Word on the net is that Microsoft plans to drop free support Windows XP and Office 2003 as of next week. On April 14, the Redmond giant ends consumer support for Office 2003 in addition to Windows XP Home and Professional. Crucially this will mean no more bug fixes except for security.
Customers will need to pay for Microsoft assistance from April 14th onwards. Security fixes will still come down the line for Office 2003 and XP until August after which the software will be 'retired.'
Customers can still get non-security critical fixes if they've part of the Extended Support programme. Microsoft is also "retiring" Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, meaning it will no longer provide support for the release.
For the average home user the choices will be continue to use their exisiting software with a potential for vulnerbilities; move to Vista or wait for Windows 7 to appear on the shelves. There has been speculation that this move to finally hammer the last night in the coffin of XP for home users is also a marker for the appearance of Windows 7, but although receieving some favourable comments from beta users there is still some doubts surrounding the new offering from the Redmond boys. Abandoning XP is something Microsoft have been wanting to do for some time, but the universally poor press on the roll out of Vista has delayed this for several years.
The assumption has to be that with the end of XP for non business use, user will finally make the lucretive, for MS at least, jump to a new OS.
There are some web browsers that are safe in older versions and some that aren’t.
If you are like me you may think that the latest version of some browsers out there, far from being bigger and better have mastered the bigger bit at the expense of the better. Firefox is a case in point. While undoubtedly one of the better browsers out in the wild, its been getting larger and larger with each generation; ever more memory hungry and prone to problems. The fastest, most stable version of Firefox was arguably the last release of version 1.5. I installed it earlier today for an experiment and while not as pretty as its younger sibling, it is fast and it is small at around 5mb compared to 7mb for the latest incarnation. It was also the only version of the fox that I could reliably install the much used Freecycle addon. The only snag to this is that all the information on 1.5 suggests that its open to exploitation, so the choice is have the addon and be unsafe or play it safe and do without.
But all the above made me wonder if there were other cut down browsers out there that could be installing in their more venerable forms. Older versions of the Opera browser seem pretty much the same as their younger brother and the newer editions do seem to have more features and feel more up to date.
Running a fast lightweight Firefox-like browser means moving to the Seamonkey platform. Like the fox, this is based on the Netscape Navigator platform and for I tried it earlier today and it does indeed zip along speedily. You can install it with Firefox and they do seem to play nice together.
People who live on social networks should check out Flock which is Firefox customised for Facebook, Myspace, Gmail and the like.
There is no lightweight, older faster version of Internet Explorer, running earlier versions on a Windows XP/Vista platform is asking for trouble! IE is the single most targeted browser on the net, so while it may not sit well, if you have IE the best option is to keep it up to date no matter what.
Versions after IE 7 are considered safe and its worth bearing in mind that if you are running Windows 2000 you are running at best IE6 which is regarded as unsafe. Probably best to download Firefox, Opera or even Seamonkey pretty quickly unless you fancy contributing to the infected computer universe.
IE 8 is new and some people have been reluctant to upgrade for compatibility reasons. Its not much fun to find you suddenly cannot access your bank details, or credit card or some other secure site. With that in mind, its always worth having at least one other browser on your machine and again, the way forward here is Firefox. A copy of Firefox 3 sitting on your machine can be deployed with IE and a website decide they have never heard of one another.
For people who automatically assume that anything from Microsoft was even badly made or impossibly resource hungry (and I confess to being one of them during the early days of Vista) its worth noting that the old firm seems to be getting back on form. Windows 7 is getting a lot of positive reviews and Internet Explorer 8 is looking good with reports that it will toddle along happily on an XP rig with 512mb of RAM under the hood.
Its not really advisible to have the older browsers on your machine, upddates negate possible exploits and while they make the browser slower from time to time, slower is better than compromised with all the expense or hassle of the solution. My advice would be to have Firefox and possibly Seamonkey on tap to go with IE8. You can't really retro-load your browser, but with a couple of other browsers installed you can cover all eventualities.
Mozilla is reported to be feeling the pinch from the opposition and wants to make its Firefoxbrowser a leaner, meaner runtime environment tool, rather than a simple web rendering device. Ben Galbraith, co-director of developer tools at Mozilla, says that browsers are evolving from page rendering applications into application runtime environments and need to be able to recreate many of the functions of operating systems. No argument from me, but I think I can hear the sound of grinding teeth from Redmond.
The spring board for this, has to be Google'a "Chrome" something which Mozilla acknowledges despite the fact that Chrome is a serious rival for the affections of the user and its business model needs to see people using the embedded Google search engine.
In the past five years or so, Firefox has been ahead of the pack but lost ground rapidly to Chrome, Safari and even IE8. It continues to rely on outdated programming which can lead to memory problems and it exacerbated with badly coded addons. It remains more feature rich, but a year or so down the line could be behind the competition, especially where user value speed.
Galbraith says he wants to have a group which will look at the way memory is used in Firefox. "We plan on the initial implementation of this tool to be simple. For memory usage, we want to introduce the ability to visualize the current set of non-collectible JavaScript objects at any point in time (i.e., the heap) and give you the ability to understand why those objects aren't collectible (i.e., trace any object to a GC root). For the cycle collector, we want to give you a way to understand when a collection starts and when it finishes and thus understand how long it took."
Firefox had 21.77% of the market earlier this year and remains the most customisable browser in the collection. But with efficient memory usage the future of the fox could be in doubt.
Whats the best browser? Its not the easiest question to answer, but have a look at some of the notes below before you decide on your weapon of choice.
for surfing the net. Each will act as your window on the web, with support Google Chrome is minimalistic. It aims for simplicity, and the interface is stripped down to bare essentials. A single text field (dubbed the “Omnibar”) acts as both address bar and search bar, and tabs protrude into the title bar to save space.
The middle ground is occupied by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.1. Outwardly, both browsers offer sober front-ends though IE8 does support some interesting new technologies. Safari 4, is a veritable orchestrate of whistles and bells.
Safari has two distinctive features. The first is the “top sites” view. When you open top sites, you’ll see a shiny curved grid of clicka
ble thumbnails enabling you to jump straight to a particular website. Safari watches your browsing habits and populates the grid with your most commonly visited sites. Safari’s other feature is its history view Safari also gives you a visual thumbnail of each page, making it easy to spot the site you seek even if you don’t recall its title.
Firefox 3.1 seems almost austere. The newer version offers a new plug-in manager to make it easier to manage Firefox extensions. Firefox's approach has always been to keep the main browser relatively conservative and offer a versatile plug-in architecture to enable third parties to add extra features and visual themes - and there are hundreds of free extensions available ranging from simple file viewers to advanced networking tools and interface tweakers.
Google prefers to trickle out incremental updates, typically upgrading the software every few weeks without even alerting the user. But the main features that set Chrome apart are the Omnibar and the “most visited” view, though rendered more plainly and without the configuration options.
The last contender, Internet Explorer 8 introduces some interesting new ideas: web accelerators let you send text or a link from one page directly to another web service enabling you, for example, to search, define or translate a word at the click of a button. IE8 also features a new mode called InPrivate, which enables you to send out a minimum of personal information while browsing, and to cache a minimum of received content to your hard disk.
Chrome: at its launch, it was able to render pages with unprecedented speed. And, more importantly, its JavaScript engine (known as V8) was much faster than any other browser’s, enabling web applications to become more powerful. It remains a fast browser, but today it no longer enjoys pole position: Firefox 3.1 uses an updated rendering engine and an all-new JavaScript engine, the curiously-named TraceMonkey. IE8 is a long way behind the rest of the pack on speed, so feature-rich sites likely to feel less snappy and responsive.
RAM usage, especially if you’re choosing a browser for use on a low-powered system such as a netbook is a big consideration. Firefox used to be a notorious memory hog, but the current version is impressively efficient. Chrome and IE8 make much greater demands. Safari is not a browser for a lightweight PC and is very RAM heavy in use.
Safari : FOR: Combines superfast performance with head-turning visual effects. AGAINST: Heavy on memory, and some may find the graphics irritatingly showy.
Chrome : FOR: A lightweight, simple and stable browser that just keeps getting better. AGAINST: Neither the fastest nor the best-featured option.
Firefox : FOR: Hugely extensible, with a low RAM footprint and great performance. AGAINST: Rather light on features until you mess around with third-party plug-ins.
Internet Explorer 8 : FOR: Brings some genuinely promising new technologies to the table. AGAINST : The slowest browser for JavaScript by a large margin.
More and more businesses seek to cut costs and find value, they are adopting Linux.
More than half of the IT executives in a recent survey of 300 executives said they planned to accelerate Linux adoption in 2009. 72 percent of said they are either actively evaluating or have already decided to adopt Linux on the server in 2009, with more than 68 percent making the same claim for the desktop.
The number one motivation executives gave for using Linux was economic (lowering support costs). However, those who are reluctant to go with Linux cited lack of application support and poor interoperability with Windows and other environments as their primary concerns. Key survey findings:
* 67 percent of respondents stated that interoperability and manageability between Linux and Windows is one of the most important factors when choosing an operating system. * The retail industry showed the greatest potential for acceleration in Linux adoption with 63 percent of respondents planning an increase on the desktop and 69 percent considering the same on the server. The government sector lagged. * Nearly half of respondents stated that moving to virtualization is accelerating their adoption of Linux. Eighty-eight percent of recipients plan to evaluate, deploy or increase their use of virtualization software within Linux operating systems over the next 12-24 months. * From a regional perspective, Asia/Pacific is the most bullish on increasing Linux adoption, as 73 percent of respondents said they would increase deployments on the server and 70 percent on the desktop. In the Americas, 66 percent of respondents said they are either evaluating or have already decided to increase adoption of Linux on the desktop and 67 percent on the server. * The economic crisis has had the biggest effect on the Americas, and in financial services and government. More than 62 percent of respondents said that their budget has been cut or that they are only investing where needed.
An IDC white paper1 summarizing the survey findings can be found here
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