Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, is off to a rousing start, at least according to one measure: paid clicks. Paid clicks are up some 13 percent compared to the old MSN Live Search. (Now, doesn't Bing sound a whole lot better?)
Not only that, but Microsoft's share of search moved from an embarrassing 9.1 percent into the double digits at 12.1 percent. The share is still small, but is moving in the right direction.
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/26/2009 at 1:16 PM5 comments
Just as we expected, the release of a beta for Microsoft's free anti-virus tool caused a firestorm, with vendors such as Symantec complaining that Microsoft has no real right to be in this market -- and that the product stinks to boot!
This argument defies logic. If the product stinks, why do you care that it exists? Meanwhile, the patch-meisters from Shavlik argue that the big security suites are big on costs and small in agility. So a small tool like the new MS anti-virus package ain't such a bad thang.
I clearly see Symantec's anger; Microsoft is trying to take over a market others pioneered. On the other hand, this move has been coming for years, giving security vendors plenty of time to react. Do I sound conflicted? You bet. Where do you come down? Send your thoughts to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/26/2009 at 1:16 PM24 comments
George sides with most of you who wrote about the various shortcomings of the supposed "Exchange-killer," Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook:
I have to agree with (most of) the readers regarding Google Apps Sync. There are a number of issues that stand out: e-discovery, backups and the ability to restore, total control of the environment, tie-ins to CRM tools, etc. Being an Exchange admin, I have seen and heard of just about every crazy request you can imagine. Google is simply not equipped to handle it right now.
As for the one person that has replaced Exchange with Google? There is nothing that irritates me more than a business with an @gmail.com, @yahoo, @live, etc. address. It's so very unprofessional. Pay the $10 to $20 a year to register a domain and pay the extra for e-mail hosting, be it with Google, Yahoo or something else. Other than horribly bad service, there is nothing that makes me not want to do business with a company more than them not having a registered domain and/or not using it for e-mail.
-George
Last week, Doug wrote about Microsoft's recently revealed Windows 7 downgrade plan, but noted that it only applies to high-end versions of the OS. Marc gives a reason why:
These downgrade rights are limited to high-end SKUs because it is not intended for consumers. It is intended for enterprise customers (as well as small businesses) who want to move to Windows 7 but have not completed their evaluation (or transition) of their mission-critical applications from XP to Windows 7. These rights are not intended to enable the end user to keep using XP so they can run their old, poorly-behaved applications forever.
Frankly, in my opinion, these downgrade terms are extremely liberal considering that users have know since 2007 that XP was going away!
-Marc
Downgrade plans or not, a couple of you are still lukewarm (at best) about the idea of moving to Windows 7:
Let me preface what I'm going to say with the fact that I've been a user -- sometimes enthusiastic, sometimes not -- of Microsoft products for over 20 years. That said, Windows 7 in my mind is Windows Vista SE (Sorta Enhanced). It's not significantly better, it doesn't really blaze any new trails, but it does correct some -- and I mean some -- of the shortcomings Vista had when it was introduced. For instance, its memory footprint seems smaller. However, I haven't noticed that it's significantly faster than either Vista or XP. And the GUI has been tweaked just enough to convince me that Microsoft is being innovative just for the sake of changing things. Who was the rocket surgeon who decided that there was no longer a need for the Quick Launch toolbar?
On the plus side, Windows 7 seems relatively solid. It seems to break some programs that run OK in Vista, but that's more a quibble than anything. I'll just say that Windows 7 is OK -- not great, but OK. Other than the forced deadlining of XP, there's no real reason to move to it. Fine. Things change. Windows 7 is the future. Get in line now, as we slog into tomorrow. Onward.
-Dennis
While Windows 7 seems to fix much/most of what was wrong with Vista, we still need to test everything on all 10,000 desktops against Windows 7. Sometimes all you need is a tweak, but you have to determine that and include it in the rollout plans before you disrupt the user community. And if you think XP Mode is the cure, think again.
First, in its present form, it is a rough beta with usability issues. Second, even if it did work well, to use it you must provide each PC with two IP addresses -- one for the regular PC and one for the virtual PC. With many of our subnets configured fairly tightly (as would most efficient telecommunication environments) there isn't room on each subnet for another IP address. Not that there couldn't be a workaround, but each time you add a twist or turn, you add complexity and another thing to go wrong. And since when would any responsible corporate customer adopt a new operating system without testing the RTM against their current population of applications and other software? Imagine if that was how Vista was handled.
-Bruce
But Jeff just hears the same, old song from the detractors:
Is it my imagination or are some of the IT folks that write into you some of the whiniest people -- more whiney than end users -- when it comes to software upgrades? I love the constant "how dare Microsoft force me to upgrade" rants; they are quite hysterical.
-Jeff
Tune in on Friday for more reader letters, including your thoughts on good IT/bad IT. Meanwhile, share your thoughts below or send an e-mail to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/24/2009 at 1:16 PM0 comments
I have to admire Diskeeper. This company thinks of one thing and one thing only: defragging hard drives.
It took me a while to understand just how important it is to organize bits and bytes on our hard drives; for our PCs, defragging gives back a little oomph. But on servers, the difference is more dramatic. And now we're asking our servers to do even more, to perform cartwheels as we virtualize the heck out of these things.
Diskeeper believes that server disks that support a bunch of VMs should be as efficient as possible, and has a new tool, V-locity, that helps do just that for Hyper-V.
Is defragging important? Do the built-in Windows tools do a good enough job? Render your verdicts at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/24/2009 at 1:16 PM8 comments
Money may not buy happiness, but it can buy freedom. And for Bill Gates, having billions means the freedom to invest in wild ideas that may or may not work. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is known for its disciplined approach to investing. It researches the area and puts money where it will do most good. (I'd love for the Foundation to manage our massive federal stimulus program!) I don't think we can praise Bill enough for these works.
But Gates also likes to take a risk or two, and is funding programs that most others turned down. Examples include "a magnet that can detect malaria" and "giving mosquitoes a head cold to prevent them from detecting and biting humans."
Speaking of the Foundation, 20 minutes after finishing this item, I got an e-mail message in French from "The Bill Gates Foundation." I called upon all my high school French skills and was able to determine that I won 250,000 Euros from a Foundation lottery. Tres bien!
I have 48 hours to e-mail one of the lottery officials. His name? Robert Clary. Now, that name sounds familiar. Can anyone tell me who Robert Clary is and why he's famous? Or do you know nothing, nothing! Send your answers to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/24/2009 at 1:16 PM3 comments
As a kid, I loved Spam. In the second grade, I nicked a tin of Spam from the cupboard and put it under my pillow so it would be close all night. Of course, I'm taking about the processed pork product. Junk e-mail is a whole other story.
I know all about junk e-mail. I publish my real e-mail address in each newsletter so your mail gets to me fast and direct. That's the best part of my job. But because my address is out there, I get spam -- lots of spam. And for me, in fact for all of us, the spam just keeps on a-coming. Despite the CAN-SPAM Act, junk mail is still on the rise, and May was one of the worst months ever, according to research from Symantec.
The culprit? Botnets that deliver this garbage, often from our very own PCs! The only thing missing from the research? A solution!
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/24/2009 at 1:16 PM6 comments
Wouldn't you know it? I just wrapped up a monster cover story about green computing for the June issue of Redmond magazine, when Microsoft released its top 10 green tips.
I won't walk through all 10, especially since the virtualization tip is rather obvious. Instead, I'll highlight a couple of surprises, such as the very first tip: Compensate IT for datacenter efficiency. Now most bonuses, raises and SLAs are based on speed and uptime. This often leads IT to overbuild, and thus wastes precious watts.
Companies should also reward power savings. Something I didn't realize is that if you have a datacenter that's only half-utilized, you waste electricity. That's because all that power you don't need comes in anyway and ends up stored in UPSes and driving cooling systems that are only really partially used. Getting a detailed picture of actual application loads can help buy future hardware that's not wasteful and is perfectly suited to your software.
Microsoft has a blog item and a pretty good white paper you can check out here.
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/22/2009 at 1:16 PM0 comments
Microsoft has always had an odd approach to PC hardware. First and foremost, the company doesn't want to compete with its OEMs. But Redmond wanted a few dollars so it started building mice, which in the early days Windows enabled character-based PCs. In a similar vein, Microsoft sold an add-in PC accelerator card, again aimed at running Windows.
While Microsoft has branched into Zunes and Xboxes on the entertainment side, its PC hardware business still revolves largely around mice. Not too exciting, right? Wrong!
Microsoft's newest mouse, the Wireless Mobile Mouse 6000, does away with the old mouse ball and uses optics for tracking. This way, it doesn't have to glide smoothly over the surface and, as Microsoft claims, can even work on a "shag carpet." Pretty slick.
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/22/2009 at 1:16 PM5 comments
When Microsoft entered the anti-virus market, I knocked it for competing against the partners that saved Windows in the first place, and also sold something that should be part of the OS, anyway (the same way seat belts are part of our cars).
Now that Microsoft is on the verge of launching a free anti-virus tool, I have nothing bad to say. Microsoft Security Essentials will be ready for testing tomorrow. Just make sure you have a legit copy of Windows; otherwise, you're out of luck.
I'm optimistic about this software. While clearly not enterprise-class, Security Essentials could be great for netbooks. And even though OneCare was a bust, I've had good luck with the Microsoft anti-virus scanning tool that's similar to Trend Micro's HouseCall (though I can't seem to find it anymore) and Redmond's anti-malware.
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/22/2009 at 1:16 PM2 comments
If you've run into some problems after upgrading to IE 8, you're not alone:
I've been an IE user for as long as I can remember. I faithfully upgraded to IE 8 when it was pushed out. However, I got very frustrated at how you cannot move around the toolbars anymore, to have more than one type of toolbar per row, so there is all this lost vertical screen space. I searched for answers, but I only found long lists of people mad about the same problem, and no response from Microsoft about why they would remove the ability to customize the size and location of the toolbars.
My answer? After years of people telling me I should check it out, I finally installed and tested Mozilla Firefox. I love it. I found some extremely cool plug-ins, and I don't know how I ever lived without them now! I doubt I will ever use IE again. All because of Microsoft's downgrade of the toolbar customization, and not listening to their users.
-Scott
I have two home systems running Vista Home Premium, a desktop and a laptop. I have repeatedly attempted to upgrade from IE 7 to IE 8 on the laptop, and every time I've needed to rollback the change. The problem? IE 8 loses all connectivity to the Internet. I've researched the related Microsoft articles, bulletin boards, blogs, etc. to no avail. I also separately tried to apply the IE 7 consolidated update and it also results in a completely broken IE app. The closest approximation of the issue seems to be a known issue with Small Business Internet Servers. I don't want to try the manual registry fix that that issue calls out. Have you heard of these issues?
I've triple-checked everything -- WINS, DHCP, firewall (physical and soft), IE settings, etc. Wireless connection is fine as is local network connectivity. What is broken is the ability to access Web sites. It appears that I'm getting serious packet timeouts based on tracert results to large sites such as Google and Microsoft. Here's another funny thing: I never lose ability to connect/download from the MS upgrade site! But a simple rollback of the update back to IE 7, and I can once again connect to Web sites. I ended up installing Firefox (it seems that Chrome also would not install). This is extremely frustrating.
-John
And one reader sees no choice but to upgrade to Windows 7 -- and not for the right reasons:
I am not convinced that I need to upgrade to a fatter, lazier operating system to work. Windows 7 is a better try than Vista, but we didn't need that one either. If the only bottom line that gets tended is Microsoft's and that of the hardware vendors that will provide the four cores and 6GB of RAM the new system needs, we should rethink our paradigm.
We will go to Windows 7 but not because of the superiority of the product. We will go to it because the vendor will force us to. Managers who are still trying to grasp the last technology deluge will jump on the bandwagon driven by tech mavens and salesmen who can't do real work. And when we are done, we will pat ourselves on the back for the fine job we did upgrading to a version of software we don't need, with money that could have been applied to producing something.
-Anonymous
Share your thoughts with us! Write a comment below or send an e-mail to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/19/2009 at 1:16 PM0 comments
There's a fairly famous story of Bill Gates being hit in the face by a pie over in Belgium. The story drew lots of laughs, but I was appalled. To me it's assault, pure and simple.
And I feel the exact same way about the Hungarian who tossed eggs at Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer a while back. Fortunately, the Microsoft protester had an arm worse than Baba Booey and missed every time. (And if you don't know who Baba Booey is, click here.)
The protester accused Microsoft of overcharging the Hungarian government through a non-competitive bid. Personally, I think it was the protestor who had egg on his face.
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/19/2009 at 1:16 PM3 comments
Recently, I described a Google app that allows you to use Outlook to connect to e-mail in the Google cloud. I made the simplistic determination that if it worked, and was indeed far cheaper, then many in IT would switch. Those of you in the IT trenches corrected me posthaste (really fast!). You worried about compliance, archiving and security. This newsletter always lets me know just how little I know!
Microsoft is clearly not a fan of anything that threatens the Exchange franchise, and this week announced that it had found a bug in Google Apps Sync for Outlook. While not exactly a showstopper, the bug does disable Outlook search.
I also disabled Outlook search two years ago -- I simply stopped using it after installing Google desktop search. The Google tool does a far better job of finding e-mails, even those I deleted long ago (not the full message, but I get the subject, a line or so and the address).
Microsoft has one fix for the bug: uninstall Google Sync for Outlook.
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/19/2009 at 1:16 PM0 comments