Microsoft’s hilarious response to Apple’s Mac vs. PC series ads
Let’s hope it’s a series.
I love both of these campaigns for two reasons.
They’re fun to watch - a trait not usually associated with computer advertising
They signal the further consumerization of technology. Not a one includes a product shot. The gigaherz and gigabytes are still there inside the box, but that’s not the pitch anymore.
We’re all buying technology these days. We’re just not calling it that.
I missed the football game last night – thanks to Steve Duplessie for catching it.
Chris Evans points out the challenges of disk drive capacity outgrowing performance. Sound familiar? Until recently, these complaints were perennially aimed at linear-access tape technology, with random-access disk in the role of savior.
As disk now faces the same “can’t get the data out fast enough” problem, the solution is clear: SSDs. Flash is the new access king in storage. Or will be, because early products are struggling with reliability, write performance, and other capabilities that disk drive device and interface technology have fine-tuned over the decades. You can’t expect a breakthrough technology to hit the ground running.
Yesterday I found this Microsoft presentation in the blogosphere on the topic from 2006: flash_is_good
Tom Brokaw’s speech on unsung heroes who “put their feet on the ground and their hands on the keyboard” to move us all forward. Are we collectively tomorrow’s greatest generation?
Steve Ballmer (mostly because of who and what he represents – his speech was mildly interesting)
Refreshing mix of about 4,000 real IT folks and system builders! I’m jaded from many events like this with a whole bunch of vendors hobnobbing amongst ourselves.
LA sunshine and 70+ degrees in February (I live in Minnesota).
I’m in Los Angeles at the Microsoft Server 2008 launch. I’ve heard lots of positive buzz around Server 2008 from system builders playing with it, developing with it. The product seems to be more mature than typical Microsoft releases at launch time – it even has SP1 included already.
I’m looking forward to hearing Steve Ballmer speak, partially because I’m kind of new to attending large Microsoft events and have yet to hear him in person.
Your customers need online backup or data recovery services. Offer both.
My friend Bret Rohloff at Microsoft calls the loss of computer data a “digital house fire”. Well put. There are lots of parallels, and the results are often the same: the permanent loss of precious, priceless keepsakes.
One big difference: unlike physical possessions, “priceless” digital possessions can be replicated and stored somewhere else to keep them safe.
Uberpulse’s Data Recovery Services tour
Uberpulse visited Seagate’s Recovery Services team. Some interesting takeaways:
Cost to store data locally: ~$200
Cost to back it up online: ~$50/year
Cost to recover lost data: at least $500, often thousands of dollars
I’ve been meaning to sign up for online backup…I’m motivated to get it done now!
Solution providers can offer these services
Seagate has programs that allow solution providers to offer Seagate Recovery Services and Evault (Seagate’s online backup service) to their customers.
Tell your real-world tech stories and be part of an IT comic series
Here’s a fun diversion from Microsoft and Seagate: a collaborative IT hero/comic/adventure! Feels like ”Dilbert Meets the Justice League”, with storylines contributed by…you?
The idea of IT folks as unsung heroes rings true to me. Saving people’s bacon day after day from problems and threats that they don’t even know (or necessarily care) about sounds as much like the technology team at my job as it does Superman.
Invisible and indispensable – about time for a little celebrating of these roles! Tell your stories and get it in on the fun.
Businesses still on XP, but consmers are overwhelmingly choosing Vista
Ed Bott at ZDNet dug deep into a Dell database to come up with surprising insight on Vista adoption. While business are installing XP twice as often as Vista, consumers are adopting Vista at a 93% rate.
As I’ve posted before, I believe Vista is well on its way to widespread adoption. And Vista is the poster child for storage consumption, leading to larger, more profitable disk drives for desktop and notebook.
Despite its name, Windows Home Server could play in business
I’ve heard from Microsoft folks that Windows Home Server is getting stronger than expected interest from the system builder community. And while Microsoft has consciously differentiated it from Small Business Server as Chris Pirillo reports , they may see small businesses adopt Home Server as an entry backup solution.
This is because home and business IT needs are converging, with multi-PC households looking more and more like client/server business environments. Simultaneously, businesses are feeling the effects of the consumer-led Digital Revolution, with content flooding their storage systems.
Are you adopting Windows Home Server in home or business? How will you use it?
A “no-brainer” central landing place for mushrooming home digital media
Seagate announced today support for Microsoft’s Windows Home Server. I’m excited because this product looks to create an easy landing place for the seemingly infinite digital media collecting in homes. And Seagate’s got the storage products lined up to make WHS-based servers purr. Check out our press release for more on this.
Windows Home Server also looks to be a huge channel opportunity. Unlike Xbox, Microsoft is letting others integrate the solutions. HP and others are offering WHS-based devices, but you’ve got a window of opportunity (months? a year or two?) before WHS-based home servers are readily available in this relatively immature market.
Looks like an easy integration process. You’re basically offering a storage-heavy PC-like system that sits on the home network. It’s designed to be managed from existing PCs in the home, so you don’t need an additional keyboard and monitor.
By outfitting the home server with 2 drives out of a possible 4 slots, you can give your customer enough capacity to meet current needs and position yourself as their “growth consultant”. You leave them room to grow, which you can help them with over time with additional internal drives. You can plug in external storage devices to expand further.
I’ve heard from people at Microsoft that limited-release versions of WHS sold out right away, with demand far beyond expectations.
