News

• APP OF THE DAY: AppTastic

  By Hafizah Osman | 16 May, 2012 10:24

  AppTastic is an amazing app that allows you to keep yourself up to date on the latest and best apps in the Windows market.

• Microsoft revamps UI on Visual Studio IDE upgrade

  By Paul Krill | 09 May, 2012 07:37

  Microsoft is making changes to the user interface for the planned Visual Studio 11 IDE, which impact coloring, icon usability, and application of the Metro look and feel.

• Dell XPS 13: Gray with MacBook Air envy

  By Eric Knorr | 04 May, 2012 20:12

  Lately I've been changing things up a bit. For several months I used a little Lenovo ThinkPad X220 running Windows 7 and had a great experience -- it felt rock solid and responsive, with fantastic battery life. Then I switched to a MacBook Pro, and now that I've gotten used to it, I actually find it more or less a wash between the two (sorry, Apple fanboys).

• Review: SQL Server 2012 stands tall

  By Sean McCown | 25 April, 2012 20:13

  As we've come to expect from new SQL Server releases, SQL Server 2012 has so many new features that it's impossible even to mention them all. Nearly everyone is well served, from the BI-hungry users of Reporting Services to the IT folks who oversee query performance and uptime. SQL Server 2012 brings improvements across the board, with only a few disappointing exceptions.

• New Microsoft tool maintains Windows user settings in virtual environments

  By Tim Greene | 05 April, 2012 08:43

  Microsoft virtual Windows environments need not require a lot of manual configuration to customize applications and update operating system preferences each time users log in thanks to a product being added to the Microsoft toolbox.

• First look: Visual Studio 11 beta leaner, meaner for Metro

  By Tim Anderson | 04 April, 2012 23:51

  Microsoft's Visual Studio is more than just an IDE. It's the official developer tool for Microsoft's platform, and new releases tie in with major changes in Windows. Visual Studio 11, now in beta, includes support for the Windows Runtime (WinRT), the engine that powers the new Metro-style, tablet-friendly user interface in Windows 8. As the tool for building Metro apps, Visual Studio 11 plays a critical role in the success or failure of the new Windows.

• Review: VDI without the server connection

  By Keith Schultz | 17 March, 2012 01:06

  Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) has faced plenty of challenges: complexity, high cost, heavy server and storage requirements, and end-user dissatisfaction, to list the common complaints. But VDI has also delivered plenty of innovation and experimentation, with vendors taking a variety of approaches to lower the hurdles to implementation, ease the management burden, and address a fuller range of user needs.

• Windows 8: Something old, something awkward

  By Woody Leonhard | 06 March, 2012 22:06

  InfoWorld's Enterprise Windows blogger, J. Peter Bruzzese, described Windows 8 as "Windows Frankenstein." I'm tempted to call it a "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" operating system, but I can't decide which name to assign to the Metro side of the fence and which to the Windows 7-like desktop.

• What you should expect from Windows 8

  By Woody Leonhard | 21 February, 2012 22:14

  With the Windows 8 Consumer Preview beta edition just around the corner, now is a good time to examine what we know and don't know about Microsoft's forthcoming OS, and what IT should look for when the Consumer Preview hits as expected on Feb. 29.

• OnLive's train wreck: Office on the iPad

  By Galen Gruman | 07 February, 2012 22:11

  Demos, like appearances, can be deceiving. At the recent Consumer Electronics Show, one of the media hits was OnLive Desktop, a service that provisions a Windows 7 desktop environment that includes Microsoft Office 2010 to the iPad over an Internet connection. For many, the idea of being able to run the full Office suite is very appealing, given some of the limitations of the iPad's native office productivity tools such as Apple iWork suite (Pages, Keynote, and Numbers), Quickoffice, and Documents to Go.

• Java tops C in language popularity assessment -- but not by much

  By Paul Krill | 07 February, 2012 07:54

  Java is barely hanging on to its ranking as the most popular programming language, edging out C in this month's Tiobe index of programming language popularity.

• The year's best hardware, software, and cloud services

  By Peter Wayner | 09 January, 2012 22:11

  Was it the philosopher George Santayana who said, "Those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat it?" Did he offer any hints for those of us who want to repeat the past, especially the successes? We're beyond the teary elegies of 2011 and deep into making resolutions for 2012. If we're going to stand half a chance of creating something great this year, it only makes sense to pause and celebrate what went right in 2011.

• VDI shoot-out: Citrix XenDesktop 5.5

  By Keith Schultz | 15 December, 2011 02:41

  Certainly the most flexible VDI solution I've worked with, Citrix XenDesktop is the model of compatibility coupled with excellent capabilities. XenDesktop not only works with Citrix XenServer, but also runs on top of other vendors' hypervisors.

• VDI shoot-out: VMware View 5

  By Keith Schultz | 15 December, 2011 02:31

  An excellent platform for building an enterprise VDI solution, VMware View 5 takes advantage of all the features, services, and fault tolerance built into VMware's flagship vSphere hypervisor.

• Introducing Windows Server 8: The InfoWorld special report

  By InfoWorld staff | 15 December, 2011 02:15

  Hailed as one of Microsoft's broadest, deepest releases, Windows Server 8 will replace the current version of the OS, Windows Server 2008, in 2012 about the same time the new companion desktop OS, Windows 8, is released. Microsoft has a broad set of goals to reach with this release, such as cloud compatibility and automation of routine tasks across multiple machines. The new release also benefits from Microsoft's work building out its own Azure cloud service. Many technologies developed for the server were tested in the cloud, and many technologies developed for Azure were then imported back to the server.