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10 Best IT Products Of 2006
digihome writes "CRN.com chooses the ten best new products of 2006, including the best development tools, server, notebook and storage device. Some of the choices may surprise you ... such as their choice for operating system of the year." From the article: "With Windows Vista, Microsoft has refreshed the user desktop experience. While debate rages over whether the five-year wait was worth it, the truth is Vista is pretty much the only game in town. One may question whether Vista should be bestowed with Product of the Year recognition in the operating system category. But the product unquestionably brings new features and capabilities to solution providers that in turn promise new revenue generation dialogues with end users."
But the product unquestionably brings new features and capabilities to solution providers that in turn promise new revenue generation dialogues with end users.
Wow! It must be really cool if it does that!
Tiger was released LAST year so it shouldn't be considered a winner for this year....oh wait, that ISN'T Tiger? Well I'll be damned....
Monstar L
Thank You
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
So a product that will be released in 2007 is the product of the year in 2006? Now I'd defend Microsoft to a point, but this is absolute bullshit. Vista should not win this at all. It's not even released to the mass market yet.
Nice, they put them on ten pages...filled with wonderful ads and other Christmas goodies.
Anyways, here's the top ten, Karma Whore, Beeeeatch!
WEB DEVELOPMENT TOOL
DataDirect Technologies Stylus Studio 2007
SECURITY SOFTWARE
Astaro Security Gateway
NETWORKING HARDWARE
Server Partners File Engine
STORAGE
Intel SS4000-E
APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT TOOL
Compuware DevPartner 8.0
IMAGING
Minolta Magicolor 7450
NOTEBOOK
Hewlett-Packard Compaq NC6400
APPLICATION SOFTWARE
Microsoft Exchange 2007
OPERATING SYSTEM
Microsoft Vista Enterprise Edition
SERVER
SuperServer 5015M-MR
The big problem with this list is that it's mislabeled as the "10 Best IT Products of 2006," when it should be labeled "Ad Copy for the 10 IT Products whose sales force managed to sweet talk the analysts who wrote this thing enough to be included."
I've read enough trade magazines to recognize that the blurbs on all of these products come pretty much verbatim from the sales office of the respective companies.
This article is purely for VARs. None of the blurbs are anything close to actual reviews. Having worked for a company whose product looked cool but had major problems under the hood (due to feature creep and unrealistic deadlines primarily), but still managed to get great reviews from "analysts," I can tell you it's distressingly easy to get publications like this to give glowing reviews, even if what you're offering is either broken or primarily vapor.
the truth is Vista is pretty much the only game in town
If I still cared I'd throw a fit at that comment. Instead I'll happily continue to use Ubuntu on my laptop and OSX on my Desktop. Vista who?
CRN = Computer Reseller News. Of course they're going to love Vista!-- rolling out Vista will be a boon to computer resellers everywhere, because few businesses are going to bother upgrading the vast majority of their existing machines, they're going to replace them with hardware beefy enough to run Vista with most of its bells and whistles.
This is hardly an award given for technical merit. Vista represents a full trough for all the revenue-hungry pigs to crowd around.
From their Media Kit page:
Mission Statement
CRN drives sales by empowering VARs and technology integrators with the vital news and technology information they need to generate demand and grow revenue. CRN is the newspaper of record for the channel. For 24 years, VARs, Solution Providers, technology integrators and IT consultants have turned to CRN first each week for immediate and actionable information.
This has nothing to do with "best of breed" or anything like that. It's purely about MAXIMIZING REVENUE by doing as little as possible.
This guy's the limit!
Any such list that includes Windows Vista as the "Best Operating System" loses all credibility.
I have been running Vista for a few weeks now and it is nothing more than an incremental improvement on Windows XP/Server 2k3.
Given the resources of Microsoft, the worldwide importance of the OS and the time taken for development, Vista is a disgrace.
-- Jeff P. Realname
Adblock Plus blocked 44 out of 90 objects on each page (not including referrer links or sponsor links!)
so >50% of each page is adverts and then the "article" (if i can call it that) is spread over 10 pages, i guess there is no dignity on that site
adding content must be so inconvenient them, at what point does a site go from providing a quality service to becoming a spam linkfarm ?
thank goodness for adblock and a hostsfile, good example of how to piss off a visitor
Amazing? Why should the lack of Open Source products in a site whose mission is to "drive sales by empowering VARs and technology integrators with the vital news and technology information they need to generate demand and grow revenue" be amazing?
Open Source is "Best of Breed" when it comes to generate advantages for the users, not to "drive sales".
This is thinly disguised link-bait from a site I've never heard of. Is there any special reason that it was deemed /. worthy, apart from the fact that their inclusion of Vista will incite a vicious troll war?
To make things even worse, each of the 10 "winners" appears on a separate page to pump up ad impressions.
I actually own the workstation edition of this laptop (the model from last year, nw8240). I think that while the specs (at that time) were top notch and could not be beat in a smaller package, the build quality of the computer is kind of bad. The casing is quite easy to break and is easier to look "beat up." The screen is also questionable, as mine had dead pixels and "yellow" spots after less than six months of use. The service department of my school replaced that computer's motherboard two times in the last year alone, and I am not one to put my computers through the rough.
Why aren't any of IBM/Lenovo's Thinkpad offerings on that list? I see that computer used more often than the high-end HP's in business anyway, which is well deserved because they are rock solid and last a really long time. I had their 760L from 10 years ago working until 2 years ago when someone took the computer and smashed it to the floor. And even after that it still worked! The same went for my Thinkpad 600.
If my computer's internals hadn't been replaced, the thing would have been gone in less than six months, which is unacceptable to me.
or the year before that.
So it seems to me that this new "best operating system" category was tailor-made for Vista. Add to that the fact that Vista is being named product of the year for a year where it's been available for companies for less than a month, hardly enough time for companies to migrate, and it looks to me like a marketing puff piece written, or funded, by Microsoft.
This CMP lot are part of the United Business Media Group. This is a very well connected little organization. The Directors' biographies read like a who's who of British Industry. Fingers into AOL, fingers into banks and big insurance companies, fingers into major Indian outsourcing companies etc etc etc.
Of course their reviews may be neutral and may uphold journalistic principles.
Adjust your tinfoil hats to maximum shield strength folks this publication looks like the Illuminati UK Branch IT Monthly.