Vista Unleashed?

Microsoft proclaims November 30th a new national holiday: VOL, for Vista Office Launch. New York City will likely shut down as millions head to their stores to get copies of Vista and Office 2007. Oh, wait, they can’t, because only a few businesses will actually receive Vista and Office this year, while everyone else waits until January or February or whenever next year. Those of you ready to send a snide note because I predicted Vista won’t ship until 2007, hold your fire. Until you can go to CompUSA or OfficeMax or similar retailers and buy a computer with the version of Vista you want, and run all the Vista features on that new computer, it’s not shipping. Coupons promising an upgrade are not shipping products. In a new partnership, Google and Sprint will work together and ensure you can never escape your e-mail: Sprint will support GMail (Google Mail) on their phones soon. A nod to my old buddy Mike A: Wherever you go, there’s your e-mail (and his nod to Buckaroo Bonzai). Is this a slap at Blackberry (who needs a Blackberry if you have a Sprint phone) or laptops (who needs a computer if you get e-mail on your phone)? Yes. People go many places without their laptops, but rarely leave their cell phones behind. Smart on both sides of this partnership. I just don’t know yet how they’ll get the Google ads down the side of the phone display, but I’m sure they’ll manage. Finally, another nail in Novell’s coffin: a Novell Linux/Microsoft partnership. I know the Borg references have died way down the last few years, but who has “partnered” with Microsoft and lived to tell about it? Sure, hardware vendors in areas Microsoft doesn’t make hardware do well enough, but software companies that “partner” with Microsoft get sucked dry and discarded. SuSE Linux, which Novell owns but had little to do with developing, has value to Microsoft, if only to appease corporate customers with some Linux installations. Novell’s non-Open Source products, including NetWare, ZENworks, eDirectory, and assorted identity management tools, are all technically superior to Microsoft’s offerings, but are not mentioned in the partnership details I’ve read. This partnership brings to mind the spider and the fly. Those two partner, in a way, just as this will be a partnership, in a way. Sad to see Novell executives aren’t any smarter in Boston than they were in Provo.