When Microsoft entered the unified communications market, the folks at Cisco
were far from pleased. In fact, I'd gather you could hear the curses from Cisco's
San Jose headquarters all the way to Redmond.
Cisco wasn't going to take this laying down. Its most recent response is to
partner
with HP to jointly sell and market unified tools to IT.
The HP deal might also be designed to shore up some weaknesses in Cisco's unified
lineup, particularly VoIP, the cornerstone of any unified solution. Service
providers, the most demanding of VoIP customers, know and respect the Cisco
brand, but Cisco is clearly
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/20/20080 comments
I don't usually read
Newsweek
, but it had an
interesting
profile
of George Ledin, a Sonoma State University professor who teaches
his students to write viruses and keystroker recorders, and cause all sorts
of digital mischief.
Of course, many people are appalled, likening Ledin's teachings to a subversive
training camp. (Digression: I hate the term "terrorist" because it
gives these punks too much power; by calling them terrorists we imply that they've
already succeeded in creating fear.)
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/19/20080 comments
Doug asked readers
yesterday
what Microsoft should do to make Windows 7 your OS of choice. Here are some
of your suggestions:
If Microsoft really wanted to do it right, all it has to do is make Windows
7 look and feel just like XP. Just make it better behind the interface. Have
it use the same third-party drivers, only use them better. If nothing else,
Microsoft should do as it did when it changed the Control Panel -- that is,
give us a one-click option to revert back to an interface which we are familiar
and comfortable with. Rather than obsolescing hardware, it should be able
to create more efficient coding to do more with less. After all, we've not
really added any major capabilities that we couldn't do with Windows NT and
that first Pentium CPU. We can just do everything faster.
When a brand-new PC with a brand-new OS is slower than my seven-year-old
one, then there is a major problem somewhere. I for one am not likely to trust
my livelihood to a company that doesn't understand that very simple point.
-T.W.
I hate to say it, because I know it won't happen, but above all else
Microsoft needs to KEEP IT SIMPLE!
-John
I believe that in order to make Windows 7 shine, Microsoft must do the
following: One, optimize the OS to make it as stable and fast as possible.
Two, make sure that the UI isn't a performance killer. Three, replace the
command prompt with Powershell. Four, drop User Account Control and replace
it with a confirmation prompt for elevated permissions for installation. Five,
remove the need for Internet Explorer to be installed on the machine at all.
Six, provide recovery options that don't require floppy disks be used for
disaster recovery. Seven, provide real multi-user capability, like what's
found in Windows Server 2003, where multiple users can make use of a single
machine at the same time. And eight, provide two versions only: Home Edition
and Business Edition.
-Jerald
Build it on BSD like Apple did with OSX.
-Bill
Windows 7 looks like window (excuse the pun) dressing on Vista. Are we
actually going to get a new file system?
-T.
A nice thing that I am very surprised has not been done in any of the
Windows OSes yet would be the ability to move the position of your open windows
on the Task Bar, instead of just grouping similar ones beside each other.
-Anonymous
It may be too late, but I'd like to see Windows 7 be secure from the outset,
small enough to fit on a single CD, and faster.
-Ray
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/19/20080 comments
Virtual servers are proliferating, but the security for them isn't always keeping
pace. Check Point hopes to catch up with its new
VPN-1
Virtual Edition
, a firewall specifically built for virtual environments.
There's a good chance you already have virtual servers. There's just as good
a chance you already have a Check Point firewall or two laying around your shop.
With the new firewall, you can protect virtual machines as if they were physically
discrete servers.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/19/20080 comments
Playtex may offer 18-hour support, but Microsoft goes six further -- for a
full 24 hours! For shops that need to be up 24x7, Microsoft has a new support
plan,
Premier
Ultimate
.
This high-end enterprise support offering has tech folks standing by all day
and all night to solve your most vexing Microsoft problems. More interesting
is the proactive part, where Microsoft looks for problems before they actually
bite you in the hiney. This may cost a pretty penny, but could save a lot of
headaches and downtime.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/19/20080 comments
Microsoft is better at priming the pump than an old Oklahoma farmer. In this
case, the company wants you to think of Microsoft when you think of next-generation
operating systems -- and that means getting you excited about Windows 7, the
follow-on to Vista.
To keep you all amped, Microsoft has a new
Windows 7 blog. So far, there's only one
post, this one explaining what the blog is all about.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/18/20080 comments
The Microsoft OOXML (Open Office XML) file format is
now
an official standard
.
As I recall, Microsoft proposed this format in response to the movement to
make the Open Office file format the main way to share documents. While I was
fine with the Open Office approach, any common file format is a step in the
right direction.
What about you -- which format would you rather see as a standard? And is file
interoperability already moving in the right direction? Answers welcome in any
format at
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/18/20080 comments
If you have a spam filter that's as full of holes as mine (in its defense, I
put my e-mail address out there every day so folks like you can write me at
[email protected]
), you get
lots of scams from Nigeria and other places who all need your help in moving
millions of dollars out of whatever country they come from.
The last one I got had my blood boiling for two reasons: First, it lacked originality.
Second, it besmirched the reputation of our fine men and women stationed in
Iraq. The e-mail was from an Army private. He and his buddy came across $18
million that just happened to be laying around in Tikrit.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/18/20080 comments
Some VMware ESX 3.5 users got a scary surprise recently: Virtual machines that
were shut down
wouldn't
power back up
. The culprit? A flaw in VMware's licensing module where the
licensing code is under the assumption that you no longer have the right to
run the software. These licenses expired this Tuesday, Aug. 12, whether you
were paid up or not.
New CEO Paul Maritz
personally
apologized
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/14/20080 comments
A
recent
survey
on browser market share gave 23 percent of the pie to browsers other
than IE, Firefox and Safari. Doug asked readers for their guesses as to what
browsers make up that remaining 23 percent:
Mobile browsers perhaps. In these busy times, probably 70 percent of
my browsing is done on my mobile device these days.
-Anonymous
Not sure whether it has "serious share," but Opera 9.5 is the
browser I'm using just now to read Redmond Report and to write you. I find
that its innate capability to render .WML files (used for conveying WAP content
to cell-phones) and to submit .HTML files to the w3.org for validation are
unmatched by any other browser I've ever used.
And, on a Java-capable cell phone, even one as primitive as the five-year-old
Nokia 6610, Opera Mini is just fantastic! Beats the pants off the Nokia's
own little WAP browser.
-Fred
Opera? Avant?
-Anonymous
I'm not sure where Janco gets the 58 percent either. At apartmentguide.com,
here's the current breakdown of our traffic: Internet Explorer (77.2%), Firefox
(15.6%), Safari (4.2%). Of course, there's a smattering of oddball stuff including
spiders, but none of those individually go over 2.3 percent of our traffic.
Concerning browsers on the Mac, our numbers show twice as much traffic from
Safari as opposed to Firefox -- 3.6 vs 1.6 percent.
Given the nature of our Web site, I would think our numbers are relatively
representative of overall browser usage in the U.S.
-Rick
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/14/20080 comments
Windows Server Update Service (WSUS to those that live and breathe acronyms)
is supposed to help IT pros download patches. But for some running Office 2003,
WSUS has been known to
block
these critical patches
.
Fortunately, there's
a fix in the form of an update (and yes, there's a way to install the update
despite the blocking).
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/14/20080 comments
Bill Gates was known for his "ThinkWeeks" where he would go off, usually
with a ton of books and documents from top company techs, and read and think
and think and read. He would often come back with new missions, such as the
time he turned the entire company around to focus on the Internet.
Ray Ozzie is a different animal. Like Bill, he likes to go off on his own,
but Ozzie
prefers
to dream
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Posted by Doug Barney on 08/14/20080 comments