The "Save XP" petition asking Microsoft to keep Windows XP available indefinitely, not end most sales on June 30 as currently planned, has prompted many readers to suggest that maybe the best answer for those who don't like Vista is to switch to another operating system completely.
Microsoft should keep Windows XP available until at least 2009, not end the majority of sales on June 30 as currently planned, said analysts at Gartner and The Burton Group.
Vista adoption in business has been slow (and at this writing more than 75,000 people have signed InfoWorld's petition asking Microsoft to keep Windows XP available indefinitely). Nonetheless, thousands of businesses worldwide have already adopted Vista.
You rarely hear about a new OS causing people to panic. But IT consultant Scott Pam says that's exactly what his small-business clients are doing when they install Windows Vista on new PCs and run smack into compatibility or usability roadblocks.
More than 75,000 people have signed InfoWorld's "Save XP" petition in the three weeks since it was launched -- many with passionate, often emotional pleas to not be forced to make a change.
At first blush, Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Yahoo for US$46.6 billion is about growing its consumer advertising and portal business to better compete wit Google. And that's certainly part of the mix, but perhaps lost in the discussion is how such an acquisition could help Microsoft execute its software-plus-services strategy for delivering business apps over the Internet faster and better, said several analysts. That strategy could help Microsoft compete with Google's own business-apps initiative, they said.
After years of hearing that investing in IT was a smart strategic plan, business executives seem to have gotten the message, according to a new Gartner CIO survey released Wednesday -- but only when the dollars are going to technology efforts that have visible benefits for the bottom line, primarily externally facing initiatives involving customers or partners.
Working with data across an enterprise -- especially in an SOA environment -- requires understanding its context and semantics, not just its format and field attributes. And that means metadata. For developers as well as services to track that metadata, a repository would be useful. Theoretically, they would provide the intermediary services, but with today's technology, "this is just too hard to do," says Paul Patrick, chief architect at BEA Systems. "No one has assembled the pieces yet."
The largely unsolved hurdle of contention for access-point capacity keeps voice-over-wireless systems vulnerable to poor-quality calls, as well as calls marred by dropouts if too many voice or data users are trying to connect to the network simultaneously.
InDesign long ago overtook PageMaker as Adobe’s publishing flagship, but the company has let the OS 9–only PageMaker 7 languish on life support. Even with the new InDesign CS, Adobe is not quite ready to let go. PageMaker lives on, sort of, via the new PageMaker Plug-in Pack that adds to InDesign CS eight PageMaker modules, three of which are from version 7. Though it’s marketed as a transition aid for PageMaker users, the pack isn’t a bridge from PageMaker; rather, it’s a collection of PageMaker tools that InDesign should have featured in the first place, along with some InDesign interface enhancements.
Apple Computer made a big splash at the Macworld Expo with its first new corporate products in more than a year. Why might Apple's new Power Macintosh G3 systems interest corporate users? The faster 100MHz bus and 400MHz PowerPC 750 processor should make Macintosh performance exceed that of most current PCs.
No need for Apple to go it alone
Apple's OS plan unveiled
