Microsoft might be in trouble?

Although Microsoft may have seen the worst of the economic woes, CFO Christopher Liddell said he expects business to be tough for the remainder of 2009.
"The economy continues to be challenging and we need to lift our game," Liddell said during a conference call with analysts, following the company's reporting of lower-than-expected quarterly revenue.

Microsoft CFO Christopher Liddell(Credit: Microsoft )
Liddell said the company doesn't expect to see things pick up significantly in the coming quarters. "Neither, in the short term, do we expect them to worsen," he said.
Microsoft did not give a specific earnings or sales forecast for the current quarter, which runs through the end of September.
"There are some signs that we have at least seen the worst," Liddell said. He said that the company saw several businesses stabilize, when compared to the prior quarter. Liddell noted that it saw unit increases in both Windows and Windows Server for the first time in a year, though revenue has continued to slide, with Netbooks making up 11 percent of PC units.
Search revenue was flat compared to last year, despite the launch of Bing.com during the quarter, Microsoft said. However, the company said it has seen a double digit increase in unique users.
On the PC side, Liddell said there is an opportunity for improvement next year, both from possible higher PC sales in general, and perhaps from business PC growth starting to outpace consumer PC growth. This year, consumer PC spending has been stronger than business, resulting in lower average selling prices for Windows--a trend exacerbated by the growth of Netbooks, for which Microsoft typically gets even less revenue.
As for the server unit, the company could see better sales next year, but he said corporate technology purchases will have to pick up for that to happen.
"Macro conditions are going to continue to trump everything," Liddell said. "IT spending is the key."
Liddell noted that several analysts are predicting that server spending may have reached bottom, but will stay in the same range for the next couple of quarters.
"That's internally consistent with the way we see things as well," he said.
Asked about Google's Chrome OS announcement, Liddell struck largely the same tone that Bill Gates did in his interview with CNET News.
"We've been fighting the free OS...for some time," Liddell said. While people do want to surf the Web, he said most people also want to run applications. "We don't see that significantly changing just because of Chrome OS coming out," Liddell said.

Article by Ina Fried

Google Chrome New OS Announced!

The new operating system, announced late Tuesday night on Google's Web site, will be based on the company's nine-month-old Web browser, Chrome. Google intends to rely on help from the community of open-source programmers to develop the Chrome operating system, which is expected to begin running computers in the second half of 2010.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company disclosed its plans for the operating system shortly after an online technology news service, Ars Technica, and The New York Times telegraphed the news on their Web sites.

Google is designing the operating system primarily for "netbooks," a lower-cost, less powerful breed of laptop computers that is becoming increasingly popular among budget-conscious consumers primarily interested in surfing the Web.

The operating system represents Google's boldest challenge yet to its biggest nemesis — Microsoft.

A high-stakes duel between the two technology powerhouses has been steadily escalating in recent years as Google's dominance of the Internet's lucrative search market has given it the means to threaten Microsoft in ways that few other companies can.

Google already has rankled Microsoft by luring away some of its top employees and developing an online suite of computer programs that provide an alternative to Microsoft's top-selling word processing, spreadsheet and calendar applications.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has been trying to thwart Google by investing billions of dollars to improve its own Internet search and advertising systems — to little avail so far. In the past month or so, though, Microsoft has been winning positive reviews and picking up more users with the latest upgrade to its search engine, now called "Bing." Microsoft is hailing the makeover with a $100 million marketing campaign.

Now Google is aiming for Microsoft's financial jugular with Chrome its operating system.

Microsoft has drawn much of its power — and profits — from the Windows operating system that has steered most personal computers for the past two decades.

Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, and its co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have made little attempt to conceal their disdain for Windows in recent years.

Schmidt maintains Microsoft sometimes unfairly rigs its operating system to limit consumer choices — something that Microsoft has consistently denied doing. Google fears Microsoft could limit access to its search engine and other products if Windows is set up to favor Microsoft products in the default settings.

Page and Brin have frequently derided Windows as a clunky operating system susceptible to computer viruses and other security problems.

Google made a veiled reference to Windows' perceived shortcomings in its blog posting.

"We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better," wrote Sundar Pichai, Google's vice president of product management and Linus Upson, Google's engineering director.

A Microsoft spokesman didn't immediately respond to an e-mail request for comment sent early Wednesday morning.

Schmidt and Brin are expected to discuss Google's new operating system later this week when they appear at a media conference hosted by Allen & Co. at the Sun Valley resort in Idaho.

Despite its own power and prominence, Google won't have an easy time changing the status quo that has governed the personal computing industry for so long.

As an example of how difficult it is to topple a long-established market leader, Google estimates about 30 million people are now using its Chrome browser — a fraction of those that rely on Microsoft's market-leading Internet Explorer. And there have been various attempts to develop open-source software to undermine Microsoft with relatively little effect.

The Chrome operating system will run in a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel — computer coding that has been the foundation for the open-source software movement for nearly two decades.

Google has already introduced an operating system for mobile devices, called Android, that vies against various other systems, including ones made by Microsoft and Apple.

The Android system worked well enough to entice some computer makers to begin developing netbooks that will eventually run on it.

Google, though, apparently believes a Chrome-based system will be better suited for running applications in netbooks.

"We believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google," wrote Pichai and Upson.

by Michael Liedtke

© 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserve

How to create an ISO

bing'ing?

  So recently Microsoft came out with a search engine called bing to try and compete with the search engine giant "google". Check it out. My first impressions of this site were ok... It produces a nice user interface while giving you the same features as google. My thoughts on if this will succeed? Probably. Microsoft wil be able to, somehow, to pull enough users away from google. If it wasn't microsoft, this engine would die. My opinion to if it should still be up in a year? No. Come on microsoft, you own the rest of the sofware market and even ripped off google with your windows live. And when your tabs are even named the same thing why switch over to your service?? I'm not saying all of this becuase I am blogging on a google application right now, but becuase I feel like Microsoft just needs to take a step back and let some other big names take some credit for awhile. 

Picture retrieved off of bing.com 

To go external or not to go external?

Now a days with information and data growing as fast as computers, people are trying to decide how to fit everything they have without having to delete anything. So here's the deal. If you wanted to save money and only got the 80 gig HD with your computer/laptop, it's ok, you can still hoarde your information and keep your pinky from pressing that "Delete" key. External Hard Drives are the new craze now, and catching on for more reasons than space. I'll explain. 

People mostly will get on their computer to download the newest song or the upload their pictures to facebook. Well an added feature is the ability of backup. Now if there's a virus or somthing and you had to reformat your hard drive, all your files on your external will be safe as long as a virus didn't touch it, and thats usually the case. 

Also, if you have to travel alot and need storage space, one of the handiest things of an external hard drive is it is portable. If you had a LAN party with your friends, grab your external and share some music!

    I hoped this help you decide to invest into this life saver for the student, or that 40 hour work-horse. Be Back Soon! And email for any suggestions on what to write about!

The Xceed DataGrid

This is for free right now!!! Why not take advantage of it??GO NOW!I just registered for the free Xceed DataGrid for WPF, and there’s only 23 days left to do it.http://xceed.com/freegrid”

Tatango

So for the last four years at Murray State University, I've been in Sigma Phi Epsilon and always active in the technology part anything we did. Well I was used to old technology (RJ-45 Jacks, Wired Speakers, etc) and I never got to experiment with anything new. Well now I get the chance! I've heard about a year or two back in one of my classes about a mass texter that organizations on campus use for contacting members with meeting times and important news.

  Tatango is a mass texting service that actually is for free! Of course, like everything else on the web that is free, it comes with advertisements. I tried out the service a few days ago with a few messages sent from my phone and sent from my laptop and computer. It was extrememly useful, and the ad took a very small space at the bottom of the screen. You can also send out a large amount of emails or voice messages. Yes, Voice messages. You call a number say what you need to say, and then after a few seconds everyone in your group gets called with the voicemail you just left. Ill keep you all up to date on how useful this program is and how well it works. 

See Ya Soon!!

The Tech Medic

Want a great jobskill to go along with any major?

Want to know what a great job to have regardless of your major?  Most businesses will have a website along with their physical business and will either use it to provide information or to sell products online. So why not take the extra step above the competition when putting in resumes for a job. Learn HTML! You may not think it is important right now, but if you get into anywhere besides a large corporation where there are it professionals already there, you could always be asked to help maintain the site. 

So regardless of what grade level or year of life you are in, pick up a book, or check out w3schools, which is a great online source for html tutorials and learn this very easy language. If you are still in high school check to see if there is an html elective, and if you are in college There has to be a HTML class where you are at.

Get programming!

Do you use P2P Software?

First off to clear myself legally by saying I do not endorse or promote using P2P software or engaging in piracy. I myself am not admiting by posting the information below that I engage, but am only supplying information.

So you use Limewire, uTorrent, Bearshare, or any other P2P or Bittorrent software?

Many of you people will use this software, download a few songs a month, and that's  it. Some of you download movies that just came out of the theatre or dvd. And a few of you know how to download games, movies, shows, or anything that can downloaded. What do all of you have in common? You're being watched.

There are thousands of people and companies looking for people like you. Even if you've downloaded once, you will be found. There is some good news though, there are programs that fight anti-p2p software. I'm gonig to briefly talk about one today, PeerGuardian.

PeerGuardian was made for the purpose of blocking IP's of comanies and gov't organizations trying to spy on you. Although it is not 100% percent effective, and you have to keep your block list updated, it will block alot of people trying to spy on you.

To get it to work on your computer google PeerGuardian and download for your operating system. If you have Windows Vista you will have to disable your UAC, which is a utillity that makes your computer think PG is a virus, and will not let it run. Once you hae it up and running you can download with more safety (remember it's not 100% effective), and open ports that were previously blocked if you couldn't use limewire at your work or something.

Email me with any more questions that you may have about this topic and good luck!

Clean up your PC at the new year.

With the new year underway you should do your PC a favor and clean it up. Now I don't mean to grab a dust rag and spray some cleaner on it, I mean getting rid of those files you havent touched since last year and won't touch ever again. Im going to give you some quick tips to clean up your PC and make it run faster and more efficent for the 2009 year. 

• Delete that old file from a class you took last year!

If you are never going to touch that paper you wrote then why save it? If you are proud of that paper and don't want to get rid of it at least zip it and store it in an archive so it's not wasting disk space.

• Use Disk deframentor

It's in your start menu, and if you've never used it before you are behind on the times. USing the DD will remove and replace files in a better order on your hard drive so there will be less load times to load up games or files.

• Spyware!!!!

Go to download.com, and download a free spyware or anti-virus software. DO yourself a favor and clean your computer so these programs wont run in the background and slow your computer up. It will also delete your temp files and other system files. Most of the files are free to download so go now!

SourceCube Development

Well with the upcoming date of graduation at the end of the year, and with a brother in Computer Science and a friend also in that field, we have put their skills along with mine to create a small company to use to program for money on a website. rentacoder is a site where you can post projects needing to be finished with background knowledge in programming languages, video editing, and tech writing. We have created a company, SourceCube Development, and have started our first project helping someone create a poker game for their class at a undisclosed university. I'll keep you posted though on how we do, and if you have a job to do, everything has a price!