Vista Service Pack 2

Windows 7 is built on the Vista base, and I assumed that meant it would be slow, unstable and incompatible. But Microsoft has seemingly worked wonders with this code, and Windows 7 appears in every way to be a winner. The question is: Did any of this magic rub off on Vista SP2? If so, that could be a swell OS. We'll find out by the middle of the year, SP2's expected general release date.

Posted by Doug Barney on 02/02/20090 comments

Windows 7 Ready When OEMs Are?

I may be wrong, but I'm hearing good things about Windows 7. In fact, it will be on the cover of our March issue -- and the story is entirely based on what you, the Redmond Report reader, had to say.

Posted by Doug Barney on 02/02/20090 comments

The EU Takes Tougher Windows Stand

The authorities, especially those in the States, have essentially conceded to Microsoft the right to continue this bundling and the tight integration (it takes mad IT skills to delete IE from a Windows machine). The EU, however, never forgot and may force Microsoft not to remove IE, but to fully disable the browser.

Posted by Doug Barney on 01/30/20090 comments

Windows 7 Undergoes Federal Inspection

This all stems from the 2002 final antitrust judgment that dictated Microsoft open the specs and APIs to the market just as much as they're open to Redmond insiders. Since then, there have been complaints back and forth that Windows isn't open enough, but by and large the industry has been satisfied. Changes were made, but speaking as someone who covered the Justice Department investigation, it was more of a wrist slap than a body blow.

Posted by Doug Barney on 01/30/20090 comments

Mailbag: Microsoft In the Money...Not

In your item about what went wrong with Microsoft's earnings, you said regarding Vista: "Then there is the Vista problem. Many who would like a faster machine believe that Vista is slower than XP, no matter how many gigs of RAM you throw at it." This is a perception that is thrown out by the media and writers of technical publications that are either under pressure to do so, or are purely misinformed and have not run comparisons themselves. It is no longer true that XP outperforms Vista. The only advantage XP has is on boot-up on laptops, where Vista lags by about 20 to 30 seconds. Once booted up, Vista outperforms XP. With desktops with dual-core processors and above, Vista performs or even outperforms XP at boot-up.

Microsoft failed on two levels, in my opinion, regarding Vista: It released it at a time when hardware and software vendors still had not created stable drivers and software updates, and secondly Microsoft has a horrible marketing department. Maybe it should have been laid off a long time ago.
-Asif

The interesting part of this article is that it seems to show that Microsoft simply does not have any understanding of its customers. I run a startup global sourcing business, and I spend a rather significant part of my day playing games with one operational problem after another with Vista. As if that is not bad enough, Microsoft provides virtually no customer service; other than a publication like Redmond Report, there is no one to talk to. Because of this, I can only assume that no one in Microsoft is listening.

Personally, I think that Microsoft is on the slippery slope of ultimate failure. I am a small fellow in the world, but I have three computers in the business and three at home that will eventually migrate to Apple or Linux. Microsoft is, in my humble opinion, the soon-to-be Chrysler of the software industry, looking for a handout to keep the doors open just a little longer. Will Microsoft's vast cash reserves last it through the need to convince the public that there is good reason to invest in Windows 7 -- or even to download Vista SP2?
-Bill

I think you are right about Microsoft for 2009; it will be glad to see the back of 2008. It will really reap the benefits through 2010, though, when Windows 7 -- I know the marketing wonks won't like it, but couldn't they keep that as the name? -- and Server 2008 R2 are established. Certainly, both products will be on top of my list late this year. We have skipped Vista entirely and I'll be working hard to ensure that we adopt Windows 7 relatively early especially as application compatibility appears pretty good in the beta so far. I think you can keep the rose-tinted glasses on.
-Stephen

Posted by Doug Barney on 01/30/20090 comments

RedmondReport.com Rocks!

Do me a favor -- check out this site and let me know what you like, dislike and how we can make it richer and more satisfying. Impressions can and will be sent to More

Posted by Doug Barney on 01/30/20090 comments

Mailbag: Readers on Lotus, More

We have been a Lotus Notes shop from the get-go and currently have no plans to switch. The primary reason for us is the support from IBM. IBM support cannot be matched by anyone! I used to spend hours on the phone with IBM until I got someone who knew what I needed. But in the past five to 10 years that has all changed. Now when I call I usually have an expert on the phone within minutes, and they guide me step by step to resolve the problem. I cannot think of a time in recent years that my problem was not resolved within 30 minutes or less.

Notes does have some issues which I hope are fixed in upcomming releases. The biggest problem is the time that it takes to open an e-mail with a large attachment. For some reason it takes a long time when you first click to open the e-mail, and then again about the same amount of time to open the attachment. It is as if the client is having to download the attachment twice!
-Harry

I work for a Fortune 100 in Salt Lake City. We use Lotus Notes, which many internally call "Bloated Goats." Every time I do ANYTHING in Notes, messages are displayed on the status bar indicating what's happening. These messages go something like: "Looking up address of server. Checking that the server is there. Checking for new e-mail." Have IBM programmers ever heard of local caching? Why not cache the address of the server, then look it up only if it isn't there? And why does Notes have to check for new e-mail when I attempt to look up a contact in the address book? This slows everything down and is a huge loss of productivity.

Before version 8 (the current release), Notes didn't even support standard Windows Ctrl+Click and Shift+Click to multi-select. And Windows has been around for...how long now? Version 8 had a major UI overhaul that ALMOST makes Notes usable. Outlook is just plain faster and easier to use. No question about it.
-Craig

Our company is not an IBM shop, but we do use Lotus Notes heavily as a collaboration tool and file store. We have several thousand databases connected with our Notes servers, and any one of those databases can connect to any other through Notes. This allows us to create an e-mail package that contains all the information for a project (even though that project info may come from many different regions around the world) and pass the e-mail from person to person. There's basically only formatted text in the e-mails, and instead of having attachments in the message, there are links to the files in the databases. When clicked, Notes will open up the associated file, no matter where it resides. This really stands out when projects are updated frequently since clicking the links will open the current revision of any given file. (Of course, if a message leaves our Notes environment, the e-mail functions like Exchange/Outlook where the files are attached inside the message, and no further updates are received unless manually sent to the recipient.)

The real downside to Notes is that it still feels like e-mail was an afterthought. I first used Notes in the mid-1990s, and I thought the same thing about Notes mail back then. I much prefer the Outlook interface, but for our business processes, Notes is the better product.
-Floyd

Way back in the early 1990s, Lotus products came with the computers we purchased and they were easy to use. We were able to learn how to use them in-house without going to a class (plus, they were Editor's Choice winners at the time). Lotus had better collaboration than Microsoft as well as better security. Lotus' downfall was that the transition from AmiPro to Word Pro happened when Microsoft's operating system was unstable and caused many crashes compared to older products. We had employees that liked the products, but got frustrated due to the crashes. But Lotus' direction and concepts were ahead of Microsoft's.

I am now so frustrated at Microsoft Word, it isn't funny. Changing numbering and bullets has always been a breeze with Word Pro. Now, I find myself banging my keyboard because Word does something irrational because I changed something that works logically and easily in Word Pro. I like Excel better than 1-2-3, but still use Word Pro because it does everything that we have thrown at it.
-Tommy

It's probably better to compare Lotus to a combo Exchange/SharePoint. Comparing Lotus to just Exchange by itself is comparing an apple to an orange. Lotus is a development platform in addition to the usual e-mail, calendaring/scheduling, etc.

We develop our own Lotus apps. Sure, eventually we'll end up with Exchange/SharePoint. We just migrated from Novell and one migration per year is enough for me. However, unlike the Novell vs. MS war, Lotus is backed by IBM and we all know that IBM isn't going away any time soon. I think Lotus will be around for a bit, unless IBM dumps it to some other company.
-Dave

Posted by Doug Barney on 01/28/20090 comments

VMware Killing It!

Wrong! VMware knocked it out of the park this past quarter with revenue up 25 percent. Like Microsoft, which reported increased revenues, VMware profits were also down.

Posted by Doug Barney on 01/28/20090 comments

IE 8 Closing In

Release candidate also means the software has all the final features and UI elements. I'm curious to see how this new IE test release works. Many of you have written me and had big problems with IE 8 stability; in some cases the beta interfered with the rest of the PC.

Posted by Doug Barney on 01/28/20090 comments

Microsoft Not a Fan of Wal-Mart Linux PCs

Microsoft, though, apparently saw a two-pronged threat. If the machine actually worked, it could hurt Windows. And even if the OS was junk, customers might snap 'em up anyway and just load a Windows bootleg.

Now Microsoft critics (who also dislike Novell because it's too close to Redmond) are starting to dig up this old dirt after Microsoft formed a taskforce, then pressured Wal-Mart to warn customers that piracy is illegal and tried to get the hardware vendor to focus more on Windows.

Posted by Doug Barney on 01/28/20090 comments

Mailbag: Lotus vs. Microsoft, Live Mesh, More

I have worked in Notes and Outlook shops. I currently work in a company with Notes applications and Outlook e-mail. Overall, I find that Outlook hangs at various times much more than Notes, such as editing contacts or launching attachments. But there are some Outlook features (such as dragging e-mail to calendar) that I find really helpful and like.

Overall, I find applications built with Lotus very helpful. The interface can be horrible, especially applications built five or more years ago, but those applications keep running with each new upgrade. My concern with cloud computing continues to be there are times when I don't have connectivity and I would like to be productive. Lotus lets me do that. Salesforce and others do not.
-David

After recently being involved, during user assessment, in a project to determine which of several messaging/collaboration products suited our needs best, I can categorically say that I found Notes to be awful. Before anyone thinks that is because I'm used to Exchange and SharePoint, I'd like to point out that my organisation is Unix and IMAP currently and there is a Notes deployment in another business unit. The decision was to go down the Exchange route after a very broad consultation in an organisation that has no history of adopting Microsoft technologies on any strategic scale.
-Stephen

You asked, "Why are Notes and related products better than Exchange and Outlook?" From a corporate perspective, it isn't. So that begs the question, "Why are we still using Notes, then?" I think that answer is not so simple but boils down to several factors. The first is resistance to change. Notes is good enough, so why change it and risk the ire of the end user whom we alienate so often already? Second is skill set. We already have several fully trained Notes admins. Why should we (as a company) pay to retrain the admins then go through the growing pains of learning new idiosyncracies; not to mention the costs of conversion?

Then there are other considerations such as cost benefits of upgrades vs. crossgrades; discounts on other product lines; OS support for OSes other than Windows; etc. Lastly, at our company, there seems to be a significant emphasis on not making employees more marketable to other companies. If this is the case, then teaching them Notes instead of Exchange is a good way to mitigate the chances of someone jumping to another job.
-Thomas

Posted by Doug Barney on 01/26/20090 comments

Conficker Worm Slimy and Sticky

CERT, for instance, claims that it's Windows Autorun that makes it so easy for the worm to slink from machine to machine. CERT advises that Autorun be disabled and criticizes Microsoft for what it calls "ineffective" guidelines. Microsoft's answer? Poppycock!

Posted by Doug Barney on 01/26/20090 comments