With Intel and AMD announcing their new processor chips this past week, Doug turns to you to see which side of the fence you're on:
As a good American, I've always got to support the underdog. I try to use AMD where I can and there isn't much performance cost. It serves us well to have these two competing. Each inspires the other to greater efforts.
-John
I usually go with what seems best when I purchase (or which is more readily available), as I don't believe that one is substantially better than the other.
-Charlie
I prefer a chip that works!
-Bill
I used to sing the praises of AMD but I started getting upset that I had to over clock the AMD based processor to get the speed that they said it was capable of. If I buy a 3 GHz processor it should be a 3 GHz processor without over clocking.
I also can't help but to wonder how much of a 64-core processor we could actually use. We run a grip of statistical analysis software and even of the most advanced applications we have do not know how to utilize 4-cores, let alone 64. Until the software geeks start writing code that utilizes these cores, it looks like we're heading for another case of hardware technology having to wait for the applications to catch up.
BTW my vote is for Intel.
-Christian
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/09/20102 comments
Vendors say cloud computing is the next big thing, but they are the ones selling, not buying. Almost half of potential cloud buyers aren't buying -- worried that security is not proven.
IT folks are used to battening down their own IT hatches, and don't yet trust a service provider to do it for them, at least according to a survey by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA).
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/09/20103 comments
The Itanium processor is a curious thing. It was designed by Intel to be the next big thing. But Intel had its own next big thing -- powerful x86/64 chips that weren't only fast but backwards-compatible. Intel nearly killed its own creation.
But Itanium fans, in particular HP, never gave up and the processor kept moving forward. Like IBM's Power6, Itanium drives high-power, high-capacity data center servers largely running Unix and Linux. (I recently interviewed the head of the Itanium Solutions Alliance and got a fascinating look at where the chip stands.)
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/07/20102 comments
The FCC's hopes to enforce Net Neutrality got a vicious slap from a federal appeals court which ruled that Comcast has the right to regulate what happens on its broadband network. In effect, this gives Comcast the right to punish those who use too much bandwidth such as BitTorrent users.
If the decision stands, ISPs will be able to do nearly whatever they want, meter usage and charge per use. Who knows what else?
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/07/20108 comments
In the April issue of Redmond magazine, Doug discussed the impact of Microsoft's ribbon interface and asked your thoughts:
I think Microsoft's ribbon is a disaster. All the products (Microsoft Office) for which the ribbon was introduced are failures. A product is a failure when users go shopping on the Internet looking for add-on tools to make the new ribbon looks like the classic interface.
The human brain prefers productivity; previous tasks -- such as cut, copy, paste, bold, italics -- now requires several clicks of ribbons. That is unproductive and inefficient. Microsoft doesn't get it. With all the money they have, they can not hire PHDs in artificial intelligence to tell them how the human brain works.
Microsoft have completely lost its credibility. Its new product launches are taken with a grain of salt. It's almost like, as Apple's Steve Jobs put it, "They have no taste."
- Duro
I'm not sure I agree with your conclusions, based on the fact you only received 30 letters, with no statistically correct sampling.
You were bound to get more angry, unsatisfied users, and not hear from most of us, who actually like it (my opinion, not a scientific poll). From what I know, the ribbon was not created by MS alone -- it was the result of an extensive usability research. Besides, complaining that UI changed is pointless. I'm actually glad that finally something new came to the Office UI.
If people spent a fraction of the time they spend complaining in learning the new features, they would gain more. Classic menus would not be able to contain all the new features, and if you don't want to change, just stick to the old version.
- Wanderlei
When I first installed Office 2007, I thought the ribbon was a pain. I could not understand why they needed to change things again. If you remember, the ribbon has changed with each of the releases of Office since Office 1997.
One of my first complaints was that there is nothing to inform you that the Office log in the upper left-hand corner actually did something. Once you figure that out, a lot of the major issues with Office goes away. My biggest epiphany was when one of our administrative people pointed out that you can basically do a right-click on almost anything to get to the dialog boxes that you are trying to find.
One of the biggest annoyances to me is that once you get to the dialog box you are looking for, it looks just like the Office 2003 dialog box. So what did Microsoft spend all of their time on? Apparently making Word and Excel more difficult to use for the person that had experience.
The ribbon has made Word and Excel easier to use for the newbie; however, for the person that has been working with Word and Excel for years and years, the ribbon has become a big pain in the neck to deal with, as you have to go hunting down things as to where Microsoft thought they made the most sense to place them. One of the biggest complaints I have heard from our administrative people is wondering why Microsoft hid some of the dialog boxes. They tell me that there are some dialog boxes that are so well hidden that you really have to go digging to find them.
However, the biggest problem we have come across is the Microsoft implementation of OpenXML for Word (i.e., DOCX format). When you use Change Tracking Mode with DOCX, there seems to be a problem with Word determining which changes are the current changes, depending on the user viewing the document. I was editing two large reports right after we converted and had instances with both where the changes I made were not seen by the administrative person. We were on the phone and what I was looking at and what they were looking at were two different things. We used DOCX for about two weeks until we realized that Word documents were getting corrupted and switched back to DOC formatting. This seems to be a hidden secret with Microsoft that this does not work. It will sure be nice when Microsoft gets this fixed.
- Jeff
Seems to be a good idea but Microsoft introduces new technologies and leave us (old tech guys) behind. Most of users get lost and can't find what they want until tech support does the research on it.
As you mention before, how hard would it be to leave the old clunky menu with the ribbon for 2007 and then phase out the old menu on 2010?
- Anonymous
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/07/20100 comments
There will be a new version of SQL Server 2008 R2 custom-made for the most data intensive shops. The Parallel Data Warehouse edition, now in test mode, can handle terabytes numbering in the hundreds.
The scalability comes from DATAllegro, a company Microsoft bought two years ago.
Three version of SQL Server 2008 R2 will ship next month: Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter. The Data Warehouse rev has no specified release date.
Posted by Doug Barney on 04/07/20100 comments
I Recently spoke with Alex Eckelberry, CEO of Sunbelt, about new products. Alex reminded me how I make him feel old since we first met around 1988 when he was an Amiga software exec with Aegis Development and I was editor-in-chief of AmigaWorld magazine (in the process he made me feel old right back).
Sunbelt has some pretty cool new products, but we spent way more time talking about the effort the company puts into security research and making sure its tools are truly unique. Sunbelt puts a ton of effort into security research so it can track and prevent the latest infestations.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/05/20101 comments
Competition is a great thing. In the case of microprocessors, AMD keeps Intel on its toes and we all benefit. Competition is the thing that actually enforces Moore 's Law.
Recently both AMD and Intel have upped the chip ante. AMD released new eight- and 12-core processors aimed at high-end servers, systems that seem perfect for virtualization.
Intel, at nearly the exact same time, unveiled the Xean 7500 series that go from eight to 64 cores. Now that's cooking!
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/05/20106 comments
Curious if Windows 7 is as good as Microsoft says it is? Under a free enterprise trial program, you can play with Windows 7 all year long -- for free. The already existing free trial offer has been extended to Dec. 31, 2010.
If you are serious about Windows 7, you might be better off just buying the darn thing. If you like the trial version and want to buy the real thing, you have to do a clean install.
Meanwhile Windows 7 RC users are starting to get shutdown notices. The RC expires June 1.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/05/20102 comments
Kids can't resist a good April Fools' joke, and neither apparently can those that run today's top Web sites. Here's a smattering of stunts from yesterday:
You've probably heard that Topeka, Kan. changed its name to Google, prompting Google yesterday to change its name to, you guessed it, Topeka. In more Google news, the New Zealand edition of PC World claimed Google is buying Microsoft for $2 billion. If they said $200 billion it would be more believable.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/02/20101 comments
Tom Kemp is not just CEO of Centrify, he is also one of 12 Windows gurus profiled three years ago in Redmond magazine.
Centrify, in essence, allows IT pros to use Active Directory to manage Linux, Unix and Mac computers. The idea is that nearly every shop has Windows Servers and thus has AD. Why not use that knowledge to manage everything else? Microsoft sure doesn't mind since it makes Windows the center of the data universe. Now that it has a few years under its belt, the still young Centrify has a full suite, including two brand new tools. Here's the rundown:
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/02/20104 comments
One reader discusses that the IE security breech patched this week may not be the fault of Microsoft:
The issue is not just with browsers, but with us Web designers and developers.
We keep making our sites to require scripts and ActiveX controls. We keep using Flash, Silverlight and any other "cool" graphic appeal we get out hands on. We throw everything, including the kitchen sink, on the front-end just because we can.
All of these add to the security problem. Most of the security hacks are not from IE or any other browser, but from the junk we add. Our sites are totally unusable if one does not allow scripts, ActiveX, etc. So users must leave their browsers open to hackers.
Don't blame the browsers, blame ourselves.
-Anonymous
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/02/20100 comments