I tried to become an expert in Software Assurance. I thoroughly read a report
from Scott Braden, who
writes
a column for Redmondmag.com, about negotiating with Microsoft. I also read
a 100-plus-page report from Directions on Microsoft and then devoured everything
Microsoft put out. Despite having written
a
10,000-word PDF on the subject, I still readily admit to being confused.
And I was plenty mixed up last week when I said that Microsoft's new desktop
optimization tools were free for SA customers and $10 a year for non-SA end
users. Like Mel Gibson at a traffic stop, I clearly misspoke. It is $10 a year
for SA end users and not available to the rest of us.
Here's
what Microsoft has to say on the matter.
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/26/2006 at 1:15 PM0 comments
No need for a Firefox 2 coupon. First, the browser is free. Second,
it's
shipping! My two sons are anxious to give this puppy a whirl on their Macs
(Safari is passé), and I'm looking forward to loading both IE7 and the
new Firefox on my Latitude 520 to see which will reign as my default browser.
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/26/2006 at 1:15 PM0 comments
I doubt Cisco liked it when Microsoft announced its Unified Communications Strategy;
communications is Cisco's playground. Cisco spit back this week, debuting a
new
virtual meeting product aimed squarely at kicking Live Meeting's butt back
up to Washington state. The Cisco tool promises to replace that pitiful, jerky
excuse for video with smooth, realistic, corporate meeting action. Boy, the
Internet backbone is going to love all these high-res files!
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/26/2006 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Dell's share is falling, and
its
reliability is worse than that its competitors' -- coincidence? Once again, as Denis
Leary would say, "I DON'T THINK SO!"
Word gets around as to what works, and what breaks. Dell is a superb company,
but if I was spending my own money (as opposed to Redmond magazine's cash) I'd
shy away from the dudes from Dell. I've had too many of their machines, and
too many motherboard replacements. Of course, I'm saving my change for a Mac
laptop. I'm waiting for Leopard and Vista to both ship and I'll be dual-booting
in style.
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/25/2006 at 1:15 PM0 comments
When Google announced plans to spend the equivalent of half Donald Trump's net
worth on YouTube, I knew the video site would have to clean up its act -- the
rules are too loose, and too much junk and material covered by copyright end
up on the site. The cleansing process has begun as the site just
yanked
some 30,000 Japanese videos. Apparently, YouTube has a policy where it only
pulls down files after someone complains. Isn't that like a burglar who only
returns the goods after he's been caught?
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/25/2006 at 1:15 PM1 comments
XP Service Pack 3 is coming --
in
two years. For many people, it won't matter, as they'll be on Vista, Mac
OS10 or Linux. But for those creaky old XP boxes, a service pack would be very
much appreciated. I'm still looking for help with all my Windows 98 machines.
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/25/2006 at 1:15 PM1 comments
Hewlett-Packard may be horrible at corporate spying, but apparently it's pretty
darn good at making PCs, or at least selling PCs.
HP
is now No. 1 in PC sales, bumping off Dell. I'm not sure how many folks
decided not to buy from HP after the spying scandal, but I'm pretty confident
that the battery-bursting-into-flames brouhaha cost Dell more business. The
unsung hero was Apple, which boosted shipments some 30 percent and now has 6
percent of the market share!
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/25/2006 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Microsoft offered an olive branch to its newfound security competitors by promising
more information about APIs and such, making it easier to disable Vista's security
dashboard to let McAfee or Symantec act as the anti-virus default. But are these
competitors grateful? Nah.
They're
still spittin' mad! (And I'm still confused as to why security is still a
Vista add-on. I say either build it in for free, or leave it to the third parties.)
These vendors also claim they still can't get good info about the 64-bit version
of Vista -- but if it's as buggy as 64-bit XP, then I wouldn't worry.
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/24/2006 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Recently, many thousand iPods shipped with a computer virus, but do you think
the folks from Cupertino admitted their fault the way Redmond does each and
every Patch Tuesday (and often in-between)? As Denis Leary might say, "I
DON'T THINK SO!"
Instead, Apple
blamed Windows. It seems that one of the iPod manufacturers had a Windows
box, and that's how the RavMonE.exe virus got installed on so many of the tiny
Apple music players. Of course, the iPod itself is fine, but because the machine
is an external drive, your PC could get infected. Maybe iPods should come with
McAfee or Microsoft OneCare!
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/24/2006 at 1:15 PM0 comments
My favorite bits of software are all old. Deluxe Paint for the Amiga was wild,
and word processor XyWrite -- despite its sometimes bizarre use of keystroke combos
(alt-F9 for help? Who's the ad whiz that came up with that?) -- was also pretty
cool. Now my favorite e-mail client, Eudora,
got
86-ed by its owner Qualcomm. Future versions of the client will key off of
Mozilla's Thunderbird (what's the word?).
The whole thing is pretty puzzling. Apparently, consumers are increasingly
unwilling to give Qualcomm $20 bucks a year when they can get e-mail software
for free. Go figure.
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/24/2006 at 1:15 PM0 comments
One way to keep Office out of the features wars with free open source tools
is for Microsoft to push the suite as a development environment and as a front-end
to enterprise applications such as ERP. This week,
Microsoft
made its pitch for Office to front-end supply chain back-ends.
Microsoft has a small share of the supply chain software market today, but
I predict it will be a major player in years to come.
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/19/2006 at 1:15 PM0 comments