I keep writing about the Opera browser, I can’t help myself.  Opera Software has put the Opera web browser at the forefront of web browser technology with innovative features, some of which are unique to the Opera browser.  Admittedly the browser technology crowd is an incestuous bunch, and steal ideas back and forth from one another, still Opera has been doing it better, and more uniquely than any other browser for a couple of years now.  What I don’t understand is why it only has 3% of the market share, it deserves a larger share of the market.  Here’s why.

With this new release 10.50, Opera has introduced a new JavaScript engine, actually three new engines combined, that together, increase the speed of the browser up to seven times faster than the previous version, which was already fast.  Opera Software claims Opera 10.50 is the “Fastest Browser on Earth.”  It is.  Couple that with a perfect score of 100 on the ACID3 test, and you have a state-of-the art, W3C web compliant, lightning fast, web browser, and there’s so much more.

Opera has joined Cloud Computing in using additional servers on the Internet to enhance your browsing experience in three ways that currently no other browser supports. First, we have Opera Turbo.  Opera Turbo can be used by people with slower Internet connections.  Opera turbo compresses the web page on the server to up to 80% of its original size to speed your download speed.  This will improve your browsing speed on some of the slower wifi connections in retail coffee houses also.

Second, we have Opera Unite. Opera Unite allows you to share music, videos and documents with friends without having to either email the content to them, or uploading the content to a server.  It sets up a virtual server between your friends over the Internet. This means larger content files like movies can be shared with your friends easily.

And finally, we have Opera Link.   For those familiar with Delicious, a web service that allows you to centralize all your bookmarks and put them on the Internet, Opera goes one step further.  You set up your Link account in each of your computer browsers.  From then on Opera Link can keep your Bookmarks, Browser configuration, history, Speed Dial, Notes, and Searches synchronized with all the rest of your Opera browsers automatically.  If you set a new bookmark in your browser at work, it will automatically show up on your home browser.

That brings up Speed Dial, which shows you images of your favorite web pages you can click on when you open a new browser window.  Unique to Opera is Visual Tabs, pull down the menu tab bar and an image of the web pages in your tabs are shown.  For those small fonts on the web page, and for readers who can’t see the page, there is a Page Zoom icon to quickly zoom in to the web page with a simple click of the Page Zoom icon on the bottom right toolbar, that’s nice.   With Notes, you can select some text on a web page, right click, and save it to Notes.  This automatically saves the text and the web URL, for reference later.  And it’s not limited to one note, like Microsoft’s copy and paste.

Then we have faster browsing with a series of enhancements.  Mouse Gestures allow you to customize your mouse movement. To give you an example, right click on your mouse, and move your mouse to the left, and you’ll go back to your previous web page, no more having to place your mouse on the “Back” icon at the top of the browser to go back one page. There’s Fast Forward to go to the next page, like the back button, this one guesses what your next page would be, and takes you to it.  No more going to the bottom of the Google page to find the next page number.  And there’s a fast back to take you to the original page of your search.  Opera will fill out the user name and password for a particular web page automatically if you like with their Password Manager.

You need a Dictionary, an Encyclopedia, or to Translate a word into another language, select the word, and right click, and select what you want to do.

If you close some of the tabs you had open and closed the wrong one by mistake, no problem, there’ a Trash can icon that keeps track of tabs you closed. You can also browse History Free if you prefer.

Have you ever wanted to find a particular word on a web page full of text. One way you could do this is with Alt-F then type in the word, Opera makes this a little easier with Find in page,  just type a period with your word, and it is highlighted on the screen.

Windows7 and Vista introduced Widgets for little applications you wanted on your desktop. There’s Opera Widgets that do the same thing in your browser window.

And now to features that I really like.   Google’s Chrome originally allowed you to type your search into the address bar.  They were the first, then Firefox followed, Opera has done them one better with a Quick Search.  You can type your search into the address bar, like with the other browsers, and in Opera you can assign a one letter url for the address bar.  Let me give you a couple of examples.  I want to search for a JavaScript book on Amazon, type “z javascript” in the address bar and you’ll go to Amazon books and the JavaScript books page pops up.  You can type “w php” and bring up the Wiki for php, or “e ipods” and bring up Ebay on the ipod page.   What’s nice is you can create your own custom key shortcuts also.   If you go to Amazon a lot this really simplifies getting to where you want to be.

And finally, Opera is starting to listen. I have said many times before that if Opera would put out some decent web development tools, I would give up Firefox for web development and use Opera full time.  With this release the Alpha of Opera Dragonfly is being released.  This will be a full-featured development environment allowing you to debug JavaScript, inspect the DOM, the CSS, network traffic and data stores with built-in remote debugging for mobile devices.  To view page source, go to page->Developer’s Tools->source, or validate, or Inspect Element. You can Inspect the element on the page with a right click of the mouse.   This is an Alpha version, some of the choices are not functional yet,  as to be expected with an Alpha release, like the color picker, but Operation Dragonfly, the equivalent to Firebug on Firefox, looks like it has the potential to out do Firebug in functionality once everything gets hooked up.

Opera, now that you are finally moving to be a full fledged web development tools, let me help you.   Things I missed in Opera Dragonfly for Web Development, that I want.  The F12 key to bring up the application, and put it back down, quickly.  The Inspect button in Firebug that allows you to search the screen for an element with your mouse.   Yes, Dragonfly does it with the right click, Inspect Element, but its not the same, or it’s not fully functional yet.  I’d like an Aardvark plug-in type of functionality where I don’t have to bring up Dragonfly to view the DOM element.  I want to see all the CSS affecting the page with file names, like Web Developer, View CSS, in fact the entire Firefox Web Developer plug-in would be nice.

Keep working!  Your doing great work. Your web development tools aren’t quite there yet, but I see you’re actively working on them, as you get closer and closer, you may win me over for Web Development, you already have for general web browsing.  For those who have not tried Opera, I recommend you try it out, you might like it.

Opera has just released version 10.10, today, and Firefox recently released version 3.6. Currently of the popular browsers, Chrome is the fastest, followed very, very closely by Opera, and Safari, with Firefox coming before Internet Explorer, but way back from the rest.

Chrome is fast, but the interface is different with its top line tabs and Omnibox combined search and browser address window. It takes getting use to, and I have not been using it, because it was not stable initially.

Internet Explorer is way behind in browser compatibility and speed, and is an after thought in my mind. When and if Microsoft ever gets up to W3C standards, decides to use web standards for determining box widths instead of their proprietary method, and passes the ACID3 test, I might consider it, but not before.

Safari is fast, and it looks nice, but they do this by pumping up the luminance or gamma of their colors from all the other web browser colors, so the browser colors look sharper. Unfortunately, I can’t use their colors system for development when I’m building for all browsers. I’ll leave the Safari browser to Mac Users.

Which brings us to Firefox and Opera. I use Firefox about 70% of the time, mostly because of its web development plugin tools. There are three plugins I recommend for web development: Aardvark, Firebug, and Web Developer. I use all three. This makes Firefox unique as no other browser has these tools. Consequently, it is my web development browser of choice. Yes it loads slow as molasses, but everything runs fine once its up. I had to wait until the Aardvark plugin was ready, but now I’m up and running on 3.6.

What’s with 3.6? Firefox claims speed improvements in page loads, and it looks like this is true, it’s much faster loading both pages and booting, but still doesn’t seem up to the other fast browsers. Last release Firefox reached a 93 on the Acid 3 test, but rather jerkily. It now reaches 94 smoothly, still not 100. You now have type ahead in the address bar, which they call the “Awesome Bar.” Just start typing the site name and possible sites are gradually filtered to give you the correct URL. This is a rip off of the Chrome Omnibox, but there search capability is limited compared to Chrome. You now have one click bookmarks by clicking the star in the “Awesome Bar” window, and there are bookmark tags, like Delicious. Type a tag in the “Awesome Bar” and all your tagged items URL populate. This does not yet synchronize with your other Firefox browsers. They now have a Private Browsing option you can toggle. I’m skeptical of this, as Google keeps a complete record of all your browsing and your searches in its database. For looks, they have 35,000 personas which changes the look of the browser, to me this is just fluff.

And now to my favorite browser, Opera with its new 10.10 release. Opera is fast, and looks great. Only about 2% of the population uses it, so there is very little problem with malware, or virus attacks. It’s safe, secure, meets W3C standards, and passes ACID 3 quickly with flying colors. It’s a great browser. If it had the Internet tools of Firefox, I’d never look back and use Opera full time.

With Version 10.10 Opera claims five things that you can only do in Opera: Application sharing of data with others, compress web pages to load pages faster for people with slow data connections, visual tabs where you see a thumbnail of the web page, in addition to the text tag of the tab like in other browsers; customize your web page thumbnails in the speed dial window, synchronize your tabs, bookmarks, and other data with your other Opera browsers over the Internet. This is like Delicious in its synchronizing. Opera also has integrated themes for looks, and an integrated Opera mail program, although I admit, I prefer Thunderbird at the moment.

If you’re a die-hard Firefox user, you’ll like the improved Firefox speed and tags with the Awesome bar. If your not into web development, I highly recommend you download Opera and give it a test drive, check out the speed, convenient surfing tools, and overall good looks. Change the appearance in tools->appearance, drag the tag bar down to see the visual tabs, and enjoy Opera.

Wow, this is big. It is no secret that Sun has fallen on some tough times lately. Sun had a total revenue of $11.45 billion last year down from $13.88 billion the year before. In contrast, Oracle’s last year revenues were $23.23 Billion. The combined revenues of both companies should approach $35 billion. Microsoft currently checks in at $56.3 billion. We’re looking at the heavy weights going at it. With Microsoft on the decline, Google at $23.65 billion on the rise, and now Oracle stepping up into the fray, this may become a very interesting war. Oracle acquired Sun for a mere $7.4 billion, a steal.

Oracle’s revenue comes from it’s pervasive Oracle database. Depending on how you look at it revenue, or installs. Oracle is in the top 2 with Microsoft and IBM’s DB2 a close third. Let’s not forget, MySql is the most popular Open Source, i.e free, database in the world. What is surprising is when you look at installs and the number of developers developing with a database, MySql comes in a close 3rd to Oracle and Microsoft, with DB2 fourth, and MySql shows the greatest growth rate of all database development.

Oracle’s acquisition of the MySql product may be a problem for the Open Source community. Sun owned MySQL, which now belongs to Oracle. If you remember, Oracle purchased PeopleSoft in Dec. 2004 for $10.3 billion. In Oct, 2005 they acquired Innobase which is an integral part of MySql for transaction processing and foreign keys. What will Oracle do with MySql has caused a huge concern with the Open Source Community, so much so, that their already has been several forks of MySql, Drizzle, and MariaDB, just in case Oracle starts charging for MySql. For now, Oracle pledges to leave MySql independent, but this is to be expected in the initial stages of an acquisition, things usually change in six months or so.

My thought is they will continue to support an Open Source MySql and build on top of MySql additional tools, extensions, and integrations with other Oracle products with, of course, a clear upgrade path to Oracle’s flagship products for which the enterprise users will pay dearly.

And the same for OpenOffice.org, a legitimate contender, now, of Microsoft Office. Oracle has never had an Office Suite and has wanted one. Oracle is built with Java, as is OpenOffice.org. Again, tools, extensions, and integrations with Oracle products seems like a nice way to get users to start paying for more and more functionality from a previously non-existent Oracle Office Products.

Oracle keeping the Open Source products they have acquired free, and enhancing them, at first, to gain market share seems like good business sense, but as these applications gain more and more market share, I believe Oracle will take a page from Microsoft’s play book, and start charging for their enhancements to the products. What this means for Open Source, is a freezing of the Open Source components to a minimal feature level, and if you want more, pay for it.

I have great faith in Open Source software, the forking of MySql is evidence that independent Open Source Developers will continue to create other applications with the missing functionality, that Oracle will ask customers to purchase. As MySql has emerged as the premier Open Source database, so other products can, and will, emerge to take its place, if Oracle begins to get as “bean counterish” as Microsoft is currently, with it prideful boasting about “Microsoft Genuine Advantage,” and its publicly crowing about the number of companies they have sued, look for any closing down, of previously Open Source Oracle products to be a catalyst to breed a new generation of improved Open Source products.

Ubuntu comes with drivers for most of your peripherals, except printer drivers, which normally are installed separately.  In a previous blog I have written favorably about the Canon MX850 compared to the equivalent HP ink-jet all-in-one printers.  Having a good feeling about Canon, I went to their web site and made an email inquiry about a printer driver for Ubuntu.  Here is their reply, “While considering the desire to provide the best possible support for Canon’s products, Canon must make decisions on which products to support when new operating systems are introduced.  Currently, Canon has decided to support only the Microsoft Windows and the Macintosh operating systems.”

Pardon me, Canon, but Ubuntu and Linux are not new operating systems.  They’ve been around almost as long as Windows, and the Apple operating system is based on Linux.

Have no fear, though, this happens occasionally and what you’ll find when you go looking for a solution is other solutions.  Searching further, for Canon printer drivers, there is a free solution, the CUPS-BNJP Printer Driver, which mimics the Canon BNJP printer protocol for the Canon Pixma printers and works over the network. This also works with the XSane scanning software provided with Ubuntu to allow scanning of documents.

CUPS-BNJP is based on CUPS, CUPS works with other printers besides Canon.  It was built for the Fedora distribution of Linux.  Since Ubuntu uses the Debian distribution, there may or may not be an issue in using CUPS with Ubuntu.  We can check that easily.  If you go to Applications->Ubuntu Software Center->Get Free Software->System Tools and scan through the list of available software, you’ll come to two choices: Printing, Printers.   If you click on “Printing,”  a CUPS printer driver is available.  “Printers” on the menu system gives you a GUI interface between CUPS and the printer.

CUPS uses your web browser to view print jobs, manage your printers, and for online help.  However, it makes use of the command line for its configuration.  The printer GUI in the Ubuntu Software Center. according to the software description,  seemed like it depended on some other software for configuring remote printers on a LAN,  if you don’t want to install a series of dependent software, or if you prefer not to use the command line interface, you probably want to check out a commercial solution, TurboPrint 2 for Linux.

TurboPrint 2 supports ink-jet printer’s from: HP, Bother, Epson, and Canon for all Linux distributions.  For the modest cost of $29 you can be ensured that you printer will function, and pick up a nice set of additional features with the software.

TurboPrint2 features include: high print resolutions, color management that matches screen document color to printed color, printer status monitoring to track print progress and errors, like a low ink cartridge, printing on both sides of the paper, print preview of what your about to print, and intelligent ink management to save ink and extend cartridge life. The one remaining question that I had is will it work on a printer attached to your network, and it will.  This intelligent printer utility has Windows and individual manufacturers printer drivers beat hands down.

The company provides a trial version to see if it will work on your system. You can download from the web and hook it up and if everything works, then purchase the software.  What’s not to like!

Given I was not sure about the Cups-BNJP distribution with Ubunutu,  the GUI configuration tool appeared to need additional software to pick up my printer on my LAN,  which meant there may be some additional configuration issues beyond just downloading the software, and  a free trial of TurboPrint was available, I decided to go with the TurboPrint option and give it a try.

TurboPrint Control Center and Printer Monitor

I downloaded the correct distribution for Ubuntu from their website. Clicked on the install button, the install wizard came up and installed the software.  The installation was painless.  The only thing that made me pause was the request to add a printer before other functionality was available.  This is done with the “Add” button in the Print Control Center.  My model Canon was recognized immediately on my LAN and that was it.  I printed a test page, checked the level of my ink cartridges, and was suitably impressed.

Considering I didn’t have to read any documentation, install several pieces of software,  or potentially do a command line configuration of the printer.  I was up and running in 5 minutes,  and had some one to turn to for support if any problems cropped up, it certainly is worth the $29 asking price for Turbo Print to me,  so much for printer drivers.

Well, I’ve just thrown down another Wrox book in disgust, and I have to say something.  I’ve read enough technical books on web development now, and my book shelf is crammed with books from all publishers.  I haven’t seen any one comment or review of technical book publishers yet,  I thought I’d  give you my opinion, and maybe save a few of you folks some dollars.

There are a small group of publishers in the world that make a living publishing technical books.  Here is my short list in no particular order: Wrox, O’Reilly, Apres, Packt, and Manning.  This list is not a complete list of publishers.  There are the big houses that publish some technical books like: McGraw Hill, Addison Wesley, and Prentice Hall, but have not created a recognizable technical brand yet.

The first group has taken the time to establish a distinguished look and type of technical book that may appeal to some readers and not others.  Let’s take them one at a time.

Wrox is the brand name for Wiley.  These books are distinguished by there red covers and the book itself is printed on cheap paper.  The cover is cheap, the book easily bends and flops.  I have been consistenly disappointed with the content of these books.  In general, they are poorly organized, the writing is poor, and the editing is poor.  The code usually has errors, which the editors or authors do not catch before publishing.  My impression is that these books are thrown together rapidly with writers, not technical experts, just to get a title published in a new hot technical topic.  Don’t waste your money.  ONE STAR.

O’Reilly has two recognizable brands.  One is the “Head First” series, and the other brand has green and white covers with a picture of an animal done in black pen.   O’Reilly focuses on technical book exclusively, and has a huge catalog.

The “Head First” books are unique.  They feature a series of diverse activities or learning activities that interupt the writing.  The idea is to engage both sides of your brain.  These books are very good.  They run about 600 pages, but because of a large number of illustrations and white space, they read like a 250 page book.  If you want a thorough grounding in a topic, these are good books to learn the fundamentals.   Their depth is not great, but their coverage of the fundamentals are in depth.  The drawback of these books is that you can not return to them and use them as a reference.  The index is poor, and even if you found what you wanted you have to read several pages to get the entire gist of the topic you were researching.  They’re read once and remember the fundamentals books.  FOUR STARS

The other O’Reilly series is what I’ll call the “Animal” series since they always have an animal on the cover.  I think of these books as reference books.  The writing tends to be dry, but it is to the point, well indexed, with good chapter organization.  I buy these books for references, not to read.  They have a sub series entitled “Cookbooks” which are code snippets on small technical problems with explanation, which I like.  FOUR STARS

Apres books are distinguished by their yellow and black glossy covers.  The paper is a higher quality than the Wrox books and the covers are stiffer. They feature well organized chapters, detailed indexes for reference, and  good writing.  The editing is good, and the code is accurate.  The writing seems to carry you logically from one topic to the next in an order that is understandable.  The topic is covered just to the right depth.  You can tell the publisher didn’t just throw a book into the world, they took their time to get it right.  I have been pleased with every Apres book I have purchased.  Apress is my favorite publisher.  I tend to look for their titles when considering a new book.  FIVE STARS

Packt books are done in orange and black with a color picture on the cover.  They feature the same glossy cover as the Apres books and the paper is about the same.  They tend to print in a slightly larger font, and their books come in at about 350 pages.  They give you a good overview of the topic and the organization is good.  Like the writing the index is an overview and thus not great for a reference.  I leave Packt books feeling like I could have gotten more.  It’s almost like the publisher wanted to keep the book small on purpose to appeal to the technical person that does not have a lot of time and wants to get through a topic quickly.  I’ve found Packt books somehow disappoint me in the end.  The problem is you feel like the topic was brushed over and you missed something, the extra detail that you wanted.  If you want a slightly beyond a basic introduction to a topic, what I would call an extensive overview, these books fill the bill.  I don’t walk away feeling like I know the topic, but I can fake it.  THREE STARS

Manning books are distinguished by a drawing of an old 17th century costumed figure on the front.  Their titles are called, ” X in Action,”  or “X in Practice.”   The covers are glossy and the paper is good.  The font tends to be smaller than the other publishers.  They have good indexes and organization.  The Manning books tend to be the opposite of the Packt books.  They are overly dense and detailed.  The topic is covered in depth.  It’s too deep.  You read on and on about a topic that may be of interest to you, or why you purchased the book, but the rest of the book is like this, and in the end, after you grok your topic of interest, you get bored, and throw the book down.  THREE STARS

There you have it, my overall impression.  Here comes the disclaimer.  Every book has a different author, and you may find a gem in my lower rated publishers.   Ultimately, the publisher controls what they publish and their care in publishing a book says something about their care in picking their authors and editors.

Google just released a new version of their Chrome browser available for download.  This is version 3.0.195.38.  If you have Chrome installed you’ll get a new version annoucement pop up,  and its an easy install to upgrade from your previos version of Chrome, or you can download the new version by going to the Chrome download page.

I ran the Acid 2 and Acid 3 Tests on the new version, and Chrome passed with flying colors.  Safari, Opera, and Chrome are the only browsers to reach 100 on the Acid 3 test to date.  Firefox is close with a rather jerky 93 after an awkward pause at 69.  Internet Explorer 8.0 failed the Acid 3 test with a miserable score of 20 after a long stop at 12.  I guess we have to give Microsoft kudos for passing Acid 2 with Internet Explorer 8.0.  Maybe in another couple of years they’ll join the rest of the web, and stop trying to make every one conform to them.

Chrome is quick, a jaguar in loading internet pages.  It is the fastest browser out there followed by Opera, in both loading the browser window and returning web pages.

The Chrome Browser

Chrome has a different look than any other browser choosing to minimize menus and toolbars to increase the browser window space.  The tabs for individual browser windows are placed at the top of the page.  You can drag a tab off the tab bar and create another instance of Chrome with that window in it, and you can make the instance disappear by dragging it back to a tab in another open Chrome instance.  Tabs can be reordered by dragging them where you want them on the tab bar. Pretty slick.

The web url address box doubles as the search box. If you don’t know the http:// url for the web site you want, you can just type the name in the box and a drop down of possible url’s appears.  If you want to search on the name, hit the arrow key on the right and a full Google search page appears.

There is a stealth window called “incognito” that allows you to search without saving any history.  Hmmm, I wonder why you’d want to use that?  It reminds me of the old “boss” key.

There are some 95 themes that you can pick from to change the appearance of the initially loaded  browser window, although I must admit, they don’t do much for me, except change the color at the top of the page.  The themes are predominately female and kid themes, no good old American macho man themes, darn.  The browser’s initial window, in addition to loading the theme, loads the former pages you have just loaded in thumbnails for quick selection of previous browser windows, an idea originally started by Opera.  You can rearrange these thumbnails by dragging them to a new position.  No biggee.

You can also create desktop icons for web applications.  This gives us a good indication of what direction Chrome, and Google, plan on moving toward in the future.  Bye, bye, windows desktop.  The king is dead, long live the new king.  Hello, the Chrome internet desktop.

I called Microsoft Customer Support the other day.   I was impressed.  I got an actual person to talk to in a relatively short time after going through the usual  telephone system automatic pick a number if it fits your problem.

I can’t say that I hung up happy, in fact, I finished the call  downright angry.  What was the problem?  About a year and half ago, I had built a computer. and paid for and installed the OEM version of Vista Home Premium as the operating system.

For those of you who have not looked at operating system pricing, the OEM version, as opposed to the Retail version,  is supposedly for system manufactures and integrators who build systems.

To continue the story, the system crashed and in the process took out the power supply and motherboard.  There was nothing wrong with the disk drives, and I still had Vista and all my data on the drives.   So I purchased a new power supply and motherboard, and connected everything up.

That’s when I found out my system wouldn’t boot.  What was the problem.  Well, in one word, Microsoft.  It turns out if you have an OEM copy of the operating system, It can only be reinstalled on a system with the exact same make and model of motherboard as where it was originally installed. My original motherboard was obsolete, so I was in a “Catch-22.”

What did Microsoft Customer Support say, “Well, that’s our policy.”  Which made me instantly angry.  To paraphrase heir policy, we know you build systems, and that you repair systems, but if your customer has a problem with his motherboard, which needs replacing, you’ll have to buy a new operating system, of course, you could have bought the retail version initially, hint, hint.  In order to get up and running I had to purchase another license.  Pay another $200 to turn a software switch on.

You would think that Microsoft would give its partners a break, which it supposedly does by making the OEM version about $100 less than the retail version.  But as you can see from this experience, you are better off initially buying the retail version.

Better yet, your better off boycotting Microsoft products all together.   Is that possible?  I believe so, yes,  I’ve just ordered the parts for a new computer.  It’s purpose is to prove to myself that I, or anyone else for that matter, don’t need to use Microsoft products.   That you can still have a fully functional computer without using Microsoft products.   I believe Microsoft is going the way of IBM, a has-been, and has peaked.  And I aim to do my part to help Microsoft along.  Yep, I guess you could say, “that’s my new policy.”

Microsoft is scrambling to get out its replacement operating system for Vista to bring up its revenues.  The replacement, Windows 7,  will try to get corporate America and the government weaned away from XP.  Vista has largely failed to meet expectations.  It is slower than XP with many annoying features, like UAC, User Account Control.  That’s not to say Windows 7  will be much better.  It will have UAC only with four choices instead of two.

In an effort to get Windows 7 out by Q3 2009, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, announced that a new version of Office will NOT be released with Windows 7.  This is a switch from previous releases where both were released at the same time to enhance both revenue streams, and signals a separation of operating sytem and Office development.

This separation is real, and led to several interesting developments.   You will not have to have Windows 7  to run Office 14.  It will still be supported on XP.   Office 14 will have a new format that will support XML-based file format Open Office XML (ODF). Microsoft has been fighting against this to try to keep to its own Open Document Format (OOXML).  It looks like it will give in on this one.

And in a big twist, Stephen Elop, Microsoft Business Division Chief  announced that Office 14 may offer a FREE ad supported version.  In other words, you can get it for free, if your willing to look at ads while you work. Elop said it was to fight piracy, but we think that the complete $400 plus package of Office from Microsoft is under a lot of pressure from OpenOffice.org.  Sales must be hurting given OpenOffice.org is free.   Elops sees it has a chance to get upgrade revenues later on.   I guess, if the ads are annoying enough, people will spring for the $200-$500 to upgrade, but we don’t think so.  Hopefully, the ads will replace the ribbon.

Office 14, the new release, now will not be released until 2010.   In the meantime, we thought we’d tease you with some advanced shots of the new Office 14.   These are compliments of the Office 14 Alpha release and was leaked by the Russian web site, Wzor.  We know, we know, the images are small, if you like an even closer look try here.

Micorsoft Security Updates?   Lets take a completely different perspective.

What if Microsoft didn’t make my operating system like a *&%$* vault, and some baddies somehow laid some malware into my machine.  That’s right, somehow penetrated all my non-Microsoft firewall, anitvirus software, spyware program, registry cleaner, and file change detection programs.  Yep, just suppose this malware got through all of those third-party apps, and really messed up my system.  It messed it up so bad, I couldn’t recover, and I had to buy a new computer.

Wouldn’t Microsoft make more money from the sale of a new operating system and office tools on that new computer I’d be forced to buy.  Get a clue Microsoft, stop these idiotic security updates, and ultra pain in the butt security measures that clog our systems, slow them down, and let us pay you more money.

Along those lines, since we never know what is inside, the now infamous, Microsoft security updates,  I have a sneaky suspicion, that has nagged at me many a time, as my system reboots from yet another securtiy update.   What if Microsoft security updates for XP, and its other older operating systems have a little extra functionality built-in.  Maybe, they have a couple extra loops in the code of each new update.  This would gradually slow your older operating system down.  We, of course, would call these updates, “security updates.”  Of course, the extra loops wouldn’t be in the updates for their latest operating system.

Why? Well, to sell new computers, and with each computer, new Microsoft software.  Can you say money?  Get rid of that super slow clunker you’ve had for a couple of years, and buy a new “speedy” computer with Vista on it.  See how quick your new computer runs.  “Wow, Vista looks really good!”   Nah, Microsoft wouldn’t do that, would they?

News Flash!  IBM to buy Sun.  It appears IBM is trying to consolidate the market for servers by purchasing Sun Microsystems for a whooping $6.5B in cash.  This is probably a knee-jerk reaction to Cisco systems announcement just this week that it will start selling servers.  The Internet giant, Cisco, entering the market is a serous threat to the existing market competitors.

That market before this week was mainly Dell and HP on the low side, Sun in the middle and IBM at the high end.  Both Dell and HP had been in pricing wars, and have been gradually reducing server pricing to gain market share, thus reducting margins.  We believe IBM is trying to consolidate the market, surround Cisco with both the high end and middle end systems, and at the same time increase IBM dominance in the market, before Cisco can gain a toehold.

IBM in the past had dominated the large mainframe market, but we think this market is gradually subsiding, just like it did when Digital started coming out with minicomputers to replace IBM mainframes.  In this case, IBM probably sees Cisco as a threat to their high end market share, and are afraid history may repeat itself.

We see Dell and HP continuing to occupy the low end with IBM and Cisco, with instant credibility, taking over the high end.  Although obviously not without a fight from IBM.  It should be an interesting battle, for those in the middle are doomed to eventually die.

In a rare convergence of technology it seems that for the first time since the 1980’s the two x86 microprocessor manufacturers, Intel and AMD, are coming out with surprisingly similar technology and architecture for their next generation 45nm quad core chips. This will allow true one-to-one competition between the two chip makers. We will all benefit as computers will show a real leap in computer performance compared to past architectures. We’re talking server speeds moving to your desktop, and Vista loading in less than 45 seconds.

The two chip builders took different architectural routes to get to today’s convergence in chip architecture. When Intel eliminated its Front Side Bus, put the memory controller in the chip, and independently powered each core they took on the same architecture that AMD has been using for years. At the same time, AMD went to 45nm technology which Intel has pioneered. Thus the convergence.

Intel’s offering internally called “Nehalem,” and commercially dubbed “Corei7,” will replace the popular “Core2″ architecture. Memory performance will triple as three separate DDR3 memory DIMMs with be run simultaneously. Intel requires a new socket, supporting hardware, and DDR3 memory.

AMD offering internally called “Shanghai,” and commercially dubbed “Opteron,” will use the same socket on the motherboard as their older “Barcelona” architecture, and AMD is waiting until 2010 to move to DDR3 memory. So they will be compatible with existing hardware right from the start.

Intel is first out the door, but will have to wait for the hardware to catch up. Memory availability appears to be there. AMD will have to prove it can deliver consistently, which it has had trouble with in the past. Thus the 2009 battleground.

The victor will be the chip with the best performance and the lowest power consumption. We are all eagerly awaiting the competition.

Microsoft is starting to take a run at Google Docs.  They have started by offering, at least, while it is in Beta release, a free Microsoft Office Live Workspace.  This is simply 500Mb of web space on a server that you can use to upload your documents, and access them from anywhere with a browser.  You also share these documents with others.  Microsoft has a plug in that integrates with Office on your desktop, and supposedly makes for a smoother integration of Office with Workspace. There is a small catch in that it only works with browsers that support ActiveX, that is Internet Explorer and Firefox currently.

The really interesting news is that Microsoft has announced web applications that will be “lightweight” versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote accessed from a browser.   No word yet whether they will be free, or whether you’ll have to have the desktop version of Office running to use it.

Rest assured, Microsoft will figure out some angle to make this a revenue producer.  Microsoft is pulling out its old tried and true strategy of coming out with a “me too” so-so  product that mimics Google Docs, and will constantly update the product until it gets 5 star reviews.  This will be followed by raising the price dramatically.  Office is not cheap, and people, for some reason, are still paying for it, even though OpenOffice.org for the desktop, and Google Docs for the Internet are available for free.