Jason Brooks

My Microsoft Watch colleague Joe Wilcox is reporting today on some rather eye-catching Apple/Microsoft numbers: ““Here’s a big number: 20 percent of Microsoft Office’s U.S retail sales are the Mac version, according to NPD. Here’s another: Mac users account for 10 percent of retail Windows Vista Business and Ultimate sales.”“ It doesn’t surprise me that […]

Today I attended a Sun Microsystems Chalk Talk on the company’s virtualization plans. The talk centered on two upcoming products from Sun, which ride together under the anagrammatic label xVM. The product duo consists of Sun xVM Server, which is Sun’s long-awaited (by me, at least) Xen hypervisor implementation, and xVM Ops Center, which is […]

Symantec has been turning heads with its suggestion that whitelisting might be a better way forward for ensuring the security of PCs than the blacklisting approach currently used by anti-virus products—including those from Symantec. My colleagues Jim Rapoza and Larry Seltzer have recently weighed in on the idea: Jim doesnt like it and Larry is […]

Microsofts Windows Server 2008 RC0 hit the Web earlier this week on the road to its scheduled February 2008 release, toting a new Internet Information Services role for the products lean and mean Server Core incarnation and a laundry list of small fit-and-finish tweaks. However, the most significant component of the RC0 code drop is […]

FileMaker Inc.s FileMaker 9 Professional is the latest in a long line of desktop database products that, as with previous versions, distinguishes itself with its ease of use. FileMaker is best known as a productivity tool for individuals and small groups. However, the product has, over its past few iterations, grown thicker back-end roots—most apparently […]

Symantec has been turning heads with its suggestion that whitelisting might be a better way forward for ensuring the security of PCs than the blacklisting approach that current A/V products, such as those from Symantec, adopt. My colleagues Jim Rapoza and Larry Seltzer have recently weighed in on the idea: Jim doesn’t like it, and […]

Salesforce.com leaves its heart in San Francisco The first floor of the Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco is a vast marble expanse with little in the way of a lobby. A small sign points the way to an elevator that has two buttons: one for up, the other for down. Stepping in on the […]

As I write this, VMworld is drawing to a close, having been an exceptional success. The fourth annual expo for VMware and its partners in virtualization saw healthy gains both in attendance and the number of exhibitors—up 57 percent and 79 percent, respectively, since last year. As I reflect on the recent explosion in popularity […]

For an office productivity application space thats been awfully staid since Microsoft smote its early office suite rivals, 2007 has been a year of significant upheaval. Between format standardization wars, the emergence of new office application players and the re-emergence of some old faces, theres no shortage of suite buzz. Whats not yet clear is […]

San Francisco free Wi-Fi is dead. Long live San Francisco free Wi-Fi! EarthLink, the Internet ISP and erstwhile municipal Wi-Fi build-out partner for various U.S. cities, has hit upon some rough financial times—rough enough that the company has recently opted to slash half its work force and dramatically scale back its muni Wi-Fi ambitions. My […]

Microsofts ISO standardization ambitions for its Office Open XML file format have hit a rough patch, as OOXML recently failed to garner enough votes for fast-track ratification. ODF (OpenDocument Format) advocates are pleased, but theyre fooling themselves if they think that the lack of ISO standardization for OOXML is going to put any kind of […]

San Francisco free WiFi is dead. Long live San Francisco free WiFi! Earthlink, the Internet ISP and erstwhile municipal WiFi build-out partner for various US cities, has hit upon some rough financial times–rough enough that the company has recently opted to slash half its workforce and scale back dramatically on its Muni WiFi ambitions. My […]