Altiris just
updated
its Wise Installation Studio to help IT easily move users to Vista. Besides
supporting Vista, the new rev works with Altiris' application virtualization
technology. Similar in concept to Softricity, recently acquired by Microsoft,
the Altiris Software Virtualization Solution packages applications in virtual
wrappers so they don't affect the registry, dramatically reducing conflicts.
Instead of just blindly going with the Redmond solution, you might want to give
Altiris a look.
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/15/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Yesterday was Patch Tuesday, and my apologies for not giving you a head's up.
If you haven't already, take a look at the fixes Redmond was kind enough to
provide. Excel, Outlook and Windows all got critical flaws fixed. Get the deets
here.
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/10/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation had gotten a free ride from the press:
How can you knock a guy who's giving away some 90 percent of his money? Now,
investigative journalists are looking at the
harm
some of the foundation's projects are doing.
Besides fighting disease, the foundation is funding power plants, which can
pollute and cause respiratory disease.
In fact, the foundation has been investing in lots of energy companies to earn
more money to pay for vaccines and research.
And therein lies the contradiction.
Energy companies are not known for their environmental contributions. But should
the Gates foundation shy away from what could otherwise be a good investment?
Just where is the greater good?
Would it be better for the foundation to invest in solar power and fuel cells?
Sure -- as long as it gets just as good a return as drilling for oil. Tell me
where I'm wrong at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/10/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Steve Jobs spent the holiday season prepping his Macworld speech and
fighting
off charges that he and the Apple board of directors played it fast and
loose with stock options. Jobs ducked the charges (it was, after all, an Apple
investigation, sorta like Al Franken looking into Hillary Clinton's campaign
finances), and I'm glad.
Even if he was found guilty, I'd pull a Gerry Ford and pardon the poor guy.
Let's face it: Steve Jobs is good for America, and even better for Microsoft.
When Jobs was forced out of Apple by John Scully, the company lost its vision
and stalled.
When the prodigal son returned, Apple was reborn. My only gripe is that Jobs
killed off the Mac clones (imagine if Dell, HP, IBM and Gateway all made Macs).
I don't care if Steve Jobs stole my kid's lunch money -- we still need a strong
Apple to balance the scales and keep Gates & Crew on its toes!
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/10/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
At Macworld, Steve Jobs
announced
a cool (but expensive) cell phone and a device that lets you play your computer
video on your TV (this is not an original idea, but my guess is that Apple will
just do it better).
Unfortunately, Apple is missing out on a huge opportunity to start pushing
Mac back into corporations. Anyone in Cupertino listening?
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/10/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Nearly 17 years ago, Bill Gates first spoke of information at your fingertips.
(
Here's
a great review of that speech.)
The idea is that one should be able to get information whenever and wherever
they need it. Now that a small fraction of the world has realized that dream,
Gates has moved on to his next goal -- connecting everything to everything.
At his annual keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show, Gates restated the
vision and bragged about the progress he and his partners have made. Gates also
showed
off a few new tricks, including a new server system so all our devices can
have a central place for backup, storage of photos and such, and -- through
a Windows Live Internet address -- the ability to get to this content from anywhere.
Hey, isn't that what servers were defined for in the first place?
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/09/2007 at 1:15 PM2 comments
Virtual PC 2007, set to ship this quarter, is
now
a release candidate, which means it is in the very final stages of testing.
The new rev supports hardware virtualization tweaks built into the latest Intel
and AMD high-end chips.
For the true virtualization aficionados, the software can run up to 32 virtual
machines at the same time. I guess it's time for a few more megs of RAM, eh
what?
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/09/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
There's a
new
test version of Longhorn, which has been in beta for about three-fourths
of a year. This is still a pretty exclusive test, so if you're not yet part
of the program, start working your contacts now.
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/09/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Hard drives are great; they're cheap and getting bigger every year. Flash drives
are cool, too: cheap, convenient and fast. So, what if we could have the best
of both worlds? That's exactly what Toshiba, Seagate, Hitachi and others are
working on. The vendors are
grafting
a flash front end onto a hard drive -- all to make Vista PCs and laptops
that much faster.
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/09/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
I don't know anyone that doesn't use PDFs nearly every day -- I
couldn't live without them. Hackers have taken notice and
recently
attacked a flaw in the PDF format -- crafting worms, ways to steal cookies
and methods to take over remote machines. The fix for IE is to upgrade, while
Firefox users are advised to turn off Acrobat support.
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/08/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Vista for consumers will ship at the end of this month, and not coincidently
a
new rev of Microsoft's OneCare anti-virus software will be ready at
precisely the same time. For customers, having more security options -- especially
ones that tie tightly into Vista -- is a good thing.
But I still don't know how I feel about how Microsoft got into this
market. First, it built an OS that needed anti-virus, then watched as Symantec
and others made hundreds of millions fixing Windows' problems. Now that
Redmond knows precisely how it's done, the company is going full-throttle.
Is this fair to all the anti-virus pioneers? Our
latest cover story takes a tough but fair look at this important issue.
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/08/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments