Microsoft is proud of IE 8 and, from what I hear, it's a pretty good browser (and will be a key part of Windows 7).
But IE 8 isn't for everyone. Many corporations have custom browsers apps, and if a new browser breaks them, there's heck to pay. The answer is an admin tool that blocks the installation of IE 8 until it's fully tested.
I asked last week why some shops use IE, and today's Mailbag section is full of highly intelligent responses. Have a look!
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/12/2009 at 1:16 PM0 comments
Google has apparently learned a thing or two about world domination from Microsoft. The latest example? Aggressive moves to
convince users to move to Firefox or Chrome.
Here's how the scheme works: Google sends out a browser alert claiming that Gmail runs faster on up-to-date browsers, then offers links to Firefox and Chrome only. I got a bunch of similar messages from Hotmail, even though I'm on the latest rev of Firefox. If I remember right, it wanted me to upgrade to the latest IE, Firefox and maybe even Safari.
Do you use IE? What are the advantages? Thoughts welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/09/2009 at 1:16 PM0 comments
Gartner has released a
list of 11 ways to save electricity in the datacenter. To get the full report, you'll have to buy it or subscribe to a Gartner service. I'll try to save you a few bucks by summarizing the findings.
First, many datacenters are actually colder than they need to be, so turn down the A/C. There are also holes in raised floors than can be plugged so the hot air underneath doesn't escape.
While thinking about these floors, consider cleaning up the tangle of cables that disrupt air flow. Finally, you can separate cold zones from hot, cooling only what really needs cooling.
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/09/2009 at 1:16 PM0 comments
Doug asked, you answered. Here are a few of your impressions (mostly favorable, so far) of the Windows 7 beta. Keep 'em coming!
I've been messing with it since build 6801, an so far I'm hesitantly optimistic.
-Michael
I couldn't wait to try out the beta, and being ahead of the curve is nice when it comes to Windows 7. It has a lot of zip and pep. I hope Microsoft fine tunes the home networking of printers, but the OS is superb!
-Bryan
I am a small shop in Southeast Georgia and downloaded the copy of Windows 7 the day it was leaked to the Net. I have installed it on a Dell Optiplex GX260 with a 60GB hard drive and 2GB RAM. The processor is an Intel Pentium (R) 2.4Ghz. My first impression is: I love it. The OS is not as memory-intensive as Vista. So far, the machine has not crashed and has been running since the day of the leak. Some of the advanced features we can't use because the machine's video card is not robust enough. However, everything else is working better than expected. I am even using the RDP to "play" on the machine on my XP desktop.
I have tested Vista and Windows 7 and right now 7 is the winner. Even some of my older applications run better on 7 versus Vista. My staff and I are going to continue to hammer this OS and make it do what Vista couldn't do for us!
-Bill
I installed it on an Asus AMD 64 machine without a flaw. Had a little problem with a Linksys application (for the wireless card). However, "going direct" worked. The USB transfer is the most exciting part. I couldn't believe how fast it was compared to XP. But since I don't have Vista, I can't compare the USB transfer from/to the USB drive.
-Bill
Meanwhile, a few of you wondered about Windows 7's official name -- or whether that will even matter:
Do you have any idea what Windows 7 will be called? We knew about the Vista name long before release but I haven't heard anything about this iteration.
-Matthew
You can call it Windows 7 or anything you want. It's still Vista.
-Anonymous
Doug recently asked for some ideas on how Apple can expand its market, but one reader thinks that's missing the point:
You may want to check your premise and see things a little differently. I don't know that Apple feels a desire or need to expand for the masses. It seems quite profitable and successful as a niche player.
-Anonymous
There was a slip-up in a recent item about game consoles-turned-supercomputers, as one reader rightly points out:
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the Xbox 360 use a "triple-core PowerPC processor"?
-Anonymous
And Russ couldn't resist a little dig after Doug compared a do-it-yourself PS3 supercomputer to a Heathkit:
Boy, are you dating yourself or what?
-Russ
Check back in on Monday for more reader letters, including your votes for favorite and least favorite IT execs, and what Windows 7 will mean will mean for Vista. In the meantime, leave a comment below or send an e-mail to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/09/2009 at 1:16 PM0 comments
At this week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Steve Ballmer announced that pretty much anyone can now
download the Windows 7 beta. Of course, you must first have a PC robust enough to run the thing. The good news is that many report that Windows 7 needs fewer resources than Vista -- that's a first!
I love the idea of a broad beta. It means the OS will get a good, solid beating, helping it ship faster and hopefully exterminate the bugs. Early reports from you, the Redmond Report reader, indicate that Windows 7 is faster and cooler than Vista. My plan? Skip Vista and move to Windows 7 when ready (and have a nice Mac lapper just for laughs).
Meanwhile, rumors have surfaced of a program that offers a free upgrade to Windows 7 for new Vista customers. The program, if true, could start this summer.
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/09/2009 at 1:16 PM0 comments
We've had a lot of executives on the cover of
Redmond magazine, and sometimes our timing is perfect. Turns out the cover of
Redmond is either a path to riches or the kiss of corporate death. We
interviewed Ray Ozzie days after he joined Microsoft, and not long thereafter Ray took over Bill Gates' job as chief software architect. Then we put
VMware's Diane Greene on the cover and, despite being a fine executive, she was deposed shortly thereafter.
Our latest cover features Microsoft's Bob Muglia. Just as the issue shipped, Mr. Muglia got himself promoted to president of the Servers and Tools Division. Bob has been around Microsoft for years, and was a guy I covered 15 or so years ago at InfoWorld. In my view, he's a tough, smart and eminently reasonable business and technology leader, and so I congratulate Bob on his new role.
Who's your favorite and least favorite high-tech exec? Ballots readily received at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/07/2009 at 1:16 PM0 comments
Yesterday, Doug wondered whether
six-and-a-half years in a Chinese prison is too harsh a sentence for software piracy. But most of you think that sounds just about right:
As a founder in a software company and a former police officer, I have no sympathy for software counterfeiters or anyone who chooses to commit any kind of crime. They steal from people who put in the time and energy to create something of value. I wish we could give all counterfeiters/criminals what I hope is an absolutely miserable prison experience for those guys.
-Veijo
Frankly, 1.5 to 6.5 years in prison for piracy seems far too lenient. You have the lost tax revenue to the U.S. (gee, touchy subject right now), you have the lost revenue to the reseller channel (which in turn trickles down to the individual level), you have the time lost by companies and individuals who were gullible enough to purchase the counterfeit software (assuming they even know they are running illegal software; many counterfeit versions are hard to detect), and of course you have the lost revenue to Microsoft (which, much like the reseller channel, trickles down to individuals). And for all of this, 11 people got these short prison terms?
While admittedly I don't know the full details of the case, $2 billion lost and 11 individuals serving up to 6.5 years -- that's still about $30 million per individual per year served. I have to assume there is a financial fine that these individuals will need to pay, and they probably didn't charge full price for the software they sold...but still, that's hardly sending a tough message to counterfeiters!
-Cynthia
There is more than one side of the "pirated software" story. Besides the loss of revenue that Microsoft experiences, what about all of the unsuspecting consumers who purchase software that cannot be supported or even patched? These pirates are making tons of money, and for every copy of a program that is sold, the impact is the same as if they walked into a store and stole it off of the shelf.
I have long thought that as long as the government continues to slap software pirates on the wrist, there will be no incentive for the behavior to stop. Knowing that they may face 6.5 years of incarceration may well deter the next pirate from embarking on an illegal career.
-LouAnne
Given the value of human rights in China, they would've gotten sentenced to death if the Chinese were really serious about deterring counterfeiting. A man in the U.S. was sentenced to four years in jail for spamming. Granted, an American prison is a country club compared to a Chinese one, but this was just for spam -- an inconvenience.
Software counterfeiting is outright stealing and, when done on what sounds like a similar scale, should be considered worse, according to this armchair judge. I am by far not the biggest fan of China, Microsoft or intellectual property law, but in my opinion these 11 guys got lucky.
-Jon
If the pirates didn't want to go to a Chinese jail for their crimes, they shouldn't have done it in China. They should have done it in France or Switzerland or somewhere where the jail doesn't force you to make 1,000 pairs of shoes a day.
-Randy
These guys broke the golden rule that's well-established in kindergarten: Share! I have not heard of any fines levied. These guys will need to spend some of their bread on prison protection, which will hopefully balance out if they partnered with Microsoft and shared their slice of the pie. Now, that would be justice.
Seriously, don't cry for millionaires that will be treated like royalty, albeit in a nasty prison. They may finally appreciate an honest day's work.
-Jim
And after reading a recent Wired article about Ray Ozzie titled "Saving Microsoft," Doug wondered if Microsoft really needs saving in the first place. One reader thinks Wired makes a good case:
Guess you missed the fourth paragraph of that Wired article:
"Not an easy job. Yes, Microsoft still rakes in the dollars from Windows and Office. But the stock has been flat for years. Microsoft used to be regarded with fear and respect -- Lord Voldemort with market share. Now people downgrade their computers to avoid Vista, tech luminaries write blog posts with titles like 'Microsoft Is Dead,' and the public face of the company is the hapless loser in the Apple ads. Oh, and this year, after a 25-month transition, Gates, the once-omnipresent cofounder, left the building."
Qualifies the title in my mind.
-Anonymous
Tell us what you think! Leave a comment below or send an e-mail to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/07/2009 at 1:16 PM0 comments
The holidays were a bit strange this year. The economy was tough, malls were empty, and we in America awaited a new and very different presidential administration.
My own family here in North Central Massachusetts also had an odd time. Due to a massive ice storm and an inept power company, our electricity went out and I had no heat for 15 days. It didn't crank back up 'til the day after Christmas (though many, including the elderly and poor, had it far worse than I did, so no complaints here). My family huddled around a space heater on Christmas morning and were none the worse for wear.
But Christmas wasn't entirely without gifts. Wall Street had $700 billion to play with, our next president talked about an extra trillion dollars or so a year in federal spending (deficit, what deficit?) and hackers blessed the world with a new SQL injection attack.
Apparently, no systems were actually hit and no patch has been released. The news leaked out only because a security researcher let it out, leading experts to rightly criticize the disclosure.
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/07/2009 at 1:16 PM0 comments
Over the holiday break, I came across an
article from The Hindu news service about some Wall Streeters suggesting that Microsoft jettison nearly 10,000 employees. Why anyone would listen to Wall Street these days is beyond me. Shouldn't Wall Street listen to Microsoft, a company that has more than proven it knows how to run a business?
In any event, it didn't take long for layoff rumors to swirl. The rumor mills upped Wall Street numbers, and had as many as 15,000 pink slips (with Vista logos?) sent out (via Hotmail or Exchange, I wonder). Steve Ballmer himself contributed to the conflagration by telling shareholders that Microsoft was "looking to reduce head count." But now, some of these shoot-from-the-hip bloggers are backing away from their layoff predictions.
There are lots of ways for Redmond to shrink the workforce. It can let contractors go and not fill the jobs of all the retiring Microsoft millionaires. Layoffs? I'll believe it when I see it.
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/07/2009 at 1:16 PM0 comments
I have a great interest in supercomputers. I'm not smart enough to really use them or completely understand all the ins and outs, but I'm fascinated by just how much power can be jammed into a single box. And nowadays, you don't have to pay millions for this horsepower. Commodity chips, memory, storage and operating systems mean these puppies are affordable to the average shop -- or even the average yuppie.
That's right: Supercomputing may now be in the realm of the average cheese-eating, pimply-faced, yuppie teenager. Thanks to Dartmouth College, the Playstation 3 (actually, eight of them) can form a single supercomputer. Pretty cool.
You could actually argue that a single PS3 is already a supercomputer, as is an Xbox 360. The PS3 uses an IBM cell processor which is already (as I understand) eight-core, while the Xbox has a custom three-core Intel Xeon. Both of these consoles make a basic -- and more expensive -- PC look like a Radio Shack TRS-80.
The coolest part of the PS3 supercomputer? Like an old Heathkit, you can build it yourself!
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/05/2009 at 1:16 PM0 comments
Doug recently
called out Apple for not doing enough to expand its market and asked readers how they would bring Apple products to enterprises and low-income consumers. Here are some suggestions:
Why, license OS X to hardware vendors, of course. But that would kill Apple's moneymaking proprietary hardware business, so it'll never happen until it has profitability problems -- at which point it would probably be too late.
-Ed
I would do one thing that would immediately expand the Mac market: drop the whole company in a waste basket and set it on fire. Mac has never been a user-friendly OS or company and should fall to the wayside. Just my thought on the matter.
-Joe
And Mark thinks that when it comes to multi-core, Microsoft comes up a little short:
We have been working with multi-core server and desktop systems from the moment they were available. While no single application becomes dazzlingly fast, we have noted how much more consistently software on all-multi-core systems tends to behave. Single-core systems exhibit too many long user interface pauses as more recently developed software, primarily from Microsoft and Adobe, puts too much demand on very limited processing resources.
There is something fundamentally wrong with the Microsoft OS kernels that is mitigated by the presence of multiple CPU cores. Process management should be Kernel Architecture 101 by now, but for some bizarre reason, Microsoft just doesn't get the fact that users expect real-time software interaction at all times. If the interaction is not real-time, users tend to think that their computers and software are broken. To be fair, Apple's OS X, Sun Solaris and Linux also present dysfunctional user interface pauses and even go out to lunch when sufficiently loaded. The threshold is just much higher than we experience with all versions of Windows.
-Mark
Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below or sending an e-mail to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/05/2009 at 1:16 PM0 comments
Software counterfeiters in China have long been a thorn in the side of Microsoft bean counters (who never actually saw a lot of beans coming from China). Years ago, one could argue that few Chinese could pay for legit copies of Windows and Office anyway, so what's the harm? But now that the balance of trade with the U.S. is tilted so far in China's favor, you could argue the Chinese can better afford these prices than debt-ridden Americans.
This all serves as a bit of context for the news that Chinese authorities have sentenced 11 software pirates to up to six-and-a-half years in prison, an event that Microsoft celebrated with a congratulatory press release.
I felt a bit nauseous thinking of six years in a Chinese hoosegow and initially thought it bad taste for Microsoft to gloat over these sentences. On the other hand, there's a massive economic impact from all this copying: Microsoft claims that up to $2 billion in potential revenue was lost.
What do think? Sentences too harsh? Too soft? Your judgments welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/05/2009 at 1:16 PM0 comments