a blog

  • Crossing My Fingers for an Insanely Great Macworld 2008

    This week, the Macworld Conference and Expo returns to San Francisco, and, for the first time since the 2002 show in which Apple’s pre-show boast of, “Beyond the rumor sites. Way beyond” turned out to refer to a flat-panel iMac, I’m feeling excited about the announcements that the Black Mock-Turtlenecked One might hand down in…

  • Vista vs. XP Showdown

    Microsoft’s release of Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista is nigh, which means that it’s nearly time for organizations sold on a “better SP1 than sorry” approach toward deploying Microsoft’s latest client operating system to start polishing off their imaging tools. However, based on the conversations I have had with readers and with eWEEK’s Corporate…

  • OpenOffice on Ulteo in Pictures

    Today my colleague Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols is reporting on Mandriva founder Gael Duval’s Ulteo, which now offers online access to the OpenOffice.org productivity suite: OpenOffice.org goes online with SAAS version I’m an OpenOffice.org user and overall fan of software as a service–particularly when it’s a free service–so I thought I’d take Ulteo for a spin…

  • You Say You Want a Revolution?

    Eyeing the trends around user-friendly Linux desktops, sub-$500 notebooks, universal broadband, and Web 2.0 office applications, my colleague Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols opines that we’re on the brink of a low-end Linux revolution. For my part, I’m not so sure. Without question, Linux has matured into a effective, manageable, and low-cost solution for companies’ and individuals’…

  • If You Can’t Beat Active Directory, Should You Join It?

    Last week I wrote about how the lack of a Linux and open source answer to Microsoft’s Active Directory is slowing the spread of desktop Linux. Could the Linux and open source answer to Active Directory be Active Directory? Today, Likewise Software (the firm formerly known as Centeris) launched a new open source software project…

  • It’s the Directory, Stupid

    Earlier this year, while writing about the fortunes of Linux on the enterprise desktop, I came across the paper, “World Domination as an Optimization Hack,” in which the GNOME Foundation’s Federico Mena-Quintero identifies bulk Linux deployments as the lowest hanging fruit for Linux moving forward. Although Mena-Quintero doesn’t call it out explicitly, the common thread…

  • OpenSUSE 10.3, Fedora 8, Ubuntu 7.10 on the Desktop

    I scratched the surface of three of the most popular Linux distributions out there–and I took plenty of screen shots. Desktop Linux Trio Offers Look at What’s To Come Review: The latest versions of fast-moving OpenSUSE, Ubuntu and Fedora make a strong case for Linux on the desktop, but there’s lots of integration work to…

  • A Head Full of Windows Server 2008

    Last week I attended a technical workshop on Windows Server 2008 at Microsoft’s Redmond campus, where I, alongside a gaggle of other tech journalists from all over the world, spent three days having my head stuffed with details about Microsoft’s forthcoming server products, including its new solution for mid-sized companies. Microsoft’s newly-minted Windows Essential Business…

  • Bumps on the Road to Document Exchange Nirvana

    The OpenDocument Foundation has announced its plans to sever itself from participation in or further advocacy of its namesake office document format in favor of the World Wide Web Consortium’s XHTML (Extensible HTML)-based Compound Document Format. Although the OpenDocument Foundation is a fairly small organization, the group sports a certain cachet that stems from the…

  • My Wish List for Google

    On Tuesday morning, while jotting down some column ideas, I took note of the top two items I wanted to see from Google’s Gmail service: 1. Enable IMAP access to mail; and 2. Make labels persist beyond Gmail’s Web UI. On Wednesday afternoon, I found that Google had satisfied both of those desires, and moved…