Mounting a CD image is a basic feature of almost every operating system package except for Microsoft Windows. Microsoft has never shipped this feature in any version of Windows including Windows Vista. Mounting a CD image is very useful when you have downloaded a .ISO cd image and you do not want to waste the time or the media to burn a copy.
Read-on:
Mount a CD imagine on Windows
You should first read this article from wired magazine. Here is a snippet of the article:
MICROSOFT HAS BEEN in a funk since 2003. Its travails could be the subject of a Harvard Business School case study on the innovator’s dilemma. The company made – and still makes – billions selling desktop software, mainly Windows and Office. But the center of gravity has moved, and desktop software is about as cutting-edge as a nightly network newscast. Instead, Web-based apps are taking hold, and devices other than the PC – smartphones, iPods, digicams – represent the growth markets for software. At the same time, new business models, like search-based advertising and low-cost software subscriptions, are beginning to generate big money.
I agree with most of what the author is saying and with all of the inputs from important members of the Microsoft community. What I admire the most from the software giant is its ability to step down and say: “We’re in trouble and we need to do something about it”. This is impressive since, let’s face it, they are not in immediate financial trouble at the moment. It means that they are able to foresee the future and say: “Hey, at this pace, we’ll be obsolete in about 15 years”.
None of this is news in Redmond. In a 1995 company-wide memo titled “The Internet Tidal Wave,” Gates famously recognized the network as a disruptive tsunami. And starting in 2000, he tried to prepare his troops for yet another big shift, with a series of speeches on Web services. Even then, Gates was describing a world where desktop applications would eventually work in concert with high-speed apps delivered over the Internet. Among other benefits, he noted, “you should never have to enter the same information multiple times.”
However, Microsoft has the resources and they are not going to lose this battle without fighting back. The next 10 years will be some of the most interesting years in the software world… gearing software production towards the web and leaving the desktop more or less behind. I end this comment with a well worded quote from the article:
Posted by Miguel | 0 commentsIn 1995, Bill Gates foresaw the Internet tidal wave and pushed his company to adapt. At the time, that seemed prophetic. Today, Ray Ozzie is pushing the same thing, but this time it’s about survival.
An endless battle between a powerbook and its user: The Struggle for Space. Unless you have some cash laying around for a bigger and better hard drive, it seems like no matter how hard you try to keep things tidy around a laptop, space keeps running out eventually.
At least, this is what happened to me a couple of months ago, and again now today. In this article, I proposed a 10-steps process for cleaning up your Mac OS X (Keep in mind I am still running the 10.3.9 at the moment on this powerbook). In order to effectively clean your hard drive, you need a good picture of what’s in it, to see how it’s organized and get a strategy for cleaning it. But first things first, let’s take note of how much space you have on the computer.
To check how much free space is available on your startup disk, do the following:
The world’s biggest software maker announced, earlier this week, the final prices for the new Windows Vista, according to an article from Reuters.
The new operating system has been in the making for about 5 years now. It has seen no less than four new operating systems released by its major competitor, Apple : Puma (September 25, 2001), Jaguar (August 24, 2002), Panther (October 24, 2003), and Tiger (April 29, 2005). A couple of months later and it would have also witnessed the birth of the brand new OS from Apple: Leopard.
Personally, I am pleased to hear the news as it will be nice to get a fresh new look from Windows. I am tired of looking at the (now) boring look of Windows XP these days. So let’s hope that Windows did their homework and hired really good designers to make their product more appealing to all of us. The release of Windows Vista might secure microsoft a couple more years of my business seeing as I was wondering if I should switch to Mac for my next desktop. Only time will tell. But, I don’t think I see a switch anytime soon though, I think having a Powerbook G4 as a laptop and a windows-based desktop machine is the perfect setup in the software developing world.
So, in a nutshell, Microsoft has released the RC1 (Release Candidate 1) edition of the operating system to about 5 million people last week and should be fixing bugs for the next couple months. Chances are that there will be no official release date announced for the next couple of weeks, but I am sure glad to hear about this RC1 release.
Posted by Miguel | 0 comments
