software « Tim Anderson’s ITWriting

Microsoft rolls out its browser choice update – but which is really the best?

By tim, on February 19th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Microsoft is rolling out its EU-required Browser Choice update. File under industry madness; but one thing I found interesting was the choice of words used by each vendor to market their browser.

I only saw the top five in Microsoft’s post; but here are the words:

Google Chrome: A fast new browser. Made for everyone.

Mozilla Firefox:

…continue reading Microsoft rolls out its browser choice update – but which is really the best?

The mystery of the slow Exchange 2007: when hard-coded values come back to haunt you

By tim, on January 26th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Following a migration from Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 to SBS 2008 users were complaining that Exchange was slower than before in some scenarios. How could this be? The new machine had 64-bit goodness and far more RAM than before.

I checked out the machine’s performance and noticed something odd. Store.exe, the Exchange database, usually grabs

…continue reading The mystery of the slow Exchange 2007: when hard-coded values come back to haunt you

What does Ribbon Hero say about Microsoft Office?

By tim, on January 19th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Microsoft has released a tutorial game called Ribbon Hero in its Office Labs. This installs an Office add-in for Word and Excel which watches you work. It has several features. When you perform an action such as Copy and Paste for the first time, it awards you points. You get further points by performing “challenges”,

…continue reading What does Ribbon Hero say about Microsoft Office?

Technology trends: Silverlight, Flex little use says Thoughtworks as it Goes Google

By tim, on January 11th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Today Martin Fowler at Thoughtworks tweeted a link to the just-published Thoughtworks Technology Radar [pdf] paper, which aims to “help decision makers understand emerging technologies and trends that affect the market today”.

It is a good read, as you would expect from Thoughtworks, a software development company with a bias towards

…continue reading Technology trends: Silverlight, Flex little use says Thoughtworks as it Goes Google

Hands On with Microsoft Security Essentials – terrible name, but product looks good

By tim, on September 29th, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

Microsoft has released its free Security Essentials software, antivirus and antispyware protection aimed at home users. It runs on XP 32-bit, or Vista or Windows 7 32-bit or 64-bit, the only technical restriction being that Windows must validate as “genuine”. Businesses are meant to use Forefront Client Security, though “home-based small businesses” are specifically permitted

…continue reading Hands On with Microsoft Security Essentials – terrible name, but product looks good

Eclipse survey shows Windows decline

By tim, on June 30th, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

In May 2009 the open source Eclipse project surveyed its users. Visitors to the Eclipse site were asked to complete a survey, and 1365 did so. That’s out of around 1 million visitors, which shows how much we all hate surveys. Anyway, this report [pdf] was the result. A similar survey [pdf] was carried out

…continue reading Eclipse survey shows Windows decline

Outlook HTML is better broken and safe, than rich and dangerous

By tim, on June 25th, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

The campaign at fixoutlook.org is brilliant. Outlook 2010 will have broken HTML support, it says, because it will use Word to render HTML:

Microsoft has confirmed they plan on using the Word rendering engine to display HTML emails in Outlook 2010. This means for the next 5 years your email designs will need tables for layout,

…continue reading Outlook HTML is better broken and safe, than rich and dangerous

For your nightmares: 10 more things which could be unbundled from Windows

By tim, on June 12th, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

Microsoft is caving to the EU and unbundling Internet Explorer from Windows 7 in Europe. Arguments over whether bundling a browser with Windows is anti-competitive go back many years of course, and were central to the US Department of Justice case in the late nineties. The DOJ won in court, but too late to save

…continue reading For your nightmares: 10 more things which could be unbundled from Windows

Will Microsoft respond to the JavaScript speed challenge?

By tim, on June 10th, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

While people argue about JavaScript performance in Chrome vs Safari vs FireFox, there’s one fact that is beyond dispute. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 is hilariously slow in comparison. On Apple’s figures, IE8 is 5.9 times slower on its i-Bench JavaScript test and 7.7 times slower on the SunSpider test.

You may hardly notice this in normal

…continue reading Will Microsoft respond to the JavaScript speed challenge?

Windows 7: July RTM, October 22 launch

By tim, on June 2nd, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

News is drifting out that Microsoft intends to launch Windows 7 – that is, have PCs with it pre-loaded on retail sale – on October 22.

Not unexpected news – it is exactly what many of us predicted last year, after seeing it at PDC – but it is good to have it confirmed and will

…continue reading Windows 7: July RTM, October 22 launch

Tim Anderson’s ITWriting

Recent Comments

Blogroll

Archives