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.
Microsoft is very clear that it wants to control the message, rather than having
us journalists do that job. It also promises to make it a two-way street, allowing
IT to tell Microsoft what to put (and not put) in the new OS.
What should Microsoft do to make Windows 7 shine? Send your advice to [email protected].
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.
What about you -- which format would you rather see as a standard? And is file
interoperability already moving in the right direction? Answers welcome in any
format at [email protected].
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.
The last one I got had my blood boiling for two reasons: First, it lacked originality.
Second, it besmirched the reputation of our fine men and women stationed in
Iraq. The e-mail was from an Army private. He and his buddy came across $18
million that just happened to be laying around in Tikrit.
Now they need my help getting it out.
Last week, I watched the movie Three Kings with my son, and I'm wondering
if Pvt. Taylor and his co-conspirator Sgt. Buff saw the same flick. The scam
sounds like it was lifted directly from the plot of the movie, only the gold
that George Clooney, Marky Mark and Ice Cube found is replaced by cold, hard
cash.
One of these Iraq scams was traced back to Australia, and this
little trick has been circulating for several months.
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.
The company already has application virtualization tools it bought from SoftGrid
(available only to those with top-tier license deals with Redmond), is currently
running Hyper-V through the manufacturing process, and is close to finishing
Virtual Machine Manager 2008.
Hopefully, there will be a few surprises for all the reporters trudging up
to Redmond for this virtual shindig.
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.
New CEO Paul Maritz personally
apologized to customers in a letter released this week. VMware has some
"express patches" for the flaw, and advises shops that downloaded
the ESX 3.5 Update 2 patch -- but haven't installed it yet -- to hold off.
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 prefers
to dream -- to avoid all outside stimuli, clear his mind and dream about
the future.
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).
The good news, besides the fix, is that WSUS was blocking only Office patches,
not all patches.
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
And would you use Linux-only
PCs in your shop? Here are some more of your responses:
Maybe in the near future, when more apps become server-based and merely
require a standards-compliant browser. Open Office is cheaper, faster and
a suitable alternative for everyone except hardcore Visio users. Requires
no more support than Office 2007, perhaps even less. As WINE gets better at
handling old DOS apps, it's a good bet.
-L
Absolutely, in a New York minute! I have been around the business since
1960 and consider IBM to be the benchmark for product reliability and usability.
I use Win 2K SP4 on my local machines and have only dabbled with Linux personally.
If IBM has desktops built to its specs and designed to optimize for Linux,
they will also have a sound OS release with the non-admin user in mind, along
with more and accurate documentation than anyone could want. With the alternatives
to MS Office suite available, small footprint utilities and the cloud along
with a solid, reliable lightweight (overhead) and from a 'safe' provider like
IBM, this is a no-brainer.
-Joe
I do use a Linux PC, Windows XP/Fedora 7 dual-boot. Fedora is a great
desktop version of Linux. It communicates well with our CentOS 4 and 5 servers.
I would never buy a Linux PC, I would just build one. Most Linux people I
know would do the same.
Too bad for IBM; it is a big contributor to Red Hat. But with Microsoft
becoming suicidal, who knows? Stranger things have happened.
-Ken
IBM makes the same mistakes almost predictably. I think Wall Street should
beat it into submission with a clear message to give up. IBM blew it in the
'80s and then again in the '90s on a lesser-known venture to make in-roads
into the desktop with thin client technologies. IBM was great at building
hardware and BIG software, but it could not be satisfied with that and was
extremely paranoid that MS would eat it alive if it partnered with them.
As far as Linux goes, I use Ubuntu 8.04 and I think desktop Linux has come
a long way. However, I believe the rules of human nature trump all else. It's
easy now to get very good free help with Linux issues, but not as much on
Windows. Some of my friends and I make our livings on Microsoft, and if Linux
were to become a serious contender in the enterprise, I believe much of the
"free" advice would disappear. Linux also bears the mark of "technology"
and datacenter managers really don't like technology that much.
-Russ
Share your thoughts with us! Leave a comment below or send an e-mail to [email protected].
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
George chimes in on Microsoft's
Midori project, a brand-new, built-from-scratch OS:
What a concept! Building an OS from the ground up instead of three to
four retreads! When I see it, maybe I'll try it. Until then, I'm sticking
with XP, Mac OS and Fedora. Vista and its spawn are NOT going into my toolbox.
-George
Speaking of Vista, John adds fuel to the fire:
Sunday, I bought my wife a new laptop, with Vista. I spent three evenings
playing find-the-right-driver. Here is how it went. Sunday I powered up and
thought, "Maybe Vista isn't as bad as they say." This was up until
I tried to install a three-year-old application that depends on a dongle for
authentication. After installation, the screen declared: "HASP not found."
So, I went to the Internet and found stories of how others had made this software
work on Vista, after they got the "HASP not found" error. I followed
their procedures. No gain. I called, but couldn't reach a friend who used
this same application. So, I sent her an e-mail.
Monday evening after work I started on it again. My friend had sent suggestions,
which I tried, but still no success. Tuesday evening brought more of the same,
except that it appeared that Vista was seeing the dongle, even though the
application wasn't. I also succeeded in finding and installing an upgrade
to the application. The message changed, but the meaning was still the same.
More correspondence with the friend. Wednesday evening when I got home, my
e-mail had a message from my friend and an attached update to the latest driver
I had installed. When I ran the update, the application worked. The dongle
was correctly associated with the application.
That was three-and-a-half evenings lost getting Vista and my application to
play well together. From the comments I have read, this is typical of people's
experience. As long as you stick to Vista and Office 2007, your new system
runs well. Try to run old software or old hardware and, as they used to announce
in the Navy, "Stand by for heavy rolls."
-John
In celebration of Patch
Tuesday, Leo shares his patching process down to the hour:
Here is our routine following Patch Tuesday:
- Wednesday (PT+1) 0100 hrs.: Synchronize our parent WSUS with Microsoft.
- Wednesday (PT+1) 0500 hrs.: Synchronize our child WSUS servers with
our parent WSUS; hopefully, synching has completed.
- Wednesday (PT+1) 1300 hrs.: Approve patches in WSUS for installation
on test systems after child WSUSs have completed syncs.
- Thursday (PT+2) 0400 hrs.: Patches install on test systems 0400 (Thursday
is a scheduled eutage day, 0300-0600).
- Wednesday (PT+8) 0900-ish.: Approve patches in WSUS for installation
on production systems.
- Thursday (PT+9) 0400 hrs.: Patches install on production systems 0400.
Usually, a few systems don't get their patches when they are scheduled
to, so we tidy these systems up on PT+16. If all goes well, we will have a
Thursday off before the next round of patches. Somewhat time-consuming but
we have it working pretty well.
-Leo
And Eugene puts the Olympic-sized
Blue Screen of Death at the opening ceremonies in some perspective:
Whether or not it is real (looks real to me), this event is a testimony
to the skill and planning behind it. There is always going to be failures
in performances, you can count on it. What apparently happened was a solitary
failure, with a very snappy backup take-over. That is the stuff of legend.
Anyone who believes that another platform would not suffer this should
be fired. No platform under those conditions would have come through perfectly,
and any platform would have needed a backup plan. If you think that an Apple-based
performance system doesn't have backup hardware, you are fooling yourself.
I've run both Mac and PC under performance conditions and you must always
have a backup/switchover plan in place.
-Eugene
More of your letters coming tomorrow! Meanwhile, share your own thoughts about
the topics covered here by leaving a comment below or e-mailing [email protected].
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!
And using deep-packet inspection, companies can learn exactly what we
do on the Web (are you getting nervous yet?). Fortunately, the Big Three don't
do deep-packet inspection. I'd like to keep it that way.
What about you? How much should Internet companies know about you? And does
Google have too much power? Thoughts welcome at [email protected].
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!
Hot areas include network engineers (more on this in our next item), database
admins, Web programmers and enterprise architects.
How is your shop doing in hiring and raises? E-mail me at [email protected].
We'll post your comments (using first names only) in an upcoming newsletter.
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.
Are you seeing this in your shop? Share your experiences by writing [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on August 13, 20080 comments