OK, so we already snuck a few in on you with the last entry. Well, here are
some more. RCPU got an absolute bumper crop this week, so we'll run a few now
and save the rest for next week. To those who took time to write, we offer our
thanks, as always.
On Microsoft's offer of $3
Windows to students in developing nations, Mackey says it's a great idea:
"I host foreign exchange students, and they tell me that most of
the OSes are pirated and cost very little (the cost that malware brings with
it does not matter to them). If they have a chance to get a legitimate copy,
they would pay the $3 even though they can get Linux free. Hopefully, this
will put some of the pirates out of business and slow the malware."
More
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/27/20070 comments
We kick off this week's Friday reader feedback with a message from frequent
contributor Robin about Microsoft's
pending
legal problems in Japan
and, more specifically, about how companies should
protect their intellectual property from the hungry beast that Redmond can be.
Robin has some tips for partners
on
his Web site
, and here's a taste of what he has to say:
More
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/20/20070 comments
Somebody -- this time,
Fortune
magazine -- has trotted out the old
Microsoft-is-becoming-IBM
line
again, suggesting that Google is rapidly making Redmond look like a
dinosaur (or a chicken,
depending
on your views on evolution
).
While it's true that Google
is running rings around its more elderly competitor in the search business,
and that Steve Ballmer and friends don't always seem entirely sure of what to
do with this new-fangled
Software as a Service thing, at least the aging heavyweight in Redmond isn't
standing still in the face of its younger challengers. (Microsoft did recently
offer
to help ISVs with their SaaS apps, though).
Witness this week's opening of the company's
largest server farm yet, a massive complex spanning the size of seven soccer
fields that will hold the geek gear that will provide the back-end for all sorts
of Web-based services, from (according to the article linked) Xbox Live to Dynamics
CRM Live. (One would hope that there would be little chance of mixing those
two applications up, thereby sending the Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles game
to befuddled sales reps and throwing order-tracking capabilities to frustrated
gamers. But we digress.)
More
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/18/20070 comments
If your
weekend
was a washout
, just keep in mind that it could have been worse. You could
work for the search team at Microsoft.
Redmond's flailing search ambitions took a major hit late last week when Google
announced that it intended to spend $3.1
billion to buy DoubleClick, the provider of online advertising-management
technology that Microsoft also coveted. (The worst part about the whole deal
for Microsoft seems to be that, according to the Times of London, old
bean, Microsoft matched Google's offer -- but DoubleClick
turned Redmond down. Ouch.)
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Posted by Lee Pender on 04/17/20070 comments
Maybe it's got something to do with
rampant
stories about identity theft
, or maybe it's a result (or the cause) of the
return of the horror movie to cultural prominence in recent years, or maybe
it's some sort of unfortunate lingering after-effect of the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks...or maybe we just like to be freaked out. But if any word describes
how we tend to react to things in the United States of late, it's "panic."
More
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/03/20071 comments
The next step in the evolution of Microsoft's Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI)
-- not to be confused with Dynamics products -- will be here next week. April
1 is the release date for the
System
Center Operations Manager 2007
, part of DSI. The new management software
is the next version of what's now called Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM)
2005.
Microsoft officials are trumpeting SCOM -- um, we mean "Operations Manager,"
but more on that later -- as the first real breakthrough for DSI, its broad
systems-management program. Operations Manager is the first product to carry
the "System Center" brand, Microsoft says. It's a key piece of the
overall strategy Redmond envisions for helping IT people better manage their
environments and provide services to users. Operations Manager does that via
enhanced IT event and performance monitoring. It represents a big leap from
MOM because of its ability to monitor an entire system and not just individual
components.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 03/28/20070 comments