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• The My Documents folder is a special folder that, by default, is located on the C:\ drive
• That most software, Explorer.exe itself included, by default, will recurse subdirectories
• Most of the things discussed here can be changed, like what folders you are sharing, and even where My Docs points can be changed too...like to a different drive
• If you have anything above retard level intelligence, you'd know to keep sensitive material anywhere but a default, commonly trolled, and (lacking proper security) easily exploitable folder like My Docs...
• ...Like, say, in an encrypted, password-protected archive on a flash drive you never let out of your sight? Or better yet, said archive on a fully encrypted portable hard drive that you make sure not to leave plugged in...
• Best solution, don't run your p2p on the same system as for super secret government work; you could maybe try running the p2p under a restricted linux virtual machine? At bare minimum, create a separate special user account specifically for either accessing the sensitive files, or else a restricted one for p2p activities

...then I'm inclined to think they're speaking as security experts, seeing as to how they've most certainly passed their advanced computer science classes. This isn't Soviet Russia, I'll skip the propaganda, thank you very much.

Actually, OneNote can search in images: "Powerful search capabilities can help you locate information from text within pictures or from spoken words in audio and video recordings." http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/HA101656661033.aspx

I had the same reaction - stupid news. Old technical problem with old solutions, but someone thought they had a "catchy headline". And conclusion. It allows for radicalizing - involves missiles, war, deaths, a lot of money, national pride, terrorism, religion, politics, corruption... sex lies and videotape. No big news, all the same, some engineers screw up, some people do wars and weapons, and some people die. If the same error was in a videogame, or in an Intel CPU or Excel spreadsheet calculation error, it would be boring. A thousand monkeys typing, last anyone checked, will not produce any decent code. Or politics.

But then seriously, how is this guy's story "news for nerds" any more than my anecdote?

Because the is a Knowledge Base article (KB975253) about this problem?

But in summary, Microsoft was fined 500 million Euros ($800 million) which was I believe the largest fine anywhere ever at the time, certainly the largest ever in Europe.

Microsoft's net income revenue last quarter was $12.92 billion, according to Microsoft. Assuming that quarter's typical (feel free to check more thoroughly if you suspect it's not), the fine you've discussed was 5.6% of Microsoft's net income for a year, or 1.5% of their revenue. That's not far from what pete6677 said, and as you say it was the largest (in absolute terms) fine anywhere ever at the time.

I'd have to say this supports pete6677's point - courts don't issue fines sufficiently large to really hurt a corporation, and they do issue fines against individuals which exceed their net worth or yearly earnings; then they garnish their income for years to come.

Autorun, by Mark Russinovich at Microsoft, gives you a complete checklist of everything that's started at bootup or login. With checkboxes that turn it off. This is worth running just to see what's in there. You may turn too much off and break something, but you can run Autorun again and turn it back on.

There's plenty of stuff worth turning off, like those useless programs that keep polling to see if Adobe Acrobat or Sun Java came out with a new version. Some of those programs are too aggressive, too. Adobe's poller seems to try to re-associate PDF files with Acrobat, after I'd changed the ".pdf" association to launch Sumatra PDF.

It's annoying that even legitimate updaters seldom schedule themselves as periodic tasks, which Windows does well and which have no overhead when they're not running. No, they have to have their own little executable in memory.

Of course not. MS Works isn't intended to compete with Microsoft Office, particularly now that Office 2007 made their old student edition available to all customers as the Home and Student Edition for $149.99.

Note: Home and Student Edition only includes Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. There is no Outlook, Access, etc...

The naming of that edition is ironic, since students can now get Office 2007 Ultimate edition for $59.95 / £38.95.

Of course not. MS Works isn't intended to compete with Microsoft Office, particularly now that Office 2007 made their old student edition available to all customers as the Home and Student Edition for $149.99.

Note: Home and Student Edition only includes Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. There is no Outlook, Access, etc...

The naming of that edition is ironic, since students can now get Office 2007 Ultimate edition for $59.95 / £38.95.

The answer is simple: MICROSOFT !!

Anyone who installs this shit IS the
New World Order

I am the NWO living off the backs of others screwing the planet over for a buck.

My lifestyle of electricity bills and internal combustion. My phone bill, my cheap clothes from the Far East.

My salad’s flown across the world from third world countries.

Here’s my ensure-the-slavery-of-Chinese-labor laptop.

You are the NWO. You’re lack of self-sufficiency IS the NWO. Your religion, your country, your money, your trainer, your last burger, your last Coke you drank. Petrol, diesel, air-conditioning, magazines, and newspapers . We’re all the NOW, people.

And if you don’t like it go get a teepee and live outdoors. Bread, it’s the NWO. Bread you didn’t bake. Bread you didn’t bake with wheat you didn’t grow. Your garbage is the NWO. Garbage you don’t dispose of.

The NWO. It’s a new evil totally separate from my disgusting lifestyle of consumerism and exploitation of others.

A lesson for Windows Engineers. Aim for 256MB, not 2GB. The era of Netbooks is upon us, and it looks like Microsoft will miss the bus

WalMart.com lists 12 Win 7 netbooks for sale on line, 3 in-store.
  Netbooks

Atom CPU. 10 inch screen.
1 GB RAM and a 160 or 250 GB HDD. Prices start at $300 US.

The life of the geek is hard:

This is a nice little netbook.
I got it home and installed Mandriva 2009.1 on it. I ran into a couple problem I want to share. The Ethernet is not recognized by 2009.1 and the wireless requires additional packages, so your left without any Internet connection. I went and bought a usb to Ethernet adapter "linksys usb300M plugged it in and had Internet in seconds. Another flavour of Linux may work fine without issues, I just like Mandriva. Acer Purple 10.1" Aspire One [Comment Posted Oct 23]

WalMart doesn't sell a netbook with less than 1 GB RAM.

The geek's obsession with "saving" RAM puzzles me.

RAM is generally the simplest and cheapest way to improve the performance and reliability of any system:

ReadyBoost works with most flash storage devices. In Windows 7, it can handle more flash memory and even multiple devices--up to eight, for a maximum 256 gigabytes (GB) of additional memory. This feature comes with all versions of Windows 7. ReadyBoost

If your computer has a hard disk that uses solid-state drive (SSD) technology, you might not see an option to speed up your computer with ReadyBoost when you plug in a USB flash drive or flash memory card. You may instead receive the message, "Readyboost is not enabled on this computer because the system disk is fast enough that ReadyBoost is unlikely to provide any additional benefit. This is because some SSD drives are so fast they're unlikely to benefit from ReadyBoost. Using memory in your storage device to speed up your computer

A lesson for Windows Engineers. Aim for 256MB, not 2GB. The era of Netbooks is upon us, and it looks like Microsoft will miss the bus

WalMart.com lists 12 Win 7 netbooks for sale on line, 3 in-store.
  Netbooks

Atom CPU. 10 inch screen.
1 GB RAM and a 160 or 250 GB HDD. Prices start at $300 US.

The life of the geek is hard:

This is a nice little netbook.
I got it home and installed Mandriva 2009.1 on it. I ran into a couple problem I want to share. The Ethernet is not recognized by 2009.1 and the wireless requires additional packages, so your left without any Internet connection. I went and bought a usb to Ethernet adapter "linksys usb300M plugged it in and had Internet in seconds. Another flavour of Linux may work fine without issues, I just like Mandriva. Acer Purple 10.1" Aspire One [Comment Posted Oct 23]

WalMart doesn't sell a netbook with less than 1 GB RAM.

The geek's obsession with "saving" RAM puzzles me.

RAM is generally the simplest and cheapest way to improve the performance and reliability of any system:

ReadyBoost works with most flash storage devices. In Windows 7, it can handle more flash memory and even multiple devices--up to eight, for a maximum 256 gigabytes (GB) of additional memory. This feature comes with all versions of Windows 7. ReadyBoost

If your computer has a hard disk that uses solid-state drive (SSD) technology, you might not see an option to speed up your computer with ReadyBoost when you plug in a USB flash drive or flash memory card. You may instead receive the message, "Readyboost is not enabled on this computer because the system disk is fast enough that ReadyBoost is unlikely to provide any additional benefit. This is because some SSD drives are so fast they're unlikely to benefit from ReadyBoost. Using memory in your storage device to speed up your computer

from G.M.A.C..
We owe you a credit on your current loan for your Government Motors clunker and need your bank account number and Social Security Number to deposit this credit in your bank. Do wish to proceed with this authorization?

Yes.

No.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Yours In Lahore,
Y. Omotayo.

what's this about then http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb204042(EXCHG.140).aspx

That is open. Microsoft released it a while ago. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc307725.aspx

I do not see the letters "EAS" or "EWS" in there.

Maybe "ESP" for "Exchange Server Protocols" (the title of the page) is close. Other abbreviations I see are "MS-OXDOCO".

A bit more searching found that "EAS" stands for "Exchange Active Sync". Sorry I did not catch that, as I saw plenty of "Active Sync" documentation but not with "Exchange" in front of it. That's closed anyway.

Also this paragraph was damn easy to find, apparently "not all is under the open specification promise":

Patents. Microsoft has patents that may cover your implementations of the technologies described in the Open Specifications. Neither this notice nor Microsoft's delivery of the documentation grants any licenses under those or any other Microsoft patents. However, a given Open Specification may be covered by Microsoft's Open Specification Promise (available here: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp) or the Community Promise (available here: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/cp/default.mspx). If you would prefer a written license, or if the technologies described in the Open Specifications are not covered by the Open Specifications Promise or Community Promise, as applicable, patent licenses are available by contacting iplg@microsoft.com.

I do not see the letters "EAS" or "EWS" in there.

Maybe "ESP" for "Exchange Server Protocols" (the title of the page) is close. Other abbreviations I see are "MS-OXDOCO".

A bit more searching found that "EAS" stands for "Exchange Active Sync". Sorry I did not catch that, as I saw plenty of "Active Sync" documentation but not with "Exchange" in front of it. That's closed anyway.

Also this paragraph was damn easy to find, apparently "not all is under the open specification promise":

Patents. Microsoft has patents that may cover your implementations of the technologies described in the Open Specifications. Neither this notice nor Microsoft's delivery of the documentation grants any licenses under those or any other Microsoft patents. However, a given Open Specification may be covered by Microsoft's Open Specification Promise (available here: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp) or the Community Promise (available here: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/cp/default.mspx). If you would prefer a written license, or if the technologies described in the Open Specifications are not covered by the Open Specifications Promise or Community Promise, as applicable, patent licenses are available by contacting iplg@microsoft.com.

Microsoft: The Monopoly Created By I.B.M.?

Yours In Novosibirsk,
K. Trout

I know another slashdotter mentioned that hosting PST files on a Windows server could bring the server to its knees, but we've done testing and have never had an issue. Luck to us?

Here's the official word:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297019

The issue only occurs on heavily loaded fileservers, but PSTs on fileservers are nonetheless a bad idea.

What?

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing/

# Web Edition: Up to 1 GB relational database = $9.99 / month
# Business Edition: Up to 10 GB relational database = $99.99 / month
# Bandwidth = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB

Web Edition Relational Database includes:

* Up to 1 GB of T-SQL based relational database
* Self-managed DB, auto high availability
* Best suited for Web application, Departmental custom apps.

Business Edition DB includes:

* Up to 10 GB of T-SQL based relational database
* Self-managed DB, auto high availability
* Additional features in the future like auto-partition, CLR, fanouts etc.
* Best suited for ISVs packaged LOB apps, Department custom apps

http://aws.amazon.com/rds/

# Small DB Instance: 1.7 GB memory, 1 ECU (1 virtual core with 1 ECU), 64-bit platform.
# Large DB Instance: 7.5 GB memory, 4 ECUs (2 virtual cores with 2 ECUs each), 64-bit platform
# Extra Large DB Instance: 15 GB of memory, 8 ECUs (4 virtual cores with 2 ECUs each), 64-bit platform
# Double Extra Large DB Instance: 34 GB of memory, 13 ECUs (4 virtual cores with 3,25 ECUs each), 64-bit platform
# Quadruple Extra Large DB Instance: 68 GB of memory, 26 ECUs (8 virtual cores with 3.25 ECUs each), 64-bit platform

(Price per hour)
Small DB Instance $0.11
Large DB Instance $0.44
Extra Large DB Instance $0.88
Double Extra Large DB Instance $1.55
Quadruple Extra Large DB Instance $3.10

Provisioned Database Storage

For each DB Instance class, Amazon RDS provides you the ability to select from 5 GB to 1 TB of associated storage capacity for your primary data set.

* $0.10 per GB-month of provisioned storage
* $0.10 per 1 million I/O requests

Data Transfer In

* All Data Transfer $0.10 per GB

Data Transfer Out

* First 10 TB per Month $0.17 per GB
* Next 40 TB per Month $0.13 per GB
* Next 100TB per Month $0.11 per GB
* Over 150 TB per Month $0.10 per GB

Data transferred between two Amazon Web Services within the same region (e.g. between Amazon RDS US and Amazon EC2 US) is free of charge.

The minimum on Amazon is 5GB, so let's compare 10GB. For Amazon at 1 month, you're paying $0.10 * 10 = $1 for storage and your $81.84 is about right. Note that this $82.84 is not comparable to the "Web Edition" offering from Microsoft, as that's for 1GB of storage. The "Small DB Instance" offering from Amazon is for an instance, not for storage, which you pay for completely separately.

So this $82.84 figure is really only comparable to Microsoft's "Business Edition" offering at $99.99, both before bandwidth costs. Bandwidth costs apply to Azure too under a different pricing model. The data in cost is exactly the same and the data out cost is $0.02/GB more expensive for Amazon for the first 10 TB and cheaper after that. You do have to pay Amazon an additional $0.10 per 1 million I/O requests, though.

On the other hand, Amazon allows you to buy way more than 10GB of storage, different instances, and

I have found for my kids ACER Netbooks with XP HOME that Flashfire "fixes" the slow down. http://flashfire.org/
Was night and day during start up alone. Improved Firefox even after cutting most of it cache storage,

Also found running defrags helped a lot. Using both IO BIT Smartdefrag http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html and Page Defrag http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897426.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/protocols/protocol-documentation/interoperability-principles-protocol-documentation/exchange-server-protocols-documentation/ Google too hard for you?

*sigh*

SharePoint was more open that the PST format was prior to this announcement. The (well documented) SharePoint API enables access to all content - it would be relatively trivial to write software that could walk your entire SharePoint content dbs and indeed farm to extract all data out in a way that could easily be implemented in alternative products. I'm sure its been done. Hell, there's software that does the reverse (and I know this being a SharePoint guy) - that use the very same API to insert data into a SharePoint environment from say a Lotus Notes environment. And trust me, you have as much access to write as you do to read data.

Repeat after me - SharePoint does not lock your data up. It implements a reasonably good document management, content management, workflow, "intranet in a box" site - it aint no drupal when looking specifically at CMS, but that's one of the many tools on this swiss army knife. Sure, corporations will be 'locked in' to SharePoint, but that is because the alternatives that come close to doing what it does are woeful (*cough* Lotus Notes). They're locked in to its functionality, which - correct me if I'm wrong - is ultimately what you choose one software product over another on.

>I am not sure that your analysis of the binary RPC version of MAPI being replaced is actually accurate.

Grandpa AC is correct.. Microsoft is phasing out MAPI entirely and has already replaced it with an open implementation. ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb204042(EXCHG.140).aspx )

With the advent of Web Services in Exchange 2007 ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb408417.aspx ), clients including Outlook are moving to use standard protocols to access Exchange. Outlook 2007 made a huge step towards using HTTP, XML to access Exchange 2007.

Apple's Mail App requires Exchange 2007 because the Mail.app client is using Web Services to access. ( http://images.apple.com/macosx/exchange/docs/MacOSXSL_Exchange.pdf )

>I am not sure that your analysis of the binary RPC version of MAPI being replaced is actually accurate.

Grandpa AC is correct.. Microsoft is phasing out MAPI entirely and has already replaced it with an open implementation. ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb204042(EXCHG.140).aspx )

With the advent of Web Services in Exchange 2007 ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb408417.aspx ), clients including Outlook are moving to use standard protocols to access Exchange. Outlook 2007 made a huge step towards using HTTP, XML to access Exchange 2007.

Apple's Mail App requires Exchange 2007 because the Mail.app client is using Web Services to access. ( http://images.apple.com/macosx/exchange/docs/MacOSXSL_Exchange.pdf )

I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Open Source House fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig on an Open Source House elevator for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to climb 17 floors. 20 minutes. At home, on my Microsoft Home Automation Gateways MagicStair, running Escalator 1.0, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Elevator, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

In addition, while on this elevator, my microwave will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even the parking garage is straining to keep up as I type this...

To Microsoft

or

Cancel

I can't see the screen cuz the lasers BURNED my retinas.

Yours In Novosibirsk,
Kilgore Tour

Which is a free download from Microsoft:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/bb980924.aspx?wt.svl=more_downloads

Possibly, but they often forget to take the dialog's title bar and the task bar into account, leaving the "OK" button inaccessible. (Yes, I know you can hide or move the taskbar.)

Guideline is for the total height of window, so it includes its titlebar (with default theme, anyway - it can be made arbitrarily large otherwise). It also includes taskbar of the default size (again, it can be resized). Here is the primary source.

Actually, my big problem with Windows is that the dialog boxes aren't big enough! How many times have you had to scroll through a list of dozens of items FIVE LINES AT A TIME because that's as big as the damn scroll box is and no, you can't make it any bigger even though you have a 1600x1200 screen that's going 90% unused.

I agree that it is a major annoyance - it's actually one thing I really like about Gtk - it defaults to resizeable and reflowable UI (in fact, I don't even recall how you make a "static" UI with it, where controls are pinned at precise positions), and as a consequence virtually every Gtk/Gnome application has all its windows resizeable - including the About dialog.

The major problem with doing the same thing on Windows is that stock Win32 API and controls offer absolutely no support for that - it's based on a model where controls are absolutely positioned using units of measurement that are relative to font size (so that dialogs can scale if user changes that). There aren't even any way to anchor a control to something but top and left edges of its parent, much less full-featured box and grid layouts seen elsewhere.

Furthermore, most popular Windows frameworks followed suit - VB, Delphi, and .NET WinForms all used the same approach; Delphi added anchoring of arbitrary edges, which helps things somewhat; and WinForms added proper layouts in 2.0, but they are still pretty complicated to use, and poorly supported by its visual designer, so people often ignore it anyway.

That approach worked fine back in early 90s, not so much now. It's changing in a sense that more stock Windows dialogs are becoming resizeable in each new release (dunno if you remember, but e.g. Open and Save As dialogs weren't resizeable in Win95... that could be very annoying).

Also, the preferred Windows UI framework - at least as far as Microsoft is concerned - is WPF these days, and that has dynamic reflowing layouts baked into it from day one; so, as more third-party stuff is (re)written in it, we should see more Windows applications doing that right.

If it's with the vendor supplied drivers, then fine. I can't do what I want without them, so it's still to do with the whole experience and readiness of the product.

It has nothing to do with the readiness of Win7; it has to do with the readiness of your hardware manufacturer.

There are issues I've come across that are most certainly MS, as the whole dependancy chain is MS stamped on the vendor sigs.

That ensures that the driver is coming from who they say it's coming from. It doesn't mean MS tested the driver.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winlogo/drvsign/drvsign.mspx

Most windows problems are people that don't know what they're doing, or bad drivers.

Trying to reply myself, in case someone is interested:

MS Annual report

Its a tribute to the power of marketing to make lemonade out of lemons.

You remember the Mojave Experiment, right? It proved:

1) That Vista had a horrible word-of-mouth reputation that all of Microsoft's considerable marketing ability couldn't counter.

2) That Microsoft could re-release Vista with superficial tweaks under a different name, with much better marketing, and the general public would eat it up.

3) That you could stick an average moron in front of a computer and a camera, show them some eye-candy, and they *still* wouldn't know what they were talking about when it comes to computers.

however AFAIK IEs implementation is in IE not at system level

You would be incorrect. IE uses an OS level service known as Windows Integrity Mechanism. Same mechanism used by UAC or Silverlight.

however AFAIK IEs implementation is in IE not at system level

You would be incorrect. IE uses an OS level service known as Windows Integrity Mechanism. Same mechanism used by UAC or Silverlight.

Here is the solution to the problem. It worked for me.

This is copy pasted from the second post here : http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7install/thread/aedb1245-f8f9-42ec-9a0c-1aa932363bbb

Where this guy got the solution from is here : http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/30470-make-bootable-iso-student-d-l.html

* * SOLUTION * *

There is a way to create an image file dispite recieving this error we seem to be all recieving.

1. You will need to use an additional Microsoft command-line tool, called Oscdimg.

Details here
Download here

Download the .zip file and extract it. Then cut and paste the Oscdimg.exe file into your C:\Windows\System32 directory

2. You now need to start up your command prompt, which can be done by Start->Run then enter 'cmd' into the prompt. (Run as administrator if in Vista!)

3. You should now have the command prompt open, now you need to use the Oscdimg tool to create the image, by entering the following:
Oscdimg.exe -u2 -bC:\ \expandedSetup\boot\etfsboot.com -h C:\ \expandedSetup C:\ \Win7.iso

For example: Oscdimg.exe -u2 -bC:\Users\James\Downloads\expandedSetup\boot\etfsboot.com -h C:\ Users\James\Downloads \expandedSetup C:\ Users\James\Downloads \Win7.iso

It will now scan the source tree then begin creating the image. PLEASE note: you must replace ' ' appropriatly as to where you have downloaded the files.

4. You should now have an image file, called Win7.iso, in the same directory.

5. You can now burn this .iso file to a blank DVD using appropriate software. I personally use PowerISO (You dont need the paid version to burn the image)

6. Viola! You have your not so shiney Windows 7 disk. Restart your computer and install away!

- I take no acknowledgment for this, I dug about and found the info at: http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/30470-make-bootable-iso-student-d-l.html Thanks SIW2 :)

* Edited byNixonInnes Thursday, October 22, 2009 8:54 AMtypo's
* Edited byNixonInnes Thursday, October 22, 2009 9:02 AM
* Marked As Answer byKevin HauMSFT, ModeratorThursday, October 22, 2009 6:35 PM
* Edited byKevin HauMSFT, ModeratorThursday, October 22, 2009 9:52 PMstep to run CMD as admin

Yeah, those 10 years of security updates Microsoft provides are really poor. It would be much better if they could do it for five years like Ubuntu.

Is that real 85Hz or dropping frames to 60Hz? I'm not aware of any LCD with a genuine maximum refresh rate of 85Hz.

CRT blanking is a very good thing, because it eliminates sample and hold blur. Good article on motion representation:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/temprate.mspx

The 2009-10-29 release date was chosen over 8 months ago, several months before Microsoft announced their release date for Windows 7.

I know for a *FACT* that "3 letter agencies" have backdoor keys. Ask any IT forensics person.

That's funny. I don't think you need to invoke "3 letter agencies" for scare tactics. Microsoft's own documentation makes reference to central key servers and separate Volume Encryption Keys vs. Volume Master Keys.

Personally, I wouldn't trust any Win7 box on a corporate network, even without "backdoors".

BTW, they claim standard AES 128 or 256. I would think it would be trivial for someone reasonably skilled in the art (not me) to verify the AES encryption. Then the only thing that would be suspect would be the key generation itself.

In that case you have to execute cmd.exe as an Admin. Enter "cmd" into the search box on the Start menu, then hold + and press , and you'll get your UAC prompt. If you need to do this a lot, you can create a shortcut to cmd and then modify the shortcut to run as an administrator by default. Again, it's like su, not sudo.

I do wish there were an "elevate.exe" native to Windows that would work like sudo, though. There are a number of widgets online that do this (including some on Microsoft's TechNet but since they're not built-in they're not particularly common.

Now compare that with some other companies:

http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html

http://research.microsoft.com/apps/dp/pu/publications.aspx#p=1&ps=36&so=0&sb=d&fr=&to=&fd=&td=&rt=&f=ms&a=&pn=&pa=&pd=

http://domino.research.ibm.com/library/cyberdig.nsf/recent (last 30 days!)

http://www.parc.com/publications/

http://research.nokia.com/

Two conference publications by Apple employee is a joke for a company the size of Apple. Apple doesn't even have a site where they show their research.

(Apple used to have a research lab with real researchers and publications in the 1990's, but they closed it.)

And the poster session is not the output of R&D by Apple, it's people talking about using Apple products in their work.

You aren't making any sense. Yes the Windows licence is more than Ubuntu, but not $2,000 more. What on earth are you actually trying to say?

In your post I replied to you included costs for Ubuntu but not Windows. If that does not make sense to you then I don't know what does. And the cost of a Windows license isn't the total cost of upgrading to Windows 7. Besides the license for it there's the license for MS Office, if you're not using Office then why do you need to stay with Windows? Uhm, let's see which 2007 Office suite is right for you, there are 5 versions. The cheapest is Home and Student for $150. An upgrade to the next version, Standard, costs $239.95 and Ultimate costs $539.95. Then there's the cost of re-training as well as lost productivity. An upgrade to Windows 7 can easily cost $2000.

But you and Windows fanbois, I don't know if you're one or not, refuse to acknowledge those costs. If you're going to spend that much and you don't really need Windows 7, why not replace Windows with Ubuntu? The only reason to stay with Windows for most shops is because of inertia or staying with what familiar. However if a business isn't willing or able to adapt then how are they going to stay in business?

Falcon

I guess that bit locker may be the only reason i've heard so far, to go with win7. But i'm going to say no thank you at the extra price since bitlocker is only available in the ultimate edition.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/compare

For the extra $50 added to the PC of upgrading to ultimate/enterprise editions , i'd rather purchase a PGP solution that will encrypt stuff like emails (automatically via outlook) has a blackberry client for reading/sending encrypted email, and can have encrypted network files that are shared to other users via a enterprise key server. Along with recovery tokens for desktop techs....

No bitlocker is basically just good enough, like IE is just good enough to download firefox. And since I don't need bitlocker to download a real encryption tool, I don't need it at all.

Microsoft runs a large collection of newsgroups for discussion and feedback. I've seen MS employees, and those who have the ears of MS employees, on these boards. You may well be able to find others who have the same complaints that you do and get somebody to fix your issues. The web-based interface is accessible through http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/, or you can use a newsreader program.

If you need to spend $2k doing an install on W7 then surely you'd need to spend the same installing Ubuntu?

Windows requires a license to be paid for on each installation, Ubuntu is a free download and can be installed on as many PCs as you want. Even if a Windows 7 license cost only $50, for a volume business license, in an installation on 1000 PCs that's $50,000. And what of individual Win7 upgrades? If I recall right the cheapest upgrade version of Vista was $200, let's see what it is now... Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate with SP2 (32bit) cost $100. Uhm, this is interesting. If you have qualifying purchase of Windows Vista Home Premium, Business or Ultimate that is bought a Vista "retail packaged product between June 26, 2009 and January 31, 2010" you can order the Windows 7 upgrade for $10, the price of shipping and handling.

Or does that just install itself and re-train the users automagically?

Gee the Windows 7 installs itself and retrains users automagically.

Falcon

There seems to be big difference in the way bugs and issues are recorded.

OSS: "If you do X, Y happens. This shouldn't happen" Followed by a long discussion between developers and users to track down and solve the problem.e.g. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.0/+bug/269656

Microsoft: "X is broken. That's just the way it is." Followed by a form to let them know just how much this pisses you off. e.g. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/102888

Maybe you don't install toolbars and the like? Toolbars are very invasive in Windows - many of them will install global hooks. This is a horrible technique where you load a DLL into every process in the system and that DLL can be installed as a WndProc for every Window. The idea is that you have a chance to look at all messages.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms644990(VS.85).aspx

Now the problem with an upgrade in the presence of things like this is that probably a Windows hook can be made to work with 90% of applications when it is released. The other 10% will have some sort of issue. New applications will probably fare worse and a new OS will introduce all sorts of issues.

Actually I've got Google Desktop Search installed here and it looks like unlike the MSN and Yahoo toolbars it does not do this - I don't see any 'foreign' DLLs injected into a notepad process. These days the Microsoft DLLs are all signed code and every single DLL in the Notepad process has a Microsoft signature.

Users should consider upgrading to x64 of Windows 7. When you upgrade from 32 bit Windows XP and provided your hardware supports it you shuld install 64 bit OS. Yet one more reason not to upgrade. User state migration tool will greatly improve your experience and in the process you can install 64 bit OS. Download it form here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc722032(WS.10).aspx

You can upgrade from Win7 home to Win7 ultimate with ONLY an upgrade key. You get all of Win7 Ultimate installed with Win7 home, you just can't use it.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/features/windows-anytime-upgrade.aspx?tabid=1&catid=3

"In Windows 7, the software you need comes preinstalled."

Suck it, nerds.

So they actually bothered to ship it with a compiler, source, and a text editor that's better than note/wordpad?

I didn't think so.

Why would anyone with half a brain bloat up a OS with those things when only about 0.5%(I'm being charitable here) of the user base would ever find a use for them? You can always download the things you mention for free(sans source) from places like http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualc/aa336402.aspx

And yet somehow they manage to bloat the os anyway.

The Core 2 Duo @ 2.53GHz is more than than twice as fast as the 1.8GHz Celeron, so really you only need 4 of the mini-servers to beat out 8 of the blades... Suddenly the price swings significantly to the mini's... ($4299+8*379 = 7331. 4x$999 = 3996, or roughly half the price) and you've still got 16GB of RAM, not 8GB (which is what the blades have)

Yeah, you have a point on the Celerons. I can't find anything exactly equivalent to the minimac hardware in these blades, but among the pre-configured options on that blade page is a quad-core Xeon for $609 with 2GB RAM. An extra 2GB RAM is +$129, so $738 for a quad core Xeon with 4GB RAM. Using your reasoning with the celeron, one of those xeon blades == 2 minimacs. If we load up an 8 slot chassis that's $4299+8*738 = $10,203 vs 16*999 = $15,984. Similar but with 8 cores & 8GB RAM per blade and 32 minimacs: $14,027 vs $31,968. As we approach "cramp LOADS of those things in a small space" the blades are looking way cheaper now as well as more space efficient.

What you're also ignoring here is the cost of the OS. You're paying $999 because the mini comes with the server-grade OS. You need to add on the cost of Windows Server 2008 per blade (I'll let you get away with the 5-CAL licences, even though OSX is unlimited), for a further cost (ouch!) of ~$1029 per blade. That takes your costs to $(4299 + 8*(738+1029)) = $18435, which is again more than the 16 minis ( =$15,984).

If the argument is that you can use linux rather than windows, well fine. You can do that on the minis too though. If we take this route you don't need the mini-server bundle, so you can get the $599 package and the costs compare as $(4299 + 8*738) = $10,203 vs the minis at 16x599 = $9,584. You still have to buy storage for your blades as well, whereas the minis come with hard-disks.

To a certain extent, this is tongue-in-cheek. I'm not sure I'd recommend anyone buy 32 mac-minis if they wanted a computing cluster for example, but if you're trying to do it on the cheap, they're not actually that bad...

individual cables: You need an ethernet wire and a power supply. That's one more wire per mini. If you're using external storage, you'll need a firewire cable or whatever, but that's the same as with the blades

One more? You don't need any cables going in to the blades. Power, network, console, etc are supplied by the backplane.

Well, actually I was assuming 6 independent psu's would take 6 wires, and 1 network cable would take 1 wire, for a total of 7, compared to 2 (power, network)x4 for a total of 8. That's not a huge difference :) The "per mini" was wrong, and left in from text I'd changed.

organization: The minis are running OSX server, so all the LOM, remote-desktop, remote console etc. server-admin tools work fine.

You can't install an OS, upgrade an OS, access firmware, toggle power or reset them that way. You can do all of that remotely with ILO and work with CD images over the network.

Actually, yes you can. You need to do some prior set-up work (have a netinstall image available or leave the OS DVD in the drive) but LOM (literally: "Lights-Out Management") lets you reboot, power-down and (later, if necessary) power-up, and the system management tools let you install software, choose where to boot from, and relay everything across the net to a client machine. I've done it before from the OS DVD I left for that purpose in the drive of an XServe. Upgrading software doesn't need anything more than ssh or vnc ("Screen sharing" as it's called on the mac) to use the GUI tools.

more-efficient energy: I meant in terms of scale. A few large power supplies will almost certainly be more efficient than many small ones.

I'm