CHKDSK, short for Check Disk, has been around since MS-DOS (I'm not sure if it actually came from California Software's Q-DOS). If you were worried that in losing things like the Start Menu you'd lose other important vestiges of the PC past, rest assured -- CHKDSK is safe and sound in Windows 8.
That is good news for old fuddy duddies and those that like tight control. You can still get at the utility from your handy command line.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 05/14/20121 comments
Are you attending TechEd 2012 in Orlando this year? Do you want to go, but can't get budget approval?
Redmond magazine believes in, supports and provides ongoing IT technical training. As a thank you to our loyal readers, we are offering one full conference pass to TechEd 2012 -- one of the biggest Microsoft training events of the year.
To register for a chance to win the free pass, simply "like" us on our new Facebook page. One winner will be notified on Friday, May 18, 2012 based on a random drawing of all participants.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 05/14/20120 comments
SharePoint is on a huge roll. Already a majority of Redmond magazine readers have some instances of SharePoint, and it's been that way for a good half decade. And here at Redmond, we use it to drive our CMS and to help us produce TechNet magazine, which we now produce for Microsoft.
SharePoint has taken hold in IT for a bunch of reasons: For one, Microsoft used to have bewildering array of collaboration tools (remember when Exchange was supposed to be groupware?), but shortly after buying Groove and deciding it was barely worth talking about, Microsoft put its considerable document sharing muscle squarely behind SharepPoint -- and nearly only on SharePoint.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 05/14/20123 comments
Hackers really have no conscience. Why else would they attack PHP? What did PHP ever do to them? But yet, that's exactly what they did. They found flaws in the revered Web scripting language and gone right after them.
One flaw lets these creepbags install their own malware (probably just a slight rework of something some other creepbag wrote -- which was, itself, just a rework of something some other creepbag found and fiddled with) or rip off your source code.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 05/11/20120 comments
What happens when one of the world's most powerful companies is given a slap on the wrist? It waits for the pain to subside in a few seconds -- then it's business as usual.
In the case of Microsoft, the slap on the wrist was the rather weak 2001 DOJ antitrust settlement which centered largely on Redmond's ill treatment of Netscape and Navigator.
Microsoft was not broken into two pieces and was instead allowed to keep bundling IE with Windows 95 and 98 (the company had essentially burned the browser into the OS, though it was technically possible for the technically savvy to extricate it), but had to make the playing field almost equal for other browsers.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 05/11/20126 comments
Readers chime in whether or not Microsoft's Media Center is worth paying for:
Media Center is the best application for one 10-ft view of music, photos and TV. I have a cable card and watch HDTV with full DVR of up to four channels. And with Windows Home Server, I can share that recorded TV content in any room of the house. I will not give up Windows 7 for 8, seeing that don't see any value in the Consumer preview.
-Larry
Personally, I use WMC every day on my home PC to record television programs and play them back using my Xbox 360 as a Media Center extender. I used it under Windows Vista and continued to use it after upgrading to Windows 7. If Microsoft doesn't offer it with Windows 8, I will not spend my hard-earned dollars on an upgrade.
-Mark
Media Center is a great product when used with a tuner that supports a cable card. Microsoft, once again, is making a mistake. It is dying a slow death. Instead, it should sell a version of Windows 8 that supports the DVD playback and Media Center for a price. I think users who love media center would pay a one-time license fee in addition to what the standard Windows cost. Maybe Apple's TV product will be all we can use.
-Joe
Let's face the facts. True WMC customers are few when compared to the total base, and it hardly justifies the millions spent in licensing fees for those users. Will it be available to those enthusiasts? Yes, but at a cost. I also have use WMC on occasion to watch TV but there are online alternatives -- and I can simply use VLC to view DVDs. Especially since Microsoft sponsored making sure it would work on Windows 8 (and it's free). While I would love to still have WMC in the Windows 8 SKU, I understand the thought and logic leading up to this decision.
-The K Man
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Posted by Doug Barney on 05/11/20121 comments
Readers sound off on whether or not Microsoft goes a little overboard with its product name changes:
I agree with you. I'm sick and tired of Microsoft changing the names of the successors to their applications. I'm a MS guy all the way, but it's getting to the point where I'm hoping some new company will rise up and take the market away from it. I'm not crazy about Steve Ballmer's legacy and initiative to bring everything into the cloud either. I hope it backfires on him. I actually miss Bill Gate's legacy, which was just Windows.
Google sucks too. I don't like nor do I want my information publicly available or force to use their cloud services. My life is an open book and I have nothing to hide, but I don't like having my personal searching, profile, etc. available for everyone to see.
-Kevin
Microsoft needs part-time marketing people. Like full-time legislators in our federal and state governments, they have too much time on their hands and come up with these nutty ideas. I guess they like to stomp in the dirt and make a lot of dust -- going nowhere but in circles.
-Allen
I still love your work, even though, being Australian, I don't get many of your American sporting reference jokes (I hope they are as witty as I imagine). However, dude, you need to get over the MS naming thing! Does this annoy you so much because you have a dash of Monk's OCD? (note that I can handle a certain amount of American TV references).
As long as we know what Microsoft means, it doesn't really matter what the products are called. Also, if it picked a decent development nickname (a big 'if' for Microsoft, I know), we might continue to use it after release, like we are doing with Google's Ice Cream Sandwich. Does any actually remember what that version number is? Who cares, and that's the point.
-Tony
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Posted by Doug Barney on 05/09/20120 comments
Recently a group of Redmond magazine editors interviewed Jerry Baldwin, who took over at Diskeeper as CEO about a year ago.
Where Diskeeper was very much a California company, Jerry is very much a New York born-and-bred kind of guy.
Baldwin looked around and saw a company that hadn't changed much in recent years, perhaps even decades. Highly successful, it wasn't anywhere near realizing its full potential.
So Baldwin went through the company, which I always thought was terrific (they won the Redmond  Readers' Choice Awards as many times as anyone), and reorged each department.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 05/09/20128 comments
If you've been reading this newsletter you are probably pretty well sick of hearing me talk about how many Office 365 users I've been talking to. And there is one thing I've learned: Setting up and migrating isn't always easy.
Quest must have been talking to the same folks since it just announced a new migration tool -- although it is pretty precise in focus. This tool moves on-premises e-mail to the cloud, either to Exchange Online or Office 365.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 05/09/20120 comments
Microsoft power brokers either don't read this fine piece of work you have before you or simply don't care. Lately I've been complaining that it commonly changes product names, and even change what it calls test software -- all seemingly on a whim. And Microsoft doesn't strike me as a company usually driven by whim.
Apparently my views don't matter. Microsoft doesn't mind regularly confusing its customers by changing product names.
Now Windows Live, which I think sort of actually made sense, is being split into a bunch of different pieces -- and it is all, for some reason, because of Windows 8.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 05/07/20126 comments
In the old days, Microsoft had a simple approach to announcing new things -- it just announced them. Now, in the age of blogs, it uses them to deliver little bits and pieces, or leak out things out here and there. Journalists, and often other bloggers, are left analyzing, speculating, guessing with limited information to go on.
I've waited nearly a full week to blog here about Microsoft's VDI licensing disclosures surrounding Windows 8, hoping it would all start to make sense. It still doesn't. The info is just too sketchy.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 05/04/20120 comments