Well, he sort of approves. Mark Shuttleworth thinks that Windows 7 is a "credible release." We can hear folks in Redmond now: "Well, thank you very much, Mr. Single-Digit Market Share. We'll just get back to developing our utterly dominant operating system, if it's OK with you."
Well, they're probably saying something like that, anyway. Or maybe not.
Posted by Lee Pender on 10/29/20090 comments
Everybody wants to douse the Windows 7 fire with cold water. Last week, it was a couple of Gartner know-it-alls, who grilled Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft's Business Division, on whether Microsoft's products still had any value and whether the company was in for a bleak future.
Elop, of course, used a lot of words but said essentially nothing, which is the primary form of communication in Redmond. (It is, perhaps, a trick the Microsoft folks learned from the French, who can use their lovely language to make totally nonsensical sentences sound like a Mozart piano concerto.) Anyway, the Gartner inquisitors fired the same old questions and accusations at Elop as everybody is shooting at Microsoft these days. Check out this blurb from the story linked above:
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Posted by Lee Pender on 10/28/20093 comments
One of our least-favorite leftover phrases from the go-go '90s is "open the kimono," which marketing types used to use when talking about a proprietary vendor revealing the inner workings of its software. It just seemed...well, a little disturbing. So, we're not going to use it here when talking about Microsoft opening the .PST data format it uses in Outlook. If we have to use a hackneyed '90s expression (and, let's face it, we do), we're going to go with Microsoft "peeling the onion." So, there you go, developers and third-party vendors. Microsoft's Outlook onion is -- or soon will be -- open for your dining pleasure.
Posted by Lee Pender on 10/28/20090 comments
So, had Microsoft's advertising executives just never seen an episode of "Family Guy," or what? We were shocked by the news that Microsoft had bought a whole episode of "Family Guy" -- and that the show's producers had sold it. This week, though, we were relieved to learn that Microsoft has backed off the whole "Family Guy" idea given that some of the show's jokes are, uh, a tad unconventional.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 10/28/20092 comments
When Microsoft released Vista a few years ago, we trumpeted the launch event with a post in RCPU simply titled, "Vista!" It was, we suppose, meant to convey some sense of excitement about the arrival of the long-awaited operating system that would gracefully lift the desktop crown from the head of XP and reign over us with benevolence and majesty.
But instead of reigning over us, Vista rained on us. It poured application incompatibilities, outrageous hardware requirements, draconian user access control and all sorts of other big, wet drops of nastiness on our heads. Well, about three years and many, many jokes at Vista's expense later, we find ourselves writing an edition of RCPU for the coronation of Windows 7, which will try to wrest the OS crown from the arthritic but mighty hands of Good King XP.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 10/22/200918 comments
Profit and sales declines will likely be the order of the day again when Microsoft announces earnings later this week. As always, RCPU will be back next week with an analysis of how Microsoft did and probably a wistful goodbye to jokes about Vista.
Posted by Lee Pender on 10/22/20090 comments
The good news is that things should pick up in 2010, but here's the bad news (if you're ready for it) from the Wall Street Journal article linked above:
"While spending growth is expected next year, spending won't return to 2008 levels until 2012."
Oh dear. That doesn't sound like good news at all. Well, at least things won't get any worse than they are now...right? Right?
Posted by Lee Pender on 10/22/20090 comments
If you're a partner who stands in any way to profit from companies moving to Windows 7, you have to love hearing stuff like this. The analyst honchos at Forrester are telling IT departments that the time to move to Windows 7 is now.
Well, more specifically, the Forrester folks are saying that IT organizations should start planning their migrations now. They give a few not illogical reasons for their recommended urgency, which are, in a nutshell, these:
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Posted by Lee Pender on 10/21/20090 comments
To its credit, Microsoft is actually doing a pretty good job of putting an end to its Sidekick data-loss nightmare. If data recovery continues at this pace -- there's now a tool online that T-Mobile users can use to recover much of their data -- Sidekickgate could (and probably should) end up being mostly a non-story.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 10/21/20090 comments
Google's campaign to dethrone Microsoft Office on the desktop, which began with a few billboards in tech-heavy U.S. cities, is going global. Does this mean war? Oh, the war's been going on for a while -- but Microsoft still has control of most of the map.
Posted by Lee Pender on 10/21/20090 comments
Free-software radical Richard Stallman and a group formed by Ralph Nader want the EU to quash the proposed Oracle-Sun merger. Big surprise, right? Well, their beef is with what Oracle would do with MySQL, which is a legitimate concern, and it might make sense all around for Oracle to sell MySQL and get the deal through (unless the whole thing was only about MySQL to begin with, which we don't think it was).
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Posted by Lee Pender on 10/21/20094 comments
It's Windows 7 week! On Thursday, Microsoft will roll out its latest operating system at an event in New York. Did you see this? Have you heard about this? Well, be informed -- it's happening!
But if you just can't wait a couple more days to get your hands on the Vista Slayer, there is a place where you can (sort of) get Windows 7 for about $3. As you might have guessed, that place is China, were software pirates have not only beaten Microsoft to the Windows 7 launch, they've also begun offering the new OS at a very competitive price.
Of course, it's not really Windows 7, but for $3, the fake version will likely sell pretty well in China. It might even get a few takers here in the U.S. And that costs Microsoft, partners and customers money. Even if your business doesn't reach Shanghai directly, the piracy taking place there is still lifting money out of your wallet -- and pretty directly, in some cases. (Remember, for one thing, that a lot of pirated Chinese software ends up in North America and Europe.)
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Posted by Lee Pender on 10/20/20092 comments