You can tell a Windows 8 computer from a Windows 7 model from across the mall. That’s no accident, it’s a critical to the industry’s plan to keep PCs relevant.
27 Years Of Microsoft Windows Launches
Once upon a time the Windows logo was a flag – back in the day when the launch of a new operating system was something to celebrate. A look back at how Microsost’s Windows launches have changed since 1985 – and how Windows 8 could be the last one.
Obama & Romney Are Ignoring America’s Hottest Export: Big Data
Never has the divide between politics and reality been made clearer by the absence of any substantive discussion of the key success story of American industry: information technology.
Next From Box: Embedding Storage In Your Apps
Working in the cloud means never having to say you forgot to save your work. Or at least it should mean that.
Could Restoring The Windows 8 Start Button Fix Everything?
If Windows 8 truly is a pretty good operating system burdened by a poor marketing design choice, then you might think a little app that undoes that design choice should set everything right. Two such apps already exist, either one of which could make you reconsider the whole notion that Windows 8 is like a catastrophe imagined by Mondrian.
Top 10 Windows 8 Features #1: The Windows Store
Microsoft never has had to be the innovator in a given market to succeed. More often than not, it has followed a successful path set forth by a predecessor, only with a bit more capital and marketing panache. This time, the competition has left a clear set of footprints for Microsoft to follow. And if Microsoft follows that path precisely…
Microsoft’s TypeScript Fills A Long-standing Void In JavaScript
The latest language from the company once identified for its programming languages seeks to bring a higher class of developer into the Web apps space, without changing the foundation of the Web… even if such a change wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
Top 10 Windows 8 Features #2: The Microsoft Account
“Logging onto” Windows is something a great many users don’t do. Let’s face it, do we log onto our phones? If we’re okay with our phones pretending they’re us while they move around, why would we need to be protective about devices that mostly stay in one place? This is a point of view that Microsoft, over the course of…
How Iran Could Make State Censorship Into A Cash Cow
Anywhere in the world, the fastest way to make anything popular is to ban it. Certainly Iran, which actually is an Internet infrastructure provider and which has by far the largest Internet using population in the Middle East, undoubtably knows that. So when Iran is handed a gold mine like The Innocence of Muslims, what should it do?
Top 10 Windows 8 Features #3: Shared Media
If Windows 8 succeeds, it will be because its users come to embrace three of its exclusive elements as critical to the way they work and the things they do. Here we address the first of those elements: Windows 8’s approach to sharing media.
“iPhone Fatigue” – What It Really Means
Just five years’ time, and already the tech press is declaring the iPhone era waning. Or more accurately, some elements of the tech press weren’t too thrilled by the iPhone 5 announcement, and the rest fell asleep. Boredom is as contagious as the plague (just ask anyone at CNN). But the claim says a lot more about the tech press than it does…
Windows Server 2012 Puts Microsoft On Collision Course With VMware
The formal release of the final Windows Server 2012 this week sets up Microsoft for a showdown in the enterprise datacenter with its newly re-armored arch rival VMware. At issue is whether an operating system based on a consumer-grade client belongs in a server that runs thousands of virtual machines at one time.
Top 10 Windows 8 Features #4: Windows To Go
The basic premise of Windows To Go sounds like it escaped from an alternate universe: Now you can take Windows home with you from work, and run it on your living room PC. “That’s crazy,” you might respond, “it’s already on my living room PC!” But this is Windows 8, which is so, so different that the ability to create take-home, bootable OS…
When and Where Will Windows 8 Matter For PC and Tablet Users?
Postponing operating system upgrades until the last possible moment, and even forestalling new PC purchases, is common among Windows veterans. Only recently has the ancient Windows XP lost its position as the most popular version of Microsoft’s operating system. This attitude enabled many of us to skip over Windows Me and Vista, and there are signs…
How Much Will Windows 8 Matter to You?
At some point, you will need the next version of Windows. But that’s down the road a ways. The question Windows users need to ask before October 26 is whether you need Windows 8 right now? The answer begins with “that depends…”
Warring Senate Factions Punt Cybersecurity Bill Until After the Election
Today’s failure in the Senate to end debate on the latest cybersecurity bill and bring it to a final vote will likely mean no action on the issue until next year. And the debate over how government agencies should share critical security information with private software and services firms has resulted in splits in allegiance on both sides of the…
Revised Cybersecurity Bill Still Faces Democrat, Republican Gauntlets
The U.S. Senate is about to deliberate a highly revised cybersecurity bill – one that last weekend won the endorsement of President Obama. The current version of the bill no longer contains measures that would essentially declare any device that may at some point contain critical government information – even via the public cloud – as subject…
Big Data: What Do You Think It Is?
“Big Data” is the technology that is supposedly reshaping the data center. Sure, the data center isn’t as fun a topic as the iPad, but without the data center supplying the cloud with apps, iPads wouldn’t nearly as much fun either. Big Data is also the nucleus of a new and growing industry, injecting a much-needed shot of adrenaline in…
Does Microsoft’s “Forgetting” the EU’s Browser Ballot Matter Anymore?
The world once debated whether Internet Explorer’s dominance in Web browsers was fair in the wake of Microsoft’s conduct against Netscape. As part of its 2009 settlement with the European Union, Microsoft offered to give new Windows users in Europe a choice of default browsers, rather than just leave them with Internet Explorer and make them…
The New Office 365: Baby Steps in the Right Direction
Let’s be clear about what was unveiled Monday afternoon by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in San Francisco: It wasn’t Office 2013 – not really. That would be the conventionally installed software application that could now be described as “offline mode.” Rather, what Ballmer demonstrated was Office 365 incorporating what it should have had to begin…