windows | Paul Wallbank - Communications Professional

Fading giants move to support each other

Merging two fading giants is unlikely to save their fortunes in the face of a declining industry.

Two struggling tech giants are reportedly set to merge with persistent rumours that Dell is about make an offer for storage provider EMC.

Both companies have been hit by shifts in the computing industry with cloud computing undermining both businesses, Dell was also hit by the collapse of the Windows upgrade cycle which changed the buying patterns of computer purchasers.

A combined company offers some theoretical advantages in bringing together one of world’s biggest server companies with a storage business, however it’s difficult to see how the two businesses combined would slow the decline of the segments both are strong in.

Mergers can slow the decline of companies like EMC and Dell, but without innovating and finding new opportunities to exploit it’s unlikely they can recover lost ground.

Businesses and the Windows 10 upgrade

Microsoft’s new operating system is impressive and free but should businesses jump at the Windows 10 offer?

Last night Microsoft formally launched Windows 10, the company’s latest desktop operating system.

A decade ago a new Microsoft operating system would have had people queuing at computer shops all night but today, in a world of cloud computing, what software runs on a computer has become less important to users.

To entice users onto the new operating system, Microsoft are making the upgrade to Windows 10 free for the next year to those using the earlier versions 8 and 7 and many will have noticed the messages appearing on their computers over the past few weeks.

Windows 10 is a good system, Microsoft has learned from the user unfriendly missteps of Windows 8 and added features that make the system smoother and takes advantage of the desktop computers’ power.

Microsoft have also continued with their philosophy of providing a system that works on all sizes of devices from smartphones to large monitor PCs and Windows 10 adapts to the needs and use patterns of the different screens.

That Windows 10 works on smartphones is less of a pressing matter given Microsoft’s attempts to crack the mobile market have been unsuccessfully and Windows phones languish with a tiny market share.

For business users, the question is whether to take advantage of the upgrade. The short answer is maybe if use cloud based services in your company and wait if you have desktop applications that rely on Windows.

Should you have applications that run on desktops and servers in your office then it’s essential to wait and see if your software runs properly on Windows 10. You’ll need to talk to the program’s supplier and your IT support person. Generally the advice is to wait a few months to iron out any bugs.

If you’re using cloud services then the operating system running on your computer is largely irrelevant as long as you have a modern web browser. Microsoft’s new Edge web browser that’s built into Windows 10 so far appears to be a fast and capable piece of software that’s an improvement on the much maligned Internet Explorer that still lurks on the system for backwards compatibly reasons.

Upgrading though isn’t without its risks, sometimes things go wrong and even the best planned transition doesn’t always work out and generally most cautious IT advisors will take the attitude “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

One other potential trap is in hardware. It may be that some printers, cameras and other hardware doesn’t have the right drivers for the new system so while the software upgrade is free, you may end up having to stump up a few hundred dollars for new peripherals.

For businesses users, if things ain’t broke and the existing computers are working well then the upgrade to Windows 10 is adding unnecessary complexity to the office and it’s probably best to hold off the transition until new computers are needed.

Security, smartcars and Microsoft Windows – ABC Nightlife July 2015

Security problems with smartcars and dating sites along with asking if a new version of Microsoft Windows matters any more

Security problems with smartcars and dating sites along with asking if a new version of Microsoft Windows matters any more are the topics for July’s Nightlife tech spot.

Paul Wallbank regularly joins Tony Delroy on ABC Nightlife on to discuss how technology affects your business and life.

If you missed this month’s show, you can listen to the program through the ABC website.

July’s Nightlife

A decade ago people lined up all night for a new version of the Windows operating system. Next week Microsoft will be launching Windows 10 to an indifferent market place, does what was once the world’s biggest software company matter anymore in a world of smartphones, connected cars and cloud computing?

Some of the questions we’ll be answering include.

So what are Microsoft announcing next week?
What happened to Windows 9?
Does Windows really matter any more?
The internet has changed things but not always for the better. What about connected cars being hacked?
Is this a bigger problem than just connected cars when we’re seeing things like kettles being wired up to the internet?
Of course it’s not just cars suffering problems on the Internet, adult dating site Ashley Madison has had potentially 37 million customers’ details leaked online.
Could this happen to any business? How do we protect ourselves?

Listeners’ questions

A few of the questions from listeners couldn’t be answered on air.

Running Flash of iPhones and iPads: Steve Jobs’ hatred of Adobe Flash was legendary and as consequence iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad don’t come with the ability to run the software. That’s a problem for those who need Flash for some packages.

The Puffin web browser gives iPad and iPhone users the ability to use Flash on their devices and is available from the iTunes store.

Securing Android: While smartphones are less prone to viruses and malware than personal computers, they still are at risk. For Android users there is no shortage of choice for security packages, some of which include;

Android power hogs: A downside with smartphone apps is they can drain battery life. One excellent feature on Android phones is the ability to easily check what’s using your juice.

Open device settings
Scroll to “about phone”
Click on “battery use”

Join us

Tune in on your local ABC radio station from 10pm Australian Eastern Summer time or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to@paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

Windows 10 release date announced

The launch of date of Windows 10, possible Microsoft’s last operating system, has been set for July 29

Possibly Microsoft’s last big operating system release, Windows 10 will be available on July 29 the company announced today.

The product, which will be a free upgrade for Windows 7 and 8.1 users, has an OEM price tag of $109 for the home edition and $149 for the professional version according the Newegg website.

For Microsoft, the race will be on to get Windows 10 onto as many devices as possible to meet its ambitious targets. How it goes with phones and Internet of Things devices remains to be see.

Seven flavours of Windows

Microsoft’s latest Windows roadmap may well be the last hurrah of the old software licensing model

In a post on Microsoft’s blog the company’s VP for Windows, Tony Prophet, yesterday laid out the final line up of the upcoming Windows 10 software.

As previously, Microsoft have decided to spoil the market with choice, offering Home, Pro, Enterprise and Education versions of the operating system along with two different versions of the mobile package and a stripped down product for Internet of Things devices.

In many respects this is Microsoft desperately holding onto the old model of operating systems where a consumer version bundled into a commodity PC offered less than an Enterprise version supplied as part of a lucrative corporate license.

That model still works – Microsoft’s licensing revenue was $19 billion last year – although it is in slow decline although the problem is operating systems are now commoditised and the old position of dominance in the PC industry doesn’t work in a world of cheap, lightweight devices interacting with cloud based services.

One theory running around the tech industry at the moment is that Windows 10 will be the last Microsoft operating system, if that’s true then today’s seven flavours of the software is the last grab at the old licensing model.

A small business makeover challenge

Microsoft’s Modernbiz technology makeover program is an interesting study on how small business computer usage has changed

One of the key factors in bringing the Personal Computer era of business to a close was the end of the upgrade cycle where users tended to buy new systems every three to five years.

For companies like Dell, Acer, IBM and Microsoft this cycle was an important and reliable income stream.

In the early 2000s though it stopped as customers decided that with most new innovations coming onto their computers through web browsers they didn’t need to buy new systems.

For the PC industry, particularly Microsoft, this presented a huge threat to their business models and all of them have been trying to find ways to refocus their businesses.

The ModernBiz Technology Make-Over

Late last year I was asked by Microsoft Australia to participate in their ModernBiz Technology Make-Over where a small business running Windows XP and Server 2003 was given a free tech upgrade to the latest equipment.

This was interesting as it was an opportunity to see how Microsoft and the market are adapting to a very changed industry.

As well I still carry the many scars – most psychological but some physical – from my years of running PC Rescue where upgrading companies’ old technology was a core part of the business.

Doing a tough job

The fallacy many managers and inexperienced companies fall for is that migration customers from old equipment to new systems is a simple matter of copying a few files. It is never that simple.

Upgrading company computers a tough field as every business is unique and in workplace where the technology has been in use for over a decade the learning curve onto new software is insanely steep for staff and management alike.

So watching the process from a relatively safe distance where I wasn’t worrying about losing customers’ data or trying to complete a complex task within a short deadline was quite attractive. Basically I wanted to see the other guys sweat.

Another attraction in participating was to see how Microsoft are managing the transition from supplying business servers to provisioning cloud services and how customers are managing that change in product offerings.

Dealing with a shifting market

For both Microsoft and their customers the shift from one off hardware and license purchases to cloud based monthly subscriptions is a major change in mindset, so seeing how small business users adapt to online services will be interesting.

Overall the technology makeover promises to be an interesting exercise on how the small business computer industry is changing.

For his participation in the Modern Biz Technology Makeover program, Microsoft gave Paul a Lenovo laptop which he hasn’t yet used.

The mobile payments industry has a USB moment

Could the Apple Pay experience be similar to the development of the computer USB port?

Has Apple Pay legitimised mobile payments? It appears so, reports the New York Times. Since the launch of Apple’s payments service, Google and other mobile payment providers are claiming usage has doubled with customers exploring the systems.

If this is true, it’s similar to how Apple legitimised the USB port in 1998 with the release of the iMac.

Prior to the iMac the USB port was a bit of an oddity, on most PCs the sockets sat unused and the few devices available on Windows computers worked reliably, as Bill Gates himself found out during a live demonstration at the 1998 Comdex show.

Unlike Apple Pay, the move to USB on Macs wasn’t welcome and it was a high stakes decision by Steve Jobs given that Apple’s existence was still precarious and its user base was still made up of largely of true believers who had been through years in the wilderness with the company.

Those users also had many thousands of dollars invested in Apple Device Bus (ADB) devices, all of which became redundant with the move to USB. Many customers at the time swore this was the last straw and they would move to Windows PCs.

Apple’s users didn’t carry out their threats and stayed with the company whose move to USB turned out to be a winner for the entire computer industry.

For Apple USB’s success meant their customers were no longer locked into a proprietary technology, for manufacturers they were able to start moving off archaic serial and parallel ports while for Microsoft the shift meant a better range of more reliable devices — although their operating systems struggled with USB until the release of the far more stable Windows XP.

It appears in this respect Apple Pay is repeating history in giving a boost to a technology that has been struggling to find traction in the market place.

The difference this time is that the payments industry is a far bigger market with far more implications for the broader economy than the computer peripherals segment.

If Apple raise the boat on payment systems, there are some incumbent businesses who are going to find themselves in a very different marketplace in five years time.

One, two, skip a few. Microsoft hopes Windows 10 will save a declining PC market

Will Windows 10 be enough to revitalise Microsoft’s ailing business divisions?

A few days ago I asked if Windows 9 would be Microsoft’s last desktop operating system.

Yesterday the company partially answered the question by announcing the next version will be named Windows 10 which conveniently skips version nine.

Skipping around numbers isn’t unusual for Microsoft, most famously Word skipped from version two to six just to overtake competitor WordPerfect in the late 1990s.

Windows itself has gone 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista, 7 and 8 in the past — that’s without mentioning the Windows NT family — so jumping to Windows 10 doesn’t detract from any logic in the Microsoft’s naming system.

The key point from Microsoft’s announcement is the business focus along with the continuation of Windows 8’s unified experience across PCs, smartphones and games consoles that has proved less than successful.

One area where Microsoft has conceded defeat is in the battle for a Start button with Windows 10, one of the biggest irritants upgrading users found with the new operating system and one of the reasons why many users chose the older Windows 7 software when buying a PC.

How the Start button will work on Windows Phone remains to be seen although Microsoft seem committed to the ‘One Windows’ vision despite its technological and marketplace difficulties.

Another interesting development with the new product is the Windows Insider Program, billed as an ‘open collaborative development effort to change the way Windows is built and delivered’.

Back in the old days this was called a beta program where testers were invited to try out new software to test the product and fine tune user experiences. At least it shows Microsoft are embracing the language, if not the spirit, of the collaborative economy.

Microsoft have released a YouTube video Introducing Windows 10 with Windows Vice President Joe Belfiore outlining the features of the new system.

Whether Windows 10 is enough to shore up the declining fortunes of the company’s Windows division and Joe’s job will be a key question for analysts and industry watchers over the next three years.

ABC Nightlife with Tony Delroy October 2014

Connected cars, smart watches, Microsoft and social media will be the topics of the next Nightlife with Tony Delroy technology segment.

Paul Wallbank joins Tony Delroy on ABC Nightlife across Australia from 10pm Australian Eastern time on Thursday, October 2 to discuss how technology affects your business and life.

Update: If you missed the program you can listen to the podcast at the ABC site or stream it below.

For this month’s spot we’re looking at smartcars, smartwatches, the next version of Microsoft Windows and whether the new social media platform Ello can displace Facebook.

Some of the questions we’ll cover include;

What’s happening with connected car technologies?
Isn’t all this talk about smart cars another way ?
So how far are we off the driverless car?
Are our mobile phone choices going to dictate what brand car we buy?
How does the smart watch fit into how companies are trying to lock us into their software?
A new social media platform called Ello is taking off, what is it?
Do we really need another social media platform?
Microsoft have announced Windows 10, aren’t we only up to eight?
What’s different in Windows 10?
Has Windows 8 been a success?
When will Windows 10 be released on the market?

Join us

We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on the night on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

Tune in on your local ABC radio station from 10pm Eastern Summer time or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

Could Windows 10 be Microsoft’s last desktop operating system?

Could Windows 9 be Microsoft’s last desktop operating system?

On Tuesday Microsoft are expected to announce their new Windows 10 operating system at a media event in San Francisco.

If the rumours are true, then the new system will be launched almost exactly two years after Windows 8 was released amid hopes that it would stem the PC industry’s decline.

Windows 8 didn’t deliver with most people being frustrated with the system’s inconsistent interface that tried to be unified desktop, laptop and tablet operating system which managed to be unsatisfactory on all of them.

As a consequence, users avoided Windows 8 like the plague with industry analysts Netmarketshare claiming most of Microsoft’s customers are buying systems kitted out with Windows 7 or just sticking with decade old Windows XP systems.

Courtesy of Netmarketshare http://www.netmarketshare.com

Making matters worse for Microsoft is the decline in personal computer sales in general with IDC estimating global shipments of both portable and desktop system will drop 3.8% in 2014.

These declines are already well established in the trends being seen in Microsoft’s business with the company’s Windows division showing an accelerating decline in profit margins.

Microsoft Windows division financial performance ($ million)

Should that decline continue with Windows 10, it may well be that Microsoft will have to consider the future of product.

As it is, the market may be deciding for them as users increasingly switch to tablets and smartphones. We may also see a wave of cheap Chinese made laptops running versions of Google Chrome or other Linux based systems also threatening the existing PC sales base.

Either way, a lot rides on what Microsoft announces in San Francisco this week. It could be the end of an era that defined the mass adoption of computers.

Lenovo Yoga

Lenovo’s Yoga 2 Pro is an attempt to combine a laptop and tablet computer into one device

Can a laptop be a tablet computer? The Lenovo Yoga Pro 2 tries to balance the needs of both in a package designed for home and small business users.

The laptop computer market is in a difficult place at the moment as both consumers and businesses move to tablets and smartphones so it’s interesting to get hold of the Lenovo Yoga Pro 2 to see how one of the leading portable manufacturers is responding to the changing industry.

One of the best ways of testing a portable device is to take it on a long trip, so a couple of 14 hour transpacific flights and trips around San Francisco, the Napa Valley and Silicon Valley proved a good workout for the Yoga Pro.

As a laptop

From a hardware perspective the Yoga is an impressive device with 8Gb of RAM, 256Gb solid state hard drive and a 1.8GHz i7 chip. The screen is a very nice 13.3″ 3200 x 1800 high-resolution display.

Rounding out the hardware specs are two USB ports — one 3.0 and the other 2.0 — along with a Micro HDMI output, webcam, inbuilt mic, headphone jack and an SD Card reader. All the basics expected in a mid range ultrabook that weighs in at a respectable 1.4kg.

In using the Yoga as a laptop, the device works well with the keys being crisp and responsive although the position of the glidepad and the backspace key being alongside the home key caused problems for this clumsy touch typist.

One of the problems with the larger form of ultrabooks is their usability when travelling economy on a plane; if the passenger in front of you reclines then it becomes difficult to use the device. This isn’t a problem specific to the Lenovo Yoga, but it is a drawback that the industry seems not to have considered in its move to the larger screens.

In the office

If you’re not travelling on planes, the weight and form factor works well and makes the Yoga 2 Pro a nice device to use while on the move. In an office environment it’s a standard mid to upper range laptop with good fast specifications.

For battery life, Lenovo claim “up to nine hours” for the Yoga Pro but in practice standard office use sees about five hours worth of juice with a full recharge taking under an hour. It’s lucky most transpacific flights now have power sockets.

Flipping to a tablet

While 1.4kg is good for a laptop it’s lousy for a tablet computer with the Yoga Pro 2 weighing in a kilo heavier than the iPad and 500g (one pound) heavier than the Microsoft Surface Pro. This makes it awkward to use over extended periods and the keyboard doesn’t feel right as the backing to a tablet.

The Yoga’s weight problem illustrates the core conflict for a device that wants to be a laptop and a tablet as the different demands for each type of device make if difficult for designers to meet both markets.

In the Yoga 2 Pro’s design, it’s clear the engineers had to make a choice between compromising either on the tablet or laptop functionality. As it turns out the designers decided to go with releasing a good Ultrabook laptop with compromised tablet functions — this was the correct choice for the Yoga.

Windows 8 limitations

Probably the greatest problem though for the Yoga Pro 2 in tablet mode lies in software with Windows 8 being far from adequate as a tablet operating system with a confused interface, an inconsistent user experience and unpredictable responses to touch screen commands.

For companies like Lenovo who are persisting with Windows as their operating system, it’s becoming critical that they start demanding better design from Microsoft before they find their market being overwhelmed by Android and iOS devices offering a superior user interface.

While the Windows 8 irritations aren’t a deal breaker for the Yoga, it does limit the device as a tablet computer and its something anyone considering it instead of an iPad or Android tablet should keep in mind.

A good general duty small business laptop

Overall, the Lenovo Yoga Pro 2 is good Windows Ultrabook for home and small business use offering the benefits of an ultrabook with the flexibility of being able to flip into a tablet for specific uses.

The device isn’t cheap, but the range of features and good hardware specs make it a decent purchase for small businesses, sole proprietors or workers operating from home who need a versatile Windows computer.

Milestones of the personal computer industry

Steve Jobs marked most of the milestones of the PC industry’s rise and fall

“There have only been two milestone products in our industry to date,” Steve Jobs told the Boston Computing Club in 1984. “The first was Apple II in 1977 and the second was the IBM PC in 1981.”

Jobs at the time was announcing the third breakthrough – the Apple Mac – which turned 30 last week.

Looking back over the four decades of the PC industry, Jobs’ claim that the Apple Mac was the sector’s third milestone stands up to scrutiny, however the greatest milestone of all for the PC was the launch of Window 3.0 in 1990.

The rise of Windows

Windows 3.0 changed the business model of the industry, it established software vendors – particularly Microsoft – as being dominant over hardware manufacturers, that shift nearly killed Apple and eventually sent most PC builders to the wall.

Microsoft’s advantage over Apple, IBM, Atari and dozens of other systems, was that users weren’t locked into one vendor’s products. It was possible

The Windows 3.0 milestone was even more important in that it forced a shakeout in the software industry as well, many of the incumbent vendors – most notably WordPerfect – though the Windows Graphic User Interface (GUI) was a flash in the pan and that most office workers would prefer to use keyboard instructions rather than mouse clicks.

WordPerfect was horribly, horribly wrong in judging the market and by the time they released the Windows versions of their product Microsoft had captured key market share for Word and the bundled Office suite that dominates the business world today.

Going mobile

So things were good for Microsoft until the next milestone, which again was marked by Steve Jobs, the launch of the iPhone genuinely did change the smartphone industry and was the first inkling of mobile would eventually destabilise the PC sector.

It’s interesting comparing Jobs’ iconic 2007 iPhone which sets the standard for product launches with the somewhat rough at the edges 1984 Boston presentation although both show how Steve Jobs was a master salesperson and a passionate believer in his products.

The PC’s final milestone

Three years later Steve Jobs delivered the milestone product that marked the beginning of the end for the PC industry, the iPad finally delivered a mobile computing device that businesses and consumers wanted.

Apple’s iPad also marked a fundamental shift in the computer industry – no longer did the software companies control the market, power had shifted back to the manufacturers.

From that moment on the PC, and Microsoft’s Windows business, started a terminal decline.

The rise and fall of the personal computer is a great illustration of a transition technology. That Steve Jobs bookmarked the beginning and the end of the PC industry is an interesting note about a technology that changed the home and workplace.