Categories
Microsoft

Surface and Metro – Microsoft’s Last Big Hope

Microsoft held a big press event Monday evening to unveil their next big product – a tablet PC they call Microsoft Surface1. It’s a big gamble for them, but, it’s one they badly need to take in order to stay relevant. Also, Surface looks, really, really nice.

Categories
Microsoft

My Impressions on Windows 7

I’ve been using a Lenovo ThinkPad T61 Widescreen as my primary work computer for going on 2.5 years, and I’ve been very happy with it. It’s no Macbook Pro, but it’s about as good as it gets for a non-Apple laptop: Fast, well-built, reliable, good technical support, and has a great keyboard. But in that […]

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Microsoft

Perceptions and the “Mojave Experiment”

Quick – What do you think of Windows Vista? Next question – Have you ever used Windows Vista?

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Microsoft

Business and the Microsoft Platform

It’s no secret that I’ve had my doubts about Microsoft in the past. But since becoming in charge of everything IT at the small business I helped start a couple of years ago, you could say that I’ve had something of a change of heart. At home and with any freelance work I do, it’s […]

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Business

Guerrilla Data Analysis using Pivot Charts in Microsoft Access 2007

Until last Friday, it had been almost a full decade since I last launched a copy of Microsoft Access. I spent a fair amount of my undergraduate career getting familiar with it and the concepts of relational databases, and SQL, but once I started working with full-featured database servers like Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server, […]

Categories
Mobile

The Open Handset Alliance, or Why Open Standards are for Losers

So Google made a big announcement on Monday about the much hyped gPhone, or lack thereof. For what seems like years now, people have been speculating about an ad-supported phone to be given away by Google. Reality turned out to be a little more boring, but much more significant than a free phone. Android The […]

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Google

Google’s Collaboration Agenda

Timed with the release of their web-based presentation application (aka, Presently), Google just published this video which does an awesome job of explaining one of the big problems that their Google Docs suite of programs aims to solve: Everyone is eager to compare “Google Office” with Microsoft Office, and while I feel that comparison is […]

Categories
North Dakota

Power Hungry

I was thinking recently about the tech companies needing huge data centers: the Googles, Microsofts, Yahoos, Limelight Networks, and Akamais of the world. These businesses depend on reliable sources of energy to stay operational and really need to worry about natural disasters affecting the ability to offer their online services. If you think about it, […]

Categories
Microsoft

Prediction: You Won’t Be Using Windows In 10 Years

Here’s my prediction: In ten years (by the end of 2015), the majority of computer users will not be using Microsoft Windows as their operating system. What will we be using instead? My bets are on Mac OS X and Linux. Like I’ve mentioned before, I think Microsoft’s best days are behind it. It’s too […]