Will Microsoft continue to dominate IT?

Microsoft recently announced that it has sold 175 million copies of its Windows 7 operating
system (http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2010/07/22/
windows-7-momentum-continues-175-million-licenses-sold.aspx). By the time you read
this, quite a few more copies will have shifted hands, as the official company line is that
more than seven copies are being sold per second, each and every day. Given the asking
price of Windows 7, that’s a serious chunk of change, although I guess it’s worth pointing
out that some of those copies will be bundled “OEM” versions that don’t generate quite as
much revenue as a fully boxed store bought copy.
No doubt the bean counters at Microsoft are rubbing together their platinum bars right now
in glee. Windows 7 has been a hugely needed hit for Microsoft after plentiful customer
complaints around Windows Vista and significant reluctance for customers to update from
Windows XP, an operating system that’s rapidly approaching ten years old.

To put that in perspective, if you were still running a ten year old OS when Windows
XP came out, you’d be running Windows 3.0 on the top of DOS. You’d also see a lot
of crashes, spend an awful amount of time mucking around with config.sys files and
wondering why none of your USB peripherals ever worked.

Ten years ago, however, Microsoft’s grip on the IT market, especially in the consumer
space, was pretty much iron-clad. A couple of months after XP hit the market, Apple
released its first iPod models, but they were Mac-only in a market that didn’t much care for
Macs. Ask people ten years ago to Google something, and they’d probably stare at you
blankly. Your TV was smaller and yet weighed a whole lot more than it currently does, and
hanging it on a wall would have involved some kind of industrial winch.

A lot has changed, in other words, and it does bear the question as to what the future
holds for Microsoft. The turbulent IT market is shifting with some users jumping over
to the Mac camp, others adopting the open source credo of Linux and plenty waiting
to see how Google’s Chrome OS pans out. A lot of actual computing is being done on
portable devices such as tablets and smart phones. Even the humble TV incorporates a
lot more in the way of IT. Within ten years a TV without Ethernet connectivity will seem
as technologically antiquated as DOS does today. To put it simply, operating systems
themselves aren’t likely to be the cash cow they have been historically.
Microsoft clearly still has lots of current market clout, not to mention spare cash. I doubt
that I’ll see Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer busking for pennies at my local railway station
any time soon. Still, the company will need more hits along the lines of Windows 7 in order
to simply maintain its market position, let alone expand it.

Browsing for a browser

If graphical browsers were actual people, the oldest of them wouldn’t be old enough to legally drink, at least not yet. NCSA Mosiac, which grew into Netscape and almost in parallel into Microsoft Internet Explorer is a bit over seventeen years old. In technology terms that’s actually quite well aged, and browsers have evolved significantly over that time. We’ve seen Netscape rise and fall, Internet Explorer take a market dominating position only to lose significant share to Mozilla Firefox and to a lesser extent Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari and Opera’s browsers.

Browser choice is a bit like choosing “your” brand of car. There’s a lot of attachment to whatever you’re used to, and getting out of the habit of just clicking on the same icon every time you want to check out the Web can be tough. It’s a worthwhile task, however, as the feature set of each browser can be surprisingly different. It can also reveal some interesting things you may not have considered about how and why you browse. Given that all of the major browsers are free and generally they’re not huge downloads, there’s no implicit reason why you can’t have multiple browsers installed.

It’s very much a personal taste test kind of thing. I try to switch browsers every once in a while if only to stay current with the market, but that’s not something you particularly need to worry about. What can be worth considering are the individual features that each browser offers.

Microsoft often throws some interesting tech ideas into each new release of Internet Explorer, although I’ve got to admit I don’t use it all that much. That’s more to do with doing most of my writing work on a Mac, however. Microsoft abandoned IE for Mac with version 5, whereas the current PC version is IE 8. Even Microsoft doesn’t recommend anyone use older versions of IE for security reasons, but when I am working on a PC I give IE a spin to see what’s fresh and new. As a Mac user you might expect I’d use Safari, but beyond its Top Sites splash screen — very handy if you repeatedly visit the same sets of Web sites — I’ve never found it that compelling. Likewise Opera, although the company’s mobile versions of its product do run well on smartphone platforms such as Blackberry and surprisingly even Apple’s iPhone.

Firefox is beloved by many for its extensibility. Some of its features are a little silly, like the Persona themes introduced in the most recent version, but other extensions are distinctly handy. Google’s Chrome is fast catching up to Firefox in the extensions stakes, and at the time of writing is my browser of choice simply because it’s so particularly fast.

That could change. Despite the browser being “free”, the browser wars are far from over. Thankfully, the casualties are usually just code, and the cost of entering this particular war only involve a little bit of download time.

NBN alternatives

There’s been a lot of recent press surrounding the first folks to be connected to the National Broadband Network. I’m not entirely sure that it can be called “National” when there’s only a few connected users to date, but that’s splitting hairs. Unless you happen to be in just a few spots in Tasmania (or shortly a few more in mainland Australia), the chances are you’re more than a year or two away from being able to access NBN services.

So what do you do in the meantime?

For a (thankfully) decreasing number of users, dialup still remains the only method of internet access. They’re the communities that will benefit most from the NBN. The problem with dialup used to be speed, and it still is, but in a different way than a decade ago. Ten years ago, Dialup was common and web pages and Internet services were formatted with dialup users in mind. Today’s web pages and applications pretty much all presume you’re on some kind of broadband, and dialup won’t cut it for much more than very simple email checking.

What then of broadband? Here you split into several choices of broadband, dictated largely by where you actually are. Satellite broadband services (and associated technologies such as WiMAX) do cover some small (and mostly remote) pockets of Australia. Cable-based Internet speeds have increased in recent years on some services, but they’re still highly limited based on whether or not your home or business was a beneficiary of the cable rollouts of the mid 1990s, and the lack of price competition

For most people, broadband equals ADSL or ADSL2+ if you’re near enough to an ADSL2+ exchange. There’s been little to no movement in value in the ADSL space for years, as most of the hardware is Telstra-owned, even if it’s resold by other vendors. In the ADSL2+ space, there’s more competition, and as such a lot better value on offer — again if you’re near enough to an ADSL2+ exchange.

ADSL/ADSL2+ might be a bit stagnant in terms of the deals getting better, but where there’s a lot of movement in the consumer broadband space currently is mobile broadband. Traditionally, using mobile broadband was a lot like playing Russian Roulette with the contents of your wallet. Unless you were exceptionally careful about how, when and where you connected, your mobile broadband bill could quickly inflate to catastrophic bill shock dimensions.

That’s changed very rapidly in recent months, with a lot of pre-paid options giving you 1GB of data for as little as $15 per month. That kind of data rate makes some low-speed ADSL options a little obsolete, especially when you consider that your mobile broadband is indeed mobile. Coverage can still be an issue depending on where you are, but it’s improving. On a recent road trip between Sydney and Adelaide, I tested a Telstra microSIM in an iPad on the road between Hay and Balranald. For those who haven’t done that particular run, describing it as the middle of nowhere is pretty apt. At the time I was in the car — I should note that I wasn’t driving and web browsing at the same time — there were few other users on that stretch of track. The mobile broadband speeds I got were better than my home ADSL2+ connection.

That’s mildly annoying, and admittedly I’m not going to move to the middle of the Hay plain just in order to get faster broadband. Still, it does point to a genuine improvement in mobile broadband access that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

Making The Most Of Your Printer

At a recent launch I attended in Hong Kong (disclaimer: HP paid for my plane fare and accommodation), HP launched a new range of printers with an interesting addition, namely e-mail addresses for each printer. The idea is pretty simple. If you’ve got a device capable of emailing, you can send files to the printer. This skips the need for drivers, or even a PC at all, as it’s technically capable of taking email from connected devices such as smart phones or tablets like Apple’s iPad.

It’s a neat idea in a field that doesn’t see too many genuinely interesting ideas. Putting it simply, printing is sadly boring stuff, and something that most of us don’t care about a jot up until the printer jams or runs out of ink or toner. A printer’s job is a mundane one, and one that it doesn’t get a jot of credit for. For most consumers, the choice in buying a printer often seems to come down to whatever model is the cheapest on the shop floor. Often that’s astonishingly cheap. I’ve seen plenty of last year’s model printers on shop floors for less than fifty bucks, which on first glance seems like a steal.

Often, however, it’s anything but. There’s nothing wrong with the older technology per se, but what can trap printer buyers is both the cost of the ink and the quality of the output. It shouldn’t be a huge surprise to discover that cheaper printers often have worse print quality, especially for things like photo or colour printing.  One of the more interesting figures to come out of the launch I attended was that HP estimates that the era of printers being used for Word Processing predominantly is coming to an end. I’m certain that this doesn’t mean that the humble small office laser should expect a gold watch any time soon, but at a consumer level, things are shifting towards photo and web printing. Once you move from printing characters to how much of a character Uncle Trevor is, the quality of the output becomes a lot more important.

The ink/toner question is the other big “trap” in printer pricing. Buy a cheap printer, and it’s almost certain that the replacement cost for a full set of inks will be greater than the cost of the printer itself. Most (but not all) vendors have moved beyond including half-filled “starter” ink packs with printers, but it’s not environmentally friendly to junk a working printer just to get cheaper inks with a new one. Where you can save money here is in buying the bulk ink cartridges most vendors offer. Look for inks labelled as “XL” or “High Yield” or similar. You’ll pay a bit more for the inks upfront, but when they go through twice as many pages, the cost per page drops, not to mention the number of times you have to go to the shops to get new inks.