IT Consultancy and Provision

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has taken over the delivery of the CES keynote (see below) from his buddy Bill Gates, and it’s a pretty safe bet that he’ll announce the release of Windows 7 beta 1. We know it’s about ready because Microsoft has promised copies to developers this month, and because there’s a leaked version unofficially available online, and because it would be frankly amazing if Ballmer missed the chance to give it a plug.
Windows 7 is already well known to the people who watch Windows, and Paul Thurrott’s Windows Supersite has a FAQ (first posted on February 14, 2007) that will probably tell you more than you need to know. And if you haven’t seen Windows 7 in action, CNet has just reviewed the leaked unofficial beta, which confirms that it’s a snappy performer.

But there are, of course, plenty of questions still to be answered. First, is the real Beta 1 going to be same as the leaked version? If so, it’s on track to deliver great performance.

Second, is Microsoft going to change the look-and-feel before the launch? As it is, it looks like Vista, and that’s still the victim of a lot of what we can politely describe as outdated, misleading or prejudiced comment. Windows 7 is related to Vista in much the same way that Windows XP was related to Windows 2000, but XP looked different. The plumbing was the same, but the exterior got a paint job.

Third, how is Microsoft going to market it? It would be nice to see some cut-price deals for XP owners, because a lot of them have PCs that can run Windows 7. (The 32-bit version runs fine on a 1GB Atom-powered netbook.) It would also be nice to see Vista owners offered a cheap or even free upgrade, because Windows 7 is what they should have got in the first place. But I suspect Microsoft would rather add to its cash pile than get Windows 7 off to a flying start.

Fourth, when is it going to ship? Microsoft got burned for shipping Vista late, and the current mantra is “three years from Vista”. That could be taken to mean early in 2010, but the quality of the current beta suggests Microsoft can easily beat that. However, I suspect it won’t promise it earlier just in case something bad happens. It will just say: “Hey, we beat our deadlines.”

Fifth, is Microsoft going to push the 64-bit version? If not, why not? The 64-bit version of Windows XP wasn’t particularly good, but the 64-bit version of Vista SP1 is outstanding (and exactly the same code is widely appreciated in Windows Server 2008). Since all PCs nowadays (except netbooks) are 64-bit machines capable of exploiting huge amounts of memory, it’s just silly to ship them with 3GB and a slower, more limited version of Windows.

If I ran Windows marketing, I’d certainly have occupied the 64-bit market long before Apple started talking about Snow Leopard.

Sad to say, absolutely none of these questions will be answered by Steve Ballmer at CES, but it would be nice to know what that nice Mr Sinofsky has in mind.

By Mohamamd Sahebjamee

Thursday released its Hyper-V virtualization server, which has been nearly five years and is a major play in the company’s march toward services-based computing.

Hyper-V, which was code named Viridian and Windows Server virtualization, hit its release-to-manufacturing (RTM) stage and will be posted on the company’s Web site today. It also will be available via automatic update starting July 8.

Hyper-V is free to users with a Windows Server 2008 license.

Microsoft originally said Hyper-V would ship “within 180 days of the shipment of Windows Server 2008,” which was Feb. 27. Most experts had pegged August as the delivery time frame, but in April Microsoft began to hint that the software would come in June or July. Regardless, the technology has been late in arriving given that it was originally slated for inclusion with Windows Server 2008.

By Mohammad Sahebjamee

Network security can be a thorny issue for small businesses because they generally lack pricey equipment and dedicated IT people who have the expertise to lock down a local area network. But addressing security is nevertheless essential: Just one customer data breach could easily wipe out a small business, and constantly battling viruses, spyware, and spam can sap employee productivity.

Threats may come from wireless deployments, too–Wi-Fi is a great convenience but also a serious weak point in most networks–as well as from Web site breaches and from employee downloads of illegitimate material. (Since you are responsible for employees’ use of your network, that last vulnerability can have serious consequences.) And that list doesn’t even count bandwidth wasted when employees visit sites like MySpace and Facebook, or watch YouTube videos, on company time. How can you secure your small business against so many disparate threats, constrained as you are by limited resources?

The task is actually not as difficult as it may sound, thanks to enterprise-grade security technology that has been trickling down to the small-business level. So-called UTM (unified threat management) security appliances offer one-stop “security-in-a-box” protection that even part-time network administrators can deploy.

By Mohamamd Sahebjamee

Five hours after Mozilla officially released Firefox 3.0, researchers at TippingPoint found a vulnerability in the new browser. Since Mozilla is still working on a fix, the researchers won’t share details about the problem. Tipping Point ranked the severity of the vulnerability as high, but said that users would have to click on a link in an e-mail or visit a malicious Web page before being affected. So far, I still Belive Firefox Is The Best Browser.

By Mohammad Sahebjamee

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By Mohammad Sahebjamee