Channel Insider Staff

Microsoft officials have been saying for quite some time that Windows Vista will ship with anti-spyware software built into the operating system. But for more than a year, Microsoft’s top dogs have been quite clear that Microsoft has no intentions to bundle anti-virus software into the product. Despite this seemingly straightforward (at least in our […]

On Wednesday, Mandriva announced that it was partnering with Hewlett-Packard Co. to distribute HP desktop computers pre-loaded with Mandriva Linux 2006 to 37 countries in Latin America. As part of the agreement, Mandriva was also named the “Preferred Linux Partner for Latin America” and Mandriva Linux 2006 has been optimized and certified for HP machines. […]

Microsoft Corp. has gone public with a tentative date for its third service pack for Windows XP. And that date—the latter half of 2007—is considerably later than many company watchers were expecting. Microsoft has published the due date for Windows XP SP3 (Service Pack 3) on its Windows Lifecycle Web site. While Microsoft characterized the […]

Still blindly following the hardware-centric myth that “better, faster, cheaper” will solve all ills, the networking industry continues to revel in the speeds and feeds of its latest products while IT managers are drowning in the cost and complexity of making the current ones work. Today’s approaches to application networks do not reduce cost and […]

Despite some challenges in 2005, Kevin Rollins, president and CEO of Dell Inc., insists the company’s business model is a strong one, and that he sees no significant changes to it in the year ahead. Rollins recently spoke with eWEEK News Editor Dennis Fisher and senior editors Jeffrey Burt and Brian Fonseca about such issues […]

Peter Quinn, the man responsible for bringing OpenDocument to the state of Massachusetts as CIO, will resign on Jan. 9, citing the controversy around the decision as well as personal attacks aimed at him as reasons for his departure. No announcement has been made as to a replacement. However, Quinn did stress to employees of […]

By now, “The Internet Services Disruption” missive from Microsoft Chief Technology Office Ray Ozzie has been dissected ad infinitum. But we have yet to see Softies or Soft watchers attempt to put any real meat on Ozzie’s services bones. Ozzie itemized several general categories of services into which he believes Microsoft should delve in the […]

I recently led a session on IT outsourcing at the Outsourcing Institute’s Roadshow in Chicago. The daylong event included an exceptional presentation by Sara Parker Enlow from Vantage Partners about relationship management that I believe would be of great interest to solution providers. Vantage Partners, of Boston, works with firms on conflict resolution. Enlow’s presentation […]

Personal effectiveness experts such as Robbins, Covey and Peters have made careers out of helping professionals achieve a sense of personal focus. Unfortunately, there is little in the literature concerning business focus. Focus for both professionals and businesses, including solution providers, is the art of identifying what is important and directing the majority of your […]

Given that the new open-source approaches to spam filtering are capable of virtually eliminating unwanted e-mail and preserving the good stuff, why do many companies continue to struggle with spam? Jonathan Zdziarski, the developer of the DSPAM open-source Bayesian spam blocker, believes IT departments of most small- to medium-sized businesses are afraid to try free […]

Jonathan Zdziarski knows how open-source spam-filtering programs work. He wrote one. Even so, Zdziarski’s creation DSPAM—and similar programs that are designed to get better at their job over time—sometimes gives its creator the willies. It usually happens when the application blocks spam messages that appear absolutely legitimate at first blush. “It gets really accurate after […]

“We are being audited.” This phrase is enough to make your heart race and your blood run cold, be it as a result of a friend telling you about his IRS woes or a client discussing Sarbanes-Oxley, FDIC, Gramm-Leach-Bliley or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. No matter how you look at it, businesses […]