It's Election Day in the U.S.
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.
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Posted by Doug Barney on November 04, 20080 comments
Remember the bank guard on "The Andy Griffith Show," the old coot
who was always asleep and whose gun fell apart every time he drew it? Well,
it seems that's far more protection than many of us give to our e-mail systems.
An
IDC
survey
shows that almost no shops control the data sent out over e-mail,
which may or may not contain corporate secrets.
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Posted by Doug Barney on November 04, 20080 comments
HP is trying to reinvent the world of magazine publishing with wholly-owned
MagCloud.com
, a Web site and system that
makes it almost as easy to publish a magazine as it is for an amateur (to be
kind) writer to blog.
That's pretty cool, but what's cooler is that the site is testing
out Azure, Microsoft's new cloud platform.
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Posted by Doug Barney on November 04, 20080 comments
Microsoft
released
Vista SP2
in limited beta last week, prompting Doug to ask readers what
they've thought so far about SP1. From your responses, it looks like it's faring
better than expected:
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
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Posted by Doug Barney on November 04, 20080 comments
Last week, Doug wondered whether tough economic times mean
companies
should be extra careful
to protect their data against inside threats. Barb
thinks it's a good idea -- but companies should tread lightly:
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
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Posted by Doug Barney on November 03, 20080 comments
Google Docs is a low-end set of productivity apps that run on the Web. So what's
Microsoft's response? Turn Office into a low-end set of productivity apps that
run on the Web!
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.
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Posted by Doug Barney on November 03, 20080 comments
There was so much news last week at PDC that I'll probably spend the bulk of
this week bringing it all to you. We've already talked about
Azure
,
Microsoft's cloud operating system/platform. Besides being a development platform,
Azure is also a set of services that will run in the cloud. In this case, Microsoft
defines the cloud as one of its own rather massive datacenters.
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Posted by Doug Barney on November 03, 20080 comments
Usually IT waits until a new product gets its first service pack before adopting.
In the case of Vista, many are waiting for SP2, SP3 or maybe Windows 7. We'll
soon know, though, if SP2 is compelling or repelling as
preview
code is being sent out
to a select group of users.
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.
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Posted by Doug Barney on October 30, 20080 comments
Earlier this week, we told you about an
out-of-cycle
patch
for Remote Procedure Call flaws in Windows Server 2000, 2003 and XP.
If that didn't make you nervous enough to start patching, maybe
this
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Posted by Doug Barney on October 30, 20080 comments
Windows Azure made big waves when Microsoft
officially
unveiled it
in PDC this week. But a few of you have some misgivings about
the OS in the cloud:
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
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Posted by Doug Barney on October 30, 20080 comments
Google is now officially in the operating system game with Android, the open
source OS currently used in its new phone. And being in the OS market means
one thing: security problems.
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
While Microsoft is
promoting
Azure
, its new cloud development platform, rival Yahoo put some more meat
on its development platform bones: the
Yahoo
Open Strategy
. This platform is responsible for creating the most self-indulgent
acronym ever (Y!OS). Does Yahoo really expect the press to use this monstrosity?
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Posted by Doug Barney on October 29, 20080 comments