At the risk of sounding like a broken record (or a skipping CD), there's good
news about IT spending. I've written about several reports pointing to higher
IT budgets. Research powerhouse Gartner is weighing in, reporting that overall
spending is
up
around 8 percent
.
What are you spending money on? Security? Services? New apps? Or just keeping
things running? Details may be sent to
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/27/20080 comments
I've been meaning to write about this for a while, but kept putting it off.
It's not easy or fun to write about a loss. An old boss of mine passed away.
You may ask what that means to you. Well, that
boss was Ed Foster, creator of InfoWorld's Gripe Line, a column that
took vendors to task for rampant rip-offs, poor products and shoddy support.
Foster wrote this column for years, crafting countless words and putting vendors
on notice. Ed left us late last month.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/27/20080 comments
Kidnappers in Mexico might soon find the
federales
breaking down their
door. It seems that more and more affluent Mexicans are taking drastic steps
to be recovered in the event of a kidnapping -- like having transmitter chips
planted
in their bodies
. If they go missing, a satellite can pinpoint the location.
Posted by Doug Barney on 08/26/20080 comments
Readers share their methods for dodging Vista:
As long as I was being forced to buy a new system to upgrade the OS,
I went and bought a iMac. Parallels gets me the few XP Windows apps I need
to use; for the rest I use Mac-based programs. Love the new Mac. It's a lot
easier to use and maintain than Windows. For supporting Mac users, iChat is
great and the built-in mike is live during screen-sharing sessions so we can
hang up the phone. XP is still in use in the corporate environs I haunt, no
change expected there.
-Eddie
For any of you who want to see what is involved in removing Vista, see
this
thread at CR4.
-Ari
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/26/20080 comments
A
recent report
from
the Yankee Group about virtualization has some reasonable findings, such as
the fact that 75 percent of companies plan to use virtual wares in their datacenters,
and that 40 percent of current virtualization customers mix and match technologies
from different vendors. That all makes perfect sense.
Here's the shocker: Some 23 percent of enterprises use Mac servers to drive
virtual Vista and XP desktops. That is so unbelievable, I actually don't believe
it!
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/26/20080 comments
Last time I checked, Apple was still based in Cupertino. But
one
blogger
thinks the company could just as easily be headquartered a bit farther
north, in Redmond, Wash.
How's that? No, it's not the monopoly it enjoys (as one Redmond Report reader
recently pointed out, nearly 100 percent of Macintosh computers run an Apple
operating system). Instead, Victor Godinez points to flaky, new operating systems
such as the one driving the latest iPhone, and bundling software such as tying
Safari to iTunes.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/21/20080 comments
Now that most of you have thrown up your hands at Vista,
Doug
asked
what you're doing to get XP. Here's what some of you had to say:
Here's a vote for staying with XP. We are finding it easier to buy XP
now than a year ago. Dell and HP have seen the light, for example, and make
is easy, but ONLY if you go through their business portals. We have found,
and many IT people agree, that if we are forced to, we will save and reuse
licenses we have already purchased when systems go out of service. OEM agreements
be damned. Call it a piece-by-piece upgrade if you want to split hairs about
OEM license restrictions.
The effort to wipe a Vista system and install XP is nothing compared
to the headache of supporting it. It isn't about being new, misunderstood
or not giving it a chance. It is fundamentally flawed. What we see on the
consumer side is that people will buy Vista for personal systems and then
fight with it for months and then give up, seeking out people like us to fix
it by installing XP. Bad press had nothing to do with it. Sooner or later
Microsoft will realize that by not selling XP, Vista is not competing with
XP -- it is competing with the XP license I already have.
-Derek
Sticking with Windows XP certainly has some challenges. Often our effort
to "downgrade" PCs, laptops and tablets to XP results in missing
out on key features of the original load or compatibility issues. We've learned
to provide proven XP laptop/desktop loads, but there are still some issues.
We also stick with Lenovo for most of our needs, because they do provide XP
as an option. I'm betting other vendors are also seeing improved sales by
offering to pre-load Windows XP. For example, on some of their laptops even
consumers can choose: "Genuine Windows Vista Business with Windows XP
Professional Downgrade." Fully supported by their help desk and repair
centers.
-Joe
Well, this month I had to buy a new laptop. I really tried to avoid Dell,
because you have to pay an extra £60 for a downgrade. So I went to Lenovo,
and they still have some Thinkpads with XP; they're not as cutting-edge as
the "19-hour battery life" from Dell, but for school/work it's more
than welcome!
-Anonymous
Vista is a no-go zone. Microsoft cannot assume the role of bully in this
debate. First, it dumps an OS onto us that we did not have much say in developing.
The good features of XP were removed and the bad features of Vista were marketed
as if it was some sort of rock god. Vista is slow, no matter how Microsoft
spins it. It has nothing over XP except more cost -- significant additional
cost, at that. I don't care about eye candy or Aero; that's just fluff and
nonsense and I am not paying for it.
I provide advice to Victorian government agencies and my advice has been:
Do not, under any circumstances, get into Vista. So far they all agree with
my view so I think Microsoft has more than just a major perception problem
on its hand. We will not be held ransom by Microsoft executives thinking they
can market or bully us into submission.
-Ken
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/21/20080 comments
VMware's new CEO Paul Maritz knows a thing or two about Microsoft. After all,
he worked there for a decade-and-a-half and, last I checked, still lives in
the Seattle area. Maritz, I believe, knows how to fight with Microsoft and how
to get along when need be.
Recently, we saw an example of what could be a long-lasting détente:
VMware
joined Microsoft's virtualization validation program, meaning that Microsoft
will qualify its applications to run well under ESX and thus gain the advantages
of Microsoft's new licensing terms which allow you to move VMs from server to
server with no extra licensing costs.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/21/20080 comments
I can imagine Jerry Seinfeld doing a pretty good stand-up routine about Vista.
What's the deal with Vista? Vista users don't care what runs on their computers
-- they care what doesn't. And what's up with Bill Gates? This guy is so rich,
he can afford a Vista machine that doesn't crash. It's called a MacBook.
But nooo. Instead of poking fun, old Jerr is getting
$10 million to convince us all that Vista is cool as part of a $300 million
advertising campaign.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/21/20080 comments
Virtualization is supposed to make computing cheaper. But if you simply create
VM after VM, your costs will rise faster than Michael Phelps' net worth. And
if you move these VMs around, extra license fees will hit as vendors like Microsoft
treat the moved VM as a brand-new install.
Microsoft is
loosening
up a bit
. Before, an app had to be in place for three months before it could
be moved for free. Now, 41 different apps can moved around from server to server
for free. This isn't exactly a revolution, but will certainly support IT agility.
Posted by Doug Barney on 08/20/20080 comments
Many of you...well, most of you...OK, nearly all of you are avoiding Vista and
sticking with XP. But Microsoft ain't making it easy. Go to Circuit City and
all you'll see is Vista, Vista, Vista. And Microsoft volume agreements are pushing
the new OS over the old.
How are you dealing with XP? Buying new machines and downgrading? Just not
using Vista licenses that come with your existing agreements? Tell us your story
by writing to
[email protected]
Posted by Doug Barney on 08/20/20080 comments
After it was announced that Microsoft's OOXML
has
been approved
as an official standard, Doug asked readers about their thoughts
on interoperability and Microsoft's standards play. The outlook isn't very optimistic:
Redmond's history with standards development and interoperability has
ranged from a high of poor, to a low of deliberate sabotage. While I find
it amusing that everyone sees this as a move to a more open, competitive,
software environment, it is still inconsistent with Microsoft's business model.
In the history of man, there has never been an altruistic monopoly. No reason
to expect one now.
-Anonymous
I have old 16-bit Windows Write files that NO later MS editor displays
right. Not WordPad, not WinPad, not Word for Win 95 or Word 97 or Word 2000,
nor the Win 95 Write stub -- only old Win 31's original Write.exe seems able
to display or print those critters the way they were originally designed to
look and print. It'd be really refreshing if Windows 7 could offer some means
of displaying and printing these correctly again -- and maybe even editing
them.
On another tack, it would be nice if whatever IE MS includes in Windows
7 would let itself be closed even when (indeed, especially when) not
all tabs have finished loading. Currently, the only way I can close IE 6 (in
XP) or IE 7 (in [ugh!] Vista) before everything has finished loading is to
kill its process with Process Explorer. I'm not holding my breath, though,
on either count.
-Fred
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/20/20080 comments