The aforementioned Google Docs is one example.  It is clearly an inferior office suite to Microsoft Office or the open source OpenOffice.org in terms of features and in ease of use.  It has some clear advantages in that it is cheap and accessible from pretty much anywhere.  It is also ‘good enough’ for many requirements.

This can be extrapolated to a lot of web applications or Software-as-a-Service.  Many (though certainly not all) of these applications have less features than on-premises software and the limitations of the web platform mean they tend to be slower to respond and sometimes less intuitive to navigate.  Again, we tolerate these issues because they also tend to be cheaper and more convenient than on-premises software.  In other words, they are ‘good enough’.

Even the current darling of the IT world, the Apple iPad, can be viewed as an example of ‘good enough’ technology.  The iPad lacks features that would arguably make it a more useful device, such as USB ports, cameras and an exposed file system (though Steve Jobs may well argue that these omissions are in fact benefits).  Balancing that is the fact that the iPad is incredibly convenient and for most web-based applications it is ‘good enough’.

Now, I am not trying to argue a position as to whether ‘good enough’ technology is a good or a bad thing, just point out a trend that I see.  Some may see it as dumbing down software development, while others would argue that convenience and value for money outweigh those concerns.  In the end, the market will decide, with only those technologies that find themselves a customer base surviving in the long term.

What do you think?  Is ‘good enough’ technology good enough?  Or are we setting ourselves up for productivity losses and frustration by embracing technologies based on price and convenience?

The products that will go out of support on 13th July are Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP with Service Pack 2.

In the case of Windows 2000, this product is now ten years old and the only option for those wanting to have access to continued support from Microsoft is to upgrade any Windows 2000 systems, to at least Windows Server 2003 in the case of servers or at least Windows XP with Service Pack 3 for PCs.

With respect to Windows XP, it is important to note that Windows XP itself will be supported for a few more years; it is specifically Windows XP with Service Pack 2 that will go out of support this month.  To maintain support from Microsoft Windows XP users need only install the free Service Pack 3 for Windows XP.

In addition, Windows Vista with no service packs (known as the Release to Manufacture, or RTM, version) went out of support in April.  If you are running Windows Vista, you need to make sure you have installed at least Service Pack 1 (and preferably Service Pack 2) to maintain support.

Firstly, here are a few Microsoft sites covering the issue, from a pro-upgrade point of view, of course!

• Top 10 Benefits of Office 2010 – This list was created for the Office 2010 Beta, but it applies equally to the final product.
• Microsoft Office 2010 Beta FAQ – Another list created for the Office 2010 Beta, but it covers a lot of topics that are relevant to the final product, including the system requirements – you may need to consider PC upgrades if your PCs don’t meet the required specifications.
• See What’s New in Microsoft Office 2010 – The Microsoft Showcase site has a number of videos showing some of the new features available in Office 2010.

For a more independent view, here are some reviews of Microsoft Office 2010 from various sources.

• PC Advisor magazine
• Computerworld
• TechReviewSource
• Wired.com
• CNET
• Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows
• The Guardian newspaper

As for me, my experience in using Microsoft Office 2010 so far is that the whole package feels zippier – the individual programs start up quicker and performance in general feels better. 

The biggest changes seem to be in Outlook, which now has the ribbon interface in keeping with the rest of the suite.  There are some useful e-mail handling features in there that could potentially be real time savers.

Office 2010 is not the revolutionary update that Office 2007 was, but there are enough evolutionary changes in there to make it worth considering making the move to upgrade.

Essential Business Server is the more recent big brother to Small Business Server.  While Small Business Server has been around since the Windows NT 4 days and has been through four major versions, Essential Business Server made its debut with EBS 2008, now destined to be the only version of EBS ever released.  EBS expanded on SBS by splitting the server roles and expanding the number of servers from one to three (or from two to four in the premium editions).  Aimed at medium sized businesses, it also increased the user limit from 75 to 300.  EBS 2008 also included some features that were taken out of the most recent version of Small Business Server, such as ISA Server (rebranded as Forefront Threat Management Gateway).

Having recently deployed EBS 2008 for ourselves, I can say that it is a very nicely integrated package and seemed to me to be a worthy product for those businesses who have outgrown SBS.  However, I think Microsoft may have been better promoting it as a premium version of SBS rather than aiming it at a completely different market.  Businesses at the high end of the user range for SBS can suffer from performance problems related to having all server functions running on the one box.  To me, the big advantage of EBS was the performance gains of being able to run server roles on separate machines.  By user numbers we could have gone with SBS, but chose to go with EBS for those performance reasons.  My suspicion is that businesses larger than the SBS user limit prefer to mix and match their own solutions rather than buy a pre-defined package.  SBS is theoretically aimed at the small business with no internal IT staff and EBS works on a similar philosophy that may not be applicable for larger organisations.

Microsoft are offering existing EBS customers the opportunity to move to the individual components of the suite at no charge, but only between 30th June and 31st December this year.  Customers who take up this offer will receive copies of Windows Server 2008 Standard, Exchange Server 2007 Standard and System Center Essentials 2007.

SkyDrive requires only that you sign up for a free Windows Live account and immediately gives you 25GB of storage online.  Files stored on SkyDrive can be private or public and you can determine who has access to your files.  Files can be easily uploaded into a folder structure you define and downloaded via your web browser.  You can even download an entire folder as a zip file to reduce the time required to download.  Office 2010 will even have the ability to save directly to your SkyDrive.

Windows Live Photos is a photo sharing component of SkyDrive that allows users to upload photos via a web browser and share them with others.  Photos can be viewed in a slide show format or downloaded as a zip file.

Each folder you create on SkyDrive has a unique address, so you can link to folders from blogs, other web pages and e-mails.  You can even set up RSS feeds, so that subscribers will be notified when you upload something new to a folder.

SkyDrive has its limitations – it has a file size limit of 50MB and it doesn’t automatically sync files in the way that a service like DropBox does, but it is certainly a very useful service and the 25GB of free disk space is very generous.  The forthcoming ability to save and share files directly from Office 2010 will make it a very appealling platform for collaboration between workers in different locations.

You can find Windows Live SkyDrive at http://skydrive.live.com/

Support for Windows Vista with no service packs will end on 13th April, 2010 and support for Windows XP Service Pack 2 will end on 13th July, 2010.  This means that to receive security updates, hotfixes and assisted support from Microsoft, you will need to upgrade these versions to a supported service pack.  The current service pack for Windows Vista is SP2 and the current service pack for Windows XP is SP3.

Also coming to the end of its supported life is Windows 2000, in all of its versions.  In this case, the Windows 200 product will end its Extended Support phase on 13th July, 2010.  This is pretty much the end of the support line for Windows 2000; Microsoft will no longer offer free or paid support for the product after this date and will provide no further security updates or hotfixes.  The only support remaining after this date will be self-help support such as online Knowledge Base articles and FAQs, which are guaranteed to remain available for at least twelve months after the end of Extended Support.  If you are running Windows 2000 on servers or PCs, then I strongly recommend that you upgrade to a more recent version of Windows.

You can find more information on the end of support for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista with no service packs here.  You can find more information on the end of support for Windows 2000 and some information about Windows Server 2003 support changes here.

Windows Mobile has certainly fallen well behind the iPhone and Blackberry phone operating systems in recent times, with Blackberry dominating the business smartphone market and Apple dominating the consumer market with the iPhone.  Windows Mobile’s tight integration with Microsoft Exchange environments, through ActiveSync, used to be a significant point of difference for Windows Mobile devices, but now that the iPhone and Blackberry devices have caught up in that regard, their superior interface and manageability have seen Windows Mobile drop to a distant third.

For the first time, Microsoft will dictate rigid specifications for the hardware that will run Windows Phone 7 Series.  This is an area where Apple and RIM have always had an advantage, as they controlled the hardware as well as the software for their smartphones.  On the other hand, Microsoft supported a wide range of devices and the complexity of doing so was probably to the detriment of Windows Mobile.  Windows Phone 7 Series may offer users less choice, but should allow Microsoft to create an improved experience on a smaller range of devices.

Indications are that there will be three chassis types for Windows Phone 7 Series devices.  The first will be an iPhone-type screen-only device.  The second will have a touch screen and a QWERTY keyboard, similar to the Palm Treo.  The third chassis type is a bit of a mystery.  A touch screen with slide out keyboard would be the obvious assumption, but maybe Microsoft have a new form factor in mind.

This may well be Microsoft’s last chance to make an impression in the mobile world; if Windows Phone 7 Series fails to make a dent in the iPhone and Blackberry market share, then it may be too late to try again.

Windows Mobile has suffered in recent times in comparison with the business features of Blackberry devices and the usability of the iPhone.  Windows Mobile 6.5 addressed some of those issues, but seemed to have missed the boat through delays in its release.  The HD2 may get some momentum going back Microsoft’s way with its very impressive-looking hardware specs.

The most notable thing about the HD2 is its huge screen – 4.3 inches.  It is a capacitive multi-touch screen, too (think iPhone), which is a vast improvement on HTC’s previous resistive screens.  The drawback may still be the phone’s operating system, with Windows Mobile having a reputation for being buggy, something to which I can attest from personal experience.

There is a pretty thorough review of the HD2 here.  It certainly looks like a device worth checking out if you are in the market for a smartphone.

For anyone who keeps their systems up to date, this will have no impact, as Internet Explorer 6 is old (and seriously flawed) technology.  However, there are plenty of unpatched systems out there still using IE6 – over 10% according to the w3schools browser statistics site.

If yours is one of those systems, then you should make the switch now, either by upgrading to Internet Explorer 8, or by changing to another browser, such as Firefox, Chrome or Safari.

The simplest method is to run a direct upgrade.  This keeps all of the current settings and programs installed on the Windows Vista machine and just upgrades the operating system to Windows 7.  Installing the upgrade in this manner is just a matter of inserting the Windows 7 DVD and following the prompts.  The Windows 7 installation program collects the information that it needs and then runs through the installation, rebooting the computer as often as it needs to along the way.  Depending on the hardware in use, the upgrade can take up to a few hours.

The second method is to run a custom installation that wipes the hard disk and installs a fresh copy of Windows 7.  This method does not keep the settings from Windows Vista and any programs need to be reinstalled as they will also be removed.  It does ensure that the operating system installation is clean and is not bogged down by legacy issues related to Windows Vista.  Running this type of installation requires booting the computer from the Windows 7 DVD and selecting a Custom Installation.  The installation program then collects the required information and runs through the installation as per the direct upgrade method.

Depending on the edition of Windows Vista being upgraded and the edition of Windows 7 you are upgrading to, the direct method may not be available and a custom installation may be required.  The table below shows the editions of Windows Vista that can be directly upgraded to Windows 7 and the edition of Windows 7 to which they can be upgraded.  For upgrades between editions not listed below, a custom installation will be the only option.

For users of Windows XP or earlier, the only upgrade option is a custom installation as there is no direct upgrade possible from Windows XP to Windows 7.  Of course, if you have Windows Vista media available, it is possible to run an upgrade in two stages, by upgrading Windows XP to Windows Vista and then upgrading Windows Vista to Windows 7.  This is not a course of action I would recommend.  A custom installation is really the best option in this situation.