Microsoft is a lot like the British -- under withering fire the company keeps a stiff upper lip and simply plods on. That is exactly what Redmond is doing in the mobile phone market with the upcoming release of Windows Phone 7, which I hear is pretty good.
But Redmond isn't about to wait for 7 -- it wants more mobile territory now, and is invading the youth space to get it. The Kin phones, made by Sharp, are built from the get-go with social media in mind. They have sliding keyboards and store data, such as photos, in the cloud. This is actually designed not just to store more stuff, but to make it easier to upgrade to new phones since you simply have to download all those items to the new device.
More
Posted by Doug Barney on April 14, 20101 comments
If you are responsible for patching at your shop, clear your schedule tomorrow cuz it's going to be a monster. Eleven patches will fix more than two dozen problems. Best tell the family you'll be late for dinner.
As usual, remote code execution fixes lead the charge, but denial of service, spoofing and elevation of privilege attacks also get their fair share of attention.
More
Posted by Doug Barney on April 12, 20104 comments
Exchange 2010 shipped only five months ago, but already Microsoft is looking to trot out tweaks. SP1 will enter beta this June and will feature new management functions and a tool that imports .PST files. In case you hadn't heard, Exchange 2010 has a whole new way of dealing with personal folders and archives. The .PST import is really just a bridge between the old and the new.
More
Posted by Doug Barney on April 12, 20100 comments
Microsoft promised that Office 2010 would be fully compliant with the ISO/IEC 29500 document standard otherwise known as Office Open XML (OOXML). Now before we get into this discussion, can we use real English to describe these things rather than random numbers and letters? Is that possible please?
So here's the back story: Office 2010, due any time now, was supposed to support the ISO file format standard. For some reason, it doesn't fully implement the format, and now Microsoft says that support will come with Office 15, which isn't even on our radar screen.
More
Posted by Doug Barney on April 12, 20102 comments
A couple of readers chime in on Doug's analysis of Microsoft's decision to discontinue Itanium versions of Windows Server 2008 R2:
As I recall, Intel did not have the x64 chips compatible w/ x86 -- AMD did. That's what led to the Opteron rush -- they were still compatible, Intel's offerings were not. And unless I am remembering incorrectly, Intel licensed that backwards-compatible technology from AMD...
Unfortunately, it's my anniversary, and I have husbandly duties to attend to, otherwise I would attempt my own fact-checking, but I think you're wrong about the history of Itanium and the x64/x86 chips…
-Dave
Well, being a long time DEC customer, we moved through versions of Digital's/Compaq's/HP's Tru64 UNIX. So when the Alpha chip began reaching EOL, we had to move to another UNIX and HP made licensing very attractive, so we went to HPUX on Itanium. We had thought very hard about Linux on x64, but being used to solid operating system support underneath our ERP apps and because HP said Linux just wasn't mainstream enough for ERP, we choose HPUX (Itanium). It's been solid for us, but I believe if we have a chance to make a jump in the far future, we will probably opt for x64 and Linux.
I saw the writing on the wall for Itanium when it took too long for updates, Red Hat dropped support and now the Microsoft situation.
Microsoft is all about market share and having ran Windows NT on Digital's Alpha processor (Alpha 1000a and the NT only Alpha 5305, which was simply an Alpha missing the firmware to support Tru64 and VMS) and running Digital's Clustering for Windows NT, I never really took Microsoft's support of Itanium seriously.
-Roy
More
Posted by Doug Barney on April 12, 20100 comments
IE 8 came out just last year, and already beta testers are getting excited about IE 9. In fact, over 700,000 folks just like you have downloaded the developer preview. The new rev has a speedier rendering engine and HTML5.
The fast creation of a new IE shows that Microsoft remains 100 percent committed to the browser market, and would likely be embarrassed if it ultimately lost to FireFox or even worse, Chrome.
More
Posted by Doug Barney on April 09, 20106 comments
With Intel and AMD announcing their new processor chips this past week, Doug turns to you to see which side of the fence you're on:
As a good American, I've always got to support the underdog. I try to use AMD where I can and there isn't much performance cost. It serves us well to have these two competing. Each inspires the other to greater efforts.
-John
I usually go with what seems best when I purchase (or which is more readily available), as I don't believe that one is substantially better than the other.
-Charlie
I prefer a chip that works!
-Bill
I used to sing the praises of AMD but I started getting upset that I had to over clock the AMD based processor to get the speed that they said it was capable of. If I buy a 3 GHz processor it should be a 3 GHz processor without over clocking.
I also can't help but to wonder how much of a 64-core processor we could actually use. We run a grip of statistical analysis software and even of the most advanced applications we have do not know how to utilize 4-cores, let alone 64. Until the software geeks start writing code that utilizes these cores, it looks like we're heading for another case of hardware technology having to wait for the applications to catch up.
BTW my vote is for Intel.
-Christian
More
Posted by Doug Barney on April 09, 20102 comments
Vendors say cloud computing is the next big thing, but they are the ones selling, not buying. Almost half of potential cloud buyers aren't buying -- worried that security is not proven.
IT folks are used to battening down their own IT hatches, and don't yet trust a service provider to do it for them, at least according to a survey by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA).
More
Posted by Doug Barney on April 09, 20103 comments
The iPad is out to mixed reviews. Apple fans love it to death, while others are knocking the new gizmo. The main beefs -- it won't run Flash, which drives the bulk of Internet video, Apple controls all the apps and you don't get a fully free browsing experience.
But hey, critics also said the graphical user interface would never catch on!
HP hopes to take advantage of the iPad's lack of computer features with its upcoming Slate based on Windows 7. HP is taking pains to point out that the Slate will indeed run Flash, and will support external storage.
More
Posted by Doug Barney on April 09, 201017 comments
There will be a new version of SQL Server 2008 R2 custom-made for the most data intensive shops. The Parallel Data Warehouse edition, now in test mode, can handle terabytes numbering in the hundreds.
The scalability comes from DATAllegro, a company Microsoft bought two years ago.
More
Posted by Doug Barney on April 07, 20100 comments
The Itanium processor is a curious thing. It was designed by Intel to be the next big thing. But Intel had its own next big thing -- powerful x86/64 chips that weren't only fast but backwards-compatible. Intel nearly killed its own creation.
But Itanium fans, in particular HP, never gave up and the processor kept moving forward. Like IBM's Power6, Itanium drives high-power, high-capacity data center servers largely running Unix and Linux. (I recently interviewed the head of the Itanium Solutions Alliance and got a fascinating look at where the chip stands.)
More
Posted by Doug Barney on April 07, 20102 comments
The FCC's hopes to enforce Net Neutrality got a vicious slap from a federal appeals court which ruled that Comcast has the right to regulate what happens on its broadband network. In effect, this gives Comcast the right to punish those who use too much bandwidth such as BitTorrent users.
More
Posted by Doug Barney on April 07, 20108 comments