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Is Windows 8 In High Demand?
Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said on Monday demand for the company’s new Windows 8 operating system, that went on sale last Friday, was running at a higher rate than its last release, Windows 7.
“We’re seeing preliminary demand well above where we were with Windows 7, which is gratifying,” Ballmer said at an event launching new Windows phones.
Windows 7 is the best-selling version of Windows so far, selling more than 670 million licenses in three years since release in 2009.
“Over the weekend we saw an incredible response around the globe to Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface,” said Ballmer, referring to Microsoft’s first own-brand tablet, designed to challenge Apple Inc’s iPad. He did not give out any sales figures.
On Friday, there were moderate lines at Microsoft’s 60 or so stores across the United States for the Surface.
Ballmer was in San Francisco speaking at an event showcasing phones running its new Windows Phone 8 software, which go on sale this weekend.
Microsoft has struggled to make headway in the smartphone market, holding just 3.5 percent of the worldwide market, compared to 68 percent for Google Inc’s Android devices and 17 percent for Apple’s iPhone, according to tech research firm IDC.
The company highlighted how the new phones make use of Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud service, enabling users to sync and transfer music, documents and photos between PCs, tablets and the Xbox game console. Microsoft added that it now has 120,000 apps in its online store for phones, still far fewer than the number available for iPhone and Android users.
Did Huawei Steal From Cisco?
Huawei has replied to US rival Cisco after the networking firm made allegations about the Chinese company relating to a lawsuit between the two firms.
The case dates back to 2003 and relates to the alleged theft of source code by Huawei from Cisco for use in its networking products. The case was settled confidentially out of court.
Cisco complained about what it saw as a willful distortion of the facts of the case after Huawei’s chief representative in the US, Charles Ding, claimed the outcome was that Cisco stood down over its allegations.
In response, Cisco released excerpts from a report by an independent analyst that was used to form the basis of a settlement, which Cisco said proved Huawei had used its source code in its products.
However, in a statement sent to The INQUIRER, Huawei said it was “disappointed with the continued rhetoric from Cisco” and claimed there was no basis to its argument.
“With respect to the lawsuit which took place about 10 years ago, the fact is the court dismissed the case, upon a joint stipulation of the parties, after the neutral expert’s review. This shows Cisco’s present allegations have no merit,” it said.
Furthermore, the firm also said it didn’t believe Cisco had the right to report elements of the review.
“We don’t think Ding violated the agreement between Cisco and Huawei, which had a negotiated confidentiality provision in it,” it said. “Cisco’s general counsel’s selective and misleading cropping of a confidential report from the Neutral Expert may have violated that provision.”
Huawei added that it would consider releasing more information on the case, though, in an effort to paint a more complete picture of the case.
“However, since Cisco has put selected snippets into the public domain, the truth may require that more than carefully selected quotes be put in the public record. Huawei is exploring the best way to accomplish that goal,” it said.
Lenovo Eyes The U.S.
Lenovo hopes that computers made in its first U.S. manufacturing plant will draw more consumers, while also making the delivery of ThinkPad laptops and tablets faster to U.S. customers.
The company, which is based in China, earlier this month announced it would open a factory to make computers in Whitsett, N.C. — its first such facility in the U.S. Lenovo said the factory would create about 115 manufacturing jobs. A spokesman later added that the company may expand the facility in the future, which could create more jobs.
Manufacturing in the U.S. will help Lenovo get its products to customers more quickly, said Peter Hortensius, senior vice president of the product group at Lenovo, in an interview at a company event in New York on Tuesday evening.
The company will manufacture ThinkPad laptops and tablets starting early next year, and with the new factory, Lenovo hopes computers could reach customers within a week, or in some cases, overnight. But initial supplies of products like the ThinkPad Tablet 2, which will become available in October, will not be made in the U.S. factory.
Many Lenovo computer shipments originate from China and are supposed to reach customers in 10 days, but in some cases take weeks. The company also has factories in Japan, Brazil, Germany and Mexico.
The “Made in USA” tag on computers manufactured in North Carolina will resonate with some buyers, Hortensius said. Lenovo’s main U.S. operations are in that state, and the company also has a distribution center there.
Windows 7 Infection Rate Soaring
Windows 7′s malware infection rate soared by as much as 182% this year, Microsoft said on Tuesday.
But even with that dramatic increase, Windows 7 remained two to three times less likely to fall to hacker attack than the aged Windows XP.
Data from Microsoft’s newest twice-yearly security report showed that in the second quarter of 2012, Windows 7 was between 33% and 182% more likely to be infected by malware than in the second quarter of 2011.
The infection rate for Windows RTM, or “release to manufacturing,” the original version launched in Oct. 2009, was 33% higher this year for the 32-bit edition (x86), 59% higher for the 64-bit (x64) OS.
Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) — the upgrade that shipped in Feb. 2011 — saw even larger infection increases: 172% for x86, 182% for x64.
Microsoft blamed several factors for the boost in successful malware attacks, including less savvy users.
“This may be caused in part by increasing acceptance and usage of the newest consumer version of Windows,” said Microsoft in its latest Security Intelligence Report. “Early adopters are often technology enthusiasts who have a higher level of technical expertise than the mainstream computing population. As the Windows 7 install base has grown, new users are likely to possess a lower degree of security awareness than the early adopters and be less aware of safe online practices.”
Oracle And Nokia Make A Deal
October 10, 2012 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
Comments Off on Oracle And Nokia Make A Deal
Nokia Oyj has agreed to grant Oracle Corp’s customers access to its mapping products, as the wireless phone company attempts to expand its location services business.
The Finnish company, which bought the world’s largest digital mapping firm, Navteq, in 2008, has been looking for ways to boost the business
and recently signed mapping deals with Groupon Inc and Amazon.Com Inc.
In stark contrast with Nokia’s troubled mobile phone operation, sales at the location business grew last quarter, though it still generates only 4 percent of group revenue.
Oracle has developed a link between its own software and the Nokia Location Platform software, Nokia said on Monday. This enables the U.S. company’s business users to access the mapping services through its products.
Financial details of the deal were not disclosed, but Nokia said Oracle users would license Location Platform from Nokia for use in Oracle applications.
“Nokia has been on a mission for the last 18 months to sign mapping and location deals with large internet players. The deal with Oracle extends this,” CCS Insight analyst Martin Garner said.
Last week Apple publicly apologized after customer complaints about errors in its maps, which have been put on its latest phone operating system instead of Google Inc’s mapping service.
Server 2008 Support Ends In 2015
Microsoft has extended support for Windows Server 2008 until 15 January 2015.
Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 operating system had been earmarked to enter the firm’s extended support phase on 9 July 2013, however the firm has moved that date back by 18 months. The firm said that it will keep Windows Server 2008 in the mainstream support phase until 15 January 2015.
Microsoft generally provides a decade of support for its high profile operating systems and software applications. The company said, “Microsoft policy provides a minimum of five years of Mainstream Support or two years of Mainstream Support after the successor product ships, whichever is longer.”
Of course Microsoft likes its customers to buy newer, shiner versions of its software whenever the firm releases it, but server operating systems customers are resistant to change in order to avoid any possible disruption in service availability. The company is desperately trying to get customers to migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7 and Windows 8, even though it extended support for the operating system until 8 APril 2014.
Adobe Gives Up On Windows XP
Adobe said today that the current CS6 version of Photoshop will be the last one to support the operating system.
Adobe Product Manager Tom Hogarty said in a blog post that the Photoshop team would like to provide advanced notice that Photoshop CS6 (13.0) will be the last major version of Photoshop to support Windows XP. He said that modern performance-sensitive software requires modern hardware graphics interfaces that Windows XP lacks, in particular a way to tap into the power of GPUs. By only working on newer operating systems and hardware Adobe can bring in significantly better performance.
Photoshop CS6 already demonstrates that relying on a modern operating system, graphics cards/GPUs and graphics drivers can lead to substantial improvements in 3D, Blur Gallery and Lighting Effect features not available to Windows XP customers, he said.
Adobe hopes that by providing this information early it will help you understand our current decisions around operating system support and where we we’re headed with future releases of Photoshop. It is hard to see how any serious user of Adobe products could be using an XP machine anyway. The move away from XP started with CS 5 which only ran on Vista.
IBM Beefs Up
IBM is unveiling a new version of its Connections enterprise social networking (ESN) software, which businesses use to give their employees social media capabilities adapted for workplace collaboration, such as employee profiles and blogging.
Enhancements in IBM Connections 4.0 include a more interactive activity stream, broader support for mobile devices, more granular usage analytics and integration with email and calendar systems, according to Heidi Ambler, director of product management for IBM Social Software. It is available immediately.
“This new release helps customers grasp the power of social analytics, gives them anytime-anywhere access to the software and provides cutting-edge capabilities,” she said.
Instead of a list-like news feed, the new software has an activity stream in employee profiles that users can filter for relevance, as well as act on the notifications right from the Connections interface.
For example, users can trigger pop-up boxes from the activity stream notifications and see the latest comments made about a file, see who posted the latest version of it and add tags to it.
An integration with IBM’s own Lotus Notes-Domino and with Microsoft’s Outlook-Exchange email and calendar systems lets users manage email messages through Connections.
I.T. Spending On The Rise
Worldwide IT spending remains on track to increase by 6% in 2012 despite the grim economic conditions in Europe, thanks to strong software, storage, smartphone and tablet sales, according to IDC.
While 2012 has been a tough year for many IT vendors, they have done better overall than many expected in the first half of the year, IDC said.
For example, software spending has been robust, even in parts of the world where the economy has been weakest, as businesses hope software tools and applications will help them implement cost-reduction strategies.
The 6% growth compares to a 7% increase in worldwide IT spending last year. IDC expects 6% growth in 2013.
Software, storage, enterprise network and mobile device markets have offset weaker sales in servers, peripherals and PCs. However, the launch of Windows 8 during the fourth quarter should help the PC market recover next year, IDC said.
U.S. IT spending will grow by 5.9% in 2012, compared to 8.5% last year. However, the strength of the dollar during the first six months of the year means that IT spending in dollar terms will grow just 4% for the full year.
Oracle Wants More Money From SAP
Oracle is appealing the damages awarded from SAP that it was granted and is pushing for more.
The news has disappointed SAP, according to a German newspaper, and the firm is worried that the appeal will draw out the five year long legal battle even longer.
“We are disappointed that the lawsuit Oracle pulls further out,” said a SAP spokesman to the German newspaper Mannheimer Morgen.
“We had agreed on a sensible arrangement, because we believe that this case has gone on long enough. We remain committed to bring this dispute to an end.”
Neither firm has commented yet, but the appeal follows SAP’s admission of liability in the Tomorrownow affair.
SAP pleaded guilty last year and acknowledged that its Tomorrownow subsidiary had done wrong. Tomorrownow was accused of downloading information belonging to Oracle, including software and customer information related to Peoplesoft users.
Oracle was initially awarded $1.3bn in damages but this was knocked down to $306m by a judge who told it that it had two options, accept that sum or take SAP back to court.