Dual-Boot Nirvana

• By Doug Barney
• 04/06/2006

There is definitely now an Intel-based MacBook in my future now that Apple has announced Boot Camp, an officially endorsed tool that lets Windows XP run on the new line of Macs. For me, it'll be the best of both worlds. While some users do their browsing on a virtual machine to keep pests away, I'll use Safari -- and play with all the cool Mac gadgets (maybe I'll even write some horrible music with GarageBand). I'll use XP for Outlook, Office and to play with new Microsoft builds. And when XP gets entirely infected, I'll still have Tiger to get my work done. Sweet.

MIT Gives It to Gates
MIT Media Lab kingpin Nicholas Negroponte thought he was doing a good thing by developing a $100 Linux laptop for the Third World. For Bill Gates, this was a poke in his very rich eye, and he and other Redmond execs have made fun of the Negroponte box and have been pushing cell phones with PC functions as a better solution. Negroponte wondered out loud at this week's LinuxWorld Expo why Gates has such a bee in his bonnet, and why Mr. Gates would publicly criticize the system, especially since Microsoft is porting Windows CE to work on Nick's machine.

Google on the IE Warpath
Several recent reports suggest that Google is building its own browser. My initial reaction: Google is again copying Microsoft to pay Redmond back for all the times it copied Google and so on…But then I thought about IE, which never ceases to un-amaze me, and realized that someone could and should do better. Someone could and should reinvent the browser, stop adding features and do a ground-up build.

Here's the bad news: Google apparently hired a cadre of IE developers to build the new browser. Are these folks radicals who Redmond refused to listen to? If so, cool. If not, we'll get more of the same from Google. The other bad news is it looks like Google will build on top of Firefox, not exactly a recipe for a browser revolution.

The article, from BBC news, isn't entirely credible, as it reports that Microsoft hasn't decided if it will keep producing new revs of IE. Earth to BBC, once Microsoft has a monopoly, it ain't real interested in giving it up.

Fed Pushing for More Records
The U.S. government is still seeking what it hopes will lead to a long life for the Internet Child Protection Law. After getting major ISPs to cave in and letting a defiant Google halfway off the hook, the feds are now going after more including EarthLink, Verizon, AT&T and cable TV scallywag Comcast (as a customer I am well aware of how much better this company could be).

The law, which has a few noble aims, makes any content that could be deemed as harmful to kids illegal.

Microhard?
Microsoft has always dabbled in hardware from the old z80 boards back in the early ‘80s to mice, keyboards and, of course, the Xbox. And little do people realize, Microsoft is the one that ultimately designs today's PCs -- if the hardware doesn't pass Redmond muster, it won't make it to Best Buy.

Now Microsoft is flexing a little muscle by licensing its input technologies to major hardware makers.

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More Linux/Windows Integration
Two-year-old Centrify is already on the third version of its flagship Active Directory (AD) integration product. DirectControl 3 lets AD take the lead in authentication, regardless of whether you're running Windows, Mac or any of dozens of versions of Linux and Unix. The company, backed with some $20 million in investment and staffed with more engineers than anything else, is also working to tie AD with a range of non-Microsoft apps. I've said before that Vintela and Centeris (weird that the first four letters are shared with Centrify) are companies to watch -- and so is Centrify.

Get a free DirectControl 3 trial version here.