OEMs May Be Mad Over Surface, Microsoft Says

As a public company, you have to come clean with Wall Street. Otherwise there are thousands of regulators just itching to set you straight.

So it's no wonder that Microsoft in a recent SEC filing said that OEM partners, who will soon compete with the Microsoft Surface, may not be completely happy, "which may affect their commitment to our platform," the company wrote.

Posted by Doug Barney on 07/30/20121 comments

iPad Could Be Big by Being Small

If Apple wants to rule the tablet universe completely unchallenged for years to come, a smaller unit is just the thing needed, IDC believes. A smaller iPad  would give Apple a majority share for four more years, the research house believes, despite low-cost Androids and fuller-featured Win 8 tablets that can act as actual PCs.

Smaller iPads have two things going for them: They would presumably be cheaper (but with Apple you never know) and they'd be smaller.

Posted by Doug Barney on 07/30/20121 comments

Next Build Conference Will Focus on Metro Apps

The Build Conference isn't exactly a regular event. Microsoft only puts this developer event on when it has something important to talk about. Windows 8 preview was the subject of the last one.

The next Build is poised to take advantage of the Win 8 buildup, and will happen the week after the OS ships in late October.

This is a huge deal for developers. With Metro, you are really developing more like a Web programmer with the integration of  HTML 5. Of course, programmers have been sort of moving in this direction for a while, using managed code approaches that aren't locked to specific architectures.

Posted by Doug Barney on 07/30/20121 comments

Is Exchange 2013 all About Management?

Exchange 2013, expected early next year, is now available as a preview -- something Microsoft sometimes calls a beta. In fact, Microsoft has a half dozen or so different terms for beta software, don't ask me why.

The new Exchange has a bevy of features aimed at easing configuration, management and thwarting attacks.

One main issue is a new architecture that centralizes items such as roles and administration. For instance, there are only two server roles available: mailbox and client access.

Posted by Doug Barney on 07/27/20120 comments

App-V Beta Built for Office 2013 Beta

App-V, now nearly on version 5.0, is a cool product with a cooler history. Originally called Softgrid, it was acquired from a company called Softricity. Here is the short version of how it was built, as I recall it: Back in the early days of the Boston Computer Museum, there was an exhibit for kids. You know how kids are -- they will beat the heck out of any PC placed before them. The result? One broken PC. The founders of Softricity had to find a way to sandbox or virtualize these apps to keep them away from the registry and Windows DLLs.

Posted by Doug Barney on 07/27/20121 comments

Doug's Mailbag: Windows 8 Backup

Readers react to the news of the new backup procedure in Windows 8:

My laptop is my living and backup is critical. I like the sound of this and it sounds like it is something leveraged off VSC. I've use all sorts of different back up programs (including the old NTBackup) and having something that will backup files I have created would be great. Keen to find out more about it.
-Stephen

It actually sounds very cool, although a bit like Mac OSX's Time Machine. At least unlike Mac, it ignores the operating system to get your backups correct and efficient. I like it even though I see no need for Windows 8 in my primary line of work: Civil Engineering and Architecture. Somehow CADD on a touchpad seems useless without a stylus or mouse.
-Bob

This sounds like Volume Shadow Copy (which has been around since Win XP when connected to a Server 2003 network). For home users, I think the biggest reason for low backup rates is the question of where to store the backups. Not everyone has a spare hard disk or external disk, and CD/DVD backup is slow, flaky and inadequate to store multi-GB file collections -- not to mention installed software with all necessary patches and customizations.
-Tom

Posted by Doug Barney on 07/27/20120 comments

SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 Comes Out

SQL Server 2008 R2 customers better get their downloading fingers ready as Service Pack 2 is now available. There is not much new to report here, and the service pack is mainly a monster roll of all the bug fixes and patches from the past. I guess if you are already up-to-date with all the fixes, you don't have to rush  this update -- but it sure can't hurt.

What is your approach to service packs? School us all by writing to [email protected].

Posted by Doug Barney on 07/27/20120 comments

Microsoft Promotes 'Self-Service BI'

Microsoft has been pushing business intelligence for years. Much of this revolves around SQL Server, but Excel also in recent years has come into play as a front-end tool.

The strategy became richer and more complex when Microsoft began previewing its 2013 products. The idea is to upgrade to SQL Server 2012 when it ships, and upgrade to Excel 2013 and SharePoint 2013 when they ship (are you sensing a theme?).

Posted by Doug Barney on 07/25/20121 comments

Virt Tool MultiPoint Update Prepped

Microsoft has so many virtualization tools  that it is hard to keep track of them all. One that always slips my mind is MultiPoint Server, a tool that some of you apparently like a lot.

MultPoint 2012 is on the way, and if you are a fan you might want to get on the beta list.

The product is aimed at low-end users -- such as schools or smalls shops. MultiPoint is simple and the name actually refers to how the product works. A single server offers desktops or terminals virtual sessions. The new version will support Windows 8, a feature built upon its existing Windows 7 support.

Posted by Doug Barney on 07/25/20120 comments

VMware Buys Its Network Virt

VMware is on the move. It just replaced CEO Paul Maritz with EMC insider Pat Gelsinger.

At the same time it announced record revenues, over $1.1 billion in the latest quarter.

Now the company is spending some of its rising cash on Nicira, which does something called software defined networking (SDN).

This is apparently worth $1.2 billion!

SDN, in my mind, is really virtual networking, though not the VLANs network admins used to know and love.

SDN replaces hard-wired networking with software. Right now all this goodness is reserved for high-end service providers. Eventually our own networks will be as virtualized as our servers are increasingly becoming. And this could be all the way down to the I/O level.

There is a good chance that VMware will adapt this technology to the enterprise and, in fact, do for the network what VMware has done for servers.

Posted by Doug Barney on 07/25/20120 comments

Win 8 Backup Sounds Brilliant

Almost nobody uses Windows client backup, and Microsoft thinks it knows why: because it ain't very good. Of course backup vendors (and nowadays, cloud backup vendors) love this as it gives them plenty of room to sell their own solutions. Microsoft says that fewer than one in 20 Win 7 users use the built-in backup.

With Windows 8, Microsoft found a very simple new approach -- one that I am sure to use as soon as I upgrade. File History backup does just what the name implies. It ignores all the junk you don't need, and backs up the files you actually create and work on. Genius! This tidy little backup file is just what the doctor ordered. And since it tracks changes, you can get back earlier versions of a file. So if you cut and deleted a magnificent swath of text, just go back to an earlier version. It may not have every single tweak, but the bulk of your brilliance will be there.

Posted by Doug Barney on 07/23/20129 comments

Q&A With Doug Warden: 'Ethical Hacking'

Before Doug Warden, instructor with the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, leads a TechMentor workshop next month on improving enterprise security, he took some time to discuss  with me why your security policy should be designed from the point of view of an attacker.

Posted by Doug Barney on 07/23/20120 comments