As expected, our entry last week about Windows XP slowly dying brought XP fans out with claims that the operating system is very much alive and well. (And it must be, considering your editor is using it right now.) Frank writes:
Hey, I'm running XP until I can't. Vista and Windows 7 both have network issues connecting to multiple domains. Until someone can tell me how to:
1) Login to one domain
2) Connect to file shares in another domain
3) Did I forget to mention that the domains cannot directly trust each other or become part of the same tree, directory, etc.? (Whatever the new buzz word is for Active Directory, NDS, etc...)
I haven't played with the Windows XP compatibility in Windows 7 yet, but it would not be enough to allow all applications to see the drive shares. Ah, the fun of having someone else in charge of a large part of my work space and the ability, or rather lack thereof, to do something about it.
I hate the control changes when browsing files. I used to be able to use backspace (very fast and quick 'look Ma, no mouse needed!' in Windows XP) to change up directory levels. In Windows 7, it gets into a round-robin and doesn't come out! And don't get me started about that horrid ribbon in Office 2007 and 2010. Yuck to the core! Dang, Microsoft, just pull the rug right out from under me and give me nowhere to land. I do like some of the speed differences in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 to get to a desktop. But that's about it.
Maybe Linux desktops will be a thing of the future.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 09/16/20105 comments
Is the recession over? Does it feel over? It doesn't really matter all that much what the stock market is doing or what leading economic indicators say as long as the job market is still lousy.
Fortunately, though, a group called TechAmerica says that tech jobs actually picked up a bit in the first half of 2010... by 0.5 percent. But hey, a bump is a bump.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 09/15/20100 comments
This is the release that's meant to be a Salesforce.com killer. Wonder what Marc Benioff (Salesforce.com's CEO, of course) will have to say about that...
Posted by Lee Pender on 09/15/20100 comments
Faithful readers (and those of you who only check in once in a while), your editor is expecting a major life event that could happen at any moment. As such, RCPU may suddenly be taken over by guest writers for a week or more. Not to worry, though. These folks are the Earl Morrall of RCPU writers. (Of course, you know that Earl Morrall was the greatest backup quarterback of all time. He led the undefeated 1972 Dolphins to nine of their 17 wins…at the age of 38.) Scott Bekker, Jeff Schwartz and Doug Barney are all prepared to strap on the helmet in case your editor has to spend some time on the sidelines. Just don't start liking them more than you like the "normal" RCPU... Also, other than this entry, RCPU is going to be pretty short the next couple of days. So enjoy that while it lasts.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 09/15/20100 comments
So, those darn Russians are at it again, infiltrating dissident groups and confiscating their computers in the name of...checking for pirated Microsoft software. Redmond, blissfully unaware of this sort of thing, is now familiar with the law of unintended consequences.
But in fairness to Microsoft (and we're not suggesting in any way that Microsoft was complicit in this Russian stuff -- in fact, we're sure that it wasn't), Redmond is trying to sort the situation out so that this sort of thing doesn't happen again. If the Russians are going to run a police state, couldn't they at least go back to using their old logo? It was way cooler than anything they have now.
Posted by Lee Pender on 09/13/20103 comments
This wasn't the Steve whose job was rumored to be on the line. In fact, he really never seemed to go by Steve at all, but we needed to call him that in order to come up with a clever headline that would create some confusion with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
Unlike Ballmer, who has been under fire for many quarters for years now, Stephen Elop was a standout at Microsoft as head of the company's Office and Dynamics product lines, among others. That must be why Nokia chose Elop to be its next CEO.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 09/13/20100 comments
Sasquatch? No, Office Communications Server, which is now named Lync Server 2010 in honor, presumably, of that guy from the Mod Squad (who spelled it Linc, but we couldn't resist a late-'60s TV reference. All you over 50s say what!) .
Posted by Lee Pender on 09/13/20100 comments
So, that Microsoft-Yahoo search deal? It's kind of working a little bit! With Bing now running Yahoo, Microsoft's consumer-search market-share numbers now seem, at least, to be marginally less pathetic than they used to be. Keep on foisting that sword at those windmills, Don Microxofte.
Oh, by the way, while Microsoft was looking slightly less non-competitive in consumer search, Google came out with some sort of instant-search thing that's supposed to make searching faster than thinking (or, at least, faster than typing).
Posted by Lee Pender on 09/09/20100 comments
You know that it's a slow news day when Windows XP cracks the headlines, but you also know that the operating system is alive and well when its death is reported over and over again.
There's no free support left for Windows XP, and soon, Dell, once again one of the industry's leading PC makers after having survived a bit of a dip, will stop offering XP as the pre-loaded OS on its machines. Evidently, Dell doesn't really want to stop selling XP on its boxes. Read between the lines (or just read the actual lines) of a Dell blog post on the XP issue, and it seems pretty clear that Microsoft is the puppet master in this scenario.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 09/09/201013 comments