Microsoft is hoping to be the new Teddy Roosevelt by taking on nefarious monopolies and busting them apart.
No, Microsoft is not going after the National Securities Company. That got torn to shreds decades ago. Redmond has its eyes on what might be an even bigger prize: Google.
According to Microsoft (which still hasn't been forgiven by the European Union), Google isn't playing fair in Europe and is using its market dominance to block out smaller competitors (like Microsoft, which only brings in about $80 billion a year).
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/04/20114 comments
Most cloud players are in it to make money by pushing proprietary solutions. But three commercial cloud players think there is money to be made in them there open source hills. Rackspace, Dell and Equinix have joined forces to promote OpenStack, a cloud platform based on work done at NASA (with the help of RackSpace) to build NASA's Nebula cloud platform.
OpenStack can build public or private clouds and has the backing over some 50 different organizations.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/01/20110 comments
Bill Gates has a long line of critics. I was one until he started trying to save the world by giving away the vast bulk of his vast wealth.
Over the last few decades I've spent most of my working time covering software vendors. Gates was clearly a brute to software partners and competitors, most of whom are now out of business. That's what made me a critic.
But someone I never expected to rain on Gates' parade is Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, out hawking a new book.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/01/201110 comments
FireFox 4.0 just shipped, and already one key supporter claims it will crush IE 9. Mozilla Community Development Director Asa Dotzler argues that by year's end, IE 9 will be on fewer than one in five machines, while FireFox will hit nearly a third.
I haven't used IE 9, but I am on FireFox 4.0, and while faster than its predecessor, it is an awkward, ungainly, confusing hunk of software.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/01/20119 comments
I used to pride myself on knowing what was going on in virtual computing. After all, I helped start Virtualization Review magazine.
But Microsoft, mainly through acquisition, has so many dang tools that it's hard for me to keep track of them all.
One such tool is the new Windows Thin PC software, or WinTPC (if you want to turn a simple name into a complex one). There is now a public beta of the software that Microsoft calls a "Locked Down Version" of Windows 7 that uses VDI to serve up the thin-client experience.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 03/30/20111 comments
Earlier this week many of you agreed with me that Microsoft is as confusing as a Dennis Miller monologue (check out today's Doug's Mailbag for some of them). And I spent a few month studying this (licensing, not Miller).
Well, there is one concept that is not that hard to grasp: the Client Access License (CAL). Here for one price is a bunch of software licensed to one client device. There are two main CALs: The Core CAL is for software Microsoft hopes every user will use, while the Enterprise CAL has high-end software that some, but not all, would avail themselves of, such as System Center and SharePoint.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 03/30/20110 comments
Whenever I've mentioned technology analysts, you, the loyal and brilliant Redmond Report reader, cackle. There is a distinct lack of respect, especially for the more pretentious firms out there (you know who they are).
So you must forgive me if I am more than a bit skeptical about IDC's latest mobile phone predictions. I lay 'em on you, and you tell me if they make sense.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 03/30/20116 comments
Readers share their horror stories trying to figure out the madness that is Microsoft licensing:
Microsoft licensing is so darn confusing, even the VARs that sell the licenses have a challenge figuring it out. You would think, for example, that a 'volume license' would be a less expensive way to license product. After all there is just one set of media (or in some cases, just a download of media) and then keys to distribute. But a recent request for 10 licenses of a particular MS software had my VAR shipping me 10 retail boxes (media, cases, retail boxes, etc) because the pricing that way was significantly less expensive than 'volume pricing.' Now I have to manage those disks and licenses.
Three months ago, I needed to renew a volume license with Microsoft Software Assurance, and ended up with a new license and software assurance. I now hold twice as many licenses as I did, but have software assurance on only half of them. Ever looked at the volume licensing center and tried to figure out what you have licenses for and what you don't? Even THAT is confusing <sigh>.
-Shirley
Microsoft licensing is way too complicated. In our great age of technology, where we have this undeniable urge to make everything we touch so much more complex than it needs to be, Microsoft Licensing is leading the way. Licensing concepts are so simple for the single user (for the moment) that if you need a software package, you purchase it, install it on a single computer and use it. If multiple people use the same computer, so what?
However, now we move into the multiuse arena. If you have two servers and 25 networked computers, not to mention a few that do not reside on the internal network, you're, in essence, screwed. Now you have to purchase a license for each computer OS, one for each user that connects to the server, the licensing fee for the server, the fee to make it virtual, the fee for each user that uses it, a fee to click your mouse more than 17 times in a session and a fee for each cup of coffee you drink while waiting on the software to give you the results you asked for 19 mouse clicks ago.
-Mark
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Posted by Doug Barney on 03/30/20112 comments
Here are one reader's experiences with Hotmail:
I got a friend set up with Hotmail after having helped a few other friends with Gmail setup. The one thing that puzzled me about Hotmail was the lack (at least I did not find it) of links to nice exhaustive explanations about how to configure a hotmail account to interoperate with Outlook or Outlook Express. The person I helped with Hotmail does not use either version of Outlook, so that it did not matter. But it does puzzle me. Is a Hotmail account not able to be configured to serve as a POP3 server for Outlook?
-Lou
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Posted by Doug Barney on 03/28/20110 comments
The cloud these days is hyped more than a Charlie Sheen binge. In these early days it was tough to tell whether the cloud would be a winner or loser. That's because the ultimate costs still have yet to be set.
Microsoft's next cloud move is Office 365, an upgrade to the rather poorly named BPOS. (I think B stands for big, but I'm not sure what POS represents.)
Office 365 is pretty much akin to Office itself -- but with more of a server apps feel. And it just happens to run on the Internet. So, of course, you all want to know how much this beast is going to cost.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 03/28/20117 comments
Steve Ballmer is certainly not afraid to make fun of himself. His speeches are wildly over the top. Now he is letting his own phone, Window Phone 7, poke fun at the sometimes wild and crazy CEO.
Microsoft is allowing employees, on the their own time, to write Windows Phone 7 apps for pay. One such app has a treasure trove of jokes made at Mr. Ballmer's expense. I'm not sure it is worth buying a Windows phone for, but it sure gives me more respect for the Microsoft boss.
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/28/20110 comments