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IPads are already making their way into businesses via bring-your-own-device efforts with Microsoft Surface RT tablets hoping to follow suit as employees lobby for their favorite devices. But which one makes more sense from an IT perspective?

Read Network World’s other tech arguments.

The two products are roughly similar in price ($500), run touch-centric operating systems, are highly portable and weigh about a pound and a half.

The two most significant differences are that Surface RT comes with both a keyboard and a version of Microsoft Office – Office 2013 Home & Student 2013 RT – which expand the potential corporate utility of the devices.

Third-party keyboards are available for iPads as are third-party versions of Office-compatible productivity suites but they represent more work for IT. A rumor says Microsoft is working on a client that will allow accessing Office from an iPad through Microsoft’s service Office 365.

Office on Surface RT has its limitations. It lacks Outlook but includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, and the Surface RT version requires a business license in order to be used for work. Still, having it installed out of the box is a leg up and gives workers the opportunity to tap into the productivity suite. The keyboard is a big plus.

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When it comes to numbers of applications iPad has far more than Surface RT, and neither one has the number of business applications that support traditional Windows operating systems. Surface RT is a Windows operating system that can’t run traditional Windows apps except for the Office suite specifically crafted for the platform.

Instead, Surface RT has its own class of applications called Windows Store apps, mainly because they can only be bought from the Window Store. They are tailored for touch tablets and must be vetted by Microsoft before they get into the store’s inventory.

They can be developed using XAML, with code-behind in C++, C#, or Visual Basic, and Microsoft has a provision for sideloading custom business apps to Surface RT without submitting them first to Microsoft. Even so, that’s a lot of work to get apps natively on the devices.

Both iPads and Surfaces support virtual desktops, which goes a long way toward making traditional apps available on them. Hosted virtual desktops (HVD) can be costly, Gartner says in a report called “Bring Your Own Device: New Opportunities, New Challenges”. Its research found that “shifting to an HVD model increases the onetime costs per device by more than $600.” Plus proper licensing of iPads for business use is complicated, the report says.

Managing Surface RT is possible via Windows cloud-based management Intune and Exchange ActiveSync for messaging. IPad also supports Exchange ActiveSync. Third-party mobile device management platforms can configure and update iPads as well as monitor compliance with corporate policies. They can also wipe or lock lost and stolen machines. OS X server can do all this as well.

Surface RT comes with security features iPad doesn’t. These include both hardware-based secure boot that checks that the system hasn’t been tampered with and also trusted boot that fires up anti-malware before anything else. That way malware can’t disable the anti-malware before it gets the chance to do its job. The same hardware security module can act as a smartcard for authentication, and Surface RT has full disk encryption.

The iPad has disk encryption but lacks the secure boot features of Surface RT. Its secure boot chain is based on read-only memory and its hardware security module doesn’t do double duty as a smartcard.

NOTE: There is another version of Surface that runs on x86 processors and supports any application that Windows 7 supports. It’s not available until next year, but is actually a tablet-sized full Windows laptop with all the touch capabilities of Surface RT.

That device would beat iPad hands-down if it cost the same, but it is likely to cost hundreds of dollars more than Surface RT.

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Blogger pegs price for Windows 7 PC buyers during run-up to fall debut of new OS

Computerworld – Microsoft will charge users who buy a new Windows 7 PC $14.99 for an upgrade to Windows 8, according to a report.

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The cost of the upgrade was revealed yesterday by Paul Thurrott, a popular blogger who writes SuperSite for Windows.

An earlier report by CNET had claimed that Microsoft would charge a fee for the upgrade, but had not spelled out the amount. CNET said that the program would kick off alongside the delivery of Windows 8 Release Preview.

Microsoft has said it will ship the preview the first week of June. If the company follows the same schedule it used in 2009 to deliver Windows 7′s release candidate, the most likely date is Tuesday, June 5.

Eligible customers must purchase a new Windows 7-powered PC between June 2012 and January 2013.

Unlike the past two upgrades — a 2006 program for Windows XP-to-Vista and the 2009 deal for Vista-to-Windows 7 — Microsoft will this time not upgrade users to the corresponding Windows 8 edition, but instead will provide everyone with Windows 8 Pro, the higher-end version of the two that will be widely available at retail, said both Thurrott and CNET.

The two previous upgrade plans offered the newer operating system for either no cost or for a small fee. Details varied, as computer makers fulfilled the offer, with some demanding small fees while others provided the upgrade free of charge.

Some OEMs had given customers free upgrades to earlier editions as well. In 1998, Gateway, for years a Dell rival in the direct sales market, offered free Windows 98 upgrades to people who bought a Windows 95 machine prior to the former’s release.

Although Microsoft has not divulged upgrade pricing for Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro, if it sticks to its current scheme, those versions will run customers $120 and $200, respectively. Microsoft’s $15 charge for the Windows 8 Pro upgrade would then represent a discount of nearly 93%.

Apple, which is also releasing a new operating system upgrade this year, has not announced an upgrade program. Last year it offered customers a free copy of OS X 10.7, or Lion, if they bought a Mac equipped with Snow Leopard.

Apple’s OS pricing, however, has been significantly lower than Microsoft’s of late: Upgrades to OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, and Lion ran users $29 and $30, respectively.

Users ineligible for the low-cost Windows 8 upgrade may be able to score a copy at a substantial discount if Microsoft’s promise of “limited-time programs and promotions” results in a repeat of the aggressive deal the company ran for Windows 7 pre-sales.

In mid-2009, Microsoft sold Windows 7 upgrades for between 50% and 58% off the sticker price, then delivered those orders after the late-October launch of the OS.

Microsoft will likely run the Windows 8 upgrade program through a website it registered in February.

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In a recent interview, Kaspersky Lab founder and CEO Eugene Kaspersky claimed that Apple is “10 years” behind Microsoft on security, as evidenced by the recent malware attacks affecting Mac OS X

There’s been a lot of chatter lately that the recent Flashback and Flashfake malware infestations plaguing Apple’s Max OS X are a sign that the Mac is not nearly as secure as Apple and its devout fans would like you to believe.

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Eugene Kaspersky, however, founder and CEO of Kaspersky Lab—a leading producer of security software—claims things are much worse. He says that Apple is in a potentially dire position and must change its approach to patches and updates, much in the same way Microsoft did year ago to more quickly and efficiently address vulnerabilities in Windows.

In a recent interview with CBR Online, Kaspersky said,

“I think they are ten years behind Microsoft in terms of security. For many years I’ve been saying that from a security point of view there is no big difference between Mac and Windows. It’s always been possible to develop Mac malware, but this one was a bit different. For example it was asking questions about being installed on the system and, using vulnerabilities, it was able to get to the user mode without any alarms.”

Of course it’s possible to develop malware for OSX. Malware could be developed for any OS. As far as malware exploiting vulnerabilities, is that what’s been happening on Windows systems for ages?

Before we go on, we should point out what we believe to be a serious flaw in that statement. When Kaspersky says “there is no big difference between Mac and Windows,” that may be true on some level because they are both consumer operating systems, but the underlying technologies in OS X and Windows are fundamentally different. OS X is based on UNIX, which is decades more mature than Windows. And with that maturity also comes strong security.

Kaspersky goes on to say, “They will understand very soon that they have the same problems Microsoft had ten or 12 years ago. They will have to make changes in terms of the cycle of updates and so on and will be forced to invest more into their security audits for the software.”

This may or may not be the case. Kaspersky asserts that the success of Flashback / Flashfake will result in more malware being released for OS X. We’re not so sure. Most malware producers are in it to make a quick buck, not for notoriety. And the success of one piece of malware, doesn’t guarantee more will follow. Flashback / Flashfake may be getting some attention now, but targeting the Mac just doesn’t make as much financial sense as targeting Windows.

The fact of the matter is, even with relatively strong Mac sales, Windows-based systems far outsell the Mac and malware producers are always going to more aggressively target the largest install base. At least that’s our opinion. What say you?

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On August 9, 2011, Apple’s market capitalization briefly rose to $341.5 billion, edging it just ahead of Exxon, until that morning the highest-valued company in the world. The company Steve Jobs had co-created putting together computers, the one that Michael Dell had suggested shutting down 14 years earlier because it had no future, was now worth more than any other. The stock fell back by the end of the day, but it had made its mark; the transformation of Apple from financial basket case to ruler was complete. At the end of the day it was worth $346.7 billion; Microsoft was worth $214.3 billion and Google $185.1 billion.

Compared to the end of 1998 (Apple $5.54 billion, Microsoft $344.6 billion, Google $10 million), the aggregate wealth of the companies had more than doubled. Microsoft, though, had shrunk by 40%, after being outdistanced first in search, then in digital music and then in smartphones — in the latter category by both companies.

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The companies had changed enormously. Google was soon to celebrate its 13th birthday, having roared from a three-person garage start-up to web giant; it was struggling too with having nearly 29,000 staff worldwide. Larry Page, once more the chief executive, was forcing the divisions to justify themselves, getting divisional heads to explain their projects in soundbite-length memos. His greatest concern was that Google was getting too big and slow to act: “Large companies are their own worst enemy,” he said in September. “There are basically no companies that have good slow decisions. There are only companies that have good fast decisions.”

Where Apple hadn’t heard of Google 13 years before, now it had gone from having a common cause against Microsoft to being just a business acquaintance, and sometimes opponent; Apple and Microsoft bid together against Google for patents covering the mobile business. Apple was seeking to disintermediate Google from search with the cloud-based voice search of its upcoming iPhone. And they were constantly niggling each other in smartphones and tablets. Even so, by September 2011 the majority of mobile search still came from iPhones, according to Google testimony at the US Senate.

Apple had changed. From just under 10,000 full- and part-time staff in September 1998, it had grown to being 50,000 strong, though around 30,000 were in its retail store chain; the core of the company in Cupertino remained small and relatively tight-knit. The old enmity with Microsoft still flickered occasionally, but strategically they almost ignored each other. Apple’s position in PCs was set at 5% of the market. It had won in music. It didn’t do search. Its position in phones and tablets had pushed Microsoft to playing catch-up; yet the Redmond company could rely on the sheer heft of 1.5 billion PC installations to ensure a stream of replacements and of new sales for Office. Apple’s value, revenues and profits had all passed those of its old rival. Its reputation had been transformed from put-upon also-ran PC maker to world-spanning design brand. Tim Cook’s influence was visible in its inventory, whose value was equivalent to three days’ hardware sales.

Microsoft, by contrast, had gone from world-beater to catch-up. The staff at Microsoft (90,000 worldwide, compared to 27,000 in summer 1998) were a little battle-weary too. As Steve Ballmer, still the chief executive, spoke at the September 2011 all-hands company meeting in front of 20,000 employees, some simply got up and left, unhappy at the ‘cloud computing’ strategy, the stock’s lack of movement, and the lack of excitement at their employer. The version of Windows that would truly work on tablets was still a year away. Microsoft seemed mired in its fabulously profitable past – not a leader or innovator in search or on mobiles or tablets or anything. People began whispering that Steven Sinofsky, who had conquered internal politics and got the Windows team to grapple successfully with the future of tablets and chip architectures, might be chief executive material.

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