Posts by The Original Steve 667 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jun 2009
Pat 5845077 maybe obvious to you now, but 15 years ago? (Which is when it was filed to the US PTO)
When Windows NT was only just taking off and networks were pretty much exclusive for the large enterprise rather than for a 2 man band upwards.
Not saying it's right, but I disagree 5845077 was obvious mid 1995.
Why on earth are you reviewing on such old hardware / platform? 2.2 is just around the corner and whilst most people are using Hero's and the like the Desire is taking off a storm (2 week waiting list on Orange) and 1Ghz Snapdragon will be the defacto in 6 months time.
Got my desire 2 weeks ago and if you think I'm likely to be installing any of that 1980's style crap on my handset you can think again. If I showed any of that off to my mates to show what the phone can do and why they need not install iTunes and get shafted by Mr Jobs I'd be laughed out of the pub.
Agree with the earlier poster - this article just puts Android in poor light compared to the iPhone/Touch. I'd never get one, but this article doesn't exactly help anyone on the fence to opt for the OSS route...
Any reviews in the pipeline that make use of the new hardware specs in the Desire?
Nearly £2k but it doesn't do DLNA video streaming, "standard" out of the box doesn't look any better than your test Samsung and no 24p for BluRay.
You must be joking. £800 for a Sony Bravia with the missing bits above and 3 year warranty.
For twice the cost of the above Sony I want the full feature set, yellow pixel AND 3D.
Um, think you need to check your facts before putting people down...
http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/nokia-for-business/messaging
HTML email is supported, I have multiple access points on my E72, can create / accept / decline meetings, folder support, Exchange 2010 supported, set out of office from the handset....
Any more bullshit you care to flow from your articles into the comments?
But thanks for sharing.
If you want messaging to "just work" on the cheap and also nice and easy then WinMo is the best option. Just don't get a touch screen and put your fingers in your ears when the users moan about the UI.
Whilst I still would prefer WinMo for our handsets, we opted for Nokia E series. Mainly E51 and 71's...
Excellent handsets. Mail for Exchange isn't bad - although not as good as WinMo. Supports encryption "apps", lock down, remote wipe, better UI than WinMo and cheaper than Blackberry.
Haven't had much time for BB - doesn't appear to do a great deal more than Exchange 2010 does yet costs a bomb for enterprise deployments and the handsets are quite pricy too.
Got a Sony Bravia last year and started playing with the connected features. I don't even have it connected anymore - no point.
Got a xbox 360 attached to the Bravia that has a wireless connection to my Win7 PC. The Xbox will stream content beautifully. Bravia over DLNA seems to have a hell of a lot of artifacts in same video...?! Other than crap DLNA local streaming the only "online" offerings are things like a calculator, world clock, picture frame etc...! WTF?! Great for developers beta testing, not so useful in the real world.
Personally I'd rather all TV's simply have the ability to be a Windows Media Centre Extender built into it, YouTube and access to the main 5 VoD players (iPlayer, iTV Player, C5 On Demand, 4oD and SkyPlayer).
Over the years google has become less and less "good" at giving me the results I want near the top.
Now Bing isn't perfect either - not by a long shot - however there's nothing - for the results I want - to distinguish between them, and I prefer Bing's interface more than Google so opt for former.
Still Google now and then, but Bing is my first port of call now. Great thing having some choice in the market - it's up to me! :-)
"They're even linking to information about EFI, which allows a normal PC to run OSX **ILLEGALLY** on non-Apple hardware."
The same way that a DVD RW allows me to copy films **ILLEGALLY**.
EFI is an Intel Technology - NOTHING to do with Apple. It's used in Itanium systems I believe. So what's wrong with including EFI with a machine? Not's Apple's tech...
See: www.intel.com/technology/efi
"How will OSX work - it's not Apple hardware"
OSX runs on commodity x86 hardware. Couse it will work. People have it running on standard PC's, on netbooks, servers etc. Get over yourself - OS X is nothing special or unique. (Unless you count Apple's marketing dept. which I realy admire as it's their biggest asset)
"You cannot legally buy and run OSX on non-Apple hardware"
I can legally buy OSX if I want. Their EULA says I shouldn't install it on non-Apple hardware, but the clue is in the title... EU stands for End-User. Unless the hardware reseller installs it for them it's not a problem...
Common sense really applies. We all know that servers generally don't need anywhere near the resources allocated to them 95% of the time - hence why virtualisation is popular.
Bog standard Windows 2008 box generally has 2Gb RAM "allocated", 1 CPU assigned and shares a 4Gbps pipe with about 8 other servers. Anything a bit heavy (multiple roles, maybe an appserver for Oracle forms etc.) then it gets another 2Gb RAM and another CPU.
For managing the resource then VMWare VCentre does all that for me really. I split the farm into 3 priority groups and technically any spare resouce can be allocated to a demanding VM guest on demand should it require more juice.
If the host doesn't have enough then it gets moved via DRS to another host who can provide the relevant power...
Simples.
So MS can spend a couple of years designing a new platform... either a flexible, customisable platform with lots of developer support but the UI can be bastardised by OEM's or dev's - or they focus on design and a cracking UI but drop features that developers want.
MS historically have sided slightly in towards the dev side of things, but have UI/end user as a close second.
For the last 7 years or so I've just wiped any machine I get. Consumer or business, I don't want anything from the OEM other than the E "equipment". Found that whilst Microsoft's UI efforts leave a lot of be desired, they are very usable and have good developer support. OEM's and 3rd party apps destroy any effort for a consistant UI.
The success of the iPhone shows that users ultimatly don't care about software, OEM branding etc. They want a clean UI first and foremost, with functionality to follow as long as the UI is clean.
MS are damned if they do, damned if they don't...
... Until they go screaming to the geek in another 12 months time saying "I can't view stuff online, my new applications don't work and my new printer doesn't have a driver for my 10 year old PC.".
And being the geek that told them to ditch XP 2 years previously I'll say... "I told you so".
The IT world is not based around a few tight arsed consumers who don't care about anything other than stretching out the life of an 8 year old purchase. Times change. Technology changes. And I for one will not left people who hold that sort of attitude change the progression of technology as a whole for everyone else.
They want 8 year old hardware running a 10 year old OS running without modern security protections (UAC, ALSR, DEP) then that's up to them. However lambasting the worlds biggest technology company as they won't support it doesn't help anyone.
Sooner people more off XP and onto OS X / Ubuntu / Windows Vista or 7 the better it will be for everyone as a whole. From a security and compatibility point of view at the least.
As title. We shell out to extend the warranty on the desktops/laptops though so we're covered throughout.
Nearly every app we use is reasonably lightweight (Office, Web apps, or lightweight niche apps) so it's more to do with reliability than power/performance.
We do mix things up a little with a thin clients connected to our Citrix farm for production, and we also use Citrix to deploy some apps like our ERP for occasional users. That means we then roll out the first batch of new PC's to the heavy ERP users.
Just brought 50 new Wyse terminals though as I'm looking at rolling out thin clients to the very lightweight office users. Mid - heavy users will stick with a PC though.
Win7 and Vista through and through.
I slagged the iPhone for not having something my staple Symbian based platform of choice has had for years and years - yet the more I think about it... I can't remember the last time I used C&P. Even for SSH, browsing the web etc... My Nokia's in recent years detect phone numbers, URL's and email addresses and provides context when selected such as to navigate / save to bookmark for URL's, add as a contact or call for number etc...
Yet before that I never used C&P anyway...
Was big on getting a WP7 handset at launch, but I'm more likely to hold off until the reviews are out I think. If MS promised the next release or two post RTM of the first one will be accessible and free then I'd jump straight onboard - but I'm not committing until I know I can get future enhancements I think...
For Gods sake... it's people like you who make me wish Microsoft didn't charge for their software just so you could actually try it... which obviously you haven't.
A copy and paste from a Linux forum talking about Vista does you no credit.
I can't even be bothered to reply to the vague and total bollocks "points" you make.
...but funding two channels? 10 years ago the kids programmes were shown between 3 and 6pm. Not saying thats rights, but the kids stuff years ago has moved to TWO channels, whilst BBC Onc and ITV around that time now show even MORE cooking and home programmes...
How about people look after their kids than relying on a channel babysitting them? Not saying there is anything wrong with a kids channel - that's fine, but two is just a waste of money.
Kids aside, I would have thought the daytime playlist on Radio 1 and Radio 2 easily incorporate 6Music. Would keep everyone happy.
The Beeb's content is woefully thin. Primetime is normally a mix of shite reality shows and soaps. That's BBC One - BBC is poor quality comedy, BBC Three (aimed at my demographic) is lost on me and I can't listen to 6Music due to coverage.
I mean there's TWO kids channels, BBC News, BBC Parliment, BBC One, Two, Three, Four, at least 8 national radio stations as well as local radio. I'm still shocked there are seperate stations for Black (1Xtra) and Asian (Asian Network) stations....! Seriously?! What's next, BBC Christian radio? BBC Gay Radio? Why the seperation? What a waste of money.
Same with BBC Switch and the other one. Some of the shite spewed out of the Radio One playlist (mainly XFactor and plastic 1 year wonder 'artists') already covers the 12 - 16 year olds that are coverered by Switch. Why rebrand stuff and shove it into Radio One and BBC Two for a few hours a week?
BBC Two has been sucked dry by BBC Three and BBC Four - neither of which grab my attention.
I rather like the BBC Website, although it's bloody enormous and I'm sure you can trim it down / save costs without removing the decent content.
All makes sense to me - trim down the crap and sidelines, focus back on the core whilst keeping the technology, diversity and quality as high as possible.
If you can't keep the quality high enough across 4 TV channels and 5 national stations why do you think you can do it across even more stations?
"They want a shiny device that works as advertised. The iPhone does. "
Completely agree. I mean what they say it will do is very limited but at least it does it
"Windows Mobile never has, and never will."
WM - in particular recent 6.x releases have worked very well. Ask the thousands of enterprise customers. (DHL, Warehousing companies etc.)
And I'm amazed you have such an insight into the future. From speculation and educated guesses, the kernel is the same but updated (I assume), yet the GUI is completely redone. In fact it's close to a total rewrite. Yet you already know this will fail? Amazing... What's the lottery numbers?
"At least you can upgrade the iPhones OS!"
Depends on the model... Tried putting the "3GS" OS on a 1st gen iPhone?
And yes - you can do it on WM. Upgraded a WM 5 Symbol device (testing some for our warehouse operation) to 6.1 last week.
"I've yet to see a copy and paste functionality as elegantly done as on a phone as it is on the iPhone. It works extremely well."
I should think so. It's had nearly 10 years to copy the competition - if it STILL couldn't do it then i'd be gobsmacked.
"As many others have noted, not all platforms are so vulnerable to trojans, virii, malware etc"
Indeed. However you are also sacrificing usability for security. It's a 3 way trade off, security, usability and flexibilty.
Mac: V. User friendly, reasonable security but below par flexibility
Linux: Poor usability, Excellent security and the best flexibility
Windows: Average on all 3
Guess which one most people pick...?
Is there a particular feature the latest release of Windows should include from a security standpoint? I'd love to hear it.
Firewall, PatchGuard, UAC, ALSR, DEP, IE Protected Mode, Automatic updates etc...
What more do you want? The answer is for every OS to be shipped with a bearded geek who lives in a basement smelling of piss to lock down root with a complex password, setup the system give the user a "user" account and periodically come back to install stuff they need without giving them the password.
Yes - my point is that you are once again a bullshit spouting fanboi. FOSS has a fuck load of holes. Check out Firefox's history after v3, a recent shitload of suprisingly well reported Linux holes, OOo still flaky as hell etc.
Think more of popularity and the user base than the technology fuckknuckle. A Vista or Win7 box, default config without a user is pretty hard to root as well as your fugly "X Server" running on your command line platform...
It's people like you that tell users to stay on XP as it's easy to use rather than getting people to UNDERSTAND that no platform is secure and it's how you look after it. Once they get that - which I think most people would agree is the key to internet hygeine and security - then for most people without a uber-geek by their sides would look at a Mac or Windows as their first choices.
"Spouting Linux is the best" and moving users over without getting them to understand how to use the tool in front of them is marginally improving security whilst dumbing down users ability to look after their system even more.
Why the bitching about the lack of a 5.1 output? The point of HDMI is to output audio and video over the one high-bandwidth pipe... Otherwise Dell would just have a DVI port instead.
Also - whilst comparing Apple to Dell:
2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x1GB
160GB Serial ATA Drive
SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Apple Mouse
Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad - British
Total Cost: £574
AMD X2 6850E 1.8GHz 512k
4096MB Dual Channel DDR2 800MHz [2x2048] Memory
640GB (7200rpm) SATA Hard Drive
ATI Radeon™ HD 4330 512MB graphics
8X DVD+/- RW Optical Drive (DVD & CD read and write)
Dell Multimedia Wireless Keyboard & Mouse Black - UK/Irish
Mouse Included in Wireless Keyboard and Mouse option
Total Cost: £520
Yeah, the Mini has the CPU edge, but wow - what a price difference in what you get...
Cause at the end of the day, most SME's (which make up the majority of IT Dept's) don't give a shit about the "ethics" or licence details - they want an application that works.
Most people don't care, and segregation between closed and open souce is one of the most pointless things in the world. The fact there is such a long article that doesn't really say much annoys me hugely.
If your looking for a free database, then naturally most geeks would think MySQL, Oracle One, SQL Server Express and maybe some other smaller FOSS players.
But at the end of the day, I'll pick which ever one integrates with the rest of my applications, management tools and is the easiest ot use.
Closed source companies charge per licence including support what a lot of the FOSS vendors charge for support - so it's not about money.
Oracle have their way of doing things. So does Microsoft. FOSS doesn't - it depends on what app it is, who developed it, when it was written, what licence it's under etc.
The biggest reason FOSS has grown has been down to the fact that a company doesn't need to build their CRM/appliance/management application from scratch - they can use someone elses for free, read up on it for a week and then tweak till it's perfect. Saved months or even years of work, saved the licence fee from Microsoft, Oracle, etc. and all they need to do is whack in a "some parts of this product are licenced under the GPLV2. As such we are obligated to provide parts of the source code upon request. Please write to ..... for a copy".
Some developers, and a few evangalists care - the rest of us just want the cheapest software that integrates the best. Open or Closed.
We didn't move to Cisco when we rebuilt our data centres due to cost, complexity and lock-in.
Using HP for switches and L3 routing between VLANS and Juniper for security, WAN optimisation and core routing. Using a completely seperate FOSS management tool for both HP and Juniper, and all devices talk to each other wondefully. No integration mess - everything just worked.
Haven't looked back - open standards (Juniper and HP) FTW!
... Dell and IBM's networking is either non-existant or woeful.
ProCurve, for switches at least is very, very good. They lacked a routing or security appliance when we moved from 3Com to ProCurve so we're using Juniper for our routers and firewalls, however the ProCurve's do a great job including Layer 3 routing between VLANs, superb management and very open when it comes to standards.
However the boss blagged a couple of the high-end switches from Dell. Awful management interface and not exactly reliable either.
Believe Dell just OEM some cheap chinese kit which is substandard, whereas HP own and develop their own networking stack.
Can't really comment on IBM but they aren't exactly the first company that spings to mind for enterprise network kit.
Our HP and Juniper estate works very well, and is a fraction of the cost of a Cisco setup. (Although we do use just Dell servers running ESX! :-))
Is here:
Access 2003
Access 2003 (Español)
Access 2007
Compute Cluster Pack
Compute Cluster Pack SDK
Exchange Server 2007 Enterprise Edition
Exchange Server 2007 Standard Edition
Expression Blend
Expression Studio
Expression Web
InfoPath 2003
InfoPath 2003 Toolkit for Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005
InfoPath 2007
ISA Server 2006 Enterprise Edition
MapPoint 2004 European Edition - Setup Disk (1/2)
MapPoint 2004 European Edition - Run Disk (2/2)
MapPoint 2004 North America - Setup Disk (1/2)
MapPoint 2004 North America - Run Disk (2/2)
MELL - Developer Edition for MSDNAA
MSDN Library - April 2007 (DVD)
MSDN Library - May 2660 - CD1
MSDN Library - May 2660 - CD2
MSDN Library - May 2660 - CD3
Office Groove 2007
Office Groove Server 2007
Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise
Office SharePoint Server 2007 Standard
OneNote 2003
OneNote 2007
Project Professional 2003
Project Professional 2007
Project Server 2003
SharePoint Designer 2007
SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition - 32-bit - CD1
SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition - 32-bit - CD2
SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition - 64-bit Extended - CD1
SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition - 64-bit Extended - CD2
SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition - 64-bit Extended - DVD
SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition - 64-bit Itanium - DVD
SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition - 32-bit -0 DVD
Virtual PC 2004
Visio for Enterprise Architects
Visio Professional 2003 (Español)
Visio Professional 2007
Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition
Visual C# 2005 Express Edition
Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition
Visual J# .NET
Visual j# 2005 Express Edition
Visual SourceSafe 6.0d
Visual Studio .NET 2003 Professional - Full Install
Visual Studio .NET 2005 Professional - Full Install
Visual Studio .NET 2002 - ISO Image - CD1 (Español)
Visual Studio .NET 2002 - ISO Image - CD2 (Español)
Visual Studio .NET 2002 - ISO Image - CD3 (Español)
Visual Studio .NET 2002 - ISO Image - CD4 (Español)
Visual Studio .NET 2002 - ISO Image - CD5 (Español)
Visual Studio .NET 2002 (Full) (Español)
Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition CD1
Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition CD2
Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition CD1
Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition CD2
Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Trial Edition
Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite - CD1
Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite - CD2
Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite - CD3
Visual Studio 2005 Team Test Load Agent Beta 2
Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the Microsoft Office System
Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition (x86 and x64 WoW) - DVD
Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition
Windows Embedded CE 6.0 DVD
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition - 64 Bit
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition (Español)
Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition
Windows Server 2003 Web Edition
Windows Services for UNIX 3.0
Windows Vista Business 64bit DVD
Windows Vista Business CD1
Windows Vista Business CD2
Windows Vista Business CD3
Windows Vista Business CD4
Windows Vista Business CD5
Windows Vista Business DVD
Windows XP Embedded
Windows XP Professional (Single User)
Windows XP Professional (Single User) 64bit Edition
Windows XP Professional (Single User) ISO Image (Español)
Windows XP Professional (Single User) ISO Image (Japanese)
Windows XP Professional with SP1a (Single User) ISO Image
Windows XP Professional with SP2 (Single User) ISO Image
Cutting edge it's not - but that's still a hell of a lot of software to be given away for free. SQL 2005, VSTS, VS 2008, Windows 2003, Vista and XP, Exchange, SharePoint, Expression, Visio and Access.
Not too sure why the cynical tone in the article. Guess it's bad for MS to hand this out, but fine for Canonical to have people standing outside handing out DVD's...
...why they can justify the cost when it's in addition to Exchange - which does the push email, calendar, tasks, contacts, out of office setup, sharepoint document sharing, web-based access should the client pack in, remote wipe, security policy settings (password, encryption etc.) and with the enterprise edition you can also push applications to the handset, lock parts of the device like bluetooth, browser etc.
You have all that, yet RIM want those sort of prices for IM and some other minor extra's.
Find it amazing CIO's and IT managers sign off on that sort of cost for what little it brings...
Agree with Ben and AC.
Sandboxing, plug-in support, updates via WSUS and GPO management makes IE a winner in the enterprise. Better management than the competition, users know it, has a big enough market share to ensure 99% of sites work in it and the security of it on Vista/7 with UAC IMHO puts it on par with the rest of the browsers out there.
Nothing against FF, Opera or Chrome (Safari is a different matter), but for enterprise deployments IE is in a league of it's own.
From a personal POV the alternatives don't add anything for me that I don't get with IE (use the IEPro plugin in IE8 on Win7), so I use that at home as well. (standard interface between home and work that way too)
Each to their own, but I think a few vocal people have their heads stuck in the sand. Windows is reliable, IE is secure* and Microsoft aren't that bad.
In the same way that Linux is usable, alternative browsers won't cause half the web to stop working for you and FOSS isn't the command line/only rough round the edges software it used to be.
This isn't 1999 anymore people!
IE is a perfectly reasonable choice now-a-days
At the moment there really isn't a platform with the excellent end-user inferface of the iPhone, and the power and usability of Windows.
As a business platform, Windows Mobile is actually very good. I'm talking for mobile computers - DHL, CitiLink and various other delivery companies use it, we use it here for warehousing (Motorola Symbol device with barcode scanner, RFID, Bluetooh and wifi). Superb device and an excellent platform for developing against. (networking stack in 6.5 just works - regardless of method, .Net, SQL CE, Java etc. - all run very well on WM) Even management is superb with MS's tools. Any apps can be installed without an "app store", it can be hacked to pieces, works with countless 3rd party tools and hardware add-ons etc.
However for a phone it sucks. The interface is crap - and that's being generous (although slighly better in 6.5 it's still awful), reliability of the phone subsystem is bizzarly poor compared to the reliability of the rest of the stacks.
Just getting the phone stack to work wouldn't be enough - as it wouldn't appease the business users who want a Pre or iPhone but will just about live with a Nokia or Blackberry (though a concession with IT) because of the GUI.
So if they tart the GUI up enough and fix the phone side then the best WM will do is make a small inroad to the business market.
However for mobiles businesses aren't big money compared to the consumer market - so MS keep the core of WM (Kernel and under-the-hood stuff - which isn't bad), slap on a nice GUI and up the HW specs.
Appeals to consumers, but a more restrictive GUI will limit business use.
I'm interested as to what they'll do for the enterprise customers. We don't want to move from WM for our warehousing operation, but I can't see how it would work on the WM7 platform. Hopefully they'll have a business edition without the GUI.
" will automatically make available the fixed discs"
As in it mounts the disks? Wow - big achievement. Guess what also automounts...?
"Also there would be good reason to use a non-Windows based OS if you are attempting to remove code that is highly infectious to Windows"
You do know what "ROM" stands for in CD-ROM? Same relevant parts apply to DVD's - it's not installing anything, and not starting anything from the infected system - so where's the risk again? Think it's going to destroy your free recovery DVD? Your point is moot.
"Now, where can I get my WinPE/RE ISO?"
Here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=C7D4BC6D-15F3-4284-9123-679830D629F2&displaylang=en
"Sucks to be a normal user I guess. So I'd have to use Bart's PE or get a Linux Live CD"
Yeah, because normal users often read the register, burn ISO's of BartPE (which I've used, and is rather good), and on a daily basis burn and boot a Linux Live CD.
Reality check?
Microsoft provides tools to the OEM's to create a seperate partition with the factory image installed. This can be booted from the BIOS, including the OS's setup recovery tools. Therefore if the HD isn't fried - but just the Win32 partition - then the user can reinstall Windows or use the recovery tools to repair their installation. No disc required.
However MS haven't stopped any OEM from releasing media.
"Of course, this would mean MS effectively having to crawl to the Penguin for help.
(snigger)"
Nope - Microsoft have their own environment and have done since 2005. Called WinPE or WinRE. (Windows Preinstallation Environment or Windows Recovery Environment)
It's the foundation for the Vista and Windows 7 setup and also used extensively for Windows Deployment Services as well.
Don't need no daft named, terminal based open source muck here thank you.
When you think Outlook is most people's primary application (spends the most time running under my Citrix farm), does document management that integrates with SharePoint (which has a free version), forms, support for VBA, excellent calendar support including scheduling with others based on their calendars, it's lightning fast, can be managed by Group Policy, integrates with Office and has thousands of 3rd party products that integrate with it. (Email archiving software, management tools, Antivirus, even CRM solutions)
It would take companies years to recover from the lost productivity during the transition to Thunderbird or some other generic POP3/IMAP application (FOSS or not). I don't have time to dick around with "plug-ins", retraining staff, the loss of functionality compared to Outlook with Exchange, shite calendaring support, lack to syncronising with PDA's/phones etc.
I'd pay £40 a user to have that fixed thanks.
Love it or hate it, Office sorta just works. No fiddling, no checking compatibility in other apps (as Office is the defacto), rich history of VBA apps behind it, saving as PDF, SharePoint integration etc, Windows integration.
The 2007 release (and 2010 beta) is rock solid, with great management, document recovery, integration and user accecptance. The only end-user issues are normally with the more eldery IT folks (in particular devs) who refuse to use it.
For the price - the basic office apps are a bargin, with no big name single suite out there (free or not) comparing on management, intergration, features and 3rd party support.
Simple as that.
Just recommend a decent AV, and have a policy on the online banking website that looks for key interceptors before showing the logon page.
Take our secure gateway... all over SSL, before the logon page either a Java or ActiveX control is downloaded and checks for anything that intercepts key strokes, and also any known naughty viruses currently loaded into memory. Also downloads a cache cleaner that removes traces of accessing the site.
Followed by RSA token authentication.
That gets you in. Although if you want to download files to your local system from the gateway the system checks for a local certificate and registry entry to see if your an authorised device, as well as checking for up-to-date (bar 2 updates) antivirus that's turned on, Windows firewall is enabled, latest service pack (we wait 3 months before updating it so users have a chance to update) and any major / critical security patches are applied too. (Users get 48 hours for these).
Anything fails, then system explains in plain english including screenshots how to get your system back to health.
The point is, transactions can be very, very secure. Nothing is perfect - if a user writes down their encryption password for their laptop, and keeps their RSA key, and their domain username/password all in the same laptop bag and it gets nicked then the security is gone.
But banks can, and should make more of an effort.
And leave IE / Windows out of it. FF and Safari are like blocks of swiss chesse - and that's without the FF add-on's people rave about until it crashes FF or installs a pre-approved Mozila virus! Linux requires just as many updates as Windows, and OS X is hardly a securtiy hardened OS either.
Good system administration can make any software stack as secure as the next. Show me a user friendly, daily use OS that doesn't require AV, firewall and patching and I'll get my coat.
Back when XP only just has SP2 out, and when a good whack of machines - even in businesses - were running user accounts with admin rights the security advice was:
1. Never run, download or even vist anything you don't trust
2. Repeat 1 and rinse
3. Firewall and AV - kept up to date
4. Don't run any day-to-day stuff as an administrator
Now none of these things have changed. The new technologies MS introduced into Vista and 7 have - and the author admits this - been compromised with a HUGE amount of effort and the chances of anything like this in the wild is slim.
Additionally, .Net / Silverlight or Java won't do this - as you can't just fuck around with memory however you want. Flash is a piss poor pile of shite which allows this to take place. (Ignore the massive holes in flash anyway)
Also, could someone who knows a little more than me confirm something - UAC would need to be turned off? (Or at least protected mode in IE)
I was under the impression that under protected mode the processes that run IE are in a very low security context - lower than the user (yes, user - not admin), and therefore cannot access anything much outside of a couple of small registry hives and a folder or two that does nothing othe than IE stuff....?
Protected mode aside, surely the flash interpreter runs under the logged on users context and not under system - therefore limited to the user environment? (therefore can delete some gormless users data or change the wallpaper but about feck all else...?)
If hack is taking place through the flash process loaded into then it really is flash being shite rather than IE - in fact IE has fuck all to do with it as it's code being processed by the flash process straight onto the stack... IE is just a vessel that fire's up flash which demands to run JIT code outside of the browser process and security context.
Flash sucks - use Sliverlight instead. Bit of managed code and it all goes away you know...
I was a big supporter of Vista based on spending hours or research into the changes under-the-hood. Security, performance on mid-range new hardware (at RTM), management etc. All huge boosts. Major rewrite of a huge number of core components compared to XP.
Yet Vista was, and is still slated.
The changes to Windows 7 are very, very minor in comparision.
It's like taking a Porche 911 turbo, and then saying I have a new 911 turbo GT3.
No new engineering - not really. Minor tweaks, cosmetic changes, and LOTS OF MARKETING.
Any "analyst" stating that Vista was shite yet 7 is the best thing since sliced bread is talking total bollocks. Same beating heart, just some (nice) additional management tools, new Windows PE and a facelift.
For the record I'm using 7 now - and it's a fine platform. Just not very different at all to Vista....
As with Pothead above (or below - can't remember how this 'forum' works), with you all the way until the NHS point.
Access to health services should be (if it's not already) a basic human right, and I would agree with everything you say but pay a reduced National Insurance to fund just the NHS.
A country full of unhealthy citizen isn't a healthy country
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