We start today's mailbag with an e-mail from a reader calling Doug out on some of his statements regarding Microsoft's riboon and sharing his own thoughts on it:
Your column in the April issue marks at least twice you have somewhat misinformed your readers on the subject of menu commands in Office 2007. The old menu commands are still there; there are just no menus to get to them. You have to remember the keystrokes (always beginning with Alt-something) on your own (which shouldn't be too hard for the "curmudgeonly users"). In fact, you generally get to the old dialog boxes directly from the ribbon interface for the more sophisticated tasks (such as changing axis features in Excel charts).
My personal opinion is that the ribbon is a disaster. It is slightly more convenient for the simple tasks, but requires many more keystrokes (or mouse clicks) to get to the really detailed stuff. More importantly, it's ugly and uses up too much real-estate; I keep it closed most of the time. I have also voted with my feet. I use OpenOffice whenever I can.
-Anonymous
After the highly publicized release of the Apple iPad and a whole slew of tablet-based computers on the horizon, Doug asked you whether one is in your budget for the near future:
Regarding your question is there is a table in my future. I would say yes. I am not an early adapter. I'll give the market some time to sort out. I hear that there will be an Android tablet before the end of the year. As far as HP Slate vs iPad I'd pick the iPad over the slate. I'm a windows guy but the iPad has all that I need and more.
I'm strongly leaning towards the iPad (my wife hates Apple and I'll probably be drawn and quartered for buying one, but what the hey).
I'll probably pick one up next year when I would suppose the second generation version would be out.
-Daryl
There is a tablet in my future: Windows 7 Tablet -- outdoor viewable AND Wacom pen capable. Touch would be nice. Doesn't need to have a keyboard, but it better have at least two USB ports, SD card reader, Wifi and Bluetooth. I intend to use it with a Clear Wimax dongle for on the go. As long as the battery is replaceable and lasts 2-plus hours going full out, I'm not going to whine about battery life.
If I had to pick a brand, I'd prefer it was Lenovo, with Toshiba as a second choice and all others being equal after that.
-Anonymous
With the info that IE 9 may just be around the corner, one reader shares their thoughts on what Microsoft should do to make it great:
Work closely with Adobe to get a version of Flash to work in the 64-bit version. I like IE best but use Foxfire all the time because of stability issues.
Out of the box with my newer HP Win 7 laptop, IE would continuously freeze whether in the 32- or 64-bit version. I love the accelerators and the private browsing features. I see no sense in purchasing a 64-bit laptop, with a 64-bit OS when I won't be able to use the browser because of Flash. After about four months I'm still waiting for the bugs to be worked out.
Another feature I would like to see is a one-click, clean cached info button instead of going through the menus. Then again, if they could get PrivateBrowsing to work reliably I wouldn't need that!
-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 04/16/2010 at 1:17 PM0 comments
A Microsoft Office official Andrew Kisslo may be the Dennis Miller of software (without Miller's obscure and inane references to Boswell). Kisslo blogged about the Google Docs upgrade, ridiculing exciting new features such as being able to move spreadsheet columns and have a margin ruler in a word processor (a feature that seems to have disappeared, at least as a default, in Word 2007).
Kisslo also warns that old Google documents and files may not work with the new Google Docs.
If Kisslo ever leaves Microsoft, he has a great career waiting for him doing standup in the Catskills!
I walked out of a Dennis Miller show after his third Boswell reference. Am I wrong or is Miller the most pretentious comedian ever? You tell me at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 04/16/2010 at 1:17 PM4 comments
Microsoft is a lot like the British -- under withering fire the company keeps a stiff upper lip and simply plods on. That is exactly what Redmond is doing in the mobile phone market with the upcoming release of Windows Phone 7, which I hear is pretty good.
But Redmond isn't about to wait for 7 -- it wants more mobile territory now, and is invading the youth space to get it. The Kin phones, made by Sharp, are built from the get-go with social media in mind. They have sliding keyboards and store data, such as photos, in the cloud. This is actually designed not just to store more stuff, but to make it easier to upgrade to new phones since you simply have to download all those items to the new device.
What will it take for Microsoft to win in the mobile phone space? Advice welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 04/14/2010 at 1:17 PM1 comments
Until this week, when a Service Pack stopped being supported it actually stopped being supported. Under a new policy, when a Service Pack stops being supported, Microsoft will offer limited support in the form of quick and dirty troubleshooting.
But Microsoft will only go so far. If it can't fix the problem quickly, it will advise customers to move onto the next Pack or product revision.
This policy will be welcome news to Windows XP SP2 and Windows 2000 users for which support ends this July.
How long should Microsoft support its products? You tell me at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 04/14/2010 at 1:17 PM2 comments
Microsoft is full of thousands upon thousands of software geniuses. And who knows Microsoft products better than Microsoft itself? That's why I am blown away by the news that Microsoft is outsourcing a good deal of its IT to Bangalore-based Infosys.
Infosys will support apps, infrastructure, PCs and take over the help desk.
It turns out that for years Microsoft has outsourced these functions to a bevy of partners. I just didn't know it. Now all that work is consolidated under Infosys.
Does your shop outsource? What is good and bad about the practice? Let me know at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 04/14/2010 at 1:17 PM11 comments
A regular to Doug's Mailbag comments on what the FCC/Comcast court ruling spells out for Net neutrality:
For Comcast and all other cable operators, the issue is network stability. Why should a neighborhood of 100 (or 1,000) Comcast customers be at the mercy of one customer who decides to turn on three or four computers in his home and start a massive peer-to-peer file-sharing download?
The cable company needs to be able to throttle back certain kinds of traffic in order to keep a small number of customers from negatively impacting performance for a large number of customers.
Networks are built on average loads, not peak loads, like the electric company, the gas company or the water company. If network operators cannot regulate a handful of abusive customers, who saturate their network at certain times of the day, they cannot guarantee any of their customers reliable service at any time of the day.
The cable provider's ability to control how many hours of porn you download (or even which porn you download -- or which TV station you watch) is a peripheral issue because demand will drive which services you can access.
The threat is not that Comcast has the technical ability to do that. The threat is that the Patriot Act permits the U.S. government to ask them to do that without presenting them a warrant served in a public court. And even worse, legislation protects them from being sued even if the government action is illegal and the network provider complies anyway.
There is simply too much money to be made for Comcast, or anyone else, to care what you do with their service, as long as your use of their service is not detrimental to others who also expect a certain level of service from the same provider.
Thanks for the opportunity to comment.
- Marc
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 04/14/2010 at 1:17 PM1 comments
If you are responsible for patching at your shop, clear your schedule tomorrow cuz it's going to be a monster. Eleven patches will fix more than two dozen problems. Best tell the family you'll be late for dinner.
As usual, remote code execution fixes lead the charge, but denial of service, spoofing and elevation of privilege attacks also get their fair share of attention.
IE has had more patches lately than a pair of old hippy pants, but one IE flaw is not ready to be fixed just yet. A browser flaw that came out of the recent Pwn2Own contest may not be patched until May or later.
Are these vulnerabilities as bad as they seem or is Microsoft just being extra cautious? You tell me at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 04/12/2010 at 1:17 PM4 comments
Exchange 2010 shipped only five months ago, but already Microsoft is looking to trot out tweaks. SP1 will enter beta this June and will feature new management functions and a tool that imports .PST files. In case you hadn't heard, Exchange 2010 has a whole new way of dealing with personal folders and archives. The .PST import is really just a bridge between the old and the new.
Exchange's search function will also be fine-tuned by giving only one result even if the searched for e-mail was sent out to multiple mailboxes.
Finally, OWA is faster by using a "pre-fetch" and can better handle big attachments.
Posted by Doug Barney on 04/12/2010 at 1:17 PM0 comments
Microsoft promised that Office 2010 would be fully compliant with the ISO/IEC 29500 document standard otherwise known as Office Open XML (OOXML). Now before we get into this discussion, can we use real English to describe these things rather than random numbers and letters? Is that possible please?
So here's the back story: Office 2010, due any time now, was supposed to support the ISO file format standard. For some reason, it doesn't fully implement the format, and now Microsoft says that support will come with Office 15, which isn't even on our radar screen.
Is this a big deal? Give me your best lesson in standards at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 04/12/2010 at 1:17 PM2 comments
A couple of readers chime in on Doug's analysis of Microsoft's decision to discontinue Itanium versions of Windows Server 2008 R2:
As I recall, Intel did not have the x64 chips compatible w/ x86 -- AMD did. That's what led to the Opteron rush -- they were still compatible, Intel's offerings were not. And unless I am remembering incorrectly, Intel licensed that backwards-compatible technology from AMD...
Unfortunately, it's my anniversary, and I have husbandly duties to attend to, otherwise I would attempt my own fact-checking, but I think you're wrong about the history of Itanium and the x64/x86 chips…
-Dave
Well, being a long time DEC customer, we moved through versions of Digital's/Compaq's/HP's Tru64 UNIX. So when the Alpha chip began reaching EOL, we had to move to another UNIX and HP made licensing very attractive, so we went to HPUX on Itanium. We had thought very hard about Linux on x64, but being used to solid operating system support underneath our ERP apps and because HP said Linux just wasn't mainstream enough for ERP, we choose HPUX (Itanium). It's been solid for us, but I believe if we have a chance to make a jump in the far future, we will probably opt for x64 and Linux.
I saw the writing on the wall for Itanium when it took too long for updates, Red Hat dropped support and now the Microsoft situation.
Microsoft is all about market share and having ran Windows NT on Digital's Alpha processor (Alpha 1000a and the NT only Alpha 5305, which was simply an Alpha missing the firmware to support Tru64 and VMS) and running Digital's Clustering for Windows NT, Â I never really took Microsoft's support of Itanium seriously.
-Roy
One reader comments on why he fully backs Sunbelt and its Vipre Antivirus program:
Saw your recent note about Sunbelt and their CEO, Alex. Largely based on a leap-of-faith (and disgust with Symantec), I moved my 35-user SMB network to Vipre approximately six months ago and have never looked back. Although there have been a few complications requiring tech assistance, I've found their support to be top-notch; their representatives even take accountability and seem genuinely concerned that your problem has been resolved -- a rarity among support these days. The product has a small footprint and works as advertised. As a result I have since recommended and installed Vipre for my handful of other SMB clients. Sunbelt does, in fact, seem to take a different approach then other vendors. Â I've noticed and applaud their efforts.
-Martin
After the announcement of users being able to test-drive Windows 7 until the end of the year, here are one reader's thoughts:
I've been playing with Windows 7 on a VM via VirtualBox at work. I'm not too impressed but also not too disappointed either -- this coming from someone who is no MS fan.
A couple things I really don't like: they seem to like to change the looks of things just to make it seem different. I really don't get the change of add/remove programs to programs and features. Where did add/remove Windows components go? I can't find it.
 Also, I finally added the Windows 7 VM to my domain. When I logged in as a domain admin and try to install software it tells me to log in as a user with administrative privileges. I thought I am. I looked in the local user accounts as domain admin are automatically added to local admin group in XP when you add it to the domain. I searched a bit and found that the UAC setting were the cause. There should be an easier way where privileges can get elevated temporary then back to standard user. Something like sudo in Linux would be nice.
MS usually does like to make these things easy though. I'm thinking now maybe they just don't know how.
-Anonymous
Posted by Doug Barney on 04/12/2010 at 1:17 PM0 comments
IE 8 came out just last year, and already beta testers are getting excited about IE 9. In fact, over 700,000 folks just like you have downloaded the developer preview. The new rev has a speedier rendering engine and HTML5.
The fast creation of a new IE shows that Microsoft remains 100 percent committed to the browser market, and would likely be embarrassed if it ultimately lost to FireFox or even worse, Chrome.
I still hear complaints about IE, but I use it for about 10 percent of my browsing and for me it works just fine.
What should Microsoft do to really make IE great? Advice welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 04/09/2010 at 1:17 PM6 comments
The iPad is out to mixed reviews. Apple fans love it to death, while others are knocking the new gizmo. The main beefs -- it won't run Flash, which drives the bulk of Internet video, Apple controls all the apps and you don't get a fully free browsing experience.
But hey, critics also said the graphical user interface would never catch on!
HP hopes to take advantage of the iPad's lack of computer features with its upcoming Slate based on Windows 7. HP is taking pains to point out that the Slate will indeed run Flash, and will support external storage.
I'm waiting to see how the Slate handles standard productivity apps like Office. Starting at $550, the price is also competitive, though netbooks are up to $300 cheaper!
Is there a tablet in your future, and if so, which one? Send your decision to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 04/09/2010 at 1:17 PM17 comments