Microsoft Windows

Mozilla Firefox 3 hits. My grandma uses it.

I am so posting this in Mozilla Firefox 3 right now. And I’m pretty happy about that.

Sure, Opera rolled along a few years ago and made the point that a decent product could put a slight dent in Microsoft Internet Explorer’s market share.

But things lit up a bit yesterday with news that Firefox now has a whopping 19% market share.

A lot of people I know have used Firefox for a while. But that’s just demographics. Everybody I know is voting for Obama, too – I’m 20-something in Massachusetts here, after all.

Nineteen percent, though? Is my grandma using Firefox?

I’ve just downloaded this (note to my IT guys: That’s cool, right?). So there hasn’t been much time to get a feel for performance and new features. The Mozilla folks have put together this handy little guide, though.

From a consumer perspective, this thing still won’t run Netflix instant watch movies. Maybe that’s Netflix’s call? You might want to check if it works with any SaaS applications before conducting a large-scale deployment.

Then again, facing a 19% market share, maybe the people selling SaaS applications should be checking in with Firefox.

Microsoft Windows XP users need a shoulder to cry on

Apparently, customers are supposed to be happy that Microsoft is going to support its most successful OS for another six years.

If you haven’t already, you really should take a look at Microsoft Senior Vice President Bill Veghte’s letter telling customers that yes, they’re going to have to take Windows Vista sooner or later.

As a PR man, Veghte is masterful. It as if he begins by rubbing a hand on the crying customer’s back, a pat here and there, assuring him that “It’s alright, we’re going to issue Windows XP updates until April 2014.”

“So I can keep buying computers with XP?” the hopeful customer asks, lifting his reddened eyes from his palms and turning his head toward Veghte, who is crouched next to him.

“Well, no,” Veghte says. “But you can buy Vista and then maybe Dell or HP will help you downgrade to XP. When you realize we’re not exactly staying up at night working on XP updates, you can just come back to Vista.”

“Oh,” he adds. “Did you know Windows 7 will be out in about 18 months? It’s really great. And it runs on the same architecture as Vista, so even though you’ll just then finally be migrated to Vista, it won’t be as much work to get into the new OS.”

“Well, if you put it that way,” the customer says, his crying subsiding, “I guess I’ll just get on with my Vista migration now.”

Is Vista security better? Yes, probably. Does it support most critical applications? Yep.

Still, customers aren’t clamoring for it. So Microsoft will just keep forcing it on them. Last day for new XP machines is Monday.

“Windows Vista was a very ambitious release,” Veghte writes in his four-page letter.

And writing a novel is a very ambitious plan for me. But I don’t kick open my roommate’s bedroom door, point an automatic pistol at him, make him read the thing and then make him beg - nay, scream - for a sequel.

Bill Gates’ not so big exit

Legacies are a funny thing.

Take Hugh Grant. Director Richard Curtis, in the DVD commentary to his film Love Actually, claims a shot of Grant bowing on stage will be the final image in the actor’s nightly news obituary someday.

Grant, also on the commentary, disagrees. He expects the big fadeout will be his 1995 mug shot.

Bill Gates has managed to avoid such an embarrassing stain, but how he’ll be recalled is still up in the air.

Increasingly, it seems Gates – who leaves his full-time job at Microsoft this week – will be remembered for his philanthropy.

Here’s the first line of Gates’ Wikipedia biography: “William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955), is an American business magnate, philanthropist, the world’s third richest man (as of 2008), and chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen.”

Those outside the technology world are apt to think of Gates as “The guy that dropped out of Harvard, started Microsoft and then gave away a lot of his money.”

Inside tech, he’s more often the guy that makes “love to hate, hate to love” sort of products. And somewhere in the recesses of everybody’s memory is that time he was accused of trying to make everybody buy them.

Gates has hit the interview circuit pretty hard this week. These aren’t exit interviews in the traditional sense. We certainly haven’t heard the last of Bill Gates (“I’m not a sit-on-the-beach type,” he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer).

And even though he won’t be inside Microsoft and claims he won’t return, we’ll likely still see Gates pitch H-1B visas on Capitol Hill and acting as a tech industry bellwether.

Judging from a quick skim of the interviews, Gates seems to be pretty well in control of his legacy. Not everybody will always love the guy at the top. But barring any run-ins with Divine Brown, his obit is looking pretty clean.

Microsoft Vista, not so popular

I know, I know, I know that people love to hate on Microsoft and Windows Vista in particular.

So when I wrote yesterday on SearchCIO-Midmarket.com about whether CIOs might skip Vista and wait for Windows 7, I figured I’d get an email or two.

And I did. But something was a bit different. Usually, when we get emails about stories they come from thinly veiled PR firms. “Hey Zach, loved your story on virtualization. You know, it got me thinking about my favorite new email client that is inexpensive and easy to install for the midmarket.” Junk like that.

The real comments either come anonymously or from personal email addresses. It’s obvious the writer wants to speak his mind, but that this is a one-way street.

Not so this time. Emails are coming in from work addresses, signed from IT managers and other CIO-like higher-ups. I’m not going to publish a writer’s name here today, but here’s a selection of the comments: Continued »

New Firefox browser nearing release

Mozilla has announced that Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is scheduled for the end of May. A code freeze was implemented late last week, forcing programmers to scramble to make last-minute changes and stomp out any bugs that still exist.

Release candidates are typically the final stages of development before the new software is pushed out to users.

The latest beta version – Firefox Beta 3.5 – was released in early April and, in my experience, the results of that version weren’t exactly stellar.

Techworld notes that Mark Schroepfer, vice president of engineering, posted to Mozilla’s development blog this weekend, “The release candidates will move a little slower than beta.” The reason, according to Techworld, is because of “the need to account for more public feedback than with earlier builds.”

Or, as one friend posted succinctly to his Twitter stream: “Firefox 3 beta 5 = fail.”

I wonder if Schroepfer saw a lot of that and decided to urge his company into a more cautious route.

Personally, I’m still a Beta or two behind 5. But even the Firefox 3 beta that I use to surf the Interwebs daily is a little buggy. From time to time it freezes or just decides to shut down on its own. That said, I’m a lot happier with my latest version instead of Firefox 2, which routinely froze and forced me to reset my user preferences: Losing my bookmarks and history several times a day got old quickly.

Vista steps into users’ crosshairs

There’s a scene in the classic film South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut that finds an army colonel’s holograph machine cutting out as he discusses strategy with his troops. Long story short, it is Windows 98’s fault. Bill Gates gets shot in the head. 

But now the colonel’s frustrations have returned, nearly a decade later, when faced with Windows Vista. The New York Times’ tech blog last week got into the “Save Windows XP” campaign, which is perpetuated by users who don’t want to be stuck with Vista when XP contracts are phased out. 

I’ve got half a mind to sign up myself. I use Vista on my home computer, and I can’t say I’m thrilled. 

Two things:

1. Startup is slow. More memory, you say? Forget it. I use the thing to surf the Internet, listen to music and watch Netflix On Demand (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is so great it hurts). I don’t need more memory. I need an OS that gets out of the way.

2. What’s with all the notices and pop-ups? I understand this is all for my own good and computer security. But I’m not dim. And I have my own security software. Yes, I can customize this. But not easily. I tried a few times and realized that beating Vista into submission has achieved “project level,” something I need to tackle on a weekend afternoon. 

Here’s a bit from the Times’ blog:  “Mr. [Christopher] Liddell [Microsoft’s CFO] dismissed claims that some customers were reluctant to buy Vista machines. ‘There are no Vista-related issues at all,’ he declared. ”