Teflon Steve

Steve Jobs spent the holiday season prepping his Macworld speech and fighting off charges that he and the Apple board of directors played it fast and loose with stock options. Jobs ducked the charges (it was, after all, an Apple investigation, sorta like Al Franken looking into Hillary Clinton's campaign finances), and I'm glad. More

Posted by Doug Barney on January 10, 20070 comments


Hard Flash Drives

Hard drives are great; they're cheap and getting bigger every year. Flash drives are cool, too: cheap, convenient and fast. So, what if we could have the best of both worlds? That's exactly what Toshiba, Seagate, Hitachi and others are working on. The vendors are grafting a flash front end onto a hard drive More

Posted by Doug Barney on January 09, 20070 comments


New Longhorn Beta Bows

There's a new test version of Longhorn , which has been in beta for about three-fourths of a year. This is still a pretty exclusive test, so if you're not yet part of the program, start working your contacts now.

Posted by Doug Barney on January 09, 20070 comments


Information at Your Fingerprints, Take 17

Nearly 17 years ago, Bill Gates first spoke of information at your fingertips. ( Here 's a great review of that speech.)

The idea is that one should be able to get information whenever and wherever they need it. Now that a small fraction of the world has realized that dream, Gates has moved on to his next goal -- connecting everything to everything.

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Posted by Doug Barney on January 09, 20072 comments


Virtual PC 2007 Virtually Here

Virtual PC 2007, set to ship this quarter, is now a release candidate , which means it is in the very final stages of testing. The new rev supports hardware virtualization tweaks built into the latest Intel and AMD high-end chips.

For the true virtualization aficionados, the software can run up to 32 virtual machines at the same time. I guess it's time for a few more megs of RAM, eh what?

Posted by Doug Barney on January 09, 20070 comments


An Order of Vista with a Side of Security

Vista for consumers will ship at the end of this month, and not coincidently a new rev of Microsoft's OneCare anti-virus software will be ready at precisely the same time. For customers, having more security options -- especially ones that tie tightly into Vista -- is a good thing.

But I still don't know how I feel about how Microsoft got into this market. First, it built an OS that needed anti-virus, then watched as Symantec and others made hundreds of millions fixing Windows' problems. Now that Redmond knows precisely how it's done, the company is going full-throttle. Is this fair to all the anti-virus pioneers? More

Posted by Doug Barney on January 08, 20070 comments


Beware Adobe PDFs

I don't know anyone that doesn't use PDFs nearly every day -- I couldn't live without them. Hackers have taken notice and recently attacked a flaw in the PDF format -- crafting worms, ways to steal cookies and methods to take over remote machines. The fix for IE is to upgrade, while Firefox users are advised to turn off Acrobat support.

Posted by Doug Barney on January 08, 20070 comments


When Will Cisco and Microsoft Collide?

Cisco owns the networking space as completely as Microsoft owns the desktop. Microsoft gained its control by relentlessly writing code and competing with a fierceness that would make George Steinbrenner proud.

Cisco has built its share of great products, but much of its growth is from an unrivaled string of acquisitions (it is a master at integrating companies).

But eventually the desktop and network worlds will collide and Microsoft and Cisco will really be put to the test.

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Posted by Doug Barney on January 08, 20070 comments


Vista and Conference Calls Don't Mix

Redmond magazine columnist Greg Shields got this tip from faithful reader Travis: "We've been having problems with our ACT conference bridge that've started with the installation of Vista/Office 2007. When Outlook 2007 receives a new message, the 'new message' sound apparently is the exact same sound as some of the touchtone sounds on the phone. For us, it causes the conference bridge to temporarily pause the conference and start reading off the long list of commands. This has happened multiple times. We've also seen problems where the Windows startup sound causes the conference bridge to completely shut down. There must be some similarity between the new Vista/Office sounds and the tones a telephone uses!"

Posted by Doug Barney on January 03, 20070 comments


Polish that Resume

Hate your boss, don't make enough scratch to keep your Yugo running (that's a lot of scratch) or just want a new batch of potential office dates? Well, bucko, now could be a good time. A survey of CIOs More

Posted by Doug Barney on January 03, 20070 comments


Windows Built Ford Tough

Every time Microsoft talked about putting its operating systems in cars or at the center of our home entertainment systems, I'd scoff, knowing the only thing that crashed more than Windows was Nascar's Bodine brothers (two points if you know their first names!).

Now Redmond is prepping a deal to put Windows in new Ford cars, letting drivers check e-mail (please pull over to do this!), navigate or Web surf.

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Posted by Doug Barney on January 03, 20070 comments


The Free Software Foundation Hates Vista: Tell Us Something We Don't Know!

I respect what open source zealots such as the Free Software Foundation have done. But its new Web site badvista.org is a cheap shot, and an easy one at that.

One mission of the site is to compel the press to tell users to look at open source alternatives to Vista, not just promote the Mac.

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Posted by Doug Barney on January 03, 20070 comments