Remember the demos earlier this year of the Windows-based HP "Slate" that may have been nixed because of HP's acquisition of Palm? Yeah, HP's slate was pretty sick, and I would have waited for it if it was coming, but the iPad now looks like a sound choice. Forrester Research makes a convincing case, in a report, that Microsoft needs to come out with a Windows tablet to maintain consumer relevance. If you're reading this post, chances are good you're a Windows consumer. That being the case, if a Microsoft partner produced something like the HP Slate, would it sway you from an iPad?
-- By Michael Domingo
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/09/2010 at 1:18 PM28 comments
A friend asked (on Facebook, nm less) for opinions on whether to migrate his company's phone service from Google Android to the new iPhones, as their contract needed to be upgraded. Obviously absent is any mention of phones sporting Windows, but there was a time when Microsoft's OS for phones was among the top three in sales.
It's ancient history now, in Internet terms, but Microsoft hopes it can ride the momentum of business's Windows 7 upgrade cycles that are supposed to take place in the next few years, by convincing business customers to upgrade to Windows 7 phones, expected later this year. (It seems we're always waiting with Microsoft.) Microsoft makes an argument for using those phones as the center of one's Windows-based world, with seamless collaboration between Microsoft's offline apps and the online, made-for-the-cloud ones. Essentially, Windows 7 becomes some sort of "Office hub," to put it in Microsoft terms.
It's nice to see Microsoft trying to make this all work, but the harder task would be to convince my friend to migrate in Microsoft's direction.
-- By Michael Domingo
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/09/2010 at 1:17 PM5 comments
Microsoft's learning event, Tech-Ed North America, is winding down in New Orleans. And the most interesting thing about it is…well, New Orleans.
The opening keynote by Bob Muglia, senior vice president of Microsoft's Server and Tools Business, was about cloud computing (a fancy word for "outsourcing"), along with a recap of past Microsoft announcements.
A lot about the cloud is still murky. Cloud computing can have a dark side, especially when you have to change out your hosted applications, according to Gartner analyst Andrew White. His colleague, Lydia Leong, pointed out that the magic cloud might not be so magic.
One Tech-Ed news tidbit tucked away in the shuffle was the availability of Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1 beta. Microsoft had announced the details about the Exchange 2010 SP1 beta back in April. The beta has some personal archive handling improvements with .PST files, as shown here. It also adds improvements to the Outlook Web App client. But that's about it.
Still, in the background of all of that excitement, there was New Orleans. They are still rebuilding five years since Hurricane Katrina. If that weren't enough, the gushing BP spill spews oil into the Gulf of Mexico with no end in sight. Something's rotten in the country, and we're not talking Denmark here!
And even though Microsoft has its hands full plugging holes in Windows, its engineers still found time to build houses in New Orleans while at Tech-Ed. Steve Andrews, a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for Visual Studio ALM, founded a group called Geek Give that advocates spending some time at conferences helping local communities. What a guy!
Will Microsoft employees next devote time to plugging BP's underwater torrent? Maybe they could inject boxes of Windows Vista into that hole? This needs some think time.
In the mean time, Microsoft has generously donated $100,000 to the Colbert Nation Gulf of America Fund, which will go towards the relief efforts in the area
But seriously, what has grabbed you so far at Tech-Ed? Check out the summary here. Was it the technical nuances of cloud computing and using the Opalis solution to manage services? The scale-up capability of SQL Azure? How about the RemoteFX capability coming next month with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1? RemoteFX will enable 3-D graphics experiences on remote thin-client devices. Maybe you were wowed by the promise of unified communications with the release of Communications Server "14" later this year?
Tell Doug what impressed you about Tech-Ed at [email protected]. And please don't mention our national disasters.
--By Kurt Macike
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/09/2010 at 1:17 PM1 comments
With the news that IE has carved out a larger share in the Internet browser market, here's some of your thoughts on Microsoft's Web offering:
I'm surprised to hear that IE 8 made a comeback. We have several customers who can't use it because of compatibility issues with older applications (most seem to be banking applications for our bank customers) and the compatibility mode doesn't help with this.
I can't get it to work reliably on my personal Win 7 computer. There's something off and I've tried several fixes, but nothing works. The main issue is that links on Web pages just won't work and give an error at the bottom of IE. I've checked the links and they aren't anything special and don't use Javascript -- just basic HTML text links. Quite frustrating, especially because I can't switch back to IE7 on Win7. I almost exclusively use Firefox now and love it.
-Anonymous
I'm glad that Microsoft finally rebooted their ability to innovate, or more correctly, compete in the browser market. Microsoft sat for waaaaay too long on the -- for lack of a better term -- crappy IE 6. IE 8 is an iterative step in the right direction and I'm glad that IE 9 is showing lots of early promising results. Once again, it shows that competition drives innovation. Microsoft has made major strides in making IE compatible, but until IE 6 and IE 7 are finally wiped away, there will be lots of compatibility issues across browsers. I just hope that HTML 5 standards do continue to move towards a final standard versus a sliding compliance standard we have today.
-Ryan
As an old software developer (30 years and counting), I try to keep an open mind about software technologies. I use IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari (pretty much in that order).
Now that you mention it, I find myself lately just automatically using IE 8. I haven't really thought about why -- I'm not much of a fanboy of anything. Maybe somebody can tell ME why I do that.
-Mike
We still have a few issues with browsers other than IE 6. One of them is with our Siebel platform. It will not function on IE 7 or IE 8. To get around this I'm now having Siebel run as a published app in Citrix so that the workstation can run a newer version of IE while Citrix publishes IE 6.
We have one other application from AT&T called Route-It which is a client install going out via port 443 that seems to be having issues with the new browser and is not supported on anything other than IE 6. Fortunately, it is only installed on one machine. It's possible a browser setting needs to be changed. We're just now starting to look into it. Also, Route-It has a Web version, but it is very inefficient. The user is requesting the fat client instead.
Aside from that, most of our other apps seem to be doing fine on a beta of about 20 people running IE 8 at my site. We're planning on rolling out to another 20 this week, and then to another 500 or so computers next week due to the success in beta testing.
-Travis
Share your thoughts with the editors of this newsletter! Write to [email protected]. Letters printed in this newsletter may be edited for length and clarity, and will be credited by first name only (we do NOT print last names or e-mail addresses).
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/09/2010 at 1:17 PM1 comments
I wrote an editorial about Microsoft's move to turn its major software platforms into one big collaborative platform.
My point was that having the phone, Web conferencing, video conferencing, IM, presence, e-mail and all forms of social networking is overwhelming. How can you get any work done when you spend all of your time communicating?
Avanade, a massive consultancy, has research that backs my assertions. In a recent survey they chronicle how important this technology is, and how it can sometimes be a colossal waste of time. In fact, 25 percent of survey answerers "dread" this stuff, seeing it
as pulling them away from key tasks, killing concentration and generally wasting time.
What is your experience with all this collab tech? Are all these communication technologies a distraction or a help? Whether you love it or hate it, please write (but don't tweet, IM or FaceBook me just yet) to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/07/2010 at 1:17 PM3 comments
Here are some of your responses on the news that Google has restricted the use of Windows throughout its company:
It's an interesting statement against Apple that Google considers Microsoft a competitor and Apple isn't. This is kind of weird because I thought that Apple was actually Google's biggest competitor with the iPhone going against Android.
Or is maybe Google just taking the classic Linux user approach where they are just against Microsoft, no matter what they do? And in that case, maybe Microsoft should just wholeheartedly accept Google so that Google has to be against itself!
But I guess it just comes down to CXOs making decisions without the understanding of the reality of what goes on beneath them. Totally not understanding what the ramifications of their actions really are, you know, just like the U.S. Congress.
Hopefully this just didn't transpire because Google is so cheap that they are going to hoard the $10M or so that they would be paying Microsoft for licenses.
-Ed
As many complaints that I have concerning Microsoft, Google, et al, won't catch them for years to come, if ever. Not only do they dominate the marketplace, the interoperability between their vast array of products is almost profound.
Linux is for geeks. Macs are too expensive. Google operates in the cloud market, which won't be trusted by most businesses for years to come.
Microsoft is for business. And since business do the overwhelming amount of computer training, everyone knows Microsoft. It will continue to dominate for at least another generation or two.
FYI, I'm implementing Small Business Server 2008 w/Office Communications Server 2007 R2. What a sweet package for the Small Business. It has everything they'll ever need for IT, and it's unified.
-Ian
What I have seen at some tech companies is a big divide between the technical/production side of the company and the business side -- when it comes to what machines they need. The technical side uses whatever they need: Windows/Linux/Mac, etc. But at the business end, while the PC dominates, the Mac has gained a cool status and can usually support the business end, when they are using Microsoft Office for the Mac -- there's that pesky Microsoft again. But, Macs are far more expensive than a PC with Windows, with no added cost/benefit (except for the cool status). I guess Google feels the need to spend the extra cash on Macs for the business staff.
But do we really think GE or another enterprise will wake up and say to themselves: "Gee, let's spend all that extra cash on more expensive Macs." The cost benefit is just not there. Maybe someday, but not yet.
-Andrew
As I understand it, the Google hack was successful because they were still running IE6 on some of their systems. Upgrading to 7 or 8 was recommended long ago because of security issues with 6. And, yes, it was Gmail that was hacked. Is that thing out of Beta yet?
-Dana
No, Microsoft isn't under pressure from Google's drop of Microsoft products, nor by the iPad. If anything, Microsoft's cell phone market is practically dead. Windows Mobile 7 is taking far too long to be released and other cell phone OSs, particularly the iPhone and Android OSs, are grabbing a huge portion of the market share. This is where Google and Apple are taking a bite out of Microsoft. Windows Mobile 7 is going to have to be spectacular for Windows Mobile phones to come back with a vengeance.
-Mark
The last company to take such a bold stand with MS was Netscape and that did not end well. Before that was IBM and they seem to have since joined MS rather than fight them.
-Anonymous
Share your thoughts with the editors of this newsletter! Write to [email protected]. Letters printed in this newsletter may be edited for length and clarity, and will be credited by first name only (we do NOT print last names or e-mail addresses).
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/07/2010 at 1:17 PM0 comments
There are some phenomenal tools that make the already powerful Active Directory easy to handle. I'm not sure if it's pride or budgets but most IT pros manage AD directly, on a manual basis.
This is according to Osterman Research which shows that nearly 60 percent of IT pros have no extra tools to manage AD.
Script monkeys and the real hard-core command line folks prefer direct control. And for the gifted, going manual gains my total respect. But I'm sure there are plenty that would love some third-party tools but the boss just says no.
What say you? Do you love command lines and other forms of direct control or do automation tools free you to be more strategic? Fire up your text editor and tell me what you think at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/07/2010 at 1:17 PM3 comments
Every Patch Tuesday is different. Some are light, and sometimes we need more plugging than a BP oil rig. Tomorrow is more like the Deep Water Horizon -- with a whopping 10 patches. The only difference? Microsoft plugs almost always work.
This Tuesday there will be an even 10 patches -- most of which , predictably, involve remote execution exploits.
The big culprits this time around include Windows, including the arguably more secure Win 7, as well as Office. IE, from version 5 all the way up to IE 8, got fixes.
SharePoint also gains an important patch.
With 10 patches, it's time to crank up the coffee pot, especially now that Jolt Cola is off the market.
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/07/2010 at 1:17 PM4 comments
I was driving home from New Hampshire with my daughter behind in another car two winters ago and came across a road block. Having to turn around, we decided to use her GPS to guide us back to the highway. The road got narrower and soon turned to dirt. Then the GPS advised us to take a left down a Jeep trail strewn with fallen branches.
That's what came to mind when I heard about Lauren Rosenberg from Los Angeles.
Lauren was in Salt Lake City and wanted to walk to a local park. Google Maps sent her down a highly-traffic sidewalk-free road where she was promptly hit by a car. Now she wants a 100 grand for her troubles.
Apparently Lauren used the mobile version of Google Maps, which offered no warning of the lack of sidewalks and no alternative route. The regular Web version would have had both of those things.
Is Google at fault or was Rosenberg stupid to proceed down an unsafe road? You be the judge at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/04/2010 at 1:17 PM51 comments
With Apple surpassing Microsoft in market sales, Doug asked what are readers' favorite Apple products and is Steve Jobs a genius or control freak? Here's some of your responses:
I think the truth is actually something of both.
There's no question that Steve Jobs has a mind for controlling everything that he goes after. If he could, I have no doubt that he would control even more. However, any one person only has a certain span of control; to attempt more is just not going to work successfully. Where Steve's genius comes in, I think, is his ability to discern products and services that will appeal to a passionate audience, and to attract very smart people to come alongside and work diligently on them until they're polished to a high luster.
Apple has not had an unbroken record of success since Jobs' return as CEO. The Mac Cube, for instance, looked great, but had some fundamental problems that were never fixed.
Overall, though, Apple has a reputation for bringing exceptional products and services to market. The fit and finish of Apple hardware is really hard to match in the arenas where they compete. Apple services, like iTunes, are market leaders for a reason -- they're better than the competition, and they just work.
If it sounds like I'm an Apple fanboy, I'm not. I simply recognize that Steve Jobs is exceptionally successful at what he does, and the company he's (re)built has done its work really well. And that market cap is evidence of that success.
Apple products are too locked down for my personal taste, but they're the game in town that everyone tries to imitate -- the most sincere form of flattery.
-Dennis
Yes. He is an unprincipled one.
-Anonymous
I think that Jobs is both a control freak and genius. I think he is a control freak because he is a genius. He has a vision of how things work, and has forced everything in that direction.
It's hard to say which one of my Apple products is my favorite, but it may be MobileMe. It seamlessly and effortlessly connects with no problems. I sync everything between Macs and my iPod without the hassle of physically doing it myself.
I truly believe that the thing that has kept Apple from being the home desktop/laptop king is their prevalence in the schools back in the '80s. I remember using the old II e/g s and thinking that they were way easier to use than the PCs. My computer tutor told me that they couldn't be any good if they let little kids use them, and I eventually adopted that attitude. Then, through necessity, I bought and used a Mac mini. One thing led to another, and now I am one of those annoying Mac converts.
-Vicke
You always come up with thought-provoking topics and provide insightful views that instigate intelligent, educational feedback.
In my collection of electronic wizardry, there are a couple of iPhones, an iPod, a MacBook Pro and an iPad. Of these, the iPhones are my most often used Apple products, while the iPod seldom sees use. My least favorite is definitely the iPod. The iPhones completely fulfill every use I would have for my iPod. On the other hand, no one product qualifies as my favorite. I love the use of Apple's MobileMe to keep all critical information in sync across almost all my Apple devices. In addition, it allows me to access that information from any Web browser on any system. For me, this advantage is so powerful that I have already moved all my contacts, calendar and task information to my Apple gear.
I promise, sometime in the near future, I'll write you about the path that lead me into the Apple world and the synergy I get from adding a little Apple to my daily PC usage.
It is politically incorrect to refer to people at Steve Jobs' level of wealth with negative terms like paranoid, control freak or crazy. Those terms are only used to describe people with far smaller nest eggs. For people at Steve Jobs' level of wealth we use the term eccentric as the first part of a compound positive term. For example, we would describe Steve Jobs as an eccentric genius, an eccentric leader or even an eccentric motivator… you get the idea. Personally, I view Steve Jobs as an eccentric genius, ever revolutionizing the lives of people living in the information age.
-Dr. Dave
Share your thoughts with the editors of this newsletter! Write to [email protected]. Letters printed in this newsletter may be edited for length and clarity, and will be credited by first name only (we do NOT print last names or e-mail addresses).
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/04/2010 at 1:17 PM2 comments
The Department of Defense is always worried about cyber attacks against government computers, but taking down a major corporation can be just as bad.
That's why the DoD is thinking about defending corporate networks as well.
The department has a new task force looking at the issue with an eye towards financial institutions, utilities and transportation.
The DoD already has its own defensive system called Einstein, which may extent to certain critical private industry systems.
If the plan moves ahead, corporate involvement would be strictly voluntary, DoD officials say.
Does this all make sense or do you fear the government will do more harm than good? Express your feelings at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/04/2010 at 1:17 PM2 comments
IE might still have more than half the browser market, but that lead has been steadily eroded by the likes of FireFox, Chrome and Safari. In a surprise move, IE actually gained back share last month, increasing 1.3 percent to nearly 60 percent of total share, according to Net Applications.
Much of the minor surge is due to IE 8, which, by most accounts, is measurably better than its predecessors. In fact, more than 50 loyal Redmond Report readers wrote to me about IE 8 and the reports were generally glowing.
Slight losers in all this were Chrome and FireFox, which each lost a tiny bit of share.
Is IE 8 a worthy competitor or am I just drinking the Redmond Kool-Aid? You tell me at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/04/2010 at 1:17 PM4 comments