I'm sure that more sophisticated users think it sucks (for some reason or other), but the only thing I find missing is voice dialing over blue tooth. Other than that, I am perfectly happy with my Motorola Droid. Works great, lots of nice apps.
This site isn't really a "license server" in the way that it sounds like you mean though. I use this site once in awhile myself as we have volume licenses through Microsoft. You go to the site to download software (then you have a copy and can use it without downloading again). You also go there for your volume keys. These are keys like a KMS (Key Management Server ) key. Once you have that, you can install as many copies as you want. Or, if you choose to use the MAK (Multiple Activation Key) - those are typically good for 5,000 or so activations. They don't activate against THIS site, so until you run out of activations on your key and need another key you don't need this site. Smaller companies get keys with less activations and may have 100, 500, 1000, etc. on their MAK key.
You are right of course. But the simple answer is that the test is done with a reference set of headphones. If it produces 85db or less with the reference set, it is fine.
Everyone sees something different as the "major win" for virtualization. Yours is certainly valid. The GP's is a little more dodgy. Another common one is that since it can be difficult to fully separate administration roles from application management roles - just creating two VM's is "somewhat safer" than having one machine with two apps running on it. Yet another is to protect from poorly coded packages stomping on each other with different levels of dependencies. One more is to have different patching outage windows for multiple applications. Anyway, let's just agree that there are a bunch of reasons for folks to virtualize and different ones may be the primary driver for different workloads.
I can only speak for myself, but I just got a Motorola Droid and it was specifically because it was Android and did not presume to tell me what software I can run on it. I am a Google Voice user and wanted the GV app, but also just plain don't care to have a hand held computer sold to me that I can't install whatever I want on it (and yes, I know about jailbreaking and cydia but don't feel I should NEED to do that). If it wasn't for that, I probably would have gotten an iPhone 3GS or whatever they are when they came out. (BTW, I really like the Motorola Droid. I've only had it for 11 days now but so far it is very solid and works very well with Google Voice).
Windows Vista and Windows 7 won't allow you to create a password protected zip file though. (Windows XP will - you can "add password" after creating it). I personally just use Windows to do zip files for the most part - but at work we have some annoying "work preventer" software that won't let us send many types of file in zip files unless we password protect the zip file (preventing the scanner from scanning inside them).
For situations that need a password protected zip you either need to stay with XP (not a good idea long term) or use a third-party utility like WinZip, 7-Zip, or one of the others mentioned above.
You can keep an old (but functioning) phone around and if you go to somplace "phone dangerous" like an amusement park, take the SIM out of your high-end phone, and use it in the old phone for a day. A lot less worry about the phone getting wet or damaged, etc. When you are done it that environment, switch the SIM back over to the higher end phone.
Or, where they don't want to manage it themselves or deal with a subcontractor they are more than willing to sell the franchise rights to some other operator like a Boingo, etc. Less work for the airport - just money to receive.
I agree with you on that - some of those programs may be great, some may be crap, some may be desired by users even if they are crap (like flash). That's why I use the term "foistware" instead of crapware. Whether you wanted it or not, the machine came preloaded with it so it was foisted off on you - foistware.
As an FYI, I generally order from the Small Business site for these vendors and not the "home" site. You get a lot less foistware when you order from the small business part of the web sites although you still generally have to uninstall Google Toolbars and a few other items like that. Often the small business ones do come with a paid (3 year) Antivirus program too so you don't have the trialware version. Of course if you are planning to install avgfree or the free ms security essentials - yes, the AV is included in the price so that may not be your best bet. I'd generally advise checking both the home and business options to see which gets you closer to what you want in terms of foistware and price.
Yes, folks who are running older versions of Outlook do indeed have a 2 GiB limit - and it will approach and hit that limit without warning and corrupt. Newer versions of Outlook have a PST format that doesn't have such a limit, but even with the newer Outlook executable if the users are still using files in the old format the 2 GiB limit applies. For new files, in the last couple versions of Outlook - not so much.
I would have put myself solidly in the "never upgrade, always do wipe and load" camp until Windows 7. I've now upgraded three machines and it has gone very very well. (I would still wipe and load for corporate purposes to be sure the machines are 100% the same).
For this specific item they mention here about iTunes... The beta version of the upgrade advisor merely recommended that you deauthorize iTunes on your computer before upgrading. Apparently nobody could figure out how to do that, so they now recommend that you uninstall iTunes, then upgrade your machine, then re-install iTunes. I guess this is to make sure your computer remains authorized for any content you bought although I can't give results for that as I only have content I ripped from CD myself. I can say I have done one machine each way - I uninstalled for this notebook I am on now and I just deauthorized for my wife's notebook. Both upgrades worked flawlessly.
Correct, my only problems are "where did I put it?" or "did I forget to bring it?". Who cares where I bought it? (Wal-Mart, Amazon, etc.) Who cares how I bought it? (online, credit card, cash, brick and mortar, etc.) And I sure don't think anyone would care when I bought it. (Tuesday, during a sale, etc.).
Pretty clear that they aren't doing anything for my benefit here unless they are going to solve the "where did I put it" and the "did I forget to bring it" without adding a bunch of DRM.
It really depends where in the world you live. For example, what you describe could easily happen in some states in the US. Other states though are "at will employment" states where you can be fired for darn near anything as long as it isn't on the list of "things you are restricted from discriminating against people for" (for example stupidity isn't on the list and "not liking SPAM" isn't on the list). You could be fired for the lame reason you were fired in a state like say California and there would be no settlement over it.
I'd like to call out the common misconception that you share with many folks in IT: APP-V is not about app compat. Anything running in App-V (softgrid) is running directly on your OS. If it won't run on Windows 7, it won't run on Windows 7 in App-V. App-V is about preventing the application from screwing up the OS or other applications. (Sure there are the streaming and update features too if you want to use them). For example you could run multiple versions of the Sun JRE or multiple versions of the Oracle client in App-V so they don't step on each other (maybe you have apps that require different versions of JRE to be "default", etc.). App-V allows you to keep a your OS pristine, but does not make applications run if they don't run on the hosting OS.
What you need for app-compat is "Windows XP Mode", or more properly in an Enterprise you want MED-V. I know these MS marketing monikers don't help to clarify, but MED-V or Windows XP Mode is running a VM (XP, Vista, or whatever) and your application then runs in the VM. This is what you use for app-compat for apps that won't run on Win 7. If you truly have the full MDOP licensed then you have access to MED-V too and can use that.
As someone who used Vista in production during the early Beta and RC days and has continued to use it through production, SP1 and SP2 I would have to agree with some other folks who have mentioned that driver problems were one of the key differentiators between a bad experience and a decent one. We had so many problems with drivers - too many to even start to detail. Let one example suffice: On a Lenovo X61s with a "designed for Windows Vista" logo/sticker, we couldn't get a video driver that worked correctly on undock until after you couldn't even BUY an X61s anymore. So drivers certainly were key. Also a big problem was the Explorer code. Machines prior to SP1 just didn't feel usable at all. A couple of months ago I went to my sister's house and she asked for computer help. She had the same model of Lenovo T61 that my wife has. It was just a bad experience trying to even use my sister's machine. I quickly found out it was still on RTM - it really brought home how far Vista has come from Beta -> SP2. It is quite usable now on most all hardware - but certainly was NOT at first with the bugs and driver issues. Now, since the parent mentioned the Win 7 upgrade - I think you'll find that a good choice. I'm now running Win 7 on 3 of my machines and also my wife's T61. It is running very well on all of them.
Good call on that. I also see they mention things like:
Now imagine Times Square with ads you just saw on television or read in a newspaper
But I don't see any ads on TV. That (and time shifting) is what a TiVo or other DVR is for. Ads are there (for the marketer) to convert to sales. For the user, ads are there to annoy us. I don't read a paper - I use the internet. With Adblock Plus. Now, can they find some other reason I would want ads in my game?
Host files will not do anything for machines behind a proxy server as the request goes to the proxy server for the route to the site (which will end up being the name or ip address of the proxy server) and does not send the request to DNS. The host file method is great for home use (I use it myself and would recommend it), but for folks behind proxy servers in a standard business it isn't generally a solution.
Sorry, I have to disagree - because of BitLocker. If you don't have a separate partition for that you aren't getting BitLocker full volume encryption. All of my home Windows machines have it and all of our corporate machines (well 55% of the way through a roll-out of Vista so about 50,000 so far) have BitLocker. You need two partitions to do that although the "active" partition can be really small and is just used for the bootloader, boot data store, and enough bits to be able to access the encrypted volume.
Oh, other than that - you make some good points and I tend to agree with most of them.
I thought you only needed one m-card (which is apparently the follow on to the cable card but does multiple streams)? I'm new to this, but I thought I could take the m-card out of one of my comcast cable boxes once it was authorized and put it into another device like a TiVo? Now, I haven't tried it because I have an old TiVo and have to use the IR blaster - and there are all kinds of warnings plastered on the back of the comcast box about not removing the m-card, but it looked like it would work. I need to check into this a lot more before I get a newer TiVo box or pick up an HDTV.
Interesting - thanks for that as I didn't know it before. So this means that comcast is reporting my TiVo changing the channels and recording "TiVo suggestions", most of which I delete, being too lazy to hit the "thumbs down" button on all of them. And because of the way Comedy Central publishes their guide info, the TiVo can't tell the difference between first-run and re-runs of the Daily Show. So it tends to record them all day. Comcast must be reporting a serious overage on those (understandably that may just be rounding error when you take the aggregate into account, but if others have similar situations it may add up to something slightly more than background noise).
hmm... No wonder the companies want a better way to figure this stuff out.
That must have sucked when they had a heap overflow. Someone could also step on them and seriously flatten the stack. I guess if there were too many, you could always throw the exceptions at someone, huh?
actually it won't since mail.provideer.com doesn't start with www. I've tried this with nslookup and unless you prefix the lookup with www it doesn't affect the DNS at all. I went ahead and sent in for the opt-out anyway though since I don't like having non-standard DNS behavior. But, even before the opt-out something like:
"nslookup someinvaliddomainnamehere.org" would return "non-existent domain" whereas "nslookup www.someinvaliddomainnamehere.org" would return a comcast server ip address.
As others have mentioned, the default firefox behavior is to go ahead and try the domain, but if it gets back a "non-existent domain" to prefix www and try again. That results in the hijack, but applications like Thunderbird and Outlook aren't going to randomly prefix www to the domain name you specified so your scenario won't have any problem with this.
OK, I think I fail orbital mechanics - however, it seems that since the moon's face is tidally locked to earth (near side of the moon I guess is the colloquial) - that since the moon spends an equal amount of time "closer" to the asteroid field than Earth as it does "farther" from the asteroid field than Earth (meaning that the moon spends 1/2 of its time "sunside" of Earth) that asteroids ENTERING the moon's orbit region from farther out would have equal chance of impacting either face - EXCEPT for the influence of Earth's gravity probably either causing those rocks to impact Earth or at least redirecting them away from the moon.
I agree with you that it sounds like a "browser appliance". However, when I think about it - there has to be more than that. There needs to be some way to setup your WPA2 connection for your router for example. Or to connect to a temporary password driven WiFi at a coffee shop or something. Probably a way to configure something like an AirCard and tell it to connect too. So there must be at least a bit of the OS shown somewhere to make this stuff feasible. Otherwise it would be the browser appliance that only works over plugged in ethernet or wide open WiFi.
You've certainly nailed one of the biggest issues. The ability to control your data, have a deletion policy that is then subpoena-free (including backup destruction), etc. is certainly a deal breaker for most larger companies.
There are other issues too though: Availability / uptime (and yes, I know a poorly run Exchange infrastructure can have a lot of downtime, but a well run one - ours - has certainly outperformed the availability of Google over the last two years) Integration with other MS applications such as SharePoint and Access Another aspect of the "data control" is user control - some companies don't want their folks logging on to mail from just any old virus-infected, malware laden machine and want them to only connect via known good machines on the corporate network. Gmail makes that control impossible.
There are many others, but that's the flavor. I know that some small companies and even some medium ones will think the above concerns are silly and misplaced, but that's the type of argument you are going to get from the big hitters.
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I'm sure that more sophisticated users think it sucks (for some reason or other), but the only thing I find missing is voice dialing over blue tooth. Other than that, I am perfectly happy with my Motorola Droid. Works great, lots of nice apps.
This site isn't really a "license server" in the way that it sounds like you mean though. I use this site once in awhile myself as we have volume licenses through Microsoft. You go to the site to download software (then you have a copy and can use it without downloading again). You also go there for your volume keys. These are keys like a KMS (Key Management Server ) key. Once you have that, you can install as many copies as you want. Or, if you choose to use the MAK (Multiple Activation Key) - those are typically good for 5,000 or so activations. They don't activate against THIS site, so until you run out of activations on your key and need another key you don't need this site. Smaller companies get keys with less activations and may have 100, 500, 1000, etc. on their MAK key.
You are right of course. But the simple answer is that the test is done with a reference set of headphones. If it produces 85db or less with the reference set, it is fine.
Everyone sees something different as the "major win" for virtualization. Yours is certainly valid. The GP's is a little more dodgy. Another common one is that since it can be difficult to fully separate administration roles from application management roles - just creating two VM's is "somewhat safer" than having one machine with two apps running on it. Yet another is to protect from poorly coded packages stomping on each other with different levels of dependencies. One more is to have different patching outage windows for multiple applications. Anyway, let's just agree that there are a bunch of reasons for folks to virtualize and different ones may be the primary driver for different workloads.
I can only speak for myself, but I just got a Motorola Droid and it was specifically because it was Android and did not presume to tell me what software I can run on it. I am a Google Voice user and wanted the GV app, but also just plain don't care to have a hand held computer sold to me that I can't install whatever I want on it (and yes, I know about jailbreaking and cydia but don't feel I should NEED to do that). If it wasn't for that, I probably would have gotten an iPhone 3GS or whatever they are when they came out. (BTW, I really like the Motorola Droid. I've only had it for 11 days now but so far it is very solid and works very well with Google Voice).
Windows Vista and Windows 7 won't allow you to create a password protected zip file though. (Windows XP will - you can "add password" after creating it). I personally just use Windows to do zip files for the most part - but at work we have some annoying "work preventer" software that won't let us send many types of file in zip files unless we password protect the zip file (preventing the scanner from scanning inside them).
For situations that need a password protected zip you either need to stay with XP (not a good idea long term) or use a third-party utility like WinZip, 7-Zip, or one of the others mentioned above.
You can keep an old (but functioning) phone around and if you go to somplace "phone dangerous" like an amusement park, take the SIM out of your high-end phone, and use it in the old phone for a day. A lot less worry about the phone getting wet or damaged, etc. When you are done it that environment, switch the SIM back over to the higher end phone.
Or, where they don't want to manage it themselves or deal with a subcontractor they are more than willing to sell the franchise rights to some other operator like a Boingo, etc. Less work for the airport - just money to receive.
I agree with you on that - some of those programs may be great, some may be crap, some may be desired by users even if they are crap (like flash). That's why I use the term "foistware" instead of crapware. Whether you wanted it or not, the machine came preloaded with it so it was foisted off on you - foistware.
As an FYI, I generally order from the Small Business site for these vendors and not the "home" site. You get a lot less foistware when you order from the small business part of the web sites although you still generally have to uninstall Google Toolbars and a few other items like that. Often the small business ones do come with a paid (3 year) Antivirus program too so you don't have the trialware version. Of course if you are planning to install avgfree or the free ms security essentials - yes, the AV is included in the price so that may not be your best bet. I'd generally advise checking both the home and business options to see which gets you closer to what you want in terms of foistware and price.
Yes, folks who are running older versions of Outlook do indeed have a 2 GiB limit - and it will approach and hit that limit without warning and corrupt. Newer versions of Outlook have a PST format that doesn't have such a limit, but even with the newer Outlook executable if the users are still using files in the old format the 2 GiB limit applies. For new files, in the last couple versions of Outlook - not so much.
I would have put myself solidly in the "never upgrade, always do wipe and load" camp until Windows 7. I've now upgraded three machines and it has gone very very well. (I would still wipe and load for corporate purposes to be sure the machines are 100% the same).
For this specific item they mention here about iTunes... The beta version of the upgrade advisor merely recommended that you deauthorize iTunes on your computer before upgrading. Apparently nobody could figure out how to do that, so they now recommend that you uninstall iTunes, then upgrade your machine, then re-install iTunes. I guess this is to make sure your computer remains authorized for any content you bought although I can't give results for that as I only have content I ripped from CD myself. I can say I have done one machine each way - I uninstalled for this notebook I am on now and I just deauthorized for my wife's notebook. Both upgrades worked flawlessly.
Correct, my only problems are "where did I put it?" or "did I forget to bring it?". Who cares where I bought it? (Wal-Mart, Amazon, etc.) Who cares how I bought it? (online, credit card, cash, brick and mortar, etc.) And I sure don't think anyone would care when I bought it. (Tuesday, during a sale, etc.).
Pretty clear that they aren't doing anything for my benefit here unless they are going to solve the "where did I put it" and the "did I forget to bring it" without adding a bunch of DRM.
It really depends where in the world you live. For example, what you describe could easily happen in some states in the US. Other states though are "at will employment" states where you can be fired for darn near anything as long as it isn't on the list of "things you are restricted from discriminating against people for" (for example stupidity isn't on the list and "not liking SPAM" isn't on the list). You could be fired for the lame reason you were fired in a state like say California and there would be no settlement over it.
I'd like to call out the common misconception that you share with many folks in IT: APP-V is not about app compat. Anything running in App-V (softgrid) is running directly on your OS. If it won't run on Windows 7, it won't run on Windows 7 in App-V. App-V is about preventing the application from screwing up the OS or other applications. (Sure there are the streaming and update features too if you want to use them). For example you could run multiple versions of the Sun JRE or multiple versions of the Oracle client in App-V so they don't step on each other (maybe you have apps that require different versions of JRE to be "default", etc.). App-V allows you to keep a your OS pristine, but does not make applications run if they don't run on the hosting OS.
What you need for app-compat is "Windows XP Mode", or more properly in an Enterprise you want MED-V. I know these MS marketing monikers don't help to clarify, but MED-V or Windows XP Mode is running a VM (XP, Vista, or whatever) and your application then runs in the VM. This is what you use for app-compat for apps that won't run on Win 7. If you truly have the full MDOP licensed then you have access to MED-V too and can use that.
As someone who used Vista in production during the early Beta and RC days and has continued to use it through production, SP1 and SP2 I would have to agree with some other folks who have mentioned that driver problems were one of the key differentiators between a bad experience and a decent one. We had so many problems with drivers - too many to even start to detail. Let one example suffice: On a Lenovo X61s with a "designed for Windows Vista" logo/sticker, we couldn't get a video driver that worked correctly on undock until after you couldn't even BUY an X61s anymore. So drivers certainly were key. Also a big problem was the Explorer code. Machines prior to SP1 just didn't feel usable at all. A couple of months ago I went to my sister's house and she asked for computer help. She had the same model of Lenovo T61 that my wife has. It was just a bad experience trying to even use my sister's machine. I quickly found out it was still on RTM - it really brought home how far Vista has come from Beta -> SP2. It is quite usable now on most all hardware - but certainly was NOT at first with the bugs and driver issues. Now, since the parent mentioned the Win 7 upgrade - I think you'll find that a good choice. I'm now running Win 7 on 3 of my machines and also my wife's T61. It is running very well on all of them.
Now imagine Times Square with ads you just saw on television or read in a newspaper
But I don't see any ads on TV. That (and time shifting) is what a TiVo or other DVR is for. Ads are there (for the marketer) to convert to sales. For the user, ads are there to annoy us. I don't read a paper - I use the internet. With Adblock Plus. Now, can they find some other reason I would want ads in my game?
Host files will not do anything for machines behind a proxy server as the request goes to the proxy server for the route to the site (which will end up being the name or ip address of the proxy server) and does not send the request to DNS. The host file method is great for home use (I use it myself and would recommend it), but for folks behind proxy servers in a standard business it isn't generally a solution.
Sorry, I have to disagree - because of BitLocker. If you don't have a separate partition for that you aren't getting BitLocker full volume encryption. All of my home Windows machines have it and all of our corporate machines (well 55% of the way through a roll-out of Vista so about 50,000 so far) have BitLocker. You need two partitions to do that although the "active" partition can be really small and is just used for the bootloader, boot data store, and enough bits to be able to access the encrypted volume.
Oh, other than that - you make some good points and I tend to agree with most of them.
I thought you only needed one m-card (which is apparently the follow on to the cable card but does multiple streams)? I'm new to this, but I thought I could take the m-card out of one of my comcast cable boxes once it was authorized and put it into another device like a TiVo? Now, I haven't tried it because I have an old TiVo and have to use the IR blaster - and there are all kinds of warnings plastered on the back of the comcast box about not removing the m-card, but it looked like it would work. I need to check into this a lot more before I get a newer TiVo box or pick up an HDTV.
Interesting - thanks for that as I didn't know it before. So this means that comcast is reporting my TiVo changing the channels and recording "TiVo suggestions", most of which I delete, being too lazy to hit the "thumbs down" button on all of them. And because of the way Comedy Central publishes their guide info, the TiVo can't tell the difference between first-run and re-runs of the Daily Show. So it tends to record them all day. Comcast must be reporting a serious overage on those (understandably that may just be rounding error when you take the aggregate into account, but if others have similar situations it may add up to something slightly more than background noise).
hmm... No wonder the companies want a better way to figure this stuff out.
That must have sucked when they had a heap overflow. Someone could also step on them and seriously flatten the stack. I guess if there were too many, you could always throw the exceptions at someone, huh?
actually it won't since mail.provideer.com doesn't start with www. I've tried this with nslookup and unless you prefix the lookup with www it doesn't affect the DNS at all. I went ahead and sent in for the opt-out anyway though since I don't like having non-standard DNS behavior. But, even before the opt-out something like:
"nslookup someinvaliddomainnamehere.org" would return "non-existent domain" whereas "nslookup www.someinvaliddomainnamehere.org" would return a comcast server ip address.
As others have mentioned, the default firefox behavior is to go ahead and try the domain, but if it gets back a "non-existent domain" to prefix www and try again. That results in the hijack, but applications like Thunderbird and Outlook aren't going to randomly prefix www to the domain name you specified so your scenario won't have any problem with this.
OK, I think I fail orbital mechanics - however, it seems that since the moon's face is tidally locked to earth (near side of the moon I guess is the colloquial) - that since the moon spends an equal amount of time "closer" to the asteroid field than Earth as it does "farther" from the asteroid field than Earth (meaning that the moon spends 1/2 of its time "sunside" of Earth) that asteroids ENTERING the moon's orbit region from farther out would have equal chance of impacting either face - EXCEPT for the influence of Earth's gravity probably either causing those rocks to impact Earth or at least redirecting them away from the moon.
I agree with you that it sounds like a "browser appliance". However, when I think about it - there has to be more than that. There needs to be some way to setup your WPA2 connection for your router for example. Or to connect to a temporary password driven WiFi at a coffee shop or something. Probably a way to configure something like an AirCard and tell it to connect too. So there must be at least a bit of the OS shown somewhere to make this stuff feasible. Otherwise it would be the browser appliance that only works over plugged in ethernet or wide open WiFi.
You've certainly nailed one of the biggest issues. The ability to control your data, have a deletion policy that is then subpoena-free (including backup destruction), etc. is certainly a deal breaker for most larger companies.
There are other issues too though:
Availability / uptime (and yes, I know a poorly run Exchange infrastructure can have a lot of downtime, but a well run one - ours - has certainly outperformed the availability of Google over the last two years)
Integration with other MS applications such as SharePoint and Access
Another aspect of the "data control" is user control - some companies don't want their folks logging on to mail from just any old virus-infected, malware laden machine and want them to only connect via known good machines on the corporate network. Gmail makes that control impossible.
There are many others, but that's the flavor. I know that some small companies and even some medium ones will think the above concerns are silly and misplaced, but that's the type of argument you are going to get from the big hitters.