Microsoft is better at priming the pump than an old Oklahoma farmer. In this
case, the company wants you to think of Microsoft when you think of next-generation
operating systems -- and that means getting you excited about Windows 7, the
follow-on to Vista.
To keep you all amped, Microsoft has a new
Windows 7 blog. So far, there's only one
post, this one explaining what the blog is all about.
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 18, 20080 comments
The Microsoft OOXML (Open Office XML) file format is
now
an official standard
.
As I recall, Microsoft proposed this format in response to the movement to
make the Open Office file format the main way to share documents. While I was
fine with the Open Office approach, any common file format is a step in the
right direction.
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 18, 20080 comments
If you have a spam filter that's as full of holes as mine (in its defense, I
put my e-mail address out there every day so folks like you can write me at
[email protected]
), you get
lots of scams from Nigeria and other places who all need your help in moving
millions of dollars out of whatever country they come from.
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 18, 20080 comments
Microsoft has a crazy product launch strategy. While it always has a monster
press conference, sometimes the launch is before the product(s) ships, sometimes
when the product(s) ships and sometimes after the product(s) ships.
In the case of Microsoft's Sept.
8 virtualization launch, it looks like all of the above.
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 14, 20080 comments
Some VMware ESX 3.5 users got a scary surprise recently: Virtual machines that
were shut down
wouldn't
power back up
. The culprit? A flaw in VMware's licensing module where the
licensing code is under the assumption that you no longer have the right to
run the software. These licenses expired this Tuesday, Aug. 12, whether you
were paid up or not.
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 14, 20080 comments
Bill Gates was known for his "ThinkWeeks" where he would go off, usually
with a ton of books and documents from top company techs, and read and think
and think and read. He would often come back with new missions, such as the
time he turned the entire company around to focus on the Internet.
Ray Ozzie is a different animal. Like Bill, he likes to go off on his own,
but Ozzie
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 14, 20080 comments
Windows Server Update Service (WSUS to those that live and breathe acronyms)
is supposed to help IT pros download patches. But for some running Office 2003,
WSUS has been known to
block
these critical patches
.
Fortunately, there's
a fix in the form of an update (and yes, there's a way to install the update
despite the blocking).
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 14, 20080 comments
A
recent
survey
on browser market share gave 23 percent of the pie to browsers other
than IE, Firefox and Safari. Doug asked readers for their guesses as to what
browsers make up that remaining 23 percent:
Mobile browsers perhaps. In these busy times, probably 70 percent of
my browsing is done on my mobile device these days.
-Anonymous
Not sure whether it has "serious share," but Opera 9.5 is the
browser I'm using just now to read Redmond Report and to write you. I find
that its innate capability to render .WML files (used for conveying WAP content
to cell-phones) and to submit .HTML files to the w3.org for validation are
unmatched by any other browser I've ever used.
And, on a Java-capable cell phone, even one as primitive as the five-year-old
Nokia 6610, Opera Mini is just fantastic! Beats the pants off the Nokia's
own little WAP browser.
-Fred
Opera? Avant?
-Anonymous
I'm not sure where Janco gets the 58 percent either. At apartmentguide.com,
here's the current breakdown of our traffic: Internet Explorer (77.2%), Firefox
(15.6%), Safari (4.2%). Of course, there's a smattering of oddball stuff including
spiders, but none of those individually go over 2.3 percent of our traffic.
Concerning browsers on the Mac, our numbers show twice as much traffic from
Safari as opposed to Firefox -- 3.6 vs 1.6 percent.
Given the nature of our Web site, I would think our numbers are relatively
representative of overall browser usage in the U.S.
-Rick
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 14, 20080 comments
Rod gives some advice to
another
reader
who mentioned using Linux for thin clients:
For Timothy who said he would use Linux to create a thin client, check
out Thinstation. Way
back in 2003, we made a major move into server-based computing. We converted
a boatload of Win 95/98 PCs into thin clients by booting from a CD or thumb
drive that reformatted the hard disk and installed Thinstation. For the few
systems that didn't work because of driver issues or when one of the PCs died
due to old age, we didn't spend time trying to get it to work -- just replace
with a Wyse thin client and move on. It was a great way to embrace Citrix
without replacing all of our client workstations all at once.
-Rod
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 13, 20080 comments
You might think I pick on Google a lot, and I do. There's a reason, though.
Google has power, and with power comes scrutiny. Just look at what a U.S. president
goes through. Every decision is scrutinized (sometimes not scrutinized enough)
as a way of keeping this power in check.
Google is as close to a president of the Internet as you can get. So when Google
admitted that it tracks
our Web moves and sells this information to marketers, I was concerned.
In fact, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo -- the Web's Big Three -- all do this!
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 13, 20080 comments
The Gartner Group has a
new
report
that says roughly what our upcoming
Redmond
magazine salary
survey says: IT is immune to our current economic malaise. Most shops plan to
add staff and, as the old laws of supply-and-demand state, this demand will
cause wages to increase.
Salaries are already going up, but for now they're roughly on a cost-of-living
basis, at an average increase of 3.6 percent. The good news? Bonuses are also
up, so get your speech ready!
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 13, 20080 comments
Our previous item points out that IT has been relatively recession-proof of
late. But if you really want to avoid economic catastrophe, you might want to
go into networking. There are currently some
60,000
networking jobs unfilled
, according to IDC.
I was scratching my head over this, 'til I remembered a couple of huge trends.
VoIP and unified communications both rely on powerful, efficient networks. And
as Web applications take off, the networks to access them must have enough capacity
and reliability.
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Posted by Doug Barney on August 13, 20080 comments