Everything considered, this is probably a good thing for most Microsoft partners and customers. After all, anything that Microsoft can do to better serve the companies that invest in its technologies is a good thing, right?
Probably. But Microsoft's announcement this week that it would introduce a Premier Mission Critical Support level did raise some concern that Redmond might be moving in on partners' territory. The new support offering will give customers credits if they don't get a response from Microsoft to their support calls within 30 minutes -- and that's 24 hours a day.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 02/04/20090 comments
Or maybe the better question is: Why would they? With Windows 7 due out some time within the next 12 months, it's hard to imagine why companies would buy into Vista rather than waiting for what looks like a better operating system. But a recent Forrester survey suggests that while Vista has tiny market share right now, almost half of companies responding were
planning to start Vista deployments
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Posted by Lee Pender on 02/04/20092 comments
Remember how there were about 435 different versions of Vista? Well, there are going to be
quite a few versions of Windows 7
, too, but Microsoft won't focus quite so much on trying to push them all.
Posted by Lee Pender on 02/04/20092 comments
Well, it's more laying off than firing, really, but it was interesting to read this week that Microsoft, which is so famously
laying off 5,000 workers
over the next 18 months or so, will also be
hiring a couple thousand people
during that time frame. We'll let the executives, accountants, lawyers and HR people sort all that out.
Posted by Lee Pender on 02/03/20093 comments
The world "clickjack" makes us think of
Skipjack's
, a small chain of seafood places here in the Boston area. And since we're writing this at just about dinnertime on Monday evening, we're going to just skip right to
the article
, which talks more about what clickjacking actually is.
Posted by Lee Pender on 02/03/20090 comments
Windows 7 might just be a true rarity, a blue moon rising in the Pacific Northwest. Microsoft's next operating system could just be, if early returns are accurate, a highly anticipated product that actually lives up to its considerable hype.
Of course, following Vista is kind of like following one of those acts that gets chased off stage on Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater; it would take a considerable effort to actually look bad after something like that. So, Windows 7 has that going for it. Timing is everything, or at least very important.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 02/03/20095 comments
You've probably heard about this by now, and maybe you experienced it, but we'd be remiss if we didn't note the comedy of Google
identifying every site on the Web
as potentially malicious. Then again, isn't there some hidden truth in Google's snafu? Something to consider..
Posted by Lee Pender on 02/03/20090 comments
If you've taken a spin around the blogs this week, you've probably read that Google's rumored GDrive, which supposedly will give users access to all of the files on the computer via the Internet, is going to
KILL THE PC AS WE KNOW IT RUN FOR YOUR LIVES AAAAHHHH!!!!
Or maybe not. Hey, we're big believers in cloud computing, but Google's cloud efforts are going to raise the same security and privacy questions that everybody else's cloud plans have raised so far. And while Windows and the PC will need to get slimmer and cheaper to compete with netbooks (a good thing as we see it), we're not sure that consumers or companies will be ready to go all-cloud, all the time any time soon. Besides, it's not as if stuff like the GDrive
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Posted by Lee Pender on 01/29/20092 comments
Just when Windows needs to be getting lighter, the pesky EU might force Microsoft to
include every browser under the sun
in its operating system. Then again, it's Microsoft putting out this news, not the EU. So maybe there's some jockeying for position going on here. Once again, stay tuned...
Posted by Lee Pender on 01/29/20091 comments
As any partner knows, Microsoft doesn't operate in a vacuum. So when Redmond
decides to cut costs
, all sorts of organizations feel the pinch. Kelly wrote last week, the day Microsoft announced layoffs, to tell us that she was feeling it already:
"We were just informed today that our highly valued (and highly paid) MCS consultant was off our company project because as of today he is no longer employed with Microsoft. I don't have all the details, but it happened without any warning and right at the beginning of our Vista deployment."
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Posted by Lee Pender on 01/29/20090 comments