According to Forrester Research, the excitement over Windows tablets is fading, which is kind of like saying that sales of Milli Vanilli albums are down.
In fact, the research reminded me that there are actually Windows 7 tablets on the market -- I plum forgot.
One problem (besides competing with the iPad and Android devices) is that Windows 7 tablets weren't designed for touch from the get-go -- touch was more of an afterthought.
But Windows tablets aren't exactly dead in the water. They are just struggling for breath. The lifesaver may be Win 8, which has a pure tablet interface, and in its preview release, already has a feel for touch.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/30/201112 comments
Presumably tired of the relentless bashing over Windows, Office and IE security, Microsoft recently tried to deflect the blame over to Java. According to Redmond, between one-third and half of the times our machines are compromised, it is Java's fault. The best thing about this for Microsoft? Java is now controlled by Oracle. Take that Larry!
The news, coming from the latest Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, argues that Java exploits are ever increasing.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/30/20112 comments
Microsoft has been teasing us all with its vision of the mid-term future. We have sneak peeks at Windows 8, bold cloud pronouncements and then there is the browser.
IE 10 is meant to reinvent the browser much like Win 8 is meant to reinvent the OS. While Win 8 has a fundamentally different look and feel, IE 10's changes are more in the innards.
The key move is to push HTML 5 in place of Flash and Silverlight. The idea is to have a single, open standard drive as a new wave of dynamic Web pages and apps.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/30/20113 comments
Here's some reader feedback on how big of an issue patch restarts is and the news that they will be limited in Windows 8:
Don't get me wrong, I know why forced restarts have to occur, but I think if Windows were a real operating system, it would be able to deal with concurrency much better. A Unix OS will allow a file to be modified even if something else is holding a file pointer to the file for read access. I don't view this as a problem. Windows does. Or Microsoft's OS is so stuck in backwards compatibility land that it can't get around it.
-Alan
Frequent restarts are only an issue if you shutdown your machine regularly (for instance, with notebooks). I leave my desktop systems on and when I arrive in the morning, all the patches are done. But every time I sit down on my son's laptop or my wife's desktop system, I have to install a bunch of stuff because they don't have administrator privileges. The Windows patches aren't so bad but the iTunes and Adobe patches are a nightmare because they are so frequent.
-Marc
Being a small shop, patch related server restarts are rarely more than an annoyance. Our users are accustomed to brief outages after business hours. For desktops, it is a non-issue. Regardless, any improvement is welcome.
-George
I will bet that Windows 8 will never blue screen either...
-Lester
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/30/20110 comments
Microsoft is working on software that tracks employee behavior -- and it is guessing employees will actually like it!
The technology, currently patented, watches employees during video conferences, on their PCs and through their smartphones. It tracks e-mail, IMs, phone calls and more. Sounds intrusive.
But Microsoft argues this type of tracking actually builds trust. The idea is to spot bad behavior and then direct it to managers for correction. If an employee sees the employer sticking up for them, trust ensues.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/28/201111 comments
SQL Server tools vendor Red Gate has one of the coolest IT promotions I've ever come across. It is running a contest where DBAs take a quiz that enters them into a contest to be blasted off for a free trip into space.
As of my last communication with the company, over 6,000 IT pros have taken a shot. The video quiz is actually in five weekly segments. Once the 15 finalists are picked, other DBAs will vote on a winner.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/28/20110 comments
It feels like 20 years ago all over again (during the Microsoft antitrust hearings). The recent news is that Redmond is the most despised software company. This is according to research from Amplicate, a company that tracks what people say online. I was skeptical and had never heard of Amplicated so I Googled the company and it seems legit. Then to be fair I used Bing and got similar results.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/28/201116 comments
Readers share their thoughts on Adobe Flash and competing formats:
As long as a lot of the Web sites I visit require Flash, I am going to shy away from products which don’t support it.
-Marc
I wonder about the flash content we have saved. Will it be viewable in five years? Maybe a great boost for converter companies
-BG
I like Flash. I think it does some cool things. I also think that the blame for the whole Apple vs. Adobe thing lies in both camps. When Macromedia owned Dreamweaver, et.al., (including Flash) it was very Apple friendly. Then along came Adobe, and it's gone downhill from there. The great thing about the Web is that it is not static -- things that were cool a decade ago no longer work. Someday some new and better thing will supplant HTML 5, as it is supplanting Flash. Maybe Adobe is just pulling that stick out and moving on. Finally
-Vic
Until you can create one code base in HTML 5 and have it render identically on all platforms, HTML 5 is a long way off. Just look at the differences now between browsers on a standard that has been in place for years! Check for this, check for that, add this code for IE, add this code for WebKit, add this code for Opera. Then deal with mobile and Linux.
-Mike
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/28/20110 comments
Are you using Google Apps, Office Web Apps, or Office 365? If so, I'd like to know in detail what you think. I'm working on a feature story based on the real-world experiences of actual users.
Share your thoughts at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 11/18/20117 comments
Windows phones may have less than 2 percent market share, but this research from Gartner doesn't account for the fact that Nokia is really, really committed to Windows phones. It should be. Microsoft is sliding the Finnish company a billion dollars over the next five years!
The combo of Nokia and Microsoft has developers interested. Too bad that in no way matches the consumer interest we talked about in the last item.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/18/20117 comments
Technology is complicated -- sometimes a bit too complicated. Every year there are more features, new interfaces and new platforms upon which software must run.
I'm collecting things that really drive you mad. Little things like important items buried deep inside the menu structure, and bigger things like new operating systems that don't work with your old gear.
What bugs you? Let me know at [email protected]. At the same time let me know how I can quote you. Look forward to hearing from you.
Posted by Doug Barney on 11/18/20118 comments
There are various banes of IT existence: dumb users, flawed bosses, collapsed budgets. I'm not sure where patching ranks, but it sure isn't fun.
Windows 8 will still need patches. What it won't need is so many restarts when you do patch. In fact, Microsoft expects only one restart for an entire patch cycle. The only exceptions are emergency fixes for problems, major worms and viruses that could spread and disrupts thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of machines -- scourges like Blaster.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/18/20112 comments