I have an interesting proposition. My high school-age son Dave just finished a writing course at Brown University and is itching to become a real published author (he mostly wants to show up the old man).
We thought an article on Bing, based on your experiences, would be fun to work on and fun for you to read. Do you want to be quoted and help a decent lad out at the same time? If so, report your interest to [email protected] and Dave will get back to you with some detailed questions!
Posted by Doug Barney on 08/17/200913 comments
Readers share their thoughts on netbooks, which Microsoft recently admitted are partly responsible for the company's PC revenue slide:
Microsoft is just plan stupid if it does not provide one or two versions of Windows 7 that PC manufacturers can put on their netbooks. The netbook market is growing and with the economy like it is, people want a cheap PC that they can do basic word processing, spreadsheets and presentations on (plus access the Internet). By making the the price too high, in the long run MS will lose money and lose the netbook market. People will not buy XP netbooks, simply because XP will not be supported in the near future. By pricing Windows 7 for netbooks low, MS would be opening up a whole new market for Office 2007, etc.
-Anonymous
My Asus Eee PC 900A runs just fine with full-blown Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty installed on a 16GB SSD from an external DVD-ROM, thank you very much.
As one aficionado observed, netbooks are for "when a cell phone is not enough and a laptop is too much." At 2.5 pounds or less, the netbook enables travelers to easily take their office with them through the airport with minimum fuss. No one suggests this as a daily substitute for heavy-duty office production, but it will conveniently do the job when necessary. And all for a very small price (hardware: $250, software: $0).
-ColdVet
Here's my prediction, for what it's worth. I'm guessing there's a sort of "flash in the pan" curve for netbooks generally. I think there's a "Wow that's neat" factor driving a lot of sales, but when the dust settles, folks are going to find that the machines are less useful than they expected.
I picked up a cheap lower-end netbook from Geeks.com some months ago. My thought was that I could have it in my toolkit as a "known good" machine for field troubleshooting calls. My donnybrook came when I tried to use it for online chat while working through a password reset issue for a client. I simply could not type accurately on the thing at any useful speed. In this case, I doubt that a higher-end unit would have helped all that much; the keyboard is going to be cramped and slow. I find myself drawn instead to some of the super-light conventional notebooks, like the ThinkPad X series or some of the Toshiba Proteges. They are nearly as light as a netbook, yet are totally usable.
-Anonymous
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/17/20090 comments
Why do Microsoft executives talk endlessly about VMware? Sure, VMware currently is the leader and a pioneer in x86 virtualization technologies. Like any upstart, VMware got a jump on the market. So why harp on the matter? Isn't Microsoft the perpetual Avis of the software market ("We try harder")? Doesn't it always come from behind to attain near-monopoly control of the market that it challenges?
Maybe the softies are unnerved by VMware CEO -- and ex-Microsoftie -- Paul Maritz. His bio reads like a Microsoft nightmare tale of an insider defecting to the competition. Wikipedia even tells us that Maritz was "often said to be the third-ranking executive, behind Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer" when he worked at Microsoft.
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Posted by Kurt Mackie on 08/14/20096 comments
Who will tell the investors? Bill Koefoed, Microsoft's GM of investor relations, has that task. And he recently explained that Microsoft's profitability as a company had a lot to do with PC sales, which were "down somewhere between 6 and 8 percent" in the last quarter. In particular, high-profit business PC sales were lower than consumer PC sales. A particular stumbling block for Microsoft was netbooks, representing "about 11 percent of industry PC sales." The low-tech, low-cost, smallish netbooks bring in less OS revenue for Microsoft than traditional PCs. Microsoft's revenues have been dogged by this "netbook effect" for the past nine months, according to Koefoed.
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Posted by Kurt Mackie on 08/14/20093 comments
Microsoft and Nokia have struck a deal in which Nokia will use Office Mobile applications on its Symbian open source mobile phone platform.
Microsoft will be developing its Office Mobile solution for a non-Windows platform, and that represents a new first for Microsoft, according to Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft's Business Division.
Is this deal another sign that Windows is becoming less of a profit center for Microsoft? Why did the Office application sell, but not Windows Mobile with it? Answers welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Kurt Mackie on 08/14/20090 comments
Despite one analyst group's recent forecast of a major open source growth spurt this year, these readers believe open source isn't inherently better (or worse) than commercial software:
Seems to me open source software is a mixed bag. Some of it is at least as polished as commercial software, and much of it is not. It is like prospecting for gold -- you get the fever and start looking for that open source app that will solve whatever technical requirement you have. When you find something that looks good, you try it out. It always looks like a 4-inch-wide vein of gold that goes deep into the rock. But you find it is shallow and can only do the bare minimum you need, many times requiring such an effort to configure for your needs that you will need to contract with a company to get it rolled out.
Is it worth it? If you can find that 4-inch-wide vein that goes deep, it sure is. For this reason, we use very little open source software. In fact, I believe the only open source software in use in our organization has been provided by vendors in preconfigured systems. In other words, we let others do the prospecting, and only buy the jewelry that has been made with it.
-Dave
Personally, I don't think that the major open source applications are any less robust or polished than commercial ones. However, there is a lot of FUD around them that is keeping large businesses from implementing. A lot of directors and managers that I know would take the plunge into open source except for the fear of unknown costs for infringed IP. Many of us remember the hoops from the Lemelson Scare back in the '90s. Thankfully Symbol and a few others stepped up for their customers.
I believe that this is what many people see licensed software as: simply IP lawsuit insurance. One lawsuit judgement can dramatically skew the TCO.
-Joe
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/14/20090 comments
Doug asked, and readers answered. Here are your (overwhelmingly positive) thoughts on the recently released Windows 7 RTM:
I have been running the Windows 7 RTM for a few days and am quite pleased with the overall result. It is easy to use and quite stable thus far. Will be interesting to see if businesses pick it up. Hopefully they do so faster than they didn't with Windows Vista.
-Derek
I have been running the RC since it came out on a couple of machines and now have the RTM (Enterprise/x64) on my primary laptop and desktop. I had been running Vista with varying levels of annoyance and was quite happy with the RC in comparison. Vista was barely functional for us and we were avoiding it completely. We have not felt that way at all with Windows 7. In fact, we have the RC running on several netbooks without problems. I must say we are pretty pleased so far.
-Caleb
Install time, boot time, and overall initial speed and stability seem to be on mark so far. I have a few gaming issues, but they only occurred after I installed ATI's Windows 7 drivers instead of the baked-in Microsoft drivers. It picked up every bit of hardware in my home-built machine -- didn't even flinch. I expect that if I'm stable over the next few weeks, and after other benching/testing, we'll use this as our upgrade path from XP Pro. We avoided Vista wherever possible, but on modern hardware I think Windows 7 does the trick nicely.
-Rick
A really solid release, easy to use, loads on to a bare drive in under 45 minutes. But patches still take time. I like it -- gave it about an 85 out of 100.
-Anonymous
I had Vista -- didn't hate it but didn't love it, either. I didn't jump on the Windows 7 beta train, but when the RC came out I took the plunge. Now with the RTM, I have to say there is something to love about Windows again. Windows 7 is what Vista should have been. I'd recommend everyone take it for a test drive. The OS is responsive and the new taskbar is wonderful.
-Brian
I installed Windows 7 RTM Ultimate x64 on my work laptop as soon as it was available. It works so smoothly that I was really impressed by how it was easy to switch from Vista x86 to Windows 7 x64. I have a poor machine right now, but it's awesome how all things run. All my productive software is running as expected (the only small issue spotted so far is the Skype add-in for IE). My vote is 10 out of 10.
-Simone
I went from Vista x64 to Windows 7 x64. I did a clean install from DVD, which went well. I have reinstalled all my programs and everything has worked well. The only problem I ran into was with Symantec Endpoint Protection 11 (Windows 7 complains about a driver related to SEP and blocks it from loading), but Symantec still seems to work OK, though.
I have tested out BitLocker To Go and it works quite well. The new taskbar, Libraries and all features I have tried have been easy to use and just work. Windows 7 seems more responsive than Vista. Overall, in my few days of testing Windows 7, I'm very happy.
-Craig
The upgrade from my Dell Latitude E4300 running Vista Business x64 took a few hours, but went flawlessly. It pulled all my settings and most of my software worked except my Cisco Anyconnect VPN (it worked after I reinstalled). The performance of the laptop is very good, but I was a little disappointed with the boot time, and it seemed to take longer (but still less time than Vista) to give me control of the desktop. This is probably due more to upgrading versus doing a clean install. Also, Windows 7 installed all its own generic drivers. I will probably perform a clean install in a few days.
I am a little disappointed that Dell still has no Windows 7 drivers on its site. I installed the Vista drivers, which generally went well, but some of them reported that this was an unsupported OS (I was able to get around this by using compatibility mode). Also, Symantec Endpoint Protection still does not have a version for Windows 7, and after installing it, Windows 7 reports some errors regarding this installation -- mostly annoying messages. Also, I noticed that after installing SEP, it adds about 20 seconds to Windows 7 boot time, and about 10 or 15 seconds more to release full control of the desktop. Hopefully, this will change when Symantec releases a version compatible with Windows 7.
All in all, it is much faster than Vista and runs really well. It comes out of sleep mode and hibernation really fast. I think by the time all drivers for Windows 7 are released, it should be a solid OS.
-Asif
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/12/20090 comments
Windows 7 is pretty much done, as the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) version has been, er, released. That's good news for IT and great news for the economy. But it's not so hot for those beta testing either Visual Studio 2010 or .NET Framework 4. The three just don't get along.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/12/20093 comments
Wow, a busy couple of weeks for Google. Besides leaking news about its new search engine, Google also announced a new beta of the Chrome browser (seems like this has been a pretty long beta for what seems like a clean and solid product). The already fast Chrome is now supposed to be a third faster and now supports HTML 5.
The bigger news, perhaps, is Google's attempt to corner the market on Web video. It already owns YouTube so it has content pretty well in hand. Now it wants to own the back end, as well. To do so, Google is buying On2 Technologies. On2 offers compression software that drives Flash videos, the way most of us view videos. (In fact, I had to bail on Firefox because it doesn't support Flash on Windows 7.) Analysts see On2 as boosting YouTube, as well as improving how the Chrome browser and Chrome OS handle video.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/12/20095 comments
It may be just a coincidence, but shortly after Microsoft released Bing to good reviews, Google leaked news of its new search engine back end: Caffeine. Now being tested by Web developers, the new engine is supposed to be way faster and offer more real-time results as well as more Twitter and FaceBook findings.
The front end? The same, old, ultra-simple Google search box. What I didn't hear was any high-faluting technologies or radical new approaches to search. But according to tester comments, Caffeine gathers more results and is, in fact, far faster.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/12/20091 comments
Doug recently questioned Hyper-V's market share numbers compared to VMware's. William thinks market share numbers, in general, should be taken with a grain of salt:
It would be interesting to see how many of the hypervisors Microsoft has sold are actually in use, and how many were purchased as part of a package, but never intended to be used. Stats can be manipulated, as we all know, to show anything one wants. Without studying how the data was collected, there is no way to validate the resultant stats.
-William
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/10/20090 comments
If you're jonesin' for a real, pretty much final copy of Windows 7, you're in luck -- provided you're an MSDN or TechNet member.
Now, bear with me if you're not a Ph.D. in Microsoft naming conventions. Recently, we had a beta of Windows 7 that turned into a release candidate (RC), which means it's almost ready for release (not sure if it has to win a majority of votes). Before we get to the real, true, actual, final, final commercial product, we have one more little beauty -- the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) version, which means OEMs now get the software.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/10/20097 comments