February 3rd, 2009

Posted by Mary Jo Foley

If you were one of those individuals holding out hope that Microsoft might go the way of Apple and move to one or two SKUs for Windows 7, your prayers have gone unanswered. But there still is some good news in what’s on tap when Windows 7 ships, most likely in the third or fourth quarter of this year.

Microsoft went public on February 3 with its planned version (SKU) line-up — but not pricing — for Windows 7.  After receiving an admittedly very quick SKU overview from the Softies yesterday, here are my first impressions of Microsoft’s new SKU plan.

The Good

Microsoft learned a lot of lessons from Vista — among them, that too many SKUs with too few justifications created customer confusion.

Microsoft is putting the bulk of its marketing dollars and muscle behind just two of the Windows 7 SKUs: Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional. “We think over 80 percent of customers will be on those two SKUs,” Bill Veghte, Senior Vice President of the Windows business said. “That’s where we are putting our marketing focus.”

Another positive: The era of Ultimate promises (and failures) is over. Microsoft is making sure that each, successive version of Windows 7 is a true superset of the SKU just below it. If you pay more money, you get more features the day you buy the product — not some unspecified time in the future.

Finally, for XP users who’ve skipped Vista and are wondering whether they’ll be able to get upgrade pricing when moving straight to Windows 7, the answer is “Yes, we can!” The official statement, from a Microsoft spokesperson: “Customers can purchase upgrade cialis online overnight media and an upgrade license to move from Windows XP to Windows 7; however, they will need to do a clean installation of Windows 7.” (Microsoft still isn’t ready to talk pricing, but at least you know now you won’t have to buy a full license.)

The Bad

While Microsoft is going to emphasize just two SKUs, it still is going to offer five or six (depending on how you count) different Windows 7 versions. (And more, if you count the stripped-down K, N and KN versions the company is required to sell overseas because of antitrust rulings). Here is the full Windows 7 SKU line-up:

• Windows 7 Starter Edition (for emerging market and netbook users)
• Windows 7 Home Basic (for emerging market customers only)
• Windows 7 Home Premium (the main “Media Center” equivalent)
• Windows 7 Professional (the business SKU for home users and non-enterprise licensees)
• Windows 7 Enterprise (for volume licensees)
• Windows 7 Ultimate (for consumers who want/need business features)

Veghte claimed that Microsoft can’t have a one- (or two-) size fits all SKU plan because it has more than a billion customers worldwide running Windows. There are too many diverse needs to shoe-horn them all into two SKUs.

I’m also still confused about the changes Microsoft is making to its Ultimate SKU with WIndows 7. Veghte told me that Microsoft is anticipating Ultimate to be one of the less popular SKUs with a run-rate in the “low single digits). Microsoft is positioning Windows 7 Ultimate as the preferred SKU for consumers who need enterprise features (but aren’t volume-license customers), as well as for OEMs or retailers with “specific offers” they want to sell around. With Vista, the Ultimate SKU was also aimed primarily at enthusiasts, but was Microsoft’s preferred high-end offering for consumers — one to which it tried to convince customers to upgrade. That doesn’t seem to be the case with Windows 7, leading me to believe Microsoft is on the path to phase out Ultimate….

The Ugly

The rumors were wrong; the reality is there is no netbook SKU for Windows 7. Because Windows 7 has been tweaked to have a smaller memory footprint, etc., the full version of 7 can run on many, if not all, netbooks. Microsoft is offering netbook makers a choice: Put Windows 7 Starter Edition or Home Prmium on netbooks.

Unsurprisingly, Veghte was unwilling to discuss how much Microsoft is planning to charge its PC-maker partners per copy for Windows. Here’s the Pandora’s box I foresee: Is Microsoft going to charge PC makers less per copy for Home Premium than it charges to run the exact same Home Premium SKU on a full-fledged notebook or desktop system? Who will be the judge of what is a “netbook”? Will OEMs decide to preload Starter Edition instead to save money? If they do, users may be unpleasantly surprised when they realize they can run only three apps simultaneously on Starter….

(With Windows 7, Microsoft is now allowing PC makers in all countries, not just emerging markets, to preload Starter Edition on new PCs, by the way.)

My ZDNet blogging colleague Ed Bott will be detailing what’s in each of the new SKUs, in case you’re still confused about how the Win 7 line-up will stack up against the comparable Vista/XP ones.

Update: Steven Bink of Bink.nu fame has a handy chart comparing the various Windows 7 SKUs.

February 2nd, 2009

Posted by Mary Jo Foley

Whenever Microsoft releases a new version of Windows, there’s always some period of uncertainty when customers face the choice of moving to the current release or waiting for the new product. This year,  however, that transition period is especially uneasy.

Windows 7 is — by all accounts (except from the Microsoft honchos) — due out later this year and is looking faster, smaller and more stable than any Windows release out there. Windows Vista is here, but not a user favorite (to put it mildly). And eight-year-old Windows XP is still the dominant version of Windows out there.

So what’s a Windows user to do? Follow Microsoft’s corporate guidance and upgrade to Vista now in preparation for 7? Hang on a bit longer with XP? Try mixing and matching the three in your IT shop?

Microsoft’s Windows brass have been reticent to provide a detailed answer to the question “What should my desktop strategy be?” But Mike Fiorina, a Microsoft account cialis online no prescription tech specialist based in New England, grabbed the Windows-upgrade-confusion bull by the horns in a blog post this past weekend.

Fiorina explained that a perfect storm is brewing: XP SP2 mainstream support is set to end in July, 2010 April 2009 (and all support for it by July 2010).  XP SP3 extended support isn’t retiring until April 2014, which, Fiorina said, “gives XP environments some breathing room, but not necessarily as much as you might think.”

Even though Vista SP1 has been out for a year (and Vista SP2 is expected some time in the next few months), Vista still is suffering from both real and imagined limitations, Fiorina admitted. From his January 30 post:

“The one recurring theme in discussions with corporate customers is that (Vista) application compatibility is a problem. Applications may not run in Vista, or maybe they can, but it’s not supported by the vendor. Remediation will be costly and time consuming. We get it. Many of the acquisitions and investments we’ve made in the past few years are targeting that problem specifically (Application Virtualization – SoftGrid, Enterprise Desktop Virtualization – Kidaro, etc.)”

Fiorina noted that the generally positive beta reviews of Windows 7 has meant “we’re hearing from a lot of folks ‘Why should I upgrade to Vista when Windows 7 is right around the corner?’” His answer:

“If we look at it from the perspective of an enterprise with fairly unaggressive adoption cycles, then you’ll see that you may be putting yourself in an untenable situation a few years down the road.”

Untenable? Fiorina continued his line of reasoning with the caveat, “for the sake of argument, make these assumptions”:

• “Company A doesn’t deploy new operating systems or major applications until Service Pack 1 (or a similar bug-fix milestone) has been provided by the vendor
• Company A probably won’t even begin testing their application footprint against the new OS until said SP1 is available
• Windows 7 ships in the fourth quarter of 2009
• Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 would likely not be final until the first half of 2011, if not later (going by our historical timelines for SP1 releases)
• So, Company A would begin testing migration from Windows XP to Windows 7 SP1 in 2011 sometime. How long would it take to perform adequate testing of your application suite to certify\remediate it for Windows 7? For most, this is at least a 6 to 12 month process…so, now we’re in mid-2012.  At that point, you’re ready to start building an image (hopefully using the MDT to make your lives easier).  Maybe the image is ready to go in early 2013. Then you have a little over a year to get it out company-wide until Windows XP hits end-of-life. Is that enough time?  Perhaps…but is it worth backing yourself into a corner?”

Sure, you could argue that Fiorina is a sales guy and is looking for any way possible to chalk up a few more Vista sales while Windows 7 is gaining steam. But, to me, his post highlights what’s likely to be one of the biggest IT questions in 2009: On which version of Windows should I standardize as my corporate desktop?

February 11th, 2009

Posted by Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft’s latest Windows deployment guidance for business users has morphed from the overly simplistic “Don’t wait for Windows 7.”

The company’s new corporate advice is more nuanced and more dependent on where users are currently in their deployment cycles. But the bottom-line message is whether you decide to go with Vista or wait for Windows 7 is less important than getting off Windows XP.

When I wrote last week about the pending arrival of the “perfect Windows storm,” some readers claimed I was complicating matters and that the choice of Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 was clear-cut for business users.

This week, Microsoft officials themselves admitted that users are confused and looking for guidance as to which Windows client version they should be targeting in their near-term deployments. To try to clarify things, the company is updating its Windows guidance for business users.

In the inaugural post on February 11 on the newly cialis once a day minted “Windows for Your Business” blog, Gavriella Schuster, Senior Director for Windows Commercial Product Management, offered a more detailed check list for business customers who are planning their Windows roadmaps:

• If you are running Windows 2000 in your environment: Migrate your Windows 2000 PCs to Windows Vista as soon as possible. Extended support for Windows 2000 ends Q2 2010, and as an enterprise customer, you may soon find your business’s critical applications are unsupported.
• If you are in the process of planning or deploying Windows Vista: Continue your Windows Vista SP1 deployment. If you’re really in the early stages or just starting on Windows Vista, plan to test and deploy Windows Vista SP2 (on target to RTM Q2 2009). Moving onto Windows Vista now will allow for an easier transition to Windows 7 in the future due to the high degree of compatibility.
• If you are on Windows XP now and are undecided about which OS to move to: Make sure you taken into consideration the risk of skipping Windows Vista, which I am discussing below. And know that deploying Windows Vista now will make the future transition to Windows 7 easier.
• If you are on Windows XP now and are waiting for Windows 7: Make sure you take into consideration the risks of skipping Windows Vista, and plan on starting an early evaluation of Windows 7 for your company using the beta that’s available now. Testing and remediating applications on Windows Vista will ease your Windows 7 deployment due to the high degree of compatibility.

Given an estimated 71 percent of business PCs are still running XP, Microsoft’s advice to upgrade from XP isn’t overly surprising. The biggest competitor to Vista and/or Windows 7 isn’t Linux or Mac OS X; it’s XP.

Schuster said she has been talking to several business users every week for the last couple of months and is hearing the same questions over and over again. Is moving to Vista — with Windows 7 in the wings — futile at this point? Is Vista another “Windows Millennium” — an operating system Microsoft quickly backed and then abandoned, heading off in another direction with Windows XP? If customers already have started Vista deployments, should business customers abandon them and prep for Windows 7 instead?

“I’m not advocating Vista or 7. I’m just saying they should be getting off XP,” Schuster told me when we chatted earlier this week.

Microsoft is retiring XP SP2 support in April 2009; XP SP3 support isn’t going away until 2014. (Microsoft isn’t advising business customers to count on SP3 to extend the life of their existing operating systems. Why patch again an operating system originally introduced in 2001? Schuster quipped. I suggested containing costs might be one reason….) Plus, Schuster argued, a number of app vendors are phasing out support for their XP applications.

“Typical enterprise organizations tend to have between 500 and 5,000 different applications deployed across their environments,” Schuster said. “Users need to find out how long these apps will be supported on XP and when (ISVs) are planning to certify the new versions of these apps on Windows 7.”

In the interim, she said, business users should shell out for MDOP, Microsoft’s Desktop Optimization Pack — a collection of deployment and virtualization tools designed to make running legacy apps and migrating to new OS releases easier. (MDOP is available for purchase by Software Assurance volume licensees only.)

XP users: With IT budgets being slashed, what’s your latest upgrade game plan? Are you going to move to Vista any time soon? Wait for Win 7? Or is it XP SP3, here you come?

Here's another dose of the Opera Web browser for you! If you didn't already know, the people over at Opera recently released the new Opera 9.6 and it's cialis offer now available for download here. Opera claims to be the only browser that comes with everything you need to be productive, safe and speedy while online. Let’s take a quick look at the Speed Dial feature available in the new version. Here we go!

Speed Dial is a new method of quickly browsing to your favorite Web sites. When you hit the New Tab button, instead of the usual blank page, you'll see a 3 x 3 grid. The grid takes up the full screen and it's laid out in the fashion of a telephone dial with numbers from 1 to 9. Each number can be populated with a different URL, selected from either your existing favorites or entered manually. Now, I know you might be thinking that nine speed dials is not nearly enough. Well, lucky for you, there's an easy way to increase the number of speed dials. Let's check it out, shall we?!

1.) Open Opera and go to Help, About Opera. That will open a page that shows the version information, as well as, other useful information about Opera. Check the Paths section and copy the path for the Opera Directory.

2.) Close Opera and paste the path into the Run dialogue box. Hit OK and you'll then see the Opera profile directory.

3.) You’ll see the “speeddial.ini” file in the folder. Open the file in Notepad and add the following lines to the end of the file:

[Size]

Rows=4

Columns=5

In the above code, 4 and 5 are just examples. You can replace them with your desired numbers.

4.) Save the file and open Opera again. Now, you’ll be able to see more speed dials in Opera!

Enjoy it, my friends!

Did you know you can choose to use multiple slide design templates within the same MS PowerPoint presentation?

As I've observed people using PowerPoint, I've noticed they always seem to apply a slide design template to the master, with the assumption it's their one and only chance to make that decision.

But cialis normal dose what if you have a long presentation with some very definite sections and you're thinking that changing the design template might be a good idea? You know, a visual clue that the subject is changing. I know we don't want to go crazy and make each slide different, but do they all have to be the same?

We all would like to think that PowerPoint isn't forcing us into anything, so I'd hope we have some control over the matter as well!

As it turns out, we do have control, so whatever your reason for wanting a design template switch, the big question now is how can you make it happen?

Fortunately, this one is probably easier to accomplish than you may think!

If you're using an older version of PowerPoint, you need the Normal View from the View menu. Now, open the Slide Design Task Pane (the Format menu, Slide Design choice will work).

For all you PowerPoint 2007 users, you're looking for the View tab on the ribbon, Normal choice. To get to your slide design choices, you need the Themes section under the Design tab on the ribbon.

With all of that accomplished, everyone needs to use the Slides tab on the left hand side of the program window to select the slide(s) that will have the Design Template. You can select a single slide or multiple slides with the Shift/Ctrl keys.