The question isn't so much when Vista SP2 is coming out as it is whether anybody
cares that it's coming out. But if you do care,
April
might be your lucky month.
Posted by Lee Pender on 12/02/20081 comments
We'd like to thanks the
Times of London
, old chaps, for giving us something
to write about in what's bound to be a slow time leading up to the holidays.
Some Times reporter said this week that Microsoft is going to pay $20
billion to buy Yahoo's search business -- a claim quickly refuted in the gosh-darn
American Wall Street Journal (well, in one of its blogs, anyway), by
a couple of investors who were supposed to be involved in the deal. All the
relevant links, plus a nifty news story, are here
on RCPmag.com.
More
Posted by Lee Pender on 12/02/20080 comments
So, OneCare is dead, but Microsoft's effort to be a security vendor is still
alive. Sort of. Microsoft will replace OneCare next year with a set of
free
security applications
. Or maybe Microsoft will finally just take steps to
secure its own applications the way users have wanted it to for a long time.
In any case, there's the potential for trouble in all this.
The immediate reaction from many observers has been to suggest that Morro,
the code name for OneCare's free successor, will be lawsuit bait for Symantec
and McAfee -- you know, those companies that have made a living doing what
Microsoft wouldn't or couldn't to secure Windows -- and antitrust regulation
fodder for the ravenous European Union.
More
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/20/20081 comments
It's a little company called Transitive that's
falling
into Armonk's hands
. (By the way, we're going to start referring to IBM
as "Armonk" the way we refer to Microsoft as "Redmond"...just
because.)
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/20/20080 comments
Jerry Yang is
out
as CEO of Yahoo...which is, perhaps, a sign that Microsoft
might
be back in
to buy the company -- eventually.
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/19/20080 comments
It probably won't affect the channel except at the very low end, and even there
partners who are trying to make money strictly by reselling software are probably
going broke, anyway. But the
opening
of Microsoft's online store
in the U.S. might still make a few partners
queasy.
Sure, the prices are high, and there's no threat to the services element that
brings in most of partners' revenues, anyway, but Microsoft going into the direct-sales
business in the U.S. -- it had already opened stores in Europe -- just might
not set right with partners who are already concerned about Redmond's not-necessarily-channel-friendly
cloud computing strategy.
More
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/19/20080 comments
Just in time for a deep global recession, it's a new enterprise software application
from Microsoft! This time, it's small-business-focused Dynamics NAV that's getting
an update.
Seriously, this doesn't seem like the best time for Redmond to introduce a
new enterprise resource planning offering, but Chris Caren, general manager
of marketing and product management for Microsoft Dynamics, isn't freaking out.
"We're just doing a lot more reconfirming [that] deals are as solid as
we think they are," Caren told RCPU in a face-to-face meeting in Framingham,
Mass. "Deals don't go away; they just get slowed down. Decision-making
processes are a little more extended and involved."
More
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/19/20081 comments
Everybody take a deep breath. One technology bellwether is reporting -- or
pre-reporting -- mostly good financial news. HP says that next week's earnings
report will
beat
Wall Street analysts' estimates
.
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/19/20080 comments
Microsoft and HP are
making
a little news
, and CA's CEO is providing the views, saying that management
will be the (we hate this expression)
"killer
app"
for virtualization.
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/18/20080 comments
Before we get started today, I'm going to drop the first-person plural because
I need to tell you that I messed something up, and it's kind of embarrassing.
Oh, it's not that big of a deal, really, but a couple of readers (Jeffrey and
Walt) noticed a boneheaded move in the first entry in
last
Thursday's RCPU
. Walt sums it up well:
"Regarding your reference to depression-era billboards from the RCP
Update yesterday:
"'Still, though...ouch. These are the kinds of messages that bring
to mind depression-era
billboards that encouraged jobless men to not give up -- messages that
are encouraging but also pretty ominous. OK, granted, we don't think that
things will get anywhere near this bad, and we're not seriously suggesting
that there will be bread lines in Redmond or anywhere else any time soon.'
"I don't think that billboard is encouraging these jobless men to
not give up. If I read this correctly, this billboard is a warning to jobless
men traveling through town to keep on moving. The billboard says, 'Jobless
men keep going -- We can't take care of our own,' and it is signed, 'Chamber
of Commerce.' To me, this says, 'Don't even think of stopping in this town,
keep moving along -- if we catch you, we'll make sure you get the message'...It
also appears to be in a train yard, which means the jobless men probably rode
in on the rails..."
More
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/18/20080 comments
Google Apps seems to be
making
headway
with small businesses, but not as much headway as its open source
competitor,
OpenOffice
.
Posted by Lee Pender on 11/18/20080 comments