Practical Technology

Computerworld - Having seen Windows 8.1, I have a question I’d like to ask Microsoft: “Is that the best you could do?”

My assessment: Windows 8.1 doesn’t suck as much as Windows 8. If you felt, when using Windows 8, as if you were banging your head against a brick wall, Windows 8.1 might feel as if you’re banging it against a wooden wall. Much better, right? Of course, someday you might ask yourself why you need to bang your head against a wall at all.

Let’s start with Start. Yes, we’ve all heard that Microsoft is bringing the Start button back, responding to all those users shrieking about its disappearance. So that’s better, right? Not so much. All that the new Start button does is bring up the touchy-feely Metro — uh, I mean, Modern — no, wait, make that “Windows 8 Store apps” interface. Is it any wonder that Lenovo bundles the Pokki Start button and menu replacement software with its Windows 8.x machines?

From Microsoft, more Windows fail. More >

Macs have never been that popular in the enterprise office. Sure, people love their MacBook Airs and their MacBook Pros, but CIOs usually frown at their price-tags. Still, the shiny Macs laptops have induced some big businesses, including ZDNet’s own parent company CBS Interactive, to buy these high-end laptops and, thanks to the Adobe Creative Suite/Creative Cloud, publishing, graphics design, and Web design departments all still use and love their Macs. Well, they do for now. They may not tomorrow because of Apple’s lack of security updates for older versions of Mac OS X.

Mavericks: The end of Macs in the enterprise? More>

How bad are Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks getting on the Internet? Arbor Networks, which specializes in DDoS defense and mitigation, has found that so far in 2013 the average DDoS attack now stands at 2.64Gbps, up 78 percent from 2012. Now, in concert with Google Ideas, a Google think tank, the two have created a global, data visualization map of DDoS attacks: the Digital Attack Map.

Arbor Networks, Google draw digital-attack map. More>

In Edinburgh, Scotland at the European LinuxCon the Linux Foundation announced that the Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA) is becoming a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project.

Linux Foundation adopts Open Virtualization Alliance and KVM. More>

Gartner is predicting that by 2017 half of enterprises will have moved to hybrid clouds. Yes, they’re serious.

How things change. Only three years ago, the research giant found that most businesses still didn’t get the cloud. They looked at it as a way to secure the virtual data center. We’d now call that a private cloud

That was then. This is now.

Today, Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst Thomas J. Bittman, states that Nearly half of large enterprises polled have deployed a private cloud service, and only 11% have no plans to do so through 2014.” OK, unless you’ve been living under a rock you knew that. The cloud, like it or lump it, is IT’s future.

Gartner: By 2017, the hybrid cloud will rule. More>