Software

Maybe 64-bit Firefox is on the way?

Dave Farquhar Software , ,

Mozilla is looking hard at questions regarding a 64-bit Windows build of Firefox. This is progress. This is good.

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Microsoft sold 400 million Windows 7 licenses; what does it mean?

Dave Farquhar Software, Windows , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Steve Ballmer announced today that Microsoft has sold 400 million Windows 7 licenses, but anywhere from half to two-thirds of PCs are still running Windows XP and need to get with the program.

He also continues to insist Windows 8 will ship in 2012, which really makes me wonder why those XP users need to switch now. December 2012 is 17 short months away, and XP support runs until 2014. I see little need to rush out now and buy Windows 7, use it for 18-24 months, and then turn around and buy Windows 8. If XP is fulfilling users’ needs, what’s the hurry? Unless Windows 8 is going to be late, as bad as Vista, or both. But none of that can happen, right? (Note: It’s not 2014 anymore, so if you haven’t upgraded from XP, you need to.)

I’m sure the Windows 8 Police will be along to haul me away shortly for insinuating such things. But until that happens, that 400 million figure lets us do some other interesting extrapolation. Read more

More help is on the way for high Firefox memory usage

Dave Farquhar Software , , ,

After years of workarounds, and even sometimes denying there was a problem, Mozilla has identified a fix for Firefox’s sometimes out-of-control memory usage.

The culprit appears to be the Javascript engine, which probably shouldn’t be much of a surprise.
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A snapshot in history of Gates and Microsoft, 1992

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire is a 1992 autobiography of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. It’s old. But it’s a compelling snapshot of what the industry thought of Gates and Microsoft before Windows 95, before Microsoft Office, and before Internet Explorer. Indeed, it gives an early glimpse into the struggle to bring Windows to market, some of the bad bets Microsoft cast on its early productivity software, and just how close Microsoft came to betting the company on the success of the Apple Macintosh.

If Microsoft’s history were written today, many of these stories would probably be forgotten.

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MBR rootkits don’t mean you have to wipe the drive

Dave Farquhar security, Software , , , , , ,
MBR rootkits don’t mean you have to wipe the drive

There’s a nasty rumor going around that if your computer gets infected with the Popureb rootkit, your only recourse is to wipe your MBR, reformat your hard drive, and reinstall (or run your factory recovery disk, which is essentially the same thing).

Not so fast.

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Firefox needs to adopt the Ubuntu model

Dave Farquhar Software , ,

Firefox has an identity crisis.

Used to being the #2 browser and eroding share from IE, Firefox sees its share eroding slightly–or not growing as fast as it used to, depending on who you ask–and the upstart Chrome gaining.

What Firefox has done is tantamount to panic.

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And that didn’t take long: Firefox 5 is out

Dave Farquhar security, Software

Firefox 5 was released yesterday with comparatively little fanfare. Firefox 4 only came out 3 months ago. And realistically, this is more deserving of a version number like 4.1, not 5.0. It’s a marketing decision more than a technical one. But it contains 8 critical bug fixes, a few stability fixes, and a few rendering fixes, so it’s worth grabbing, and treating like a point release, not necessarily with the usual trepidation that accompanies a major release.If your browser hasn’t already grabbed it and prompted you for installation, I recommend you go get it.

And a new version, most likely to be called 6.0, is expected in another three months.

Microsoft buyouts that worked

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , , , ,
Microsoft buyouts that worked

On May 10, 2011, Microsoft surprised a lot of people by buying Skype for $8.5 billion. The deal closed October 13, 2011. I think most people thought Facebook would do it. Now I keep hearing pundits say that this will fail, because Microsoft buyouts always fail.

Thing is, I can think of 11 Microsoft buyouts that worked out really well. Over the years, I think Microsoft has proven itself to be pretty adept at both cloning products and buying products. They don’t always improve them all that much, but they frequently remain popular.

Sometimes I think Microsoft is better at buying products than developing them. After you see this list, you might agree.
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Making the ribbon even worse

Dave Farquhar Software

How can you make the dreaded Office 2007/2010 ribbon worse?

Add Clippy to it.

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If Microsoft goes through with the threat to ribbon-ize Explorer

Dave Farquhar Software

If Microsoft goes through with its threat to foist the atrocious ribbon on the flawed but useful and usable Explorer, I have insurance.

You can install Far Manager, a text-mode Win32/Win64 clone of the classic Norton Commander. It’s fast, it’s functional, it’s easy to use, and it looks just like you remember the old DOS classic that you haven’t used since the day you upgraded from DOS to something else, whether that was OS/2 or Windows 95. But it supports long filenames and it’s a true 32- or 64-bit application.

If you prefer a GUI application, there’s Free Commander, which resembles the Windows GUI version of Norton Commander.

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