Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Are We Going to See a Dogfight in the Web Docs Clouds?
Microsoft has finally announced formally something that we’ve all been speculating would happen for some time. Office 2010 will have not only an online version, but both paid and (the big news) a free version on the web. Microsoft is, of course, dominating the traditional ‘brick-and-mortar’ desktop-based office productivity software with their Office product already. They are entering the online document market with competitors Google and Zoho already with a decent foothold on the online market. Unfortunately for Google, Zoho, and others, Microsoft has a pretty good reputation from its Office client and anything with the Office label is probably going to be accepted by consumers.
As Matt Asay points out in Microsoft’s strategy in the virtualization market, ‘good enough’ and convenience sometimes are plenty to take over a market. Microsoft has something that Google and Zoho do not: desktop operating system market share. Just like Microsoft has done in the browser market to take over most of the market until Firefox came around (they still hold the majority), they essentially have a ‘botnet’ of users in Windows users. If the integration with Windows 7 and Office online is ‘good enough’ and integrated in the OS already, users may be drawn to it out of simplicity. Often consumers don’t care about what technology is better. In fact, I would argue that most of the time they don’t care about what’s better. They just care about what is easily available and the quickest. If Office online can meet their needs in a pinch, they probably won’t explore other options.
On the flip side of that, Google and Zoho do have a pretty good foothold in the web-based docs market. Google Docs or Zoho just might be ‘good enough’ to keep users already using their services. Plus, services like these often don’t integrate with others, so they tend to be somewhat viral in nature since collaboration with others requires those users to sign up for those services. As OS X and Linux start to become more popular alternatives to Windows, Microsoft’s advantages in integrating its OS may start to diminish, but their marketshare is still pretty high.
We still have to see exactly what Microsoft has up its sleeves for features in Office Web. Microsoft is calling their Office Web apps an “online companion” to its desktop applications, so we will see what they offer in features. Promised features so far are the ability to create documents and do basic editing, something that both Google and Zoho can blow out of the water. Only time will tell what will happen, but Google and Zoho seem to have finally brought Microsoft out of its fortified position on the ground with Office to do battle in the clouds.
Tags: google, microsoft, zoho
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Jul 14th, 2009
Vista Needs More RAM Than OS X: A Vista Selling Point?
Microsoft’s recent “Laptop Hunters” ad campaign as well as their “TCO” comparison have been stirring quite a bit of controversy in the blogosphere, but their last add might be the most laughable of them all. The ad proclaims that Apple’s most expensive laptop under $2000 only has 2GB of RAM. They do have a good point. “Out of the box”, the low-end MacBook Pro has only 2GB of RAM at $1999. You can add more RAM if you want to, but that brings the price up. Of course.. what they don’t mention is why the Vista laptops usually come with 3GB of RAM or higher.
If you take a look at the minimum system requirements, Windows Vista Premium requires 1GB of RAM. Windows Vista Basic requires 512MB of RAM, but that doesn’t suit most users’ needs. OS X Leopard, on the other hand, only requires 512MB. (Can we call it OS X Leopard Premium?) Now, I’ve run Leopard on 512MB of RAM. The system is usable. Not incredible, but not too bad. Ever try running Windows Vista on 1GB of RAM? Pretty much the same. It works. It’s just not overly usable. I guess I am not quite sure how the PC that comes with 3 times the required memory is a better value than the Mac with 4 times its required memory. The fact that to get a well-performing Vista laptop, you need more system resources is a selling point?? Since when? What are your thoughts? Out of control ad campaign or legit?
Filed under Uncategorized : Comments (0) : May 5th, 2009
Sun Joins the Open Source VM Game
Sun announced today that it is open sourcing its bare-metal hyper visor VM technology xVM. This comes on the heels of the release of Microsoft’s Hyper-V for free, reported last week on What a N00b. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under Uncategorized : Comments (0) : Sep 15th, 2008
Firefox 3.0's Killer Feature
It seems like every time I try out a new version of a piece of software that I use, there’s a feature that really makes me mad and then later I realize I can’t live without it. Firefox 3.0 was no exception. When I first started using the beta, the first thing that I noticed that was different was that it searched both the URL and the page titles of your history when typing into the address bar. I use the history in my browser to a great extent and it seemed to get in my way when I was trying to get at what I needed to and I struggled to find it.
I was really frustrated when the software didn’t react as it used to. For example, I use Webmin to a great extent both personally and at work. Whenever I wanted to webmin.com, I’d start typing ‘webmin’ in the address bar and once my history started popping up, I’d hit the down arrow, hit enter and I was there. Now, when I do the same thing I get taken to my Webmin login pages since “Webmin” is in the title of the page and I tend to go there first. That change frustrated me to no end until one day I wanted to get logged into one of my systems. Absent-mindedly, I started typing in “webmin” into the address bar, hit the down arrow and hit enter. Without even realizing it, I was brought to the place I wanted to go without typing in the address. Now, it comes second nature. In my work I use the Zimbra wiki a lot and tend to go to a lot of the same pages for reference, and I can just type in “wiki Zimbra” and then the topic I want to find the pages very easily. Even though Firefox 3 is still fairly new, I don’t know what I’d do without that feature anymore. Mozilla did a great job of giving the me what I really needed, not what I thought I needed.
Filed under Uncategorized : Comments (0) : Aug 24th, 2008
Zimbra Releases Package for Ubuntu 8.04
Everyone’s favorite collaboration suite, Zimbra, released its newest version 5.0.9 late yesterday with something lots of open source enthusiasts have been begging for in the forums for some time: support for Ubuntu 8.04! In the past, Hardy Heron users had to wait for an alternate build to be released on sourceforge or build the install from scratch, or resort to running the older LTS Ubuntu release. Now, with the newest release, packages for both 32 and 64 bit Ubuntu 8.04 are available from Zimbra. The release also includes support for viewing multiple calendars on the iPhone.
The supported “Network Edition” is still in beta with limited support, but the community packages can be downloaded here.
Filed under Uncategorized : Comments (0) : Aug 19th, 2008
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