RafaelWolf.com

A while ago I posted a beef with a software vendor I’ve had experience with called Sage.  They’re the makers of software like Peachtree Accounting, MAS 90, 200 and 500 oh and lets not forget the contact management software called ACT which by the way I actually kind of like.  The ACT division has something about it that’s different than the rest of the group, secondly I must say that the Peachtree group is my next favorite and lastly the MAS group which has a TON of ground to make up but from what I understand they’re trying.  I’ll give them credit there, they’re trying…I think…

For what it’s worth their MAS family of software is OK, not horrible, not stellar, just mediocre and still definitely 3rd (last place) on my list of the Sage products I’ve had the pleasure of supporting .  I suppose if we factor in the price it could even be called good and that it gets the job done (but still 3rd at this point in time).  For whatever reason though there is an animosity that resellers of the product have against people on the outside, IT people like me that are not in the Sage MAS Family Partner Network.  That basically means I didn’t pay to resell their software, I didn’t get training, I don’t get commissions and well, I’m just not good enough to click a mouse on their executable to install it and I sure can’t configure it because it’s such a complicated software (are you getting my sarcasm?).  I happen to charge less than their partners do and my systems don’t hang or need debugging.  My number one suggestion if you think about putting in Sage’s heavy application, a real server from Dell (Dual Core or better), 4 gig of RAM minimum, dual gigabit teamed nic’s and at minimum 10k RPM hard drives oh and you also NEED to connect your clients to gigabit Ethernet like your server is so they are all lined up at the same speed.  With that, bye bye bugs that are hardware or network related!

I received quite a few responses with my initial post, I laid out several issues and I appreciate all the great responses.  I recently came across Wayne Schultz’s post titled “5 assumptions I’ll make when debugging your MAS 200 server“.  Wayne actually posted to my initial blog about Sage and I signed up for his newsletter which I get regularly.  Because Wayne has so graciously posted a fair use clause on his site I’ve taken the liberty to re-post it here for the greater IT community with as you noticed, a link back to his original post above!

Begin re-post:

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One of the toughest things to diagnose are sporadic Sage MAS 200 errors. Typically these manifest themselves as Error 12 conditions or cryptic lockups that bring the MAS200 server to a grinding halt (usually mid-day or in the midst of a heavy processing day).

The first thing I’ll usually try with a MAS 200 server problem is running the server app as a program instead of a service. This seems to be especially helpful for larger sites (for sake of argument lets label a site with over 10 users as large).

If you’re seeing error messages like “Connection failure to host:[tcp]Servername;####;NODELAY;STREAM” when starting tasks – these can often be resolved with the tweaks from our site.

I’ve diagnosed more than a few of these in my career. While they’re highly annoying – they generally  can be resolved with  careful and systematic checking of configurations and settings.

My observation is that many sites however fail in diagnosing the error conditions. Below is my list of the top 5 reasons that problems go un-resolved (or in some instances such as failing to have a backup – get worse).

Top 5 Reasons Your MAS 200 Server Keeps Having Errors

1. The IT person didn’t do what I asked because they typically don’t know how and are too embarrassed to admit to you or the boss. If you’ve asked to have Anti-Virus exclude certain folders – check that it has been done. Similarly watch them make any changes (again). Yes, you’ll have to put up with some heavy breathing and sighs. This is something all IT people learn to do in school.
2. Even though staff will say  “It couldn’t be this” – check it anyway. Insist on it. Watch them do it. That goes for any of the Sage KB suggestions as well as instructions on excluding folders, files, etc on antivirus scans. Probably 40% of the problems go away when users actually try the fixes (as opposed to saying they tried them). (Tip: Always backup first – and be sure to read my #5 below).
3. The fact that Word and Excel run are totally irrelevant to any diagnosis of why MAS 200 won’t run — but the IT folks will hold that out as Prima Facie evidence that MAS 200 sucks, Sage sucks, Providex is a shitty language, SQL rocks, their MAS 200 consultant sucks, The Boss Sucks and their network is air-tight and better than any other on Planet Earth. You just have to develop a tough skin and keep running down the checklist.
4. Roughly 40% of IT folks have no idea what administrative rights are. In general I test for this right off by right clicking on the Start button and noticing whether “explore ALL” is an option. When that’s not present I assume the user doesn’t have administrative rights. Quite a few times after I do this and announce the results the IT folks disappear for a half hour or so. I’m pretty sure they’re going in the back to look up “administrative rights” in their “Server Administration for Dummies” book.
5. The IT staff don’t have a proper backup. Drag the entire \MAS90 folder (and all subfolders) to a separate location locally before starting.

Our site contains information on the different ways that you can correct many MAS 200 errors. The key is to systematically try them all one by one and observe whether small changes to your setup are correcting the issues you exist with MAS200 lockups.

© 2009 – 2010, Wayne Schulz. All rights reserved. Limited use is allowed provided you included the following link back to our site “Via: Schulz Consulting Sage MAS90 & MAS200 Consulting”

Comments

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I tried to post this but I’m unsure if at this time Wayne approved the comment (Wayne graciously did approve my comment – THANKS WAYNE! Cancel that, there one minute GONE the next – Wayne you are not cool!).  On my site I like to practice free speech and I’ll post practically any comment that’s written with a human hand and that makes sense, even negative comments add to the greater good and knowledge base!

Here’s my comment to Wayne’s post…

Begin comment:

Hi Wayne, you posted on my site so I’ll post on yours if you don’t mind publishing my comments.  I find your 5 tips condescending to most IT professionals and in line with Sage and their partner network’s elitist views that their word is gospel and that most IT people outside of the sage network don’t know what they’re doing.   I see you commented on a client’s IT person deleting a file from a MAS directory.  This should indicate to anyone that Sage doesn’t understand “administrative rights” because you’re required to give all users of MAS full rights to the directory that Sage resides in.  That action in itself is ludicrous and shows poor design on the part of Sage’s product.  By design it gives anyone the right to delete whatever they want, truly a flaw with Sage not IT pro’s.  Your attitude and comment are classic examples of why Sage has the problems it does with the IT community at large (people off the Sage payroll).

Rafael

End comment:

Here are my thoughts on Wayne’s 5 tips to debugg your MAS 200 server.

1. Tip 1 and 2 deal with virus scan’s, has Sage not figured out how to deal with AV?  I find it quite odd that you have to exclude directories from anti-virus scanning so their product will run properly.  I guess it’s not the end of the world since end user file deletion to the Sage program directory is a much bigger problem, better tackle that one first!
2. Tip 3, this tip seems most unhelpful – what IT pro assumes MAS won’t run if a totally unrelated program won’t run?  This tip is perhaps the most insulting tip of the list and is it really a debugging procedure or just a poke at how inept you’re accusing your own client of being?  I don’t think I’d be your client any longer if you insulted me like that on a website that anyone in the world can read.
3. Tip 4, I’m sure that 40% statistic is pulled out of a joke bag for entertainment purposes…or was there a study done by Harvard you could cite?  Where did that number come from?  Lets bump it up to 80% for giggles and assume they all work in Sage’s MAS 90 Development Center!  As I’ve already noted several times the permissions are by (poor) design on the part of Sage not IT pro’s who are told to give those directory permissions.
4. Tip 5, it’s interesting how a “proper backup” is a drag and drop method.  I haven’t seen such a sophisticated method of backing up an application since Windows 3.1.  MAS is truly a stellar product!

To conclude I’d like to simply state that we should all be honest here.  Sage MAS 90, 200, and 500 are mediocre products, they certainly have flaws.  Wayne himself pointed out a glaring flaw in fact and in my opinion it’s a HUGE one because it’s at the core of their product.  <– I’ve bolded that for extra emphasis!    I’d hardly call giving full permissions to your program directory to every user of the system a “bug”, that’s a flat out security hole.  That practice which has been around forever (and I think it exists with Peachtree products as well) goes against every security and application development 101 class because it allows anyone to delete your content.  Definitely not a “bug”!

I don’t think Sage will be as widely accepted in the IT community until it breaks their current corporate culture of elitism both in their office and in their partner network.  It’s so hard to take Sage and their reseller network seriously when they talk about server infrastructure, networking or their own product as I sighted on my initial post  because they don’t give you the respect or dignity you deserve as an IT pro.  They in fact chase their tail when you ask them technical questions especially about their product’s user capacity (as though 10 simultaneous users was a “large” user…Peach Tree Quantum does 30…maybe more now?).  It always seems to be a he said – he said game of finger pointing between IT pro’s and Sage resellers.  Unfortunately posts like Wayne’s and this very post propagate the animosity between the IT community and Sage + its reseller partners.  I’d have to believe though that since I’m relatively new to dealing with Sage that this is a well rooted tradition which is confirmed by other more experienced IT pro’s who have posted to my initial Sage post.  That post can be found here if you’d like to read it –> Link.

If you’re reading this and you’re thinking about buying a Sage product think long and hard about it.  A cheap price shouldn’t be the only motivation for purchasing a product.  Feel free to ask me what I think about Sage or their competitors and I’ll give you my honest answer!  I am not a reselling partner of any product so I have no vested interest in selling you either way.

Take note that when I was doing an initial investigation for these types of products that Micro$oft never even called me back, they had no real phone number for me to call and I couldn’t get past the gate keepers so God only knows how good or bad their product is or how it performs next to Sage’s.  Thinking about it for a moment I think they’re quite different in operation actually.  The one glaring positive that Microsoft has over Sage is that I don’t think Microsoft will tell you to give your end users full access to their program directory

I was on Dell’s website today (and yesterday in fact) looking at an Inspiron 560s.  Dell’s website has 4 different “systems” with various options, bells, whistles, etc.

Here’s the current link:  –> Inspiron 560s

After going online to try and “Personalize” a system I noticed the website intentionally steering me to a model with a higher base price just to get the video card I wanted (it was $100 dollars more).  According to the “Tech Specs” all those systems are basically the SAME!  The case and the motherboard in all Inspiron 560s systems are the exact same, they then layer various types of processors, memory and hard drives on top of the foundation.  Nothing new right?

Here’s the old bait and switch:

What I’ve discovered is Dell tricking the unknowing consumer to pay more than they need to by NOT offering the same options for a “lesser” model thus, to get the add on video card (NVIDIA GeForce^® G310 512MB DDR3) you are forced to buy the more expensive model.  You DON’T need to buy the more expensive model because the NVIDIA card will in fact go into the less expensive model but who’d know that if you’re just some non-nerd shopping for a computer?

As a side note, Dell has begun saying “This quote is only good for today” and they’re no longer honoring the typical 30 day quote time.  This too is a typical high pressure sales tactic used to pressure consumers into pulling the trigger early.  It’s subtle but effective!

Dell – your bait and switch practices are shameful!  So are your subtle high pressure sales tactics!  Are you owned by ABC Warehouse another infamous bait and switching company with high pressure sales tactics (Read more here –> Link)?

I think it’s a real shame that people (especially those in local governments) don’t see Google’s ploy for what it is and that people aren’t speaking out to take a more rational approach to the Google Gigabit Fiber announcement.  It’s a marketing campaign, typically people / companies have to pay for a marketing campaign but not Google because of their marketing brilliance!  I can’t believe how “excited” people are at the opportunity for “Gigabit fiber” to their houses.  Would any other business making promises they may or may not fulfill get in trouble for this type of hype?  Can we please look at this Google hype logically and sensibly?

1 – Google’s doing what a Walmart might do at the checkout when they’re looking to place a new store:  “Can I have your zip code”.  This is an attempt at Google to see where they can get the most bang for the buck, where the MOST customers might be.  The old model was to build it and they will come.  I suppose Google is smart about this approach, I bet one of their PHD’s came up with the idea!

2 – Customers, Google is not doing a service to the community, make no mistake about it.  They’re looking to jump into the Cable TV business, the phone business (in part they already have), and anything else they can serve over Internet Protocol.  You know, to take advantage of ANY connectivity you need a device, do poor and under served people have the devices to access digital data Google provides?  I would suggest they don’t and they’ll always lag behind so no matter what Google says unless they have Section 8 computers and cell phones it won’t really help that class of population!

3 – Google would love to have their own network, that way they don’t have to be beholden to their competitors beefs, currently Google relies on external networks which are fastly becoming DIRECT COMPETITORS, ATT, NBC, ABC, Verizon, Sprint, Comcast, Charter, etc, etc, etc (some are direct already!).  It’s only in Google’s best interest, NOT the community, for Google to get a fast and furious foot hold – to gain and take market share away from entrenched vendors.  Is this bad?  Probably not, competition is good but I think we need to know the real reasons for Googles Gigabit Hype, it’s mostly good for them not you even though you might see benefit in the end!

4 – Google’s marketing campaign, isn’t it a shame how we act like sheep?  All Google has to do is drop an idea and right away millions of us are ready to fill out a survey and submit applications but for what?  So you can get fast Internet to your house?  So you can get viruses, spyware, filter through junk email and waste even more time updating your Google Buzz status?  So you can download Avatar in 5 minutes instead of 55 minutes?  How will this actually help anyone?  It seems like more hype the more I think about it.

5 – Economic impact, I wonder how much real economic impact this will make on a community?  Certainly you should already be seeing shifts in your local community because of companies like NetFlix.  I bet there’s a local video store that’s recently closed in your local neighborhood because of slumping sales thanks to NetFlix or Block Buster online!  It’s not that Google would be creating jobs, they’d merely be shifting them or they might in fact be importing them because the local community doesn’t have the skill or talent to support Google’s technology.  I’m sure there are many communities who’ve experienced that, their talent pool isn’t Google qualified!

6 – Why would you want to be part of an experimental network?  I can imagine anything that’s experimental would be buggy, it’s EXPERIMENTAL.  They’ll be using you as the guinea pig or a lab rat.  I wonder if users who suffer outages or poor performance will see their excitement wane?  Maybe users will switch back to the more reliable providers they once vilified?

7 – If I think of anymore I’ll update the post!

What’s utterly shameful in my opinion (and not surprising) how most have give in to the herd mentality, we’re sheep, everyone jumping on the Google Gigabit bandwagon.  Can someone with a voice louder than mine start bringing sense into the Google Gigabit conversation, it’s maddening how the public can’t see what’s truly happening!  You’re being manipulated at Gigabit speeds!

Rafael Wolf
Director for The Center of My Own Opinion

Over the past 3 years I’ve come into contact with Sage Software products.  I’m curious if anyone else has had problems with this company?  By the way, I don’t discriminate!  Anyone have problems with Microsoft, Intuit, or others?  Please feel free to share, I’d LOVE to know.  I asked on more than one occasion for a contact to other companies who’ve installed their products and who “LOVED” it.  The managers I spoke with said sure, let us contact those companies and we’ll have them give you a call but I’m still waiting, I’ll update this post should that change!

I have several big beefs with Sage that I’ve finally been able to speak with someone about at Sage although who really knows if it has fallen on deaf ears?  Maybe they’ll do something about it?  Until then I’ll post to my hearts content!!!

Here’s my list:

Pre-Sales technical questions aren’t answered:

I had pre-sales technical questions when evaluating their products against their competitors products but couldn’t find anyone who could answer them.  By the way, Microsoft was worse, I was rooting for their product but I couldn’t get through the front door and they NEVER called me back once.  You’d think they’d want to sell some software!  I just found out the other day why Sage still supports Windows 2000!  It took me 3 years to get that answer!  Windows 2000 went into “extended support” in 2005 which, from most in the IT community is considered unsupported because outside of security patches you have to pay for support.  Apparently Sage supports one year past anything in extended support.  I told them to market that as the “Sage +1″ plan, who knows, I think it’s kind of silly for them to support all those OS’s, certainly it’ll kill your developers and your support staff.  I wonder how many people still use Server 2000 with Sage products anyway?

Shoddy Documentation:

Most of the documentation makes claims like MAS 90 can only support 10 networked clients before it experiences file locking problems and their documentation encourages you to upgrade to MAS 200.  Besides the fact MAS 200 has some build in Terminal Client there is no difference between 90 / 200, their documentation actually said that.  If you want MAS 200 pay less for 90 and put it on a Terminal Server, you’ll save 50% of the cost! That kind of shows me their entire model isn’t well thought out among other things.

Their documentation doesn’t have any metric information, per client bandwidth utilization, disk I/O on transactions, no min’s no max’s, etc.  They don’t even make estimations.  I spoke with some folks at MAS just the other day and they said it was impossible to know. I find that impossible to believe! They said it depends on how you use it.  Isn’t that true for any software?  I’ve got a client with 20 or more clients all using the MAS 90 fat client on a gigabit network without incident.  We’ve only recently had a lock file issue because of a NIC driver problem but I’ll keep tabs on what’s going on.  CPU utilization, disk I/O, etc is nill I’M ACTUALLY IMPRESSED by their product from that regard.  It lives past their low expectations, it’s almost like MAS 90 is Sage’s red headed step child .

Customer Support:

Their customer support might be good if you can get to the right person but that’s difficult.  I’d rather pay more for support if they were able to help faster, redirect your question to the right person, they’re only open till 8 PM, that is, if they’re not in training so if you run 3 shift’s you’re out of luck or you have to pay for extra support.  I’m not sure what that costs?

Customer Relations:

Another point I thought odd was an email reply to a complaint I had.  It included the President and COO of the company I do IT support for on the reply.  This was uncalled for and I made them know that in my reply which didn’t include the COO’s address on it.  Later, another support manager was insisting to not only cc the COO but the CFO in an introduction letter.  Of course that angered me further and I emphasized in 3 responses that is not acceptable.  The justification was that this “introduction letter” wasn’t of a technical matter so he could essentially go over my head, furthermore since I was a consultant and didn’t work at the company he could do this.  He later said he wouldn’t contact the COO and CFO because I verbally requested it (how many times do I need to ask again?).  I think it’s a tacky ploy by the management team to include people in communications that aren’t supposed to be included, clearly it was trying to be used as a leveraging tool to tamper down my complaints.  It was certainly not appreciated.  What software company calls the COO and CFO or emails them?  They have much bigger things to handle than a low level quarrel between their IT person and a software company.  I can’t stress enough how ridiculous this was, truly laughable!

Business Model:

Sage and it’s partners live on a high horse, they think everyone that’s not a reseller, Sage Certified, Migration Specialists, or whatever hokey title isn’t capable of managing their product.  If they just had the documentation available even a cave man could do it!  Most of their partners seem to be less than intelligent even about the products they support anyway and I’ve dealt with three of them.  There is an attitude at Sage I just don’t like, same goes for the resellers.  I spoke with several people over there about the “do it yourselfer”, I used that on purpose and they bit hook line and sinker.  They said their product isn’t for the “do it yourselfer”.  I wanted to confirm their thinking, that unless you pay them, their “partners”, etc for support then you won’t be able to manage their product because you’re not intelligent enough, skilled enough, technical enough or you don’t know how ERP / MRP software works.  That’s frankly not the case Sage because you can if they provided the documentation, but they don’t!  They protect their resellers and partners by keeping users IGNORANT.  Isn’t that why customers pay 1500 / year for support?  To get the documentation to support their product and for that ability to pick up the phone and call?  That should apply on all aspects of the software not just the use of it but installation, migration, or general administration of the product.  Reseller protectionism hurts their product more than they know – in my opinion.  I’m sure I wouldn’t hate it as much if I had the tools to properly support it, instead I have to reboot the server or reverse engineer the thing.

Why I wrote this:

There were a few links prompting me to write this along with recent personal conversations I’ve had with some customer service personnel and I thought I’d ask the Internet Community at large if Sage Sucks or is it the greatest thing since sliced bread?

Why Sage Software Sucks

Microsoft offers to help unhappy Sage users

Nicholas Piasecki – Buying Software Sucks!

I am currently in the “Sage Sucks” group even though management has seemingly made efforts to appease my complaints, I do appreciate that.  It’ll take more than a few conversation to get me into the neutral or positive category though.

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My Gift To Sage:

I just sent a kind gift to the folks at sage, it’s a book called “Why Software Sucks“.  I think they earned it, I went all out for the folks on the management team, 13 copies, all gift wrapped with Amazon gift wrapping paper and a nice card that said this:

“Dear Jeff, A gift for you and your wonderful management team.
It’s no joke, I sincerely think your team would do well to read this
wonderfully humorous and oh so true book about your industry.
Please distribute to your team.Best wishes”

It’s 240 characters EXACTLY, all the room they gave me on the note!  The gift which I’ll write off on my taxes ha ha cost me $262.61, including tax, shipping and the gift wrapping – well worth it if something gets done around there! 

My gift to Sage MAS90 / 200 Support Services Management

Cheers, I hope you guys and gals enjoy the book!

Rafael Wolf
Director for The Center of My Own Opinion

Hey look, YAOOTI…that’s me saying Yet Another Opinion On The Internet!  Would I know how to say that word?  No – I just made it up!

I’m going to briefly give my opinion about Windows 7 since it’s finally here and I’ve used it a bit.  I haven’t used it extensively but I do know Geeks who have.  Those who’ve used it a lot (Geeks) say they’re happy with it and that seems to be the consensus of other Geeks on the net who use Windows.  I think I’m only a border line Geek; I’m more of a technology utilitarian and use it for what it’s worth.  If the bells and whistles don’t really add anything useful they don’t matter to me.  I hung on to Windows 2000 forever because Windows XP’s release was nothing more than Windows 2000 with a pretty desktop.  I eventually converted to XP and have used it ever since.

So what’s Microsoft say about their new product?  What’s my motivation for switching to Windows 7?

Here’s your: “Top 10 reasons” to buy Windows 7

10 Reasons Microsoft says you should upgrade to Windows 7

Lets see here:

Get quicker access to all your stuff, quickly find what you’re looking for, manage open windows easier, oh and this is by far my favorite…”Stay entertained effortlessly“.  Isn’t that just what everyone wants?  To be effortlessly entertained?  Is that possible?  WOW!  I actually think that’s a tie with “Do more and wait less” because your computer goes to sleep faster and resume’s faster?  Really?  All those seconds must add up to some BIG productivity gains.  I bet as a result of Windows 7 that national productivity will spike in the coming quarter!  They use the words easier, easily, quicker, effortlessly, etc…if you can’t already tell; this would seem like nothing more than a Microsoft smoke and mirrors advertising campaign.

In fact, the people at Apple already picked up on the silliness of the M$ campaign and made PC and MAC commercials satirizing Microsoft’s Windows 7 release!  They’re brilliant!

MAC | “Broken Promises” commercial

Apple sums it up nicely don’t they?  FYI – I’m not even a MAC fan!

What I am a fan of is usefulness.  If it’s useful it’s good.  Can I edit documents, surf the web, check email, can I watch a video?  Those are the questions most home users need answered.  Of course we assume we can do all that on our systems.  A recent Microsoft “I’m a PC” commercial echo’s that when the people in the commercial say only seem interested in the PC’s looks, sturdiness and whether it can manage pictures.  “We’re PC’s so we can share photo’s of this little guy”.  Why do you need a PC to do that again?

Microsoft | Laptop Hunters

Many of those in the commercials did say they want it to be fast, have long battery life or use it for gaming.  With the exception of gaming any operating system can do that for you.  Most computer users be they MAC, Windows or even Linux users don’t utilize 100% of the features on their systems, most do basic tasks.  We drive a Mercedes Benz but most of the time we leave it parked in the garage collecting dust.

The death of Windows:

For most people it’s because of the Windows operating system that the Internet became common place.  My first computer was a 233 Mhz, 64 meg of RAM, 2 gigabyte hard drive HP with Windows 95 that included Internet Explorer 4.0 with a dialup modem for Internet!  There’s more power, memory and storage on an iPod now.  Occasionally I’ll run into some old timers who reminisce about 4 meg hard drives or programming on “punch cards“.  It’s all a result of the Internet being brought to you by Microsoft and Internet Explorer that people even needed a computer!  First the Internet, then came the MP3 and file sharing, online shopping, online banking and easy financial transactions, now YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter, etc.  I can’t help but to think that the extraordinary life the Windows operating system was given due in most part to the Internet will also be the death of the Windows operating system even though Internet Explorer will likely live on.

Many individuals and corporate organizations can almost do without Windows as a desktop operating system they just don’t know it.  I listed a few things I needed to do as a user and corporate users arne’t too disimilar:

• Edit documents:  Google Docs, or Office Live
• Surf the web: Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari and many more…
• Check email: Webmail(Web based email), Outlook, Thunderbird and many more…

…I think you can see what I’m getting at?

I believe that only now (or soon), with Web 2.0 +, the integration of mobile devices into our lives…giving us instant access to people, web, email, video and even document management; that we can get past one dominant operating system on the desktop.  The operating system will only facilitate your web browser which will be the gateway to do everything you need!  You can use your web browser in more ways than you think already!

The only thing slowing down the transition process to a move from desktop operating systems like Windows 7 to pure web browser based systems with a minimal underlying operating system are proprietary applications that require a desktop to function or those users who need the power to run their games like the kid in the I’m a PC commercial.  Additionally for the enterprise it’s IT security (and rightly so), you don’t want to have your proprietary corporate data in “the cloud” thus out of your control.  For corporations, they’ll soon be standing up their own internal clouds and giving their end users what amounts to a kiosk or terminal.  Applications without a complementary web interface will one day find themselves without a place to live.

There are other challenges ahead I probably haven’t thought of I’m sure.  What might Intel or AMD do without a processor speed war to compete over since an OS that merely needs to support a web browser doesn’t need  Ghz upon Ghz or multiple processor cores to process data?  What might happen to the memory manufactures who continually supply us with more RAM?  What might happen to the hard drive storage companies if we’re storing data “in the cloud” rather than on our workstations?  What might happen if your device lasts for 20 years instead of just 2 to 4 because they have less moving parts, consume far less power and thus more durable?

It doesn’t seem to be in their best interest to truly do more with less?  It also seems like they’ll all eventually be dragged kicking and screaming but you can bet they’ll protect their pocket books by charging fees for access to their clouds, whether that be the apps you use, the storage you use or the amount you process.  Is it easy to leave the cloud once you’re in?

To summarize:

I think that Windows 7 is more hype at the moment brought to you by the Microsoft Marketing Department.  Functionally it’s more bells and whisltes than substance for most people.  You need to buy it though because they won’t support XP much longer and unless you’re an OEM manufacturer of “Ultra Low-Cost PC’s” you can’t even get it any longer.  Sure it’ll let you make a window shake like a piece of paper or jump through hoops but who needs that?  I know I don’t!  If you are a Windows junky you’ll soon get version 7, if you’re not a Windows junky you’ll be pulled that direction when you buy a new computer.  Perhaps Apple is right, consider an alternative or try a popular Linux distribution?  You do have options, suffer with your old sluggish hard to use dusty XP (sarcasm!), upgrade to Windows 7, buy an Apple with OSX or be a rebel and try Linux.

Either way you slice it your on your own!

Rafael Wolf
Director for The Center of My Own Opinion