- Test Center Tracker: The zen of Web apps and Mac OS X
- NYT warns against running Windows
- Sun: Java runs great on Vista
- GNOME v2.16 brings more features, fewer bugs
- Update: FreeDOS hits the big 1.0
- Test Center Tracker: Vista vexes, FreeBSD impresses
- The verdict on Vista RC1
- Vista RC1 release notes
- Vista RC1: First looks, screengrabs
August 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Test Center Tracker: The zen of Web apps and Mac OS X
Have you been thinking to get yourself a Mac for a long time and never did? Then don't miss this week Enterprise Windows where Oliver Rist asks (with his well known subtlety): "Does Mac OS X suck?". Oliver's column is the closest you can get to walking the Apple road yourself, and may be you will after reading it.
Is the Web treating you well? Or more to the point, are Web applications treating you well? Moving an application from the quiet waters of a corporate network to the stormy weather of the Net takes more than being technically savvy, warns Tom Yager in this week's "Ahead of the Curve". In his column Tom explains why, and reveals what's the secret sauce to make good Web apps. A useful reading also for non-developers.
Posted by Mario Apicella on August 29, 2007 08:30 AM
January 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)
NYT warns against running Windows
A bit of technical advice appearing in the Sunday New York Times likely has elicited snickers from members of the Apple and Linux community and moans of displeasure from Windows users and just about everyone at Microsoft. That bit of advice, found in an article titled "Tips for Protecting the Home Computer," is to stop running Windows as well as Internet Explorer.
"Using a non-Windows-based PC may be one defense against these programs, known as malware; in addition, anti-malware programs and antivirus utilities for the PC are available from several vendors," the article says.
Of course, Windows' and IE's respective histories of insecurity are really no secret to anyone in IT -- or even anyone who knows what the acronym IT stands for; security holes have been reported time and time and time again over the year. Thus in some ways, the NYT's article is laughably dated.
Still, given how widely read The New York Times is, the article must come as a bit of a blow to Big Red, as it suggests that the perception that Windows and IE aren't safe might be becoming more mainstream. But more important, it may suggest that more casual PC users are coming to realize that real alternatives may exist to meet their needs.
Interestingly, though, the article doesn't make any mention of alternative OSes, though it does refer to increasingly popular non-IE browsers like Firefox and Opera.
The article doesn't come at a good time for Microsoft: Vista, after all, is due to be released to consumers shortly and Microsoft has invested a lot of resources in attempting to bolster the forthcoming OS's security -- not to mention a lot of PR time and effort trying to let people know about the company's efforts. Meanwhile, the NYT article makes no mention of Vista's security enhancements (though it does allude to better defenses in IE 7).
To Microsoft's credit, at least some IT folks out there have taken notice of the work the company has done to secure Vista. Case in point: InfoWorld's very own Security Adviser Roger Grimes wrote last month that "Vista will never be as secure as OpenBSD, but I believe it will be secure enough to ensure that Microsoft becomes known as a vendor of choice for a secure operating system. And that's a far cry from where it was five years ago."
On the other hand, there already have been reports out about security holes in Vista.
What do you think? Is the Times offering some sound advice here for mainstream end-users or simply serving up some FUD?
Posted by Ted Samson on January 7, 2007 11:41 PM
October 10, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Responding to a rumor started on Microsoft Watch that Java doesn't get along well with Vista, Sun Java Client Group Architect Chet Haase declared quite firmly in his own blog that Java runs quite well on Redmond's next-born.
In a Sept. 29 blog posting, Microsoft Watch cited eWeek Lab tests running various Java-based apps on Vista. "In each case, Aero Glass [the Vista UI] wasn't just disabled for the (apparently) offending application, but for our test machine as a whole--until we closed the Java app."
The entry dispenses the following advice to Sun: "Sun Microsystems would do well to give a ring to one of the interop contacts at Microsoft that came out of the firms' historic make-nice agreement back in 2004, and figure out how to make Java apps first-class Vista citizens."
That final bit particularly irked Haase, who responded in a recent entry in his blog.
"[O]lder versions of Java do have problems on Vista, and that's what the original report was about; someone tried running some older version of Java on Vista and noted some problems. But that's like saying that your favorite XBox game, Bloody Mess X, doesn't work on XBox360. Of course it doesn't; the original game was written for a completely different system."
Haase goes into great detail to explain just how hard Sun has worked to adapt Java to the ever-evolving Vista.
"... [It] has been an ongoing process of learning, testing, debugging, submitting bugs against Microsoft, fixing our bugs, re-testing. ... And since Vista has been a moving platform during the Java SE 6 development process, we've been in this development cycle continually with every new drop of Vista (they are still releasing weekly builds for us to test; we just found a bug in RC1 that has since been fixed in the latest release we got yesterday)."
(Application developers in particular may want to read his post; it's quite detailed, technical, and blissfully devoid of marketing.)
Java SE 6, by the way, "is the best solution for Vista," Haase writes. "That release has received most of our focus during the Vista beta release timeframe, and it is where most of the fixes to the known problems currently reside."
As for other flavors of Java: "J2SE 1.5 should work fine, but there may be some nuances that may not be as perfect... . Some additional Vista-specific fixes (such as component animation) may not be back-ported, so the fidelity may not be as close as that in Java SE 6... . But the full gamut of Vista work that we feel is necessary for J2SE 1.5 should be available in update 11, which we hope to release around January of 2007."
Moreover, J2SE 1.4.2 will basically work, according to Haase. "We see 1.4.2 as being functional, usable, and perfect for situations where a customer is absolutely locked into that particular release for now. But we encourage developers and customers to migrate to a more full-feature Vista release soon."
Stay tuned to InfoWorld's ongoing coverage of Vista for the latest news and reviews.
Posted by Ted Samson on October 10, 2006 09:41 PM
September 07, 2006 | Comments: (0)
GNOME v2.16 brings more features, fewer bugs
The GNOME Project has released Version 2.16 of its multi-platform desktop environment, delivering several new features and fixes for hundreds of reports bugs.
Among its reported improvements are:
- tools for managing laptop battery, UPS, and wireless peripheral
- a new quick-note-taking application called Tomboy
- an improved menu editor called Alacarte (which Ubuntu users should recognize)
- a disk-usage-analyzer called Baobab
- enhancements to the Totem video player; and an improved bug-reporting features.
GNOME is part of The GNU Project, and is free software.
Posted by Ted Samson on September 7, 2006 10:05 PM
September 07, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Update: FreeDOS hits the big 1.0
After a long 12-year journey, FreeDOS has achieved Version 1.0.
"FreeDOS 1.0 is a major milestone that has finally been released," writes Blair Campell, aka blairdude, on the FreeDOS Project Web site. "By now, we have a stable and viable MS-DOS replacement."
He reports that FreeDOS (which, as the name suggests, is gratis) now delivers long filename support in several of its apps, including COMMAND.COM. The kernel supports FAT32 and most applications. Additionally, he writes that HIMEM and EMM386 are "extremely stable considering the complexity."
There's also a new installer with user-friendly menus and a free-disk space checker.
FreeDOS has a following among admins at organizations running older software and diagnostic tools. Some end-users use it for running old DOS games, too, a la Doom.
Here's a take from Test Center Senior Contributing Editor Brian Chee, author of the Geeks in Paradise blog:
"FreeDOS is an interesting beast in that it answers issues for quite a few folks in the embedded systems world and other specialty vertical markets. A good example is the EnCase Network Boot Disk that was created by their users group to support easy acquisition of 'suspect' computer hard drives.Previously you had to 'obtain' a bootable disk, and then add the pieces necessary to do the job. Now with FreeDOS, you can package it all into a single ISO image.
FreeDOS should make it much easier for integrators to create bootable media that should be able to run on just about anything, with a much smaller learning curve than stripping down a Linux distro.
Basically, to create a bootable anything in the past you either had to purchase a license for MS-DOS, pirate a copy, or work on cutting down a Linux image."
(For those who don't know, Brian is also the director of the Univ. of Hawaii School of Ocean and Earth Sciences and Technology's Advanced Network Computing Lab.)
So, now that FreeDOS is stable, can we next expect an open source version of Windows to run on top of it? And will it take another 12 years to get?
Wikipedia has ample information about FreeDOS. Version 1.0 is downloadable here. Customers also may order it on a CD.
Posted by Ted Samson on September 7, 2006 01:32 PM
September 06, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Test Center Tracker: Vista vexes, FreeBSD impresses
Vista RC1 verdict: Windows wiz Oliver Rist peered into Vista RC1 and wasn't enamored by what he saw. Hardware hiccups and compatibility concerns suggest that this release might not be worth deploying for anyone but the power users in your organization. The good news: RC1 looks polished enough that Rist predicts that Vista will ship by January 2007. Those of you still hankering for Vista news should bookmark InfoWorld's ever-expanding Vista special report page.
FreeBSD still looks good to me: Over in The Deep End, Paul Venezia shares his experiences dipping in to FreeBSD 6.1. He acknowledges the upgrade from Version 4.9 came bit late, but that really speaks well to the reliability of the OS, right? As for 6.1: "This server does just about everything, from handling a massive mail volume and the associated filters and virus scanning duties, to mailing lists served via mailman, to hosting over 80 domains for both DNS, mail and Web hosting."
Phenomenal routing power, itty-bitty living space: Cisco announced the newest and smallest member of the CRS-1 family. This four-slot CRS-1 model delivers 320Gbps of total switching capacity in a 40Gbps-per-slot chassis. It's built to support the growing demands for IPTV, digital video, and other advanced business and residential IP services. Networking superstar Brian Chee, who pens keys the Geeks in Paradise blog, declares that rookie router (due out in November) will help Cisco give Juniper a run for its money and will "most likely become the core switch/router for most future Cisco solutions."
Blog roundup: Virtualization Report-er David Marshall peeks at Vizioncore esxRanger Professional 2.0, a hot backup and recovery solution for VMware Infrastructure 3.
Paul Krill points out a couple of product announcements out of Redmond, including Expression Web Beta and IronPython 1.0, which recently starred in a screencast by Blogger in Chief Jon Udell.
Posted by Ted Samson on September 6, 2006 06:00 AM
September 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Oliver Rist spent the last few days sailing Windows Vista RC1 through the rocks of software incompatibility and the hard places of hardware support. His take-away:
"If there's one immediate use we can think of for Vista RC1, it's setting up learning machines for the power users in your organization so you can begin the training process now. Overall, we did find it to be far more polished and reliable than even the latest beta build. As new Vista-compatible software arrives from third-party ISVs, RC1 is definitely the OS we'd use for testing. This version is close enough that we feel a release date of January 2007 is not only possible, but likely. Use RC1 to get ready."
Read the full report.
Posted by Doug Dineley on September 5, 2006 04:36 PM
September 04, 2006 | Comments: (0)
When Christopher Flores, Microsoft's Group Product Manager, Windows Marketing Communications, came by the office last Tuesday, bearing Windows Vista RC1 installation DVDs, he was full of good news. He announced that performance and stability had been vastly improved over Beta 2, with Vista now offering a user experience as fast as Windows XP. And he said that Microsoft was on track to deliver Vista to volume license customers in November and to the retail channel in January, though his Windows Vista Timeline slide noted "enterprise availablity EOY 2006."
During an hour-long briefing, Flores also shared a list of specific improvements ranging from improved responsiveness and consistent performance that won't degrade over time to widespread elimination of annoying prompts and driver support for thousands more devices. On the downside, anti-virus software support is still forthcoming, but Flores said Vista's APIs are now frozen so third-party ISVs are finally able to build on them.
Here's the list:
* Elimination of crashes caused by incompatible Internet Explorer toolbars. IE 6 toolbars caused some trouble; Vista can now detect incompatible ones.
* Improved usability of BitLocker. It seems a complicated UI was leading to users locking themselves out of their own systems. An easier UI helps users activate BitLocker safely.
* Media Center now leverages tags for browsing photos and videos. Beta 2 ignored the tags.
* High Definition DVD and Blue Ray DVD are now supported (in both 32 and 64 bit modes).
* Presentation settings now suppress all pop-up messages. Beta 2 prezo settings quashed only IM popups.
* Vastly improved device coverage. Thousands more in the box, including wireless devices, printers, SATA controllers, MCE tuners.
* WinFX now named .NET 3.0 and installed by default.
* A host of peformance improvements: Windows Defender, disk defrag, and other functions have been given lower I/O priority to reduce their impact on system performance. Also, Windows SuperFetch and Windows ReadyBoost reduce the need to read and write from disk, reducing performance impact of Windows BitLocker drive Encryption.
* Lots of changes to User Access Controls to eliminate annoyances. Microsoft acknowledges that Beta 2 prompted users too often. Administrators can now delete shortcuts from public desktops without a prompt. Users can copy files to newly formatted external drives without prompt. Non-admins can manually install high priority updates without nagging. Prompts for viewing firewall settings, for "Ask Me Later" device install, and for connecting to a network (Beta 2 prompted twice for connecting) have been removed. Windows Defender no longer prompts to update signatures. No prompt to open Scanners and Cameras control panel. And no prompt during Media Player "Express" setup; Beta 2 incorrectly prompted users for permission. Finally, prompting at startup is no longer allowed.
When asked why users often were confronted with prompts for the same approvals again and again, Flores' reply was that no "forever" permissions were allowed because other programs could piggyback on that with harmful results.
And a few things Microsoft calls Additional Experience Improvements:
* ActiveX installer service enables standard users to install approved ActiveX controls. This feature is aimed at supporting home-brewed ActiveX controls for corporate intranets; through Group Policy, admins can make permission prompts unnecessary for certain ActiveX controls.
* Programs cannot prompt during the logon process unless configured by Group Policy.
* The command prompt window is marked with "Administrator" if run with elevated permissions.
The main reasons for the stability issues in earlier betas, according to Flores, was that Microsoft was still working on driver support, and had not yet "cleaned up the code." (But you knew that.) The first priority was to make the code feature complete, and then worry about tuning. They're worrying about tuning now.
We'll have our review of Vista RC1 for you in the next day or so. Keep your eye on infoworld.com.
Posted by Doug Dineley on September 4, 2006 01:00 PM
September 01, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Vista RC1: First looks, screengrabs
Here are my notes from my install of Vista RC1 (Build 5568.16384.060827-1900) on a Dell E1405 Core Duo laptop with GMA 945:
-- Most notable of all with RC1 is that Aero Glass, which lets you see through windows and toggle/tab through 3D stack of windows, now works swimmingly (view image) with Intel's GMA 945, which has no discrete graphic card.
Vista has a new driver for the Intel GMA 945 graphics system (core duo) and it works well. No lagging. There was a lot of fuss around the Web with earlier betas because it simply was not clear who was going to get the "full" Vista experience, and with prices of laptops coming down with in-built graphics cards, it seemed a bit rich to not support it. I chose this $699 Dell E1405 as just the kind of machine that should be able to run it (with its 1GB RAM).
-- Clean install much quicker and all drivers except for media card reader were installed. However, all did not work properly, namely the MS-installed Broadcom Wi-Fi driver for my machine's Dell 1390 WLAN card.
-- Everything feels a LOT more finished and look and feel is near final; time will tell on reliability, etc.
InfoWorld's Test Center will be looking at it more closely and have a more in-depth preview for enterprise buyers soon. Follow InfoWorld's ongoing coverage of Vista here.
Some more screen grabs: Start-up greeting; Security Center
Posted by Mike Barton on September 1, 2006 05:38 PM