Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’

Google and the Limits of Love

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

I like Google.

I never liked Microsoft. Windows has never given me much trouble, but it is nothing elegant. MSWord I use every day, and detest – clunky, and filled with bells & whistles I will never use. (Alas, I pine in vain for the long lost simplicity of WordStar.)

I never liked Apple. I’m sure their stuff works great, but Mac fans are so preachy, and the 1960s moderne styling doesn’t move me. Anyway I don’t want Steve Jobs deciding what apps I can run.

I like Google. What’s not to like? Its free! The front page and search results are clean, not tarted up. The ads don’t waste my machine’s bandwidth, or mine. The search results are pretty good. They haven’t beaten SEO spam yet, but has Bing?

My other blog uses Blogger, and though I have separate hosting, Blogger itself is also free, and for my minimalist approach to froufrou it gives me all the tools I need, with only fairly rare glitches.

But when the comment registration button on a blog asked me to join Google Friend, I passed up the opportunity to be closer friends with Google. I have Chrome, but still use Firefox as my default browser. As much as I dislike MSWord, I’m not inclined to switch to Google Docs.

I like Google, but I’m not so in love that I want to become dependent on them.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Cloud Computing, Search, Social Media | 3 Comments »

Thanksgiving Leftovers

Sunday, November 29th, 2009
  • Finally, a conspiracy theory I can believe in. Lee Gomes speculates in Forbes that the whole Vista fiasco was a marketing ploy by Microsoft to drive sales of well-received Windows 7. After all, says Gomes, the biggest selling point of many Microsoft releases is that they fix the flaws of the previous release. (Ba-da-Bing!)
  • Meanwhile, Microsoft is establishing a cloud presence. It has spent $500 million for a data center near Chicago, where 400,000 servers will run on Microsoft’s Azure operating system. But to compete in the cloud, Microsoft will have to build a new business model as well, in place of those software upgrades that have served it so well.
  • And nuclear power struggles to make a comeback. In a section devoted to energy, Technology Review looks at nuclear’s prospects 30 years after Three Mile Island. (No full free access.) The industry’s challenges now are mainly financial. Only large plants are economical, but their high front end price is a barrier, given the uncertain future cost of other power sources.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Cloud Computing, Energy, Productivity Software | 2 Comments »

The March of Time: Hello, Windows 7; Goodbye, GeoCities

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Windows 7 is out, and getting good reviews. Even the reviews that go looking for faults don’t seem to be finding that many.

A cynic would say to just give it time; Vista also got some good early reviews. But perhaps Microsoft learned from Vista. When all else fails, falling flat on your face can be instructive; it works for the rest of us.

Anyway, it is not as easy to hate Microsoft as it used to be. Apple has gone from cult to hot, Windows Mobile lags, and Google is everyone’s next world conqueror.

But Windows is not going away. Probably it will run on my next desktop, and there’s a good chance it will be running on yours. Perhaps everything will eventually get beamed up into the cloud, but a lot of people will still want or need a powerful local machine and an operating system to run it.

For most of us, for the next few years, that will mean Windows 7. I don’t need to think about it till I upgrade my machine, but if you deal with desktop computing at the enterprise level you need to start thinking about it now.

Meanwhile, GeoCities closed its doors, providing an occasion for sentimental commentary about this ancestor of Web 2.0. The Web, as it turns out, is not forever after all. Many people might be just as happy that their old GeoCities homepage, abandoned ‘under construction’ years ago, has finally disappeared. If they even remember they ever had it.

Just remember that one day your Facebook page may also be half forgotten, then disappear.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Productivity Software | 3 Comments »