Bill Gates was great at grabbing onto a concept and never letting go. Two examples come to mind: a PC on every desk, and information at your fingertips.
Ray Ozzie is much the same way with cloud computing. Every speech he gives is a sales pitch for clouds. So it was no surprise that Ozzie's keynote at this week's Professional Developers Conference was all about Azure.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/18/20090 comments
Last week, Cisco got into the hosted e-mail space, and immediately the gadflies all came out to worry that Cisco is competing with Microsoft when they're supposed to be partners. Oh, dear!
Have any of these eggheads seen how Microsoft competes? It can be your best friend, your worst enemy -- and sometimes both at once.
I wouldn't be too worried about Cisco, either. It's managed to put nearly every independent networking vendor out of business, and did it all with a smile.
Posted by Doug Barney on 11/18/20090 comments
Doug's been having IE 8 issues since he upgraded to Windows 7. Luckily, a couple of you were quick to respond with some tips:
IE 8...I can't tell you the number of small annoyances. Lately, it's a new tab taking seven to 10 seconds to appear. Think it's the Java plug-in. But it's always something. It seems like these days, if you find a site working well in a particular browser -- Safari, IE, Chrome or Opera -- just stick with that browser-site combination.
-Michael
Rule of thumb for IE problems is to start it in no-add-on mode and see if the problem still occurs. IE problems are almost always add-ons, so if it works as expected in that mode, you can disable/enable using the 50 percent rule until you figure out the cause. Also not a bad idea to make sure you're on current versions of Flash and Java.
-Dave
I never had problems with IE 8 until I got a new Windows 7, 64-bit computer and switched to IE 8 64-bit. I started having problems with freezing while loading Web pages or being unable to click the back arrow. After about a week of this, I suddenly got a Windows update that restarted my computer, and IE 8 64-bit has been fine ever since. I think that they must have downloaded a patch that fixed my problems. It might have been the following:
Update for Internet Explorer 8 for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB976749)
Installation date: 11/5/2009 4:58 PM
Installation status: Successful
Update type: Important
Install this update to resolve issues that may occur after installing the Internet Explorer cumulative security update issued as MS09-054. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.
-Bernie
The problem stems from doing an upgrade from Vista to Windows 7, and is not an IE 8 or Windows 7 issue, per se. I had this problem with one of my workstations in which I did an upgrade from Vista x64 ENT to Windows 7 x64 ENT. I also experienced a few other problems such as not being able to access some Web sites using https (one of them being the Microsoft eOpen site). I did not experience these problems with my laptops in which I did a fresh install. So I then backed up my workstation's data, wiped the partitions and did a fresh install. The problem went away and has not resurfaced.
The problem may stem from some browser plug-ins that have built up over time. My suggestion: Back up all your data and do a fresh install and restore all your data and settings. The process may be a little unappealing at first, but you will have a faster, more stable system. Which, in my opinion, is worth it.
-Asif
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/18/20090 comments
For years, pundits claimed that Google was Microsoft's biggest enterprise rival. Back then, Google had a search engine and some low-function Web productivity apps. The company has grown since then, and is starting to emerge as a real enterprise player as its cloud apps -- especially messaging -- mature.
Our news hound, Kurt Mackie, cornered Matthew Glotzbach, director of Google Enterprise, to talk about apps, browsers and operating systems. After reading this extensive and insightful interview, you'll have a better appreciation for all that Google has done.
Posted by Doug Barney on 11/16/20090 comments
I spent six years of my life as news editor at Network World and there was plenty to cover. Like the early days of software, there were vendors galore -- Cabletron, 3Com and a little company called Cisco. Today, most of the independent networking companies are gone, having either gone out of business or been bought by Cisco.
A former powerhouse, 3Com, just got snapped up by HP for a bit less than $3 billion. That's chump change compared to what the company used to be worth.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/16/20092 comments
Microsoft has a special computer forensics tool designed only for law enforcement. Now, the Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE) has been leaked on the Internet, and the fear is that hackers can use the tool to sidestep these very forensic techniques.
The tool is designed to nab computer information including evidence of child pornography and other crimes -- the same approach I see on every other episode of "Law & Order."
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/16/20091 comments
Doug mentioned last week that he'd been having some issues recently with both IE 8 and Office 2007. Here are some of your tips for the Office problem (and check back on Wednesday for your IE 8 responses):
This happened to one user here (out of fifty) -- highlight anything in Word 2007 on XP Pro and the whole document gets highlighted. Two restarts fixed it.
-Michael
I had the same thing in my Office 2003 for months. To resolve it, I deleted the Normal.dot and let it create a new one and life was good again (after months of frustration). Might do the same for 2007 and see if that fixes it for you.
-Phillip
The issue with Word is not so much a glitch as it is a newer option/feature (since Word 2003). Word tries to determine if you want the matching text style to include the similar formatting, so the whole block will change. There is an option to disable this feature.
As for our own software, we will not change the behavior of the software unless the user selects this new feature as an option. Kind of like the Prime Directive from "Star Trek." I wish Microsoft took this stance!
-Tom
If you have text that uses a particular style (Normal, for instance) and that style has the "Automatically update" setting checked, then if you change the style of a single piece of text that uses that style (for example, by making it bold), all the other text in the document that uses that style will also automatically become bold. To fix it, clear the "Automatically update" check box.
-Marcus
Have you been cleaning your computer? CCleaner does a good job. With all the spam you say you receive, I am not surprised with your problems.
-Pedro
Here is another issue, at least on the version of Office 2007 in my classroom: Adding a text box into a document causes the Blue Screen of Death. Anyone else experiencing this?
-Mitch
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/16/20090 comments
We just finished a cover story on Bing, due to run Dec. 1, that's entirely based on your opinions. Apparently, you like it, you really like it! Now there's more to like: Bing will soon display results from Wolfram Alpha, a rather unusual search engine.
Based on Mathematica, Wolfram does not index the Web. Instead, it builds its own ever-growing mini-encyclopedia or database. If I search for my name, it won't give links to my articles, but will give information about the commonality of my name and other stats. It's also a compute engine; it can solve equations or play notes when you search on C# (the note, not the computer language).
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/13/20091 comments
I get a lot of spam. Part of it is because I put my real e-mail address ([email protected]) in all my newsletters. I'll put up with a few hundred spam messages a day just so I can hear directly from Redmond Report readers.
But come this holiday season, I may be eating my words. Security experts believe that spam will increase dramatically this month and next as we celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa and others. There could be as many as 2 billion holiday spam messages every day. Bah humbug!
Posted by Doug Barney on 11/13/20092 comments
I'm generally happy, very happy, with Windows 7. When I upgraded, I also went to Office 2007 and IE 8. But a few months in, two glitches have suddenly appeared. When I highlight and bold text in Word 2007, huge portions of the document also turn bold. Only when I hit Ctrl+Z to go back is the intended highlighted text bolded. Rather bizarre.
IE 8, meanwhile, now hangs when I try to go back to the previous page. Sometimes I click again, and of course it goes back two or three pages. I'm waiting for the next release of Firefox and will likely switch back then, but in the meantime it's a little frustrating.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/13/20093 comments
Microsoft is now shipping Exchange 2010, giving a much-needed upgrade to Redmond's widely deployed messaging platform. Among other things, it provides higher availability and improved administration, and will be welcome to Outlook Web Access users.
If you've made the upgrade or tried the beta, we'd like to hear what benefits you're seeing and how you intend to use it to improve the way messaging is used in your organization. If you're on the fence about making the upgrade, what's holding you back? Write [email protected] and you may be quoted in an upcoming feature story.
Posted by Doug Barney on 11/13/20091 comments
Last week, Kurt Mackie, while covering for Doug, wrote about the Windows 7 upgrade "hack," which would yield a cheaper version of Windows 7 at the expense of violating Microsoft's ULA, the company says. Readers share their thoughts:
Microsoft should give consumers and non-consumers a big break and charge $25 for Windows 7 Ultimate full version. Or we could all try Linux (then again, I'm not a big fan of Linux, except for dabbling with UNIX-like software). Better yet, maybe we could all get OpenSolaris to work.
-Jeff
What really riles up many of the open source devotees is the labyrinth of rules associated with Microsoft licensing. Instead of having "full retail versions" and "upgrade versions," why not have one version with which you can do either? Make the pricing on this simplified version one-price-fits-all, or perhaps base upgrade pricing simply on whether the user obtained a license for the previous version within the past six or even three months? I think taking these measures might actually woo some users back to Microsoft that have henceforth been beating the Linux drum.
As it is right now, Microsoft is the biggest gorilla on the block and it appears it enjoys beating its chest and lording it over all the users. It thinks it's bullet-proof, but eventually its arrogance will catch up with it, just as it did with so many other mega-corporations at the beginning of our current recession.
-Mike
I ordered Windows 7 Ultimate upgrade DVDs in advance from Microsoft for my tower and laptop computers. I did clean installs and was surprised when I was not asked to insert DVDs of previous qualifying versions (which I have) to validate the Windows 7 upgrades. The clean install in my tower computer was to an HDD that had Windows 7 Ultimate RC (7100), while the clean install in my Dell laptop was to a new HDD.
I would never dishonestly violate an EULA or install unlicensed software on my computers. How does Microsoft know my OS upgrades are legal?
-Gary
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/13/20090 comments