and Azure Real Time Operating System (RTOS), which is ThreadX RTOS, an embedded real-time operating system that Microsoft purchased…

Last Update: Nov 19, 2024
Teams is one of the fastest growing products Microsoft has ever released, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there was a big focus on Teams at the November edition of Ignite. In this article, I’m going to cover all the important news in brief. New Microsoft Teams chat features Microsoft Teams chat recently…

Last Update: Nov 19, 2024
At its Ignite conference yesterday, Microsoft announced that some parts of its Fluid Framework are being rebranded as Microsoft Loop. Or at least some parts of it. First announced in 2019, the Fluid Framework provides users with what Microsoft describes as ‘atomic units of productivity’ that can be shared and worked on independently of a…

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024
Ignite Hero The second installment of Microsoft Ignite November 2021 kicks off today, November 2nd, at 4.15 CET with the opening keynote by Satya Nadella. The conference runs through to November 4th. Many of the sessions can be watched on-demand after the event but not all of them. In this article, I’m going to cut…

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024
Windows 11 is now generally available, there are already fixes for a long list of bugs and performance issues with AMD processors, and Android apps come to users in the Windows 11 Beta Channel. Plus, there’s much more of what’s new with Windows in October 2021, so let’s get started! Windows 11 is now generally…
Last Update: Sep 04, 2024
In this quick guide, I’m going to show you how to download the Windows 11 ISO image file, which you can use to install Windows 11 in a virtual machine (VM), perform a Windows 11 upgrade from Windows 10, or use to create your own installation media. If you want to install Windows 11 in…

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024
At an event on Oct 18th, 2021, Apple announced new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro notebooks, sporting updated M1 processors, the M1 Pro and M1 Max respectively. Released earlier in 2021, the 3-inch MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pros use the first generation of Apple’s M1 chip. At the time of launch, the original M1…

As part of Windows 11 Insider Preview build 22478 in the Dev Channel, Microsoft is starting to test a new way to update the servicing stack in Windows. What are Update Stack Packages? Update Stack Packages deliver changes to the Windows 11 update experience before a monthly cumulative update (CU), or yearly feature update, is…

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024
The Microsoft Teams desktop client is getting a long-awaited feature update that lets you send quoted replies to messages in chat. And it is rolling out now. It might sound like a first world problem, but when chats get long, it can be difficult to keep track of conversations without the ability to quote messages…

This month’s Patch Tuesday for includes a cumulative update (CU) for Windows 11, which was made generally available October 4th. In total Microsoft released patches addressing 71 CVEs in Windows, Edge, Exchange Server, .NET Core, SharePoint Server, and many other products. Two of the CVEs patched this month are rated Critical, and 68 Important. And…

Sharing content with users external to your organization and managing guest user access in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams can be confusing to understand and difficult to manage. If you would like to know more about this important aspect of cloud security, download this free eBook. AvePoint dives into policy considerations you need to make…

Last Update: Sep 04, 2024
Petri’s Endpoint Management 1-day virtual conference is now available to view on demand. At the end of last month, Petri hosted a full free day of learning, covering topics like how to manage devices using Microsoft Intune, how to deploy new hardware with Windows Autopilot, and managing security updates with Windows Update. The management of…