If they haven't hit your PC already, they're on their way.
Posted by Lee Pender on September 08, 20090 comments
Well, now that's a headline that ought to get picked up by a search engine or two (or one, most importantly). Google News, we'll scale your castle walls one way or another! Microsoft! Linux! Patents! Open source! Communists! We're going to go hash-tag crazy when we post this one on Twitter...
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Posted by Lee Pender on September 08, 20093 comments
Microsoft really wants to you leave XP behind. Microsoft also wants you to forget about Vista altogether (although nobody in Redmond would ever come out and say that). And Microsoft really, really wants you to buy Windows 7.
The final sentence of the preceding paragraph, while not exactly a surprise, became that much more obvious this week, as Microsoft revealed that it'll offer Windows 7 Enterprise to companies for a free 90-day trial. (There's more detail about availability and such here.)
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Posted by Lee Pender on September 03, 200921 comments
It's the community technology preview of the embedded operating system once known as "Quebec."
Microsoft had to release a preview and ditch the code name because the OS kept threatening to break away from the rest of Canada.
Posted by Lee Pender on September 03, 20090 comments
Here's a new front in the browser wars. If Microsoft is going to embed IE into Windows, then Google will go after OEMs -- in this case, Sony, which will offer Chrome as its default browser on VAIO PCs. Scott Baio, whose name sort of looks like VAIO when it's spelled out, has not officially commented so far. As far as we know, anyway.
Posted by Lee Pender on September 03, 20090 comments
There's so much going on at VMworld that we're not going to attempt to cover it all here. But Keith Ward, who's at the show, will be covering it all -- and it's on his blog.
Just one thing, though. Keith reveals in his blog that he doesn't like Foreigner, the '80s band that's headlining VMworld's entertainment. (We really are in a recession, aren't we?) Oh, Keith, you are as cold as ice. Don't you want to know what love is? Come to think of it, maybe Foreigner wasn't so good after all. But get your lighters or cell phones or whatever people use at concerts now ready for that last link. It's power-ballad time!
Posted by Lee Pender on September 03, 20090 comments
How long does the operating system have to live? A very long time, probably. But how much longer will Windows be a major revenue driver for Microsoft? That's another question altogether. The same question applies to the productivity suite, otherwise known to most users as Microsoft Office.
Both stalwart Microsoft moneymakers are under attack again, but this time, the competition looks fierce. The New York Times published this week an interesting piece about how Google and VMware are putting the squeeze on Microsoft by attacking with Web-based applications (Google Apps) and virtualization (VMware, obviously). Here's the crux of the NYT's argument:
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Posted by Lee Pender on September 02, 20092 comments
There was quite a bit of hubbub last week about Microsoft holding sessions with lobbyists and lawyers in Washington, D.C. with the intent of getting Google into some sort of regulatory trouble. And, as we all know, Microsoft knows all about regulatory trouble.
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Posted by Lee Pender on September 01, 20090 comments
Microsoft Partner Program, we hardly knew ye. Well, that's not true; we actually knew ye quite well. But ye are not long for this world (how far can we carry this?) and will soon -- well, within 16 months -- be replaced by the Microsoft Partner Network. RCP the magazine Editor in Chief Scott Bekker goes into great detail about the MPN here.
Posted by Lee Pender on September 01, 20090 comments
We're taking a break from running reader e-mails this week, although we've got plenty more to run and will get back to them (probably) next week. This week, though, we just couldn't resist the return of the Red Menace, the Free Software Foundation.
Yes, the industry's favorite communists are back, this time with a very nasty Web site that (guess what?) attacks Microsoft and Windows 7. The "Windows 7 Sins" site details the FSF's objections to Windows 7, Microsoft, proprietary software and presumably the American capitalist system. It also encouraged people to meet on Wednesday at noon on the Boston Common to dump proprietary software into a huge garbage can, or something like that -- a sort of Boston Software Party, if you will.
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Posted by Lee Pender on August 27, 20094 comments
So, who saw this coming? Bankrupt and defeated vendor SCO, which lost a lawsuit it filed against IBM in 2007 and at the same time lost claim to ownership of the UNIX copyright (which went to Novell), has won a stunning reversal in a federal Appeals Court. Now, not only can SCO get back to suing IBM (if it can raise the money), but Novell seems to have lost its unique copyright on UNIX. Goodness. Do stay tuned on this one.
Posted by Lee Pender on August 27, 20095 comments