Saturday, January 20, 2007

mis-typing Google

You Tube has a chilling video of what happens when you get the letters wrong in the word "google". The resulting spyware infection isn't pretty. While teenagers looking for music are the prime target for these scammers, anybody can mis-type a word.
Once infected, not only is a computer alive with advertising and spyware, it can be used to send spam and all the passwords, banking details and passwords can be stolen. These problems are causing banks and their customers all manner of damages. This is why we recommend surfing the net only in a limited user profile.

Who comes up with these numbers?

So IDC and Microsoft reckon Vista will generate $9.5 billion for the New York and New Jersey IT industries in 2007?!?

Yeah, right.

The study itself is available on the Microsoft website.What I find intriguing is they claim every dollar spent on Vista will customers will also spend $9.75 in hardware, 4.60 in software and 3.65 in services. These numbers are right on for a new PC.

Looking at our cost breakdown for a new system, these proportions are about right. If you throw in monitors, printers and other peripherals then the proportion of hardware increases. So really all IDC are saying is they expect 9.5 billion to be spent on new systems this year in those two states.

I've got no idea how many systems are sold each year in New York and New Jersey so maybe they are right. But the figures are misleading as most of these systems would have been sold anyway. The real question is how many new systems will Vista sell, and my guess is it won't make much difference.

A big problem I have with triumphant press releases like this is it confirms in many people's minds that the IT industry just tries to perpetuate business for itself. If I were the cynical type, that's what this story would make me think. It certainly won't encourage business owners to buy Vista.

There's no doubt about the fact we'll get a boost in turnover from Vista. The early adopters are going to bleed badly as they do with every new operating system, but it's not going to be a massive part of our turnover. We recommend our customers steer clear of Vista until late in the year.