by ezs | Apr 10, 2006 | Uncategorized, ZENworks
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This is the start of another series of blog posts – this time around managing desktops and laptops – and what will happen in the future with Windows Vista.
In the words of Microsoft’s own marketing – we’ll try and “Bring Clarity to your World”
Written at: Draper, UT
First to the basics – the versions of Vista and hardware requirements.
There will be at least five versions of Windows Vista – although only two of these really seem suitable for businesses: Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Enterprise.
It seems that the proliferation of choice will be confusing at best. Will most customers choose the Business edition? Enterprise?
The next piece of the puzzle is hardware requirements. As always – take the ‘minimum requirements’ as just that. Analysts and beta testers alike are giving the following recommendations:
- general knowledge worker – Pentium 4 class machine, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, 1Gbit ethernet, accelerated graphics capability
- ‘power worker’ – Pentium 4 class machine; dual core and 64 bit ideal, 2GB RAM, 100GB HDD, 1Gbit ethernet, accelerated graphics capability
Now I have talked to enough of you to know that this is a tall order. Most organisations are currently working to a three year replacement program for laptops and a four, five or six year replacement cycle for tethered desktop machines. One other factor in this equation is that almost every IT team did a refresh of hardware and OS in 1999. (Remember that!)
This has led to the “Y2K + 5″ phenomenon – hardware was replaced on the desktop in 2004/2005 – and will next be replaced in 2008/2009/2010. Laptops are due for replacement this year – following a first round of replacement in 2003.
These two factors combined are significant:
- confusion on choice of Vista desktop
- massive costs (replacement and just churn costs) of desktop hardware
Already enough to make you think twice.
In the next post I will talk about another area to consider – application support. I’ll dive into some of the murky details of getting applications supported on Vista and why this may be another roadblock for some customers.
As always – comments are welcomed.
Written at: Draper, UT
by ezs | Apr 6, 2006 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
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Microsoft announced at Linux World this week that they would be ‘opening the doors’ of their Open Source Software Labs.
Early days – the site went live this afternoon and there is very little content (low signal:noise ratio – flames about Windows streaming video and Microsoft outnumber the useful information).
Overall I think this is probably a good idea – Novell has been using many forms of Open Source Software for years – most visibly with our use of Novell Linux Desktop and OpenOffice – but also with Bugzilla, various Wikis, development tools, test tools – even the software that runs these blogs.
Novell has certainly learned a lot about making software better; we’ve made our own proprietry offerings interoperate, we’ve adopted more open standards – and we’ve been active with many Open Source community projects.
(I’ll not forget that we also develop a broad portfolio of open source solutions – from OpenSUSE to iFolder – take a look on Novell Forge.)
Will Microsoft do the same? I hope so – even if it’s only about making their own proprietry offerings somewhat more interoperable.
Take a look at the Microsoft Open Source Software Labs here.
What do you think? Will this make Microsoft a better player? Are Microsoft running scared?
Written at: Provo, UT
by ezs | Apr 5, 2006 | evilzenscientist, fun stuff, Technology, Uncategorized
Apple released Boot Camp.
Legally letting you dual boot your Intel based MacBook.
Very nice – more fuel to the “Why I want a MacBook” 🙂
by ezs | Apr 3, 2006 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
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Novell’s CTO – Jeff Jaffe – is now blogging – http://www.novell.com/ctoblog/
His first post is now live – it’s pretty long – but an interesting read.
Written at: Draper, UT
by ezs | Apr 3, 2006 | evilzenscientist, Gonetoutah, Uncategorized, Utah
We joined Recycle Utah a month or so ago – supporting recycling locally.
We’ve now started composting again (a three year gap since we were in England), seperating recyclable glass and generally trying to cut down on the general trash we throw out.
I also signed up for the Utah Power green energy program – to power our web server farm.
Every little helps.
There was a thought provoking article in the Salt Lake Tribune today about this.
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