Windows 7: Pricing is out of this stratosphere

With Cloud computing all the rage, Microsoft has decided to price upgrades to its new operating system, Windows 7 up high, above the clouds.

Ed Bott, who is generally very supportive of Microsoft's products (and, based upon the products' performance, he's generally right about them), has an article about Microsoft's planned pricing for upgrades from the different flavors of Windows 7. He does an excellent job of pointing out the absurd disparities, and concluding that Microsoft's intent is to encourage Enterprise customers to continue to pay for Enterprise (rather than Anytime upgrades).

The article -and Microsoft's pricing regime- reemphasise my original conclusion: It's a good operating system, certainly better than the listless Vista, but rather pricey. Only if you absolutely need to for business should you bother to upgrade to Windows 7. At no cost (other than the minimal cost in time of migration), Home and Home-Office users can move to Ubuntu and save, save, save without losing productivity.

UPDATE: MARY-JO FOLEY JUST POSTED HER TAKE ON MICROSOFT'S PRICING FOR WINDOWS 7

One Billion Downloads for Firefox

On Thursday, July 30th, Firefox officially hit the one billion downloads mark. That's one billion downloads since its debut in November of 2004.

Congrats to Mozilla, the Firefox team -including all the great add-on developers!

Even tho' it's not included --not even as an option-- in most people's operating system (Windows defaults to the Internet Explorer; Macs default to Safari), Firefox has managed to become a part of many people's everday experience of the Internet. With its vast supply of addons (and the developers!), Firefox allows the individual user to mold the browser to the individual users' needs. What a concept! Why wear a shoe that doesn't fit you when you can, with very little effort, craft one that fits your particular foot?

Firefox is available in all flavors of operating systems.

I've looked at Google's Chrome, but am less impressed. Chrome is a simplified browser, but I prefer my particular added-on verison of Firefox. I use a plethora of add-ons, from AdBlock (which frees my browsing experience from the distraction of too many ads) to Zotero (which aids me in research & writing). While the number of addons slows down the startup time, in the long run, they have saved me at least an hour a day. And it's MY Firefox.

(If you'd like to test out my addons, email me and I'll send you a CLEO pack.)

For more on Firefox, check out Tom Foremski's article.