Preliminary results from our 2009/10 x86 Vendor Preference Survey show that the economy has had a considerable impact on IT spending among our survey respondents. While this is perhaps a “Duh, dumbass” finding, it does give us some data to hang our hats on. We want to stress that these results are tentative, as the survey is still out in the field and could well change as more responses are received. But, we also wanted to share a bit of interesting data and maybe even induce more of you to take the survey.

'Read More' to see the results and the participants' observations... or to take the survey yourself...

The ideal client computing solution doesn’t yet exist. The traditional model is very expensive, requiring lots of troubleshooting and 1x1 support to keep users up and running. Left uncontrolled, users will add more applications or inevitably use their systems for both work and personal tasks. This anarchy leads to more system problems and thus more support. Organizations typically try to minimize these problems by locking down the PC configuration – sort of the old-style Soviet Politburo approach, which leads to unhappy users burning effigies of CIOs.

OK, I’m a sucker for anything that does something a lot faster – even if I don’t quite understand how it does it. So I have to blog a least a little bit about IBM’s recent announcement; they’ve lit a fire under the task of assessing data quality with a newly patented (and presumably shiny) algorithm. What got my attention was this result:  Using this new method, they were able to accurately validate 9TB of data in 20 minutes  – as opposed the 24 hours plus that traditional methods would have taken on the same hardware.

That’s pretty sporty performance, in my mind,

There hasn’t been a lot of talk yet from Oracle about their plans for HPC now that the Sun purchase has been consummated. From what I can tell, it’s not that Oracle is necessarily holding anything back; it’s more that their approach to the market is still being shaped up. The big job was getting the systems roadmaps in place and communicated to the world – and there still are some who will argue that Oracle hasn’t been clear enough on that issue.

However: it looks like almost all HPC-related content has disappeared from the Oracle website.

The people have spoken: Barbie will become a computer engineer. And a news reporter.

Results of the 2009 Barbie Global Career Survey – called the ‘Girls’ Vote’ on the results announcement page – swung in favor of ‘News Anchor.’ But the ‘Popular Vote’ conducted online during the last month and promoted here has delivered geek glory: Computer Engineer Barbie. Hell yeah.