Microsoft

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People complain about the economy. People say that, “because of the economy businesses will fail.”

The evidence used to back this up are the high numbers of layoffs that companies make or lower of stock prices. In some cases, hundreds of people are laid off at a time. In some cases thousands at a time. Sometimes stocks plummet.

I argue that the economy isn’t the problem.

I argue that the real problem is business decisions. Business leaders make poor business decisions because they don’t understand their customers, don’t understand their vendors or just plain don’t understand their own business.

Let me give you an example that supports this. continue reading...

So, Microsoft is really working hard to dispel the attitudes that people have about  Windows Vista. It is fascinating to me that they have to work so hard at it. They have sites dedicated to telling people how good they are like the Mojave Experiment. They did the same with another site but it wouldn't work because of their stupid Silverlight technology. They have even resorted to spam to accomplish the telling.

If it was half as good as Microsoft claimed, they wouldn't have such a hard time getting people to upgrade. The consumer would spread the word for them.

The fact is, you can do so many things with Vista. You can do all that you did before... you just have to do it differently. In many cases, it is much more difficult.

Here are some observations that I made a year ago that still seem to be an issue... even with the much touted SP1. Some are getting better, but still not there. continue reading...

So, I was doing a little maintenance on LinkedIn and saw this fancy little ad for Microsoft Vista Ultimate.

Of course, I had to click on the ad because I was curious to know what spin Microsoft was going to put on Windows Vista now trying to prove to public at large that Vista is a "stellar" product. Just because I use it, that doesn't mean that I think it is a great product.

Funny thing happened when I clicked through. continue reading...

Ken comments at my post on loving Walmart that big business is becoming soulless. He provides examples of Apple, Target and Google being better brands from a more caring perspective. But, I wonder if the problem that Walmart really has is the fact that as a company gets larger they are simply more of a target.

Let's put the size of Walmart into perspective.

   

Here are the annual revenues of the four companies mentioned above.

Apple Computer: $19,314,000,000

Google: $10,604,000,000

Target: $59,490,000,000

Walmart: $378,799,000,000 continue reading...

Maybe De-legitimize isn't a word...

A couple of weeks ago I wondered if companies were less relevant if they have to use spam. Microsoft had used some comment spam on another blog I maintain. I guess it is becoming more and more common place for a legitimate company to spam other sites in order to get traffic.

Alex at the Sunbelt Blog pointed out that even security companies are starting to use spam... to give you tools to avoid spam, no less.

You know, the least they could have done was used correct spelling... or make it a little relevant to the conversation. So, the question I pose... is a company less legitimate if it has to use spam to drive traffic? continue reading...

So, I just bought a new laptop. Given the nature of what I do, I had to get a Windows Vista machine. I wish more of my clients used a Mac so that I could do more development on my Mac.

Maybe one day.

I had it installed with Vista Ultimate because it doesn't make sense to me to intentionally get a version of an operating system that is missing features. I have spent about seven (7) hours getting it all set up. I had to turn off various security features (like User Account Control and prevention of non-digitally signed drivers) and work through installation problems just to get it all to finally work for me.

I then needed to set up my Exchange account and Google IMAP accounts. For those of you who have ever set up Outlook, you know that you can't set up Exchange from within Outlook. If you try, you get this error:

Notice that it indicates that you should go to the Control Panel and open the Mail icon.

So, here are the icons that are around what should be the Mail icon. continue reading...

One of my many projects is managing a blog that posts news and opinion for the copier, printer and document management industry at http://www.OfficeProductNews.net/.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a news story about Captaris and Microsoft. Today, Microsoft decided to spam my site a little. Well, I think it is a little spammy. "Fred" at Microsoft wanted to post a comment that blatantly points my readers to their Server 2008 launch site. Check out the comment: continue reading...

A few weeks ago, I moved my email services to Google Apps.

My main motivation was I wanted to find a good alternative to an Exchange Server. Since I left corporate America a few months ago, I have missed the synchronization that an Exchange Server provides. I can't justify the costs of one, so I needed an alternative.

Google Apps provides free email hosting for up to 100 email accounts on your domain. You can petition for more without paying extra. The shared calendars are pretty cool, too. Recently, they added IMAP support which allows the users to have their email in their favorite email desktop client sync with the Google Gmail interface... so you can have the best of both.

If you are used to the way that your client handles email in a POP3 or Exchange environment, it takes a little getting used to (for example, you can't hit delete in Outlook, you have to drag and drop to the trash and identifying something as spam or not as spam is a little more complicated). But, once you get used to it, it works really well. One of the things that I really didn't like very much was that I couldn't synchronize my calendar. I still prefer to use Outlook for my email. I do because it is so well used. But, I really like the idea of having a web interface to modify my calendar. continue reading...

Be the best. Be the top. Leave your competition in the dust. And they'll come for you. Microsoft and Yahoo are teaming up (or rather Microsoft is buying Yahoo for $44.6 billion). From the press release, Microsoft said:

Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo! can offer a credible alternative for consumers, advertisers, and publishers.

Who do you think they are talking about? Of course, they are talking about Google. If you are number one, people will look to you as the person to beat. That is not necessarily bad, but once you get to number one, you have to do more things, new things, innovative things to stay on top. Although, Microsoft does have a long way to go since Microsoft and Yahoo combined market share was half of Google's. Microsoft hasn't historically been a very innovative company, just a company who copies then either sues or buys to increase market-share. So, we'll see what happens. Corey Smith Co-founder of Resumango where you can build a better resume for free.