Election Day in the USA

I told my staff to figure out the best time to vote and to go ahead and do it -- don't worry about time away from work. I can't reach half of 'em by phone or e-mail so they must have chosen the busiest time and the longest line! Hey, anyone ever heard of a BlackBerry?!

I have no idea who'll win (could be a stunning Nader upset, eh what?), but I do know that the main candidates talked more about George W. and William Ayers than about our huge IT industry.

Posted by Doug Barney on November 04, 20080 comments

E-Mail Security Lax

Posted by Doug Barney on November 04, 20080 comments

MagCloud.com

That's pretty cool, but what's cooler is that the site is testing out Azure, Microsoft's new cloud platform.

Posted by Doug Barney on November 04, 20080 comments

Mailbag: Thumbs Up for Vista

I use Vista Business Edition SP1 at work, and Vista Home Premium Edition SP1 at home. I have no problems at all with either of them. I can do all of my work just fine on the work system, and I play all kinds of graphics-intensive games on my home system. Vista works great for me, so I don't know what everyone is complaining about.
-Kyle

Don't be afraid of Vista! I am running all Vista boxes in my office, and have been for a year. I run both 32- and 64-bit machines without any problems. I do have to admit, however, that there are more issues with 64-bit boxes regarding driver functionality, but they're workable. SP1 was smooth as silk with 32-bit systems, but there were a couple of hangs in installing the correct 64-bit patch. Some of my customers for whom I've recently built new Vista systems are well over 65 and run Vista flawlessly. I receive very few help calls!

With Microsoft getting ready to retire XP soon, we are all feeling the pinch to switch over. If we were to wait for Windows 7, we would still be in the same "wait and see" boat, because I don't think Microsoft is ever going to have one OS hang around that long again (as in NT, for instance).
-Dan

I've been on Vista since day one, on a machine that was labeled as Vista-ready and that shipped with XP installed. And it's a x64 machine. I should have more problems than anyone, but I've been virtually problem-free. I think you guys all give Vista a very undeserved bad rap. -Anonymous

To be honest, I have no idea what the fuss is all about with Vista being deployed from an IT perspective. I'm currently working for a good sizeed corporation (800-plus employees) that owns a large base of financial institutions. We have a mixture of Windows XP and Vista Business Edition 32-bit SP1 deployed at the majority of our banks. Vista is working great with our bank applications and a majority of the older bank apps have been made to work with little effort. We in IT have welcomed the additional security added to Vista, like a more robust Group Policy that allows even better control over our users.

We are not waiting for Windows 7 as an answer to what's wrong in Vista (and we have yet to see many issues at all), as those will be fixed like anything. I would like to see Vista stop being treated like the ill-fated stepchild of Windows ME.
-Bill

We had been holding back on Vista rollout internally as our early experience with Vista was pretty discouraging. The net assessment was the gains from Vista were pretty even with the downsides, so why move from XP? But we recently acquired an HP laptop machine and discovered that it would not be easy to do with it what we usually do with a new machine, i.e., wipe what the manufacturer loaded on the hard drive and reload with an RTM version of XP SP3. The RTM version of XP did include disk drivers for the type of hard drive controller built into the laptop. We would need to locate the right disk drivers and hope they would integrate correctly into the XP installer.

It had been a while since we had looked at Vista, and we also were curious about 64-bit performance, so we elected instead to replace the Vista Home 64-bit version shipped with the laptop with an RTM Vista 64 Ultimate version. The Vista shipped from HP included all sorts of add-on "crapware" programs that killed its performance during boot-up. Replacing this with RTM Vista 64 Ultimate SP1 eliminated the add-on programs and their negative effect on performance. We were amazed at the high performance of RTM Vista 64 SP1 on this laptop. The hardware choices and Vista seemed tuned for each other. Vista 64 performed noticeably faster on this laptop than Vista 32 on desktop machines with faster hardware.

Our take is that Vista's bad reputation comes from insufficient hardware performance, operating in 32-bit rather than 64-bit mode, manufacturer-installed applications, and the many pre-SP1 compatibility issues. It is a shame that this OS is not more appreciated!
-Charles

I have run Vista since it was first released and have been pleased with it, although it's not without issues. The thing I noticed, though, is that most of the issues were application/driver-based and not with the core. Once the problem applications/drivers were updated, the issues went away and I can honestly say that Vista has run fine since then. The amazing thing is that my laptop in not a high-end machine like most Vista "haters" state you have to have, and I still have no real major issues.

SP1 has really helped with compatibility and performance and I really hope that MS improves the performance even more with SP2. The start up time is still too slow. I'd also like to see the SP2 include all the latest versions of the .NET Framework. This is important to me as a developer, since it helps make deploying applications I write.
-Shawn

Posted by Doug Barney on November 04, 20080 comments

Mailbag: Recession Security

It doesn't hurt to walk through security practices and settings. It may be a wake-up call to many of us. But I hope it doesn't create unfounded suspicions against fellow employees -- witch hunts, of sorts -- timely though it may be. We have enough bad feelings about our economic quagmire; we don't need to manufacture more.
-Barb

Posted by Doug Barney on November 03, 20080 comments

Office in the Sky

At PDC, Microsoft announced that Office would run in the cloud, bereft of a few hundred features or so, and be accessible by PCs and even mobile devices such as cell phones.

Posted by Doug Barney on November 03, 20080 comments

SQL's Future Is Cloudy

Posted by Doug Barney on November 03, 20080 comments

Vista Help on the Way

There are a bunch of new features in the pack, such as better Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and search. But the key, or course, is in the fundamentals -- compatibility, performance and reliability. I'm still on XP, but if Redmond Report readers like what they see in Vista SP2, I'll go for it.

Posted by Doug Barney on October 30, 20080 comments

Patch Now or Pay Later

If that didn't make you nervous enough to start patching, maybe this More

Posted by Doug Barney on October 30, 20080 comments

Mailbag: Cloud-y Thoughts

I'd like a few more details, such as what you have to agree to in order to use this. Since Microsoft owns the computers and the equipment in which the data and created applications will reside, who controls this now and in the future? How would you go about getting your "property" should something change in the future? How much will this cost now and in the future? What is to prevent the Big M from taking what you create as its own?

Security worries me any time you do not control the equipment in which the applications and data resides. The idea of being able to access this from any location sounds great -- but so could someone else. Hackers would have a field day with this. I could be totally wrong about Azure, but I won't be taking that chance. There is too much to lose, in my opinion.
-Les

I agree with your statement: "I like to have ownership of the files I create, and don't want somebody controlling my access. And I would never want them taken away."

Also, you city dwellers don't realize this, but there are still vast areas of this country with NO Internet access (unless you count dial-up, which, with today's large data transfer requirements, is quite useless). A major problem with cloud computing is that you must have Internet to use it. Even in the city, I've found Comcast to be somewhat unreliable. No Internet, no application. Very frustrating.
-Mike

Posted by Doug Barney on October 30, 20080 comments

Google Has Security Flaws, Too!

Researchers now say that Android has a security flaw , but won't say what it is 'til it's fixed. If only security researchers were as kind to Microsoft!

Posted by Doug Barney on October 30, 20080 comments

Yahoo Develops Developers

Posted by Doug Barney on October 29, 20080 comments