I can imagine Jerry Seinfeld doing a pretty good stand-up routine about Vista.
What's the deal with Vista? Vista users don't care what runs on their computers
-- they care what doesn't. And what's up with Bill Gates? This guy is so rich,
he can afford a Vista machine that doesn't crash. It's called a MacBook.
But nooo. Instead of poking fun, old Jerr is getting
$10 million to convince us all that Vista is cool as part of a $300 million
advertising campaign.
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 21, 20080 comments
Now that most of you have thrown up your hands at Vista,
Doug
asked
what you're doing to get XP. Here's what some of you had to say:
Here's a vote for staying with XP. We are finding it easier to buy XP
now than a year ago. Dell and HP have seen the light, for example, and make
is easy, but ONLY if you go through their business portals. We have found,
and many IT people agree, that if we are forced to, we will save and reuse
licenses we have already purchased when systems go out of service. OEM agreements
be damned. Call it a piece-by-piece upgrade if you want to split hairs about
OEM license restrictions.
The effort to wipe a Vista system and install XP is nothing compared
to the headache of supporting it. It isn't about being new, misunderstood
or not giving it a chance. It is fundamentally flawed. What we see on the
consumer side is that people will buy Vista for personal systems and then
fight with it for months and then give up, seeking out people like us to fix
it by installing XP. Bad press had nothing to do with it. Sooner or later
Microsoft will realize that by not selling XP, Vista is not competing with
XP -- it is competing with the XP license I already have.
-Derek
Sticking with Windows XP certainly has some challenges. Often our effort
to "downgrade" PCs, laptops and tablets to XP results in missing
out on key features of the original load or compatibility issues. We've learned
to provide proven XP laptop/desktop loads, but there are still some issues.
We also stick with Lenovo for most of our needs, because they do provide XP
as an option. I'm betting other vendors are also seeing improved sales by
offering to pre-load Windows XP. For example, on some of their laptops even
consumers can choose: "Genuine Windows Vista Business with Windows XP
Professional Downgrade." Fully supported by their help desk and repair
centers.
-Joe
Well, this month I had to buy a new laptop. I really tried to avoid Dell,
because you have to pay an extra £60 for a downgrade. So I went to Lenovo,
and they still have some Thinkpads with XP; they're not as cutting-edge as
the "19-hour battery life" from Dell, but for school/work it's more
than welcome!
-Anonymous
Vista is a no-go zone. Microsoft cannot assume the role of bully in this
debate. First, it dumps an OS onto us that we did not have much say in developing.
The good features of XP were removed and the bad features of Vista were marketed
as if it was some sort of rock god. Vista is slow, no matter how Microsoft
spins it. It has nothing over XP except more cost -- significant additional
cost, at that. I don't care about eye candy or Aero; that's just fluff and
nonsense and I am not paying for it.
I provide advice to Victorian government agencies and my advice has been:
Do not, under any circumstances, get into Vista. So far they all agree with
my view so I think Microsoft has more than just a major perception problem
on its hand. We will not be held ransom by Microsoft executives thinking they
can market or bully us into submission.
-Ken
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 21, 20080 comments
VMware's new CEO Paul Maritz knows a thing or two about Microsoft. After all,
he worked there for a decade-and-a-half and, last I checked, still lives in
the Seattle area. Maritz, I believe, knows how to fight with Microsoft and how
to get along when need be.
Recently, we saw an example of what could be a long-lasting détente:
VMware
joined Microsoft's virtualization validation program, meaning that Microsoft
will qualify its applications to run well under ESX and thus gain the advantages
of Microsoft's new licensing terms which allow you to move VMs from server to
server with no extra licensing costs.
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 21, 20080 comments
Last time I checked, Apple was still based in Cupertino. But
one
blogger
thinks the company could just as easily be headquartered a bit farther
north, in Redmond, Wash.
How's that? No, it's not the monopoly it enjoys (as one Redmond Report reader
recently pointed out, nearly 100 percent of Macintosh computers run an Apple
operating system). Instead, Victor Godinez points to flaky, new operating systems
such as the one driving the latest iPhone, and bundling software such as tying
Safari to iTunes.
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 21, 20080 comments
After it was announced that Microsoft's OOXML
has
been approved
as an official standard, Doug asked readers about their thoughts
on interoperability and Microsoft's standards play. The outlook isn't very optimistic:
Redmond's history with standards development and interoperability has
ranged from a high of poor, to a low of deliberate sabotage. While I find
it amusing that everyone sees this as a move to a more open, competitive,
software environment, it is still inconsistent with Microsoft's business model.
In the history of man, there has never been an altruistic monopoly. No reason
to expect one now.
-Anonymous
I have old 16-bit Windows Write files that NO later MS editor displays
right. Not WordPad, not WinPad, not Word for Win 95 or Word 97 or Word 2000,
nor the Win 95 Write stub -- only old Win 31's original Write.exe seems able
to display or print those critters the way they were originally designed to
look and print. It'd be really refreshing if Windows 7 could offer some means
of displaying and printing these correctly again -- and maybe even editing
them.
On another tack, it would be nice if whatever IE MS includes in Windows
7 would let itself be closed even when (indeed, especially when) not
all tabs have finished loading. Currently, the only way I can close IE 6 (in
XP) or IE 7 (in [ugh!] Vista) before everything has finished loading is to
kill its process with Process Explorer. I'm not holding my breath, though,
on either count.
-Fred
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 20, 20080 comments
Many of you...well, most of you...OK, nearly all of you are avoiding Vista and
sticking with XP. But Microsoft ain't making it easy. Go to Circuit City and
all you'll see is Vista, Vista, Vista. And Microsoft volume agreements are pushing
the new OS over the old.
How are you dealing with XP? Buying new machines and downgrading? Just not
using Vista licenses that come with your existing agreements? Tell us your story
by writing to
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 20, 20080 comments
When Microsoft entered the unified communications market, the folks at Cisco
were far from pleased. In fact, I'd gather you could hear the curses from Cisco's
San Jose headquarters all the way to Redmond.
Cisco wasn't going to take this laying down. Its most recent response is to
partner
with HP to jointly sell and market unified tools to IT.
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 20, 20080 comments
Virtualization is supposed to make computing cheaper. But if you simply create
VM after VM, your costs will rise faster than Michael Phelps' net worth. And
if you move these VMs around, extra license fees will hit as vendors like Microsoft
treat the moved VM as a brand-new install.
Microsoft is
loosening
up a bit
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 20, 20080 comments
Doug asked readers
yesterday
what Microsoft should do to make Windows 7 your OS of choice. Here are some
of your suggestions:
If Microsoft really wanted to do it right, all it has to do is make Windows
7 look and feel just like XP. Just make it better behind the interface. Have
it use the same third-party drivers, only use them better. If nothing else,
Microsoft should do as it did when it changed the Control Panel -- that is,
give us a one-click option to revert back to an interface which we are familiar
and comfortable with. Rather than obsolescing hardware, it should be able
to create more efficient coding to do more with less. After all, we've not
really added any major capabilities that we couldn't do with Windows NT and
that first Pentium CPU. We can just do everything faster.
When a brand-new PC with a brand-new OS is slower than my seven-year-old
one, then there is a major problem somewhere. I for one am not likely to trust
my livelihood to a company that doesn't understand that very simple point.
-T.W.
I hate to say it, because I know it won't happen, but above all else
Microsoft needs to KEEP IT SIMPLE!
-John
I believe that in order to make Windows 7 shine, Microsoft must do the
following: One, optimize the OS to make it as stable and fast as possible.
Two, make sure that the UI isn't a performance killer. Three, replace the
command prompt with Powershell. Four, drop User Account Control and replace
it with a confirmation prompt for elevated permissions for installation. Five,
remove the need for Internet Explorer to be installed on the machine at all.
Six, provide recovery options that don't require floppy disks be used for
disaster recovery. Seven, provide real multi-user capability, like what's
found in Windows Server 2003, where multiple users can make use of a single
machine at the same time. And eight, provide two versions only: Home Edition
and Business Edition.
-Jerald
Build it on BSD like Apple did with OSX.
-Bill
Windows 7 looks like window (excuse the pun) dressing on Vista. Are we
actually going to get a new file system?
-T.
A nice thing that I am very surprised has not been done in any of the
Windows OSes yet would be the ability to move the position of your open windows
on the Task Bar, instead of just grouping similar ones beside each other.
-Anonymous
It may be too late, but I'd like to see Windows 7 be secure from the outset,
small enough to fit on a single CD, and faster.
-Ray
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 19, 20080 comments
Playtex may offer 18-hour support, but Microsoft goes six further -- for a
full 24 hours! For shops that need to be up 24x7, Microsoft has a new support
plan,
Premier
Ultimate
.
This high-end enterprise support offering has tech folks standing by all day
and all night to solve your most vexing Microsoft problems. More interesting
is the proactive part, where Microsoft looks for problems before they actually
bite you in the hiney. This may cost a pretty penny, but could save a lot of
headaches and downtime.
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 19, 20080 comments
I don't usually read
Newsweek
, but it had an
interesting
profile
of George Ledin, a Sonoma State University professor who teaches
his students to write viruses and keystroker recorders, and cause all sorts
of digital mischief.
Of course, many people are appalled, likening Ledin's teachings to a subversive
training camp. (Digression: I hate the term "terrorist" because it
gives these punks too much power; by calling them terrorists we imply that they've
already succeeded in creating fear.)
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 19, 20080 comments
Virtual servers are proliferating, but the security for them isn't always keeping
pace. Check Point hopes to catch up with its new
VPN-1
Virtual Edition
, a firewall specifically built for virtual environments.
There's a good chance you already have virtual servers. There's just as good
a chance you already have a Check Point firewall or two laying around your shop.
With the new firewall, you can protect virtual machines as if they were physically
discrete servers.
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 19, 20080 comments