Archive for June, 2009

27
Jun
09

What about Windows 7 support?

By brentsmi 6 Comments
Categories: Product Management and Tech Support

September 3 2009 update: Please see: Deep Freeze (beta) for Windows 7 available.

(Note that this answer is similar to, but different than, the What about Snow Leopard support? posting.)

We’re asked this question all the time, every time a new OS version is poised for release: will Product X work on the new OS?

OFFICIAL ANSWER:

1. We do not make any products publicly available with support for an OS until no earlier than one week prior to the OS’s official release date.
2. At this time, we anticipate that all of our currently shipping Windows products will be available for Windows 7 on approximately the same date that Windows 7 ships.
3. At this time, we anticipate that all of our currently shipping Macintosh products will be available for Snow Leopard on approximately the same date that Snow Leopard ships.
4. We may or may not have a private beta available for a particular product prior to the date that Windows 7 or Snow Leopard ships.
5. Any customer who is interested in joining a beta program for any Faronics product should email us using the betaprogram@faronics.com email address, as listed on our “Contact Us” page and should describe their situation and interest in that email. All submissions to that address are read and replied to.

1. We do not make any products publicly available with support for an OS until no earlier than one week prior to the OS’s official release date.

2. At this time, we anticipate that all of our currently shipping Windows products will be available for Windows 7 on approximately the same date that Windows 7 ships (October 22, 2009).

3. We may or may not have a private beta available for a particular product prior to the date that Windows 7 ships.

MORE DETAILED ANSWER:

The above is all true and correct, but the reasons for it can be slightly complicated. Unlike with Snow Leopard, there was a public beta of Windows 7 and there is now a public RC build available to all. Therefore, unlike with Snow Leopard, we are not bound by NDA when discussing compatibility or release plans.

However, it would be impossible for us to officially support Windows 7 until the Windows 7 code is frozen and we get a final build of it to test with. In the meantime, the best that we could do would be to officially support Windows 7 RC. We likely won’t be doing that and will wait for the final version instead. Not many of our customers would install the RC version in a production environment anyway and there is too much risk of something going wrong between the RC and final release.

We are in a different situation than many other developers when it comes to OS changes, particularly for the DF line. Because of what DF is and what it does, it operates at a very low level in the OS and is more “sensitive” to core OS changes than other products might be. DF is not like a word processor app (or whatever product you want to think of) where incompatibility with the OS might result in broken features or occasional crashes of the app.  A badly functioning or incompatible DF could cause fairly catastrophic failure, so we have to get it right and ensure complete compatibility.

This is why when you try to install the current version of any of our products on Windows 7 RC, you will be blocked by  a message stating that the product is not supported on Windows 7. We had no way of knowing when the current version was released whether it would work on a future OS, so we block you from potentially screwing yourself up. At least in theory — Microsoft changed their code from the beta to the RC in a way that now lets you screw yourself. After we display our message stating that installation is not supported, Windows 7 RC displays its own message asking if you want to continue installing in compatibility mode anyway. Note that we cannot prevent Windows from doing this and we do not officially support installation of any of our products on Windows 7 at this time. If you do go ahead and install, be forewarned that you should only do so on a “testbed” that you are willing to wipe clean and reformat if something goes wrong.

Our QA department is currently testing all of our Windows products with the Windows 7 RC; as they find compatibility issues or other bugs, our developers will fix and QA will re-test. We may or may not release an interim version of any particular product until the official release…

Please do let us know your experiences though. Keep checking back prior to October 22 and we’ll share more news as we have it.

26
Jun
09

A customer testimonial.

By azilliax Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

We just got this email in from a customer today, it really speaks for itself:

Dear folks,

(I believe I talked to ******),

I’ve trouble(-shooted? shot?) the issue covered by ticket ***-***** and it does not seem to have anything to do with DF. It was a medium-to-long shot, anyway.

Thank you for all your knowledgeable help and not rolling me over to five levels of automated support software asking me for details of my problem and recorded voices telling me my call is very important to them between bursts of vintage 1993 Windham Hill celtic easy listening fusion world jazz until I am dumped to someone with a binder full of error codes and a list of all the questions they have to go through before they are allowed to ask what is actually going on and are required on pain of death to say Thank You For Your Patience not less than two times in any three sentences.

The jolt of competence and problem-solving suggestions, together with the obvious absence of a script, was so invigorating that I considered inventing problems just in order to have such a conversation again. Please earnestly consider the possibility of applying fire and sword to all other tech-support services of all major hard- and software vendors, disposing of their crisped, lacerated corpses with guttural cries of triumph and taking over their jobs.

But I digress. Again, thank you for your assistance.

Sincerely,

-xxxxx

As much fun as this email was to read it’s not that uncommon to get similar feedback from our customer base – not quite so colorfully phrased but of similar sentiment. The biggest problem that I see in our industry is that most companies see their support teams as a cost center and don’t plan around making customers happy with the products but with keeping the cost of support down. Obviously that does not work well, our challenge as we grow will be ensuring that we continue to meet these expectations.

26
Jun
09

Netbooks, Netbooks, pretty little Netbooks…

By azilliax 2 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized

We have seen a lot of traffic in the last little while asking if our products  work on Netbooks. If you have been living under a rock for some time check the link above for a quick definition of what a Netbook is.

The biggest thing of interest with a lot of these Netbooks is that they incorporate Solid State Disks, and in most cases will not have any moving parts in them making them arguably more durable than a magnetic hard disk drive. Now anybody working in education, who puts a computer in a vehicle, or any other laptop user is going to look at these interested in the durability alone, factor in that the price point on some of these is less than half that of a normal notebook and you have a lot of people interested in putting these into production.

We picked a few of these units up for testing in the office, and in using them I personally have a hard time with them since my hands are big enough that I can actually use one like a blackberry but I can see the appeal for somebody who’s hands are not as large as mine, especially if you needed to travel a lot with it.

And yes, all our products work fine on them.

24
Jun
09

What about Snow Leopard support?

By brentsmi 2 Comments
Categories: Product Management and Tech Support

We’re asked this question all the time, every time a new OS version is poised for release: will Product X work on the new OS?

OFFICIAL ANSWER:

1. We do not make any products publicly available with support for an OS until no earlier than one week prior to the OS’s official release date.
2. At this time, we anticipate that all of our currently shipping Windows products will be available for Windows 7 on approximately the same date that Windows 7 ships.
3. At this time, we anticipate that all of our currently shipping Macintosh products will be available for Snow Leopard on approximately the same date that Snow Leopard ships.
4. We may or may not have a private beta available for a particular product prior to the date that Windows 7 or Snow Leopard ships.
5. Any customer who is interested in joining a beta program for any Faronics product should email us using the betaprogram@faronics.com email address, as listed on our “Contact Us” page and should describe their situation and interest in that email. All submissions to that address are read and replied to.
  1. We do not make any products publicly available with support for an OS until no earlier than one week prior to the OS’s official release date.
  2. At this time, we anticipate that all of our currently shipping Macintosh products will be available for Snow Leopard on approximately the same date that Snow Leopard ships.
  3. We may or may not have a private beta available for a particular product prior to the date that Snow Leopard ships.

MORE DETAILED ANSWER:

The above is all true and correct, but the reasons for it can be slightly complicated. First of all, there is no publicly available “beta” or “RC” release of Snow Leopard available. Therefore, we are covered by NDA when talking about specifics. Therefore, I can’t talk about specifics. I can say that the biggest challenge will be related to the builds of Snow Leopard that are made available to us (and other developers) and the timing of them.

We don’t release products until they have undergone a complete QA cycle, which can take up to a full week. Therefore, even if we had DFM working internally on a Snow Leopard developer “beta”, there is no guarantee that the final Snow Leopard won’t break DFM. This means that we need to test again on the final version and hope that no new issues come up. If they do, they will need to be fixed immediately. Because we need approximately one week for a full QA cycle, we need to get the final Snow Leopard approximately one week before its release if we want to have a simultaneous official release. This may or may not happen, but we will do our best. The worst case scenario is that we will have our own “beta” or “RC” release to coincide with the Snow Leopard launch.

We are in a different situation than many other developers when it comes to OS changes, particularly for the DF line. Because of what DFM is and what it does, it operates at a very low level in the OS and is more “sensitive” to core OS changes than other products might be. DFM is not like a word processor app (or whatever product you want to think of) where incompatibility with the OS might result in broken features or occasional crashes of the app.  A badly functioning or incompatible DFM could cause fairly catastrophic failure, so we have to get it right and ensure complete compatibility.

This is why when you try to install the current version of DFM on Snow Leopard, you will be blocked by  a message stating that DFM only works on OS X 10.3 – 10.5. We had no way of knowing when the current version was released whether it would work on a future OS, so we block you from potentially screwing yourself up.

21
Jun
09

So what’s this all about?

By brentsmi Leave a Comment
Categories: General

We’ve been toying with the idea of a blog/wiki/twitter feed/whatever for ages. My own intertia has been mostly responsible for the inaction so far. It just seemed complicated to set up something official. Ideas for postings were never the problem. It was more technical and also ordinary than that — how would we set up an official company or departmental blog that multiple people could post to? What would we call it? How would we link to it? Who would be allowed to post to it? Who would moderate it? I’d have to get my IT team (for setup, maintenance, backups, etc) and the Marketing group (for branding, consistent messaging, etc) involved… It seemed like a lot of work and though it would be worthwhile, there were always bigger priorities. And so we were stuck in that most useless place — The Waiting Place.

But then Tore did a site visit to one of our local Higher Ed customers. He came back from it and told us that the IT group over there wanted to know whether we had a communication method like this in place. They knew about our official Facebook page, Twitter feed, and quarterly newsletter, but felt they were too focused on marketing and didn’t contain the kind of information they were looking for about our products (in Tore’s words — technical issues, advice, and comments).

So, the whole thing got revived again and this time we got off our lazy butts and did something about it. We decided we’d start with an unofficial blog. No branding, no corporate language, no thinly veiled sales pitches; nothing but real observations and real postings around the topics of technical issues, advice, and comments. At least at the beginning, we are intentionally not mentioning our company name or product names other than by the three letter Product Code assigned to each one. If you use one of our products, you’ll know the Product Code or will be able to figure it out. If you don’t use one of our products, some of the postings here might be of interest but the product-specific ones probably won’t be of much use.

Rest assured that although this is all unofficial, it is real, honest, and unfiltered. You’ll be hearing from the people who make the decisions about what products we make, what features go into them, how they are supported, and who they are designed for. Tech Ops as a department is made up of Tech Support, Product Management (including Technical Publications), Professional Services, and IT. We hope you enjoy it and find this useful. Spread the word.

Oh yeah, comments are not only appreciated, but are expected. Please let us know what you want to hear more about. We all have very thick skin too, so if something is not working make sure you tell us. With committed, interested, interesting (and groovy) readers, I’m sure we’ll succeed. It’s 98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed now that Tore has allowed us to escape from The Waiting Place.

19
Jun
09

MS “Free” AV to release beta next week

By bparmar63 Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,

MS announced that it’s new “Free” Anti-virus software will be released in beta next week. To be named Microsoft Security Essentials, MSE is the descendant of “One Care”. The beta will be limited to 75k downloads and its target is global.
Interestingly enough they are actually targetting Brazil and China – both are large vectors of malware infection because users are running Windows without AV. MSE is aimed first and foremost at users who either can’t or won’t pay for antivirus/anti-malware software.

There will be no registration required, no trials with an expiration date or required renewals. But Microsoft is restricting the MSE download (both the beta and final) to PCs running Genuine Windows (which has been authenticated as non-pirated).

Don’t cancel your current AV contracts yet though. While MSE makes use of the same core engine as the Forefront Client product Microsoft offers to businesses, it doesn’t provide the management capabilities that the paid Forefront Client — or the former Windows Live OneCare subscription offering do.

19
Jun
09

Welcome to the Igloo

By azilliax Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

Well welcome all to the Igloo, in the next couple of days we should be putting some interesting topics up here for your consumption. I’m sure that the others in the TechOps team will have some interesting to post.

In the meantime here’s a cat to distract you.

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