Thanks. In my dreams last night, Balmer came up on stage with Page and apologized to the world for not seeing a need for S2S XMPP federation and they announced a partnership between Hangouts and Skype/Lync via S2S XMPP. Then they pulled a "but there's more" and announced that they open-source extended XMPP/Jingle so that both products could handle Multi-way chat/audio/video. In my dreams!

It is not possible that Google doesn't fear MS. I'd be willing to be that most of the people reading our comments here are doing so from a Windows computer.

For sure, Skype was around first, but I think that it isn't as much of what Skype stands for as what Skype stands for when Microsoft owns it. Google fears Microsoft more than it feared Skype.

Nothing is for sure when you're working with competitors, but I don't think that Microsoft would have had a lot (if anything) to lose by attempting to incorporate XMPP. XMPP should have been added a long time ago by Microsoft, way back in the Messenger days. I can't remember what year (2008?) Microsoft offered up XMPP for the first time with Office Communications Server (it was in 2007 R2), but they should have offered XMPP at that time. By my measurements, if Microsoft did everything right with respect to XMPP, Skype should have been getting XMPP in 2013.

I like open IM and will miss being able to chat with my Gtalk contacts from Lync.

This mostly comes down to a battle between 2x platforms: Google vs. Microsoft. I consider myself a pretty avid Microsoft supporter, but if you look at the facts, I kind of think that Microsoft started this fight by:

1) Buying Skype and pitting Skype against Talk.
2) Their Scroogled campaign that pitted Outlook against Gmail
3) Connecting Outlook.com to the Talk API when Google would have preferred that Microsoft federate skype/outlook/hotmail/live/passport via XMPP.

It's that third point surrounding XMPP federation that this all comes down to. When Microsoft decided to not federate via XMPP with the Outlook/Skype consumer products they were saying that they only wanted to establish 1-way communication with Google's platform. There is no doubt that this pissed Google off because Microsoft is trying to take away their market share while also taking advantage of their services and open architecture. Google's offered up XMPP for many years and Microsoft never connected until they had a mail product that was capable of trading market share (in one direction).

Microsoft is clearly not against XMPP because they do support XMPP in their commercial IM product, Lync (which I'm a regular user of and competent in supporting/deploying). I've considered many scenarios but can't figure out why Microsoft wouldn't want to enable XMPP for its consumer products as a way of communicating with Google Talk contacts other than to discourage interoperability with their consumer products; e.g. keep everyone on Skype.

I know that some might argue that Microsoft connected to Google the way they did so that it could pull over all of your Google Contacts and already authorized XMPP invites, but in my opinion they could have just showed you a list of all your current Google Talk XMPP contacts and asked you to place check marks next to any that you wanted to invite to your Microsoft Account contact list. With all that said, maybe its as simple as that someone in the right position at Microsoft failing to comprehend the scenario.

The article clearly states that WP8 is going to be updated to the next version of WP. This would be like saying that Windows 7 RTM support is ending so Microsoft is abandoning all of its faithful Windows 7 users that are buying computers today with Windows 7 today. When in-fact Microsoft is really just saying that you need to be running the latest SP1 (service pack) that can be installed on any computer running Windows 7 RTM. Basically, install WP8.5 or WP9 (whatever it is called) and you'll be set.

FWIW, I rushed out and bought a HTC 8X on the day they came out and used it alongside my day-to-day smartphone and although I LOVED the OS, I hated the fact that there weren't enough apps and the whole Messenger/Skype/Lync/Facebook/SMS thing is a mess on the device at the moment. I would have kept the device and loved using it had it not been for how horrific the messaging experience is on the phone. For anyone who cares, the default "Messaging" app contains your text messages and facebook messages, but is 100% incompatible with Skype and Lync at the moment. It doesn't support Messenger anymore really either since that is technically on its way out. My opinion is that they need to somehow integrate Lync/Skype/Facebook/SMS on the platform to give an unrivaled communications experience. If they could also integrate voicemail, email, twitter, and phone calls all so they show up in that same place then that would be great. You should just be able to set your outbound communication preferences for a particular contact so that you can reply to them easily. /rant

Back to the point. Please read the article.

Surface Pro is very close to reaching my "device trifecta". I think that the killer device for 2013 needs to be these 3-things with very few compromises: 1) Notebook: everyone is comfortable with this form factor and still wants it. It has to have a full keyboard is basically the main point here. I think that it ideally should be able to work on your lap but I don't know that everyone agrees with me. 2) Tablet: Most people want to consume and play, this is the easiest form factor for that. It is also the best form factor for convenience. If you want to whip your device out and check something really quick then a tablet is the most comfortable form factor to achieve this. 3) Desktop: This is the big one that I think all these tablets are missing and I feel like the solution is so close. All they have to do is make a docking station with dual mini-DisplayPort outputs and a bunch of other connections such as Ethernet, USB3, and audio in/out. the dock would need to connect with just a single connector and should ideally stand the device up in its tablet form factor so it can be used as a 3rd screen for additional interaction/notifications. If this isn't in the plans for Windows 9/Surface 2 then it should be.

I have Comcast Business Class Internet in Seattle and I'm not re-rerouted; everything is working as it should. I internally have a split-horizon DNS setup where are DNS requests thare non-local are forwarded to OpenDNS's servers.

Excel 2007 SP2 actually does support .ODS now.

I don't see this feature being added to the corporate IT toolbox of practical ways to run legacy applications. Lots of business computers are going to suffer larger than acceptable performance hits when running XP virtualized on top of 7.

Imagine XP being virtualized on top of 7 on a desktop with a Pentium 4 2.4GHz CPU (no Hyper-Threading or Virtualization Technology Support), 1 GB RAM, 80 GB 7200 RPM HDD, and a circa 2004 integrated graphics card. Many companies still have tons of computers like these that will barely be able to run 7 let alone XP virtualized on top of it.

The fundamental problem is many people are just as happy today with their XP computers as they were 5 years ago when they purchased them. Although many of us who have new quad-core computers with solid-state-disks and loads of memory can barely stand using them these archaic machines, it is all about what the end-user is able to accomplish with their toolbox at the end of the day.

Disclaimer: I run Windows 7 on my main laptop, love it, and look forward to it hopefully being adopted with huge open arms by everyone.

This is unfortunately another case to show that SSDs are not ready for prime-time. With that said, I'm anxiously awaiting the ability to buy a super-fast 120GB+ SLC drive once prices drop below $400.

I just hope that Microsoft and Apple come up with some great software enhancements for handling SSDs ASAP.

It is hard for me to believe that the two OS giants can't release their upcoming software in a way that is totally SSD optimized. They are kidding themselves if they don't think that conventional mechanical HDDs are living past their life expectancy already.

I have one of these as well and it is great! I can't believe that D-Link would consider discontinuing it.