Microsoft to ship last service pack for Office 2007 this month

Microsoft yesterday announced it will ship a third and final service pack update for Office 2007 before year's end.

It appears that Microsoft will deliver Office 2007 Service Pack 3 (SP3) this month.

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"The October 2011 release provides a six-month window to test and deploy the release prior to exiting mainstream support," Microsoft said in a blog post Thursday.

Office 2007, which went on general sale in January 2007 alongside Windows Vista, exits what Microsoft calls "mainstream support" in April 2012.

The suite will continue to be updated with security fixes for another five years after that, through April 11, 2017, during the "extended support" phase.

The biggest difference between the two support phases is that extended, non-security fixes are provided only to companies that have paid for special support contracts.

Microsoft, however, never issues service packs -- which are mostly composed of past security and other patches -- once a product is retired from mainstream support.

Office 2007 SP3 will be offered using Microsoft's now-standard procedure. Initially, the service pack will be available as a manual download and through Windows Update as an optional install. Three months later, the company will kick SP3 into Windows Update for automatic distribution and deployment.

Microsoft also usually gives corporate customers another heads-up about 30 days before it starts serving Office service packs through its update services.

Service Pack 3 is Office's 2007's first SP since 2009's SP2.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft touted the newer Office 2010 as an option for customers who want to retire Office 2007 or the even-older Office 2003.

Office 2003 has more than two years of life left in it: The suite won't be retired from security support until April 2014.

BlackBerry PlayBook

After experiencing both the ups and downs in the smartphone market, Research In Motion (RIM) is now trying to make its way in the tablet industry as well. The new Blackberry PlayBook tablet is the company’s first effort in this regard. Released in April 2011, this tablet is working really hard to make some productive revenue for its developers, if nothing else. We’ll now take a look at the goods and bads of this device in detail. So jump in!

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Blackberry PlayBook Specs and Features
The tablet features 1 GHz dual core processor and 1 GB of Random-Access Memory (RAM). It has a distinctive 7-inch LCD screen with WSVGA 1024 x 600 pixel resolution,and acapacitive panel with multi-touch capabilities. The compact screenmakes this tabletreally handy by reducing its total weight to 0.9 lbs, which is much lighter as compared to the iPad.

PlayBook is backed by the new Blackberry Tablet OS with QNX technology, an operating system that also supports symmetric multiprocessing. The device also flaunts twin 1080p HD cameras ideal for making high-quality videos and video conferencing. The rear camera is 5 mega-pixels and the front-facing camera is 3 mega-pixels, definitely better than the low-quality iPad cameras in every way.Not just that, this Blackberry Tablet also have 1080p HDMI output; GPS; accelerometer; stereo speakers and microphones; digital compass; micro USB port; and 6-axis motion sensor (gyroscope). In terms of connectivity, the device can be connected through Bluetooth (2.1+ EDR) or Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n).Later, it will be updated to support WiMax, LTE, and HSPA+ as well, probably by the end of this year.

The Blackberry PlayBook release took place on April 19, 2011 with Best Buy being its preferred retailer in the USA. The device is available in three models, differentiating each other on the basis of external storage and also prices. Therefore, the 16 GB PlayBook is priced at $499, 32 GB at $599, and the 64 GB version is available at $699 in North America.

BlackberryPlayBook Review

Even after having such amazing features and smart technology, the Blackberry PlayBook couldn’t manage to attract users like the iPad. Why? There are a number of reasons for that. Let’s find out!

BlackBerry PlayBook

First, the PlayBookapps are pretty limited, especially when we compare them with Apple or Android applications. This majordrawback automatically reduces its usability and makes the device less enjoyable. There’s no doubt that applications play a great role in maintaining the reputation of devices. That’s why the continuously growing app stores of Apple and Android do not let their devices fade out from the market so easily.

Secondly, the Blackberry PlayBook price is pretty much similar to the iPad 2, which makes it a lot easier for buyers to make their choice between the two. Of course, no sane person would want to spend their money on an unstable new device, when a highly rated device is available at the same price.

blackberry-playbook

And lastly, the false promise! The Blackberry tablet claims to give a battery life of up to 10 hours, but it actually gives much lesser time when compared with other tablets.According to a test done by Engadget, the PlayBook displayed an average battery life of 7:01 hours, which was fairly less than the iPads, Motorola Xoom and even Archos 101.

Overall, the Blackberry PlayBook is purty, smart and unique but it is also true that the industry is already dominated by a name-brand tablet. Therefore, the new tablet developers should consider all of the various aspects including features, competitors, prices, and of course timing before releasing their final products in the market.

Arabs, Jews Study IT Together

Orgad Lootsky heard the bombing near here that killed 20. But Lootsky, who has trained IT professionals for seven years, still believes he can forge links between Arabs (Christian and Muslim) and Jews.

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In this northern city, which has an Arab section and a Jewish one, called Nazareth Illit, high school teenagers from the Nazareth Baptist School and its Jewish counterpart come together to earn their Cisco Certified Networking Associate (CCNA) certificates in classes taught by Lootsky.
These young adults exhibit seriousness preparing for their futures, but what's compelling is how they trump the political pressures that make any mixing of Arabs and Jews potentially confrontational.
Haya Samaan, a 15-year-old 10th-grader at the Nazareth Baptist School, has been in the program for two months. "I want to make a difference," says Samaan, who considers Bill Gates a hero. "I want to fulfill my dreams," she adds, explaining her studies for the CCNA certificate. She's also excited about the connections she's making with Jewish classmates.
The program has backing from local educators such as Ousama Moalem, principal of the Nazareth Baptist School; parents; and scholarship help from Salesforce.com/foundation, individuals and Nazareth Illit-Yezreel Technological College, which hosts the sessions on its campus.
Zika Abzuk, who established the program in Nazareth and is business development manager at Cisco in Israel, said that after a suicide bombing, tensions were high, and some parents and officials were dubious about the plan. "But we felt this is time people should show there are many good things we can do together," she said.
Moalem, whose school of 1,060 makes do with 20 computers and lacks networking equipment and teaching space, agreed: "The students are excited, the atmosphere is comfortable, and I look forward to more cooperation with the Jewish school."
But as with IT projects in the business world, reality tempers enthusiastic visions. Iris Klein, general director of the Nazareth Illit-Yezreel Technological College, said on a day when people were visiting bombing victims in the hospital that she wholeheartedly supports the program and will find money to keep it alive, but that this alone will not change the enmity in the region. "This is a small program, and we would be happy to enlarge it," she said, "but we have to be realistic."
And yet the attitude of Alex Etkin, a 17-year-old 11th-grade Jewish student in the program, should encourage more optimism. "We're all here to learn," said Etkin, who has dreams of being an artist as well as an IT professional. "It doesn't matterif you are Arab or Jewish, we want to learn together."

Microsoft says no more Zunes, it's all about the phone now

Microsoft will make no more Zune music players, building its future music strategy on applications incorporated in its Windows Phone and Xbox platforms, the company has confirmed.

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Rumors circulated in March that Microsoft planned to stop making dedicated music players, but the company ducked the issue then, saying this year's new Zune devices would be mobile phones running Zune software. It went on to release a trickle of applications for the Zune platform later in the year.

The company has now updated a help page at Zune.net to announce: "We will no longer be producing Zune players." Instead, the page said: "Going forward, Windows Phone will be the focus of our mobile music and video strategy."

However, this will make no difference to current Zune users, the company said on the support page: "Your device will continue to work with Zune services just as it does today. And we will continue to honor the warranties of all devices for both current owners and those who buy our very last devices."

Microsoft launched the first Zune players and Zune Marketplace music store on Nov. 14, 2006, as a challenge to Apple's iPod player and iTunes music store.

However, Apple moved the goalposts a couple of months later with its Jan. 9, 2007, announcement of the iPhone, a widescreen iPod that could also make phone calls and surf the Web.

It took Microsoft three years to follow suit. When it announced Windows Phone in February 2010, one of the features of the new mobile OS was a Zune music player app. It's also possible to access Zune music and video via Xbox Live, Microsoft's online service for its Xbox 360 game console.

Sales of the Zune have consistently trailed far behind those of the iPod. While not a definitive ranking, the list of best-selling MP3 players at Amazon.com is telling: Nine of the 10 best sellers are iPods (Sandisk has a $40 Sansa model in eighth place) and the first Zune device now appears at number 24, preceded by 16 iPod variants.

Terry Childs juror explains why he voted to convict

Terry Childs' guilty conviction struck a nerve with IT staffers this week.

Here was a man who, by all accounts, was good at his job, though lacking in interpersonal skills. Suddenly, on July 9, 2008, he's pushed into a tense situation -- a hostile conference call with the human resources department, his boss and even a police officer, all listening in, and told to hand over the passwords to the City of San Francisco's FiberWAN network, which he helped build. He chokes and hands over bogus passwords. Later, he argues that he did this because nobody in the room was qualified to have administrative access to the network.

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IT people are used to being held accountable for bad decisions made by their superiors, and some people who've read about the case feel some sympathy for Mr. Childs. After all, the city's network never went down, and Childs eventually did hand over control of the FiberWAN to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom -- the only person Childs felt was competent to have the passwords.

"How exactly was he breaking the law?" wrote one Slashdot poster, reacting to news of Childs' conviction. "[H]e refused to disclose the passwords when the person requesting them did not follow proper protocols."

While the City of San Francisco apparently did a poor job in spelling out the protocols for handing over administrative control of its network, Childs was still guilty of a crime. A jury found him guilty of breaking California's hacking laws on Tuesday, and when he is sentenced on June 14, he will be facing a possible five-year prison term.

So how did Childs break the law? We put the question to one of the best people able to answer it: Juror # 4, also known as Jason Chilton. In addition to having listened to countless hours of courtroom testimony, he also happens to be a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) and a senior network engineer with payroll administrator Automatic Data Processing. (ADP) He's spent the past five months of his life on the trial, which began jury selection in late November. According to him, there's much more to the Terry Childs case than most people realize. Following is an edited version of an interview he gave the IDG News Service on Wednesday, the day after the verdict was handed down.

IDG News Service: Why did you find Terry Childs guilty?

Chilton: The law was clearly spelled out for us. Within it there are very specific questions that you have to answer in order to reach a guilty verdict. And within those questions there are certain terms such as computer network, computer service, and those are given legal definitions, which you have to follow.

The questions were, first, did the defendant know he caused a disruption or a denial of computer service. It was rather easy for us to answer, "Yes there was a denial of service." And that service was the ability to administer the routers and switches of the FiberWAN.

That was the first aspect of it, the second aspect was the denial to an authorized user. And for us that's what we really had to spend the most time on, defining who an authorized user was. Because that wasn't one of the definitions given to us.

IDGNS: People who followed the case heard about this conference call with Cisco engineers, and the defense said he was reluctant to hand over passwords to people who were not authorized to have them. There was an HR person in the room, a police detective, and the chief operating officer of his division, Richard Robinson.

Chilton: It was really hard for us to get through that part. We said, "OK, what policies may there have been that defined an authorized user?" Well, the city didn't have any procedures. There was no policy that was formally adopted that people were supposed to follow. It was this amorphous thing.

Eventually we looked at it and we saw that in late June his manager had requested certain accounts to be created that would have access to certain routers and switches. And he did create those accounts, and he sent that back in an email with the user IDs and passwords, to which Richard Robinson was also copied. If his big concern was that Richard Robinson was not authorized to be a user, why -- just a week before -- did he copy him on an email that has user IDs and passwords?

IDGNS: If you're doing this stuff in the course of your job, it's not criminal. There must have been a point at which you decided that what he was doing was outside of his job description?

Chilton: Essentially, one of his job duties was to allow the network to be maintained. So when he went into that meeting on July 9th, he was told he was being reassigned, therefore he was not going to be working on the FiberWAN any more. Somebody has to get access, and he refused to provide that. So he's leaving this very critical network in the city's hands, but saying that nobody can maintain it.

IDGNS: What do you think he was thinking at that point? The defense made it sound like this was a high pressure meeting and he choked.

Chilton: I think he went into that meeting probably thinking he was being fired. Definitely he knew that there were some employment changes coming. He had received an email the week prior from his manager saying, "We're about to go through organizational changes." So that was proof to us he knew something was going to happen organizationally that would affect his employment. That very morning before he went into the meeting, he received a phone call from one of his co-workers saying, "We've just been told you've been reassigned."

I think he was used to, over the years, dealing with Herb Tong, his manager, who didn't understand how to deal with him effectively. He would let him get away with everything, and he was kind of weak-willed and would let things slide. And I think Terry Childs was used to that and not thinking that the consequences of what he was about to do would be greater than what they normally would be if he was dealing with Herb Tong. Now he's dealing with Richard Robinson [Tong's boss] and the police.

And I think he left that meeting honestly thinking, "OK, they're going to try to get into this network and they're not going to be able to." He even sent an email the next day, saying, "I know you all are trying to figure out how I can get into this network."

So he knew nobody else could get in, and I think he had the assumption that they would say, "We need you back to maintain this network." And that obviously did not happen.

IDGNS: Since the verdict you've finally been able to read what people are saying about the case. Any surprises there?

Chilton: No, not really. Most of the news stories that covered it really boiled it down to something simple such as he was in a meeting and asked to give up his passwords and refused. There were so many other things happening that don't get put in the news that really led to the whole situation happening. It wasn't simply he wouldn't give up his username and password. It was two years of building up to this point.

IDGNS: What do you think of Terry Childs?

Chilton: I think he's a decent guy. Like many IT people, protective of his work. Possibly a little paranoid. But the problem he had was that he didn't have good management to keep that in check. He was allowed free rein, which allowed engineering decisions over the years that made things worse and worse, and locked people out of possibly getting into this network.

IDG News: Going back, what was the one step he could have done to avoid prison?

Chilton: If he would have simply said, "I will create you an account and you can go in and you can remove my access if you want." If he had created access for someone else, I think that would have resolved it. If he had not decided to leave and go to Nevada a few days later and withdraw US$10,000 in cash, [Childs did this the day before his arrest, while under police surveillance] I think the police may have let it continue on as an employment issue and not a criminal matter.

IDGNS: Do you think Terry Childs deserves another chance?

Chilton: Yes I do. He has a lot of knowledge and he has the ability to learn this stuff on his own. I think with what's happened, he's probably not going to get himself hired by an AT&T or a Bank of America, but he could probably do stuff on his own. Because he definitely has the knowledge.

IDGNS: Do you think he's a trustworthy person?

Chilton: I think for the most part, yes. If he's given clearly defined rules, he could be. I think he's also very stubborn and a little egotistical.

Is an IT boot camp the way to shape up for Windows Vista?

The attractions of an accelerated tech training course are obvious. Why spend weeks or months reading boring computer books or lurching through online courseware when you can have high-energy instructors helping you to cram all that information in over a single long weekend?

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Nicknamed boot camps for their abbreviated length and grueling methods -- 12 hours in class per day, along with assigned homework at night, is not unusual -- some even have students taking certification exams by weekend’s end -- and still boast a respectable pass rate.

Unsurprisingly, a number of boot camps aimed at training both system administrators and end users in Vista and Office 2007 are starting to spring up.

The courses aren't cheap. Prices typically start at more than $1,000 for a long weekend’s course, and the costs go up rapidly from. But some experts see value in these crash courses. IT boot camps "are very helpful to get a team up to speed prior to a software deployment," said Cushing Anderson, an analyst at Framingham, Mass.-based IDC.

A constellation of camps

Training Camp, the boot camp division of TechTrain, will begin offering Vista boot camps in June with a three-day course aimed at helping Microsoft Certified Technology Specialists (MCTS) pass the certification exam for configuring Vista.

Jeff Porch, director of educational services at Philadelphia-based Training Camp, says the $2,195 course is aimed at people who provide IT support, both in person and via call centers.

All of the instructors employed by Training Camp are Microsoft Certified Trainers (MCT). Classes are limited to 10 students, allowing them to get a lot of one-on-one attention, Porch said. They are also worked hard. "The camp will run from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., with an hour for lunch and an hour for dinner," Porch said.

Training Camp is also developing courses for Office 2007 and Exchange that should be available by the end of the summer, Porch said.

Other providers include Vigilar Inc.'s Intense School, which is holding a series of five-day Vista-Office 2007 boot camps starting in August. The $2,495 course will prepare students for the Vista configuration exam. Intense School Chief Technology Officer Barry Kaufman said 97% of students in Intense’s MCSE classes pass their exams.

Atlanta-based CED Solutions’ six-day, $2,995 course claims to go one better by preparing students for two MCTS exams on configuring and deploying Vista and Office 2007.

Meanwhile, Houston-based ETEC is, until the end of this month, letting students who register for a 14-day, $5,990 course for Microsoft Certified System Engineering (MCSE) certification also attend a three-day Vista boot camp for free.

Learn IT is offering three-day Vista deployment courses for $1,400 in San Francisco and Santa Clara, Calif. Compared to Training Camp's courses, Learn IT's weekday classes run at a relatively light pace -- 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. -- and the company makes no mention of preparing students for passing certification tests.

Certifications less valuable today

One reason why not all training companies offer certification exam preparation may be because of the recent decrease in the prestige of technical certifications. The dot-com crash left many IT workers, even those with certifications and years of experience, unemployed for many years.


Some scrambled to buttress their resumes by hastily taking courses to add certifications. That led to a situation in which many workers held paper certifications but lacked much or any work experience with a given technology.

Add to that recent reports about the prevalence of cheating and pirating of certification test answers, and it’s no wonder that many employers are less impressed with certifications than they once were. "Certifications used to be the be-all, end-all for getting you a job. Now they’re a way to get you an interview," Porch said.

Still, certifications are important enough for most students that Training Camp has them taking the exam at the end of its three-day course. Porch said 80% of students pass at the time of the boot camp, and 90% pass after six months.

Moreover, Training Camp takes an approach similar to the one the Princeton Review takes in preparing high school students for the SAT. In addition to teaching the content, Training Camp instructors also teach strategies for taking the mostly multiple-choice test -- such as eliminating two answers if they are too similar, or reading the answers first on a long question, Porch said.

Porch says the company has to balance opposing needs. "We don’t want anyone to walk away feeling like they were given the answers to the test," he said. At the same time, "we try to focus on the exams because it’s 90% of what students are looking for."

Teaching to the test

While IDC’s Anderson remains a fan of IT boot camps, he takes a hard line against providers focusing purely on getting certified.

"Teaching to the test is, in my view, unethical and bogus," said Anderson, emphasizing that he was speaking generally and not singling out Training Camp. "What a manager wants is someone who knows the material. They care if you have the skill."

Anderson doesn’t buy the argument that emphasizing test-taking tactics helps those students who otherwise know the material but tend to choke or underperform during exams.

"We’re talking only about a very small minority of people there," he said. "It’s not helping the profession of IT to have certificates granted to people who three weeks later may not be able to pass the same test."

Anderson also warns that some boot camps don’t license official content from Microsoft, leaving them vulnerable to teaching out-of-date information. Potential students need to ask and make sure the courseware didn’t come from "some manual bought at Borders," he said.

How about an online course instead?

Anderson said students -- especially those who are motivated and lack a pressing deadline -- should certainly consider other options, such as self-study with books or self-paced online courses. The downside, he pointed out, is that it’s easy to procrastinate with self-guided study programs, since "life tends to get in the way."

Rubbish, said Tim Hildreth, manager of content solutions at SkillSoft PLC, a Nashua, N.H.-based provider of online IT courses. "If students aren’t motivated to begin with, they won’t be motivated sitting in a classroom, either," he said.

SkillSoft, which claims 3,000 corporate customers and more than 6 million current end users, offers four Office 2007 courses today. It is also developing an additional eight Vista courses and 50 Office 2007 courses that will start to become available in July.

Hildreth claimed that online courses are more convenient to those who can’t take whole days or weeks off to attend a boot camp. SkillSoft also sells subscriptions to its e-library of more than 12,000 technical books. Those are popular with IT administrators, who can cut-and-paste scripts and programs straight from the books, Hildreth said.

While some SkillSoft courses "are very closely aligned to a certification exam," Hildreth said, "in general, our courseware tries to be broader than that."

Another provider, Anaheim, Calif.-based New Horizons, is offering 14 Vista-related courses at the moment.

The real value of IT certifications: Education

I got my first certification in the 90s on Windows 98. I did it solely because I was tired of hemming and hawing when my clients asked if I was certified. After all, I'd been working and playing with technology in various forms since the 1960s. I didn't need to prove myself to anyone and besides, all certification would prove is that I had good test-taking skills. I was surprised, however, after going through the preparation and testing process, at how much I learned on subjects not directly related to Windows 98. Since then, I've added CCNA, MCSE, Linux+, MCT, and CCNA Security as a means of broadening my knowledge base and keeping my skills sharp. I'm also pursuing certifications in non-IT areas for the same reason: education.

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Here are two rarely spoken benefits of certification:

1) Broaden my overall knowledge base.

I realized that preparing for and taking the test forced me to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. For example, I had very limited experience with NetWare, but the test had questions about IPX/SPX. In order to pass the test, I had to gain a basic familiarity with Novell NetWare, so I got a trial copy of NetWare (I think it was 3.12) and began to experiment. There were questions about Unix and even mainframe integration. Admittedly, there weren't many questions on those subjects, but without knowing exactly which questions would be asked, I was forced to study each of the subjects enough to be comfortable with the fundamentals. My overall knowledge base was increasing because I wanted to pass a Windows 98 certification exam.

2) Narrow the gap between what I think I know and what I really know.

I rarely know as much as I think I do on any given subject. The certification process provides a reminder of the vast amount of information that is absent from my brain.

We've all read the myriad articles extolling the benefits of IT certifications: Make more money, get faster promotions, earn the respect of your peers. Many organizations reimburse testing fees and even offer pay increases when you achieve certification. There's no doubt that certification has its benefits, but I've never read an article that discusses the real benefit of certification. The real benefit lies in forcing me to follow a prescribed course of study, filling in gaps in my knowledge, and widening my overall knowledge base. (This, by the way, is not about "paper" certifications where you memorize questions and answers and pass the test without having any real knowledge. Please don't do that.) Even if your employer doesn't pay for certs, most employers like having qualified people on staff who are interested in expanding their knowledge.

I had a client who said he didn't care if we were certified or not, but he did care that we went through the process of preparing for certification. He wasn't talking about attending a boot camp or memorizing questions. He was talking about sitting in a lab, experimenting with configurations, breaking things and troubleshooting, and fixing them.

I really don't like taking tests. I'd rather do almost anything than take another certification test, but I know that the process of preparing for the test will make me a better trainer, writer, and IT person. It's not about piling up a long list of initials after my name, it's about piling up the hours of study, experimentation, and real-world experience that those initials represent. That way, when I design a system, it will usually work as expected. Similarly, when some component fails, I've got a real chance at identifying the problem and fixing it.

How do you see the benefits of certification? Am I the only one who thinks of the certification process as having educational value?

I still don't know as much as I think I do, but preparing for and passing a certification exam gets my actual knowledge base a little closer to my perceived knowledge base.

Don R. Crawley is President/Chief Technologist at soundtraining.net, the Seattle IT training firm. A geek and nerdy kind of guy since sometime back in the 60s, today he pontificates at Computerworld, writes books for IT people, and speaks on command.