Category Archives: Windows 7

HTC, Microsoft, Tech, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows XP

Android’s Biggest Fan Is Microsoft, of Course

 

“Even if Microsoft were able to extract Danegeld for every Android device …, every license sold is one less WinPhone sale, one more mobile device using Google instead of Bing, one more customer lost to Android apps, one less customer for Microsoft’s mobile gaming and other services,” said Slashdot blogger Barbara Hudson. “Microsoft is basically selling a ‘license to kill’ — to kill WinPhone7 dead.”

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It’s been obvious for some time now that Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is a big Android fan, thanks to the tidy sums of cash the software giant has managed to extract from the companies that use it.

What wasn’t necessarily apparent until recently, however, is just how far Redmond’s devotion goes.

With last week’s addition of Compal Electronics to Microsoft’s Android licensing lineup, it’s becoming truly clear. It doesn’t seem premature, in fact, to declare Ballmer et al. Android’s biggest fans *ever*, so passionately dedicated have they become.

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Compal was the 10th victim of Redmond’s lucrative new licensing line of business, of course, and its acquiescence means that Microsoft now gets a piece of more than half of all Android devices out there.

If that won’t inspire a little adoration, Linux Girl doesn’t know what will!

Redmond’s lawyers have surely been doing the Happy Dance all week. As for those in the Linux blogosphere? Not so much.
‘A License to Kill WinPhone 7 Dead’

“I think this is yet another data point (as if anyone needs any more proof) that Microsoft’s mobile strategy is on the ropes, if not down for the count, and can’t compete in the marketplace,” opined Barbara Hudson, a blogger on Slashdot who goes by “Tom” on the site.

“And just to rub salt into the wound, even if Microsoft were able to extract Danegeld for every Android device manufactured by anyone for sale anywhere instead of just the US market, every license sold is one less WinPhone sale, one more mobile device using Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) instead of Bing, one more customer lost to Android apps, one less customer for Microsoft’s mobile gaming and other services,” Hudson added.

“Microsoft is basically selling a ‘license to kill’ — to kill WinPhone7 dead,” she asserted. “This is not the way to get the critical mass of users needed to start a ‘virtuous feedback cycle’ for your product.”
‘Like Squeezing a Chocolate Bar’

Eventually, Microsoft is “going to have to bite the bullet and start giving away WinPhone licenses, and even that is probably too little, too late,” Hudson told Linux Girl. “Apple and Android have a solid lock on the market.”

Making matters worse is that “licensing fees are real balancing act,” she pointed out. “The strategy of trying to collect royalties is like squeezing a chocolate bar — squeeze too hard and you’re going to have a sticky mess on your hands as manufacturers look for alternatives.”

Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has shown that “it’s possible to switch the underlying OS — they’ve done it several times,” Hudson noted. “In a worst-case scenario, BSD can replace Android’s Linux underpinnings.”

Meanwhile, “to milk the current situation as long as possible, Microsoft will have to be very careful not to exceed the manufacturers’ collective pain threshold,” Hudson warned. “But even that’s a loser’s game over the long term.”
The Problem With Patents

Roberto Lim, a lawyer and blogger on Mobile Raptor, saw it differently.

“If the Android manufacturers feel it is to their benefit to pay the license fees, we should assume that they do have a good reason for doing so, and not assume that Microsoft is milking Android,” Lim opined.

After all, “HTC paying license fees to Microsoft did not prevent it from having a banner year,” he pointed out.

Still, software patents — which are the foundation for Microsoft’s current licensing strategy — “do seem too broad,” Lim added. “If we applied this to technology that has developed in the past 30 years, it would have restricted innovation.”
‘Something Is Wrong With the System’

Imagine, for example, “if someone had patented clicking an image displayed on a screen to launch an application, or manipulating a television set with a remote device, or adjusting volume by sliding an indicator displayed on a screen,” he mused.

“There is a need to really look at the entire system of software patents and see to what extent they are necessary to protect investments in research and development for new ideas and to what extent patents are sought to try to create a monopoly,” Lim told Linux Girl. “Apple, for one, appears to be trying to utilize broad patents to create a monopoly.”

Today’s patent wars, in fact, are similar to domain name squatting, he concluded: “There are companies that do not manufacture anything, have no product other than patents, and obtained patents for the sole purpose of seeking royalties. When you start to see things like this, you really know something is wrong with the system.”
‘A House of Cards’

Indeed, “M$’s taxation of Android/Linux is an anticompetitive act propped up by bogus software patents,” agreed blogger Robert Pogson. “It’s all a house of cards which will fall when SCOTUS finally rules them illegal.”

For proof that software patents don’t promote innovation, one need only look at the “gridlock” that results, Pogson explained.

“Look at Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) v Google,” he said. “The judge is very busy and has to find a whole month to deal with it on top of the weeks already spent on the matter. The end result is that the legal fees will amount to more than the value of the so-called patents.

“In the high-tech world, patents are inhibitors of innovation,” he concluded. “These guys are not working out new ideas in their garages.”
‘They Spend Billions on R&D’

Slashdot blogger hairyfeet took a different view.

“Android DOES infringe!” hairyfeet told Linux Girl. “Have you SEEN how many patents MSFT has? They have tons, folks — they spend billions on R&D cranking out more every year.”

That, in turn, is why “FOSS needs badly to kill ‘free as in beer’ and make it, as RMS has said, ‘free as in freedom,’ because you simply have no way to build a sizable patent war chest,” hairyfeet asserted.
‘Have a Scary War Chest or Pay Up’

“Look at some of the companies that have died, like Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL) — how much better would it have been for FOSS if ALL their patents were now property of the community?” he added. “This is why, even when they were suing each other, AMD (NYSE: AMD) and Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) had cross licensing agreements, and even though they are rivals, AMD and Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA) have them as well.”

There are simply too many patents, in other words, to deal with them any other way, hairyfeet concluded: “You either have a scary enough war chest of your own that rivals want to do cross licensing, or you pay up — your choice.”

Google’s absence from Microsoft’s licensing campaign is “a strong sign that Microsoft is afraid of litigation in this area but trying to find some way of monetizing the competition,” suggested Chris Travers, a Slashdot blogger who works on the LedgerSMB project.
‘Every Incentive to Fight to the End’

“In other words, only the devices are licensed, not the allegedly infringing operating system,” he added. “The goal of litigation against Motorola and others is solely to flesh out licensing deals and not with the intent to bring anything to trial.”

Travers wonders, in fact, “if Google acquired Motorola Mobility (NYSE: MMI) solely to take over the patent litigation,” he told Linux Girl. “This increases the stakes considerably, and decreases the chance of an 11th hour, out-of-court settlement based solely on device manufacturing.”

Google has “every incentive to fight to the end,” he pointed out, “and Microsoft has important incentives not to.”

In the long run, “I think the only lawsuit that matters is the Motorola one,” Travers concluded.

Microsoft, Office, Tech, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Azure, Windows XP, Xbox

The inside story of how Microsoft killed its Courier tablet

Steve Ballmer had a dilemma. He had two groups at Microsoft pursuing competing visions for tablet computers.

One group, led by Xbox godfather J Allard, was pushing for a sleek, two-screen tablet called the Courier that users controlled with their finger or a pen. But it had a problem: It was running a modified version of Windows.

That ran headlong into the vision of tablet computing laid out by Steven Sinofsky, the head of Microsoft’s Windows division. Sinofsky was wary of any product–let alone one from inside Microsoft’s walls–that threatened the foundation of Microsoft’s flagship operating system. But Sinofsky’s tablet-friendly version of Windows was more than two years away.

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For Ballmer, it wasn’t an easy call. Allard and Sinofsky were key executives at Microsoft, both tabbed as the next-generation brain trust. So Ballmer sought advice from the one tech visionary he’s trusted more than any other over the decades–Bill Gates. Ballmer arranged for Microsoft’s chairman and co-founder to meet for a few hours with Allard; his boss, Entertainment and Devices division President Robbie Bach; and two other Courier team members.

At one point during that meeting in early 2010 at Gates’ waterfront offices in Kirkland, Wash., Gates asked Allard how users get e-mail. Allard, Microsoft’s executive hipster charged with keeping tabs on computing trends, told Gates his team wasn’t trying to build another e-mail experience. He reasoned that everyone who had a Courier would also have a smartphone for quick e-mail writing and retrieval and a PC for more detailed exchanges. Courier users could get e-mail from the Web, Allard said, according to sources familiar with the meeting.

But the device wasn’t intended to be a computer replacement; it was meant to complement PCs. Courier users wouldn’t want or need a feature-rich e-mail application such as Microsoft’s Outlook that lets them switch to conversation views in their inbox or support offline e-mail reading and writing. The key to Courier, Allard’s team argued, was its focus on content creation. Courier was for the creative set, a gadget on which architects might begin to sketch building plans, or writers might begin to draft documents.

“This is where Bill had an allergic reaction,” said one Courier worker who talked with an attendee of the meeting. As is his style in product reviews, Gates pressed Allard, challenging the logic of the approach.

It’s not hard to understand Gates’ response. Microsoft makes billions of dollars every year on its Exchange e-mail server software and its Outlook e-mail application. While heated debates are common in Microsoft’s development process, Gates’ concerns didn’t bode well for Courier. He conveyed his opinions to Ballmer, who was gathering data from others at the company as well.

Within a few weeks, Courier was cancelled because the product didn’t clearly align with the company’s Windows and Office franchises, according to sources. A few months after that, both Allard and Bach announced plans to leave Microsoft, though both executives have said their decisions to move on were unrelated to the Courier cancellation.

The story of Microsoft’s Courier has only been told in pieces. And nothing has been disclosed publicly about the infighting that led to the innovative device’s death. This article was pieced together through interviews with 18 current and former Microsoft executives, as well as contractors and partners who worked on the project. None of the Microsoft employees, both current and former, would talk for attribution because they worried about potential repercussions. Microsoft’s top spokesman, Frank Shaw, offered only a brief comment for this story and otherwise declined to make Microsoft’s senior executives available.

“At any given time, we’re looking at new ideas, investigating, testing, incubating them,” Shaw said in a statement when word leaked in April 2010 that Courier had been cancelled. “It’s in our DNA to develop new form factors and natural user interfaces to foster productivity and creativity. The Courier project is an example of this type of effort. It will be evaluated for use in future offerings, but we have no plans to build such a device at this time.”

While the internal fight over Courier occurred about 18 months ago, the implications of the decision to kill the incubation project reverberate today. Rather than creating a touch computing device that might well have launched within a few months of Apple’s iPad, which debuted in April 2010, Microsoft management chose a strategy that’s forcing it to come from behind. The company cancelled Courier within a few weeks of the iPad’s launch. Now it plans to rely on Windows 8, the operating system that will likely debut at the end of next year, to run tablets.

Courier’s death also offers a detailed look into Microsoft’s Darwinian approach to product development and the balancing act between protecting its old product franchises and creating new ones. The company, with 90,000 employees, has plenty of brilliant minds that can come up with revolutionary approaches to computing. But sometimes, their creativity is stalled by process, subsumed in other products, or even sacrificed to protect the company’s Windows and Office empires.

‘Not a whim’
Courier was much more than a clever vision. The team, which had more than 130 Microsoft employees contributing to it, had created several prototypes that gave a clear sense about the type of experience users would get. There were still tough hardware and software issues to resolve when Microsoft pulled the plug. But an employee who worked on Courier said the project was far enough along that the remaining work could have been completed in months if the company had added more people to the team. Microsoft’s Shaw disputes that.

“There was extensive work done on the business, the technology and the experience,” said a member of the Courier team. “It was very complete, not a whim.”

Ballmer and Microsoft’s senior leadership decided to bet solely on Sinofsky’s Windows vision for the company’s tablet strategy. Though it crushed some innovative work from dedicated employees, that decision had plenty of logic to it. Corporate customers may be more inclined to use a Windows tablet than, say, Apple’s iPad, because those devices will likely include well-known management and security tools that should make them easy to plug into secure corporate networks.

A new survey by the Boston Consulting Group found that more than 40 percent of current tablet users in the United States want a tablet that runs Windows. That number jumps to 53 percent when non-tablet owners are included. The reason: familiarity with Windows, which still runs nearly 90 percent of all PCs sold.

“They think a common operating system will make this experience seamless across devices,” said Boston Consulting senior partner and managing director John Rose. “The products will be introduced, and they’ll be better (than the iPad) or they won’t be.”

Ballmer went out of his way to underscore Microsoft’s Windows strategy at the company’s financial analysts meeting last month, which it held concurrently with a conference where Microsoft wooed more than 5,000 developers to the Windows 8 platform for tablets.

“The first thing, which I hope is obvious, about our point of view is Windows is at the center,” Ballmer told analysts. “Certainly I can read plenty of places where people will question whether that’s a good idea or not. I think it’s an exceptionally good idea.”

But using Windows as the operating system for tablets also implies that Microsoft will update the devices’ operating systems on the Windows time frame, typically every three years. Compare that to Apple, which seems likely to continue to update the iPad annually, a tactic that drives a raft of new sales each time a new generation hits the market. By the time Windows 8 rolls out, Apple will likely have introduced its iPad 3. Moreover, Amazon’s much anticipated Kindle Fire tablet, which goes on sale November 15, will have nearly a year head start on the Windows-powered tablet offerings.

On the other hand, Courier, with its modified version of Windows, could have been updated more frequently than the behemoth operating system itself.

How far behind is Microsoft? Tablet makers sold 17.6 million devices in 2010, and are on a pace to sell 63.3 million more this year, according to industry analyst Gartner. In 2012, the firm expects sales to jump to 103.5 million devices. Just 4.3 million of those tablets, the ones that go on sale at the end of the year when Windows 8 debuts, will run Windows, according to the firm. Gartner expects Apple’s game-changing iPad to continue to dominate with a two-thirds share.

Building consumer muscle
Microsoft counted on Allard, more than any other senior executive in the last decade, to help it figure out how to reach the types of consumers who are now racing to buy iPads. Once an Internet wonk who helped a mid-1990s Microsoft wake up to the Web, Allard led the team that created Microsoft’s biggest non-PC consumer success story–the Xbox video game business. Always willing to stand up to leadership, Allard successfully argued that Windows wasn’t suitable to power the video game console, something Gates wasn’t initially keen on.

The success of the Xbox led Microsoft to create its Entertainment and Devices division under Bach. And Bach tapped the chrome-domed Allard to be his chief visionary.

Allard is a downhill mountain-biking maniac, who co-founded a cycling team, dubbed Project 529, whose name is intended to reflect the team’s after-hours passion, what they do from 5 p.m. to 9 a.m. He often used Apple products, such as the iPod or the Mac, much to the disdain of some Microsoft colleagues. While he has serious technology chops, Allard also appreciated the importance of design, creating studios, rather than traditional office space, where his teams toiled. A key Allard trait: challenging convention.

Gizmodo broke the Courier story in September 2009, posting leaked pictures of what the device might look like and how it might work. Rather than the single screen that consumers have come to know as a tablet, Courier would have had two screens, each about 7 inches diagonally. The device would have folded in half like a book. It would have supported both touch and pen-based computing. The gadget-loving site drooled over what it had found.

“It feels like the whole world is holding its breath for the Apple tablet,” Gizmodo wrote. “But maybe we’ve all been dreaming about the wrong device. This is Courier, Microsoft’s astonishing take on the tablet.”

The gadget was the creation of Allard’s skunkworks design operation Pioneer Studios and Alchemie Ventures, a research lab that also reported to Allard. (The lab took the German spelling of “alchemy” to highlight the stereotypical Teutonic traits of structure and regiment it hoped to bring to its innovation process.) The two groups were created to identify consumer experiences that Microsoft could develop and hatch.

“Our job is to incubate those and work with the product teams to bring them to market,” said Pioneer’s co-founder Georg Petschnigg in a video posted to Microsoft’s developer Web site last year.

Allard created Alchemie to focus on innovation process to make sure that the efforts of Pioneer were not scattershot. It studied best practices, both within and outside Microsoft, to “design a repeatable, predictable and measurable approach for building new business” for Bach’s division, according to the Alchemie Ventures Toolkit, an internal Microsoft book reviewed by CNET.

“If Microsoft wants to truly implement effective and sustainable incubation, we have to embrace rigorous, repeatable, and measurable processes–and make those processes available to everyone,” Alchemie’s general manager Giorgio Vanzini wrote in the book.

Courier was born from the minds of both groups. And while Apple was working on its iPad at the same time, Courier was designed to be something entirely different. The iPad is all about content consumption–surfing the Web, watching videos, playing games. Courier was focused on content creation–drafting documents, brainstorming concepts, jotting down ideas.

“We weren’t fearful of it,” a Courier worker said of the iPad. “We were doing something different.”

Early on, the group opted to use Windows for Courier’s operating system. But it wasn’t a version of Windows that any consumer would recognize. The Courier team tweaked the operating system to make sure it could perform at high levels with touch- and pen-based computing. What’s more, the graphical shell of Windows–the interface that computer users associate with the operating system–was entirely removed. So while it was Windows under the hood, the home screens bore zero resemblance to the familiar PC desktop.

Creating a new approach
The Courier group wasn’t interested in replicating Windows on a tablet. The team wanted to create a new approach to computing. The metaphor they used was “digital Moleskine,” a nod to the leather-bound notebooks favored in the design world. In fact, according to a few team members, a small group led by Petschnigg flew to Milan, Italy, to pick the brains of the designers at Moleskine to understand how they’ve been able to create such loyal customers.

“Moleskine was interested but a little perplexed,” said one executive who worked on the Courier project.

Designers working on Courier came up with clever notions for how digital paper should work. One of the ideas was to create “smart ink,” giving text, for example, mathematical properties. So when a user wrote “5+8=” on, say, digital graph paper, the number “13” would fill in the equation automatically. Additionally, if users selected lined digital paper, words would snap to each line as they were jotted down.

The phrase at the core of the Courier mission was “Free Create.” It was meant to describe the notion of eliminating the processes and protocols that productivity software often imposes on workers.

“Free Create is a simple statement that acts as a rallying cry, uniting the consumer’s core need and Courier’s core benefit,” reads a passage in an internal Microsoft book memorializing the Courier effort, reviewed by CNET, that was given to the team after the project was shuttered. “Free Create is a natural way to digitally write, sketch and gather inspiration by blending the familiarity of the pen, the intuition of touch, the simplicity of the book and the advantages of software and services.”

It’s clear there were substantial resources behind the effort. The commemorative book, designed to resemble the journal-like look of the Courier, lists the 134 employees who contributed to the gadget’s creation. Moreover, Petschnigg writes on his LinkedIn profile page that he “managed $3.5 (million) seed funding, (and) secured $20 (million) to develop this new product category.”

Those funds helped build a multi-disciplinary team. It included interaction designers, who worked on new interfaces using pen- and touch-computing. There were also employees who worked on software to synchronize data from the Courier to Web-based services. The project had moved far enough along that there was staff that worked on brand strategy, advertising, retail planning, and partner marketing. Courier even had a deeply considered logo, something of a squiggle that looks a bit like an ampersand, meant to evoke the doodling that often is the start of a creative process.

“The Courier logo expresses the free-flow and formation of ideas,” reads the description of the logo in the commemorative book. “It references simple scribbles that are often the beginning of new ideas.”

While the software prototypes ran on existing tablet PCs built by Microsoft’s partners, they didn’t meet the performance goals for Courier. So Allard’s team also worked with several hardware makers, including Samsung, to create hardware prototypes.

“It was not off-the-shelf tech,” said a Courier team member. “There is no commercial product today that meets the specs we had for it. It was highly demanding and innovative and no one partner had all of the pieces.”

When Courier died, there was not a single prototype that contained all of the attributes of the vision: the industrial design, the screen performance, the software experience, the correct weight, and the battery life. Those existed individually, created in parallel to keep the development process moving quickly. Those prototypes wouldn’t have come together into a single unit until very late in the development process, perhaps weeks before manufacturing, which is common for cutting-edge consumer electronics design. But on the team, there was little doubt that they were moving quickly toward that final prototype.

“We were on the cusp of something really big,” said one Courier team member.

In late 2009, before the iPad had launched, the Courier team recognized the market for tablets was ready to explode. It laid out a detailed engineering schedule and made the case to Microsoft’s top brass that Courier could be a revolutionary device that would define a new product category. The team put forward a vision that Microsoft could create a new market rather than chasing down a leader or defending an established product.

“J (was) incubating with his tribe, very much thinking consumer and very much thinking the next few years,” a former Microsoft executive said. “He was trying to disrupt Microsoft, which hasn’t been good at consumer products.”

In fact, one of the mandates of Alchemie was to look only at product ideas and business concepts that were no farther than three years into the future. The Alchemie book includes something of an innovation process road map that lays out four “gates” that ideas needed to pass through to move from incubation to product development. And a source said that Courier had made it through all four gates.

So why did Courier die? The answer lies in an understanding of Microsoft’s history and cultu

Apple, iPad, iPhone, Microsoft, Tech, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Azure

Bill Gates: I’m cool with Steve Jobs dissing me

Some relationships become competitive. And some have competitiveness at their core.

The latter surely was the case between Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs. So no one could have imagined that Jobs would have offered too many conciliatory quotes in Walter Isaacson’s biography.

In an interview with ABC News, Gates says he’s thoroughly and utterly cool with Jobs tossing zingers his way.

“None of that bothers me at all,” he told ABC. He added a finely generic eulogy: “Steve Jobs did a fantastic job.”

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The thing is that, even in the Isaacson book, Gates offered flaming daggers of his own. He called Jobs “weirdly flawed as a human being.” I thought it flattering that he included the “human being” part.

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player

Jobs, in turn, told Isaacson of Gates: “He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.” Yes, he’d have rather that Gates had been more like, well, him. He also accused Gates of “shamelessly ripping off other people’s ideas.”

Gates insisted to ABC News that wafting off to India was not, in fact, a prerequisite for entrepreneurial success. However, you couldn’t get anywhere in life if you weren’t good at math. (I exaggerate, but only by 0.04 per cent.)

Gates added of Jobs: “Over the course of the 30 years we worked together, you know, he said a lot of very nice things about me and he said a lot of tough things.” Jobs was, indeed, mercurial.

Gates couldn’t resist a little, well, Gatesian perspective. He would like to remind everyone just how much Jobs struggled in the face of Microsoft’s pleasantly left-brained onslaught.

He explained: “He faced, several times at Apple, the fact that their products were so premium priced that they literally might not stay in the marketplace. So the fact that we were succeeding with high volume products, you know, including a range of prices, because of the way we worked with multiple companies, it’s tough.”

Critics of Microsoft might offer that Gates still rejoices in the idea that he simply muscled Jobs out of the market. But for Jobs, Microsoft stood for everything he most disdained– not mass production in itself, but a mass lack of taste.

These were two men who simply thought differently. As Isaacson offered to the New York Times yesterday, Gates was the epitome of what academics regard as “smart”, while Jobs was pure ingeniousness.

You couldn’t imagine them hanging at parties together. Or art galleries for that matter. Though they did– once– play nice in 2007.

In the end, though, both must have known that each secured victory within his own sphere of thinking. Gates dominated the left brains, while Jobs dominated the right.

Microsoft, Tech, Windows 7, Windows 8

Bill Gates: Being very rich is ‘the same hamburger’

Let’s talk money and hamburgers.

Sometimes you can spend a lot of money on a hamburger, sometimes very little. For example, at the Four Seasons in San Francisco, you can pay $18 for a very nice hamburger with exquisite french fries.

It is spectacularly better than the ones at the Golden State Warriors games, where, please believe me, the burger and fries are almost the same price as the Four Seasons and of a similar quality to the team in 2002. (And 2003. And 2004.)

These–and several other–thoughts on the finance/hamburger axis have been occupying my mind because of a fascinating speech and Q&A session yesterday at the University of Washington featuring Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

The way the Seattle Times records it, one enterprising listener asked Gates how she could become as blindingly rich as him.

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Gates explained that money hadn’t been his goal. He just loved what he was doing. Even better, he could involve his friends in this thing he loved. Soon, he had more money than he knew what to do with. Which he described as “a responsibility.”

But here’s the meat of it.

“I can understand about having millions of dollars. There’s meaningful freedom that comes with that, but once you get much beyond that I have to tell you, it’s the same hamburger. Dick’s has not raised their prices enough,” Gates said.

Not having eaten hamburgers in Seattle very often, I assumed he was, oddly, referring to Dick’s Sporting Goods. But, no. Dick’s Drive-In seems to be a fine place that actually won “The Best Cheap Eats in Western Washington.”

It so happens that Dick Drive-In is very keen on offering its employees financial assistance with college funding. So it’s a hamburger joint where you can begin your journey to becoming a billionaire.

But is there really any such thing as “the same hamburger?” Anyone who’s been to McDonald’s and then popped into In-N-Out knows that they’re a little different. You can’t get McDonald’s “Animal Style,” though there is some animal-style behavior at McDonald’s occasionally.

So isn’t the truth that when you begin to amass your billions, you have some interesting choices to make? They might be between one hamburger and another. But they’re still different.

Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs mentions that when Gates came to Jobs’ relatively modest house he wondered how on earth the whole Jobs family could fit into such a place. Perhaps this, to Gates, just wasn’t a big enough Mac.

However, as Gates himself has proved, you can use your billions to attempt to do good. You just have to choose to do that. Most, though, will never have that choice. Most will never get to try the $5,000 FleurBurger created by suave pony-tailed chef Hubert Keller at his restaurant in the Mandalay Bay in Vegas.

I wonder if Gates has tried it.

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Windows 8 Tiles Metro-Style UI on Windows 7

Windows 8 would ditch the Windows 7 Aero interface in favor of Metro UI,  which exists on Windows Phone today. If you love the MEtro style tiles and interface, you can get the Metro UI on windows 7 using Zetro UI.

Zetro UI is very simple to install and configure. Extract the zip after downloading the theme from the link below. When done, follow the below two simple steps:

Opening the Extras folder, running the Theme Patcher, and clicking on all three “patch” buttons contained within.
Opening the Theme folder and copying both of the files inside it to C:\Windows\Resources\Themes.

When finished, Open the Control Panel and “Change the Theme” under Appearance and Personalization. The Zetro theme should be available in “Installed themes”.

metro-ui-windows7
The look and feel of the theme makes you windows 7 look simple with white all over the place, which might look a bit odd for the first few minutes. You can tweak it using the extra tweaks available in the readme file that comes along with the zip.

Extending the tweak further, feel free to blend it with something like the Metro-inspired Omnimo 4 theme for Rainmeter.

 

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How Microsoft SQL and Oracle Certifications Compare

Which database certification is the most marketable? It is clear when searching online job sites that Oracle, DB2, and SQL Server certifications are what employers are expecting from a qualified database administrator (DBA). Being aware of the different standards for each industry will help you decide which is best for you 70-640 Training .

 

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SQL Server 2008 is the current version and offers progressive certification levels entitled Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS), IT Professional (MCITP), Master (MCM), and Architect (MCA). The MCTS Implementation and Maintenance certification is required for the MCITP DBA exam Microsoft Free MCTS Training and MCTS Online Training.

The MCTS Database Development certification is required for the MCITP Database Developer exam. Both the MCITP DBA and the Database Developer certifications are required for the MCM exam. The MCM certification is required to reach MCA. The MCA certification requires a review board interview conducted by Microsoft. This would be the most marketable certification for someone wanting to move into a senior DBA position at a small to medium size company.
Oracle has historically been the most popular platform for larger companies. It has a balanced presence across all platforms and currently dominates all forms of UNIX. It is a close second to SQL Server on Windows and has been the most marketable certification internationally for years. The Oracle 9i Release 2 certification has three progressive levels of advancement called Associate (OCA), Administrator (OCP), and Master (OCM). An OCM will work best for someone looking forward to joining a large company and is willing to relocate.

DB2 is the platform of choice for most mainframes. It has a significant UNIX and Linux market presence because it runs on almost any operating system. DB2 offers a highly scalable and flexible product in a setting where most of the customer interaction happens through an ATM or kiosk of some kind. These custom devices require custom software and applications that can eventually report to an Oracle or SQL database but cannot run the software themselves.

The progressive certifications for DB2 are IBM Certified Database Associate, Administrator, and Advanced DBA. The Associate level is the prerequisite to the Administrator, which includes DBA for Linux, UNIX, and Windows (LUW), Mainframe DB2 DBA for z/OS, and IBM-Certified Application Developer. These certifications are only for a dedicated DB2 and mainframe professional as DB2 is not marketable is other industries and platforms.

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5 Things Microsoft should do at BUILD

Can you hear it? Can you hear it coming? Microsoft’s Windows developer conference is almost here. BUILD kicks off September 13 in Anaheim, Calif., and it’s going to be big, big, BIG. Microsoft will give Windows 8 its formal unveiling — everything else before was just movie previews. No new Windows version is really official until Microsoft presents it to developers. 70-640 Training .”

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But there’s more. Microsoft moved its annual Financial Analyst Meeting from July to September, coinciding with BUILD. It’s a colossally smart move. Wall Street geeks and technophobes will have chance to get caught up in the energy and enthusiasm of Windows 8 — and Windows Phone “Mango”, too. Microsoft really needs to energize analysts about these products and how they’re not so much the past but vital forces for the so-called post-PC era.

I present five things Microsoft should do next week. These aren’t recommendations, since it’s too close to BUILD for Microsoft to follow my lowly advice. It’s what I expect from Microsoft, if the Windows operating system teams hope to churn up the kind of positive reaction that can ignite developers and spread the fire to Windows enthusiasts and customers.

1. Give everyone Windows 8 slates. No developer, no financial analyst, no news media attendee should leave BUILD without an ultraportable or tablet PC running Windows 8 beta. Hell, Google gave participants to its I/O developer conference Samsung Chromebooks and Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets. Microsoft should do even better.

There’s precedent. PDC 2009 developer attendees received free thin-and-light laptops designed by Microsoft and Acer. These portables were reference designs for developing apps. Microsoft should do at least the same next week.

“Windows 8 slates are great”. Now there’s a slogan.

2. Give all participants Mango smartphones. Why stop at ultrabooks or tablets? The first Mango smartphones are ready to ship, and Microsoft needs to rally developers. What? Microsoft should let its core use iPhones or Androids? Hell, no! Give developers phones and free cellular and data service for a year, if they personally use them. Make it hard to say no. Some wonky bloggers will scream “Bribery!” Frak them. Windows Phone is part of a larger Microsoft ecosystem of products and services (see #3).

3. Introduce a new far-reaching strategy: “Three screens and a cloud” Catchy, eh? For years Microsoft has talked about its three-screen and cloud strategies, separately and loosely connected. With the development and platform changes coming next week, Microsoft should formally and exactly tie together three screens and the cloud.

It’s clear that when looking at XNA, HTML5 and other technologies, Microsoft is rapidly unifying development around Windows 8, Windows Phone, Xbox and its cloud services. The vision must be communicated with absolute clarity and certainty next week, as much for financial analysts as anyone else. They have to see the vision of the Microsoft connected lifestyle. Too many of them drank the Apple Kool-Aid. Don’t believe that? Count how many analysts will be carrying iPhones and MacBook Airs or Pros next week.

4. Unveil a unified Windows marketplace, one place for apps of all varieties — cloud productivity, Internet Explorer 9, Windows Phone, Windows 7/8 and Xbox. Microsoft must present to developers and customers a connected business and personal lifestyle. A unified app store should be one of the experience’s pillars. Developers get the convenience and assured revenue confidence/piracy protection from a single, unified market for all Microsoft platforms.

5. Debut Metro OS. One of Windows 8’s most exciting new benefits is the tile-like Metro desktop UI, which is optimized for touchscreens. But behind it remains Windows legacy code for the seemingly zillions of enterprises and developers needing support for existing apps. Why not break out Metro instead, as a separate operating system? It would be much more than a Windows lite or embedded but much less than the legacy operating system.

Now that Windows will support ARM processors, Metro OS could be adapted for all kinds of touchscreen devices, everything from ATMs, to retail kiosks to tablets. Sure, Microsoft has Windows embedded, but Metro OS would be better because of the emphasis on touch. These third-party products could help sell Windows, too, because people would become used to the tile motif everywhere Microsoft Free MCTS Training and MCTS Online Training.

Metro OS also could extinguish Chrome OS. Google’s browser-based operating system has merit, but the motif is archaic in a touchscreen world. HTML5 already is core to Microsoft’s development approach for Metro UI. How hard would it really be for Metro OS to push Chrome OS into the waste bin?

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Intel Joins the Windows 8 Developer Push

IDF takes place at the same time as BUILD, and the Wintel alliance (for now) is linking arms to reach out to developers Microsoft 70-640 Training .”.

If you’re going to Intel’s Developer Forum next week and want to know what’s up with Windows 8, good news: you don’t have to jet down to Anaheim, Microsoft has got you covered at IDF, too.

 

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As we all know, the Microsoft BUILD conference takes place next week in Anaheim, California (just across the street from Disneyland). BUILD is a rollup of PDC and WinHEC, so it’s the show for developers to attend. At the same time, Intel is hosting the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco.

This may present a quandary for some people, but thankfully, Microsoft and Intel are coordinating this rather well. For those of you attending IDF, you can get yourself at least some info on Windows 8. As for a beta, well, we still don’t know if one will come out at BUILD (although I’d be shocked if it didn’t happen). The most likely scenario is that you can register to get the beta while at IDF.

The information comes courtesy of Intel’s IDF site, which lists a few notable sessions involving Microsoft (click on the Technical Session Catalog and search for Microsoft). The biggest one comes on Wednesday, where Microsoft will deliver a session on Windows 8 called “Microsoft Windows 8 on Intel Architecture.” This session will be the look at Windows 8 and discuss “the work both companies are undertaking to deliver this new compute experience.”

Most of the sessions are reserved for Thursday, the last day of IDF. I’ve seen how attendance falls off on day 3 of IDF and question whether that’s a good idea, but maybe it was all they had Microsoft Free MCTS Training and MCTS Online Training.

The two companies will host a session called “Hot Topic Q&A: Intel and Microsoft – Windows 8.” Microsoft will have three representatives, Intel will have two engineers.

Another session on Thursday will be “Microsoft Windows Platform Evolution and UEFI Requirements.” UEFI stands for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface and will finally replace the creaky old BIOS firmware that has been in PCs for more than 30 years. The session will talk about the latest Windows 8 platform requirements including UEFI boot and security features.

The final session on Thursday will be “Integrating Intel Platform Capabilities on Microsoft Windows Security Architecture.” Intel will detail improvements in the Windows security architecture and how Intel hardware will work with the next-generation of Windows.

Sure sounds like a beta is coming, doesn’t it?

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Microsoft’s 5 biggest weaknesses 2

Search, mobile devices, the Web and even the desktop represent challenges for Redmond
*There are more than 45,000 registered Windows Phone developers.

*Customers have access to nearly 30,000 apps and games on Windows Phone Marketplace, with an average of 100 added each day Microsoft 70-640 Training .”
4. The desktop

 

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Arguing that Windows is a weakness takes some work. Really, it is a potential weakness, but an important one because it is also Microsoft’s greatest strength. The 80% to 90% market share Windows holds on desktops and laptops is the reason Microsoft has direct access to most of the personal computing users on Earth, so even small percentage drops in sales are problematic. Windows 7 has sold more than 400 million copies, but revenue declined 2% in the fiscal year that ended June 30.

While Windows 8 will be optimized for both PCs and tablets, Microsoft is holding off on any big announcements regarding the next OS until the BUILD conference in mid-September.

“With a $32 billion chunk of Microsoft’s business (Windows Client and Office combined) dependent upon Windows 8’s long-term success, it is a fair statement that Windows 8 may well be one of the biggest bets any company has made in a long time,” Gillen writes in a new IDC paper titled “Getting Back in the Game: Can Windows 8 Reverse Microsoft’s Position?”

There have been various arguments that the PC is dead, but a more accurate description comes from 41-year IBM veteran Irving Wladawsky-Berger, who says the PC is the new mainframe: still profitable, but no longer the center of innovation.

Innovation is happening in cloud computing, and smartphones and tablets. With Microsoft struggling to gain any foothold in mobile devices, the biggest immediate danger to the Windows franchise is that smartphone and tablet buyers will delay the purchases of their next PCs.

It’s hard to imagine large segments of the population doing without PCs entirely, but someone who spends hours each day with a smartphone or tablet might wait five to seven years to buy a new desktop or laptop. The 10-year-old Windows XP is still the most widely used version of Windows, after all. And as more people buy Androids, iPhones and iPads, Microsoft’s share of all Internet-connected devices will erode.

“All the competitors would like to have you think that next year Microsoft hits the wall and the PC business is cut in half,” Gillen says. “That is not what’s going to happen. What is happening is we have a proliferation of other devices that are competing with Windows for mindshare. But at the end of the day, users, especially business users, need PCs.”

Microsoft should position the PC as the hub for all other devices to connect to, from phones to television sets. The company should also consider building more software for non-Microsoft platforms, if it wants users to interact with Microsoft software no matter which device they are using. One key change Microsoft is embracing is the ARM chip architecture, popular in mobile devices and which Windows will now support in addition to Intel x86 processors.

One rumor is that Microsoft and hardware partners will build an ARM-powered laptop with a removable screen that becomes a tablet when separated from the keyboard. One Microsoft advantage is that all the rich applications running on Windows will be available to tablets. But Microsoft will need a user interface that is a compelling alternative to the simplicity of the iPad, and provide strong battery life and quick if not instant startup time Microsoft Free MCTS Training and MCTS Online Training..

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Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) exam 70-640

There’s an unprecedented role of Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) Microsoft 70-640 Training in the gamut of industries. Organizations with Microsoft solutions, especially are better positioned to prosper even in the troubled times like these. Not merely enterprise but at individual level Microsoft Certified Professionals (MCPs) have reaped most of the benefits in comparison with any information technology vendor. As the economies are not any healthier yet and professionals are also facing downturn in different regions of the globe, Microsoft technologies, still, are well placed to lend security, stability and efficiency to both certified professionals and businesses.

 

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That said, having decided to pursue Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) track or respective exams brings a hard consideration of estimated cost, time span and failure and success. After taking MCTS certification path, your commitment for gaining the credential is the key that would take you there. Failure after months of work out in course training and breaking busy day to day schedule does not feel good at the same time. Leave alone the loads of money gone into buying courseware and books. You may have conceptual understanding and hands-on lab experience with training and book study but achieving the certification in the first go requires something else as well.

The candidates who are applying for the MCTS certification exam should have prior experience in computer field by addressing logon problems, performing password resets, and resolving the desktop applications. Those who are very good in these areas can have these MCTS certifications without any problem. The future of the certification will be very good and more demand will be there for MCTS certified professional. There are lots and lots of products that are developed with Microsoft Technology. Microsoft develops products which is very helpful for the users.

In the IT industry, the one who maintain responsibility should have updated experience about the product. IT industry will expect skilled professionals who have good knowledge and skills about a particular product. The professionals should be able to handle the whole network of the company. These professionals are important in the IT industry and getting more updates daily is the best way to prove your skills and knowledge over a particular product of Microsoft Free MCTS Training and MCTS Online Training.