Well, here's a piece of bad news. Researchers have found holes in pretty much every anti virus software program available for Windows, including the biggest-selling ones. That means that attackers can make a Maginot Line out of your firewall or anti virus program and go right around it to install malware on your machine. Great.
Posted by Lee Pender on 05/12/20102 comments
By the time you read this, the confetti will have fallen, the executives will have made their speeches and Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 will be available to enterprises. Check back with RCPmag.com for updates throughout the day and during the rest of this week. Our man Jeff Schwartz is on the scene at the New York launch party.
Although SharePoint is likely to be the big moneymaker for partners, it's Office that's getting all the attention. And most of that attention is centered on Office Web Apps, the long-awaited, fully cloud-based, free version of Office that launched today with the flagship Office product.
More
Posted by Lee Pender on 05/12/20100 comments
The company that managed to briefly shut down sales of Microsoft Word not long ago is inching ever closer to a $290 million windfall from Microsoft for patent infringement. The US Patent Office is almost assuredly going to say that the i4i patents that Microsoft apparently broke (according to a jury and an appeals court, anyway…) in Word were indeed valid patents. Redmond might end up being on the hook for this one after all.
Posted by Lee Pender on 05/12/20101 comments
So, where has RCPU been this week? Not around, for a variety of reasons. But never mind that. We're back now, and so is Microsoft.
Well, OK, Microsoft has been back for a while -- back from the brink after the failure that was the Windows Vista operating system. This week, forlorn Vista packed up its belongings and headed out into the great beyond, the market-share abyss.
Windows 7 passed Vista in enterprise market share, more or less officially, and in doing so became the rightful successor to King Windows XP's business-OS throne (which the good king is not surrendering easily).
There's no surprise here, of course. But this small event does officially relegate Vista into the pantheon of technology flops; someday we'll all look back and laugh about it. Maybe we're laughing already. But give Microsoft credit: Neither its own rotten product nor a clever (if way overplayed) ad campaign from Apple nor the rebel forces of open source could keep Redmond down for long. Most of us are still PCs, and while Windows 7 might not have been our idea, it will eventually be our operating system.
We're still looking for feedback on Microsoft's greatest comebacks. Is Windows 7 overcoming the specter of Vista one of them? Answer at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 05/06/20102 comments
One of the main architects of Windows 7's success left Microsoft in January. But he's back, and he's going to ply his trade for the software business of one of Microsoft's biggest and oldest partners. Bill Veghte, former head of Microsoft's Windows unit, will soon lead HP's enterprise software business. Good choice, we'd say, HP.
Posted by Lee Pender on 05/06/20100 comments
Ugh, here come the patent lawyers again. Fire up the grill down in Tyler, Texas (patent lawsuit capital of the US), because Microsoft has entered into a patent agreement with HTC for Android phones that could set off a three-way East Texas showdown between Microsoft, Google and Apple.
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/29/20101 comments
There was a time when the Palm Pilot was very nearly a Xerox machine, a Kleenex, Google or maybe even the iPhone. It defined the category -- back when "PDA" still meant public display of affection to a lot of people, Palm Pilot meant handheld electronic organizer. The thing was the category.
Of course, that has all changed over the last couple of decades, and Palm hasn't been able to keep up with its smart phone competitors, particularly Apple. So, this week, a company that might be able to keep up with Apple snapped up Palm: HP.
More
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/29/20102 comments
McAfee's recent XP-crashing patch got a lot of press, but the anti-virus vendor is hardly the only one in the category that has had trouble doing what it promises customers it will do. In fact, as this long report notes, the anti-virus game seems to be getting more difficult -- and worse -- all the time.
Posted on 04/28/20101 comments
Hey, do you think this might have been a good idea for Vista? Yeah? Well, a very wise Microsoft partner called ChangeBase has come up with a service that tests whether applications will run with Windows 7. Microsoft, pay attention -- people need stuff like this.
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/28/20101 comments
Another fighter jet of a development platform joined the battle for the cloud this week, as Salesforce.com and VMware revealed an effort called…seriously…VMforce.
Aside from sounding like a '70s superhero cartoon, VMforce has some muscle behind it. First of all, Salesforce.com has expanded in recent years from being mainly a provider of hosted CRM to being a pretty legitimate cloud player -- see its Force.com development platform, for instance. And VMware is VMware, still the runaway leader in virtualization technologies.
More
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/28/20100 comments