might remember that even before OS X was launched for its first version, the "vista" "road map" had been published clearly stating what major components would be part of Vista, on WinFS never made it while another, "Aero" has always been slated as part of the opertating system. Unlike apple Microsoft likes to get feedback from their customers before throwing something at them. So of course Mac users see 3d components, 3d windows and naturally assume that MS just ripped off the idea, however it's not fully the case - and the line isn't clear. The thing is: if you strip away the UI of vista and compare OS X and Vista based simply on their progamming models and underlying architecture - they are decidedly different. It would seem this author however is not qualified to make this evaluation.
PLEASE MOD PARENT DOWN. As you can see from my testing, there is no factual basis for this users's claims.
Here is the output from the SSIS based copy tables and data tasks. This process can be accessed by right clicking on the database in SQL Server 2005 Manager and clicking Tasks -> Export Data...
This will copy the data and objects from the source server to the destination server. You will also have the option of specifying transformations between the source and the target table.
The test was performed using a single table containing 3 rows of data from hosted in a Sql Server 2000 database, to the same database running on Sql Server 2005. Both instances of SQL Server were located on the same server. The package was executed from a XP64 based workstation using SQL Server Management Studio. Table and database names have been substituted with the string XXXXXXXXX The results of the operation are as follows:
Messages Information 0x402090df: Data Flow Task: The final commit for the data insertion has started.
(SQL Server Import and Export Wizard)
Information 0x402090e0: Data Flow Task: The final commit for the data insertion has ended.
(SQL Server Import and Export Wizard) - Post-execute (Success) - Cleanup (Success) Messages Information 0x4004300b: Data Flow Task: "component "Destination - XXXXXXXXX" (61)" wrote 3 rows.
No really, this might be a new low for the FSF. I mean, really people, does this tactic ever work? Far from becoming an effective bad PR campaign it is going to further elevate consumer and user awareness of Vista.
While were at it, why aren't we bashing the hell out of Apple and it's release of Shaguar? After all, Jaguar runs on fully DRM'd, TCP'd hardware. The same cannot be said for Windows users.
All right, just because I thought that you were blowing smoke up everyones ass I decided to test your claims.
First, a suggestion, check the dates on threads of conversations. The first thread cited was from Nov, 2005. There was little to no information regarding version. Also, it's difficult to acertain the users ability levels.
Second, before running around and claiming the sky is falling - maybe you should do some testing to see if it actually is, eh?
Here is the output from the SSIS based copy tables and data tasks. This process can be accessed by right clicking on the database in SQL Server 2005 Manager and clicking Tasks -> Export Data...
This will copy the data and objects from the source server to the destination server. You will also have the option of specifying transformations between the source and the target table.
The test was performed using a single table containing 3 rows of data from hosted in a Sql Server 2000 database, to the same database running on Sql Server 2005. Both instances of SQL Server were located on the same server. The package was executed from a XP64 based workstation using SQL Server Management Studio. Table and database names have been substituted with the string XXXXXXXXX The results of the operation are as follows:
Messages Information 0x402090df: Data Flow Task: The final commit for the data insertion has started.
(SQL Server Import and Export Wizard)
Information 0x402090e0: Data Flow Task: The final commit for the data insertion has ended.
(SQL Server Import and Export Wizard) - Post-execute (Success) - Cleanup (Success) Messages Information 0x4004300b: Data Flow Task: "component "Destination - XXXXXXXXX" (61)" wrote 3 rows.
Sorry, I should have been more specific "Components for SSIS are also C# components as opposed to com components under DTS" I meant to say that Custom components for SSIS are also C# as opposed to com components". That is to say that SSIS is easier to extend by developers than its predecessor.
Copy database objects from sql server 2000 never really worked correctly either. Under very simple scenarios it works, but when there are foreign key constraints and many related tables sql server does not usually copy the objects in the correct order, and you get resulting constraint violations which ends up faling the package. My experience has been that it is one of the least reliable ways of moving tables and data between systems. To be frank, basing your release process or relying on it to propogate changes from one environment to another isn't great. No other system would you be able to use this process. Just use SQL scripts and insert scripts like everyone else.
For the most part SSIS is a huge improvement over DTS, it is also much more scalable, and now has it's own dedicated runtime. Components for SSIS are also C# components as opposed to com components under DTS. Theoretically if you code is written well, you can reuse parts of it inside a 2005 DB with the CLR enabled.
"Horribly broken" is really a rather exagerated claim. No one's software is perfect.
Also, it's rather rude to call individuals "liars" when you don't have any evidence that that individual is in fact lying.
"suggests that there may be a general market for a cheap, robust laptop without hard drive or optical storage."
No? India and other countries are already miffed that the U.S. has tried to foist substandard hardware on their "poor" populations to make technology more accessible.
While the intentions of OLPC program are commendable it really ignores the fact that basic education and literacy - a prerequiste for computer use, and power are fundamental components that are not readily available in developing areas of the world.
"Every time I check my email, I am flooded with spam from compromised Windows zombies. Every time I try to purchase new MacOS X software, I am limited in my selection due to Windows monopolization driving competing developers out of business. I could go on and on."
A) If they were not windows zombies, they would be some other platforms zombies. There is of course no way to prove this, but every month vulnerabilities are discovered in every operating system in use. It takes a lazy or ill informed end user to provide a hole to exploit by not patching. There are many, many people out there that fall into this category.
B) "I am limited in my selection"... Are you referring to an office suite for Mac? Or maybe games such as Halo. That's the only area where MS could directly compete. However, there are a number of alternatives to word and excel available on the Mac. You know you should really be complaining about apple killing off your choice of software providers. Every time Apple chooses to roll in a new feature to their OS they kill off an entire development segment. Take for example the widgets from dashboard, originally implemented on the Mac by Konfabulator now a yahoo company. Apple claims that the implementation is different, however the product is effectively the same. A once paid for product is now free.
C) Bill Gates AND Microsoft are both far more of philanthropists than Apple, or Jobs can ever hope to be. What was the last significant charitable gift from apple to the world? Jobs? http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70072-0.html
Point C I find most aggravating. Hundreds of Millions of dollars are being re-invested in the world to fight important issues that for the large part the developed world doesn't give a crap about. Give credit where credit is due.
Yeah a commercial broadband connection isn't a great comparison actually the speed tests that I've run have way to many variables in them and are not really representivie of the speeds/efficiencies avaiable in a LAN environment. After I put the post up it it also occurred to me that they are probably not even using TCP/IP, it's probably UDP.
However, a study that I read a while back (sorry no link) shows that MTU size becomes very important at higher data rates. Also, MTU size varies based on the application. Generally a faster network needs to be "tuned" to the proper MTU top achieve optimal performance.
With all that said we have no way of knowing how much optimization they did, but from my personal experience I can see how it would be easy to set up a network with 75% efficency and we don't even know if they were *trying* to use the full link speed!
"An experienced DBA can set up MySQL with many useful tools in a matter of minutes, too. And you can pay him more because you're not paying Microsoft."
In the grand scheme of things - the amount of money that goes to MSFT is insignificant compared to the revenue of a business. 5K for SQL Server standard edition - and "free" developer tools to support the DB. Almost every other database platforms packaged tools (i.e. provided with the default install) are insufficent to effectively manage AND develop for a novice or intermediate developer/dba.
Compared to other platforms the default toolset included with SQL Server (Enterprise Manager and SQL Query Analyzer now SQL Server Management Studio soon to be moved to VS.NET) is the most comprensive (though DB2 might be more so, but I have not used).
Finally, you don't NEED a DBA to setup SQL Server. Any reasonably proficient developer can figure it out, you also don't need a dba to tune sql server or to setup backup schedules or to create maintence plans. The traditionally cryptic dba functions are so accessible via the UI that there is really nothing to "learn" apart from knowing that you need to do X, and finding it in the menus.
As an aside - these TCO arguments also do not discuss which platforms are most productive for developers, this is where the most savings are to be had.
There is significant overhead associated with the use of TCP/IP. A typical 6.0 Mb/s connection will deliver appx. 4.2 Mb/s this is only about 70% of the connections actual bandwidth. So, 75% is looking pretty good.
What rocks is the ability to reliably deliver 7.5 Gb/s AND do something useful with it.
You're probably not going to like my version of perfect sync...
Exchange + Outlook + DirectPush
Any changes made via Outlook go to the server. Then they are sent to any active instances of Outlook, finally the phone (T-Mobile Dash) is updated with any new mail, calendar or contacts. Conversely, if I add items in the phone they are instantly available on the desktop. In some cases the phone receives notifications faster than the desktop.
There is also a nice web interface for Exchange that can be accessed securely. It has about 60% of the features of the thick client outlook.
Of course you have to pay for Exchange - but this solution is secure (SSL) and fairly easy to setup.
As an added bonus if I lose my phone I can have exchange blow away the contents of its memory remotely.
I think my friend, that you are missing something. It *IS* highly useable.
Start IE 7, you know where everything is, it's easy to get started and you can explore from there. Why has everyone expected everything to be the same? For the last 4 years, there have been crys for change, hooping and hollering pointing out how OS X, and Firefox are models of user interaction. The IE design team went and mixed it up, and they did a great job. They reclaimed a massive amount of bar real estate, and from my experience so far the interaction has been totally intuitive.
Sure, I have had to "search" for some things that were previously in plain sight, like the menu. However my use of these options is only a fraction of a fraction of the total time that I spend using the application for its main purpose, browsing. So I spent 2 minutes figuring out how I could access the Menu bar in three different ways. In addtion why would I expect IE 7 to work like IE 6? If I wanted IE 6, I wouldn't have upgraded.
From a day to day UI perspective what more do you need from a browser than address, back, next, home, tools, search and tabs?
Removing the file menu was NOT retarted, and it's not "gone" its just disabled by default. There are at least 3 ways to enable it that require only one keystroke or mouse click to find an one action to enable. Also, all of the "important" features of the menu are available via the "Tools" menu on the right side.
Everyone who has bashed the IE 7 UI in this thread seems to have used the application with only one eye open. It's really not hard to use.
As an aside, the only thing that I would have changed would be placing the back next buttons on the right side where scrolling is typically done. This would have kept the user from having to traverse right to left to get to the back/next buttons after performing a scroll operation. I think though, that it would have made it too easy to accidently close the window so... maybe it is the best design possible. Who uses back next anyway? Atl -> - 4tw.
The technical differences and bugs in IE's code are the problems, opinions of the software are a different matter.
Read TFA the entire thing is an opinion piece, there are no bugs mentioned, there are were no technical differences mentioned, which is why I bothered to write this in the first place.
There are no benchmarks for page loading. There are no side by side comparisons of features. Just broad, vague statements about how IE has a long way to go compared to FF and Opera.
The issue that the author brought up about the info bar was inane. Not every user knows about the info bar. It's helpful to have the pop up and it follows the same pattern as every other one time notification in windows.
There are a limited number of reasons to support a six year old, soon to be two generation old operating system. In addition, I think that there are probably a number of technical reasons why it "can't be done" namely the fact that there is no XP SP2 equiavlent update for w2k.
Also, Microsoft would be just a little crazy to continue throwing money at the one useful OS that does not require activation.
Not saying I don't think w2k is decent OS, and certainly not on its "last legs".
Good: Tabbed browsing, full page zooming, quick tab view, improved security alerts. Bad: Non-standard user interface, very limited customization, very limited platform support
Non-standard interface? Who's standard?
Limited customistation - ok you might have a point here. But honestly what do we need tool bars for?
Limited platform support !? What do you expect. You can't possibly list this as a con (well I guess you just did, but let be reasonable)
One of the biggest mistakes Microsoft made was dropping Windows 2000 support for IE so soon.
Why, w2k is 6 years old. That's old. In addition it is the last unencumbered version of windows, it is also going to be EOL'd soon. From a software developer perspective, I don't want people using w2k, it's old, and dirty.
fairly minimal interface, however, once you open a few tabs this interface starts to look cluttered because of the buttons placed along the right side of the tab bar... The menu bar is missing by default which further adds to the confusion. To make it appear hit ALT or right click on the toolbar and enable the menu bar.
First, it is a minimal interface. I think MS finally figured out that IT'S A WEB BROWSER. The browser is for browsing pages and that's really all the browser needs to do, contain pages. No really, why is a menu needed by default? I applaud this shift. There is no need to loose 30px of real estate to a menu that is used.00001% of the time.
As fot tabs; if they get croweded you can do one of three things. Open a new window with a new group of tabs. Not open so many tabs, I mean after all you can only usefully use one page at a time. Change the bar arrangement.
liked the thumbnail view of open tabs, however it'd be good to see the thumbnails scale so that if there's only a few tabs open they'd be larger and many tabs open they'd be smaller to reduce the need for scrolling
Man, everyone is a critic. My guess is scaling each page image dynamically would hurt performance. you'll notice that they are live previews of the pages (the refresh and stuff).
Also IE7 has gained a search bar much like most other browsers. By default it's set to Windows Live Search (aka MSN) but changing the default is as simple as clicking the dropdown arrow and installing a new search engine. It's a shame that there's not more choice in the default list but to be fair they've made it fairly simple to add new search engines. So the first thing I do is make Google the default.
It's not MS's job to go drum up a list of favorite search engines for everyone. If they were to be "fair" that list would be quite long. If you have a preference you can choose, if you don't you have a search engine sounds well engineered to me.
First impressions aside now it's time to get down to using the browser on a day to day basis. The first thing that I did was import my Firefox bookmarks.
Wait, I though you already added Google as the default search engine as the "first thing" you did?
Lack of bookmark import support is a good find! But honestly who is going to move from firefox to IE;-)
I was unable to crash the browser through standard day to day usage and performance was reasonable on most websites, although performance on some sites that were heavy on JavaScript (such as AJAX sites like Gmail) was slower than Firefox and Opera.
You talk as if IE 6 crashes all the time, it doesn't... Some support for performance would be nice (loading times etc.)
I think some logic consistency checking needs to be implemented in the authors head.
The idea of using the information bar was to stop bombarding users with dialog boxes. However, in their infinite wisdom they decided to put up a dialog box saying 'Did you notice the information bar?'... Of course, it has an option to never show this again but some people just habitually hit OK when they see a di
"As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it." What part of that sentence has nothing to do with the issue at hand? OH WAIT, it is the part where they accuse Windows of not being "hardy" against a locally run EXE file. OH HA, ok, that makes it all better now doesn't it? How can you make a computer more "hardy" against locally run programs, especially ones that originate from a presumably trusted source? Auto run is actually the issue here as that is the attack vector on the windows machines - but the bigger problem is not the operating system. It is the fact that a user trusts the iPod. If a user plugs in an iPod with a malicious program on it for the first time and it asks the user for the machines admin password, how many users would provide their credentials to the malicious iPod program? Almost, everyone.
As I understand it, the virus was implanted by one infected machine among a number of machines at a Chinese manufacturing shop they'd contracted iPod manufacture to. Apple said, "here's a thing that looks like an external disk: please put these bits on it for us". A simple and straightforward enough task, one would think
What apple FAILED to do was verify that the contents of the disk are identical to the image that they were created from. It's THAT SIMPLE.
Lets re-write part of the press release statement from the perspective of Dell a few months back.
"As you might imagine, we are upset at Sony's li-ion cells for not being more hardy against regular usage, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it."
Yeah, not going to find that in print. Why? The selection and distribution of defective batteries is a result of Dell's poor supply chain management (not really that poor), not Sony's. Sure Sony's batteries sucked, and they blow up, but you do not see Dell making snide remarks at Sony for providing the faulty battery.
In conclusion, this is Apple's problem and their Windows based customers. It is that simple.
In response to your little print shop scenario:
The difference between paper and hard drives is that the contents of the hard drives can be verified at any time, using automated tools that require little or no human intervention. Where as it is impractical to have a human read every
Slashdot Mirror
might remember that even before OS X was launched for its first version, the "vista" "road map" had been published clearly stating what major components would be part of Vista, on WinFS never made it while another, "Aero" has always been slated as part of the opertating system. Unlike apple Microsoft likes to get feedback from their customers before throwing something at them. So of course Mac users see 3d components, 3d windows and naturally assume that MS just ripped off the idea, however it's not fully the case - and the line isn't clear. The thing is: if you strip away the UI of vista and compare OS X and Vista based simply on their progamming models and underlying architecture - they are decidedly different. It would seem this author however is not qualified to make this evaluation.
PLEASE MOD PARENT DOWN. As you can see from my testing, there is no factual basis for this users's claims.
Here is the output from the SSIS based copy tables and data tasks. This process can be accessed by right clicking on the database in SQL Server 2005 Manager and clicking Tasks -> Export Data...
This will copy the data and objects from the source server to the destination server. You will also have the option of specifying transformations between the source and the target table.
The test was performed using a single table containing 3 rows of data from hosted in a Sql Server 2000 database, to the same database running on Sql Server 2005. Both instances of SQL Server were located on the same server. The package was executed from a XP64 based workstation using SQL Server Management Studio. Table and database names have been substituted with the string XXXXXXXXX The results of the operation are as follows:
The execution was successful
- Initializing Data Flow Task (Success)
- Initializing Connections (Success)
- Setting SQL Command (Success)
- Setting Source Connection (Success)
- Setting Destination Connection (Success)
- Validating (Success)
- Saving (Success)
- Prepare for Execute (Success)
- Pre-execute (Success)
- Executing (Success)
- Copying to [XXXXXXXXX].[dbo].[XXXXXXXXX] (Success)3 rows transferred
Messages
Information 0x402090df: Data Flow Task: The final commit for the data insertion has started.
(SQL Server Import and Export Wizard)
Information 0x402090e0: Data Flow Task: The final commit for the data insertion has ended.
(SQL Server Import and Export Wizard)
- Post-execute (Success)
- Cleanup (Success)
Messages
Information 0x4004300b: Data Flow Task: "component "Destination - XXXXXXXXX" (61)" wrote 3 rows.
Snap! Totally got my cats mixed up. So sry!
Thanks, I didn't know that. Ha, they just don't care do they LOL.
Wow...
No really, this might be a new low for the FSF. I mean, really people, does this tactic ever work? Far from becoming an effective bad PR campaign it is going to further elevate consumer and user awareness of Vista.
While were at it, why aren't we bashing the hell out of Apple and it's release of Shaguar? After all, Jaguar runs on fully DRM'd, TCP'd hardware. The same cannot be said for Windows users.
Read my post, you should apologize for your behavior.
All right, just because I thought that you were blowing smoke up everyones ass I decided to test your claims.
First, a suggestion, check the dates on threads of conversations. The first thread cited was from Nov, 2005. There was little to no information regarding version. Also, it's difficult to acertain the users ability levels.
Second, before running around and claiming the sky is falling - maybe you should do some testing to see if it actually is, eh?
Here is the output from the SSIS based copy tables and data tasks. This process can be accessed by right clicking on the database in SQL Server 2005 Manager and clicking Tasks -> Export Data...
This will copy the data and objects from the source server to the destination server. You will also have the option of specifying transformations between the source and the target table.
The test was performed using a single table containing 3 rows of data from hosted in a Sql Server 2000 database, to the same database running on Sql Server 2005. Both instances of SQL Server were located on the same server. The package was executed from a XP64 based workstation using SQL Server Management Studio. Table and database names have been substituted with the string XXXXXXXXX The results of the operation are as follows:
The execution was successful
- Initializing Data Flow Task (Success)
- Initializing Connections (Success)
- Setting SQL Command (Success)
- Setting Source Connection (Success)
- Setting Destination Connection (Success)
- Validating (Success)
- Saving (Success)
- Prepare for Execute (Success)
- Pre-execute (Success)
- Executing (Success)
- Copying to [XXXXXXXXX].[dbo].[XXXXXXXXX] (Success)3 rows transferred
Messages
Information 0x402090df: Data Flow Task: The final commit for the data insertion has started.
(SQL Server Import and Export Wizard)
Information 0x402090e0: Data Flow Task: The final commit for the data insertion has ended.
(SQL Server Import and Export Wizard)
- Post-execute (Success)
- Cleanup (Success)
Messages
Information 0x4004300b: Data Flow Task: "component "Destination - XXXXXXXXX" (61)" wrote 3 rows.
Sorry, I should have been more specific "Components for SSIS are also C# components as opposed to com components under DTS" I meant to say that Custom components for SSIS are also C# as opposed to com components". That is to say that SSIS is easier to extend by developers than its predecessor.
Copy database objects from sql server 2000 never really worked correctly either. Under very simple scenarios it works, but when there are foreign key constraints and many related tables sql server does not usually copy the objects in the correct order, and you get resulting constraint violations which ends up faling the package. My experience has been that it is one of the least reliable ways of moving tables and data between systems. To be frank, basing your release process or relying on it to propogate changes from one environment to another isn't great. No other system would you be able to use this process. Just use SQL scripts and insert scripts like everyone else.
For the most part SSIS is a huge improvement over DTS, it is also much more scalable, and now has it's own dedicated runtime. Components for SSIS are also C# components as opposed to com components under DTS. Theoretically if you code is written well, you can reuse parts of it inside a 2005 DB with the CLR enabled.
"Horribly broken" is really a rather exagerated claim. No one's software is perfect.
Also, it's rather rude to call individuals "liars" when you don't have any evidence that that individual is in fact lying.
"Now, I hope, people will start to understand why Sun and Intel are focussing so hard on performance-per-watt, and not just performance."
LOL Sun and Intel!? Yeah, Intel is all about performance per Watt becuase AMD used it as a marketing weapon, to great affect.
Neither Sun, not Intel is responsible for Performance per Watt - AMD is.
"suggests that there may be a general market for a cheap, robust laptop without hard drive or optical storage."
No? India and other countries are already miffed that the U.S. has tried to foist substandard hardware on their "poor" populations to make technology more accessible.
While the intentions of OLPC program are commendable it really ignores the fact that basic education and literacy - a prerequiste for computer use, and power are fundamental components that are not readily available in developing areas of the world.
Is it possible to start a lawsuit on behalf of another organization? I mean we could all pitch in to sue him and his children!
Whooo!
Please mod parent down.
... Are you referring to an office suite for Mac? Or maybe games such as Halo. That's the only area where MS could directly compete. However, there are a number of alternatives to word and excel available on the Mac. You know you should really be complaining about apple killing off your choice of software providers. Every time Apple chooses to roll in a new feature to their OS they kill off an entire development segment. Take for example the widgets from dashboard, originally implemented on the Mac by Konfabulator now a yahoo company. Apple claims that the implementation is different, however the product is effectively the same. A once paid for product is now free.
"Every time I check my email, I am flooded with spam from compromised Windows zombies. Every time I try to purchase new MacOS X software, I am limited in my selection due to Windows monopolization driving competing developers out of business. I could go on and on."
A) If they were not windows zombies, they would be some other platforms zombies. There is of course no way to prove this, but every month vulnerabilities are discovered in every operating system in use. It takes a lazy or ill informed end user to provide a hole to exploit by not patching. There are many, many people out there that fall into this category.
B) "I am limited in my selection"
C) Bill Gates AND Microsoft are both far more of philanthropists than Apple, or Jobs can ever hope to be. What was the last significant charitable gift from apple to the world? Jobs? http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70072-0.html
Point C I find most aggravating. Hundreds of Millions of dollars are being re-invested in the world to fight important issues that for the large part the developed world doesn't give a crap about. Give credit where credit is due.
Yeah a commercial broadband connection isn't a great comparison actually the speed tests that I've run have way to many variables in them and are not really representivie of the speeds/efficiencies avaiable in a LAN environment. After I put the post up it it also occurred to me that they are probably not even using TCP/IP, it's probably UDP.
However, a study that I read a while back (sorry no link) shows that MTU size becomes very important at higher data rates. Also, MTU size varies based on the application. Generally a faster network needs to be "tuned" to the proper MTU top achieve optimal performance.
With all that said we have no way of knowing how much optimization they did, but from my personal experience I can see how it would be easy to set up a network with 75% efficency and we don't even know if they were *trying* to use the full link speed!
"An experienced DBA can set up MySQL with many useful tools in a matter of minutes, too. And you can pay him more because you're not paying Microsoft."
In the grand scheme of things - the amount of money that goes to MSFT is insignificant compared to the revenue of a business. 5K for SQL Server standard edition - and "free" developer tools to support the DB. Almost every other database platforms packaged tools (i.e. provided with the default install) are insufficent to effectively manage AND develop for a novice or intermediate developer/dba.
Compared to other platforms the default toolset included with SQL Server (Enterprise Manager and SQL Query Analyzer now SQL Server Management Studio soon to be moved to VS.NET) is the most comprensive (though DB2 might be more so, but I have not used).
Finally, you don't NEED a DBA to setup SQL Server. Any reasonably proficient developer can figure it out, you also don't need a dba to tune sql server or to setup backup schedules or to create maintence plans. The traditionally cryptic dba functions are so accessible via the UI that there is really nothing to "learn" apart from knowing that you need to do X, and finding it in the menus.
As an aside - these TCO arguments also do not discuss which platforms are most productive for developers, this is where the most savings are to be had.
There is significant overhead associated with the use of TCP/IP. A typical 6.0 Mb/s connection will deliver appx. 4.2 Mb/s this is only about 70% of the connections actual bandwidth. So, 75% is looking pretty good.
What rocks is the ability to reliably deliver 7.5 Gb/s AND do something useful with it.
You're probably not going to like my version of perfect sync...
Exchange + Outlook + DirectPush
Any changes made via Outlook go to the server. Then they are sent to any active instances of Outlook, finally the phone (T-Mobile Dash) is updated with any new mail, calendar or contacts. Conversely, if I add items in the phone they are instantly available on the desktop. In some cases the phone receives notifications faster than the desktop.
There is also a nice web interface for Exchange that can be accessed securely. It has about 60% of the features of the thick client outlook.
Of course you have to pay for Exchange - but this solution is secure (SSL) and fairly easy to setup.
As an added bonus if I lose my phone I can have exchange blow away the contents of its memory remotely.
Finally real time sync that works!
Hey, as long as its documented as a known issue.
LOL
I think my friend, that you are missing something. It *IS* highly useable.
Start IE 7, you know where everything is, it's easy to get started and you can explore from there. Why has everyone expected everything to be the same? For the last 4 years, there have been crys for change, hooping and hollering pointing out how OS X, and Firefox are models of user interaction. The IE design team went and mixed it up, and they did a great job. They reclaimed a massive amount of bar real estate, and from my experience so far the interaction has been totally intuitive.
Sure, I have had to "search" for some things that were previously in plain sight, like the menu. However my use of these options is only a fraction of a fraction of the total time that I spend using the application for its main purpose, browsing. So I spent 2 minutes figuring out how I could access the Menu bar in three different ways. In addtion why would I expect IE 7 to work like IE 6? If I wanted IE 6, I wouldn't have upgraded.
From a day to day UI perspective what more do you need from a browser than address, back, next, home, tools, search and tabs?
Removing the file menu was NOT retarted, and it's not "gone" its just disabled by default. There are at least 3 ways to enable it that require only one keystroke or mouse click to find an one action to enable. Also, all of the "important" features of the menu are available via the "Tools" menu on the right side.
Everyone who has bashed the IE 7 UI in this thread seems to have used the application with only one eye open. It's really not hard to use.
As an aside, the only thing that I would have changed would be placing the back next buttons on the right side where scrolling is typically done. This would have kept the user from having to traverse right to left to get to the back/next buttons after performing a scroll operation. I think though, that it would have made it too easy to accidently close the window so... maybe it is the best design possible. Who uses back next anyway? Atl -> - 4tw.
The technical differences and bugs in IE's code are the problems, opinions of the software are a different matter.
Read TFA the entire thing is an opinion piece, there are no bugs mentioned, there are were no technical differences mentioned, which is why I bothered to write this in the first place.
There are no benchmarks for page loading. There are no side by side comparisons of features. Just broad, vague statements about how IE has a long way to go compared to FF and Opera.
The issue that the author brought up about the info bar was inane. Not every user knows about the info bar. It's helpful to have the pop up and it follows the same pattern as every other one time notification in windows.
Yes, I do develop software.
There are a limited number of reasons to support a six year old, soon to be two generation old operating system. In addition, I think that there are probably a number of technical reasons why it "can't be done" namely the fact that there is no XP SP2 equiavlent update for w2k.
Also, Microsoft would be just a little crazy to continue throwing money at the one useful OS that does not require activation.
Not saying I don't think w2k is decent OS, and certainly not on its "last legs".
Good: Tabbed browsing, full page zooming, quick tab view, improved security alerts.
.00001% of the time.
;-)
... Some support for performance would be nice (loading times etc.)
... Of course, it has an option to never show this again but some people just habitually hit OK when they see a di
Bad: Non-standard user interface, very limited customization, very limited platform support
Non-standard interface? Who's standard?
Limited customistation - ok you might have a point here. But honestly what do we need tool bars for?
Limited platform support !? What do you expect. You can't possibly list this as a con (well I guess you just did, but let be reasonable)
One of the biggest mistakes Microsoft made was dropping Windows 2000 support for IE so soon.
Why, w2k is 6 years old. That's old. In addition it is the last unencumbered version of windows, it is also going to be EOL'd soon. From a software developer perspective, I don't want people using w2k, it's old, and dirty.
fairly minimal interface, however, once you open a few tabs this interface starts to look cluttered because of the buttons placed along the right side of the tab bar... The menu bar is missing by default which further adds to the confusion. To make it appear hit ALT or right click on the toolbar and enable the menu bar.
First, it is a minimal interface. I think MS finally figured out that IT'S A WEB BROWSER. The browser is for browsing pages and that's really all the browser needs to do, contain pages. No really, why is a menu needed by default? I applaud this shift. There is no need to loose 30px of real estate to a menu that is used
As fot tabs; if they get croweded you can do one of three things. Open a new window with a new group of tabs. Not open so many tabs, I mean after all you can only usefully use one page at a time. Change the bar arrangement.
liked the thumbnail view of open tabs, however it'd be good to see the thumbnails scale so that if there's only a few tabs open they'd be larger and many tabs open they'd be smaller to reduce the need for scrolling
Man, everyone is a critic. My guess is scaling each page image dynamically would hurt performance. you'll notice that they are live previews of the pages (the refresh and stuff).
Also IE7 has gained a search bar much like most other browsers. By default it's set to Windows Live Search (aka MSN) but changing the default is as simple as clicking the dropdown arrow and installing a new search engine. It's a shame that there's not more choice in the default list but to be fair they've made it fairly simple to add new search engines. So the first thing I do is make Google the default.
It's not MS's job to go drum up a list of favorite search engines for everyone. If they were to be "fair" that list would be quite long. If you have a preference you can choose, if you don't you have a search engine sounds well engineered to me.
First impressions aside now it's time to get down to using the browser on a day to day basis. The first thing that I did was import my Firefox bookmarks.
Wait, I though you already added Google as the default search engine as the "first thing" you did?
Lack of bookmark import support is a good find! But honestly who is going to move from firefox to IE
I was unable to crash the browser through standard day to day usage and performance was reasonable on most websites, although performance on some sites that were heavy on JavaScript (such as AJAX sites like Gmail) was slower than Firefox and Opera.
You talk as if IE 6 crashes all the time, it doesn't
I think some logic consistency checking needs to be implemented in the authors head.
The idea of using the information bar was to stop bombarding users with dialog boxes. However, in their infinite wisdom they decided to put up a dialog box saying 'Did you notice the information bar?'
This is crap.
"As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it." What part of that sentence has nothing to do with the issue at hand? OH WAIT, it is the part where they accuse Windows of not being "hardy" against a locally run EXE file. OH HA, ok, that makes it all better now doesn't it? How can you make a computer more "hardy" against locally run programs, especially ones that originate from a presumably trusted source? Auto run is actually the issue here as that is the attack vector on the windows machines - but the bigger problem is not the operating system. It is the fact that a user trusts the iPod. If a user plugs in an iPod with a malicious program on it for the first time and it asks the user for the machines admin password, how many users would provide their credentials to the malicious iPod program? Almost, everyone.
As I understand it, the virus was implanted by one infected machine among a number of machines at a Chinese manufacturing shop they'd contracted iPod manufacture to. Apple said, "here's a thing that looks like an external disk: please put these bits on it for us". A simple and straightforward enough task, one would think
What apple FAILED to do was verify that the contents of the disk are identical to the image that they were created from. It's THAT SIMPLE.
Lets re-write part of the press release statement from the perspective of Dell a few months back.
"As you might imagine, we are upset at Sony's li-ion cells for not being more hardy against regular usage, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it."
Yeah, not going to find that in print. Why? The selection and distribution of defective batteries is a result of Dell's poor supply chain management (not really that poor), not Sony's. Sure Sony's batteries sucked, and they blow up, but you do not see Dell making snide remarks at Sony for providing the faulty battery.
In conclusion, this is Apple's problem and their Windows based customers. It is that simple.
In response to your little print shop scenario:
The difference between paper and hard drives is that the contents of the hard drives can be verified at any time, using automated tools that require little or no human intervention. Where as it is impractical to have a human read every
Hunting rifle used to kill man. Details at 7.
Yeah, no. Relying on a single wireless data source such as GPS for navigation is unwise.
Traditional means would include compass and gyro. Both have issues given the mechanics of the craft.