Microsoft averaged almost precisely 7 patches per month this year, releasing 83 fixes (or bulletins) in 2012. This month was right on target with 7 fixes (or bulletins), 5 of them critical.
The newest wares, Windows RT and its cousin Windows 8, were impacted by all seven fixes.
If you haven't yet patched this month, here are the deets.
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/19/20120 comments
An MIT professor with a Harvard blog address (my sister starts her fancy new job at Harvard today!) has some choice words for Windows 8. Philipp Greenspun calls it "A Christmas gift for some you hate" and called the interface "a dog's breakfast." And you thought MIT people were all slide rules and calculators. This guy can write!
Greenspun's criticisms aren't exactly original, but he does a terrific job analyzing the difference between Win 8 as a tablet and the more refined iPad and Android.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 12/17/201213 comments
Microsoft is making an offer I'm sure many can refuse. For a limited time only, if you buy the expensive version of Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro (as opposed to that amateur-hour release), you can get for free what came in XP, Vista and Windows 7 for free: Windows Media Center.
That's right, you lucky dog, just pay your money by Jan. 31 and you too could be enjoying DVD playback, make a slide show, copy a CD and other state-of-the-art things. Things my two-year old Dell already does just fine.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 12/17/20122 comments
Redmond columnists are not just dopes off the street (present company excluded), but are real IT pros and noted authors, with a real world view and actionable advice.
Brien Posey is just one such writer. Posey's insight and Microsoft contacts recently let him to an interesting thesis -- that PowerShell could be used in place of System Center, making the management package far less relevant.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 12/14/20128 comments
Julian Assange has been assaulted on all sides by the British, Swedish and U.S. government, and pundits on TV, radio and the blogosphere.
I'm not going to raise a reader ruckus backing or dismissing Assange. Instead I'm going to lay out some provocative points he recently made and let you comment (by writing to [email protected]).
According to a recent interview, Assange believes technology is allowing governments to find out what all of us are doing, and has a broad and deep view of Internet activity through sophisticated monitoring. This type of insight equals control, and would enable totalitarianism. In his view, technology can "intercept entire nations."
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Posted by Doug Barney on 12/14/20121 comments
I trust analyst projections about as much as campaign promises. In each case they occasionally come true.
So when IDC released projections showing Windows tablets going nowhere fast, I was skeptical. Estimates of current paltry market share are probably good. It's hard to mess up analyzing what is happening now. This year Microsoft has less than a 3 percent share, a reasonable estimate.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 12/13/201227 comments
Are you the type that gets a new car every year, stands in line for the latest gadget and buys new clothes right as a new fashion fad begins? Then you may want to snag Office 2013, which is possible so long as you are already a volume customer.
That could make you first on the block, as the general availability won't be until the first quarter of next year.
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/13/20120 comments
I learn a lot from Redmond Report readers. One case is Security Essentials, a free antivirus program that you all seem to generally like.
One organization that doesn't like it is AV-Test, a security test shop. AV-Test compared the Microsoft tool against other free tools and found it sorely wanting. In fact, it only picked up on 64 percent of zero-day exploits. When the attacks have been out for a while Security Essentials handles 90 percent. That might be an A in high school, but it is an F in security.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 12/12/20123 comments
Getting a pilot's license takes months of study and lots of practice. Being in compliance with some software licenses can take the same effort. All the gotchas are in fine print and legalese.
And sometimes the licenses are just bizarre. Take the free version of Office you get when you shell out about $800 for a Surface RT machine as an example. This Student version can be used as much as you like, provided you don't work for an actual office.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 12/12/20126 comments
Readers chime in with their thoughts on the redesigned and renamed Hotmail:
I have never been a fan of Hotmail (or of most Microsoft products, for that matter). But they are the industry standard and as such, have most of us in a position of dependence. But I have adapted. I use Yahoo mail for my personal use and the Outlook client at work.
Tonight an elderly friend asked me to look at her computer. She had always used Hotmail. Now it was Outlook, and she couldn't figure out why. After some research, I found that Microsoft had 'changed' from Hotmail to the 'new' (almost typed 'ew') Outlook. We could not figure out a way she could forward an e-mail. Like her spiritual chain letters... you know the type: 'Please send this message that Jesus loves them to ten of you close friends and know that all of you are loved.' That sort of thing.
Well, if there is a way to do that, or even forward other kinds of e-mail (like a meeting agenda) to specific people, we couldn't find it. I am going to get her set up with Yahoo, as it is much easier, but she wants to import her contacts. Outlook is also not cooperating with that... Overall, I would say it's a bust, unless there is something I am just not seeing.
-Denise
The best thing about the Outlook.com page is the button that lets you switch back to the old Hotmail.com Web pages. Even if the Outlook.com pages worked well, which (as you noted) they don't, they're still flat-out ugly, hard to use and waste enormous amounts of screen space. I paid good money for the pixels on my display, I don't want 90 percent of them white all the time.
Fortunately, I use Office Outlook on my desktop and laptop so I rarely need to use the Web pages.
-Anonymous
You are dead on target and describe my feelings about Outlook.com.
I will be wise in future NOT to believe those so-called independent reviews (the basis on which I switched to Outlook) and will continue my love-hate relationship with Microsoft.
-Satish
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Posted by Doug Barney on 12/12/20121 comments
Last month you had it easy with barely any big patches on Patch Tuesday. Tomorrow Microsoft is catching up with no less than 5 "critical" security bulletins. Overall Redmond is fixing 11 holes in everything from Windows and Office to Exchange and IE.
The vast majority of patches, as is now rote, is for remote code execution (RCE), and IE is the biggest target. Experts advise fixing the browser first since it is the easiest vector for attack.
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/10/20120 comments