Microsoft debuted its second retail store at The Shops in Mission Viejo; since I live a skip and jump away, I thought I'd drop in there to see what all the commotion was about. Apparently, the grand opening wasn't enough to rate the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger, or even a Rolling Stones tribute band; instead, we got Justin Bieber (Taylor Swift was at the Scottsdale retail opening last week). Maybe the message here is that the Stones are XP old and Windows 7 is younger, hipper.
To get myself prepared, I did read some stories about the store opening in the local paper. What I learned was that Justin is bigger than I thought, and that there were going to be hundreds of people there. I had to jump in the car to make the 45 minute trip out there before the grand opening within the hour. Yikes!
I got there in the nick of time, after battling traffic and parking. As I entered the mall, I could already hear the commotion and saw what looked like throngs of kids and geeks. I didn't have to ask for directions to the store. I was already in the thick of it within 20 steps of the door.
Microsoft COO Kevin Turner made a few announcements and then cut the ribbon. As the drape dropped from the front of the store, it was instant madness, mainly from the shrill screaming of teenage girls. And Justin wasn't going to show until later that evening. I did manage to talk to one guy in line -- just one -- who said he was a consultant who was impressed with Windows 7 that he's already running it. He wanted to find out what a Microsoft retail experience was like and to see if the store would have Apple's Genius Bar equivalent. I don't think he was going to find out, sorry to say. The majority of customers that morning were there for something other than OS purchases and they were being shuttled in and then back out after they got their goody bags.
Like anything Microsoft does, the marketing machine in overdrive knows how to throw a party. I'll come back in a month, on a Saturday afternoon, for a more realistic picture of Microsoft retail. For now, some pics of the craziness:
(More pics here. )
On a side note: I love how blogosphere commenters are lambasting Justin Bieber. I confess that I don't know much about him and probably not the target demo for his music, but far be it for me to mock the guy, who is far more talented than I am. Well, okay -- he's talented, I'm not.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 10/29/2009 at 11:59 AM4 comments
The outlook for Microsoft's earnings call for the last quarter is expected today and it bests analysts expectations; online editor Kurt Mackie will sort out the details at Redmondmag.com later this afternoon.
Analysts predicted moderately bad news, mainly as a result of poor PC sales. Of course, we're all wondering what the next few earnings quarters will show, and what impact Windows 7 sales will have.
What's even more interesting, though, is that Apple continues to prove that OS bit players (really, it's what it is) can make bank against the 800-lb. gorilla. The company's OS market share has improved by a modest 3-point increase, mainly at Microsoft's expense. Some analysts peg Apple as having as much as 10 percent of the OS market now. Even though its OS still has a hill to climb, where it counts is Apple's awesome revenue numbers last quarter: $9.87 billion, which was well above Apple's own estimates, with $1.67 billion of that being profit. All good news to shareholders.
And remember that we're in a recession. Some of the credit for Apple's success, of course, is attributed to the iPhone juggernaut, but still -- how do you like them apples?
Who's all for predictions? Will Apple continue to increase OS market share, even with Windows 7 in the mix? Or will Windows 7 be able to regain lost ground? Predictions welcome here.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 10/23/2009 at 11:59 AM0 comments
Just in time for the debut of Windows 7 is the official opening of the very first Microsoft retail store, in Arizona. Yes,
YouTube is there.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 10/22/2009 at 11:59 AM0 comments
Live from New York,
it's Ballmer stating "Im a Windows 7 PC, effective immediately" at the official launch event. I'm guessing when he made that proclamation, he wasn't as adorable as the
little girl in the ads. Now, if Ballmer were a PC, I'd guess that he would be the shiniest, most souped-up, Windows 7-sporting
Alienware desktop, not an ASUS netbook.
Windows 7 officially went on sale Oct. 21 in the U.K., pushed up because of a postal strike. The early launch doesn't matter much; Windows 7 has been tested and debugged (for the most part) and manhandled by well over 8 million beta testers, so we weren't expecting any surprises. For consumers, an upgrade is likely to come from the purchase of a netbook or a new computer. And for enterprise folks, there's a modest list of upgrade-worthy features, outlined here.
(Odd or intentional coincidence: the successful Apollo 7 mission ended when the space module splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean, Oct. 22, 1968.)
As you're downloading your copy of Windows 7 from the online store, check out this freebie, Deploying Windows 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and TechNet Magazine (it's a PDF that download immediately if you click on that link).
Posted by Michael Domingo on 10/22/2009 at 11:59 AM0 comments
When Microsoft's Patch Tuesday rolls around, it's a scramble to make sense of the fixes and then go through the laborious process of lining up and installing the needed ones. So, last week's looooooonnnngggg list of fixes meant much more than usual to think about.
Among the patches was one for a spoofing flaw in the CryptoAPI, but as a few IT folks just discovered, this pill had some far-out side effects: Installing this fix on servers running Office Communication Server and Live Communication Server expires the licenses for those products, rendering them moot (and mute, so to speak).
With so many patches this month, you'd think that Microsoft would take extra care with the QA process for each fix. Might Microsoft be distracted, understaffed, or both? Or are we blowing this event out of proportion? Send us high five or a slap across the face to snap us out of it by commenting here or e-mailing us.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 10/22/2009 at 11:59 AM4 comments
Sidekick phone users who were data loss victims are pointing their fingers at Microsoft, now that they own Danger, the company who provides storage services for T-Mobile's Sidekick customers and was a recent acquisition of the software giant. And with that, cloud computing gets its reputation, well, sidekicked as a result. Deserved or not on Microsoft's or cloud computing's part, it certainly will give pause to CTOs who may have been warming up to the idea of trusting the safekeping of data in someone else's hands.
New technology is bound to fail, and if it does so in spectacular fashion, there are lots of reinforcing lessons to be learned from them. Obvious Lesson #1: Whether you're a big or small company or an individual, always have a solid backup plan.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 10/14/2009 at 11:59 AM0 comments
Comment in a
recent blog post from
The Seattle Times ripping the recent Windows Mobile 6.5 release:
"I work at Microsoft and I have an iPhone. The iPhone population continually increases here. Windows Phone will not diminish this."
I can't very that it comes from a Microsoft employee, but if it indeed originates from the Redmond campus, it means that that employee and colleagues have little to no faith in the company that provides said employees with livelihoods. I'm all about "eating one's own dogfood," so to speak. Tell me if I'm right or wrong to think that way.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 10/13/2009 at 11:59 AM4 comments
You know those Intel ads featuring some of their high-profile colleagues as "rock stars"? Turns out, Conan O'Brien on last night's show interviewed the real Ajay Bhatt, the Intel fellow who was a co-inventor of the USB. Trying to inject humor into IT issues is a hard sell, and usually it's such an in-joke that it only kills among fellow pencil protector wearers. One of the commenters: "I laughed so hard!" Yeah, I admit -- me, too.
That bit isn't the first time Conan has gone to the IT-as-comedy well. On his older show, his team had the smarts to send one of the comedy writers to NBC's tech support center in Hyderabad, India, so that the writer's computer could get some personal love and care.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 10/13/2009 at 11:59 AM1 comments
Microsoft's newest messaging platform is now golden, so who cares? Seems it's getting lost amid anticipation -- real or imagined -- for Windows 7. Microsoft is busy on all fronts, but the software-consuming public seems to be able to handle only one thing at a time.
For those who want to remain ahead of the curve, do check out the Microsoft Learning Group's Exchange Learning Portal. You'll find a bevy of free chapters from Microsoft Press books that can be downloaded, plus a few Exchange 2010 Learning Snacks. The e-Learning clinics pack the most value though. I tried accessing them from the portal page, but it looks like the links are broken. So I searched the catalog and sure enough, they're accessible that way. Here are the links:
Clinic 6900: Introduction to Exchange Server 2010
Course 6901: Exchange Server 2010 in an Enterprise
These offer marketing hyped overviews, which may or may not give you an edge on the upcoming Exchange 2010 Configuring exam; expect more advanced clinics down the road.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 10/09/2009 at 11:59 AM2 comments
A company as big as Microsoft needs powerful and proactive legal counsel (see
vs. Uniloc,
vs. EU, or
vs. i4i for some of the more recent high-profile court drama). But the recession (there's that word again) had the company cross examining its legal bills. The result: hefty cuts to the tune of about $135 million and negotiations to reduce costs associated with outsourced counsel, according to
this blog piece in
Legal Week. That's more than half a billion if you take into account the Uniloc fine. There's no indication if the 450 lawyers who were axed are part of the
5K that Microsoft was going to let go, but I'm guessing it is.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 10/09/2009 at 11:59 AM1 comments
The Microsoft ecosystem seems healthy and poised to remain strong despite the recession. That's what a
Microsoft-sponsored study by IDC shows, with 5.8 million Microsoft-related IT jobs resulting from the software giant's offerings over the next four years.
The IDC study has some interesting statistics:
- Microsoft is directly and indirectly responsible for employing 6.1 million people worldwide.
- 14.9 million IT professionals worldwide are involved with Microsoft software, which is 42 percent of all the people working in the IT industry.
- For every dollar that Microsoft makes, the Microsoft ecosystem gets another $8.70. Microsoft is poised to make about $60 billion in revenue this year. That means more than $500 billion will be made by Microsoft partners, tool developers, service providers and the like.
Online News Editor Kurt Mackie tempers Microsoft's rosy optimism with some grim data from the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics; read his piece here.
(Post corrected to reflect more realistic revenue numbers, stated in IDC report. Thanks to Scott from Portland for pointing out the error. -- MSD)
Posted by Michael Domingo on 10/08/2009 at 11:59 AM1 comments
IDC's study on the Microsoft ecosystem is all well and good, but what does that mean for you? From a jobs perspective, it means you plan on sticking with this IT gig for a while. A survey of 1,627 Redmond readers shows that 89 percent believe they'll be working in IT at least for the next five years. The numbers over the year have shown that number to be fairly steady, rocking around the 90 mark.
If you want to read more, check out this year's Redmond Reader Salary Survey here. (Next month, I'll have MCP-specific data to share with you.)
Posted by Michael Domingo on 10/08/2009 at 11:59 AM0 comments