There's some stir this week about Microsoft's
"starter edition" of Windows 7
, a low-functionality version apparently aimed at the growing netbook sector that helped clobber Windows revenue in Microsoft's last earnings report Windows 7 starter would, for instance, limit users to running three applications at a time and require an upgrade for users who want more juice.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 04/21/20092 comments
Everything considered, this week's
IBM earnings report
isn't too bad. Revenue came in a little below what analysts would have liked, but earnings per share beat the Street. And with this news, we take the opportunity to offer another profile of an
RCP
Platinum Partner Program. That's right --
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Posted by Lee Pender on 04/21/20090 comments
For almost as long as they've existed, security applications have been a little like guards at the wall of a medieval city: very important, but just kind of sitting out there all day, not really living with everybody else.
There's been a movement for a while to change that, and two vendors introduced products this week that show progress toward the goal of merging security and systems management. One of those vendors is Microsoft, which bulked up the Forefront security line. The other is Trend Micro, which aims to offer more manageable endpoint security. Both new offerings have cloud components, and both demonstrate the trend toward bringing security into better harmony with the rest of an enterprise's infrastructure in order to improve management and access while not sacrificing protection.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 04/16/20090 comments
We continue our series on the best "other" partner programs for Microsoft partners with a look at Microsoft's old buddy and partner in the famous "Wintel" alliance,
Intel
.
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/14/20090 comments
One of the more infamous worms in recent memory is
still doing damage
, in part by installing a form of "scareware" on computers -- fake anti-virus malware that promises to clean users' machines if they'll just fork over $50 or so.
Redmond
magazine covered scareware in depth a couple of months ago. Read more about it
here
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/14/20090 comments
There's a very brief scene in an
old episode of "The Simpsons"
in which a couple of guys, presumably brothers, are fuming at each other over the impending demise of their restaurant, dubbed Two Guys from Kabul. At one point, one brother looks at the other and barks, "Sometimes, I think you want to fail!"
We thought of that little moment this week when reports started to surface that IT managers wouldn't be lined up to deploy Windows 7 like tweens camping out outside the ticket booth for Jonas Brothers concert. Presumably, we're supposed to be aghast that a survey by KACE shows that 83 percent of IT professionals don't plan to implement Windows 7 in the operating system's first year of release.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 04/14/20098 comments
XP might be the operating system
that will never die
, but most free support for it will on April 14.
Redmond
magazine found some readers who
weren't too impressed
with that little bit of news, and we're guessing they're not the only ones.
How do you feel about free XP support expiring? Send your thoughts to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/09/20092 comments
We're continuing our series on the best third-party partner programs for Microsoft partners as chosen by
RCP
the magazine readers. Today, it's Microsoft's old friend, and sometimes foe,
Symantec
.
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/09/20090 comments
It might not be true that there's a solution for every problem. But in the technology industry, that's not really such a big deal. What matters in tech is that there's a problem for every solution.
You've probably noticed that while software vendors love to refer to their applications as "solutions," we jaded, ink- (or pixel-?) stained wretches use words like "applications," "offerings" or even "wares." (We don't say "programs" much anymore because "software program" just sounds like something that would run from a floppy disk -- the original kind -- on a computer with 64K of memory. But we digress.)
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Posted by Lee Pender on 04/09/20092 comments
If Rome is the Eternal City, then it must run on Windows XP. Even with considerable hype around Windows 7 continuing to swirl, Microsoft said this week that customers will be able to downgrade from Windows 7 not just to Vista (as if anybody would do that) but to XP.
Redmond
columnist Mary Jo Foley
has the dish
, as usual.
OK, we love XP. Everybody does. It's familiar and useful, and it still does most of what most of us need an OS to do. But at some point, isn't it going to enter a Willie Mays-with-the-Mets stage of its career? (For our foreign readers, that's another baseball reference; soccer fans, you might want to go with George Best with the L.A. Aztecs -- if you're old enough.) When does XP become antiquated? Our feeling is pretty soon -- when Windows 7, or maybe the first Windows 7 service pack, comes along and sends the legend into retirement.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 04/07/20091 comments
For the next few weeks, we'll be featuring the
RCP
(the magazine) Platinum Partners, those companies whose partner programs are the best fits for the Microsoft partner according to the magazine's readers. Today's profile? Well, it's no surprise: It's the old pro,
Cisco
.
Posted by Lee Pender on 04/07/20090 comments