July 14, 2011
Acer slips to 4th place as global PC sales edge up
The Register
Paul Kunert reports on the rise of Lenovo and the decline of Acer.
“Lenovo seized control of the third spot on the back of a 22.5 per cent rise in sales-in, the strongest of all the major vendors, with growth in Asia Pacific, the US and Latin America. Troubled PC vendor Acer, which rose to prominence on the wave of low-cost consumer notebooks, continued to struggle with sales down more than 20 per cent year-on-year…”
Microsoft Office 365 cloud billing policy: an update
MSPmentor
Joe Panettieri gives the update.
“Overall, I suspect the vast majority of Microsoft’s partners – say, 95 percent or more – are fine with Microsoft’s cloud billing policy. If fact, many VARs prefer to have Microsoft automatically manage customer billing. But the five percent who don’t like the policy are vocal, influential, smart and stubborn (in a good way). Most of the billing policy critics are successful MSPs who (A) already mastered recurring revenue models and (B) want to maintain close relationships with end-customers.”
Why McAfee is still at the top of my Not Recommended list
ZDNet
Ed Bott details his experiences with the security software.
“It should have been so easy to set up a Remote Assistance connection to my Mom’s new PC. She and I both have Windows Live Messenger installed. All she has to do is send an invitation from a chat window to get the remote-support ball rolling. I got her invitation just fine, clicked Accept, and then … nothing. On her end, Windows 7 helpfully suggested that a firewall might be causing the issue and offered to fix the problem automatically. Nope.”