Microsoft’s Vista : Is migration really worth ?

Nearly 16 months after Microsoft launched Vista, the company is still trying to convince some consumers of the operating system's merit. "Vista is a disappointment," says Shawndra Hill, operations and information management professor at Wharton and a Vista customer. "It's too complicated. We had Windows XP and were using it fine. Then Microsoft decided to provide us with something new. But there wasn't anything really new" about it.

Legal studies and business ethics professor Kevin Werbach says Microsoft faced multiple challenges with Vista. "Successfully building a software system as complex and interdependent as Windows Vista is a nearly insurmountable challenge, even for Microsoft. It's hard enough to make the operating system run reliably with all the legacy connections and potential software and hardware combinations, let alone provide sufficient innovation to justify an upgrade," Werbach says.

Although Microsoft executives disagree with the Vista naysayers, perception problems linger. Infoworld has an online petition urging Microsoft to keep XP in circulation. Dell is allowing professional customers to exercise their "downgrade rights" after June 30 when Microsoft will stop licensing XP to PC manufacturers. Downgrade rights, which come with Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate, allow anyone with those software versions to downgrade to Windows XP Professional. Dell will install XP at its factories if customers choose. Other PC vendors have similar offers. Microsoft's usual practice is to phase out an operating system as PC manufacturers and their customers move to the new one.

"Microsoft made a mistake with this one," says Wharton management professor Lawrence Hrebiniak. What's unclear is whether Vista suffers from a perception problem that can be cured with better marketing or whether it faces more entrenched problems. In its fiscal third quarter ending March 31, Microsoft had client revenues (what the software giant calls its operating system sales) of $4 billion, down 24% from a year ago.

Some of those analysts are beginning to worry. "The overall reputation problem that Vista has developed with both business and consumer users could be beginning to exert a material impact," said Tsvetan Kintisheff, founder of Sofia, Bulgaria-based Kintisheff Research, in a research note.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt declared at the company's annual shareholder meeting on May 8 that "the shift from PC-centric to Internet-centric computing is the defining shift of our generation." And Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has acknowledged that this shift was one of the primary reasons for Microsoft's bid for Yahoo.

Meanwhile, another technology called "virtualization," which allows multiple operating systems to run simultaneously on one PC or server, is diminishing the importance of products like Vista and raises questions about its future. The OS was originally intended as an abstraction layer between software applications and the computer's hardware. But with the new abstraction layer between the hardware and the OS provided by virtualization and products like Adobe's AIR that sit between the OS and desktop software applications, the role the operating system once played is becoming increasingly diminished.

Despite these new developments, Microsoft finds itself at a crossroads, according to Werbach. "The platform for most uses of PCs today is the Internet, not Windows. Windows plays an important role in the ecosystem, but it's not the center of the world in the way it used to be. Microsoft has made several attempts to integrate Windows and the web, but the center of gravity for innovation and monetization keeps moving to the network. Microsoft needs to decide whether it cares more about the next 5 to 10 years, or the 20 years after that."

Another radical shift for Microsoft would be to make Windows a more open platform where the company would give away the software to collect revenue from transactions and advertising. "The only long-term solution is for Microsoft to make a radical shift and turn Windows into a truly open platform," says Werbach. "Eventually, the big money is going to come from services and transactions, not software licenses. Microsoft understands this and is moving in the right direction, but it will eventually have to go much further. As long as it has the DNA of a software company, it will be weighed down in the new era."

Pune's Growing Real Estate Market: Pune's Growing Real Estate Market

Pune's Growing Real Estate Market: Pune's Growing Real Estate Market

How Richest Familes Manage Their Wealth ?

For many of the world's richest families, SFOs -- Single Family Offices -- play an essential role in their investment strategy. SFOs manage the family financial portfolio and often provide other services, such as handling children's college applications, hiring domestic staff or managing the family fleet of jets. About 1,000 SFOs are in operation around the world catering to families with a least $100 million in assets. More than half the SFOs are managing family wealth of more than $1 billion.

Up until now, little has been known about these powerful entities. New research, however, shows that they play an important role in managing major investment portfolios, guiding significant philanthropic endeavors and maintaining a core set of values across generations of extremely wealthy families.

Stacy M. Dutton, former president and chief investment officer of the Manhattan-based Park Agency, the successor company to the SFO Joseph P. Kennedy Enterprises, says family offices are trending toward more emphasis on managing money than managing the family compound.

Amit, academic director of the Wharton Global Family Alliance (GFA) says a family needs at least $100 million in assets to make it worthwhile to establish an SFO, which typically costs about $3 million a year to operate. Individuals and other groups of families often form similar entities known as multi-family offices (MFOs) which, according to Amit, number in the thousands.

From interviews, the GFA research found that other common reasons for having a SFO include freedom of career choice for family members; cost effective money management; stable, controlled and scalable asset management; development of trustworthy and loyal employees, and cheaper document administration.

Amit says the new research is just a first step in gaining a better understanding of how family wealth is managed. GFA plans to continue its studies and hopes to examine the financial performance of families with SFOs against the investment performance of private banks or other investment professionals. "The vast majority of businesses around the world are indeed family businesses, and there are a number of distinguishing aspects that make family firms unique, raising issues that we as academics must look at, such as succession and governance," says Amit.

Indeed, the link between the family and the family business deserves more interest. Some lessons to manage personal wealth can always be derived from them.

Disney back to promoting new optical disc format : BD

Thomas K. Arnold of USA Today, shares with us the campaign that Disney is launching to promote Blu-Ray disc format through the launch of it’s classic ‘Sleeping Beauty’ :

Disney wants to awaken sales of the Blu-ray Disc format, and the studio knows it'll take more than a kiss to get the job done. In October, Disney will release its first animated classic on the high-definition video format, Sleeping Beauty, with high-tech viewing options not possible with DVD.

Using a new technology known as BD Live — which connects to the Internet — viewers will pop in the disc and get a customized version of the famed castle that serves as a backdrop for the menu. The sky will reflect weather conditions in the viewer's hometown.

Once viewers begin watching, they'll be able to chat with friends right on the movie screen, using a laptop, BlackBerry or other PDA, through Disney's protected network. They'll be able to insert customized video messages anywhere in the movie and send them to friends or family members via a "movie mail" feature.

They'll be able to play trivia games with fellow viewers across the country. And when they're done, they can get a constant supply of new trailers, plus trade in "reward" points, collected by using many of these features, for ringtones and wallpaper.

Sleeping Beauty "will revolutionize the way people will interact with and view movies in the home," says Bob Chapek, president of Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment. "We pulled out all the stops in launching this technology."

The Blu-ray format could use a wake-up call. Despite competing format HD-DVD giving up the field in early February, sales of BD players fell 40% from January to February, and recouped only 2% of that loss in March, according to a report from market tracking firm The NPD Group. (Figures do not include sales of Sony's PS3 game system, which also plays BD videodiscs and is on the upswing.)

At this point, Blu-ray accounts for about 5% of overall disc sales, according to Nielsen VideoScan. To really start the ball rolling, studios believe it'll take not just a clearer picture but also a completely different and interactive experience.

Sony released two BD Live features in April, The Sixth Day and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, with downloadable extra content. And 20th Century Fox's Alien vs. Predator lets viewers superimpose themselves into a game and play against others over the Internet.

"Blu-ray Disc alone is a significantly different viewing experience, with seamless menus and other technological advances that make DVD seem almost clunky," says Sony Pictures' Lexine Wong. "But with BD Live, it's a whole other world. BD Live allows packaged media to live forever."

High - Definition optical disc format war

Finally, in the optical disc format war, Blu-ray disc was able to establish it’s triumph over HD-DVD. On February 19, 2008, Toshiba — the main company supporting HD DVD — announced it would no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders, leading almost all other HD DVD supporters to follow suit, effectively naming Blu-ray the victor of the format war.

HD DVD had a head start in the high definition video market and Blu-ray Disc sales were slow at first. The first Blu-ray Disc player was perceived as expensive and buggy, and there were few titles available. This changed when PlayStation 3 was launched, since every PS3 unit also functioned as a Blu-ray Disc player. By January 2007, Blu-ray discs had outsold HD DVDs, and during the first three quarters of 2007, BD outsold HD DVDs by about two to one. Finally, by February 2008, Toshiba announced it was pulling its support for the HD DVD format, leaving Blu Ray as the victor in the video wars.

Blu-ray Disc uses a "blue" (technically violet) laser operating at a wavelength of 405 nm to read and write data. Conventional DVDs and CDs use red and near infrared lasers at 650 nm and 780 nm respectively. The blue-violet laser's shorter wavelength makes it possible to store more information on a 12 cm CD/DVD sized disc. The minimum "spot size" on which a laser can be focused is limited by diffraction, and depends on the wavelength of the light and the numerical aperture of the lens used to focus it. By decreasing the wavelength, increasing the numerical aperture from 0.60 to 0.85 and making the cover layer thinner to avoid unwanted optical effects, the laser beam can be focused to a smaller spot. This allows more information to be stored in the same area. For Blu-ray Disc, the spot size is 580 nm.[38] In addition to the optical improvements, Blu-ray Discs feature improvements in data encoding that further increase the capacity.

Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD), is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD), as well as storing large amounts of data.

The format offers more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs and can hold up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc. This extra capacity combined with the use of advanced video and audio codecs will offer consumers an unprecedented HD experience.

Me-hi-co

After a long journey of 30 hours, I finally reached destination Mexico at 21:00 hours on 13th April 2008. It was a tiring journey with 6 hours halt at Frankfurt. Thankfully, while returning we have 23 hours halt at Frankfurt wherein we will be checking into the Airport Hotel, giving us good time to relax.

Mexico is a good city, but not for vegans. There are hardly any vegetarian options available at the hotels here. For breakfast, we are surviving on cereals, fruits and bread. Arroz and beans are regulars during lunch, and dinner is catered by the stock of food that we have from India. No idea, what will happen once this home stock exhaust.

Be sure to learn some basic Spanish, before you land in Mexico. It’s a hard life if you do not know Spanish. Despite of Mexico’s close vicinity to U.S., it was surprising to see people not knowing English. All the signboards to utility websites are in Spanish. It’s dangerous to tour alone without a Mexican counterpart.

We visited a place called Xochimilco(pronounced ‘Socheemilco’). It was a nice place with a good marketplace. Daniel Lopezgonz, accompanied us with his wife Martha and two daughters Pamela and Tamara. Daniel’s in-laws later joined us during a ride on the boat. There were vendors selling everything, from fruits to half-roasted corns, flowers to some speciality cloth during our one-hour ride on the boat. All we replied to everybody was with Gracias. There were also small boats that had people playing Mariatchi music. Later we had some Quesadillas at a restaurant. To indianise we added lot of chilli, lemon and salt, which made them taste better. If it not had been Daniel we wouldn’t have reached this place with so ease due to the language barrier.

There are some picturesque volcanoes in and around Mexico city which we are planning to visit sometime later.

Wish us good luck on our conquest to find or cook Indian food in Mexico!!