You've probably heard the news that Android 3.0 will only be available for tablets. This inspired me for this article series.

Do you know what the first video was that was shown on MTV? That’s an easy one. “Video killed the radio star.” And what will kill the web app? Not that difficult to guess either: The app!

So why will the company that was supposed to fulfill Netscape’s plans to replace Windows with web apps actually kill the web app? The reason why the radio stars disappeared was because many of them were no good dancers and not pretty enough for video. The same applies to web apps: They are just too stiff and ugly compared to apps.

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This is a list of free online tools for IT pros. It discusses ProcessLibrary.com, VirusTotal, Sysinternals online, Who.is, CentralOps network tools, My IP Address, Speedtest.net and Pingtest.net.

There are many useful, free online tools for IT pros. In this post, I listed a few tools I like. If you know of other good online tools that are helpful for Windows administrators, please post the link in a comment below. I will then add the tool to the list.

ProcessLibrary.com

Whenever I have a hunch that a PC is infected even though the antivirus tool is silent, I start Task Manager or Process Explorer to see if I notice anything suspicious. Of course, I don’t know all Windows processes, so if a process I’ve never seen before appears in the list, I search in ProcessLibrary.com for the corresponding EXE or DLL file.

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Most IT pros hopelessly overestimate the importance of browser features. In the sense Carr doubted that IT matters, I question that browsers matter.

A new browser war is going on and I like it! Progress is everything for me. There is no doubt that the web browser is the second most important application on my computer. Since I use it all day, even slight improvements can make a big difference. A big difference for me and probably also for you. I discussed Internet Explorer 9 in detail because I know that it is an interesting topic for many IT pros. However, it appears to me that many people hopelessly overestimate the importance of web browser features for average users. This is why I couldn’t help myself from writing another somewhat ironic post as a counter balance.

The truth is that the vast majority of users don’t really care about what browser they are using. They want to be able to load websites and they also find it quite useful that they can click links. Those who still access sites other than Facebook might like the bookmark feature, but I think this already covers all the relevant features most users expect from a web browser.

The fierce discussion about the coolest and fastest browser is only of interest for IT pros, bloggers, and journalists. This distorts the picture of the importance of browser features because these are the guys who rule the web. Even though almost every adult in the developed world uses a web browser regularly, most don’t really consider browser features as something worth discussing. Try it! Ask any non-geek about important browser features and you will see that he or she will have problems naming a fourth function.

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Internet Explorer 9 64-bit speed benchmarks confirm that it faster than the IE 32-bit. Does browser speed really matter?

So if Internet Explorer 9 64-bit isn’t more reliable, perhaps it scores when it comes to speed? If you’ve been reading 4sysops for some time, you probably know that I don’t miss any opportunity to ridicule the browser speed obsession the IT community enjoys so much. Of course, I am thankful for yet another chance to make some fun of this irrational discussion. If you are one of those IT pros who are so proud to use the fastest and coolest browser, you had better skip the cynical part in this post. I will warn you early enough.

The question whether IE 64-bit performs better than IE 32-bit arises because of the undying myth that 64-bit in general improves speed. But let’s see what others have to say about the speed of IE 9 64-bit.

FavBrowser.com ran some speed benchmarks with the latest version of IE 9 32-bit and 64-bit. The results are quite remarkable. In most of the disciplines, IE 9 64-bit outpaced IE 9 32-bit by far. The same guys ran a comparable test with IE 7 64-bit and 32-bit a while back. The results are similar, although it appears to me the performance difference between 64-bit and 32-bit has become bigger with IE 9.

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Is Internet Explorer 9 64-bit more reliable than than the 32-bit version? In this article the author argues that this is not very likely.

In my last post, I explained why running Internet Explorer 9 64-bit has some severe downsides. Let’s see if better reliability outweighs these disadvantages. People often believe that 64-bit applications are more reliable than 32-bit programs. This might be due to the fact that Microsoft introduced a few features in Windows 64-bit, such as signed drivers and Kernel Patch Protection, that were supposed to make Windows more secure and reliable. Some older fellows might also remember that the move from 16-bit to 32-bit indeed improved reliably.

A topic that is related to reliability is performance (which I will discuss in more detail in my next post) because performance differences are usually only measurable with complex web pages and web apps. So often when a browser crashes it is because not enough resources are available and/or because it can’t handle the complexity.

Rich Menga discussed a similar question recently. His main point is that a 64-bit application is more reliable in handling large amounts of data. To prove this claim, he linked to two nice examples. The first page loads a couple of images, which keeps your browser busy for a while. The second page is even better because it loads a few more images.

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How compatible is Internet Explorer 64-bit? This articles covers Active-X, Silverlight, Sharepoint 2010, Flash, Java, and IE extensions.

Last time I explained that IE 64-bit can’t be used as the default browser, which is not recommended anyway. The biggest downside of the 64-bit browser is poor compatibility. However, the situation has improved slightly in recent years and so it is worthwhile to have a closer look at this topic.

Internet Explorer 9 64-bit HTML and JavaScript compatibility

When IT pros talk about browser compatibility, they usually mean the tiresome web standards topic. Internet Explorer 8 is Microsoft’s first browser that really follows open web standards. With Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft gets one step closer to becoming the open web standards primus considering that that they now even favor HTML 5 over Silverlight. Internet Explorer 9 64-bit is not different from Internet Explorer 9 32-bit when it comes to web standards compliance. This also applies to earlier IE versions regardless of how well they followed the standards. There also shouldn’t be a difference with regard to JavaScript.

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In this article series you will learn about the differences between Internet Explorer 9 64-bit and 32-bit.

Now, that you have an overview of the new features of Internet Explorer 9, I will discuss the differences between Internet Explorer 9 64-bit and 32-bit in another series of articles. Today I will make some general remarks about the default browser settings and how to check which browser version you are actually running.

Download Internet Explorer 9 64-bit or 32-bit?

Internet Explorer has been available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions since Windows XP. Of course, you can run Internet Explorer 64-bit only on a 64-bit Windows. However, the 32-bit edition also works on Windows 64-bit. For instance, if you installed Windows 7 x64, you already have Internet Explorer 8 as 32-bit and 64-bit installed.

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This post summarizes the performance features of Internet Explorer 9: Hardware acceleration, JavaScript-Engine Chakra, modern processor instruction sets and Add-on Performance Advisor.

You’ve probably read the news when Internet Explorer 9 Preview 7 was released a while back. Internet Explorer is now the fastest browser in the world! Wow! While I am sure that those geeks who have a somewhat troubled relationship with Internet Explorer will find some benchmarks that show that IE9 is actually the slowest browser, it is worth having a look at the new features that make Internet Explorer perform so well.

Hardware acceleration

IE9 display uses the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) to render all graphics and text. This reduces the load on the CPU and thus improves the overall performance while loading pages.

JavaScript-Engine Chakra

The new JavaScript Chakra engine makes use of multiple CPU cores to background compile JavaScript code. It can also use the computer’s CPU.

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This article described the new user interface features of Internet Explorer 9: New tabs, Your Popular, Sites, Windows 7 integration (taskbar pinning), new toolbar menus. It also compares IE9 to Chrome.

In my last post in this series, I discussed Microsoft’s stance towards open web standards and, in particular, HTML5. Today, I will have a look at Internet Explorer 9′s new user interface.

Empty title bar

The first thing you notice in Internet Explorer 9 Beta is that the HTML title of the web page is no longer displayed in the title bar. At first you think this is just like in Chrome, but unfortunately it is not. While Chrome uses the title bar for tabs, Microsoft might have been too hesitant to give a Windows application a totally new look. If you ask me, the empty title bar is just a waste of valuable screen space.

New tabs

However, I do think that Microsoft’s developers recognized what makes Chrome so appealing—that is, that you have more space for the web page because the menus and toolbars are arranged intelligently to save space. But instead of moving the tabs to the title bar, Microsoft placed them beside the address bar. Although this also saves space, it can become a problem on a small screen (laptop or tablet) if you have many tabs open. The search engine input field disappeared because it was united with the address bar (like in Chrome), but in my view there is still not enough space for the tabs.

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Microsoft has obviously shifted its strategy when it comes to web standards. Instead of leading the web community and setting its own industrial standards, the company is now trying to be the first to implement open standards. HTML5 is the best example.

For many admins, the question of whether to deploy the latest version of Internet Explorer or not never came up simply because they only deployed a new browser version with a new Windows version. Even though new IE versions were also available for older Windows versions, for many organizations the benefits of deploying a new browser did not justify the costs. Is the situation different with Internet Explorer 9? In this series, I will summarize the new features and other noteworthy things about Internet Explorer 9.

Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview or Internet Explorer 9 Beta

If you want to try Internet Explorer 9, you have two options: You can either install the Internet Explorer 9 Test Drive (Internet Explorer Platform Preview) or the beta release of Internet Explorer 9.

The downside of Internet Explorer 9 Beta is that it replaces Internet Explorer 8 on your computer. So far, IE9 appears to be stable to me, but running a beta on a productive system is always a risky.

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Of course, the winner of this contest was decided right from the outset. Nevertheless the results of this poll are quite interesting. More than 700 IT pros took part in this poll and to my experience this number is statistically significant; that is, it is quite likely the results represent the search engine market share among Windows admins.

As the time of this writing 86% of 4sysops readers prefer Google as their search engine, and 10% use Bing. Note that these percentage numbers are rounded. This is why the results still appear to change. So if you wait a few days, Bing might have 11% of the votes. However, the overall pattern is stable now and I don’t expect any major changes.

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Has your website been hacked and spreads malware such as viruses, spyware, and computer worms all over the Internet? Probably not. But are you sure? You ‘d not only be endangering the computers of your visitors, you’d also be risking the reputation of your organization, and your site might even be removed from Google’s index. In my last post I outlined why I think that the probability of your websites getting infected increases steadily. In this article, I discuss some free tools that allow you to check or scan your website for malware.

I already mentioned Google Safe Browsing and Bing’s malware detection in my last article. Today, I will introduce free third-party website malware detection tools.

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The number of websites infected with malware is growing steadily. According to the Google Safe Browsing Malware List statistics, which were published in August 2009, almost 350,000 sites have been infected. (Please let me know if you know of more recent statistics.) Considering the increase that Google measured, it is quite likely that we’ve already passed the half million mark.

One point that advocates of Web applications argue is that Web apps are safer than desktop apps because they are not prone to infection from viruses and computer worms. In my view, this claim is no longer valid. The Web has become a dangerous place.

I think, there are two reasons for this development. Firstly, the bad guys have found out that the Web, not Windows, is the best place to spread their malware simply because the distribution options are more powerful. Popular sites have thousands of visitors who are not aware of the risks especially if the site owner is trustworthy.

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You’ve probably read the news that Bing is gaining market share lately, although these advances are only moderate and it appears they are at the expense of Yahoo! and not Google, Microsoft’s arch rival. Considering that Microsoft has invested a lot in Bing’s technology and marketing I have been wondering why progress is relatively slow.

I have a theory, meanwhile, but I’d better not reveal it now because it might influence the outcome of this poll. I am really curious to know if the share of Bing decision makers is different among 4sysops readers.

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Just in case you feel the need for browser speed, you should have a look at this demo at the end of the page presented by Steven Sinofsky (President of the Windows Division) and Dean Hachamovitch (General Manager, Internet Explorer). You know, I don’t think that browser speed matters. Our PCs are brimming with CPU power and hardly make use of all their muscles to trim fat desktop apps. It is interesting to note that they don’t tell what kind of hardware they are using. My guess is that these are low-end machines because otherwise the differences wouldn’t be so obvious.

It is hard to imagine that slim real world web apps will ever need more power than desktop apps considering that a large portion of their code is running in the cloud. But who knows, maybe HTML5 will change the game. And yes, when it comes to games speed counts.

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