Microsoft Grants Windows XP Yet Another Reprieve

It adds six months by extending media shipments to OEMs through July 2009

October 3, 2008 (Computerworld) Microsoft has extended the availability of Windows XP on new PCs by six months, the company confirmed today.

Computer makers that “downgrade” machines from Windows Vista Business or Vista Ultimate to Windows XP Professional will be able to obtain media for the latter through the end of July 2009, a Microsoft spokeswoman said Friday.

The new date is a change in policy. Previously, Microsoft had planned to halt XP Professional media shipments to major computer makers after Jan. 31, 2009.

“As more customers make the move to Windows Vista, we want to make sure that they are making that transition with confidence and that it is as smooth as possible. Providing downgrade media for a few more months is part of that commitment,” the spokeswoman said in an e-mail.

The Jan. 31 date is also the last day when smaller companies, dubbed “system builders,” will be allowed to purchase Windows XP licenses to install on the machines they assemble. The system-builder deadline has not changed, the spokeswoman added. It remains Jan. 31.

To confuse matters, some PC makers have long claimed that they would provide XP downgrades on new computers past the Jan. 31 deadline. Last June, for example, Hewlett-Packard Co. talked of a July 2009 cutoff. “HP…will continue to offer this option on its business systems through at least July 30, 2009,” a company spokesman said almost four months ago.

The Microsoft spokeswoman clarified the situation. “The [downgrade] rights don’t go away,” she said via instant messaging in response to follow-up questions. “It’s all about having the media on hand. It’s always been OK to use what you’ve got.”

Microsoft sent Windows XP into semiretirement last June when it stopped selling the aged operating system at retail, withdrew Windows XP Home from use on new PCs and allowed XP Professional to be installed as a Vista downgrade.

The latter tactic takes advantage of Vista’s end-user licensing agreement, which allows users — and in their stead, computer makers — to install Windows XP Professional while also providing media for Vista for a possible upgrade later. More than a third of all new PCs are being downgraded to Windows XP, according to data from a Florida company that operates a community-based performance testing network.

It’s also possible that XP will be widely available long after July 31, 2009. “Downgrade rights do not expire,” Microsoft’s spokeswoman said Friday.

The longer availability puts Microsoft in an unusual position; the new time line will make it possible for users to purchase XP-powered PCs through next July, just months before Microsoft plans to roll out Windows 7, the successor to Vista.

Microsoft Prepares for End of Windows

With the Internet increasingly taking on the role of the PC operating system and the growing prevalence of virtualization technologies, there will be a day when the Microsoft Windows client OS as it’s been developed for the past 20-odd years becomes obsolete.

Microsoft seems to be preparing for that day with an incubation project code-named Midori, which seeks to create a componentized, non-Windows OS that will take advantage of technologies not available when Windows first was conceived, according to published reports.

Although Microsoft won’t comment publicly on what Midori is, the company has confirmed that it exists. Several reports — the most comprehensive to date published on Tuesday by Software Development Times — have gone much further than that.

That report paints Midori as an Internet-centric OS, based on the idea of connected systems, that largely eliminates the dependencies between local applications and the hardware they run on that exist with a typical OS today.

The report claims Midori is an offshoot of Microsoft Research’s Singularity OS, which creates “software-isolated processes” to reduce the dependencies between individual applications, and between the applications and the OS itself.

With the ability today to run an OS, applications — and even an entire PC desktop of applications — in a virtual container using a hypervisor, the need to have the OS and applications installed natively on a PC is becoming less and less, said Brian Madden, an independent technology analyst.

“Why do you need it?” he said. “Now we have hypervisors everywhere.”

Madden suggested that a future OS could actually be a hypervisor itself, with virtual containers of applications running on top of it that can be transferred easily to other devices because they don’t have client-side dependencies to each other.

And while he has no information about Midori beyond the published reports, he said descriptions of it as an Internet-centric system that provides an overall “connectedness” between applications and devices makes sense for the future of cloud computing and on-demand services. Microsoft likely recognizes the need for this even if the actual technology is still five or more years out, Madden said.

“They’re preparing for the day when people realize we don’t need Windows anymore” and thinking about what they will do to remain relevant, he said.

Indeed, Microsoft has been emphasizing its virtualization strategy, based on its new Hyper-V hypervisor, beyond merely virtualizing the server OS. The company also is moving full steam ahead with plans to virtualize applications and the desktop OS as well.

Using virtualization in these scenarios would eliminate the problems with application compatibility that are still giving headaches to Vista users, and that have made the OS a liability rather than a boon for some Windows power users and enterprise customers.

If Midori is close to what people think it is, it will represent a “major paradigm shift” for Windows users and be no easy task for Microsoft to pull off, said Andrew Brust, chief of new technology for the consulting firm Twentysix New York.

He said challenges to an OS like Midori would be both technological complexities and the “sobering compromises” that must be made when a product moves from being a research project into commercialization. “I would expect those in abundance with something of this scope and import,” Brust said.

Though he has not been briefed by Microsoft on Midori, Brust said the idea makes sense because Microsoft needs to drastically update Windows to stay current with new business models and computing paradigms that exist today — particularly to help the company compete against Google on the Web.

“Breaking with the legacy of a product that first shipped 23 years ago seems wholly necessary in terms of keeping the product manageable and in sync with computing’s state of the art,” Brust said. “If Midori isn’t real, then I imagine something of this nature still must be in the works. It’s absolutely as necessary, if not more so, to Microsoft’s survival as their initiatives around Internet advertising, search and cloud computing offerings.”

Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service

Why Google Has Lost Its Mojo

Google went from startup to behemoth in record time. But there are increasing signs that Google has become just another fat, happy, and even arrogant company, no longer the lean, industry-changing giant of the past. And that spells good news for Microsoft.

There are numerous signs that Google has lost its mojo. Let’s start with the way it treats its employees. Google has prided itself on the many perks it offers those who work for it. The pact has always been clear: Google will treat you like a king, if you in turn work long, hard hours. That free food, after all, is fuel for those willing to work harder and longer hours.

An eye-opening article in the New York Times, though, shows those days are gone. In it, Joe Nocera details how Google has decided to nearly double the cost of day care for its employees, who have complained bitterly about the change.

The story reveals a surprisingly high level of arrogance. It claims the following happened at a company meeting:

In June, the Google co-founder Sergey Brin said he had no sympathy for the parents, and that he was tired of “Googlers” who felt entitled to perks like “bottled water and M&Ms.”

A Google spokesman denies that it ever happened, of course.

This is far from an isolated instance. There are many other similar signs as well, notably numerous Google employees heading for the exits, with unpleasant tales to tell. Most telling of all is Sergey Solyanik, who recently left Google for, of all places, Microsoft, where he had previously worked. In his blog, here’s one thing he notes about the atmosphere at Google:

There are plenty of silly politics, underperformance, inefficiencies and ineffectiveness, and things that are plain stupid.

Instead of focusing on them, though, he talks about the actual engineering work and the underlying business plan, and he’s not impressed:

I was using Google software — a lot of it — in the last year, and slick as it is, there’s just too much of it that is regularly broken. It seems like every week 10% of all the features are broken in one or the other browser. And it’s a different 10% every week — the old bugs are getting fixed, the new ones introduced. This across Blogger, Gmail, Google Docs, Maps, and more.

Ultimately, he believes, Google business practices are not sustainable, because the focus is on engineering and the “coolness” factor, rather than on services that people will actually find useful:

The culture at Google values “coolness” tremendously, and the quality of service not as much.

There are plenty of other Googlers who have left as well. There’s the blogger who calls himself the Digital Hobbit, who said that he left Google in large part because the company had simply gotten too big.

Another troubling sign: Google stock has plummeted. Back in November, it was at $744. Today, as I write this, it’s at $546 — a precipitous drop. The entire stock market has gone down, you say? So what? In the past, Google has defied market gravity. If it’s now tied to the movement of the market itself, its salad days are gone.

The New York Times article concluded that the daycare debacle is a microcosm of what’s happening at Google in general. I think its conclusion sums up the problem best:

Google has shown that it thinks about day care the same way every other company does — as a luxury, not a benefit. Judging by what’s transpired, that’s what Google is fast becoming: just another company.

So why is all this good for Microsoft? First off, there’s a chance it can pick up talent from Google, as the defection of Sergey Solyanik has shown. Beyond that, though, if Google’s best days are gone, it gives Microsoft more time to figure out how to finally take advantage of the Internet, something it has yet to figure out.
Computerworld.com Monday, July 7, 2008

Recommended Software (Free)

New Release: Foxit Reader 2.3

Are you one of the many who use Foxit Reader? I am and it is fast! If so, great news and if not, check it out. On April 25, 2008, the people over at Foxit released a brand new version of the popular PDF file viewer, Foxit Reader 2.3. It is now available for download! It is packed with new features.

The list of new features is quite lengthy, so just a sneak peek here, but if you want to see the list in full, you can do so right here.

Some of the new features you in Foxit Reader 2.3: a brand new bookmark design, multi-tab browsing, multimedia player support, a comment text tool, rulers and guides, a magnifier and even automatic scrolling.

There are also several new enhanced features, including optimised rendering, search enhancement, better annotation control and font information. If you haven’t downloaded this new version yet, I don’t know what you’re waiting for! To download Foxit Reader 2.3, just click here.

It’s a quick install, so you’ll be enjoying your new Foxit Reader in seconds. Get it today!

Prediction:

Microsoft Will Leapfrog Vista, Release Windows 7 Early, and Change its OS Business

(This is a synopsis of an article from TechRepublic of April 21st, 2008, Author: Jason Hiner)

Full story: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=664&tag=nl.e101

Microsoft is nothing if not responsive to its customers. In fact, it’s hyper-responsive. That’s why we’ve ended up with feature-bloat in both Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office as the company has tried to please everyone by including everything-but-the-kitchen-sink in its software. And that’s why Microsoft will ultimately try to quell the embarrassing Windows Vista debacle by making a bold move with Windows 7 to win back customer loyalty and generate positive spin for its most important product.

What will happen next?

My prognosis is that Microsoft will use smoke and mirrors to conjure up an early release of Windows 7, the next edition of the world’s most widely-used operating system. Then they will quietly and unofficially allow IT departments to migrate straight from Windows XP to Windows 7. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has already alluded to this and IT departments have certainly welcomed that idea, since most of them have found very few reasons to migrate to Vista…

…I have no doubt that Microsoft execs are privately seething over the public condemnation of Vista, and they are looking for ways to right the ship…

…It’s unlikely that Microsoft is sitting on its hands and waiting for IT departments to start rolling out Windows Vista, or for users to start liking it and creating a demand for it. The jury has ruled on Vista, and it is largely a dud because it offers too few improvements from Windows XP and it actually runs slower on the same hardware in many cases.

Look for Microsoft to make some bold moves with the OS, including a new incremental development model and potentially a subscription business model for consumers. Also, look for the Microsoft marketing machine to launch a “new” version — Windows 7 (which will actually be more like Windows Vista Service Pack 2) — that will be faster, simpler, and perhaps released in 2009.

TGIF

The True Origin of the Internet

In ancient Israel, it came to pass that a trader called Abraham of Com did take unto himself a young wife by the name of Dorothy.

And Dorothy of Com was a comely woman, broad of shoulder and long of leg. Indeed, she had been called ‘Amazon Dot Com’.

And she said unto Abraham, her husband, ‘Why dost thou travel far from town to town with thy goods when thou can trade without ever leaving thy tent?’

And Abraham did look at her as though she were several saddle bags short of a camel load, but simply said, ‘How, dear?’

And Dot replied, ‘I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between to send messages saying what you have for sale and they will reply telling you which hath the best price. And the sale can be made on the drums and delivery made by Uriah’s Pony Stable (UPS).’

Abraham thought long and decided he would let Dot have her way with the drums. And the drums rang out and were a n immediate success. Abraham sold all the goods he had at the top price, without ever moving from his tent. But this success did arouse envy A man named Maccabia did secrete himself inside Abraham’s drum and was accused of insider trading. And the young men did take to Dot Com’s trading as doth the greedy horsefly take to camel dung. They were called Nomadic Ecclesiastical Rich Dominican Siderites, or NERDS for short.

And lo, the land was so feverish with joy at the new riches and the deafening sound of drums that no one noticed that the real riches were going to the drum maker, one Brother William of Gates, who bought up every drum company in the land. And indeed did insist on making drums that would work only with Brother Gates’ drumheads and drumsticks.

And Dot did say, ‘Oh, Abraham, what we have started is being taken over by others.’

And as Abraham looked out over the Bay of Ezekiel, or as it came to be known ‘eBay’ he said,

‘We need a name that reflects what we are.’

And Dot replied, ‘Young Ambitious Hebrew Owner Operators.’

‘YAHOO!’ said Abraham.

And that is how it all began.

(Thanks GEH)

Gartner Analysts Predict Doom and Gloom for Microsoft Windows

Is the end in sight for Microsoft Windows? Will Linux finally get some market share? Gartner thinks it is possible.

In a presentation at a Gartner-sponsored conference in Las Vegas, analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald said Microsoft is overburdened by nearly two decades of legacy code and not responded to the market and faces serious competition that will make Windows controversial unless the software developer acts.

My question is “what serious competition?” Linux, MAC and other OSes have been around, viable and available for some time, yet none have really chipped away at Microsoft’s dominance on the desktop. What’s more, by all accounts, the Windows Server Market is expanding, not contracting!

It seems that Microsoft’s only real competition is itself, users choosing to stick with XP, instead of Vista, network administrators sticking with Windows Server 2003 (or even 2000), and not even entertaining thoughts of switching to Windows Server 2008. The list goes on for many of Microsoft’s products, rnging from MS Office to Small Business Server, people just seem to stick with what works for them, and that may be the real problem here. Let me put it this way, Microsoft’s biggest enemy is common sense! Common sense basically dictates if something works, leave it alone.

Even so, alternatives to Microsoft’s products are still not being considered as viable by most of the mainstream market. Does anyone know why? After all, we can’t chalk it up to quality, especially if you listen to how much people complain about Microsoft’s products and it can’t be a cost issue, Linux for the most part is free and it can’t be because of a lack of applications, there are open source alternatives that with a little bit of work could probably meet anyone’s needs.

Yet we hear very little news of any enterprises, small businesses, non profits (and pretty much any business segment) ditching Microsoft’s products and jumping on the band wagon of alternatives! So it seems that applying Silver and MacDonalds arguments to the market will really have no effect, even though their arguments make a lot of sense (even common sense). It’s going to take a lot more than predictions of gloom and doom to derail the Microsoft juggernaut, but I’ll be dammed if I know what it is! Do you?

From eWeek Channel Insider

When E-Mail Serves To Lower Productivity

Many moons ago, I wrote a blog about people who are e-mail impaired. Among the many infractions I listed, one was a personal pet peeve: The apparently uncontrollable urge by some people to “Reply All.”

If you’re in a group of people who are all on one thread because you’re seeking a common piece of information, then by all means, Reply All to your heart’s content. That’s what it’s for.

But if your reply to some group copied e-mail is something like “OK” or some attempt to suck up like, “Wow, Jim, I have to say your e-mail messages never cease to enrich my existence,” you should resist the lure of the Reply All siren. Because if you don’t, the group then has to read 29 other responses like “Sure does!” and “Thanks for sharing!”

I will acknowledge that I can be a curmudgeon, but I’m fighting the battle of information overload just like nearly every other human on the face of the earth.

Jonathan Spira, a chief analyst for Basex, Inc., forecasts information overload will be the problem of the year for 2008. In a piece for msnbc.com, Spira said that Reply All can actually lower workers’ productivity:

Workers get disoriented every time they stop what they are doing to reply to an e-mail. Workers can spend 10 to 20 times the length of the original interruption trying to get back on track. It’s too much information. It’s too many interruptions. It’s too much lost time.

His advice? Make sure the subject line of your e-mail clearly reflects the topic and urgency of the e-mail. And use Reply All sparingly.

Okay, so let me have it. Are there any Reply All devotees out there who want to come to its rescue?

From TechRepublic

Some Good News !

Windows XP May Get Another Reprieve

With deference to my colleague (and boss), not ALL roads lead to Vista.

Although Microsoft is pushing hard to move everyone to the latest version of Windows, there are some market realities that are going to keep Windows XP around for some time–likely well beyond the current June deadline for large computer makers to stop selling the older operating system.

Microsoft has already extended the deadline once (XP was originally supposed to stop showing up on big-name PCs in January) and I would expect another extension to be announced soon.

The biggest area where XP is likely to stick around is in the nascent but growing market of low-cost, flash memory-based notebook computers, such as the Asus Eee PC. These devices are fertile ground for Linux, benefiting from its low cost and low memory requirements. Microsoft had to do some work just to get Windows XP onto the Eee PC and Vista would seem to be a non-starter.

Speaking of starters, another area where XP is likely to persist is in emerging markets. Microsoft conceded as much when it first extended the XP deadline last year. In addition to offering a few months reprieve for XP broadly, the software maker said it would offer the entry level Windows XP Starter Edition through 2010 for use on ultra low-cost PCs.

“We’re seeing great interest from our OEM partners in having Windows on these machines, such as pre-installing them with Starter edition in over 100 emerging market countries worldwide,” Microsoft VP Mike Nash said in a statement in September. “That continues to be a trend we’re keeping our eye on, as even though we expect hardware costs to continue to drop, it reaffirms for us that not all customers want the same thing from their computers.”

But it’s not just Starter edition that people want. To compete against Linux, Microsoft needs full Windows XP on these devices. There are more and more devices like the Eee PC cropping up and they are finding interested buyers, not just in emerging markets, but in mature markets where people are willing to trade a few features for getting a low-cost, light machine that allows full Web browsing on the go.

Publicly the company is still sticking to the revised June deadline, but Microsoft has shown a willingness to make changes in the past. My big question is whether it will extend the deadline only for certain types of computers. There are plenty of mainstream models today where XP remains an option, particularly on build-to-order machines from the likes of Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell.

- C/Net March 25, 2008

Nostalgia Time

Windows 2000 Pro: Microsoft’s Best Desktop OS Ever?

Windows 2000 Professional might have been the best desktop operating system that Microsoft produced, up until XP SP2 shipped.

What about everything else Microsoft made?

Arguably MS-DOS 5.0 was probably the most stable and efficient operating system Microsoft ever made, but DOS’s usefulness is long past. Any version of Windows before 3.1 was an interesting toy, but not very useful. Windows 3.1x was usable, but if you looked at it cross-eyed it crashed. Windows 9x was built on an architectural house of cards as the final version, Windows ME, proved beyond a doubt. The various versions of NT Workstation, from NT Workstation 3.1 (really 1.0) through 4.0 (really 3.0) were OK but limited by hardware restrictions and software incompatibility.

That leaves Windows XP and Vista. There’s no reason really to pile on where Vista is concerned. Although on new hardware Vista’s a half-decent operating system, everyone knows how it has turned out (check this link !). When XP first shipped, it was slower than Windows 2000 Professional and more unstable. Until Microsoft shipped Service Pack 2, XP really wasn’t that great.

What makes Windows 2000 Pro so great?

Windows 2000 Pro shipped February 17, 2000. It was a direct descendant of Windows NT Workstation 4.0. It overcame a lot of NT WS’s limitations by having a wider hardware compatibility list. It added Windows 9x features such as USB and Plug And Play support. Its minimum hardware requirements of 64MB of RAM and a 133 Mhz CPU were well below hardware that was being shipped at the time, so it ran really well on just about any machine you threw at it. There was no heavy GUI sitting on top of it, so response times were almost always fast. It also included an Application Compatibility kit that allowed more DOS and Windows 9x software to run on it than could run on NT Workstation.

Windows 2000 Pro isn’t perfect of course. There was no built-in firewall (not that XP’s is any good either), which made Windows 2000 Pro more vulnerable to some viruses and worms such as Code Red. Not all hardware vendors embraced Windows 2000, which meant that older hardware would never run on it. Its default configuration left security as an afterthought.

One nice thing 2000 Pro lacked which showed up in XP was Windows Authentication. This makes installing and reinstalling Windows 2000 Pro much less of a headache than XP.

Windows 2000 Professional never gained a lot of traction in many business environments. In October 2001, when XP shipped and 2000 Pro had already been out a long time, Gartner estimated that Windows 9x still had about 80% of the installed base of PCs. Windows 2000 Pro only lasted 18 months before Microsoft shipped XP. That was too fast of a turnaround for some businesses that were already on Windows 98 and had ultimately decided to sit out 2000 Pro while waiting for XP to ship.

Microsoft stopped mainstream support of Windows 2000 Pro with Service Pack 4 and one Security Rollup Package. You can’t get new software from Microsoft such as IE 7. That’s not to say that you’re stuck if you decide to use Windows 2000 Pro on an old piece of equipment however. You can still put a modern Web browser such as Firefox on it. You can also patch some of the security holes in 2000 Pro by putting a virus scanner and firewall such as ZoneAlarm (or better still Comodo) on it. Microsoft will also continue Extended Support on Windows 2000 Pro until July 2010 which means that it will continue to create security patches for 2000 Pro until then.

The best there is, the best there was…

Windows 2000 Professional may be long in the tooth, but it’s still a good choice for older equipment. It does infinitely more things than DOS. It overcame the hardware limitations of NT Workstation. It was way more stable than Windows 9x and could run almost all of the same software. It wasn’t encumbered by the restrictions or the hardware overhead of Windows XP and Vista. With some added software and configuration changes, it’s relatively secure (and fast). In short, Windows 2000 Professional may be the best desktop OS Microsoft ever shipped. (from an article in TechRepublic, my italics)