Andy Patrizio
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Andy Patrizio
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Yes, you still need endpoint malware protection
There has been a steady stream of reports and claims lately that many of us no longer need endpoint security, that antivirus (AV) programs on our PCs are worthless.Gizmodo flat out said that you really don't need an antivirus app anymore, arguing that Windows 10 and the browsers have tightened up security to the point that they adequately protect end users. Windows Central asked the same question, but determined that more protection is better than less.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Yes, you still need endpoint malware protection
There has been a steady stream of reports and claims lately that many of us no longer need endpoint security, that antivirus (AV) programs on our PCs are worthless.Gizmodo flat out said that you really don't need an antivirus app anymore, arguing that Windows 10 and the browsers have tightened up security to the point that they adequately protect end users. Windows Central asked the same question, but determined that more protection is better than less.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Microsoft to NSA: WannaCry is your fault
Microsoft’s top lawyer has blamed the government’s stockpiling of hacking tools as part of the reason for the WannaCry attack, the worldwide ransomware that has hit hundreds of thousands of systems in recent days.Brad Smith, president and chief legal officer, pointed out that WannaCrypt is based on an exploit developed by the National Security Agency (NSA) and renewed his call for a new “Digital Geneva Convention,” which would require governments to report vulnerabilities to vendors rather than stockpile, sell, or exploit them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Microsoft to NSA: WannaCry is your fault
Microsoft’s top lawyer has blamed the government’s stockpiling of hacking tools as part of the reason for the WannaCry attack, the worldwide ransomware that has hit hundreds of thousands of systems in recent days.Brad Smith, president and chief legal officer, pointed out that WannaCrypt is based on an exploit developed by the National Security Agency (NSA) and renewed his call for a new “Digital Geneva Convention,” which would require governments to report vulnerabilities to vendors rather than stockpile, sell, or exploit them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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The Itanic finally sinks
Intel has released the final versions of its Itanium RISC processor, the Itanium 9700 series, which are virtually unchanged from the last generation and uses a 5-year-old architecture. There are no new features or capabilities, just the most minor of clock speed bumps. In a reflection of how old the designs are, they come in four- and eight-core design with hyperthreading for twice the number of threads. Xeons are now coming with up to 22 cores. Clock speeds are 1.7Ghz to 2.66Ghz and the thermal package is 170 watts. A 3.4Ghz Xeon E7 with 22 cores runs at 165 watts. These things aren’t even remotely competitive, and Intel didn’t really try to address it. The quad core Itanium CPUs get a 133MHz speed bump, while the dual cores get no speed changes. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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So, what did we get from Microsoft’s Build conference?
Microsoft is winding down its annual Build developers conference in Seattle, and a lot of news has come from the show. Some of it was expected; some of it was a surprise. And there were a few from out of left field. We speculated on what might make news and what would not, so let’s revisit the list and see how the predictions went.Operating systems As expected, Redstone 3 was discussed. It’s formally known as the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, a pretty blah name, and will be released in September. Microsoft gave a pretty deep dive on what to expect primarily with Project NEON, now known as the Microsoft Fluent Design System. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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What to expect at Microsoft Build 2017
Today marks the start of this year’s Microsoft Build developers conference in Seattle, not far from Microsoft HQ. It seems like yesterday that the show was launched at the Anaheim Convention Center, which I attended for a briefing on Windows Server 2012, among other things. The show has grown tremendously and played a part in the launches of Windows 8 and 10, among many other products.So, news will roll out out throughout the day by people there to cover the show, but in advance of that, let’s take a look at what will likely be the big news in different categories, and what we hope to see. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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New Windows build brings more new features
It was just a week ago when Microsoft issued an update to Windows 10 for Insiders to test, and now, four build numbers later, it has another for testing with some new features added.Microsoft is currently full-on in development of “Redstone 3,” the next major update to its operating system. It has said it plans to issue two major updates per year to the OS, with the Creators Update in March being the most recent. The next update is planned for September.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Windows 10 S will lock you into the Edge browser and Bing
Now that the rumored cloud version of Windows 10 has been revealed, the facts are starting to come out, one of which may not sit very well with some users. Microsoft is all but locking users of Windows 10 S into its Edge browser. Windows 10 S is a locked-down version of the operating system that will only run apps from the Windows Store. When Microsoft tried this a few years back with Windows RT on the Surface tablet, it failed miserably due to a lack of apps.+ Also on Network World: Windows 10 adoption faster than any previous OS + However, with time and the switch from ARM to x86, there is a much larger app library from which to choose, and that includes third-party browsers. But while you can install Chrome from the Windows Store, there is a big catch—you cannot change the default browser. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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New Windows build adds two significant features
Microsoft has released a new build for Windows Insiders as part of testing for the upcoming Redstone 3 update due in September, and it adds two major new pieces of functionality users have been waiting for. The two new features in Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16184 are centered around social experiences, which may or may not be part of a theme. The first is the My People feature, which Microsoft first considered for a Creators Update release but pulled it because it was not ready in time. My People is all about the people you care about, according to Microsoft. It’s meant to be a central place for all your communication and interaction with contacts. To use it, make sure you have the latest versions of Skype, Mail and People apps. In its current form, My People has three basic features:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Microsoft reportedly will separate Edge from OS updates
It’s no secret that Microsoft’s Edge browser, the revamped browser that shipped with Windows 10 as a replacement for Internet Explorer, is struggling to gain any sort of traction. As IE fades rapidly, Google Chrome has been picking up share, while Edge remains stubbornly at 5 percent share.As I illustrated last week, Edge doesn’t really have one. It’s painfully slow. I should not be able to watch a website load piece by piece in 2017 on a broadband connection.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Microsoft to host Windows as a Service AMA chat
News aggregator and fan community Reddit frequently hosts an “Ask me Anything” (AMA) live discussion where people can ask questions of celebrities, technologists, politicians, and whatnot and get answers almost in real time. They can be informative and entertaining, or they can turn into unmitigated disasters.Microsoft is no doubt hoping for the former as it hosts its own AMA event to give its customers the chance to ask about the company’s plans for Windows as a Service (WaaS), its efforts to move Windows to a internet-dependent state of continuous development rather than going the old route of just providing fixes and an occasional service pack before the next major OS release.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Windows Phone brought in just $5 million last quarter
I have avoided the steady drumbeat of bad news surrounding Windows Phone because after a while it gets repetitive and morbid, but this one makes it abundantly clear it’s time to draw a sheet over Microsoft’s mobile phone business. For its third fiscal quarter of 2016, ended March 31, Microsoft reported sales of just $5 million. It didn’t actually say it that way, though. For its 10-Q financial filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Microsoft simply said "Phone revenue declined $730 million."And if you look at the same quarterly report from one year ago, it reported sales of $735 million. So, do the math. Just two years ago, its phone hardware revenue was $1.397 billion. That’s a collapse if ever I saw one.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Windows 10 adoption faster than any previous OS
Eighty-five percent of enterprises will have started Windows 10 deployments by the end of 2017, with nearly two-thirds of organizations completing their Windows migration in less than a year. That’s the main takeaway from a new report from Gartner.Gartner surveyed firms in six countries (the U.S., the U.K., France, China, India and Brazil) between September and December of 2016, and they spoke to 1,014 respondents who were involved in decisions for Windows 10 migration.The time to evaluate and deploy Windows 10 dipped slightly, from 23 months for previous operating systems to 21 months for Windows 10. Large businesses that are yet to start the migration are delaying because of legacy applications, a typical problem with every OS version. They are delaying upgrading until 2018, according to Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Sensitive data often follows former employees out the door
There is an old cliché that says a company's most valuable assets walk out the door at the end of the day. However, according to a recent security report, some other valuable assets are walking out the door as well, and they're not coming back.In a survey from Osterman Research, 69 percent of organizations polled say that they have suffered significant data or knowledge loss resulting from employees who took information resources with them when they left the business.Any form of data loss is a threat to a business, but the report notes that problems can arise both from employees actually taking data with them when they leave, and when departing employees have parked corporate information in locations like cloud storage services that are unknown or inaccessible to their former employer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Sensitive data often follows former employees out the door
There is an old cliché that says a company's most valuable assets walk out the door at the end of the day. However, according to a recent security report, some other valuable assets are walking out the door as well, and they're not coming back.In a survey from Osterman Research, 69 percent of organizations polled say that they have suffered significant data or knowledge loss resulting from employees who took information resources with them when they left the business.Any form of data loss is a threat to a business, but the report notes that problems can arise both from employees actually taking data with them when they leave, and when departing employees have parked corporate information in locations like cloud storage services that are unknown or inaccessible to their former employer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Avoid manually installing Windows 10 Creators Update
The Windows 10 Creators Update began rolling out on April 11, but impatient users could do their own upgrade as early as April 5 thanks to a utility called the Update Assistant, which downloaded it and installed the update for you.A lot of people jumped on this offer, and thanks to a few blow-ups, Microsoft has found some problems with the update and now advises users not to manually install the Creators Update and instead wait until it’s automatically offered for Windows Update.+ Also on Network World: 10 hidden features in the new Windows 10 Creators Update + The reason for all this rather late call for caution is that Microsoft wants to iron out any issues for specific hardware configurations. It started the rollout for newer devices that were less likely to have problems. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Specs of Microsoft’s purported CloudBook leaked
Over the past few weeks there have been rumors of a new version of Windows 10, called Windows 10 Cloud, that sounded like a reimagined Windows RT and would only load apps from the Windows Store and do everything online. Along with the new OS have been rumors of a new piece of hardware, dubbed the CloudBook, which would be targeted at the popular Chromebooks created by Google and its OEM partners. Chromebooks are basically modern-day netbooks, in that they are aimed at internet use, have very long battery life and are below cost. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Microsoft updates Office Online Server, announces release schedule
Microsoft announced it intends to stick to a twice-per-year cadence of major releases for Windows 10 and Office. Along with that, it has updated the Office Online Server for data centers.Office Online Server basically lets companies deliver Office Online to their users from their data centers rather than over the internet and from Microsoft’s servers. Microsoft introduced the Office Online Server (OOS) as a successor to Office Web Apps Server 2013.+ Also on Network World: Microsoft ends updates for Windows 7/8.1 on new processors + Office Online is not the same as Office 365. There are differences in the apps, although the core remains the same. One thing different is that Office Online doesn’t use the ribbon in some apps. But the basics—Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote—are all there. Outlook is available only through Outlook.com.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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The AMD Effect might be back—and that’s a good thing
In the early part of this century, Intel had become fat, dumb and lazy, not to mention complacent. Competitors such as AMD, Cyrix and VIA had been vanquished, and Intel stood alone on the x86 market. Its product offerings were a confusing mess of code names and features that confused even a propellerhead like me. Then AMD made its move. It introduced the Athlon, a dual-core, 64-bit x86 processor with the memory controller on the CPU. Intel pooh-poohed all of this. It had a 64-bit strategy called Itanium. No one needed 64 bits anyway.+ Also on Network World: Ryzen CPUs explained: Everything you need to know about AMD's disruptive multicore chips + Intel would eat its words. Once Microsoft and the Linux community introduced 64-bit versions of their operating systems, Athlon and its server equivalent Opteron would take off like a shot. Not because of performance, but because they shattered the 4GB memory limit of 32-bit processors. Now you could have servers with 8GB, 16GB or more, if you could afford it, and the age of server consolidation and virtualization had begun.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here